Free The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming by Michael Rizzo Page A

like a
broken-hearted child, and I saw a ghost of the innocence I thought
he’d lost (thanks to me). “They won’t share a space with me. I’m unclean , and not just because I have Mars all over me. And
death.”
    He hadn’t traded his battle-worn armor-patched
sealsuit for a fresh one, hadn’t bothered to try to fit in with his
neat and uniform brethren. He didn’t even bother with a helmet and
mask. And of course, he was carrying his rifle—the rifle I gave him
and taught him how to use—not his people’s Tools.
    I realized I could smell him, that he smelled human.
I don’t think I ever smelled an ETE in all my time working with
them, even staying in their Stations. They’re that obsessive about
sterility.
    They didn’t stop him from letting me in, didn’t post
visible guards, but he was right: any time we entered a section
that had white suits, they quickly left, not saying a word and
barely glancing at him. Us. It was like they’d all been issued a
mandate.
    Without me asking, he took me to a containment
chamber, through multiple containment walls, to a regeneration tube
that looked like a beefed-up version of their implantation
couches.
    Inside I could see Kah-Terina Sher-Khan. Asleep.
Unconscious. Her Companion—still in its Naginata form—was embraced
across her chest like she was on-guard. She was still in her Modded
form: Her original long-limbed broad-chested Katar adaptive
physiology overwritten by an Earth-grav athletic ideal, her
people’s pervasive rust-dyed skin cleared to a rich olive-tan, all
thanks to her Companion’s default settings. She looked healthy and
intact, except for the face over her right eye: Her massive head
wound was mostly healed, her skull and facial bones re-grown
(probably helped by the rich nutrient media she was being fed), but
the part of her face that had been blown away by the explosive
round was still that glossy, translucent silicate—the same
artificial “skin” that had covered all of her after she’d received
devastating radiation burns desperately fighting her way through
Yod’s barriers to the Barrow.
    “Progress?” I asked.
    He shrugged.
    “Our bio-nanotech teams are intrigued by the
Companion interface. Drake was right: There is potential for
at least partial memory reconstruction. But recreated memories, no
matter how detailed…”
    “Won’t be the same,” I agreed. “Might not even be
convincing.”
    “Like Asmodeus,” he said it before I could. “And will
that be her fate, too? The madness of knowing?”
    “Asmodeus was insane to begin with,” I tried to be
comforting. “The only real difference is the reduced impulse
control, the emotional lability. The original version—the mortal
version—was a little more reserved.”
    We stood there watching her heal, trying to imagine
what she would be when she finally woke. I could tell: There was
something Paul was reluctant to tell me. I gave him the time he
needed to get up the nerve, to find the words:
    “The Council… They’ve been in talks with UNMAC.
Trying to forestall their demands that we turn over all of our
technology and surrender the Stations.”
    “And?” I could tell the news wasn’t anything I wanted
to hear.
    “They’ve agreed to partial cooperation, to provide
fuel and oxygen. UNMAC has landed a depot facility in Melas, hooked
it up to a Feed.”
    (I would find reference to it later in the files Lisa
gave me. They called it “Project Wellspring”.)
    “They’re gearing up for war,” I told him what he had
to already know, what they all had to already know. “They need the
fuel for all their new fighters, shuttles. They’re using you until
they have the foothold to take your Stations by force. In the
meantime, they’ll use the range that fuel gives them to hunt down
the locals, round them up for relocation, or hit them from the air
if there’s resistance. They won’t work with us. They won’t believe
a goddamn thing we say or do. They’re still convinced