Battlefield Mars

by David Robbins

  “Do I have to bring you out to their farm and rub your nose in their blood?”

  “No, no. That was harsh. I’ll do whatever you require of me. It’s just so incredible.”

  “Contact all the outlying settlers. Order them to New Meridian. If any refuse, tell them I’ll show up personally to drag them in by the scruff of their necks.”

  “Goodness, you’re in a mood.”

  “And Winslow?”

  “There’s more?”

  “Pray that whatever attacked the farm doesn’t know about New Meridian. Because if they do, and breach the dome, the colony is in serious danger.”

  “You’re exaggerating, surely.”

  “I wish I were,” Archard said.

  Albor Tholus. Over seven kilometers high and one hundred and sixty kilometers wide. The caldera itself, from which the hot lava once spewed, was thirty kilometers across. Satellite images suggested that the main vent went deep underground. Exactly how deep no one could say since no one had ever been down there.

  All this went through Archard’s head as the tank wound among giant boulders and basalt outcroppings. The rugged terrain had slowed them considerably.

  Time for more intel, Archard decided. Rising, he walked back to the bay and sat across from Private Pasco and Piotr Zabinski.

  The boy was slumped in despair, still clutching his mother’s head as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

  “Piotr, we need to talk.”

  The child looked up. His eyes were moist, his lower lip quivering.

  Archard proceeded with care. He wasn’t a psychologist but he could tell Piotr was on the cusp of a breakdown. “Do you remember the time I visited your farm?”

  “Yes. You had your gun.”

  Archard smiled. “I always have my gun. My name is Archard. I’d like…”

  “What are you?” Piotr broke in.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your country. Your people. We’re Polish. My dad…” Piotr stopped, and sniffled. “My dad was proud of that. He said it’s good to know where a person comes from. That you can tell a lot about them.”

  “I’m German.”

  Piotr’s brow furrowed. “My dad said Germans like to make things like cars and rockets. He said they are good soldiers.”

  “Here I sit,” Archard said.

  The boy gnawed his lip, thinking. “From my studies…the countries are very close, yes?”

  “Germany and Poland? They’re next to each other. We’re neighbors, you might say.”

  “Ah.” Piotr almost smiled.

  “I need your help,” Archard eased into it.

  “Me? What can I do?”

  “My men and I are after the things that hurt your parents. We want to punish them for what they did.”

  A savage gleam came into the boy’s eyes. “Kill them all.”

  Archard rested his elbows on his knees. “It would help us greatly if we knew what we are up against.”

  “Monsters.”

  “You said that before. But what kind of monsters, Piotr? What are they like? What can you tell me about them that might help us?”

  “They’re scary.”

  “I need more than that. What do they look like? How big are they? How fast do they move? Those sorts of things.”

  “Oh.”

  “Please, Piotr. A soldier must learn all he can about an enemy. Their weaknesses. Their strengths. What they do.”

  “The first one,” Piotr began, and trembled. “The first one came out of a hole and jumped on me. I was so scared I fell on my back. It stood over me on its long legs—”

  “How many legs?”

  Piotr removed his left arm from his mother’s head and held up his fingers one by one, counting. “Eight. If you don’t count the grippers.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s how they hold stuff. How they tear…” Piotr trembled. “How they tear people apart.”

  “All right. What did it do then?”

  “It looked at me for the longest while with its awful eyes.” Piotr closed his, and when he went on, he did so in a mechanical tone. “They move all around. One can go up while the other goes down.”

  “What moves? Their eyes?”

  Piotr’s helmet bobbed. “Their eyes aren’t in their heads, like ours. They’re at the ends of wavy things.”

  Archard tried to picture it. “What do you mean by wavy things?”

  Before the boy could reply, Sergeant McNee shouted, “Sir! There’s something up ahead that you should see.”

  11

  The tank was approaching the base of Albor Tholus, the slope seeming to rise forever. Hundreds of meters up, a flurry of dust rose from some sort of disturbance.

  Sergeant McNee braked and boosted the amplification on the holo to no avail. “Can’t tell what that is. Pressure escaping, maybe?”

  Archard deemed that unlikely. According to the experts, the volcano had gone inactive millions of years ago.

  “I thought I saw something when I first noticed the dust,” the non-com said.

  “Be more specific.”

  “I can’t. It was moving, that’s all I could tell. But now there’s no sign of the bloody thing.”

  The red dust was settling and thinning. Another minute, and all that was left were wisps.

  “Heads up, everyone,” Archard said, and pointed at the volcano.

  Sergeant McNee took the hint and continued on. “I hate slopes like this.”

  So did Archard; they were treacherous in the extreme. Ground that appeared solid might give way without warning.

  “Sir, I’ve been thinking,” McNee said. “Shouldn’t we contact Wellsville and Bradbury? Major Howard and Colonel Vasin will want to know about the attack, won’t they?”

  Wellsville and Bradbury were the second and first colonies, respectively. Green and Vasin were the heads of their U.N.I.C. details.

  “When I have something concrete to report, I will,” Archard said.

  Presently, they came to where the dust cloud had been raised. Exiting the airlock, Archard roved for sign. He only went a couple of steps, and there, imprinted in the soil, were more strange marks exactly like those at the farm, only larger. They ringed a disturbed area about three meters across. At its center was a depression of loose dirt.

  Archard had the impression that the ground had been scooped out and resettled again. Gingerly placing his foot in the disturbed area, he slowly applied his full weight. It didn’t give way. Sinking to his knees, he scraped with his fingers. Some of the dirt trickled inward, but that was all.

  Archard returned to the tank. Private Pasco was trying to persuade Piotr to hand over his mother’s head but the boy was shaking his and saying, “No! No! You can’t have her!”

  Archard intervened, asking nicely, “How about if you give her to me, Piotr? I’ll wrap her in a blanket to keep her safe.”

  “They might take it like they did my dad’s,” Piotr said tearfully.

  “Was that at the agripod?”

  Piotr nodded. “After that first monster looked at me a while, it went back down the hole. I was so afraid, I ran to a shed and hid there I don’t know how long. When the monster didn’t come after me, I ran to the agripod to tell my dad but didn’t see him. I heard a noise and saw what I thought was the same monster coming through the wall so I hid in the potato patch.” Piotr talked faster. “A whole lot of those things came out. I figured they were hunting me. That was when dad and mom showed up. I should have yelled to warn them but all I did was lie there, I was so scared.” He stopped, and sobbed. “Everything happened so fast. The monsters tore my dad apart, and then they went after mom.”

  “You don’t need to go on,” Archard said, but Piotr didn’t seem to hear him.

  “One of them would hold up part of my dad or mom, and the others would look at it. My dad’s head they looked at the longest, until the one holding it went into the hole.”

  Archard was going to ask how the boy got his hand
s on his mother’s head when Sergeant McNee let out with an excited, “Captain! We might have found where those things come from.”

  “Enlighten me,” Archard said.

  “Sensors show a cave.”

  12

  Caves were common on Mars but few had been explored. It was too dangerous. One slip, one fall, and an EVA suit could be punctured. Plus, the government had made it illegal to venture into a cave without official approval. There were forms that must be submitted. Few requests were ever made. The colonists had better things to do than bumble around in subterranean death traps.

  Sergeant McNee brought the tank to a halt on a basalt shelf.

  Before them gaped a black hole that the Red Planet’s weak sunlight failed to penetrate. Rimmed by sharp projections much like teeth, it gave Archard the impression of staring into the gullet of a gigantic beast. He issued orders. Everyone was to refill their EVA suit air supply from the reservoir in the tank. They were to recheck their weapons. Batteries should be at full strength, or replaced. Spare bulbs for their spotlights, as well as coils of rope, and bolts, were also essential. He left nothing to chance.

  “Private Pasco, you’ll stay with the vehicle and keep Piotr company. Under no circumstances is he to venture outside.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pasco said, unable to hide his disappointment that he wasn’t going with them.

  “Sit up front and monitor us. If we lose contact or our vitals flat line, you’re to proceed immediately to New Meridian. On the way, raise Wellsville by satellite. It’s closest, and you shouldn’t have any trouble getting through unless there’s a sandstorm. Inform Captain Howard of developments. He’ll take it from there.”

  Archard had Private Everett fill a bag with flares and instructed Sergeant McNee to bring two dozen locator beacons from the equipment locker. No bigger than a thumbnail, they could broadcast a signal for up to a month before they drained dry.

  The wind had died. As they approached the dark maw, the only sound was the tread of their boots and the barely noticeable rasp of their breathers.

  The cave mouth was five meters across and about twice that high. Beyond, their spotlights revealed an ancient lava tube, angling down.

  With Sergeant McNee flanking right and Private Everett flanking left, Archard entered. They hadn’t gone a dozen steps when McNee pointed at the wall and said, “Sir.”

  Scratch marks, a lot of them, just like at the Zabinski farm.

  “No life on Mars, my ass,” Private Everett said.

  Archard, too, had been wondering how the experts could be so wrong. Centuries had gone by since the first NASA rover roamed the Red Planet, yet the scientists were clueless. Or were they? A troubling notion occurred to him. The ban on unauthorized cave exploration, the edict about perimeter fences. Did the government know more than it let on? Would the powers-that-be keep such a terrible secret from the colonists? Surely not, he told himself.

  “Nothing on sensors yet, sir,” Everett said.

  “A thought, Captain, if I may,” Sergeant McNee said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “We know there are creatures of some kind. We know they headed here from the farm. Yet we didn’t pick up their heat signatures. We didn’t pick up hardly anything at all.” The non-com gazed worriedly down the tube. “What if we can’t read them? We’ll be going in blind.”

  “We have eyes. We have ears.” Archard moved on, knowing full well McNee had a valid point. It could be none of them would make it out alive.

  13

  The lava tube was like a giant vein, blood-red with streaks of black, the basalt reflecting their spotlights with bright intensity.

  Gradually, the passage narrowed. They could no longer walk abreast.

  Archard assumed the lead. His helmet display continued to read negative although once he thought there was a flicker of motion from deeper in.

  Every two hundred meters, Sergeant McNee affixed a locator to the tunnel wall.

  Every quarter-hour, Archard radioed the tank. Pasco reported all was well. The third check, Pasco let him know Piotr had fallen asleep cradling his mother’s head.

  “Do you want me to try and take it away from him, sir?”

  “You couldn’t without waking him, and he’d be upset,” Archard said. “Leave him be. He’s been through enough.”

  “It’s so weird, him holding onto that thing.”

  “If it was all you had left of your mother, you might do the same. Now hush up. I want complete comm silence unless I say otherwise.”

  The farther they descended, the more scratches they came across. Not just on the sides and the bottom but the top as well, suggesting that whatever the creatures were, they could cling upside down to a surface as hard as metal and as smooth as glass.

  The tube curved.

  Archard held his left fist up, signaling a halt. He cautiously crept forward and peered around. The tunnel appeared empty. He signaled for McNee and Everett to follow, and advanced. He was looking ahead, not at the ground, and when something crunched under his foot, he glanced down. With an oath, he recoiled, jerking the ICW to his shoulder.

  “Sir?” Sergeant McNee was instantly at his side.

  “A dead one, by God,” Private Everett said.

  That it was. Long dead, and desiccated. Only part of it remained, a couple of legs attached to a round piece about forty centimeters across.

  “Can’t tell much from that,” McNee said.

  Archard slid his fingers under a leg and tried to raise it. Light as a feather, it dissolved into pieces. He lightly touched the rounded section, and where he touched dissolved away, too.

  “At least we know they can die,” Private Everett said.

  They passed smaller tubes that branched off. They came to junctions and always chose whichever tube seemed to lead deeper into the bowels of the volcano. By now, Archard estimated, they must be a kilometer under the surface.

  Yet another curve was bathed in their beams. At the same instant, Archard’s motion sensor went off. He stopped and boosted his audio input so high that if he sneezed, he’d hurt his eardrums. Odd sounds filtered in. Tapping, was how he’d describe it. A burst, then silence, then another burst.

  “What in the world?” Private Everett whispered.

  Archard could have slugged him. He scowled, and Sergeant McNee slapped Everett on the arm.

  With a finger to his helmet, Archard edged to the bend. He had no idea what he would see. He thought he was ready for anything. The U.N.I.C. had exhaustively trained him to compartmentalize and contain his emotions. It didn’t always work, though, like back at the farm when he saw the slaughter.

  And now.

  Reality as Archard knew it crumbled, and nightmare became real.

  14

  The tube ended in a cavern that stretched so far and so high that the other side was lost in the distance, a cavern that sank down and down and down even more, until there didn’t seem to be a bottom.

  The sheer immensity staggered Archard’s senses. Yet the cavern paled compared to the things that filled it. Literally, it crawled with life.

  Archard had expected to find fauna of some kind, animal life, albeit alien, at least by Earth standards. He didn’t expect to find highly intelligent life. He didn’t expect to find an entire civilization.

  Before his amazed gaze unfolded a bustling, thriving, underground city, although ‘city’ didn’t apply in an Earth-sense. There were no skyscrapers, no suburbs, no streets, few comparable frames of reference.

  There were ramps and walkways and wider avenues, all composed of basalt, crisscrossing one above another, traversing spans of hundreds of meters.

  There were structures, obelisks and spires and spheres and triangles and pentagons, and shapes the human mind had never conceived, on cliffs and mesas and broad shelves.

  There were life forms, a multitude of living organisms, moving ceaselessly to and fro, up the ramps and along the thoroughfares and going in and out of the structures. Some were small, s
ome large. Multi-legged, one and all.

  Archard blinked, shook his helmet, and looked again. It wasn’t a hallucination induced by a suit leak or his tank air gone foul. Yet his sensors, even this close, failed to register any heat signatures. The sensors did pick up motion, but weakly, as the sensors had in the tank.

  He focused on the life forms and made out different types. The majority—he would estimate seventy percent—possessed circular bodies about a meter round. Pinkish-red, they were covered by a carapace or shell that rose slightly in the center, and supported by eight legs about half a meter long. Two appendages projected from the ‘front,’ each ending in several long ‘grippers,’ as Piotr had called them. Then there were their eyes, attached at the end of thin stalks that constantly moved up and down and from side to side, just as the boy said.

  Of the several kinds of larger beings, the one Archard could make out the best was traveling along an elevated walkway not far off. Nine meters in length, it, too, had eight legs, and grippers, but an elongated body with a bulky blue carapace that tapered into a segmented tail.

  Archard was so intent on the spectacle that he almost didn’t catch the movement near his feet. Glancing down, he was startled to find one of the smaller creatures with its stalk eyes fixed on him. Even as he saw it, the thing extended its grippers toward his faceplate.

  Archard sprang back and jammed the ICW’S stock to his shoulder, but the thing didn’t attack. It stood perfectly still except for its eyes, which reminded Archard of a photo he’d seen as a boy of an assassin fly. He remembered it because at the time its name had struck him as cool; an assassin fly. He also remembered how fascinated he had been by its multifaceted compound eyes.

  The creature appeared to be studying him. Its stalks roved up and down, from his boots to his helmet.

  Archard didn’t shoot. The thing wasn’t acting hostile, merely curious. The grippers, he now saw, were three long digits, or ‘fingers,’ the middle one thicker than the other two.