The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (15 page)

Of course, I try to explain that it’s an ingrained
necessity: A warfighter needs to sleep and eat when they can, to
keep healthy and stay sharp, ready. Just like cleaning your weapon
or repairing your gear—you do the maintenance, you take care of the
tools. As a discipline. But that explanation seems to go over about
as well as these Upworlders trying to explain oceans and insects
and animals and cheeseburgers to me.

I also seem to sleep lighter than they do, with the
exception of Rios and Jane. They’d make good Peace Keepers, only
they question orders. (But then, so did I. Eventually and too
late.)

The first thing I do is run through my morning PT—the
aft lab also has our meager exercise equipment crammed into it.
Again, I realize one of the more insidious forms of our punishment
as Leviathan exiles: With no access to a base G-sim centrifuge,
we’re steadily losing bone mass and density. When (if) we get back,
we’ll be weak, fragile, and we’ll get to look forward to months of
hard rehab and painful re-calcifier therapy. (To try to reduce
this, Rios insists we wear at least our L-A gear inside, taking a
lesson from some of the low-tech surface dwellers who laden
themselves with armor and gear to keep their skeletons from
wasting.)

Sweaty and with a good burn going, I take the
opportunity for a two-minute shower, get my LA’s on without waking
Carson, then hit the Galley for one of the rituals I’ve adopted:
Making the First Shift coffee.

Jane tells me I’m good at it, even though it’s pretty
foolproof. Maybe I take some kind of extra care because coffee was
such a luxury at Industry, reserved for officers. (It was even
getting sparse at UNMAC Melas Two before the relief flights started
dropping it by the case, like it was actual food.) Or maybe it’s
because my father taught me to pour it high and slow to aerate it,
to bring out the flavor.

One thing we all seem to have in common: We
appreciate the simple things.

Jane can smell his coffee coming before I’m through
the hatch. I can tell he’s spent the night here, in his driver’s
seat, staring out into the darkness after the sun set and the ports
started frosting over, lights down to readouts so he could keep the
blast shields open. Now the morning sun is pouring purple light in
on his darkly-circled eyes, making his graying stubble almost
sparkle.

Jenovec is asleep in the link-operator’s seat,
looking like a sack of grain flour. I’m tempted to spill coffee on
him, but I value it too…

“
Whoa!!
”

Jane bolts upright in his seat, almost coming out of
it. His coffee sloshes on the deck. He’s seen something. Straight
in front of us.

I look, expecting to see another insect or other
bizarre creature. But what I see is a
man
. And I see him
easily because he wants to be seen.

He’s just standing there—we parked facing the
trailing edge of the ridge that marks the unofficial border of the
Vajra, and he’s on the high ground, barely twenty-five meters away.
Out of the green, out in the open. Wearing a Nomad’s cloaks and
scarves.

Jenovec is awake now, startled and still post-sleep
disoriented, joining us at the ports.

“Where did
he
come from?” he asks dumbly.

“Why didn’t we
see
him coming?” I ask the
smarter question. And I’m looking at the scans as Jane says it out
loud:

“He’s not on the screens…”

“No heat?” I don’t believe what I’m seeing. “No
motion?”

“No
visual
,” Jane points urgently to our
camera views. They show the patch of ground he’s standing on, the
rocks and the plants, the morning winds starting to kick the dust
up at us, but he’s
not there
. I check the time stamps to be
sure, run a system check. Pan. Zoom. The sentry systems still all
insist there’s no one there, despite what we can see with our
actual eyes.

And he can probably see us, having our little panic,
through the forward ports.

I hit the intercom to wake everybody, get them up and
up here. Rios is behind me in seconds, smelling like he had his own
shower right after mine, still pulling his jacket on.

“What have we…What the
hell
?”

“He’s not showing up on any of our scans,” I report
quick. “Even visual says he isn’t there.”

Rios checks, does the same back-and-forth between
screens and port view, then orders:

“Guns. Lock him.”

Jane activates the forward antipersonnel turret,
but

“No response… Nothing… None of our batteries
work.”

The panic of sudden defenselessness—betrayed by UNMAC
tech—washes over us. I consider running to the armory and dealing
with this the low-tech way. But as we all watch, the figure slowly
raises his hands, then clasps them behind his head, dropping to his
knees in the universal position of surrender. Under his robes I can
see knives, a short sword, armor. Slung over his shoulders are a
bow and a quiver of arrows.

“I mean you no harm,” a soft, smooth voice comes over
our link channel. “One of you possesses something I would very much
like to make use of, only briefly. I’m willing to trade information
of what lies ahead of you.”

His tone is casual, friendly, almost if he knows us.
And there
is
something familiar about his voice, I just
can’t imagine where I’ve heard him before.

“Who are you and how are you hacking our equipment?”
Rios demands.

“Long story, Captain. I will restore your
systems.”

True to his word, the cameras reveal him as if he
just materialized in a blink. We get heat. But T-Wave scans won’t
penetrate what he’s wearing.

“Are you hybrid? Nanotech?” Rios needs to know.

“Not in any sense that concerns your commanders. I am
perfectly safe in terms of what scares them so. I will leave my
weapons outside.”

He stands slowly, un-slings and sets his bow and
arrows down, unclasps and drops his cloak, starts dropping his
blades. Then he does a slow spin, arms out, hands open. We see
armor, a breather canister, a portable heater and a canteen, but
nothing obviously threatening. Then he just stands there facing us,
self-crucified, the wind battering him with dust and dead
leaves.

Rios keys the uplink to report this to Melas Command,
but his reply is a garbled blast of static.

“What are you doing to our communications?” he
confronts the stranger.

“That’s not me, I assure you.” His voice is still
calm, disturbingly so. “It’s another reason we need to talk.
Immediately would be best.”

Jenovec checks the systems, tries to ping the
satellites.

“It’s not a hack, sir,” he reports after more noise
blurts out of our speakers. “Interference. EMR.”

“It’s not blocking our close-range links,” I point
out.

“No, sir. It’s environmental. Maybe the Atmosphere
Net.”

Rios checks. Our last clear report was sent two hours
ago, before sunrise. There was nothing like this yesterday.

“If nothing else, you should go out topside and
thicken the homemade camouflage on your hull,” the stranger advises
gently but urgently.

“Orders?” I ask Rios. He’s watching what Jenovec is
getting from the Atmosphere Net.

“This is not good…” he mutters like he’s seen this
before. I’m afraid I have, too.

Outside, the dust storm is increasing, killing
visibility. Wind speed is in the usual range, but the particulate
count is higher than it should be, especially if the wind is coming
at us from such a green zone.

“This can’t be what I think it is…” Jane tries to
deny.

Our visitor seems to be ignoring the sandblasting
he’s taking, still patiently waiting for us to decide what to
do.

“We need to back out of here,” Rios tells Jane,
watching the air thicken around us. “Now!”

“Don’t move, Captain,” the stranger warns, finally
losing the lazy tone, now sounding like an officer. “If you move
you’ll be seen. You need to shut down your uplink, go quiet. And
you need more cover on the roof.”

He turns, picks up his short sword and dashes to the
nearest clusters of Graingrass and Rustbean. He starts hacking with
the stout, single-edged blade, shearing the thick stalks with
impressive speed and strength. When he’s got a bundle of long
growth gathered, he grabs hold of it, drags it toward us. Then he
stops right in front of us, plants his feet, squats low, and
jumps.

A blur of rustling green passes upwards across our
ports. We hear his boots up on the

roof. He just jumped ten meters straight up, lugging
a load bigger than he is.

Topside cams show him dragging his bundle across the
upper deck, pulling it apart, spreading it, trying to secure it so
the wind doesn’t take it, weaving it in with what’s left from
Lyra’s last fix.

“Help him!” Rios decides, picking me and Jenovec.

I make a quick run to my quarters as I’m sealing up
my L-A—no time to put on a shell—and grab my knife. Then I meet
Jenovec at the armory locker, grab an ICW and a sidearm, ammo; pull
on a mask and goggles. Then we seal ourselves in the axial airlock,
pop the pressure, and climb for the upper hatch.

We get hit by the cold abrasive winds as soon as we
poke our heads up. The grit cuts skin where it’s exposed around our
masks and goggles. Our “friend” ignores us, busily weaving a net
from what he cut, trying to get it over our turret, conceal the
guns. We start helping, and he abandons us, jumps over the side.
But half-a-minute later, he’s back, jumping up on the hull with
another big bundle of green like he’s just hopped a small boulder.
We spread the foliage out as best we can.

“Is this what I think it is?” I get his attention,
gesture into the storm.

“It may be just a brief test,” he says over the wind.
But then he stops working on the camo, looks up at me, locks my
eyes with his pale blue ones. “You’re the one I need to speak
with.”

He doesn’t explain further, goes to get another
bundle.

We manage to cover the guns, but I’m sure we look
like a pile of branches rather than natural growth. Hopefully
whoever we’re hiding from is looking from a long way away. We sit
topside, cling to the vines, ride the storm.

After several minutes, it begins to fade. The morning
winds start to clear the dust, slowly restoring visibility. We’re
all thoroughly caked with it. But we take our visitor’s lead and
sit still for awhile longer.

“I’ve got sat-link,” I hear Jane on my link.

“Do not use your long-range communications,” the
stranger warns us. It would be dubious advice, but considering what
we may have just witnessed, it may indeed be essential to our
survival. “And we should get out of sight.”

“Captain Rios,” I call down. “Do we bring our friend
inside for a chat?”

“Check him,” Rios allows, “then bring him down.”

Once we get in the lock (with reasonable assurance
that our visitor has left his obvious weapons outside), we vacuum
him off, then ourselves. When we pop the inner hatch, Rios and
Carson and Wei are all crammed into the passage, pointing guns. I
see Lyra just behind them. The stranger raises his hands, waits for
permission. Rios gestures him toward the lab.

Then we shut him in, contain him. He just stands on
the other side of the thick polycarb observation window, waiting
patiently.

“Who are you?” Rios opens with the basics.

“I currently serve the Melas Nomads. They call me
Azrael. Angel of Death. My mission for them was to check on the
status of the expedition that Abu Abbas took into Coprates. And to
ensure the safety of a rather impulsive ETE who’s decided to
violate his Council and go adventuring without the protection of
his Tools.”

“And have you found Abbas and his group?”

“Abbas’ expedition has entered the Vajra. They had
encountered losses along the way, skirmishing with what you call
Silvermen, and a group of deserters from Chang’s army. They’re
currently escorting a prisoner they rescued, a member of a culture
that calls themselves the Katar, back to her homeland in hopes of
striking a treaty. And investigating the prisoner’s claims that
Chang is active in the region, that he has deployed robots against
the locals while he builds a new flying fortress.”

“Another Stormcloud…” I grumble, feeling my guts fill
with ice.

“This is why we can’t call out?” Rios wants
clarification.

“I assume we’ve just experienced a test of his
storm-cloaking system, possibly a brief test-flight if the
construction has progressed that far. You are currently just out of
sight-line from the Vajra, but too close if he’s scanning for a
response to his test. You will be detected if you call out now. If
you move into the Vajra in this monstrosity, you will be seen.”

“Then we need to move at night,” Rios decides with a
surprising lack of hesitation. “Where is he based?”

“I have not yet determined. Local intelligence
indicates he is somewhere in what the locals call the ‘Central
Blade’, hiding in a place they call ‘Lucifer’s Grave’. I estimate
you’re less than twenty kilometers from that location, comparing
the hand-drawn maps I’ve seen to satellite imagery.”

Rios looks like he’s processing. Then:

“We need to confirm and report. We go in, get
eyes-on, back out.”

“Why not pull back now, uplink a preliminary when
we’re out of range?” Carson asks, though it doesn’t sound like
she’s against the plan.

“We’d waste a day, maybe two,” Rios explains.

“Melas will come looking for us when we don’t
report,” I caution.

“Then they should see us from orbit. Hopefully they
figure out why we’re silent running and not do anything stupid.
Hopefully they recognized the storm and the EM spike for what it
was.”

I remember the ETE Station has a view down into the
Central Blade.