The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (11 page)

Then the world explodes.

The cave walls blow into us, stunning and filling the
already dim space with dust and smoke. Black suits tumble into the
pit. And over the ringing in my ears, I hear a familiar pop-woosh
sound. I drop back just as a spearhead flies over my chest. I see
the Ghaddar dodge another. Then black suits start dropping with the
long silver lance-heads stuck through them.

Squat armored creatures are pouring into the cave,
having blasted side-tunnels all around us. There are scores of
them. And they’re between those of us on this side of the pit and
the exit.

“
THIS WAY! THIS WAY!!
”

I hear shouting above me. Look. In the vent I came
down through is a shape in a Nomad cloak, dropping a line from his
perch, popping rounds at the armored shapes. I’m not sure if he’s
shouting at me, the Ghaddar or the strange thin girl. I finish
kicking the body off of me (every movement tears like knives
through my torso), roll to my feet in time to sloppily knock one of
the armored suits off of the surviving prisoner, grab her and drag
her up. I look for the Ghaddar. She’s throwing herself into the
armored shapes, apparently able to find lethal access once she’s
grappling with them. Then she slings some kind of large rifle from
under her cloaks and starts picking off the armor that stands
between us and the rescue line, the deafening blast of the gun
betraying its large caliber.

Still far too injured to leap (certainly not carrying
a girl who’s not terribly sure she should come with me), I wrap the
girl in my arms and do something resembling running around the edge
of the pit, trying not to trip on fallen armor, stumbling over my
own leaden feet (and accidentally banging my charge into the rock
wall, but she doesn’t complain). My body is bisected by blazing
pain. I stagger forward, lunge, grab the line.

“
GO!!
” I hear our rescuer shout, and the line
jerks us up, pulling us for the cave roof, for the vent. Still, I
take a spearhead through the left calf, apparently not done paying
for my impulsiveness. It tears meat when it catches on the rock. I
have to stop, tear it out (too late realizing it has razor-like
fins that act like barbs), leaving the girl to keep hold of me, her
long arms tight around my neck. I throw the spearhead back like I
could hit someone with it.

I’ve lost my sword.

But I have the girl.

Our rescuer shoves us up past him, possibly choosing
to wait for the Ghaddar, and we go banging up the vent as we
continue to get pulled.

When we hit daylight, the other Nomad sentry is there
to greet us, running a portable rappelling winch he’s wedged into
the rocks. There’s still one more line down the vent for his
companion.

The girl lets go of me and wrestles herself out of my
grip, rolling away from me on the slope. I realize through my pain
and dumb shock that she has my pistol.

Thankfully, the sentry manning the rappelling gear
takes my lead and raises his hands in response to her threat.

“It’s okay, girl… We’re here to…”

She answers me back by putting a bullet into the dirt
next to my head. Then she puts one between my legs. It’s pretty
clear she’s meaning to miss, but has little patience or trust.

The rappeller motor whirs again, and the other sentry
gets dragged up out of the vent, grabs the edge and pulls himself
out. Sees the gun in his face. Freezes. Offers his hands. Then goes
further by slowly pulling away his cowl, mask and goggles, showing
her his face. He’s young, maybe little more than a teen, though he
sports a thin beard. But he’s blonde, pale, blue-eyed. I realize
from descriptions that this must be Abbas’ adopted son.

In the light, the prisoner has long dark hair, tied
into braids. Her skin is indeed painted with something that looks
like it’s based on the high-iron Martian clay, but where it’s
flaked away, it looks like it’s dyed her skin rust-colored,
matching her simple clothing. The fact that she’s partially exposed
in front of us doesn’t appear to bother her. Her body is strikingly
long and lean, except for her enlarged ribcage. She looks like a
child’s doll from Old Earth, one I remember was criticized for
portraying impossible female proportions. Even her face is
elongated. And she also doesn’t seem to mind the chill or the thin
air.

I’m thinking she may be a product of generations
living in the richer, deeper valleys, with no concern for
weight-discipline, letting their bodies conform to the .38 gravity
and low atmospheric pressure. She may have lived without oxygen
supplementation or pressurized shelters her entire life. Perhaps
the clay coating is a defense against the UV radiation that keeps
the other Normals under heavy cloaks and cowls.

I realize we’ve forgotten the larger threat when
something whips through the air past my head and smacks the pistol
from her hand. Then a cloaked shape is standing over me, having
climbed out of the vent in absolute silence. It’s the Ghaddar. She
hands me my sword, still stained in blood.

“It’s a good blade,” she appraises casually, then
walks over to recover the steel rod she threw to disarm, and my
pistol before the girl can reach for it.

My own rescuer turns his head back to the vent,
listens, calls to his companion

“Jibril! Grenade!”

The other tosses him a sphere, which he juggles and
drops down the hole, backing up before it blows somewhere below us,
sending a geyser of dirt and smoke upwards to rain on us. Then he
kicks loose boulders to try to close the vent.

“They can dig!” the thin girl criticizes urgently,
the first words I’ve heard her speak. She has a thick accent that
sounds almost Russian.

“We know,” the blonde lad tells her, sounding far
more world-weary (or battle-weary) than his years.

“We need to get away from the highlands,” the Ghaddar
confirms with cool authority. Jibril is already packing the
rappelling gear, his head swiveling like he expects attack from any
and all directions.

“Come with us!” the blonde lad urges the girl,
putting his gear back on. “Come!”

The Ghaddar tosses me back my pistol. “Can you
travel?”

I nod weakly, force my legs back under me, my left
calf on fire, one hand on my gut wound like it will help hold me
together. (At least I’m not visibly bleeding—my wounds have
sealed.)

The other Nomads are already falling back from the
cave mouth, leapfrogging to take turns covering each other’s
retreat. But I only count two. I saw four go in. Assuming the
Ghaddar was one of them, they’ve left a man behind.

I hear a fatherly voice shout “
Ishmael! Jibril!
MOVE NOW!
”

They stop briefly when they see us scrambling down
the slope to meet them, hesitating for an instant as they count the
extra numbers, just long enough to reassure themselves they’re
seeing friends rather than foes. Then they gesture us to fall in
with them as they keep running north for the mouth of the canyon. I
notice one of them has a visible limp, but doesn’t let it slow
him.

I hear a lot more shouting, rhythmic, like a war
chant, echoing from inside the slopes. There is a clattering of
metal—a lot of metal—and I look back in time to see a squad’s worth
of squat armor come pouring out of the cave mouth in pursuit. But
then they start falling, getting picked off by arrows. They
hesitate. Fire their spearheads, return their own arrows. I trace
where they’re aiming: High ground overlooking the cave. There
stands a lone archer—Azrael—casually taking his target practice.
And even more casually dodging the projectiles sent back his
way.

The Ghaddar is especially mesmerized by the sight.
But then she swings up her large-bore sniper rifle. Aims.
Fires.

An armor suit goes tumbling down the hill, having
somehow emerged behind and above Azrael. He takes a moment to
salute her, but then must deal with another that comes running down
on him. Despite the mass of the armored attacker, he gracefully
side-steps and throws the warrior down the hill in a clattering
landslide. He turns back to the dozen or so armor suits hunkering
at the cave mouth, fires a few more discouraging kill-shots (each
one seems to effortlessly find an eye socket), then comes skipping
down the hill to get around to joining our retreat.

And so we run.

“Barak Hassim al Fadil sent me!” I yell as we jog and
hop over the ruins of Concordia, heading for the open valley as
fast as we can cover the treacherous ground. There’s been no sign
of pursuit since Azrael so ruthlessly discouraged it, but for some
reason we don’t dare slow.

“They won’t follow us out into the open lowlands,”
Abbas’ son Ishmael tells me breathlessly, running at my side, as if
anticipating my question. He’s keeping his pace slow intentionally,
staying with me.

I should be faster than him. But I’m still weak,
still compensating for blood loss and tissue damage, and all this
vigorous activity is working against the repair process.

I still feel the pain of the gunshot that ripped
through my torso, and of the spearhead that stabbed through my leg.
I can’t take an even remotely full breath yet. My abdomen feels
bloated, rigid, which I know is a sign of severe internal bleeding.
My nanites must be struggling just to keep my blood pressure up
enough to fend off shock. My back, gut and calf muscles feel like
they’re being held together with wire staples, as do too many
sensitive parts of my insides.

If I was still linked in to our network, I’d be
sending full telemetry and getting a detailed damage report back.
The network would also be able to help direct my field repairs. As
is, I get only the basics, the defaults. That leaves me to diagnose
myself.

The entry wound is about five centimeters to the
right of my spine, just above my kidney. Thankfully, it missed my
spine, or else I’d be doing my repairs on the floor of the cavern.
Also thankfully, it missed my main iliac vessels, or I’d be dealing
with a lot more blood loss.

Because I’m not vomiting any blood, I can assume my
upper GI tract is intact, but if I draw a line from entry to exit,
I’m sure it took a piece of my liver, and probably punctured my
transverse colon. And that means a lot of bleeding and endometrial
contamination.

I make myself keep running, trying to distance myself
from the pain by playing through the healing process in my head (at
least how it should be proceeding), what I learned during my
Pre-Implantation Orientation:

Stage One: The nanites rush to close any wounds by
forming an inorganic analog called Tech-Scar. This takes seconds to
minutes, depending on the severity of the injury. That means the
internal bleeding is probably staunched, but not before it flooded
my abdominal cavity, hence the pressure against my diaphragm
preventing deep breaths. The nanites also provide an analgesic
effect, but unfortunately not full anesthesia.

Stage Two: They initiate creating any backups to
compensate for damaged critical systems. Right now, that means
keeping my blood pressure up until I can replace the lost blood
volume. Later, they may have to compensate for the liver damage
until the organ can be regenerated.

Stage Three: They clear the damage. Right now they’re
busy digesting stray bone and tissue fragments, reprocessing what’s
bled internally, neutralizing any contamination. They feed off the
organic matter, use it to replicate themselves and create what they
need for Scar. Eating me to heal me.

Stage Four: They stimulate accelerated cellular
regeneration over the Tech-Scar mesh, until the wounds are fully
healed, organ function restored. This can take hours to days. Then
the nanites forming the Scar disassemble, waiting until they’re
needed again. Surplus nanites deactivate and dissolve.

But one thing the Orientation fails to describe is
how it feels. I’ve certainly needed my wound-response technology on
my questionable adventures, but this is the first time it’s had to
deal with severe internal damage, organ trauma. I
assume
Stages One and Two have progressed effectively, just because I’m
still able to move at all, that I’m not still gushing from entry
and exit wounds, that I’ve got enough blood pressure to function,
however weak and awful I feel. But Step Three takes time, and Step
Four will take resources I don’t have the luxury of right now. I
need to rest, sit still, hydrate, breathe, and eat. Until I can,
I’m just a mangled mess being held together, and I’m straining on
those temporary patches with every step…

The strange rust-skinned girl we rescued is pacing me
on my other side. She looks like the run is barely taxing her—her
long limbs and light frame could probably outpace all of us with
ease. She’s staying with us by choice.

Behind me, the Ghaddar is covering our rear, also
moving with easy grace.

I keep glancing back. There’s still no obvious sign
of pursuit by the time we reach the mouth of the canyon, running
for the open valley beyond. But I don’t see Azrael either.

I also realize we aren’t heading for their camp.
We’re heading more westward, back for the tail of the Lesser
Divide, though still staying well clear of the high ground.

Forty minutes of running later, I dully realize we’re
headed for the nearest Tapsite.

My extremities are numb by the time we get there, my
wounds still barely in Stages One and Two thanks to the continued
abuse. Meanwhile, my band of new companions still seems little the
worse for our long run. I’m especially regretting the bulk of my
armor (and they’re each wearing far more than I am, except the
slender girl, who’s wearing only her torn single layer of
garment).

But as we reach the exposed and tapped Feed Line, one
of them collapses, nursing his left arm. Ishmael sees his distress
and runs to check him. (I take this distraction to sit down for my
own sake, trying not to look as hurt as I am, as if I’m just
winded.) When his injury is exposed through his thick and
blood-soaked layers, he looks like he’s taken a bullet, or perhaps
a projectile spearhead, through the forearm. Yet somehow the
violence done to his own body seems to amuse him.