One hundred years before, as Earth’s inhabitants jumped head first into World War V, the Martians waged their own battles for supremacy on the red rock. Seventeen clans emerged after only three Martian years of fighting. The most powerful clan, with its innovative chieftain, Dirk Benedict, held sway over all the clans. His word became law, and the law was as brutally enforced then, as now: death without trial. Sentencing on Mars had to be this swift and brutal -- it was the only way to keep the planet safe from anarchy, and almost all male chaos. It was an unstable place to live.
Benedict, although dead for many cycles now, managed to keep his political structure and empire vision alive and well. Benedict’s original clan: First Blood, were still ruling Mars when the breeding program on Earth began. The current leader, Tiberius Koln, fought and won the right to succession of First Blood clan, taking on the best warriors from the other sixteen clans, as was tradition, and the law. One on one, mano y mano, he defeated all comers in the gladiator-like arena.. An opponent could submit, admitting he’d been bested, rather than fight to the death. Most did not give in for the shame and ridicule would follow them to the grave, if they did. Though Tiberius was born into the dominant clan, his life was anything but easy. By the time Koln was born to the dust and sands of Mars, the Haute Societe ball had been in full swing for over 70 years, but getting there was no “walk in the park”.
Tiberius Koln was born to Marianna, third wife of the First Blood leader, Korgis Koln. As a son of the third of Korgis’ five wives, he had been near enough last in line, for the right to succession. He would have to fight his older male siblings to garner permission from Korgis to even enter into combat for the supreme position, held by his father. Marianna was ambitious and not satisfied with being a third wife, so she passed on her aspirations to Tiberius. She taught him how to read, write, and use, not only his burgeoning strength, but also his brain. Brute strength was fine, she said, but the wise fighter knows more, expects the unexpected, and will usually win. Tutored by his mother and trained in mortal combat by his father and two older brothers, Koln became a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately that took time and patience, something lacking in the young of any race.
Education on Mars was not of the kind of tons of useless information-force fed and regurgitated-was the norm. Most Bloods were illiterate, but came from the real world University of Hard Knocks. Street smarts are what the Terran's called it. Trained to thrive in an unforgiving environment was essential for the Bloods. Like the Aleuts or Inuits of Terra’s North Polar Region, adversity was a daily challenge to Mars’ new society. The Blood Empire’s education system didn’t teach Literature or the arts, but it did teach applied math and all the sciences the Bloods needed to know for survival on the red rock. Marianna knew that increased contact with Terra required more than brute strength and fighting skills. Korgis, an uneducated man himself, grudgingly allowed his third wife to continue teaching the young Tiberius, as long as it did not interfere with “the important stuff”.
All males, and unwed females, were required, by Martian law, to work in the mining operations, starting at age eight. The rub, as it were, was that children had to work the mines in all of the seventeen clan locations, to be better rounded, should that child win the right to succession in a future contest. Tiberius had gone through the same in his younger years. It had been a frightening time for him. As with other Mars children, Tiberius had been taken care of by foster parents at other compounds. But his guardianship came with psychological and physical abuse. The Martians were careful not to kill another’s offspring, as that would mean death by order. But that did not preclude the abuse, ostensibly employed by the elders to toughen the children up enough, so that they could handle life on the merciless rock. It worked. A child learned the ins and outs of the entire Mars operation, such as: any male had the chance to advance and lead, no matter which clan he belonged to, or of the rank within that clan. Tiberius took all the abuse hurled at him, with grim resolve and silence. He was a model of quiet stillness, as he was tattooed with each of the rival clans in turn. The first tattoo applied at age seven was that of the clan into which the child was born. A quick glance at the left pectoral muscle told every Blood from whence an individual originated. The ink of the remaining sixteen clans could be placed in a clockwise direction on the child’s torso, and therefore, a Bloods’ journey through childhood to manhood told a story of his efforts. At age 18, the tattoo’s would be inked into the outer legs of the journeying males. Starting at the ankle, these latter ink marks would tell a person, the exact jobs and ranks that the wearer of the tattoo’s had held in his lifetime. The ultimate effect was that Blood males looked a lot like the Russian mafia of the former Eastern half of the now United France. But with all of their black leather outerwear, and their favorite pastime of hyper-cycling, they were a cross between Hells Angels and Russian Mafia.
By age thirteen, Tiberius had earned a reputation for using his brain as well as his brawn, and he fell in love for the first time: with hyper cycling. Each clan entered up to five contestants, to run the deadly races, using souped-up power bikes, with impossibly thin wheels. Traveling at speeds of up to 400 miles per hour, the iron “tires” were coated with a gummy substance that repelled the dusty grit covering most of Mars, thus leaving the rider and bike a few inches above the ground. The race winner’s only prize was bragging rights, and his own clan popularity, until the next race. One was only as good as the last contest, which was held three times a Martian year. Betting was rampant when the hyper bikes took to the thousand mile course. Wrecking was a death sentence, at the velocities reached by the racers. Bloods often joked and laughed at the tame sport the Terran's called extreme motocross.
Propelled by the very He-3 mined by the colony, these mini fusion hyper-cycles often took out other riders ,when the strain became too much and a racer lost control. The only rules were finish the race alive, and win.
Tiberius convinced his father to let him enter the race, because as the third son, he would have little chance of becoming the next First Blood leader. Korgis consented after added pressure from Marianna. She refused to sleep with him --she knew she was his favorite -- until he acquiesced. Rape was punished by castration followed by banishment to the mines forever. Women were rare and valued, even though it seemed that they played a subservient role. In reality, females worked hard behind the scenes, wielding a power of their own. On his fifteenth birthday, the elder Koln presented his son a hyper cycle, and so Tiberius entered himself into the coming race. He was the youngest in Martian history to do so, but Tiberius practiced and learned the nuances of balance and speed; when to throttle up or down, when to lean, (called digging), and when to back off. The third son was a natural and became one with his hyper cycle as if he’d ridden for years. Still, being of the First Blood clan, Tiberius was a target. If he died then, that was one less obstacle that could get in the way of succession, and people had started to take note of the young upstart.
TK, as he was increasingly referred to by friends and the general population, sat astride his hyper cycle at the starting line on the day of his first foray into competitive racing. At 15, he did not think about politics or succession. One could not enter the arena where policy was decided and dictated until 18, but that would not have mattered. Tiberius’ concentration was on last second checks of his hyper drive systems and going over the course, turn by precarious turn. The horn sounded and 85 riders, the maximum allowed, sped off in a cloud of red dust and spitting gravel.
At first, TK hung at the back of the crowd letting the close knit pack jockey for early position. By mile 100, the pack had begun to string out with three riders missing turns or miscalculating the terrain, to become a splattered blood stain on the already red landscape: more skulls to mark the way for future competitors. Koln had moved up to the middle of the loose pack and had his first taste of racetrack aggression. Entering a narrow ravine with walls rising 200 feet on either side, the rider to his left suddenly swerved
toward him and extended his leg to jostle TK. Koln saw it coming. Throttling back from 350 miles per hour to a mere 250 saved him from becoming one with the rock face. The rider from Iron Fist clan missed and lost balance, dragging himself and his hyper cycle to the precipitous wall of stone. He skipped along the wall, his cycle disintegrating in nanoseconds. The thick splash of red momentarily blinding Tiberius, as he struggled to control his own vehicle. Fortunately, as those speeds, the blood peeled off as soon as it landed and TK’s intuition paid for itself in spades. Throttling up, and digging slightly to the other side, brought him safely around the ricocheting debris that bounced around the canyon. Four riders behind him were not so lucky and the resulting explosion hardly registered in Koln’s helmet as he raced to catch up.
By mile 700, there were only six contestants left at the front. TK avoided two more attempts to unhorse him from his carriage. His adrenalin spiked, he forged forward for the last 100 miles. One more rider, a man from the Dust Eaters clan, experienced hyper system failure and fell back. He would live to race another day.. Coming out of the final turn, with 90 miles left to traverse, the remaining five throttled to top speed, but the young Tiberius was maintaining a small lead. Racers on either side tried to sandwich him. As they closed on what they believed was an unaware victim, TK found a last burst of speed; he’d intuited their plan, and shot ahead. He did not register the collision of the would-be assassins behind him, and only saw it on a replay of the race hours later. The last three hyper cycles, two from First Blood and one from Cyclone Clan, screamed across the valley in a duel of speed and grit-determination. A minute from the finish line, hyper cycles pushing 400 miles per hour, the Cyclone clansman produced a laser weapon and aimed at TK.
Advanced weapons were forbidden on Mars. The Cyclone knew, that even if he was successful, he would be put to death for this transgression, as the entire planet’s population watched on V-screens from their various compounds, not to mention the thousands of spectators crowded around the finish line. Tiberius’ mentor and fellow racer saw what was about to happen and swerved to shield his best student. The bright green blast of deadly light knocked Kolov off his hyper cycle and onto the sandy soil. His mentor disintegrated, leaving a trail of bone, sinew, and blood over a trail 500 yards long. Kolov’s cycle, seeming to have a vengeance of its own, veered directly into the path of the Cyclone rider, who wasn’t wily enough to avoid the impending crash and his own subsequent death, leaving TK free to cross the finish line alone, and a full two minutes before the second place hyper cycle arrived. There were no kudos for second place though.
TK’s first race glory was overshadowed by Kolov’s assault, however.. How was a Terran weapon not discovered, when pre race protocol checked for just such arms? An investigation was in order. The leader of the Cyclone clan came forward and admitted to buying the weapon from a shady character from one of the Terran cargo ships months before. He did this knowing the consequences. He would be fed alive to the creatures lurking far beneath in the mines, but his confession --Marzing-up, as it was known -- would ensure that his family would not be punished along with him. The rider had been his only son and his bloodline would die with him. He had had no daughters.
After winning his first hyper cycle race, Tiberius went on to keep an undefeated record, until he could no longer participate. When one became the chieftain of a clan, Hyper Cycle Racing was not permitted. However, it was not in the throes of terminal velocity that TK earned his spurs. Nor was it his superior skills and talent in the fighting arena that earned them. The young leader-to-be earned the respect and loyalty of the many in the mines with which he toiled. And then, subsequently, the Blood Empire as a whole, by demonstrating bravery and a selflessness not seen on Mars, ever. In the 52nd year of mining, a lost city was discovered, when a tunnel collapsed, revealing a monstrous cavern. Had the miners been another 50 feet to the side it is doubtful that the lost civilization would have been found. As it was, 12 miners dropped through the floor of the tunnel and fell 300 feet to their deaths. The cavern was over a mile long and almost as wide. The “ceiling” varied in height from 200 to 600 feet high, and investigation showed buildings and house structures half buried in red, dusty sand. No sign of humanoid life, past or present, was found by the miners.
One peculiarity that the first miners to enter and light the subterranean city noted, were four foot diameter holes in all the walls that seemed to have no end. What the Bloods could not know was that they had awakened creatures lying dormant for over a million years. When the food ran out, the long sleeping creatures --dubbed scorps because of their likeness to Earth’s scorpion -- went into a state of hibernation. A biological trick they had honed over the millennia. By uncovering these long tunnels, and by giving off their own warm blooded aroma, the Bloods didn’t realize they had set the scorp's free to roam the previously dug tunnels used by the miners, until it was too late. Just another hazard to worry about while they were digging up the precious He-3 and ores.
Scorp's were an average of 10 feet long, sporting serrated pincers that could cut a man in half. The creature would grab a victim and then employ its segmented tail, about five feet, or half the length of its 10 foot body, and plunge it’s eight inch spiked tip into it's thrashing prey, then scuttle off with the now lifeless body, to the safety of it's tunnel. Just one attack was witnessed, but it was enough for the Bloods to find out what the Scorp's did with their prey. It took three weeks for the Martians to capture a specimen and learn that the creatures not only lanced their victims with their lethal stingers, but that the stingers were actually giant syringes, full of sulphuric acid. This acid was injected into whichever hapless Blood they had dragged back to their tunnel, and the Scorp's, not having any kind of recognizable mouth, would then slurp up the jellied remains of it’s prey. The acid dissolved bones, hair, and clothes, which is why no bodies were found. One of the main differences between the Earth’s smaller version and the Mars creature, other than sulfuric acid for blood, was that they died, almost immediately, when above ground, day or night. A few brave miners dared to enter and find the termination of one of the scorp's many tunnels. At one time, the bizarre animals must have been able to walk the length and breadth of the planet, as the tunnels stretched impossibly, to cover the whole of the red rock’s substrata.
Young Tiberius was working with his 16th clan; the last of his mandated underground education, when the alien city was found. Korgis wanted to pull him out early but knew that would be seen as a sign of weakness by his peers and rivals. On the seventh day following the accidental discovery, TK, then 16, found himself, along with eight other miners, trapped by four of the monsters. The first miner was snatched as he passed one of the Scorp’s tunnels, but he fought and clung to the opening of the creatures lair. The scorp did not have the room to employ its stinger, and instead tried to exit the hole to finish its fiendish work. Tiberius leapt to the rescue without thinking of the possible consequence. He swung his bladed tool across the extended pincher that held his screaming coworker, with all his might. The blade passed through the limb severing it easily; the bristled, glossy exoskeleton was as pliable as a soft shelled crab! Millions of years living underground negated the need for heavy armor. As green “blood” spurted out, narrowly missing the young hero, Koln did not hesitate, and yanked the predator out of the hole. Narrowly missing the flailing spiked tail, he swung again and the deadly appendage fell to the ground where it writhed of its own accord. The scorp died seconds later, but the miner caught in the severed claw continued to yell in pain. The pincer would not open, until and the miners finally pried him from the pincer’s crushing grasp. Jagged tears across his abdomen split open as he breathed a sigh of relief. But the poor soul promptly died from his gruesome injuries. Glistening gray intestines spilled out of his gut, like so many writhing gray eels, tumbling to the dusty floor. That should have been the end, but it wasn’t over.
Suddenly, three more scorp’s appeared, surrounding the miners. Without thinking, Tibe
rius sounded the battle cry and ran headlong innto the band of creatures, slashing and cutting with reckless abandon. Two of the remaining scorp’s were dispatched in seconds, as his blade sliced through their bodies like butter, spattering green goo everywhere. Four more workers leapt onto the last scorp and began to club it. One coworker broke off the bulbous, spiked tail and was rewarded with a sulfuric acid shower. All in all, only two miners died, but the horror had just begun. Exiting the tunnel as fast as possible and then sealing the entrance proved useless in the long run. The scorps could simply dig into and through other tunnels in the mass network of substrate passages, dug by the Bloods over the years. The news of the novel threat and TK’s deeds in the mines spread quickly throughout the Blood Empire.
The Martians adapted as they’d always done, and accepted the fact that the new hazard was there to stay. Earth, of course, refused to allow or supply laser or shock weapons to the beleaguered Bloods: After all, they were criminals! Mining parties now travelled with an armed party of four, each equipped with eight foot, barbed spears. This permitted the guards to stay out of striking distance of the acid dispensing tail, while impaling the blood thirsty creatures of the nether world, with their improvised spears. The extra miner/guards rotated between work and sentry duty to keep themselves alert to the danger. More than a few miners, lulled into a false sense of security, found themselves impaled by a scorp’s spike.
Clean Regency Romance: The Earl's Temptation (The Pure Heart Triumphs Series Book 1) Page 12
