The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are by Michael Rizzo

to a
heavy hatch, its metal scarred like tools were put to hacking at
it, but the wounds are rusted old.
    They get it open easily enough, get me in. The female
is covering our rear. She’s about to close the hatch behind us when
she suddenly staggers back, goes down.
    “ Hammond! ” Murphy shouts.
    I get dropped and the hatch gets slammed shut. I can
see the female struggling with something stuck in her upper right
chest.
    “Knife!” the first identifies. “This is P-6! I need
Medical. H-8 took a knife. Right lung.” I see Murphy put pressure
on Hammond’s wound.
    “Now you owe her, too,” first grumbles at him. “This
corpse better be worth more than fertilizer.”
    I can hear Hammond sucking air, struggling as they
try to tend to her. I’m temporarily forgotten.
    Ten seconds later, it gets crowded in the airlock as
medical personnel in white worksuits come in and start working on
Hammond. The two males also get help in the form of more security
uniforms. They pick me up and roughly drop me on a gurney like
unusual baggage, making comments about how bizarre I look and “He
can’t really be Colonel Ram.” “So what the hell is he?” “Should we
be bringing him inside?” “Gardener wants to scan him.”
    Murphy and his cohort finally strip off their masks
and goggles. Murphy has dark cropped hair, a square jaw, strong
lines, dark eyes. The other one, who I’ve so far only heard call
himself P-6, has a rounder face, with a deep scar out of the right
corner of his mouth. His eyes are cruel.
    “Take the meat to Iso. Weapons too.” P-6 giving
orders again. “Gardener’s waiting.”
    I get wheeled out as a second gurney gets wheeled in
for Hammond.
    “…got a Legacy knifed…” I hear P-6 grousing somewhere
behind me. “…look good on our records… I think I get Kara for
this…”
    “Sick, Palmer,” Murphy grumbles back. “Kara’s a
child.”
    “She’s grown up enough. Just because you haven’t…”
    The second gurney gets wheeled past me in a rush, the
medics trying to keep Hammond from bleeding out or succumbing to a
punctured lung. At least they give their wounded higher priority
than my dead ass, however interesting I may be.
    Another hatchway, and it gets bright. And open.
    I think I’m inside the second dome. It is intact.
    But the original transparent roof panels are gone,
the geodesic framework now supporting a patchwork of metal plates
gummed with sealant. Additional support columns have been welded in
place abstractly, probably holding up the heavier ceiling and all
the dirt and rock that must be over top of it.
    The situation begins to fall into place for me: The
wild people live out in the shattered dome, making due with
survival gear and plentiful food. Their hunters—apparently from
another complete and separate society—live in whatever of
Tranquility is buried beneath the slide slope.
    Intimate neighbors—literally right next door to each
other. Were the wild people from this colony? Or did they migrate
in, drawn by the gardens? That might explain the “hunting”: The
colony might not have enough guns and ammo to fight them off, but
enough for the occasional show of force to maintain whatever
understanding they have.
    But I got the impression the killing is more sport
than necessity—Palmer, at least, seemed more about trophies and
records and compensation. (And “compensation” here sounds like it
mean sex, and with someone who doesn’t get a say in the matter. Is
this society as striated as the PK, where the warriors have far
more value than the civilians?)
    How long has this been going on?
    Dome Two has its own green: neat gardens under bright
warm artificial sunlight, beamed from up high in the structure. The
facilities within, at least what little I can see and still play
dead, are in near-pristine condition: The dome interior is ringed
with terraced housing, labs, workshops, all well-maintained. And
neat and clean, especially in contrast to conditions in