Read The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are for Free Online Page A

breakfast table, eat standing up bar-style.
Everything tastes great—at least that hasn’t been dulled.
(Actually, I think my skin has gotten closer to normal in
sensitivity since I came inside. I expect it has something to do
with temperature and pressure. I keep checking my reflection in the
transparency to make sure I still look old-me.)
    “So. What did I miss?” I make it sound like an idle
question.
    It’s definitely not. They all look deeply
uncomfortable. I watch them struggle to find something “safe” to
say.
    “How did the fight go?” I try for something I figure
is relatively harmless. “I hate missing the end of stuff like
that.”
    “I got shot,” Rios matches the lightness of my
tone.
    “In the leg,” Ryder details. “Then he landed on it
when he got knocked off Chang’s ship. He’s lucky he still has
it.”
    “I’m fine, sir,” he assures. “Just trying to catch up
with all your scars. The plan went off like clockwork. You saw the
first parts: The Shinkyo took out Chang’s support ships, kamikaze’d
his railgun, napalmed his staging deck. Total chaos. Then our
ground forces popped up and started pounding his batteries—his guns
were the only part of the ship we could hurt. Then while he was
busy chasing them, our boarding group got under him, shot lines. We
almost took the ship, but then Chang got his shit together and got
into the fight himself. I felt like we got hit with a tsunami-sized
firehose. He literally swept us off the decks, then made a run for
it when the ETE moved in on him. Toothless. And most of his
conscripts dead or down.”
    “Looks like you didn’t need me after all,” I give
him.
    “You’re the one that made it happen, sir,” he won’t
let me off. Or maybe he just wants it on record.
    “How many did we lose?” I need to know.
    “Ninety-eight total,” Tru lets me know when everybody
else gets quiet again. “Including Knights, Nomads and Shinkyo.”
    “Jill Metzger,” Lisa gives me at least one meaningful
loss. “And her crew when AirCom got hit.”
    “Any idea where Chang crawled to?” I stay on
tactical, wanting to hit back.
    “Kicked up one of his storms, then hacked into the
Atmosphere Net, ramped up the EMR all through Coprates so we
couldn’t track him from space,” Anton takes it. “Had some trick so
even the ETE couldn’t see him. When the noise faded, there was no
sign of him. And nothing since. Command thinks he may have buried
himself, like the way the ETE dug out Shinkyo Colony. Too bad we
don’t have good enough before-and-after mapping to compare for
terrain changes.”
    “Do we think he has a base somewhere, or just the big
ship?”
    I get shrugs and head shakes, but this doesn’t feel
like a taboo topic.
    “We know he moved all of Zodanga and at least one PK
colony,” Kastl tries. “I doubt they all fit on the ship. I’d have a
home base somewhere.”
    “Any action at the other PK sites?”
    “Dead quiet,” Kastl tells me.
    “Earthside is pushing for a confrontation as soon as
we’ve got the resources,” Rios dares a potentially forbidden
subject. “Show of force. Demand they surrender their sites,
starting with Industry.”
    “That’ll go over well,” I grumble. “And assuming they
just lay down arms, then what?”
    I feel another uncomfortable subject coming on.
    Tru finally speaks up:
    “They want to round everybody up, all the survivors,
get them into camps. ‘For their own wellbeing.’” She keeps her tone
remarkably level, probably not wanting to sound like the Eco leader
that she is. “Full screening. Make sure they’re clean of anything
scary. Then probably systematic evacuation to Earth, once the
Quarantine lifts.”
    “And if they don’t want to go?” I ask the obvious
boiling question.
    “Earthside is considering it a mandate for
interplanetary safety and security,” Rick reads me what I assume is
the official line. “They want to make sure no one is carrying
anything dangerous, nano or bio.