John Carter

by Stuart Moore

  “The army’s been repositioned outside Helium! Only a small contingent remains.” The man squirmed, terrified. “I beg you—have mercy—”

  Carter rode up next to them. “Sab and Dejah Thoris. Where are they?”

  “At the wedding.”

  Carter, frustrated beyond belief, drew his sword.

  “In Helium!” the man cried.

  Tars Tarkas rode up behind Carter. “We’re in the wrong city?” He smacked the Earthman on the back of the head, a painful blow.

  I deserve that, Carter thought.

  “It’s the only way to get there in time,” Carter insisted.

  Tars Tarkas fixed him with a steely glare. “Tharks. Do. Not. Fly.”

  They stood together on the Zodangan Hangar Deck. Tharks loitered around the edges, eyeing the assembled airships warily. Normally the green Martians were fearless, eager to rush into any new situation at their Jeddak’s command. But this seemed to be a leap too far.

  Carter opened his mouth to argue, then stopped. Time was running out.

  “Okay,” he said. He gestured to a Thark guard, who tossed him an extra pistol. He strapped on another sword, then hopped onto a one-man flier and kicked it to life.

  Woola, faithful Woola, roared in protest. Sola held the beast back. Tars Tarkas approached Carter cautiously. “This is madness, Dotar Sojat. You’ll die.”

  “Then I’ll see you down the River Iss!” Carter yelled, over the noise of the flier.

  Sola touched his arm. “Follow the canal,” she said. “And be careful. Moonlight will force you to fly low.”

  He nodded, smiled, and shook her off. Lifted his flier into the night sky.

  And began his one-man assault on the forces of Helium and Zodanga.

  As the dark wasteland sped beneath him, Carter realized a startling fact. Since he’d come to Barsoom, this was the first time he’d been alone. And despite the urgency of his mission, he found himself growing pensive.

  His former life, back on Earth, seemed unimaginably distant now. He felt a twinge of guilt at the thought, and for just a moment he felt Sarah next to him, her long hair soft against his neck. Silently, sadly, he bade her a final good-bye.

  In that moment, he knew what mattered to him. Barsoom—and Dejah Thoris most of all. Carter’s old war, his old pain, was gone. Now he had something new to fight for, something worth a man’s life. He flicked the flier’s light controls, feeding more stored power into the motor. The rush of acceleration forced him back against the seat.

  Helium loomed ahead, a glowing jewel in an ocean of dead sand. Carter frowned and banked his flier to the side, scanning the desert before him. Sure enough—it was hard to make out, but a vast fleet of Zodangan ground troops lay scattered on the desert floor ahead, just now fanning out to surround the city. The troops carried no lights, no torches. That would have given them away.

  Just as he’d thought. Zodanga was planning to use the royal wedding as a distraction to invade and conquer Helium with overwhelming force. That was why they’d left their own city almost undefended.

  Carter grimaced as his flier approached the Zodangan army. A trooper pointed up at him, swiveling a rifle quickly in his direction. But a big officer quickly slapped his hand down.

  Carter exhaled in relief. He’d hoped they wouldn’t risk giving away their presence by firing. Besides, Carter was riding a Zodangan flier. They probably assumed he was one of their own scouts.

  Still, he knew that this was the easy part.

  Carter glided over the city walls, cutting his motor to silence. He scanned the spires quickly, spotted a domed palace blazing with light.

  Gangway, boys, he thought. I’m late to the chapel.

  “LIKE OUR ANCESTORS before us, we gather under the mingled light of Barsoom’s first lovers…Cluros and Thuria…”

  For Dejah Thoris, all hope was lost. She stood ramrod-straight on the elevated dais, listening as the priestess sealed her marriage vows. And her doom.

  “… as the moons are joined in celestial union, so do we unite Sab Than and Dejah Thoris. So do we unite Zodanga…and Helium.”

  Sab Than’s eyes flickered to hers. But Dejah just stared straight ahead, painfully aware of the hundreds of eyes fixed on her from the balconies. More spectators watched from the floor below, along with half of Helium’s royal guard.

  The priestess poured clear liquid into a crystal goblet. “In the Time of Oceans, the celestial lovers rose from the sea each night to consummate their love in the sky.” She handed the goblet to Sab Than. “Drink now of this holy water, and be wed.”

  Sab Than drew himself up to full height, held out the goblet in a toast to the congregation. “So may it be again.” He turned to Dejah, his eyes seeming to take possession of her. “I am yours forever.”

  Sab took a long, full drink, then offered the goblet to Dejah. She stared at it for a moment, then took it in both hands.

  “And I am yours. Forever.”

  She lifted the goblet to her lips…

  Carter burst through the dome, raining shattered glass down on the crowd. Helium guards scurried up and down the balconies, drawing swords and pistols. Carter swooped his flier down and around, circling above the floating dais.

  He cried out to Dejah Thoris, who stood shielding her eyes from the falling glass. She lowered her hand and called back, “Carter!”

  The ceremonial goblet slipped from her hand, shattering on the dais.

  “It’s a trap!” he yelled. “Zodanga is at your walls!”

  Sab Than stepped in front of Dejah, followed by his retinue of groomsmen. He glared up at Carter, then stopped as his bodyguard grabbed his arm.

  When the “bodyguard” spoke, Carter recognized the deep voice of Matai Shang.

  “The nanoblade,” Matai said to Sab Than. “Now!”

  Grimacing, Sab Than pulled a disk from his belt. As Carter watched from above, the familiar blue energy leaped up out of it, weaving itself into a sharp, glowing sword.

  Carter sprang off his flier, letting it crash into the balcony. He landed on the far side of the dais, momentarily disoriented. Dejah made a run toward him, but Sab Than grabbed her by the hair, stopping her in her tracks.

  Then, as Carter watched, Sab Than levitated upward in a stream of blue energy, dragging the screaming Dejah with him by her hair. He soared all the way up to the very top of the cracked dome, to the mirror that fed power down to the dais’s receptor.

  Sab held up the blue sword, and for a moment Carter thought he was going to slit Dejah’s throat. Then Sab reached out with its blade and flipped the mirror upward, sending a bright beam of reflected moonlight shooting up into the night sky.

  “Helium falls!” Sab Than cried.

  It was the sign, Carter knew. The signal for Zodanga to invade in force.

  But it was more than that. Deprived of its power source, the dais plummeted downward, crashing to the floor below. Carter lost his balance, toppling into an elderly Heliumite couple scrambling to avoid the falling platform. He muttered apologies, then threw them to safety as the first wave of Zodangan soldiers poured in the door.

  The room erupted in chaos. Zodangans opened fire, mowing down stunned Heliumites. Carter drew his sword and glanced back upward to see Sab Than and his five groomsmen suspended in mid-air, held aloft by the crackling blue Thern energy. Dejah Thoris still hung by her hair in Sab’s grip, struggling but held fast. The hovering groomsmen pulled out their own blue disks and morphed them into fiery blue guns. They rained down fire on the soldiers and scientists of Helium. Carter dodged to the side, barely escaping the deadly barrage.

  Then Dejah Thoris pulled out her jeweled hair comb and stabbed it into Sab’s hand. He screamed, released her.

  Carter leaped, arcing over the fallen, shattered dais. He caught Dejah in both arms, swooping past the floating groomsmen. They turned, momentarily startled, as Carter and Dejah sailed by.

  When they landed, she gave him a brief, intense look. “So you have changed your metal.
”

  He nodded. “And my heart.”

  “If you’ll just get behind me, sir.”

  She grabbed his sword and thrust it through an attacking Zodangan, impaling him. Then she swung wide, slicing into two more men.

  Carter smiled as he dodged two other Zodangan swordsmen. He elbowed one into the other, knocking them off balance, and grabbed both their blades as they fell.

  From the balcony, Tardos Mors cried out as blue fire assaulted him. Dejah Thoris broke away from Carter to help her father. As she ran, she fired at the five floating groomsmen. Carter watched her with pure admiration. He turned quickly to follow her—and then Sab Than was upon him, furious, swinging his deadly blue nanoblade. Carter ducked behind a pillar, and Sab’s blade sliced through it like butter. The next stroke made contact with Carter’s first sword, chipping off the tip. Carter stumbled backward, edging down a small flight of stairs.

  Sab Than smiled, cruel and confident.

  Carter parried the next blow, but the nanoblade sliced his sword in half. Carter gasped, barely managing to raise his remaining sword in time.

  He realized grimly that whatever Thern science or magic was at play here, mere swordsmanship wasn’t going to defeat it. Sab had him, and the Zodangan knew it. Meticulously, one stroke at a time, Sab whittled Carter’s blades down to blunt nubs.

  At last Sab backed him up against a wall. Sab leveled his black glowing blade against Carter’s throat, his hot breath foul on the Earthman’s face.

  “When you are dead,” Sab hissed, “when Helium is mine…she will be mine too.”

  Carter darted a glance past him to the balcony, where Tardos Mors, Kantos Kan, and Dejah Thoris crouched behind a pillar, making their last stand against several regiments of red-clad Zodangan troops swarmed through the palace, making short bloody work of the remaining Helium forces.

  No, Carter thought, squirming back from Sab’s hot blade on his throat. It can’t end this way.

  Then the palace itself seemed to implode. People screamed, Zodangans and Heliumites alike running for cover as the dome’s framework toppled inward. Sab stumbled but maintained his grip on Carter. Together they watched as a heavy Zodangan personnel transport wobbled, toppled, and crashed down to the floor stern first, cracking the ancient stonework.

  Time seemed to stand still as the transport’s hatch creaked open. Then Tars Tarkas climbed out, looking a bit dazed.

  “Thank the Goddess that’s over with,” he said.

  Sola appeared behind him, and then a hundred more Tharks spilled out of the transport. At the sight of the green warriors, both the Zodangans and the Heliumites panicked. “Tharks!”

  Even Sab Than gasped, momentarily surprised. Seizing the moment, Carter dove and jabbed his sword’s blunt nub into Sab’s leg, impaling him by sheer force. Sab roared in pain, hacking and slashing wildly at Carter. But Carter was already leaping free.

  “Virginia!” Tars Tarkas cried.

  Carter turned as Tars flung his sword. Carter caught it by the hilt and, in one fluid motion, sliced off Sab Than’s entire sword arm. Sab howled, a blood-curdling cry of pain that mingled with the buzz of one-man fliers ridden by the remaining Tharks. They swooped down into the roofless dome, firing mounted guns. Three of the floating groomsmen fell before their fury.

  Maybe Tharks never flew before, Carter thought. But they sure learn fast.

  He whirled toward Dejah, saw that the two remaining groomsmen still held her and her father pinned under fire. Carter crouched to spring to her aid—and then Sola and Woola swooped past him on a one-man flier heading straight for the groomsmen. Sola held out her sword, impaling one assassin in mid-air. Woola bounded, roaring, and chomped down hard on the other’s torso. They landed in a ball, Woola whooping and yowling over his prey.

  Dejah grinned upward, and Sola grinned back.

  “The Tharks,” Tardos Mors said, amazed. “By Issus, they’re fighting with us!”

  And so they were. Throughout the palace Tharks swarmed, firing and slashing—but only at the red-caped Zodangans. A Heliumite flashed his blue uniform at Tars Tarkas, and the Thark grinned in response, moving on to his next target.

  Carter whipped his head down to see Sab Than moaning, clutching his bleeding arm-stump. Carter jabbed his sword at the Zodangan’s throat.

  “The Therns,” Carter said. “You’re gonna spit out everything you know about them.”

  Sab Than flinched in pain, nodded. “Spare me and I will tell you—”

  Then Sab stopped, eyes flicking in fear to his own severed arm, lying nearby. The nanoweb of the weapon was crawling off of it, oozing across the floor toward Sab himself. “No,” the Zodangan said. “No, you can’t. I’ve done everything. I’ve—I’ve served the Goddess…”

  But as Carter watched in horror, the web reached Sab and crept up over his face, into his mouth and nose. Sab began to choke, to spasm, gasping hopelessly for air—strangled by his own unearthly weapon.

  When Sab Than lay dead, the web seemed to recede, moving away—toward Carter. The Earthman turned to leap, but it was too late. The web oozed onto Carter’s sword and up his arm. He shook his sword, eyes casting around frantically as the eerie substance crawled slowly toward his face…and then he saw it. A green Thark, up on the balcony, manipulating a Thern bracelet. Medallion around his neck.

  As if from nowhere, Dejah Thoris’s well-aimed sword struck the fake Thark’s bracelet. The instant it shattered, the nanoweb evaporated from Carter’s body, dissipating into the air.

  Up on the balcony, Dejah pointed her sword at the Thark. He grinned, shape-shifted—and then Matai Shang stood before her.

  Dejah had not seen Matai’s transformations before; she stepped back in amazement. Matai Shang took immediate advantage, transforming into a duplicate of Dejah herself. “Your Highness,” he said. As she stood, astonished, he reached out and snatched her sword away.

  “Dejah!” Carter called. All around him, Tharks still sparred with Zodangans, but all he could see was her. In one smooth motion, he sprang up onto the balcony—just as Matai-Dejah brought the sword up around the real Dejah’s neck.

  “A fitting solution to your setback, wouldn’t you say, Captain?” The Thern smiled with Dejah’s face. “Dejah Thoris survives her assassins, but fails to prove her misguided theory of the Ninth Ray.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Carter said. “Oh, I know. But I think she—I mean, I—will enjoy playing out this particular scenario.”

  Teeth gritted, the real Dejah ripped the medallion off her captor’s neck and tossed it to Carter. He caught it handily, smiling as Matai’s eyes went wide.

  “You want it?” Carter asked, then hurled the medallion into the seething fray below. It vanished into the battling mob of Zodangans, Tharks, and Heliumite guards.

  Sneering back, Matai threw Dejah off the balcony.

  Carter leaped immediately and caught her in midair. Dejah pointed downward. “He’s—I’m—no, he’s getting away!”

  Carter landed on the lip of the balcony, placing Dejah down gently. When he turned to look, Matai was already floating down toward the floor. The Thern morphed several times in rapid succession: Zodangan, Heliumite, Zodangan again. Then he disappeared into the crowd.

  “The medallion,” Dejah said.

  Carter nodded, turned, and vaulted off the balcony. He landed on a piece of jagged debris between two brawling groups of Zodangans and Tharks. Then an oddly familiar voice rang out.

  “Tars. The medallion!”

  Carter turned to see himself reaching out toward Tars Tarkas. Tars stood holding the medallion, hesitating.

  “Give it to me, my Jeddak.”

  Carter yelled to Tars, leaping over the crowd toward the Thark. He saw Tars’s eyes dart from the real John Carter, arcing toward him in mid-air, to the disguised Matai Shang, still holding out his hand for the medallion.

  Tars made his decision. He swung his sword straight at Matai-Carter just as the real Carter soared down out of the air, a
lso swinging.

  And then Matai was gone. Tars Tarkas’s sword sliced through open air, nicking the real Carter on the neck. The Thark jumped back, his eyes darting around warily.

  Carter mopped blood off his neck and looked around. The last of the Zodangans were being marched off by a dual force of Heliumites and Tharks—the red and green people of Barsoom, working together at last.

  No trace remained of the blue energy, or the Thern weapons.

  Tars Tarkas crossed to Carter and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You are my Jeddak now. And you have won.” He grinned. “All is finished.”

  Carter turned as Dejah ran down from the balcony toward him, her arms spread wide. Her face was bruised, her wedding dress shredded, her hair smeared with blood. An Earthman would have recoiled at the sight of her.

  She was the most beautiful thing Carter had ever seen.

  “No,” he said. “Not quite finished.”

  They embraced with a fire and a passion unique on two worlds. And in the ruined Palace of Helium, all eyes turned, with great curiosity, to learn the meaning of their new Jeddak’s words.

  “… WE GATHER under the mingled light of Barsoom’s first lovers, Cluros and Thuria…”

  Once again the words rang out under the shattered palace dome. But this time, Tardos Mors spoke them with joy and pride. And the lovers who stood on the broken dais, amid dust and rubble and spilled blood, were Princess Dejah Thoris and Captain John Carter.

  Carter smiled at Dejah, raising the goblet to drink. Then he stopped and glanced down at the twin rings on his finger. He pulled them off, held them up to the light, and studied them one last time. Then he placed them down tenderly on a silver tray and allowed Sola to take them away.

  Carter drank deep, then handed the goblet to Dejah. She drained it, sealing their union.

  “By the ancient rite of moon and water,” Tardos continued, “you are bound together. Husband and wife.”

  They kissed like long-lost lovers, like worlds reunited after centuries apart. The palace erupted in a thunderous cheer.

  But that night, Carter found himself restless. He rose from their wedding bed, taking care not to wake Dejah Thoris, and strode out onto the balcony. Helium lay spread out below, battered but unbroken, a many-faceted jewel of life and light.