The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (39 page)

“Simpler, maybe…” I accept her counterattack, but
can’t let go of my bitterness, my own self-pity. “I’m still Mike
Ram. I remember that other world, but I don’t feel like I
lived
in it. Maybe that’s what I don’t understand. I don’t
miss that world and I don’t like this one. And I certainly never
let an artificial supreme being into my head.”

I turn to face her. She stands, summons her own
armor, her pure-white dress, transforms from woman to goddess,
becomes less real. It doesn’t help that I can still smell her,
taste her.

And so ends our poor therapy.

“I do still love you, in my own way, for whatever
it’s worth,” she tries, already distant, aloof for her own
protection.

“I know.” But I can’t say it back, not right now.

She leaves me alone to deal with myself.

25 June, 2117:

I come back “home” before sunset, done with another
day’s excuse for solo brooding, watching the UNMAC teams trying to
secure and analyze the wreckage of the Stormcloud. Burns has moved
in a full platoon—Thomas’—to camp in shelters as full-time security
for the “research team”, mostly new arrivals, probably working
under UNCORT. But today I heard Rick onsite. And Morales. While the
troopers keep working with the engineers to cut open and clear more
sections, the primary team is trying to understand Chang’s power
source, and even more importantly, his lift systems. With the ETE
being stubbornly unresponsive, standard feedline production won’t
keep up with the fuel requirements for the reinforced airwing, much
less get heavy shuttles skyward when the Quarantine lifts. Jackson
has to ration his flights, which means thin patrols and minimal
recon based on highest priority. This news manages to cheer me up,
despite how nervous I am about my people poking around in Chang’s
derelict.

One of the newbie troopers was already found dead
after a night watch, apparently fallen and impaled on some
wreckage—it’s being officially called an accident. I’ve spent the
day debating what I’ll do if there are more such “accidents” and
the newcomer command doesn’t take steps to ensure the safety of the
boots on the ground. The argument was pointless—I know I’ll do what
I’ll do depending on what happens—but it kept me distracted from
Star’s crushing revelations, and how shitty I was receiving
them.

Coming back to Tranquility has been uncomfortable
these last few days. Star has been keeping her distance, letting me
process. I usually see her wandering the Cast gardens, watching the
children. A beautiful phantom in white. But I know I’ve hurt her by
not fully accepting what she’s become and done, not being able to
let go of my pain and rage to even attempt to soothe hers. That she
says she did a lot of what she did for me only makes it worse.

It’s Bel that greets me this evening, back from his
excursion to the Coprates North Rim. He looks urgent, excited.

“We found signs of several abandoned habitations of
varying sizes, hidden in the foothills. Some looked like they
hadn’t seen life in decades. Others were fresher, maybe weeks. A
few sites look like they’d been reused several times. No obvious
signs of violence. Maybe some kind of local nomadic group moving
on, looking for better real estate. Or somebody running from
something.” He flashes me his memories. I see “Zodangan graffiti.
Recent. We found these at two sites near Tyr, higher up in the
cliffs, but neither was big enough for more than a few dozen
people. And these…” He shows me unfamiliar symbols. They look like
a hybrid of stylized English letters, ancient runes and Chinese
pictographs. They’re carved into the rock instead of painted like
the Zodangan work. But I think I’m seeing at least two distinct
styles, languages. In some cases, one set has been crossed out,
partially obliterated. I’m reminded of old-school graffiti,
especially competitive gang tagging. But there’s also art: Stylized
drawings of warriors, families, long-destroyed colony sites, even
commemorations of the nuclear bombardment. Depictions of tragedy
and hope. “We found these at more than a dozen sites along the Rim,
some at the mouths of caves that looked like they were
intentionally collapsed.”

“The ETE told us the few survivors of Tyr found
better sites, dug in and vanished,” I tell him. “And the Cast have
repelled attacks from other groups over the years. Nothing else
left behind?”

“A few scraps. Trash. Waste pits. But then there was
this…”

He shows me another image: a cave floor, with
familiar letters drawn in the dirt. Fresh.

“CROATOAN”

“We made a return trip to this cave on the way
back—Lux was getting cranky but Azazel agreed it looked like
promising real estate for our new home. That wasn’t there the first
time, the day before.”

The Knights were there. Maybe looking for Chang’s
base themselves. Maybe getting themselves away from UNMAC
territory. They’ve probably been watching us, watching
Tranquility’s restoration, watching me. And they left a message.
Why? To test my memory? Reaching out? Did Abbas succeed in getting
word to them, but they’re being cautious?

“Can you take a turn watching over the Stormcloud
site?” I ask Bel. “There’s been a death—a trooper on late watch.
Supposedly an accident.”

“Of course.” It sounds like I’ve given him something
else to be intrigued about.

“How are your friends holding up?” I catch him before
he heads for his rooms, probably to bathe, definitely to sleep in
the bed he made for himself.

“Like I said: Lux got a little tired of what he kept
calling ‘our little camping trip’, but I think he really enjoyed
it, seeing the world. Az definitely did, especially the thought of
finding new societies.”

I’m wondering if that’s all it is. Lux seems like
pure selfishness, even when he joins us, like she’s looking for
appreciation, reciprocity, or at least to alleviate his pervasive
boredom. Azazel has his curiosity, his compulsive need to tinker,
but he’s also got his ravenous hedonism and thrill-seeking. He
truly seems to enjoy his immortal life, and takes every opportunity
for experience, action, sensation. And he seems to be what he
presents as, where Lux frankly oozes deception and manipulation. (I
would say the two are the difference between the sensuous and the
sensual, complex seduction and simple wonder.)

I decide I need to talk to Star, if only to ask if
she recognizes any of the sites Bel found from her time with Chang.
I quickly regret that impulse when I find her in the apartment Bel
set up for her, and she’s definitely not alone: The hatch has been
left ajar. I know what I’m hearing (and smelling), but my brain
doesn’t want to process. So I make another impulsively regrettable
choice and silently slip inside.

She’s passionately engaged with Lux, both of them
naked on a blanket on the deck in the middle of the front room, and
I get the bonus surprise that Lux is in her female form. I’d never
previously known Star to have that orientation, except for some
calculated professional flirting—I’m immediately wondering if I’m
witnessing residual Cal.

Lux sees me first, grins at my visible discomfort,
and gives me the usual so-glad-to-see-you come-hither
there’s-room-for-one-more. Star turns from what she’s been doing
with a start, then freezes, locking my eyes. She looks a little
shaken, maybe more than a little embarrassed, but Lux prods her
back on task, and she complies, however distracted. Lux closes her
eyes and gets back to being lost in the moment, ignoring me if I’m
not going to make myself useful, but I think I hear her giggle as I
make my sheepish retreat and give them their privacy. I make sure
to shut the hatch (I fully expect it was Lux that left it ajar).
Through the steel, I hear things get rougher, more intense—either
the unintentional voyeurism excited Lux further or she’s
aggressively endeavoring to keep Star’s attention.

I get out of there, trying to convince myself that I
have nothing to be jealous of, that we’ve always had our unspoken
understanding. Star was always in and out of my life. When she was
in, things were intense, passionate. When she was out, when she was
off on another job or random adventure, it was like we didn’t
exist. Then she’d just show up again, out of the blue, and we’d be
like hormonal teenagers for awhile. Over the years, I got used to
it—my own duties kept me occupied, demanded too much of my
attention. I knew she must have had others in between—she certainly
didn’t keep her desires in check, and I knew full well she used
them for business purposes. And considering the rejection I’ve just
dealt her…

Now I feel like an idiot in one of Bel’s cheap
romance dramas. I take a walk back to the Lower Dome, pause to
watch the sun set on the way, then head for my old quarters—Fera’s
apartment, unused since Bel and I moved over to the port, Kali
having set herself up in much more regal spaces, where she can
better watch over (and be seen by) her people.

I see Kali walking in the green, and she looks up at
me, gives me a wicked smirk like she knows I’ve been the idiot from
the cheap romance drama. I go shut myself in.

Kali lets me stew for a few hours, then comes up and
reminds me why I married her.

26 June, 2117:

The caves where Bel found the message left are barely
two-hundred klicks east of Tranquility, in the shadow of the ETE
Turquoise Station.

Since I don’t know that much about geology,
especially Martian geology, I’m glad I decided to take Paul, even
though I expect he’s uncomfortable being so close to the Station,
maybe close enough to be seen. He tells me these caves—which go
well-back into the Rim slopes—were probably the result of a
miscalculation in their resource extraction: They take careful
precautions to avoid destabilizing the bedrock, but sometimes their
scans miss something and they pull too much from a permafrost vein,
and a piece of the Rim comes down (not unlike that natural thaw
process that’s crenellated the rims over the eons). These slides
can expose a virtual labyrinth of caves, some reaching all the way
back to the Station thermal cores, making for tempting shelter,
sometimes complete with small springs. But these caves are also
highly unstable—any construction could cause catastrophic
collapses, bringing down more of the Rim.

Paul has never been to these particular caves, nor
have any of the local ETE reported on them. We find some of the
mixed writing Bel showed us, along with drawings of what are likely
supposed to be people—entire groups in some of them—but their
shapes vary from unusually squat and thick, to unnaturally tall and
thin with exaggerated torsos, giving them a cartoonish quality.
Some of the drawings illustrate battles between the squat and the
thin people. All of the carvings are weathered, possibly decades
old.

But there are fresh boot prints in the dust of the
cave floor, coming in and out. The clearest ones I know belong to
Bel and Lux and Azazel. Others look like they’ve been carefully
masked, brushed over.

“Here,” Paul lights up the one-word message in the
dirt.

“Colonel Ram?” A voice calls to me out of one of the
deeper branch caves, deep and authoritative through a breather
mask. I stand put, keep my hands away from my weapons. I call back,
demonstrating my familiarity:

“Grandmaster Kendricks. You take a hell of a risk
coming yourself.”

He steps into view, but keeps back in the smaller
branch tunnel. He’s wearing his usual mix of hand-crafted armor and
camo-cloaks, his ICW held casually low, his sword sheathed at his
hip. He appears to be alone, but I can sense more heat and slight
movement behind him, and in some of the other branches.

“Not so much of a risk,” he tells me, nodding over my
head. “My engineers set charges that will send that part of the
cave down the slope. Even if you’re as indestructible as you say,
thousands of tons of rock should prove inconvenient. And, I expect,
uncomfortable.”

I give him a smile of appreciation. Paul tenses
behind me, backs up a bit, stops himself, stands his ground. He has
a hand on one of his belt Spheres.

“Doctor Stilson,” Kendricks greets him. “A pleasure
to see you again.”

The gesture sounds more formal than sincere. Paul
doesn’t respond.

“Why the invitation?” I nod toward the codeword in
the dirt.

“You sent me one,” he returns. “Through your Nomad
friends. Apparently they trust you, sir, despite your interesting
appearance and unlikely authentication.”

“What brings you out so far from Melas?” I deflect
his polite doubts.

“I expect we share reasons. Searching for Chang’s
hidden base, hopefully to destroy it before he can reconstitute and
resume his war machine, hamstring his operations. And to put
distance between us and your former command.”

“Abandoning your mission to protect the vulnerable?”
I challenge as gently as I can.

“The Nomads insist they can manage without us, and I
believe they can, at least for a time. The Keepers and any stray
Zodangans are not our concern, nor are the Shinkyo. The small
numbers of refuges we protect are moving with us.”

“You know you’re eventually going to run out of
places to hide,” I confront.

“We believe we can make a better stand where it’s
greener and richer. And we have brethren near Liberty Colony, or so
we hope. And where is it that you intend to hide?”

“At the moment, I appear to be stuck between poor
choices.”

“Earthside will never accept you, and fighting them
directly will only escalate their violence, with innocents likely
paying the price,” he accurately sums up my predicament. “But the
war with Chang will certainly be far more devastating—the measures
each side may take to ensure their victory may kill us all. And
Chang only offers slavery or death.”