The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (21 page)

My world explodes. I’m thrown by a shockwave that
feels like it’s crushing me simultaneously from the inside and
outside, lost in an eruption of dirt and rock and shredded plants.
I’m thrown into unyielding brush, blinded by smoke and debris. I
feel another blast, but thankfully further from me. I shake my
goggles clear.

One of my escorts is staggering on his feet,
wobbling, reaching for me. I hear the rattle of automatic weapons
and realize he isn’t in control of his Tools. His head and torso
come apart. He sprays all over me. I can’t see…

I hear. Screaming. Shouting. Cursing. Something metal
gets sheared apart. More explosions. More gunfire.

I have to wipe gore off my facemask. I can’t see my
companions. A broken Bug is flailing in the shredded plants.
Everything is smoke and ruin and blood… I try to crawl on my back,
try to get away…

I CAN HELP YOU.

I hear a voice in my head, over my link.

LET ME HELP YOU.

Soothing. Reassuring.

GIVE ME YOUR HAND.

As I crawl backwards, the debris suddenly begins to
push up between my legs—something rising out of the ground…

One of the Bugs comes charging at me then, but gets
stopped dead. It’s not a field. It looks like something has a hold
of it. Internally. It jerks, convulses, begins ripping itself
apart.

LET ME HELP YOU.

The debris falls away from whatever’s grown out of
the ground. I see light. Shimmering. Gold and silver. It sings to
me.

BE WITH ME. JOIN WITH ME. AND LIVE.

It’s a… a sword. Double-edged. Broad. Straight. With
a simple but ornately decorated hilt. Still planted tip-first in
the planet.

TAKE ME. NOW.

The crushing grinding cubic shapes of a Box robot
comes lumbering at me, spinning its guns to lock on me. In
desperation, I lunge forward, grab the convenient but probably
useless weapon, and tear it from the ground.

My hand instantly convulses tight around the grip, an
overwhelming shock going up my arm, taking over my muscles,
dragging me to my feet. The robot starts shooting—high-caliber
armor-piercing full-auto—but the blade makes me hold it up in front
of me, and the bullets deflect off of it. I’m screaming. I feel the
sharp impact of each shell against the blade, hammering me all the
way up through my shoulders and into my clenched jaw, but the sword
is immovable, impenetrable.

My scream shifts from terror to rage, washing over me
until rage is all I am. The robot’s gun runs dry, and it tries to
spin another weapon on me. I see my companions, mangled, in pieces,
white suits all red. Like mine. And I charge forward…

The blade hacks away the next gun like it’s soft
plastic, then drives into the machine. My vision goes from red to
white as I’m blinded again, this time by an arc of plasma, and the
Box dies violently. I feel the life—the corrupted enslaved organic
matter inside—broken down and…
absorbed
. Along with the
energy from its reactor. The sword is
drinking
it,
eating
it. And then it feeds
me
…

I convulse now with a rush of strength, of power, of
rage. I feel like I’ve suddenly become bigger, stronger, faster… My
mind flashes on images of violence that weave themselves into my
motor memory—the sword is teaching me how to fight, how to
kill…

Another Bug comes at us. I spin, hack. Hack.
Hack
. The metal monster comes apart, helpless against me,
pitiful, fragile.

My world spinning, I walk over to the damaged one,
the one still flailing on its back. My body floods warm with rage
and I chop the disgusting thing to pieces. Then I plant the sword
in one of the torso sections and feel it drink the thing’s dying
energy. And sharing it.

It’s quiet now. I stand on the battlefield, sole
survivor, upon the wreckage of my enemies and the butchered remains
of my friends, all massacred beyond unassisted regeneration. I need
to call for help. I need to get them back to the Station.

The sword vibrates in my hand. Alive. And it speaks
to me again, inside my consciousness:

I WILL TAKE YOU TO YOUR BROTHER.

PLEASE WAIT WHILE I FINISH YOUR UPGRADES.

I feel a renewed shock go up my arm, even worse that
the first. My flesh feels like it’s tearing apart. I’m being
stabbed all over, down to the bone. I can’t move, can’t even
scream. The world goes bright white and I…

Erickson Carter:

They don’t stop coming. But they still don’t seem to
see me, either.

As I sit here, crouched low to the slope amongst the
rocks and holding absolutely still, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve
just incidentally wandered into their mass advance, or triggered
it.

I estimate that I’ve come about four kilometers since
I so impulsively abandoned the Nomads, running headlong through the
brush toward the eye of the unnatural storm. I managed to make it
all the way to the rise that partially surrounds what the locals
call Lucifer’s Grave, which I can only guess is a crater since I
have no direct sight-line. I was climbing up-slope, just out of the
thick growth a few hundred meters above the forest floor, when the
first wave of them started pouring over the top of the crest well
above and ahead of me: First scrambling versions of the Bug bot,
then the rolling and tumbling Boxes. I lost count of how many in
the dozens, and that’s just what I can see.

But they can’t see me, or are intentionally ignoring
me, which makes no sense. In any case, they just pass me by.

They could be set to target heat, perhaps motion. My
freezing at the first sound of them coming, before they cleared the
top of the crest and had sight-line on me, may be what’s spared me.
My sealsuit’s efficiency masks my heat, and it’s now very dirty and
battered red shell—while poor camouflage down in the green—may be
just enough to confuse their optics up here on the rocky slope. As
long as I stay perfectly still.

The problem is, I know what lies in the direction
they all seem to be headed. And I already hear gunfire coming from
that way, explosions; see smoke and dust rise from the canopy back
toward the tail end of the Spine Range. If any of my fellows tried
to follow me…

I spin plans in my head: I could wait until the wave
of bots passes, then strike them from behind, go to my friends’
aid. I doubt I would get very far, just me against an army of bots,
but I can’t let my friends face this threat alone, especially if I
did bring it down on them. My only other option is to press on,
make it over the crest that’s still hundreds of meters above me,
and hope when I get inside the crater I can find means to hurt
Chang, maybe destroy his work. I remember that the villain Fohat
controls his monsters from a transmitting “crown” on his head, sees
through them with a prosthetic eye. If I could get close enough to
use my sword…

It’s not just the threat keeping me pinned here, it’s
the doubt: crushing me, paralyzing, making me feel sick in every
cell of my being. I’ve rushed into something too big. I have no
chance.

But I must try.

And cowering here as the killing machines pass me by,
I realize: for the first time in my long journey, I am absolutely
terrified. I only got this far because my rage covered it up. But
now, up here just above the green, I can see my situation: I am
isolated, alone, with just a sword, two knives and a pistol that I
can’t shoot straight. I shouldn’t have come here.

I shiver in my sealsuit. I want to cry, to scream. I
don’t dare move, not now. But I know I’ll never be able to live
with myself if I just sit here.

Another Box rolls down the hill, passing barely
meters from me. I want to fade into the rocks, become a rock.

I need to make a decision…

I carefully tilt my head to look uphill.

And there, as if to help me make my decision, stands
Syan Chang. Pitch-black silhouette against the sky, way up on the
crest but still unmistakable, his equally black cloak blowing in
the wind around him. (He never wore a cloak in any of the videos
I’ve studied. A new affectation? Or some necessity due to whatever
damage he sustained in the blast? Does that mean he’s weakened,
vulnerable?) He’s just standing up there, watching his monsters go
off to do his murder, not caring if he’s seen, almost as if he
wants to be.

I want to charge him, hurt him, stop him, but I know
that nothing I have can injure him. And I can’t get past him. But
if I turn and run, chase his machines, he’ll see me. He’ll…

He sees me
now
. He’s waving at me. Like my
predicament amuses him. Like he’s daring me.

So I jump up and run away, go to hide in the brush
like a coward.

I get maybe a hundred and fifty meters back into the
thick growth, and then hit something. Or something hits me. Across
the legs. Hard and sharp. It sends me tumbling head-first into the
brush.

I try to get up, but feel something stab me in the
back, a blade in my ribs just under my left shoulder blade, below
my armor, pinning me down but not running me through. It presses,
twists.

I flop over, block the weapon away as I roll (ripping
it through my own flesh as I do so). I try to draw my gun because I
can’t reach my sword. I get hit in my faceplate by something blunt.
Then I get stabbed in my right hand, between thumb and forefinger,
and lose my pistol as the pain shoots all the way up to my
eyes.

I see a figure over me, not much more than a
silhouette against the light through the trees: slim, long-limbed,
with a sort of pole arm, like a Japanese naginata: a short
single-edged sword blade on a long metal staff. My nanites are
sealing my wounds as I roll, try to get away. The figure pursues,
but seems to hold back, lets me get my legs under me, lets me draw
my sword with my mangled hand. I can barely hang on to it. But I
get a better look at my assailant:

His proportions are similar to Terina’s, as is his
clay-stained coloring. He wears sectional armor, laced together
like a samurai’s, complete with helmet. Everything is painted red
and green, stylized camouflage. He wears no mask or goggles, so I
can see his face: strong, high cheekbones; angular jaw; long nose;
deep, intense, thick-lidded black eyes; thin mouth framed by a
black and gray beard. I hold up my left hand to stop him.

“Terina… I’m with Terina… Kah-Terina Sher-K…”

He jabs me in the faceplate faster than I can react,
wedges his blade into the seals and pries, popping my mask off like
he’s done this before.

“
Lie!
” he spits at me like I’ve just given him
unbelievably bad news. Another jab skillfully rips my helmet off.
He jerks his head uphill the way I came. “Call back your
machines!”

It sinks in like a slap in the face: He saw me
following after the bots, and they were ignoring me. He
assumes…

I get stabbed in the left shoulder, his blade finding
its way through my armor. I hack, swat his weapon away, jab my
sword at his face to warn him back (I have to hold it with both
hands just to keep from losing it).

“
I’m not with Chang!
” I insist. “I’m his
enemy!”

He parries my blade like it’s no threat, slashes my
face, then pauses while he watches my nanites knit the wound back
together.

“You’re like them!”

“I’m ETE!” I keep trying. “Look…” I risk letting go
of my sword with one hand to show him my belt buckle insignia. I
smear it slick with my blood in the process.

“Eternals do not wear red! And you do not have their
power-objects! Maybe you took that for a trophy, killed one. Maybe
you turned, joined the Shadow.”

“Neither! I‘m trying to destroy him! And I’m here
with Terina, your war-king’s daughter!”

I have to back up when he hacks at my face again with
renewed viciousness, almost falling on my back as I trip over
brush. My nanites are trying desperately to do Stage One repairs,
but he keeps cutting and stabbing me before the prior wounds can
finish closing (and each one leaves me with a burning mesh of
Tech-Scar). I have to fight back, just to hold him off. I should be
stronger than he is, so I aim my blows at his weapon, try to jar it
out of his grip, get him on the defensive, discourage him. But this
only enflames him.

He’s fast—maybe as fast as Azrael and the Ghaddar. I
can barely track him. He gets the butt of his weapon into my jaw.
And then I’m down on my knees because he’s stabbed me through the
left calf.

“If you’re Katar, I’m a
friend
!” I sell
poorly, because I’m hacking at him with all I’ve got while I say
it. He’s making me really fight him. I could hurt him, kill him.
But every time I hesitate, hold back, his blade bites into me
again, adding to my damage, overtaxing my systems, lacing more of
my body with Scar, making it harder and harder to move. “Terina is
here! She’s
here
!”

I try to indicate the direction of the Spine Range,
but I realize he probably took it to mean Chang has his princess,
and possibly because of me. He actually increases the ferocity of
his attack, slams my sword out of my grip, nearly breaks my jaw,
jabs me in the throat, and then stabs me in the upper right chest,
pushing me back off my feet and pinning me to the ground. I grab
the shaft of his weapon, struggle for control over it, even
wrapping my legs around it. He flips around partially on top of me,
getting purchase closer to his blade-point, driving it in, through
me into the ground, twisting. I try punching him—his facial bones
flex like plastic. I go for his eyes. His leg wraps over and pins
my arm down away from his face.

“
Where is my daughter?!
” he growls at me.

Oh.

Hell.

“…
safe
…” I try to say, but he’s injured my
voice box, so I can only rasp. “…close… She’s…”