Mars, The Bringer Of War

by George P. Saunders

  "Strange quirk of fate, you and me here, god knows where," she said through a whisper.

  "Yeah," he agreed, kissing her again. When Mars opened his eyes, he saw that Barry was standing near a tree, just staring at both Anna and himself.

  “Hey, kid,” Mars called out to the boy.

  The Controller realized he was being hailed and incorporated a gesture he had learned was distinctly human. He waved.

  “You okay?” Mars asked, walking hand in hand with Anna toward him.

  “Sure,” the Controller replied convincingly. “Scared … but okay.”

  They began to hear voices beyond another treeline. Mars recognized Ravers and Casey, and at last, Simpson, whose voice seemed to carry loudest. Mars took Anna's hand and together they followed the welcome cacophony of other human beings in congress.

  As usual, it was Casey who was complaining, querulous in this world or any other. "Someone care to tell me what the hell just happened?"

  Myoga, always the most forthright with any answer to a query, regardless of the source, shrugged and cleared his throat. "It would be safe to say that we have been transported off the space vessel."

  "Yeah, but where?" Ravers snorted, leaning against a tree, like Mars, trying to formulate an hypothesis of where, in a billion starred Milky Way, they might have been dumped.

  Myoga continued. "A thousand parsecs from earth. Maybe a million. Perhaps, we are no longer even in our own galaxy."

  "Thanks, pardner," Wes Simpson interjected, though with no malice in his voice whatsoever. "That's real comforting. Guess I don't have to worry about that income tax audit next month after all."

  Myoga grinned at the big Texan, who couldn't help but grin back.

  Mars considered his desperate little group, all looking shaken and muddied, all only a heartbreak from one fun-filled collective nervous breakdown. Ravers caught Anna's eye, gave her a mock salute.

  "Hello, Captain," he said, with all due reverence.

  "Ravers," she smiled warmly. "Last time I saw you, it was around a million light years ago."

  "Seems like only yesterday," he said.

  "Well, this is just a hoot and a holler for all of us," Casey steamed. "Very funny. Ha, ha!"

  Mars, of course, found their collective predicament far from funny. At least being aboard the Sel ship of circumscribed darkness and intermittent shafts of light, accompanied by mechanical, albeit homicidal, aliens, held some kind of insular familiarity. The enemy had form – legs, tail, eyes. But out here, in the open, the age old primordial fear of jungle and buzzing things (possibly invisible growling and carnivorous things, too) forged new terrors.

  Ravers squinted at something behind a tree. Something had caught his eye, something shiny, and he bolted like a trout going for a lure. He was suddenly hollering in glee.

  "Hot damn! This is more like it!!"

  From behind the tree, Ravers produced two pistols -- both some kind of plasma generated lasers, Mars deduced. Simpson followed Ravers' lead and now pulled out a single sawed off shotgun, an Ithaca deer-rifle in rather mint condition.

  "Looks like we got ourselves a guardian angel," Ravers said with clear delight.

  Mars stepped forward and snatched the sawed off out of Simpson's surprised grasp. He checked the firing chamber for rounds. The gun was fully loaded, ready for action. Mars glared at Ravers in a way that left no mistake as to what he wanted. Ravers shrugged, and handed him one of the lasers. Again, Mars went through the pre-load check procedure. Both weapons were primed and fully functional. He pointed the laser at a tree fifty yards away and fired.

  A green blast of ionized fire lurched out of the laser's barrel and immolated the tree in half a second. Mars considered the weapon in his hand, a light weight marvel which both repelled and fascinated him.

  This was impossible.

  These were NASA issued, experimental weapons. Probably still DOD classified. What were they doing here?

  The bad feeling was creeping down his spine again (not to be confused with the panoply of other bad feelings he’d endured in the past few hours, an army of the little bastards, in fact). But this feeling was a familiar one and the last time he’d had it … was just before the robot scorpion had attacked he and his men back on the moon.

  Something rotten in Denmark, he repeated to himself, recalling a favorite Shakespearean quote. Something rotten … and me thinks the frumious bandersnatch is out there, hiding, waiting to pounce with those claws that catch, those jaws that snatch…

  Something rotten …

  “You got something against having an edge, John?” Ravers inquired, irritated with Mars’ lack of joy over finding the weapons.

  "That easy, huh?" he said contemptuously to Ravers. "Two pulse cadmium-argon NASA classified laser rifles and an old fashioned sawed off, just conveniently placed here for our viewing and using pleasure."

  Simpson considered the statement, and mulled over scenario after scenario within his simple, yet intelligent, mind. What Mars was saying didn’t immediately register as anything important.

  "What's your point, Captain," Simpson said wearily.

  "My point has been made, Mr. Simpson," Mars said. "They, whoever they are, want us to have and use these weapons."

  "It would seem someone is interested in seeing us protect ourselves," Myoga assented as well.

  "I don't like it," Casey interjected predictably. An easy stance for the nervous lawyer who liked nothing at all in general. For once, Mars agreed with the grumbling Casey. He didn’t like it, either.

  Ravers alone seemed stunned by the collective obtuseness of the group. "Wait a minute, guys, hold on one damn minute. We've just hit paydirt here! Isn't it possible that someone -- maybe not those mechanical nightmares up there -- is actually watching our butts?"

  Mars was adamant. "I'm not buying it."

  "At least we now have a fighting chance," Ravers said steadfastly.

  Mars considered this, and looked back up at the ominous suns of this alien world. "Do we?"

  An hour passed, then two. The suns remained high in the sky, as did the moons. It seemed like they had not moved, as if perhaps they were permanent stellar fixtures in a sky that followed no known physical laws of nature. It’s only a paper moon, hangin’ over a cardboard sea. It wouldn’t be make believe, if you believed in me. Nice song, Mars thought absently, increasingly aware of the uncomfortable temperature of this alien jungle. It was an excruciatingly humid one hundred degrees (the temperature was arrived at through Paul Casey's one thousand dollar combo Seiko watch that even provided time changes happening in Botswana, if so needed). No aliens presented themselves to the small thirsty group of survivors from the Freedom Space Station and Flight 399.

  The weapons issue had not gone away, but Mars’ last rhetorical commentary on the questionable convenience of their discovery now put a damper on jubilant promise of hidden guardian angels. More likely, his doubts had merit. They were all part of some grand experiment, it seemed.

  It’s only a paper moon.

  Hangin’ over a cardboard sea.

  Those alien pricks are gonna kill us all,

  We promise you that, laddie …

  The mind fairies were back, in force. Mars groaned inwardly. When sorrow comes, it comes not singly, but in battalions. Shakespeare was right. Disaster was multitudinous in its potential.

  There was worse to come, and Mars knew it. He didn’t need the fairies to tell him that.

  It was agreed that the weapons found in the brush would not be used, even for test purposes. Under the assumption that they were present for a reason, to be used against some as yet unforeseen nemesis, it was decided that the conservation of firepower was of paramount importance. This briefly rankled Ravers, who maintained that a good old fashioned practical target practice would benefit all weapons bearers immensely, but he acquiesced to the collective will. He was happy that Mars allowed him to be one of the laser carriers. In fact, Mars would have had to forcibly take the weapon away from hi
s old friend before Ravers would have relinquished it, but such a confrontation was forestalled by Mars who gave the easy order that only Ravers, Lieutenant Drakes and himself need worry about firing the damn things. No one balked at the decision. They moved to slightly higher ground, a patch of rock relatively clear-cut from jungle fauna that overlooked a small valley of green. Over the past hour, a low mist had crept over the opposite hills and settled into the glade, further adding to the general spookiness of the place.

  Myoga had opined that because they were on a planet with two suns in the immediate neighborhood, one no doubt the dominant astral body that the other would orbit, there would be no night on any world in this particular solar system. Rather, daytime would be incessant, and that whatever intelligent form of life that had evolved on a world bereft of nightfall would be one that would have to impose its own artificial cycles of rest and activity. It would explain, Myoga postulated, the lack of any kind of activity thus far. Mars was not so optimistic; he felt that they were all being toyed with, that their enemy was simply watching them, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. For what reason, he could not guess -- but his experience with the alien Sels to date had given rise to generally pejorative suspicions.

  Anna moved closer to Mars, keeping pace with him, glancing around to see if the others were in earshot before speaking. "We've got to let these people rest, John," she said. "They can't keep up with your pace."

  Mars pointed at a plateau a hundred yards ahead, couched against a cave and an outcropping of rock. "We rest when we get there."

  Suddenly, a green burst of light razed into a nearby tree, disintegrating it instantly. The blast occurred nearest Paul Casey, who turned and yelped. From behind a tall bush, a gigantic claw appeared. It picked Casey up. Casey screamed, begging for help, but the horror lasted only a second. The claw from the alien robot squeezed and Casey’s back snapped like a dried twig.

  Edna screamed, watching the life wash out of her husband’s body. The huge robot turned on itself, and disappeared down a hill.

  Ravers tried firing at it, but the robot had appeared so suddenly that his aim was off. Further, out of the corner of his eye, he could see yet another robot appearing just behind Lieutenant Drakes.

  “Drakes, behind you!” Mars screamed out.

  The young lieutenant wheeled on himself, and dodged the first claw that swiped toward him. This robot, however, had little interest in sparring. Its mechanical tail appeared overhead, and glowed a deadly green. A burst of fire jetted out of the stinger and smashed into Drakes’ body, immolating it instantly. Drakes didn’t even have time to scream. Brenda did have time to scream, and she did not stop. With equal arbitrariness, the robot turned toward the noise, and expelled another deadly round of green light. Brenda stared at the evanescent death-bolt gliding her way, unthinking, shocked, unable to run.

  Not that running would have helped. Brenda’s body glowed hot for a moment, and then her screaming stopped forever.

  The robot let out some kind of mechanical scream of victory, then it, too, disappeared into the jungle. The attack had lasted less than half a minute, yet now three more of Mars’ dwindling team were now dead.

  Edna Casey dropped to her knees, sobbing, staring up at Mars, asking the question he had no answer to: “Why? Why?”

  Why, indeed, he thought.

  It had been a calculated decision by the Controller, for the express purpose of adding some much needed stimuli into a scenario plagued with inertia. Nothing much had happened lately. The Controller decided to up the stakes, as it were.

  The attack was meant to be quick, giving Mars and his people little time to respond. The Controller was not interested in a combat response at this time. It had figured out of late that human beings were motivated by strong emotions, alien emotions to the Sel psyche. The emotions were rich with passion that inhabited extreme opposite ends of an unfamiliar spectrum. When such passions were inflamed or stimulated … well, there was still so much to see and learn …

  The Controller was a willing student.

  Of course, there were no dead to be buried. Casey’s body had been taken away by the Sel robot drone … for what reason, no one cared to guess. More accurately, no one dared imagine why. Moreover, a strange thing happened in the next five minutes. Myoga was to be proved wrong. The suns disappeared over the horizon, very quickly. Darkness, illuminated only by the faint albedo of the collective trinary moon system, fell across the alien land just as the survivors ascended the final bluff to the plateau Mars pointed out to Anna.

  "We don't know how long night lasts on this planet," Mars began, catching his breath and looking out the others. "I suggest that you all get as much sleep as possible. I'll take the first watch. Ravers --"

  I know," Ravers butted in, waving a hand in surrender. “I get the second watch. How did I guess."

  Ravers turned to Barry, who approached Mars with a stony expression and a tilt of his head. "How do you know the aliens are not more active at night?"

  The question had merit. Mars sighed, putting his hand on Barry's shoulder. "I don't, son. Just plain old fashioned wishful thinking."

  "Wishful -- thinking," Barry said in a strange, stilted voice.

  Mars offered a small, wistful grin. "It's been a bad day, kid. Right now, all we have is wishful thinking. Capiche?"

  Barry continued staring at Mars, even after the big man walked away. The Controller within pondered the switch in human idiom. Capiche? The Controller began to file reference its data…

  Everyone but Mars fell asleep almost immediately, exhaustion and concentrated periods of sheer terror finally kicking in. Mars stared out into the alien night. He figured the Sels would return, in one form or another, and annihilate all of them, notwithstanding Myoga’s feeling that they were all being preserved for some other nefarious purpose. There could be no other reason for the Sels to have brought them here, on this strange world of two sons and stultifying heat.

  Yet the weapons which Ravers found presented a persistent problem for Mars in his marathon of deductive reasoning. It made no sense, providing weapons for the opposition. It would only prolong the inevitable, make things more difficult for the aliens in terms of the cleaning-up process. Unless ... unless they had been brought here for another reason completely.

  A chill ran through him at the thought. His senses were assaulted, his body ached, his eyeballs burned, and his thinking faculties were effectively arrested. He pulled out a cigarette, one of two remaining from another world, a million light years from his current position. He lit up from a nearly depleted matchbox.

  Something moved in the darkness to his right. His gun automatically shifted to a firing position. He held his breath, listened. Another rustle.

  "I give up," Anna said from the darkness.

  Mars lowered his weapon, as Anna emerged from the void.

  "What were you doing out there?" he asked, irritated.

  "I thought I heard something," she said. "Command prerogative to investigate."

  "I thought I was in command," Mars countered.

  "Are you?" she asked, and for the first time since he'd liberated her from the glass cryo-prison, Anna smiled.

  "I think we're spooking each other," Mars said, relaxing a little. He continued to survey the darkness around him, never letting his guard down completely.

  "We used to do worse," Anna said quietly. She moved closer to him, sitting on a rock. He continued to smoke, nodding in agreement.

  “Of all the people I never thought I'd end up with half-way across the universe --" he paused, digesting the enormity of the statement. Half-way across the universe. The stars. He was here, among them, light years, no, light parsecs into the unknown, courtesy of a race of euthanasia-inclined aliens. The moment of elation he may have enjoyed at the thought of visiting the furthest reaches of the universe evaporated in light of the very real fact that the beings he once envisioned as inhabiting the stars were no better than human beings. In fact, taken as a whole fr
om he had experienced thus far … they were worse. The stars, it would seem, harbored only killers.

  "I have a theory on that," Anna said, her tone shifting from the whimsical to the immediate. She removed the small picture of herself and John from her flight shoot, and handed it to him. "When I was transported over to the alien ship, this came with me."

  Mars considered the picture, but looked back at her, shrugging. "So?"

  "So, the connection I think is you. You, John! I wasn't killed like the others because of my link with you!" Mars thought about this for a moment, his embattled mind still not analyzing at a hundred percent.

  "John, you were their first human contact. On the moon, you and your crew gave them a black eye, figuratively speaking, that is. You destroyed one of their machines. It must have somehow identified you, marked you, sent your mug shot through the galaxy and brought the rest of the aliens to Earth."

  Mars smiled wistfully. "I figured that much out. A lot of trouble for one insignificant human being."

  Anna nodded, the idea of a superior race traveling through the enormous expanse of interstellar space just to inflict a little tit for tat not entirely implausible. "Possibly. But perhaps they came looking for you for another reason."

  Mars nodded. "Curiosity. They wanted to know who kicked their butt."

  He stood now, and began to pace. "It still doesn't explain what they want, now that they have me. And what about these people? If it just wanted me, it could have killed the others immediately. And why did it pick off our wounded?"

  “Not only that,” Anna interjected, “why did it arbitrarily attack today, killing Drakes and Casey and the woman? They weren’t injured.”

  "A lot of questions, I know," Mars admitted. "And maybe I am the key, for all the good it does us."

  “Or maybe we’re simply dealing with a race of sadistic monsters that lash out like cruel children,” Anna said dejectedly. “They bring us here, toy with us, then squash us at leisure.”

  Mars said nothing, cogitating on this dismal possibility. He looked down at the picture he still held. He then handed it back to Anna. "We looked happy there. Back then."