Mars, The Bringer Of War

by George P. Saunders

Mars looked down at Barry. “Good idea, son.”

  He moved toward the rear of Business and the stairs leading to the bottom section of the 747. Barry stayed close behind. Brenda followed last.

  The stairs were twisted, broken in places, dilapidated. When they reached the last step, the impact of what had happened to the jet rammed itself home with damning visual acuity.

  “Oh, no . . .” Brenda cried softly to herself. Mars glanced down at Barry; the boy just stared into what was left of Coach. Mars studied the carnage with analytical precision, though he could not repress the bile rising in his throat at viewing the extent of the damage before him.

  Most of the airplane had been vivisected; masticated, Mars amended to himself, as if something huge and inhuman had simply taken a bite out of the jet’s fuselage and then began to chew. The middle section and rear were gone. So were the wings. What remained was the forward fuselage and all of First Class. There was a grotesque profundity of blood, smattered against most of the remaining wall paneling in Coach. Mars tried not to dwell on the probable cause for this; the mental picture of impact down here and the resulting floodgate into the void of man and metal was too dreadful to contemplate.

  A strange, eerie mist swirled around them, emanating from the cavernous black that loomed beyond where the rest of the 747 used to be. Barry stepped forward, tears welling in his eyes. “My parents were back there.”

  Mars put his arm around the boy’s shoulder, then turned as he heard the unmistakable sounds of human pain. In the spooky half light, half dark of First Class, Mars could make out five people. A Marine lieutenant named Drakes was tending to an elderly woman. Another man by the name of Drummond, was just staring out a window, dumbstruck. It was not immediately apparent how badly injured he may have been. He weaved side to side, eyes wide, like a child in a playground, bobbing to and fro for lack of anything better or more adult to do. In the starboard section of First Class, a tall Japanese fellow looked toward Mars; he had been offering assistance to two young newlyweds of around twenty years old. Only the marine lieutenant and the Japanese man appeared to be free from injury. This would be a blessing. But Mars was not ready to make gross assumptions yet.

  “Is anyone not hurt?” Mars asked

  “I’m fine, sir,” the lieutenant acknowledged. He turned toward Myoga: “I think this gentlemen is okay, too.”

  “We have a doctor upstairs --” Mars began, but was interrupted by a voice from behind.

  “You also have one down here, Captain,” Dr. Maynard said, lowering himself gingerly from the mangled staircase from above. Mars did not see Maynard’s daughter behind him. He assumed the young doctor was still upstairs attending to wounded there.

  Good, Mars thought momentarily. No panic, and even a kind of calm coordination.

  Mars noticed sparks from some shorn wiring dangling from a far corner of First Class. He moved toward it, past the injured, past the moaning, his first priority whenever the danger of fire presented itself on an airplane being to investigate and neutralize it.

  A huge maw of a hole connected the ceiling to what appeared to be the flight deck. Mars decided to find out if this was indeed the case. He yelled into the hole:

  “Ravers, are you there?”

  In the flight deck, Ravers checked out the damage. He heard Mars from below a blown out portion of floor paneling under the co-pilot’s control panel. He got on his knees, and looked down.

  Through the gloom of dark, punctuated by the occasional spark of a shorn wire, he could make out Mars’ face.

  “Yeah. Still. How is it down there?”

  “Bad. Whatever hit us took out most of Coach. Tail is gone, wings, eighty percent of the aircraft looks to have just disintegrated.”

  Ravers thought about this for a second. And closed his eyes.

  “Jesus.”

  “We have around a dozen survivors in First Class.”

  Ravers just nodded, then looked out the window. An eerie light continued to oscillate from out of nowhere, but it was so brief and provided so little luminance, that Ravers couldn’t determine what was five feet beyond the cockpit window.

  “Care to take a stab at where we are?” Ravers looked down at Mars again.

  “For all I know, it could be the Fifth Ring of Hell. I’m going to do a recon in a few minutes outside the hull.”

  “I’ll be down in a sec,” Ravers said. Behind him, Paul Casey popped his head in. He looks irritated and frightened.

  “Excuse me, but are you one of the crew?”

  “By proxy only,” Ravers replied, with zero humor in his voice.

  “Well, I want to know what’s being done to expedite our rescue. This is a helluva way to run an airline.”

  Ravers just stared at the other man, then shook his head in agreement. “Agreed.”

  Below, in what remained of Coach, Barry continued to watch the madness around him in stunned silence. He turned, perhaps for the last time entertaining hope that his mother and father were someplace just a few feet away, perhaps trapped (yet still alive) behind the few remaining passenger seats not torn apart. He saw something move. It was fast, dark, without form -- but it was definitely a shape.

  And it was outside of the plane.

  Barry glanced momentarily behind himself, at Mars and the others, all congregating in the disemboweled remains off First Class. He turned back to the jagged opening of the plane’s rupture point and began walking.

  The air from outside was humid, wet, and smelled vaguely like a greenhouse. It was not an unpleasant odor, Barry thought; it conjured up images of flowers, grass, mildew. He looked down at his feet; they were obscured by a low ground mist, much like the mist that seemed to encircle the entire plane, and was tendriling in through he shattered windows.

  Suddenly, he was being grabbed. And lifted. He had no time to scream. The only sound of his extrication, was a dull thud as his legs knocked against the hull.

  It was enough of a sound to make John Mars turn.

  “Hey, kid,” he called out.

  Silence. And then Mars knew something was wrong. He moved away from the mass of injured and scared humanity, toward the rear -- or more accurately, the middle section of Coach -- to the break-off point of the airplane. The kid was gone, plain and simple.

  Mars looked down at his feet, as Barry had done. He was at the step-off point between where airplane ended and whatever began. The mist that cloaked the ground prevented him from telling what lay beyond the plane deck.

  Well, we’re being supported by something, Mars reasoned.

  He took a step out. His foot came down on solid ground. He moved another step, walking ten feet beyond the airplane.

  “Kid, where are you?”

  From somewhere above, Mars could tell a ventilation system of sorts was operational. Oxygen flowed through this place, though a floral, odiferous oxygen at that. He could also hear the steady drone of what could only be some kind of propulsion mechanism.

  We’re inside of something. Something mechanical. Something moving.

  But moving where?

  Red and blue light washed across his plane and then disappeared. Mars immediately thought of searchlights in a prison, periodically, dutifully holding vigil across a compound area, searching for any possibility of escape by ...

  Inmates. Is that what we are now?

  Mars continued to call out into the void: “Kid, if you’re out there, answer me.”

  He turned now, again receiving no response from the missing boy, and absorbed the amazing scene of his wrecked airplane. The damage was more massive than could be determined by being inside -- every inch of the jet had suffered structural violation. What held it together now was a mystery to Mars. Whatever had hit the 747 -- well, it looked like it ruptured every plate of metal that held the jet together; like some kind of all-encompassing hemorrhage that spared nothing in its wake.

  Something touched his arm. He swung around instantly, his heart leaping into his throat.

  Barry stoo
d there, his eyes glazed.

  “Something ... out there,” Barry said mechanically.

  Mars looked from Barry to the darkness around them. For a moment, Mars thought there was something not quite right about the boy. The voice, the expression on his face ... the eyes. But he dismissed the moment of uneasiness almost immediately. The boy had suffered a loss and was in shock. A shock from which he may never recover. Mars remembered the trauma he suffered on the moon last year ... and how he had changed. Deteriorated, actually. To the extent where he went off to become a drunk for six months and recluse himself from the rest of the world, lost in a world of giant scorpions and ghosts of a dead crew.

  Something out there. Something ... unimaginable. Something that could blast a 747 out of the sky, then swallow it whole.

  “Come on, kid. Back inside,” Mars said.

  Barry did not resist. They both walked back to the jagged opening of the airplane. Mars was about to step inside when he heard it. From high above, descending. He looked up and froze.

  A gleaming, twinkling sphere beelined toward Mars and the boy, but then came to an abrupt halt, rotating on itself, flashing a bright light at them.

  Within the sphere, the face of John Mars took on a three dimensional point of view. Veins, arteries, bone mass, and pumping organs filled the on-board screen of the sphere -- everything that was John Mars exposed in alien detail. A second screen lighted up next to the first screen. The images of John Mars conducting battle against the robot scorpion on the moon replayed itself over and over again. A correlation played out within the sphere’s cyclotronic brain -- a satisfactory correlation at that.

  The sphere moved away from Mars and the boy and suddenly assumed a stationary position above the airplane. A light blasted out of the sphere -- a strange, cloudy light which seemed to completely envelope the 747. The light blast lasted perhaps five seconds, then discontinued. The sphere rocketed directly upward and out of sight.

  “What the hell was that for?” Mars muttered.

  The answer came almost immediately.

  The creak and scream of metal began to echo through the alien darkness. And John Mars knew exactly what was happening.

  He turned, grabbed the boy by both shoulders and spoke in a hiss: “Stay here. Do not, I repeat, do not re-enter the plane, under any circumstances.”

  Barry stared obliquely at Mars, and Mars took this to be comprehension. He had no time to believe otherwise.

  On the second level, Ravers looked up and around himself. As did the other passengers, trying to determine what the bizarre scream of metal indicated.

  Mars entered the jet, yelling: “Everyone out. Now!”

  Ravers could hear Mars and he slid down the frail remnants of the connecting staircase.

  “What’s happening?”

  “The plane is collapsing. Move those people out from upstairs.”

  “Collapsing?” Ravers said in disbelief.

  “Some kind of thermodynamic meltdown,” Mars said, rushing past him up the stairs. Ravers turned, keeping up.

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  Mars picked up Jennifer, and looked up, as parts of the roof began to cave in. People gasped around him, and Mars looked directly at Ravers.

  “Lucky guess.”

  Wes Simpson helped Lisa Maynard to her feet, and ushered Edna and Paul Casey out of their most forward seat.

  “Boy, a drink would sure make my day right about now,” Edna said, allowing Simpson to fairly shove her.

  “What else is new?” Paul couldn’t resist, following behind Mars and Ravers, Simpson bringing up the rear. Wall paneling and roof continued to disintegrate, or rather, push in around them. Mars noticed that collapse may not have been the correct description for what was happening to his aircraft, and meltdown was definitely inaccurate. Mars suddenly thought of a huge trash compactor, and deduced that whatever existed within the beautiful purple light that the sphere bathed the airplane with somehow had metal-crushing properties.

  Not somehow ... did. No doubts, none at all. And if we don’t move very quickly, we’re all going to die.

  Mars lead the way out of the airplane, as people behind him took his lead, helping or carrying one another toward the exit. Mars lowered Jennifer to the ground, sixty feet from the airplane, then ran back, checking on stragglers. Wes Simpson was the last one out of the rear coach section.

  “That’s everyone,” he said.

  Mars just nodded curtly. It was all he had time to do. Suddenly, the 747 curled on itself, like a dying ember, a ton of metal and reinforced titanium rolling like warm yeast. The noise was deafening. Mars found himself standing next to the man called Myoga, the Japanese passenger who appeared uninjured at first glance.

  “Implosion,” Myoga nodded, impressed.

  The airplane continued to shrink on itself, encapsulating itself into the rough shape of a square. A minute later, and the screaming of tortured steel ceased. As did the implosion itself. What remained was a compacted cube of pressurized glass, metal and an undiscernible amount of human blood and tissue the size of a basketball.

  Silence again invaded the blackness. The hum of the mysterious engines droned distantly, like some slumbering bumblebee at rest.

  Simpson said what didn’t need saying: “Safe to say we ain’t in Kansas anymore.”

  John Mars looked out over the mottled collection of survivors. For the second time in his life, he had been part of a tragic and overwhelmingly destructive scenario wherein even his top talents as a leader and flight officer could not save the majority of human beings he was responsible for. In wartime, he could accept such losses as being the inevitable cause and effect consequences to the dismal vagaries of combat. But like on the moon one year earlier, Mars today felt a profound sense of despair, even hopelessness. He would, of course, never show his vulnerability; now, too many lives depended on his strength and guidance. Still, at the deepest core, it was unnerving and he was afraid.

  “Christ in heaven, just what the fuck is going on?” Paul Casey screamed. He had been pacing for five minutes, since the crush-down of the airplane. Now, he seemed to simply explode. Mars didn’t blame him one little bit. He took a breath and approached the crowd. He tabulated the number of survivors in an instant. Ten people in all. Out of over four hundred passengers ... only ten individuals now lived.

  “It’s a fair question,” Mars began. “Deserves a fair answer. I believe we are inside some kind of vehicle. A ship, maybe. Maybe ... something else.”

  Casey stared at Mars as if he were mad. “Oh, let me guess. Maybe we were attacked by a U.F.O.!!”

  Brenda lifted a weary head up and found Mars’ eyes. “Is that possible, Captain?”

  “Under the circumstances, I can’t rule out anything. We don’t have all that much information. Clearly, whatever attacked us possesses a superior technology. We’re inside of some kind of containment or holding area, but if you listen, you can hear the sound of engines. My guess it is some kind of propulsion unit. I believe we’re moving. I can’t say where, or how fast.”

  No one had any questions. He pressed on. “If it’s any consolation, Major Ravers and myself have 40 years of combined flight experience. If there’s a way off this thing, and it has wings, we’ll find it.”

  Myoga stepped forward, nodding to himself, as if he had just finished taking extensive notes and was formulating an opinion.

  “I see no other explanation than some kind of extraterrestrial intervention,” he said in very precise, clipt English. “What we have just witnessed in terms of the airplane’s transformation, bears out this hypothesis. Further, I think it is safe to assume that whatever attacked us, is now keeping us alive for a purpose.”

  Casey threw up his hands and almost laughed. “Oh. Fine. Air Martian! You expect us to buy that?”

  Mars looked to Lisa Maynard, as Jennifer groaned softly in her arms.

  “Will she live?” he asked.

  Lisa studied Jennifer, shaking her head. “She ha
s a concussion. Two broken ribs, one of them lodged in her lung. Internal bleeding. It’s not good. If we don’t get some medical help for her very soon, she won’t make it.”

  Simpson took a few steps away from the others, and stood next to Mars and Myoga.

  “What in the name of God could do that to an airplane?”

  “As I said before, molecular implosion. The atomic structure of the metal alloy would have to literally collapse onto itself. In nature, I have seen examples of such things only in distant quasars or dwarf stars succumbing to the pressures of their own gravitational force. It is quite extraordinary.”

  Simpson nodded. “No shit,” he said, then extended his hand to Myoga. “Wes Simpson. You some kind of scientist?”

  Myoga took the hand and proffered a small bow. “Osawa Myoga. I am a physicist. Tokyo Astronomical Institute.”

  Mars faced Myoga. “So what kind of weapon could have done this to my airplane?”

  “One that our planet has clearly yet to develop.”

  Mars frowned His frown furrowed deeper as he looked up. Something was coming out of the darkness. Still distant, the sound was unmistakable. A steady clop, clop, clop, clop droned out of the alien void. The ground beneath them all began to vibrate.

  “Footsteps,” Simpson whispered.

  No ordinary footsteps, Mars realized a second later.

  But footsteps of a giant.

  The shape of the giant materialized against the glow of the intermittent light. For the remaining passengers of Flight 399, the horrible outline of the robot scorpion was horrendous, a living nightmare that froze blood cold to the marrow. Only John Mars, who recognized this machine to be a duplicate of another he battled on the moon one year ago, allowed rational thought to dictate action and command.

  “Move back,” he yelled above the roar of the robot scorpion’s approach.

  Mars picked up Jennifer, yelling continuously. “Come on, run. Spread out. Don’t give it a clear target.”

  These were combat tactical orders, perhaps meaning very little to the largely civilian contingent. But it was the best he could offer at the moment. He doubted whether any of them would survive an attack from this proven killer. He had barely survived Mankind’s one and only battle with a Sel Warrior Drone twelve months earlier.