The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (22 page)

He backhands me with an armored fist. I taste
blood.

“
Where?!
”

I can’t even point.

“…Black Clothes… had… We…
rescued
…”

He shifts a knee down onto my throat, choking me… How
does he expect me to answer…?

I CAN HELP YOU.

…blacking out… hallucinating…

LET ME HELP YOU. GIVE ME YOUR HAND.

…voice in my head… shock… can’t keep up with Stage
Two…

GIVE ME YUR HAND.

…how can I give you my hand if I can’t…

I let go of the blade twisting in my chest, flail out
with my right hand… like I’m going to find a solution in the
undergrowth...

Hallucinating, I feel the ground heave.

My enemy jumps back off of me like he’s been scared
by something, tearing his weapon out of my chest. I think the
undergrowth next to me is moving, pushing up… One of Chang’s bots?
I can’t see…

TAKE ME. JOIN WITH ME.

Flailing, my hand does find something to grab,
something sticking up out of the ground, and it immediately cuts
into my fingers. I feel metal grate on bone and a shock goes up my
arm, fire and electricity. But I can see (and almost breathe).

Sticking up out of the ground, out of the growth, is
a
new
sword. I’ve got it by the stout double-edged blade.
It’s slicing me to my reinforced bones, passing effortlessly
through my gloves, my flesh, but I can’t let go. I pull it up out
of the ground. It falls across me like a body, heavier than I
thought it would be. I do the obvious thing, fumble around until I
find the hilt, take hold of it…

And then I’m screaming because my entire body is
lightning and fire.

But my enemy is backing up, backing away. Eyes wide.
Terrified. Of me? What…

He’s raising his weapon, his guard, planting himself
for a fight.

My brain floods then. I’m bombarded by thousands of
images of violence, but I can
feel
them, feel myself doing
them, fast, strong, efficient, lethal… I look at my enemy,
catalogue every move he’s shown me, flash on dozens of ways to beat
him, to kill him. And I want to kill him. I’ll enjoy it. He needs
to pay for doubting me, for not listening. He needs to pay for
hurting me. He needs to die for it.

I get up, hold my new sword in front of me, show it
to him: It’s so beautiful, perfect—a fine artwork of elegance and
brutality. So much better than my old one. It feels so good in my
hand. It’s part of my hand. Part of me.

KILL HIM. NOW.

What?

The sword drags me forward, makes me advance. I
realize I’m suddenly fully patched, my nanites somehow boosted
through Stage Two and into Stage Three at an accelerated rate. And
I feel stronger.
Much
stronger.

KILL.

And it shows me again how to do it, like it can teach
me in a flash-download of VR, like…

It’s a
machine
. It’s not just a sword. It’s
nanotech. Maybe AI. And it’s wired itself into me, body and mind.
Trying to take over…

“No!”

I WILL HELP YOU. I WILL MAKE YOU EVERYTHING YOU
WANT.

I take another involuntary step forward, move the
blade to strike.

“
Run!
” I shout at my opponent. “You need to
run!
Now!!
”

He doesn’t budge, reinforcing his stance against his
shaken resolve, either paralyzed with fear or too stubborn in his
sense of honor to flee.

I redirect the blade, hack it into a nearby
Graingrass trunk. I expect it to slice clean through, but it sticks
in the leg-thick stalk. And the tree begins to shrivel, to
desiccate. I feel more power, more strength, flowing up my arm.
It’s agony in my veins, but it feels so
good
. But somehow
it’s lacking. And I know what would feel unimaginably better…

“
RUN!!!
”

He does, his eyes giving me a flash of gratitude for
my effort, maybe even respect.

The sword hacks around me in a whirlwind, as if I’ve
angered it. It kills more plants, drains them. It’s feeding us
both. But it’s unsatisfied. It needs something more. It makes me
need
something more. The need starts to hurt, right down to
the marrow of my bones…

“You need to kill something?” I try asking it. Then
offer: “All right… Maybe I have someone in mind…”

The sword stops its reaping dance, seems to settle in
my grip (but I can’t let go of it).

PLEASE WAIT WHILE I FINISH YOUR UPGRADES.

I open my eyes to sky.

I’m on my back in the undergrowth. The sun tells me
that it’s still morning. (I can only assume it’s still the same
day.)

I seem to be lying in a shallow rut, an impression in
the ground that’s shaped the way I’m sprawled, as if I somehow sank
into the dirt and rock.

I manage to sit up. My body doesn’t feel like mine.
It reminds me of how I felt after my implantation, but more
intense. Every system seems to be overcharged, overpowered.

I’m sitting in the middle of a circle of death. The
plant life for several meters all around me has been drained to dry
husks, crumbling, disintegrating. I expect this is the sword’s
doing, feeding itself so it could do whatever it’s done to me.

I try to get a better look around, listen. The world
floods me, disorienting. My senses have all been amplified,
sharpened even beyond the work of my nanites.

I can hear gunfire in the distance. I remember the
bots…

The sword is still in my hand. I finally get a proper
chance to examine it. It’s of the same style and size as my own,
but so much finer, stronger. The surface of the blade is marbled
like Damascus steel, but the patterns swirl, liquid, as does the
scrollwork on the heavy crescent-shaped guard. I remember hearing
that the immortals have weapons like this, able to change shape,
cut through almost anything, indestructible. But those are passive
tools. I never heard anything about their weapons having their own
intelligence, acting of their own motivation. Nor have I heard that
those weapons harvest their surroundings for replenishment
resources (though the immortals themselves seem to be able to do
that just through physical contact).

“What are you?”

And what have you done to me?

I look down at my body. My sealsuit has been
completely repaired, all my wounds now fully healed throught Stage
Four—not even the dull ache that usually lingers for hours or days
until the Scar is re-absorbed. And my armor has been… improved.
It’s now what I imagined it would be rather than what I managed to
manufacture. It gleams, polished stainless steel, all scars and
dents (and peeling paint) gone. Most amusing, my worn rag-covered
boots have been replaced, and by what looks like something out of
one of my literary fantasies: I’m now wearing black leather-like
hip boots, folded over swashbuckler-style.

My helmet and facemask are missing (as is my homemade
sword), but I’m not bothered by the chill or the thin air. I look
around for them in the crumbling dead matter, but they’re nowhere
to be found. Then I realize my hair has grown out to
shoulder-length as it falls over my face—another apparent
concession to my romantic imagination. (“I will make you everything
you want.”)

But then I do find something within the circle of
death: lying among the organic debris is what looks like a Bug bot,
except it’s not all there. It’s been partially disintegrated,
innards gutted, as if consumed.

PROXIMITY ALERT. HOSTILE FORCES.

Looking around, I can “see” through the surviving
green. Back the way I came, back up-slope, there’s heat, motion,
dozens of ghostly shapes arrayed up on the crest. I look back at
the half-consumed bot. It probably stumbled across whatever was
happening to me, fell prey to the sword and however it feeds
itself, feeds me. Chang’s bots are networked. He likely knows what
happened. The only reason his army is holding back is he must not
know what he’s dealing with. Or maybe he does, and he’s afraid of
it. Of me.

I’m flooded with a sense of satisfaction, of
righteous rage, prodding me up, up the slope.

I look at the sword again—the steel is swirling more
energetically. I alternate hands gripping it. I
can
release
my grip on it, I’m not fused physically to it, not visibly, but I
don’t
want
to let it go. (Maybe our connection requires
physical contact, and I’m being influenced not to break that
contact.)

“What are you?” I try asking it again.

WE ARE ONE. WE ARE INTERFACED.

The voice is in my head, wired into my sensory cortex
like my nanite link, maybe through my nanite link. It’s using my
own implants…

RESOURCES REQUIRED. ENGAGE THREAT.

The enemy targets blaze bright inside my skull,
impossible to ignore, screaming for me to deal with. My hands
tighten involuntarily around the sword hilt. I feel profoundly,
unbearably hungry.

ENGAGE THREAT.

My memory flashes on my earlier promise, that I had
someone in mind to kill.

“Fine. Maybe we should see what you can do.”

I give in to the drive burning my nervous system,
turn and march up the slope. I almost hope my new companion is
not
up to the task at hand.

He’s waiting for me, standing up at the top of the
crest, flanked by a dozen of his black-uniformed human troops, and
two of his Bug bots.

“
Chang!
” I call out as I approach directly,
the sword content to hang low at my side. “Send your meat and your
toys away! Face me yourself!” (I hope the sword doesn’t understand
my ploy: that I’m trying to get the fragile Normals out of reach of
the blade. Enemy or no, I won’t be consuming a human being.)

“Erickson Carter,” he greets me as I come at him,
almost singing my name like it sounds funny to him. “Yes, I know
who you are. I’m just not terribly sure what you’ve gotten yourself
into.”

“Still finding that out,” I tell him bravely, like it
isn’t important, bringing the sword up between us as I close within
striking range.

I know from studying him that he can’t be harmed by
conventional weapons. Whatever technology that lets him absorb all
light also allows him to break down into some kind of pure nanotech
form, able to reshape at will, become fluid. He’s been blown apart
and reassembled himself (and apparently survived a nuclear blast).
But the immortals were able to hurt him by hacking into him with
their own technology, using physical contact to affect his
technology and drain his resources. I’m hoping my new blade can do
the same, given what it’s done already, and the blade seems very
eager to try.

“Then let’s do,” he purrs at me, stepping back. His
human troops fall back into a respectably large semicircle around
us, guns leveled at me. He’s letting me come up rather than use the
high ground against me. The top of the crest is actually fairly
level but terraced, rocky, a crescent-shaped mesa partly around a
roughly circular depression—it
is
a crater, a big one. The
mesa stretches at least several kilometers, and looks to be over a
kilometer wide in places. But here, near its northern tip, it’s
less than fifty meters across, broken by potentially treacherous
crevices. A challenging battlefield. He wants to see what I can
do.

His Bugs come alive, spring at me. Each one is almost
twice my size and reach, able to slash and stab with all six limbs,
tumbling so that they constantly interchange. And they’re more than
fast enough to give Guardian or Immortal a good fight.

But somehow I can track them, their movements leaving
trails across my vision that translate into predictions of future
movement. I simply have to meet them. And cut.

The sword screams through the air, moving too fast to
see. Each blow strikes like an explosion, snapping through metal,
taking off arms. I alternate between them as they come, tumble,
pass—each time leaving more of themselves behind. At my leisure, I
go for the heads, the bodies. They don’t manage to land a single
blow.

The sword is singing in my hands—each cut drained
power out of its target. And it wants more. I want more.

“All right. I’m impressed,” Chang gives me, finding a
suitable place to plant his feet to receive me: a wide flat rock on
slightly higher ground. I don’t keep him waiting. I leap across the
narrow gap between us. Charge. Cut.

But he doesn’t dissolve, doesn’t go fluid. Instead,
he just evades, quick and smooth, his body staying in human form.
He’s at least as fast as I am, and moves with a dancer’s grace.
Then a weapon comes out from his cloak, blocks the sword, tries to
slash and stab through my guard. It’s a spear.

Our weapons lock together. He should be stronger than
I am, but I’m able to keep him from pushing me off. I ride him as
he tries to weave and wind, keeping us glued together as I keep him
from getting the spear tip on me. Our conjoined weapons begin to
arc, blazing with plasma—immortal weapons are not only nanomorphic,
they sometimes contain additional devices, hidden weaponry.
Whatever the spear is, it’s able to charge itself with energy, and
my sword takes the opportunity to drain it.

Frustrated, he tries to kick me, to knock me off our
elevated arena. I block him with my left arm, catch his leg, throw
him back—he almost goes over the opposite edge. I think it
surprises him. But my surprise is that his leg is
solid
,
armored. I swat his smoking spear aside, keep close on him, keep
him on the defensive.

“You aren’t Chang.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” The figure springs off the
rock and retreats out of my easy reach, and the absolute blackness
melts away. Now he’s wearing golden armor, a crimson cloak. Red
hair and beard. Strong sharp nose. Hungry, evil eyes under a thick
brow.

“Asmodeus,” I recognize from the Guardians’ record of
the final battle on the Stormcloud. But so does my sword. It
flashes me what it knows of him, and it knows quite a lot:
Immortal. Ally of Chang, brought through from the other timeline.
Old enemy of Ram’s. Assassin. Sadistic killer. Brilliant
strategist. Ruthless sociopath. But he was killed long before any
of the people in that timeline became immortal. Someone took his
DNA and his files and made themselves a