The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (23 page)

He should have had some last words, some kind of
goodbye. Maybe that’s why I wanted the nanites to bring him back
for me—and it was for me, not for him. He would have wanted the
exciting death.

But he should have been allowed to say goodbye. I’ve
had enough people alive and then just dead just like that—I should
be used to it. But Matthew was always there my whole life, even
when I wasn’t. Keeping me together. Watching my back. Showing me
how to survive the life. Keeping me from sinking so far down into
myself there’d be no coming back. Always there with a joke or
attitude or just a wake-up to get out of my own shit and get
moving. Someone to stand against the darkness with.

He brought me into this, so many, many years ago. I
wouldn’t be Mike Ram without him. I’d probably be dead. Dozens of
times dead.

So I tell myself that he’d rather die in a fight than
sick in a bed. (But he didn’t
have
to die sick in a bed—I
had what he needed to avoid that fate, at least for a few more
years, in my pocket all that fucking day and I didn’t even tell
him.) I remind myself he took the ship instead of me because he
knew the risks, put me ahead of himself because I’m somehow more
important to the Big Picture than he ever was. Because it was his
job.

But Simon… Simon threw himself in the way of a Disc
to save my life. He knew it would explode. He had to have known it
would explode.

No last words. No goodbyes.

A friend gives up their life for you, you should at
least get to say goodbye.

Selfish.

I couldn’t recognize them. Just meat and bone.

For nothing. It didn’t have to happen. But Earthside
overrode me. Arrested me.

I’m only getting angrier, and still with nothing to
strike back at but the rock and sand and the thin cold air. I turn
and

I’m hallucinating.

The sky and everything has gone bright, bright as a
summer’s day on the beach. And coming towards me is a figure all in
gold. With the head of a bird.

It’s an Egyptian thing—like their pictures of their
gods with animal’s heads. I used to remember what the bird-gods
were called, when I was a kid and I thought Egyptology was cooler
than dinosaurs. Horus? Thoth? Ra…

It’s a helmet. A golden falcon’s head. The eyes are
light. The sun-disk on its head is light. It’s all light.

“I’m so sorry,” I hear a voice come out of the light.
Soft and gentle and caring like it knows me and it knows I’m hurt.
“He wasn’t supposed to die. Not that way.”

“What…?” Most profound thing I can manage to say to a
glowing Egyptian god.

The golden falcon god holds out its palm, and
something folds open out of nothing, and now it’s holding a big
ram’s skull (I’m wondering if that’s supposed to be funny) like I’m
supposed to take it.

“You aren’t supposed to die, either,” the voice tells
me like it’s really important that I know that. The voice almost
sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.

But then it’s all gone and I’m back in the cold in
the sand and the sunset sky is a bruised purple and it’s getting
darker and colder by the minute.

I look at the sand. No footprints but mine.

“Kastl? You on?”

“Yes, Colonel,” he comes back prompt.

“MAI have eyes on me?”

“Yes, sir. Problem?”

“Anything odd on the playback, last few minutes?”

He feeds it to me. Nothing but me walking, slipping.
Then standing out here sulking. Alone. Nothing on the wider view.
Nothing but our own people on any view.

“Probably just a trick of the light,” I discount.
“All the scrap metal. Sunset. Either that or I’m getting a pressure
headache.”

“I’ll keep my eyes on the screens just in case, sir.
Maybe someone came by to check out all the excitement. Or take
advantage of it.”

20 October, 2116:

“Wait for the kill box graphic, Jon,” I remind Drake,
even though I doubt he needs me to after how attentive he was
during all of his prior practice sessions. He’s taking to the new
technology with the ease of youth, which is apparently still alive
and well despite the relative privation and hardship of his life.
“Then squeeze and hold. The AI control will cycle the rounds when
you have the best shot. It takes a little getting used to.”

The training drone comes around fast, almost as fast
as the real thing. Drake rolls in the sand, keeping his profile
low, letting the landscape shield him as the drone spits a few
sim-rounds his way for effect. I watch his feed on my own goggles,
watch as MAI feeds him firing solutions through his ICW sighting
interface while trying to anticipate the drone’s apparently random
maneuvers. Then one of his tribe pops up and fires a few “feint”
rounds in the drone’s path, triggering a dodge. Drake takes his cue
and sprays where he anticipates the drone will flip, but he guesses
wrong.

His partner—a young Nomad named Yassi—“closes the
back door” and puts a few rounds in the opposite direction. He
manages to clip the training drone, but gets fired upon for his
trouble. His Link “scores” him as wounded, and I hear some choice
Arabic on their channel.

“Not bad,” I try to reassure.

“Odds are against you on the first volley,” Rios
adds, a patient coach. “Even the AI can only give you best guess on
what a Disc is likely to pull. The rest is luck and instinct.
Sometimes you just have to override the AI aim and go for it.”

“It’s a lot like trying to hit a fly or a mosquito in
midair,” Anton offers, using his joystick to shift his “chair” on
the rocky hilltop to follow the action. The six wheels of what used
to be a “follow-along” bot-rover (before Thomasen “re-tasked” it)
dig and crunch in the gravel. “Not that’d you’d know what those
are,” he corrects himself sheepishly after a moment’s thought.

The simple drone—one of about three dozen we had in
stores, specifically designed to train ground troops and battery
gunners to hit a flying Disc—is intact enough to come around for
another run at their positions in the dunes. I watch Drake set it
up in his sights for another attempt at “boxing” it in, not one to
give in to frustration easily. The drone is a lot smaller than a
real Disc, isn’t nearly as tough and doesn’t move as nimbly, but it
has a fairly challenging laser tagging array and does fire light
simmunition rounds at random just to keep things interesting.

The drone sprays Drake again, making him duck and
cover and reset the shot. He comes back up over the dune quick, but
then we all freeze as the drone gets inexplicably swatted out of
the sky. It skitters into the sand, MAI telling us its systems have
just gone dead.

“That wasn’t me,” Drake says needlessly. He gets up
but keeps his new ICW trained on the downed drone, eyes scanning
for additional threats, expecting this is a programmed trick.

“I am assuming this is not part of the exercise,”
Abbas responds to our apparent confusion.

“Not exactly,” I hear a familiar voice over the Link.
MAI lights up the origin as a blip fifty meters behind us and to
the east, and I turn to see a blue sealsuit standing on a crest,
something long and shiny cradled in his arms.

Abbas’ Nomads come up out of their concealed
positions, weapons ready, but Abbas waves them down.

“Paul,” I confirm. The sealsuit levitates a foot or
so off the ridge and then glides toward us like a phantom. When he
gets close enough I see that the new “tool” he’s holding—which
looks like someone turned an elongated Rod into some kind of chrome
assault rifle—isn’t the only change. He isn’t wearing his helmet,
only his facemask and goggles.

“Colonel Ram, Lieutenant Rios,” he greets formally as
he settles like a ghost on the rocks in front of our little
observation group. “And I assume this is Abu Abbas?”

“It is,” Abbas says, almost sounding like he’s ready
for a fight.

“Paul Stilson,” I introduce, realizing the two have
never formally met.

“Your Jinn?” Abbas asks me to confirm, keeping his
tone cold.

“He’s been a good friend,” I assure. “And he’s paid
dearly for that.” Despite the lack of direct contact, I’ve kept
Abbas apprised of everything the Stilsons have done for us,
including Simon’s ultimate sacrifice. Abbas takes a breath in his
mask that seems to soften him, while I see Paul’s face get harder
under his own mask.

“Then you are welcome here,” Abbas allows
cautiously.

“New toy?” I change the subject, gesturing to Paul’s
“gun.”

“The Rod in its basic form hasn’t served as an
accurate weapon,” he says, hefting the modified device. It reminds
me of an old Sten gun or grease gun in its simplicity: a Rod with a
pistol grip and a fore-grip. There are small holograms flickering
over it which must serve as sights. The “barrel” retracts to a
compact size as I watch. But what I’m most surprised about is Paul
using the word “weapon” to describe anything made by the ETE.

“Your Council approved this?” I ask him.

“My Council has allowed the Guardian teams some
latitude in tactical development, given recent events,” he answers
with vague diplomacy. “Be assured: Nothing fundamental has changed.
We do not use our tools to harm organic life. The Discs are not
organic life.” His voice goes especially hard on that last
point.

“You came alone?” I notice no ship, no team, not that
I’d be surprised if cloaking a ship was one of the Guardians’ new
“tactical developments.” But Paul nods.

“We should talk, Colonel. There are things I should
pass along.”

I can still feel Abbas’ tension.

“We can talk in front of these men,” I nod toward
Abbas and Drake (who’s just jogged up to join us, dust billowing
from his robes). Paul hesitates, but nods his agreement.

“Then you should be welcome to talk in my home,”
Abbas offers. “It is time we got out of the wind and recharged our
tanks.”

Abbas had moved his camp a dozen miles north along
the feed line from where it had been when we’d first met. He never
did tell me if this was in order to be closer to our base, or
further from the unstable situation with Aziz’ band in the south,
or just some routine or traditional rotation to keep his position
harder to predict. The new camp is hidden and defended just as well
as the previous site, and was established quickly, which suggests
the sites may be pre-prepped or the Nomads are just very good at
moving and rebuilding. Abbas told me it is all done in the night
despite the bitter cold, to avoid the eyes of local competitors as
well as out of the generational fear of observation from space.

Abbas’ own shelter, however, is set up the same. “A
man’s home should have some constancy,” is how he put it, even
declining the larger shelter I offered him since his personal
residence regularly becomes a meeting place for larger and larger
groups of visiting “advisors.” Today brings myself, Rios, Sakina,
Anton (whose chair’s wheels “walk” over hatch thresholds) and the
unexpected Paul to his humble home. His wives quickly provide mats
for all of us to sit on and begin to brew tea, startled only
briefly by their unusual (and probably at least a little
frightening) new guest.

Paul’s weapon folds up to pistol size and slips into
a holster at his hip. He still carries his usual compliment of
Spheres and unmodified Rods on his belt. He takes off his mask and
goggles, and folds them up into a convenient pocket-size in a trick
that would be impossible without nano-construction. His usually
neat hair is ragged and dusty, and the dust clings to his face
where the edges of his mask and goggles were. And I realize the
only other time I saw Paul anything other than sterile was when the
Shinkyo had knocked him out of the sky with a nuke. Or picking up
the pieces of his brother’s body.

We all take our turn ritually rinsing the dust from
our faces—the caked lines that form around masks and goggles, made
of sand that abrades like ground glass—in a hand-crafted recycling
sink made specifically for this purpose. Then we all settle in
around Abbas’ low table, including Anton, who’s gotten fairly
nimble at using his arms to get himself in and out of his chair,
his dead legs bound together like a merman’s tail. I notice Paul is
particularly awkward in trying to sit on his floor cushion,
suggesting that either the ETE don’t make a habit of sitting on
floors, or perhaps that he’s just a little uncomfortable with this
whole ritual. I also notice Abbas keeps his eyes on Paul the whole
time, like he’s got a bomb visiting his home.

A small feast is already laid out for us, as we were
expected to break eventually from our morning’s training session.
There’s fresh grainy bread, a salty paste made out of the nuts
Abbas had once brought me as a treat mixed with some unknown and
almost minty herb, slices of the bittersweet and bloody-fleshed
local apple hybrid, and dried tart strawberry-like fruits.
Gratitude for this hospitality is shown not by polite hesitant
turn-taking, but by everyone digging in whole-heartedly with the
familiarity of close family (but only using the right hand, as
traditions are important here).

“How do your Earthside commanders feel about you
supplying your arms to the locals?” Paul begins bluntly, nodding
his head at the ICW Jon Drake is putting away in its case like a
precious treasure before joining us at table.

“You’ve been monitoring our communications,” I remind
him for Abbas’ benefit. “You know I’ve also been given ‘latitude’
to recruit local resources, given recent events.”

“But are you sure you want to involve these people
against the Discs?”

I give him a look that asks what his real concerns
are, but he maintains his stony intensity. I almost feel like I’m
talking to his father.

“They are as willing as they are welcome,” I tell
him. “And they have a right to be able to defend themselves if they
come under attack.”