Mars, The Bringer Of War

by George P. Saunders

  He turned to Jennifer. “Take her up.”

  Jennifer smiled, pleased with the honor. “Roger, Captain.”

  Mars reached for his com-phone. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard flight 399, Trans Global Airlines, non-stop to Tokyo, Japan. If you’d be good enough to give our attendants a few moments of your time, we here on the Flight Deck would be most appreciative, as we taxi down the lane for a number four spot in schedule take-off order. I’m Captain John Mars and I’ll check back with you just before we’re airborne.”

  Mars put the phone down. He noticed that his hand was shaking.

  “Couldn’t ask for a nicer night,” Bob Peoples said.

  Yes, I could, Mars thought, trying to make the demonic images of the alien spacecraft evaporate in his mind. He sat back and thought about Anna, wondering if she were alive or dead.

  The Sel probe calculated the direction of Anna’s retreat. But it did not pursue. No need. It would find her sooner or later – there was simply no place to run – the probe understood this intrinsically.

  She was heading for the lower level of the station, toward the docking hook-up of the space shuttle Discovery. The probe had scanned the computer libraries of Freedom’s central data banks and had downloaded the information in less than a micro-second. It now understood every minute function of every moving part on board the largest space station ever built by Man.

  The probe fused through the floor of the upper level and materialized only a few yards from the Discovery airlock that connected Freedom to the shuttle itself. Two humans were in the umbilical, only a few feet from the shuttle entrance. The probe took a second to calculate an equation, linked to an imminent course of action. It did not weigh the moral ambiguities of exterminating the nearby human lifeforms; preserving or destroying them did not hold a crucial priority in its cyclotronic computations.

  There were more important things to ponder.

  It “thought” about things for a second more -- then blasted the fifty foot long umbilical. The vacuum of space filled the lower chambers, sucking anything that was not latched down into the coldness of space. The remaining crewmembers of Freedom not initially blasted to hell by the probe had a second to scream in shock and astonishment, before their bodies imploded and were ripped apart from the gravitational extremes of the space vacuum. Discovery floated toward the upper atmosphere of Earth and began its fiery descent into re-entry.

  Anna was two chambers away, but was aware of the suck from the hull breach ten seconds later. She hit another adjoining hatch, which slammed shut obediently, preserving oxygen and gravity within the chamber she presently occupied. She knew what had happened. She hit a wall video, which displayed the ruined Discovery immolating, as it skipped across Earth’s atmosphere. And she knew, too, that all of her crew were now dead.

  And so am I, she thought coolly. A minute, two, maybe less. Forever and ever --

  There was no time to cry or grieve. There wasn’t even time for personal terror. As John Mars had done a year earlier in his confrontation with the destructive alien forces, she could only act.

  She headed back for her cabin at the far end of the station, half expecting to run into the destructive probe. She had reconciled herself to death. Freedom was now out of its fifty-eight degree orbital declination and would soon blow apart, since the hull breach near the shuttle docking entrance was beyond repair, and besides which, there was no one left to initiate said repairs. Communications with Earth were gone. And oxygen was slipping away by the square pound.

  If the probe didn’t kill her first, suffocation or the station’s imminent explosion would.

  She reached her cabin and sprinted to her desk. She grabbed the picture of John Mars, and glanced out at the porthole. There was only blackness. The alien ship must be only yards away, she deduced. Gleaming metal was all that she could see -- the hull of the behemoth Sel invasion vessel.

  The probe suddenly appeared at her doorway. It did not wait for an invite inside. It passed through the open door and hovered ten feet away from her. She hugged her picture of John Mars close to her chest, though the greater part of his face was still visible. It was this fact alone which saved Anna’s life.

  The probe zeroed in on the image of John Mars. It twittered momentarily, but did not fire on Anna. She remained frozen.

  These are John’s aliens, she thought. He was right. We were wrong. We should have listened to him. We should have been making defensive plans. How could we have been so stupid? John, wherever you are, I’m sorry.

  It was her last thought before the probe fired an orange bolt of light at her. Anna’s eyes went wide for a second, astonishment and momentary agony suffusing through every molecule of her body. And then she dematerialized, her world thrust into a blackness more horrible than death.

  Five seconds later and the space station Freedom exploded two hundred miles above the home of its origin.

  Flight 399 raced down the runway and took off into the clear California night, its heading, directly west for Japan. John Mars watched Jennifer perform her job with perfection, but his mind was racing with other considerations. Once the plane leveled off he would go back and tell Ravers what he knew -- and feared.

  With each passing second, the anxiety that he was losing his mind beguiled John Mars less and less. He knew what he had witnessed in space minutes ago had actually happened. Freedom was destroyed by now, all hands on board dead. That meant Anna was dead, too. He closed his eyes at the thought, but shook off the notion of her demise immediately. He would grieve later. Right now, he had a bigger problem.

  Earth had a bigger problem.

  He knew instinctively that the alien ship belonged to the builders of the killer robot that murdered his crew a year earlier. They had come back, just as he had promised. Just as he had feared. And they had come back with a belly full of vengeance, aided and abetted by a technology that could reduce his world to a blazing cinder.

  “We’re at twenty-thousand feet, climbing to thirty-six,” Jennifer said professionally, glancing at him. “Letter perfect.”

  Mars nodded, glanced at his watch, then leaned over and looked up at the sky.

  “A tall ship and a star to steer her by,” Jennifer continued, smiling at Mars, perhaps expecting a similarly poetic response. It’s how they had flirted in the days before their impromptu affair; snippets of poetry shared over cocktails, prefatory lines of prose exchanged, a veneer of sexual tension and excitement. A lover’s game.

  But the Great Captain remained silent. He was not feeling philosophical at the moment, nor remotely whimsical, and Mary’s Little Lamb had a better chance of waxing poetic before John Mars ever would. Not tonight. Not here. Not now. He continued to scan the heavens. Searching for monsters.

  “Call me when you’ve leveled off, Jen,” Mars said abruptly, then turned and headed out of the Flight Deck.

  The Sel ship assimilated the final piece of data relayed by the small probe on board Freedom. It based its next decision accordingly. Following Freedom’s destruction, the ship now turned its considerable attention to Earth.

  Seconds of complicated computation took place within the massive on-board computers. And then, the Sel ship began to move inside of Earth’s atmosphere.

  It lumbered downward, a flaming giant weighing six hundred trillion tons. Within its vast interior, images filled huge alien screens. John Mars represented the predominant image, followed by topographical grid maps of Earth’s largest continents. The two images coalesced into one. And then a large red target point materialized somewhere over the largest body of water on Earth, the Pacific Ocean.

  The alien being known to the Sels only as the Warrior was acquired -- John Mars, airborne at 36,000 feet above sea level, and moving fast on a westerly vector across Earth’s largest ocean. The airspeed of Flight 399 was roughly 600 nautical miles per hour. There was not another jet in the area for 1,000 square miles in either direction. Just a lot of space, a lot of night, and a lot of stars.

&nb
sp; These facts did not bother the Sels one bit. They would have no trouble finding John Mars.

  No trouble whatsoever...

  Mars practically ran to where Chase Ravers was seated. Ravers looked up, as Mars leaned in to whisper.

  “We have to talk,” he said, and didn’t wait for a response. Ravers turned and watch John Mars head for the stewardess station at the rear of the upper level. He followed, impatient.

  John turned and grabbed him by the arm, fairly pulling him into the Stu Station, then shut the partition curtains.

  “What the hell is going on?” Ravers asked.

  “Call Mission Control. Now!” Mars barked through gritted teeth.

  Ravers began to laugh.

  “What?”

  “Listen to me. Freedom has been destroyed.”

  Ravers stared at him as though he were a new form of bacillus.

  “Just get on the goddamned phone and snag a confirmation of what I saw!” Mars said quickly.

  “What did you see, John?” Ravers asked carefully, as if he were communicating with a deranged child.

  “Freedom is under attack. Their ship is -- huge. Unbelievably powerful. They --”

  “They?”

  “My aliens,” Mars said, with just a hint of proprietary righteousness. He knew he was giving Ravers what he wanted to hear, proof positive that he was suffering from some kind of hysteria. But there was no time to mince words. “They’ve come back. They’ve attacked Freedom. And they’ll attack Earth next.”

  Ravers stared at him for a long moment. Then shook his head. Genuine despair.

  “I’d better get you off the Flight Deck. You’re sick.”

  Mars grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him toward him, face to face: “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think, Ravers. Make the fucking call. If Freedom is still operational, if you make contact with Anna, if I’m wrong -- you have my permission to relieve me.”

  Ravers eyed Mars for just a second longer, then gently disengaged himself from his old friend’s grip. He reached inside of his pocket, and opened his cell phone.

  “This could be very embarrassing for you, John,” Ravers said, then turned, and headed back for his seat.

  Paul Casey gazed vacantly out of his window, his thoughts disjointed and angry. Work accounted for part of his irritability; discovery of the Miller litigation was moving at a snail’s pace, and he had four cases behind schedule as a result. Nothing new for a prosecuting attorney, he thought morosely. The mountain of files he could live with; his quibbling clients as well, even those lying, muff-diving fucksticks known hereafter as the managing partners of the firm that employed him, Watkins and Srick. He could live with the smoke-up-the-tactics they employed, promises of partnership if he took “just this one last case” – promises that had been on the table for over a year now, yet had never been fulfilled. He had created this life long ago, a life of endless minutia, dictated by perpetual time constraints and an overall sense of hurry. It was a life distilled down to an unhappy mixture of discontent, impatience and irritation with the human race at large.

  Yet he could live with all these things. He knew he was a good lawyer, and the latest offer from the New York conglomerate, Scibatten, Maly and Rorke, more than endorsed this fact. The fucksticks at Watkins and Prick (more appropriate than Srick, he thought delightedly) would piss themselves once he told them he was dropping their sorry, lying asses. He wouldn’t even give notice, either, once the Miller case was wrapped. He would take his four other cases and clients with him, and just wouldn’t show up for work. That would be sometime next week, and oh, what a yummy day that would be. Paul Casey could practically feel a stiff one wooding up between his legs with the thought.

  Yes, he could live with that, too. Paul Casey was a methodical man, fueled by life-long anger and insecurity and governed by an incisive intelligence. The perfect litigator, he more than once observed. His adversaries had learned to live with that, too, often to their detriment and failure to prevail in the courtroom.

  Yet certain other aspects of about Paul Casey’s life were barely tolerable. One of those intolerable elements was sitting next to him, on her fourth Vodka Tonic and Tequila chaser.

  Edna Casey sipped her cocktail, and gulped the shot of Tequila. No sooner had the Tequila dried on her lips than her hand went up to a passing flight attendant.

  “One more Patron,” she said amiably and gave her husband a bleary, disgusted stare.

  Edna Casey was once beautiful. Today, sallow skin made red and blotchy by a regular and excessive diet of primarily pills and alcohol, had turned the once attractive demeanor into something strained and desiccated. She belched, loudly enough for those in adjoining, front and back seats to hear. Probably, Paul thought, as yet another tactic to enrage him into berating her mercilessly.

  Christ, I’ll bet she actually likes it when I’m pissed, he thought with the expected mounting surge of annoyance.

  She was baiting him, he knew that. She knew he hated to see her drink, but that’s why she did it. When she drank and became morose and publicly embarrassing, at least Paul would pay attention to her. Granted, the attention was abusive in nature, but what the hell, it was the only thing left in their marriage.

  “Why stop at just one, Edna?” Casey said, not looking up from his papers. “Why not just order the bottle. It would save the stewardess time and allow you to save your energy for strictly swilling.”

  Edna turned and smiled sweetly at him. “Go screw yourself, Paul. You and your interrogatories.”

  Wes Simpson, directly in back of Edna, glanced up from his People magazine. He did not mean to eavesdrop, but the volume from the arguing couple had begun to crescendo.

  “I drink because I don’t have a husband,” Edna said in a hiss.

  “You drink because you’re a drunk, Edna,” Casey shot back. “A neurotic, self-pitying, dried up drunk. Don’t blame me for your addiction.”

  A long time ago, the drinking thing hadn’t bothered him. That was when Edna had been younger, and the sex was good. Hell, nothing bugged him back then. He had been younger, too. Now, both of them were nearing fifty and there was nothing left in common, not even physical intimacy. They shared little time, airline seats and constant bicker sessions, all adding up to their joint ownership and monopoly on abject misery.

  Casey abruptly stood and passed her, moving toward the lavatory. The stewardess passed by and Edna practically lunged for her, grabbing the girl’s arm. “Make that two tequilas, both doubles.”

  Wes Simpson told himself five minutes earlier, about the time when Edna was telling her husband of twenty years to get fucked, that he shouldn’t involve himself in this. Another unhappily married couple, sharing their discontent a little too loudly with the world at large. Nothing new, now, a hundred years ago, a thousand years in the future. But something in Paul Casey’s voice irked him, downright ruffled Wes Simpson’s relatively straight Texan feathers. One didn’t talk to a lady like that down south. Just wasn’t done, and by Holy Baby Jesus, no one treated a filly like that in Wes Simpson’s presence! He got out of his seat and ambled over to the same lavatory Casey approached. He cleared his throat, and leaned in to Casey, just folks and real friendly, making a real effort at concealing the tone of abject contempt in his voice.

  “I know it’s none of my business, but your lady sounds like she’s having a real bad day. Maybe if you go easy on her cocktail hour, it won’t become such an issue.”

  Casey turned and met Wes Simpson’s frank and helpful gaze. “You’re right. It’s none of your business.”

  Casey brushed past Simpson, but Simpson blocked his way, holding the lawyer’s rheumy and surprised gaze. “You ought to mind your lip, son. Not everyone in the world would toller’ to that kind of rudeness.”

  Casey brushed past Simpson, mumbled something inaudible, then entered the lavatory as a pretty girl exited. Simpson nodded to himself, controlling his annoyance. He could have cold-cocked the little bastard, but it would h
ave been more trouble than it was worth.

  “Schmuck,” he said through a whistle, then glanced out one of the windows. Something caught his eye. More than something. A light show of sorts was taking place against a backdrop of black. Hard to tell what kind of light. Stars? The moon? Couldn’t be. The stars and moon don’t … move.

  Simpson made the connection a second later. Hell, it was lightning. Fingering down from the skies, like some kind of ectoplasmic phantom. Usually lightning flickered and blazed, but this lightning seemed to pulse, modulate.

  As though it were being artificially generated.

  Simpson moved closer to the window, jamming his nose against the cold Plexiglas.

  Well, hell, that’s strange looking electricity, Simpson thought. No thunder, no noise. And --

  He figured out why the appearance of the lightning was bugging him.

  There were no clouds.

  But that’s impossible. Stars everywhere, a full moon …

  Simpson glanced around the rest of the business class cabin. Most of the passengers were either napping, or sipping their pre-dinner cocktail. Many of the windows were half shut. No one else seemed to notice what he was noticing.

  The lightning continued to spiral downwards.

  Damn strange, Simpson continued to think. Never seen anything like it, not even in Texas. And Wes Simpson had seen just about everything you could see in his home state.

  About ten years back, one of those freak tornadoes had touched down about ten miles from Corpus Christie. It so happened that he had been part of Uncle Tyrell Jenkins’ Circus Miracle back then, a five-man operation whose greatest claim to fame was that Tyrell was a man with three eyes and no arms. The third eye was a useless freak of nature, minus an optic nerve, but it made Tyrell Jenkins a real interestin’ piece of man to look at for a spell.

  Fortunately, for the three eyed, one armed wonder, Tyrell was a man born from an oil-rich family. The question was of course begged: What could a man with three eyes and no arms hope for in this life or any other? What kind of achievements could he hone, challenges to surmount, dreams to be made – aside from learning to eat lunch with his feet? Wes Simpson had initially pondered that same question in earnest. When no immediate response was forthcoming, it was told to him by one of Tyrell’s employees, almost mystically: Why, friends and neighbors, a man like Tyrell could build himself a circus. Which is what he had done, successfully at that. Tyrell Jenkins, though minus a few appendages and blessed with triple vision, of sorts, was further gifted with great foresight and a natural business acumen (heck, P.T. Barnum called it “showman moxy”) – assets which, as maintained by those who knew him well, were a result of possessing three eyeballs. Tyrell Jenkins had created from scratch (and unlimited family funding) a circus unlike any other in the history of Texas. Small though it was, Tyrell’s circus was replete with the requisite Bearded Lady, Fattest Lady this side of the Mississippi, a husband and wife trapeze act (who were both midgets and helped with the flatulent elephant act for comic relief) and Wes Simpson, greatest Rodeo-Rider in the West. Simpson’s act, in fact, was the Wild Wild Wes.