The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming (41 page)

“These people are a special kind of nuts,” Horst
grumbles as he gets his cold-weather suit on over his L-As. “They
think they’re the last Americans, but they’ve devolved to
Revolutionary times or some shit. They all have historic names,
think we’re all out to subjugate them.”

“Are they wrong?” I challenge lightly.

“They asked us if we knew about the ‘savages’, the
‘red skins’…” Lyra adds, resetting her mask and goggles over her
battered face. “Apparently they’ve had encounters over the
years.”

“Justified or not, they’ve got nothing but hate for
outsiders,” Horst condemns. “And they didn’t strike me as the most
educated lot on the planet.”

“They seem to have made do,” I defend, scanning our
surroundings.

“Maybe not for long,” Horst gets more urgent. “You
realize you just painted them for an orbital strike?”

I feel fresh ice in my gut.

“We should probably be going,” Horst confirms.
“Preferably as fast as possible.”

“I thought the smoke had to be coded,” I make what I
suspect is an empty defense.

“Yeah. But blowing it all is going to look like the
‘Horse was destroyed.”

Lyra shoots me a look of horror.

“How well can they see it in the dark?” I hope.

“It’s radioactive,” Horst crushes. “Orbit’s seen
it.”

I listen through the stone roof, but can’t connect to
Orbit, can’t hear anything but the Son’s own coded link chatter as
they rally a defense against what they assume is a major offensive.
The rock may be interfering. I need to get outside.

The gunfire is still popping intermittently out
there. And the banging on the hatches is getting more violent. Then
the whole room gets shaken by what I’m sure was a grenade blown
against the center hatch. It’s buckling on its frame, the sealed
rock around it cracking.

I’m wondering if there’s another way out of here when
I realize we’ve got more problems: There
are
exits on either
end of the chamber. I didn’t see them initially as they were hidden
behind the artistic panels, some of which are designed to slide. I
can hear Sons incoming, coming at us from both sides, and there’s
no way those panels will keep them out for any length of time.
Horst has taken a weapon from one of the men I disabled, and tosses
Lyra another.

“You had a plan to get us out of here, Colonel?” he
asks urgently.

“I was hoping to either reason with them or put the
fear of
me
in them.”

“I don’t think they’ve got enough sense for either of
those to work, sir.” He crouches down behind some toppled furniture
that won’t do a thing to stop a bullet, leveling his stolen rifle
on one of the panels. Lyra does the same facing the other way.

I’m looking at my friends, thinking about Kendricks’
math, that I’m going to have to kill a lot of people to save two.
When I was mortal, that wouldn’t have bothered me: anyone willing
to bring violence against me or mine or any innocent was promptly
fed into the meat grinder of my rage without pause or much regret,
but now…

“Down!” I yell at Horst, leaping over his barricade.
I tear aside the sliding screen, revealing a tight tunnel through
the rock. I can see the heat of the enemy less than ten meters down
it, hesitating now at the sight of me. I jump up, grab hold of the
frame supporting the ceiling, and pull. Of course it doesn’t give—I
don’t have the leverage—so, hanging onto the beam, I flip myself
inverted, plant my boots against the roof and start kicking hard
enough to fracture the seal holding the stones together, then put
everything I’ve got into what’s basically an upside-down dead lift.
The beam groans, snaps and tears free, throwing me back-first into
the floor, knocking the wind out of me. I barely roll out before
the ceiling starts falling down on me as a rain of large rocks. A
few punches into either side-wall finish the collapse. The Sons
take a few shots at me that do nothing other than smack off my
armor.

The tunnel is blocked, but not completely. I dash
over to one of the stunned fighters, grab a grenade from his
bandoleer, and show it to the gunmen in the tunnel before I toss it
into the gap. I hear them scramble before it blows, the blast
finishing my demolition work. But I still have another tunnel, and
I’ve wasted too many seconds on this one.

The Sons coming in from the other side decide the
safest tactic is to start spraying blind through the panel blocking
their entrance, shredding a perfectly good rendition of the signing
of the Declaration of Independence. Lyra’s thankfully down on the
deck with Horst, so the barrage just perforates the furniture over
their heads.

With no time or space to repeat my wrecking stunt, I
grab the nearest bench and charge them, charge into the blind
gunfire, ramming it through the well-perforated plastic panel. I
feel the bench hit guns and meat, and start slamming it down the
tunnel like a ramrod packing a cannon as they continue to shoot me.
I know the slightest miscalculation on my part will be lethal—a
little too strong, a little too fast—but I keep battering, pushing
them back over each other. The panel between us comes apart, falls
away. They get hold of the bench, try to wrench it free of my grip
in a tug-of-war, and I let them have it. As they stumble backwards
into a pile of tangled limbs in the narrow passage, I run into
them, swatting aside their weapons and using a trick Lux taught me,
charging my fingers so that my touch sends enough current through
their skulls to knock them cold, hopefully without doing permanent
damage.

The effort leaves me exhausted, my gauges demanding
resources. I’d already gone a long way to deplete myself healing
and repairing after I let the Sons unload on me outside. I know
full well I’m standing on a pile of exactly what I need, but I’m
not eating these people.

I stagger back out of the tunnel and into the light.
I’m peppered with dozens of rounds, probably looking like I’d lost
the fight. Horst and Lyra give me stunned looks that I’m not sure
are more shock or concern.

“America…
Fuck yeah
…” I mutter, somewhere
beyond punchy. Horst shakes his head and rolls his eyes like I’ve
lost it. I focus:

“This way!” I prompt them to follow me. And I lead
them through the dark narrow tunnel, over the partial plug of
unconscious Sons, and finally out through an open hatch and into a
smaller chamber that looks like a storeroom. It’s stocked with
sacks of Graingrass seeds and crates of what look like either
locally collected or—more likely from the quality—farmed produce.
There are also plump loaves of grainy bread that smell
distinctively like sourdough. And pressurized drums fit with
spigots that spew what’s immediately recognizable as beer when
opened. I grab a loaf of bread and start ripping into it, then get
my face under one of the spigots to wash it down, gorging myself
like a starving wild man. It’s not what I really need, but it will
help. As I eat, I quickly take in our new situation.

There are no more Sons—I seem to have dealt with the
teams sent after us. There’s a hatch I assume leads back outside. I
signal Horst to seal us in this section, shutting the hatch behind
us, then I find the valve to bleed the air to equalization before I
carefully take a look outside.

I’m immediately seen by two guards just on the other
side of the hatchway, and I slam it shut, hold it shut. I know I
could take them out easily enough, but we’d still have to cross the
“square” and get back up-slope, get back to the pass through the
crater rim, and there are over a hundred Liberty guns between us
and that exit.

I’m thinking my best and only option is to have my
fragile friends stay here while I wade out and try to
single-handedly beat the entire Sons of Liberty army into
submission, when I hear the chaos outside shift. They’re ignoring
the hatch, ignoring us. There’s suddenly more screaming, panic, and
the gunfire actually intensifies. I hear grenades blow close—it
sounds like there’s a battle inside the “square”. Have the Knights
moved in for a rescue?

But then I hear the sound of familiar treads and
motors.

I rip open the hatch and fly out through it. The
guards have their backs to me, hunkered for cover in the stone
niche of the entry passage, firing into the square. I catch them
before they can react, picking them up by their jackets and
throwing them out into the clearing, where they immediately have to
scramble out of the way of the spinning, rolling Box.

It’s tearing around the haze-filled square, careening
through the Sons, scattering them, breaking their lines. They shoot
at it, but even when they hit it, their small-arms are no match for
its armor, and it’s too fast for grenades. It doesn’t have live
guns to shoot back, and it doesn’t need them. It’s doing just fine
being a big, fast, agile mass of shifting metal.

I look back after my friends and see that Lyra’s done
something smart while I’ve been staring slack-jawed at our
unexpected rescuer: She’s stripped the fallen Sons of a pair of
jackets, scarves and cowls, and hands one set to Horst. I give her
a nod to accept her plan: they’ll make a run through the midst of
the panicked, distracted Liberty forces dressed as two of their
own. She’s also taken their link gear, so she can hear if the Sons
see through the ruse.

“We’ll drop these once we’re clear,” Horst confirms.
“We don’t want to get shot by the other side—I’m assuming they’re
friendlies?”

“New Knights,” I tell him.

“The ones the Avalon Order was looking for?” he
remembers.

“Found. Long story.”

“Bad ending,” he finishes, borrowing my phrasing,
getting his costume set.

I notice he never assumed that the incoming fire was
from the rest of the ‘Horse crew, probably because he knows the
only ones on the team capable of making the shots he’s seen are
Lyra and himself.

“Head for the gap,” I tell him. “Back to the ‘Horse.
We need to break silence, get a signal out any way we can—smoke
signals,
anything
to convince them not to obliterate this
place. I’ll keep them off you.”

“How?” Lyra worries.

“They seem to enjoy shooting me.”

As I dash outside, I see two of the Liberty fighters
have made it to the rover and are trying to get the guns to work
manually. The multicolored fog I impulsively blew all over is still
thick enough that the Box keeps spinning in-and-out of sight as it
circles the village, drawing fire and looking for new targets to
collide with. I see dozens of fighters down, others trying to drag
and limp themselves to cover, battered and broken. Thankfully it
looks like the families got themselves to shelter and out of the
chaotic crossfire.

The pair on the rover can’t get the guns working, and
the Box doesn’t wait for them to. It plows into them, slamming them
through the air as it breaks and crushes the rover’s turret, but it
doesn’t run them down, doesn’t try to crush them under its weight.
In fact, when it does run over someone, it just takes a limb. It’s
only trying to disable, not kill.

I let the bot see me, show it my empty hands. It
pauses, scans me with one of its sensor heads and seems to
recognize me, and I give it a grin and a nod. It bobs its sensor
head on its retraction motors, mimicking the gesture. Then it heads
for another group of gunmen hunkered in the rocks on the periphery
of their village.

Lyra and Horst make their run for it in the
confusion. I decide to add to it by going semi-cloaked—enough that
they can see me moving like a shimmering ghost but not enough to
give them a clear target—and start charging into their fire,
running into them and stunning them as I reach them. It’s a slow
process, and exhausting, and I lose track of how many times I get
shot. I’m seriously craving more heirloom sourdough and homebrew
(and preferably a nice Pax steak to go with it).

Whenever I can, I check on Horst and Lyra’s progress
up for the gap. Once they’ve made it well past the Liberty
perimeter—or at least beyond their effective marksmanship range—I
signal the Knights on their short-range link channel to expect
them, let them pass through and cover them. Kendricks sends me back
their confirmation.

As I run around from shooter-to-shooter like some
crazed game of tag, I find their apparent leader again: He’s down
in one of the ditches that was dug as fortification, protected by
two riflemen who do me some abuse before I take them out. He
himself looks like he’s nursing several broken bones, probably from
trying to stand up to the Box, but he still tries to point a pistol
at me before I take it away from him.

“Listen to me! This place has been painted, marked.
You either need to evacuate or visibly surrender before the UN
blows this place from orbit or air. They have tactical nukes and
rail-guns—they’ll make this whole place a crater before you know
what hit you. They’ll do it from well out of your reach. You won’t
have a chance.”

“We… Don’t…
Run
…” he measures out his words,
spitting blood into his mask. “
Never… Run… Never… Bow…
”

“Then you’re stupid and you’ll all die,” I growl at
him. “Be smart and live. Fight another fucking day.”

Despite the fact that I’m obviously so much stronger
than he is, despite his broken bones, he continues to struggle
against me. I can feel his fractures grind, his joints threatening
to pop in my grip. He doesn’t care how badly he hurts himself. He’s
not giving up.

I consider killing him in hopes that a saner mind
might take command, but I’m certain that would only harden their
resolve.

“Get your people out of here! Now!” I give him a last
warning without any confidence he’ll listen, then I get up off of
him. I give him a hard look and go, walk away, letting him shoot me
in the back to his heart’s content.