Beast

by Patrick McClafferty

  Giuseppe looked up, and his voice dropped dramatically to a whisper. “He found a cave. Not a natural hole in the ground, however, but something shaped by thinking hands tens of thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands, of years in the past.” He laughed gently. “Malachai was a smart lad and took voice notes and photographic records of everything he found.”

  Giuseppe’s face went as pale as Lucinda’s. “Then he found something else—or to be more accurate, it found him. What he found was alive, but not as we define life. It was a… living shadow. Videos Malachai had taken revealed that there were dozens of these creatures—or possibly hundreds—living in the cave and in the area. They looked and moved like black smoke.”

  Chills went up Solomon’s spine as he recalled his own experience with the shadows of the desert, and he wondered if they were one and the same.

  Giuseppe laughed dryly. “It was at about that time that the guards caught up with Malachai. They must have startled him, because his small pocketknife broke, the blade spinning off to cut his cheek.” He paused, his eyes going to the floor. “The creatures must have been attracted by his blood because Rolf saw at least two vanish into the boy’s wound. What happened next is still unclear. The boy changed into… something that had the strength to toss two large guards around like rag dolls.” Giuseppe gave Solomon a long level look. “Something with impossibly dense red skin and eyes that glowed the color of Martian sand. Rolf never lived down the fact that an eleven-year-old boy bested him and broke his arm.

  “Later, after the effects had faded, the doctors found nothing unusual in Malachai but a strangely altered mitochondrial DNA. Malachai fought the effects of the shadows bravely, but suffered from fits of violence none could explain. Sometimes, his skin would change color, and sometimes not. Three people in the city of Lowell were killed and several were injured. Rumors began to spread about the Beast of Mars.”

  Elora was staring openly at her father. “You mean that you aren’t the Beast, like everyone says?” Her pallor matched her parents’, and her voice was barely a rumor of its former strength.

  Giuseppe smiled. “I am not the Beast of legend, my dear. Years passed, and still, Malachai had bouts of the madness, especially when he was angry or in danger. Finally, in desperation, it was decided to return him to Earth. Although it was obvious that he was slowly getting better, the public outcry about the Beast was getting to be more than I could handle. It was hoped that being on Earth would heal Malachai’s madness.” Giuseppe gave a resigned shrug.

  “Then I made a grave mistake. I allowed the doctors to use an experimental technique to erase Malachai’s memory of Mars. They told me the effect would only be temporary, but it turned out that it was not. My teams on Earth edited the records and changed Malachai’s name. They also arranged for him to be found in the midst of a gruesome train wreck in central Europe.” Giuseppe almost smiled. “My agents had stumbled onto a terrorist plot to destroy a high-speed train, and we inserted a sedated Malachai onto the train along with two corpses conveniently edited to become his parents. After that, we let nature take its course, and through my agents, I watched. With the help of my cousin, Luciano Vento, we set him up in business for himself, and now, surprisingly, our son has come home to use those very forces of evil… or good, to save us all.” Giuseppe’s eyes held tears as he looked up at Solomon. “Welcome home, Malachai.”

  Chapter 6

  THE BEAST

  Solomon glared at Giuseppe. “I’m really the Beast… and your son?” he asked in disbelief, his anger rising. “My whole fucking life has been a lie? A fucking sham?” His fists were clenched as his newly found father looked at the floor. “You claimed to be the Beast, just to protect me?”

  “You’re my… brother?” Elora said in a disconsolate voice, like a bucket of ice water thrown in his face.

  His rage evaporated, and he realized in a flash of insight that the screwed-up situation wasn’t completely about him.

  “You are Malachai?” she asked in a strained voice.

  Solomon shut his eyes. It was all getting to be too much to accept in one swallow. “According to your father, I’m your brother, but my name is Solomon Draxx.”

  “But you’re my brother!” A note of anger slipped into Elora’s voice, as if she held him personally responsible for what she felt for him, which was obviously far more than a sister should normally feel for her brother.

  Giuseppe looked from one younger person to the other. “At least the problem with the shadows has been resolved. One month after the incident in the cave, we sent in a team of scientists in clean suits to get records, and we sealed the cave. The shadows won’t bother anyone ever again.”

  Solomon gave his father a sad look. “I’m sorry to pop your bubble, Giuseppe. I came across those shadows again, on my trek through the open desert.” He let out a short bitter laugh. “I woke from a brief nap to find them crawling all over me.”

  Lucinda shuddered, crossing her arms tightly under her breasts.

  “I’m afraid that man isn’t the only species on Mars anymore, if he ever was.” He frowned. “Perhaps they were always here, and I just came across a few hiding in the cave.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes before Lucinda spoke. “Have you then learned to… control what is within you?”

  Solomon looked up at her, expecting to see fear and loathing in her eyes, but found only love. He was surprised, considering that she wasn’t even his biological mother. Holding out his right hand before his face, he watched the skin slowly darken to a deep red, nearly black, with a hard leathery texture. Elora reached out a tentative finger to caress the palm of his hand. He twitched at the light tickle, amazed that the new “skin,” despite the tough appearance, was even more sensitive than the old.

  “It’s hard, and a little like that body armor you had me wear,” she murmured, studying his hand. There was no fear in her voice.

  Solomon turned his hand over, and his black fingernails began to lengthen into claws. Extending the clawed index finger, he stared at it, and the claw slowly straightened and flattened into a…

  “It’s a standard screwdriver!” Elora gasped.

  As Solomon held up his middle finger to join the index finger, the nail on the second finger morphed into a perfect Phillips-head screwdriver. The tools returned to claws, then the claws vanished. His skin began to run the gamut of colors before settling back to its normal olive tone.

  “I think that this is like a mechanic’s tool belt, but able to do much more,” Solomon said at last. “If you give a child a car, he’s going to go out and get someone killed. It’s not the car’s fault, certainly, and not really the child’s fault. The same is true with this. I think that this tool belt, for want of a better word, has… self-defense safeguards to protect the user. When the guards grabbed me in the cave, they triggered a survival response. I never learned control until I stopped struggling with it back on Earth.” He looked up at Giuseppe and gave him a crooked grin. “Call me stubborn. I really am sorry for the pain that I might have caused you, and more so for those poor innocents I killed in Lowell.”

  Giuseppe snorted. “In two of those instances, we were set on by robbers. In the last instance, a toady of the governor insulted your mother and you backhanded him, breaking his neck. That might have been a bit… excessive. His family still lives in a better part of the city on an endowment I’ve set up for them.”

  Solomon nodded. “Thank you.” He took a breath. “Now what, Giuseppe?”

  The older man looked at him calmly. “Do you wish to make your new status public?”

  Solomon snorted. “Not likely. Let’s just go on with the ruse that I’m your employee.”

  “As you wish, son.” Giuseppe helped Lucinda to her feet. “Now, I believe that you should get some food and rest. It has been a very busy day for you.”

  Solomon grinned, offering Elora his arm. “Going my way, sis?” he asked impishly.

  Elora just rolled her eyes but took his pr
offered arm. “This is going to make things difficult,” she muttered to herself.

  No shit! The picture of Addy back on Earth flashed through his mind. How the hell can I ever tell her about this?

  Life was busy for the next few days, with massive repairs to be made inside and out on the main building and on the smaller buildings scattered around the grounds. New personnel had to be hired to replace those who had been killed or were suddenly too gun-shy to stay. Despite their best intentions, it was quickly evident to the hired help and the rest of the Fontaine family that a major shift had occurred in the household hierarchy. Giuseppe and Lucinda both came to Solomon more often to discuss issues. Elora, who had found Solomon interesting at first was usually at his side. To anyone watching, it was evident that, although the two never touched or had any form of intimate contact, they were never far apart. The younger girls would look at the two and sigh.

  At dinner a week after the shuttle crash, Solomon got his first whiff of trouble—literally. He sat glaring so intently at his plate of Martian free-range chicken that Elora finally had to give him a sharp elbow to the ribs and a deep frown. “Your face is positively dyspeptic, Solomon. What’s the problem?”

  He gave her a long look and finally decided that the truth wouldn’t put her off her feed too badly. “That waiter who served me my dinner smelled wrong,” he said sotto voce, still looking at his plate.

  “What? Like he didn’t bathe?” Elora wrinkled her nose, sniffing the air.

  “Not quite. It’s more like he bore us ill will. Novalie’s bodyguard smelled the same way when I first met him, but I didn’t know what it meant.”

  Elora made a small sound of distress and looked up as the same waiter set dinner down in front of Giuseppe. Without a conscious thought, he was up and on his feet. “Don’t eat that, Giuseppe!” With a glance at the marine standing guard near the dining room door, he pointed at the waiter. “Guard, seize that man!”

  The waiter bolted for the door, reaching beneath his white jacket just as the butt of the guard’s rifle struck him in the temple. The waiter went down as though he’d been poleaxed, and the guard reached into the waiter’s jacket to gingerly pull out a small but deadly energy pistol.

  The sour reek of fear was thick in the air as Solomon looked around the table. “Don’t eat your dinners. They may be poisoned. I’m sure Giuseppe’s dinner was poisoned, and I suspect that mine was also. If you are still hungry, go for an unopened can of something.” He looked to Giuseppe, who gave him a quick shaky nod and turned to the guard.

  “Call your officer in charge and tell him to set Condition Two. An attack is definitely imminent.” Solomon’s voice was hard as he looked at the man on the floor. “And you might want to have someone question this person very thoroughly,” he growled, drawing his own weapon.

  Standing at his side, Elora was holding her own heavy Colt .45, an updated model of the classic 1911, with modern bullets and materials. He stared for a second more then raised an eyebrow. “Where the hell did you ever have that cannon hidden?”

  Elora just smiled. “A girl has to have some secrets, Mr. Draxx,” she purred.

  Thinking that the leadership had been neatly removed from the Fontaine family, the attackers were scheduled to begin the onslaught at three o’clock—and in force. Unfortunately for them, the former waiter hadn’t been all that firmly bought, and when faced with having his limbs slowly removed by several very large, very angry marines, the waiter sang like a canary, telling the marines exactly how many attackers would be calling and from approximately what direction.

  Nobody but Corporal Brigit Uí Dubháin and the rest of the marines liked Solomon’s plan. It was simple: he would bring the fight to the enemy, arriving in stealth to take out their top leadership, wreak havoc, and then fade back into the night, leaving only enough traces for the hostile forces to track him exactly where he led—right to an eight-man squad of heavily armed marines. Solomon doubted there would be very many of the chase party left after that encounter. With the attacking forces in disarray, all that was left to finish off was the bulk of the mercenaries that had been thrown against the Fontaine forces.

  Elora, Brigit, and Giuseppe joined Solomon shortly after midnight in the darkness just beyond the lights of the compound. Solomon studied each face then slowly took off his shirt and shoes, handing them to Elora. On his recent trek in the desert, he’d found that he could move faster and more quietly in bare feet. The temperature, at the freezing level, wasn’t a problem. He looked at each in turn, then faded to the color of the dark Martian sand right before their eyes.

  ”Dúil mo bod!” Corporal Brigit Uí Dubháin cursed, with more passion than logic.

  Elora just watched, wide-eyed. Even under the dim light of Phobos, Giuseppe paled visibly.

  “Be careful, son,” Giuseppe whispered, touching Solomon’s arm.

  Brigit’s eyes widened, moving from one man to the other, then narrowed as she nodded, obviously putting the pieces together. Elora kissed him on the cheek, and for a moment as she touched him, he could feel the dampness of her tears. He turned and, without another word, slipped into the night.

  Field Marshall Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke, back in the prespace and even preflight era, had coined a phrase that was still used by the modern military: no military operation survives contact with the enemy.

  To his dismay, Solomon found that to be more than true in his particular case. Homing in on the dim lights and sounds, he slid over a sand dune to discover that the force preparing to storm the Fontaine compound was far more than the two hundred men the stoolpigeon had reported, but rather a battalion of nearly eight hundred. How Governor Vergas had arranged to get a battalion of mercenaries to Mars, Solomon didn’t have a clue. A score of surplus armored personnel carriers sat lined up in a staging area, their engines idling. On the far side of the encampment was a heavily guarded area that Solomon guessed was a munitions dump. Exactly opposite the dump on the other side of the camp was a large, well-lit tent. A man dressed in white carried a covered tray into the tent, and Solomon smiled grimly. That was his first target.

  Whoever had planned the camp had the strategic sense of a stump. Tactically, keeping the command tent away from the munitions dump was a good idea, but locating it at the outer edge of the encampment was sheer idiocy. Solomon considered killing the three guards posted in the dunes just above the command tent but slid by silently in the darkness. His KA-BAR combat knife sliced through the tent wall without a sound, and Solomon found himself standing by the general’s bed in a small sleeping chamber in the back corner of the tent. Separated from the rest of the room by a low canvas privacy curtain, he made a small hole in the screen of the sleeping area and peered out. Four men were bent over a large table, studying a detailed map. All four wore uniforms of different countries, none from the United States. Beside them on a smaller folding table sat a large silver pot of steaming coffee. In the mostly open sleeping area Solomon could smell the rich brew. Solomon raised the small deadly energy weapon he’d confiscated from the masquerading waiter and silently shot all four in the back through the canvas wall. War was about surviving, not necessarily being nice. Four bodies slumped onto the table, trickles of blood dripping on the sandy floor. Solomon looked at the weapon he’d used in appreciation. He’d expected more noise than the muted hiss it had made. Sticking the assassin’s gun in his pocket, he walked quickly out into the night and toward the idling APCs. Limpet mines would have been his weapon of choice to take out the personnel carriers, but he smiled to himself as he opened the fuel cap on each APC and dumped in several handfuls of dusty Martian sand. As the APCs traveled the five or six bumpy kilometers to the estate, the sand would mix with the fuel, and each vehicle would just… stop.

  Checking his watch, Solomon turned toward the munitions dump. He was running late, but it couldn’t be helped. His bare feet padding in the soft sand sounded vaguely like a Martian breeze.

  The five guards at the ammo dump went dow
n without a sound, but the pistol’s battery indicator was blinking red. One shot left. For a second, he considered throwing it away, but stuck it back in his pocket. He smiled as he pulled the KA-BAR back out.

  He found a heavy canvas bag in the small supply tent located at the very center of the munitions dump and began stuffing it. From the quantities of explosives, Solomon suspected the powers that be had discovered the first attack’s inability to breach the Fontaine compound. Puffing with the exertion, Solomon carried all of the explosives to the center of the ring of fuel drums, where he made a neat pile and set a grenade on top. He rigged the grenade to go off at the smallest vibration, then he picked up the canvas sack of grenades and began to run. He was halfway up the dune to safety when a shout of alarm came from the command tent and a siren began to wail. Panting, Solomon sat on the top of the hill and dumped the grenades on the ground before him. Picking up the first, he pulled the pin and looked around for a target.

  In the center of the encampment, a large man was shouting orders, and the troops were running in all directions as they followed his commands. Solomon’s grenade landed in the sand at the big man’s feet, giving him time for one startled glance and a curse before it blew him to perdition. Solomon rained grenades down at random, until he reached the last, which he planted beside his booby-trapped explosives. The concussion from the blast tripped the trigger—