The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (46 page)

All communications offline, I play my own show. The
crew elevator raises me up to pad-level as the morning winds blow
the remaining dust cloud away. With me is Sakina and Rios, the
latter only in his LAs and a mask, hopefully presenting a formal
but harmless-looking delegation. The fact that we aren’t fired upon
partially reassures me that Chang is in the mood to talk, or at
least to threaten. But we stand there in the wind for several tense
minutes with no acknowledgement, looking up at the flying fortress
hovering motionless just off our perimeter. (I’m sure Chang is
doing this intentionally, letting us sweat as we appreciate his
creation.)

Finally, a bright light slices straight down under
his ship, making a circle on the dirt just big enough for us to
stand in glow. The effect is very UFO abduction cheesy, but we get
the hint and cautiously move forward, stepping off the pad deck,
down the reinforcing berm of rock (and trying not to slip during
such an auspicious moment), and out into the shadow of his ship.
Into the light.

The next sensation is disturbing. I feel my skin
crawl, and my own LA suit begins to pull me upward. Rios and Sakina
get dragged similarly skyward. I look up and realize a large
hatchway has opened above us, but it’s not into the ship. It’s
through
it. I see sky.

As we get pulled through the center of the main hull,
I find myself wondering if the same equipment that’s lifting us
could drop troops onto the surface. There are heavy hatches facing
into the gap, but they remain sealed. Chang doesn’t want us getting
a look inside his masterpiece, his labor of hate. But he does want
us to get a good look over it.

We get pulled up into daylight and open air and set
down on top of the forward section. From where we are, we can see
his apparent command towers, his airship-sized landing pads and
moorings, and recessed decks that look like they’re meant for troop
staging, because they’re crowded with ranks of neat black uniforms
armed with a variety of small arms. The dirigibles on either side
of us have similar manpower lining their gun decks, all turned to
watch us.

Looking toward the bow, I can see our mostly-buried
base, our greenhouse beyond it, directly in line with his bow gun.
I look to Rios and Sakina, who’ve been similarly sizing up our
situation, and give them what I hope is a reassuring nod.

Then we hear boots. Lots of boots. Two ranks of black
suits come up to the deck we’re on from its aft rail, climbing up
from somewhere below. They form a semi-circle between us and the
mid-ship, but don’t bother to point their guns at us, or move to
take our weapons, as if we’re harmless. They simply stand at
attention—a show of discipline or obedience. And after a few
breaths of nothing happening in the wind, Chang decides to make his
entrance.

His featureless shadow “pours” up right out of the
metal deck in front of us, taking shape like ink filling up the
mold of his humanoid form.

“Chang,” I take the lead in greeting, staying where I
am as if completely unimpressed.

“Destroyer,” he gives back with equal cool. “A name
you again live up to. I assume your display of bravery in choosing
to face me on my own ground is in hope of bargaining for mercy,
finally seeing your situation clearly.”

I don’t answer him.

“The supply drops from Earth are due this afternoon,”
he gets to the point. “I have already detected their signals coming
into orbit. We will take those supplies.”

“Or?” I challenge dully.

“There is no ‘or’,” he gets testy. “The last time I
gave you a choice, it ended badly. All you had to do was accept the
reality of your situation, be reasonable. Instead, you murdered
over one hundred good men and women, men and women who only wanted
to keep their homes safe from men like you.”

“We’ve seen their homes,” I let him know. “And the
bodies of their fellows—more than twice as many as the lives wasted
in that fight. That certainly wasn’t my doing.”

“But you made it
necessary
,” he blames. “We
could have cooperated, secured this planet together, taken the
ETE’s technology away, disarmed the Shinkyo. Negotiated with Earth
for the sanctity of this world from a unified position of strength.
But instead, you did something stupid and brutal.”

“Then punish
me
,” I dare him, as Sakina tenses
at my side. “My decision. My responsibility. Who dies today is your
choice. But then, you’ve been a lot more indiscriminate about
slaughtering people than I ever have.”

My righteous monologue seems to have no impact on
either Chang or his recruits (they could be robots under their
breather masks).

“You have no idea, do you?” he almost growls at me.
“When you shot me down, killed my men… Then your freak allies tried
to hurt me… It took me time to heal, to reconstitute. During that
time, my so-called allies took charge, tried to further my
plans—our plans—in their own stupid way. Those people that died at
Frontier and Zodanga, the attack on Shinkyo, that may have been
Colonel Janeway and Captain Bly, but it was
your
fault. I
wasn’t there to stop them. Because of you.”

“And where are Janeway and Bly?” I ask as if it’s an
idle question. He doesn’t answer me immediately.

“Janeway has been… re-tasked,” he’s being
theatrically vague. “As for Bly, he’s been eager to meet you
again…”

“Captain Colonel,” an almost familiar voice comes
from behind me. We turn. Standing on the bow is a ridiculous
apparition of fantasy: It’s wearing gleaming black European-style
plate armor from head-to-toe under a black knight’s surcoat. The
mask of the helmet (which is gaudily crested with bat or dragon
wings) is some abstract fusion of skull and insect. The eyes (of
course) glow red. In his gauntleted hand is a European-style
broadsword. “Good of you to bring your blade.”

It’s Bly’s voice, muffled through the mask, but his
broken speech patterns are gone, as if Chang has done much more to
him than just provide a fancy suit of armor.

“As you can see, captain Bly has also been
re-tasked,” Chang tells me, barely masking a sense of pride.

“What did he do to you?” I ask Bly (ignoring
Chang).

“Nothing I didn’t want,” the bug-skull insists
lazily. “I’m strong. Fast. True near invincible. Care to try
me?”

“Like what he did to Nina Harper?” I try driving a
wedge.

“You don’t get to speak her name!” he snaps it back
at me, his sword now pointed at my face.

“Where’s Janeway?” I change the subject, still asking
Bly instead of Chang.

“Not quite finished,” Chang discounts. I turn back on
him.

“For someone who insists that nanotech and biotech
like this destroyed our future, you certainly employ it a lot more
liberally and dangerously than any of your so-called enemies,” I
confront the obvious hypocrisy.

“The weapon of my enemy…” he discounts lazily. “This
is war, Colonel Ram. And the stakes are high. Everything. The
entire human race, our future. But you don’t believe. You didn’t
really believe in my time either, even when you stood up against
it. You still had hope. And that’s too bad.”

Beneath our feet, the deck begins to thrum, the whole
ship vibrating, and I can feel heat rising. Then a hum quickly
builds to deafening.

“Chang…”

And then a scream. Like a supersonic jet passing
right under my feet, or a booster in liftoff. Or a meteor.

The bow behind Bly erupts in a fireball blaze of
plasma. Heat washes over me like a blast furnace. And there’s an
explosion. Rubble geysers skyward. From my base.

When I can see, the Aircom Tower is gone.

Metzger. Weiss. Li.

I want to draw my gun, draw my sword, but there’s no
point. I catch Rios’ eyes—he’s as frozen as I am. Sakina’s eyes
just tell me she wants orders, wants me to give the word. But it’s
not time yet…

The rail gun starts building again under my feet. I
feel the ship turn slightly, lining up on the Command Tower.

And then I hear the scream of jets.

Through the cloud of ruin, I can almost see the four
small specks coming from the west, flying low. Shinkyo fighters,
courtesy of Daimyo Hatsumi. Specially loaded.

“Down!” I shout to my companions as I hit the
deck.

Bly turns to face the incoming threat like it’s
nothing to him, and the big ship’s guns start to spit into the
western sky. The Shinkyo ships are nimble, almost as nimble as a
Disc, and they’re coming in fast. Still, I see one break up and go
down just as it crosses over our base. The others smartly use the
dust and smoke Chang’s rail gun threw up to mask them, and then
they’re on us.

The reason why the hydrogen-filled Zodangan
dirigibles don’t explode under fire is there isn’t enough oxygen
for critical combustion. Two of the fighters shoot low over the
airships and drop their loads: thermobaric bombs with an oxygen
primer charge. They pierce the gas hulls and blow. And ignite. I
have to cover up as massive twin fireballs wash over the big ship
from each side as the smaller ships detonate. I manage to see some
of Chang’s “guard” knocked overboard. Then something explodes
beneath us, kicking me through the deck.

I roll to see another fireball pour out of the
bow—out of the rail gun’s maw—and I know what’s happened. The third
Shinkyo fighter—without hesitation—dove straight down the gun’s
“barrel”, packed with a bunker buster’s worth of explosives. The
fact that the big ship externally looks none the worse for the
violation (and the shockwave didn’t kill us) is a testament to its
construction.

Let’s see what else it can take.

Without communications, everything happens by
pre-plan: A half-dozen ETE ships come from the west and south.
Chang has already launched at least a dozen Discs, which now have
to turn from their pursuit of the remaining Shinkyo fighters to
engage the new threat. I feel the big ship start to take a beating
(literally: it feels like giant hammers are pounding at the hull),
but it isn’t breaking up. Our few base guns add to the abuse, to
similar lack of effect. Chang’s ship appears to be resistant to
both conventional fire and ETE weapons. And then both the ETE and
our turrets are busy with the Discs.

But as the flaming husks of the Zodangan ships sink
to the ground (taking what looked like his full complement of
“kite” fighters with them), all the smoke and chaos lets our next
line move into position.

The ridge lines to the north and south sprout hordes
of cloaks: A mix of Nomads, Knights and Ecos. They throw a number
of rockets into the underside of Chang’s hull, trying to damage his
lift engines, his guns, while others lend small-arms to picking
away at the Discs and any of Chang’s troops exposed on deck (and
several that managed to survive jumping or falling from their
blazing vessels).

I manage to get up on my knees. The battering is
shaking the ship, but not destabilizing it. But it isn’t moving,
either—it’s just holding position. Hesitating. Chang is still
standing where he was, watching the battle silently. Without any
facial expression, I can only hope he’s in shock. I can’t help but
drive it in:

“The drops arrived days ago on silent running. What
you picked up were decoy signals. And we’ve had satellites in place
that saw you coming: you kick up enough dust to be seen from space,
even without all the EMR. The ground sensors you passed were
decoys. We saw you as soon as you lit up: Coprates North Rim, ten
klicks east of the Tyr ruin.”

“But… There were no significant supplies of weapons
or ammunition on those drops…” he tries to wrap his head around
what we’ve done under his radar.

“But there
was
plenty of food, medical
supplies, survival gear. The true currency of this world. And
you’ve made as many enemies as we’ve made friends.”

More blasts rattle his ship, but still don’t really
hurt it. His own guns start pounding back in a massive show of
force, raking the ridges, busting our turrets. One of our pads is
blown open. Smoke is rising from the Command Tower. Ground rockets
manage to pop some of his guns, but this fight is far from done.
And I don’t know how to hurt Chang.

And I’ve forgotten about Bly.

I stay low to keep from getting hit by friendly fire,
but Bly doesn’t seem to care. I see him take several good hits, but
he barely flinches as the shells ping off his armor.

Sakina and Rios take their opportunities: Chang’s
remaining troops have apparently forgotten about us, letting my
companions—my friends—pick them off with little resistance. Chang
lets his men fall as if they mean nothing to him, just stands there
in all the violence. But we’ve gotten Bly’s attention.

I draw my sword as he comes at me—and he’s coming
directly at me, even as more bullets smack him. But Sakina jumps
between us, throwing torpedoes for his eyes, only to have them
swatted away by his blade. He is fast, almost faster than I can
see.

“No!” I try to command her, but she doesn’t listen.
She blocks Bly’s blade and lands a series of brutal blows, but it
doesn’t even stagger him—she could be fighting a statue. And I
think the only thing that saves her life is that Bly sees me
charging him. He throws her away, almost sending her over the
side.

I don’t hesitate. I engage his blade, try to ride it
and find some gap in his armor.

But he is strong. He slaps my Shinkyo blade away,
then chops down on it, breaking it like a twig. The impact is hard
and shocking enough that I don’t realize what’s happened next until
I feel sharp steel scrape up under my ribcage. It didn’t hurt—I
barely felt it. But then I do.

By then he’s pulling his sword out of my gut—enough
length to prove it went right through me, right through my
liver—and I’m hit with a shock of pain that feels like my body is
split in two and my legs are melting and I can’t breathe and
already I can feel blood surging up my throat. I’m vomiting into my
mask as I manage to draw my sidearm and stubbornly empty it into
his face. He just stands there and takes it. Watching me die.