by Holly Hook
Matt sighed. “I forgot that your parents kept things from you. We're marching to the Great Council right now. I'll get your parents back. It is partly my fault that this happened. On the way, shoot at everything that the Grounders can use to communicate. I trust you.”
“Is that an apology?”
“Yes.” Matt struggled to push the word out. He cranked the lever to move the walker again. “I make things hard for everybody.”
I said nothing for a moment. We took a step forward.
“You do not,” I said, still thinking of my grandfather.
A Grounder killer?
I had never heard of attacks on the headquarters. They didn't teach that in school.
I was a Grounder killer, too. The two thoughts molded into each other. The Earthers had united not only to save the planet but to get rid of this alien menace. The Grounders' power had forced us to be civil.
Now we were reverting to our old ways. It was a strange feeling.
“Bull,” Matt said. Another step. The searchlight swung across the still-empty park. Something was wrong. It was in the air. “I stress out my dad.”
“That's because you're against the Mars Identity thing.”
“I worry Fiona.”
“So what?”
“Now I ruined your life.”
I hated my outburst. “The Grounders did that. I'm on Earth because of you. Matt, you tell the truth. I get this whole situation now."
Silence fell in the walker. The metallic steps broke it. With each clunk, we neared the edge of the glass dome. Outside, houses were dark and likely evacuated. I wondered why the Grounders hadn't confronted us yet. They must be coming up with a bigger attack, something that would take us out from below. I tried to remember the weapons the Teaching Computers had taught us about in class.
Then I spotted movement on the other side of the dome, out in the outside world. Another green spotlight swept across the glass, blinding me for a moment.
“Another walker!” I shouted.
Matt stopped with the pull of the switch. Gears ground and I lurched forward in my seat.
“You're right,” he said. “The second crew. They came to back us up. They must have scared off the Grounders. We might have your parents back sooner than we thought.”
The other walker, a shining, indistinct shape in the night, stood on the other side of the glass, seemingly staring at us. Its dark window matched our own.
“This must be the second crew,” Matt said. “They followed our tracking capsules in our guns. I'll hail them.”
“And then we're going to to the Great Council, right?” How long would it take the Grounders to convert Mom and Dad or to torture answers out of them? How much did Mom and Dad even know?
“Yes,” Matt said, pressing a much smaller button above the lever.
A loud horn sounded from above, shaking the inside of the walker.
The second one responded.
And then the glass of the dome exploded, blasting a hole in front of us.
I jumped. So did Matt. Glass rained down, giving us a clear view of the second walker. It glinted in the pale light, round and deadly. Apparently, these machines could explode things.
“This isn't right,” I said.
Matt gripped the lever and cranked it back. “Grounders!”
At first, I thought that a few of them had found and commandeered the other walker, but Matt was facing the ground. A whole bunch of Grounders, perhaps thirty of them in blue-gray uniforms, rolled another pulse cannon through the opening as the second walker stood by and watched. I caught a glimpse of a Great Council member standing underneath the walker, shrouded in black.
“The heat gun!” Matt shouted. “It's a trap!”
My mind spun. Now I knew why the Grounders hadn't attacked us in the past hour. I fumbled for the lever that would aim. As soon as I gripped it, an orange target appeared on the glass. I had a guide. I aimed it down at the horde of Grounders and slammed my fist down on the orange button.
A buzzing sound filled our space. A ray of clear, rippling air shot from the top of the walker. The green spotlight illuminated the horror. Grounders stopped in place as I swept the beam over the first row, past the cannon and over the legs of the other walker. Smoke burst from collars. The Grounders fell to their knees, faces twisting in anguish, as I finished sweeping the ray over the first row.
And then the beam of rippling air died, leaving flames dancing on the backs of uniforms. Ten Grounders lay on the grass, dying, and one woman's hair had caught fire.
I pressed the orange button again. Nothing. The heat gun had to recharge.
But more Grounders swarmed around the pulse cannon, getting behind it. I hadn't hit them all. A red glow burst to life in the barrel and brightened. It aimed at the legs underneath us.
Matt swore as he realized what the Grounders were about to do. “Deploy the smoke bomb!”
The black button waited for use.
I didn't make it.
A horrific, electric roar filled the air and reverberated in my mind. The walker tilted and the ground rose. The air flashed to scarlet below, overtaking the green of the searchlights.
I screamed.
We fell. The world toppled and spun. I came off my seat and struck the wall. Impact followed. I blinked. Pain shot through my shoulder and I landed against the control panel and my seat. Matt's green hand slapped down next to the navigation lever. My orange target remained on the glass, pointing at the pulse cannon which now aimed directly at us. The red light inside cooled down as the weapon began to recharge. Behind it, Grounders stood, emotionless and in silence. The legs of the second walker glinted in the green light.
They had shot ours off. We might be almost helpless.
“Matt?” I asked, lifting my head. My shoulder throbbed. I hoped it hadn't sustained a break. I didn't know if we had medical nanobots on board.
We had landed at an angle. My chair stopped me from sliding down the slope towards Matt's seat, but I let go to find Matt lying against the wall. He blinked, stunned.
And his left forearm was bent at a strange angle.
Broken. Two years on Mars had made his bones weak.
Matt seethed. “They shot us,” he managed, grasping his arm. “I'm hurt.”
“Get up!” I shouted, putting one leg on the wall. “We have to get out of here. They're going to kill us as soon as the cannon charges again.” I thought of the gun on our walker. It must still work, but it, too, needed to recharge. We couldn't use the smoke now. It would kill us with our enemies. I still had the gun on my belt, and so did Matt. Maybe twenty Grounders remained outside, waiting for the cannon to ready itself again. If we both got out and fired, we might have a chance.
But what about the other walker?
We had to take the chance.
Matt struggled to his feet. Our walker had landed so that the hatch didn't open right to the ground. I twisted it open manually, and my gaze met grass and dirt. I had to crawl to get out, and so did Matt. I breathed in the fresh air of the park, of home, because it might be the last time.
"They are climbing out," a Grounder man said. I wondered if he was the Great Council member.
"Ready the cannon," said another.
"It is charging."
I crawled out from under the walker. Its three legs had turned to stumps, with the bottom halves blasted away. Three trails of fine dust lay on the ground. That might be Matt and me in a few minutes.
Matt seethed with pain as he got out, but he was tougher than I thought. He held his heat gun out with his right hand as his other arm hung at his side, bent and useless. We would have to worry about his arm later. The two of us scrambled out from underneath our broken machine.
"Matt," I breathed, raising my weapon.
My gaze crept up to the second walker, the one that was aiding the Grounders.
Our spotlight still shone bright enough for me to see the pilot. There was one figure inside the walker, one in a gray uniform with g
reen skin. The pilot wasn't a Grounder at all, but a fellow colonist. I recognized his sharp face and the dark hair spilling around his cheeks.
Marv.
"Do not move," Marv ordered through a speaker. "If you do so, you will die."
Chapter Seventeen
Matt and I remained still. We knew what weapons Marv had at his disposal. We knew that he had smoke bombs. What I didn't know was whether Marv was working alone, trying to keep the Grounders off his back, or if he had formed an alliance with them. I was willing to bet on the latter. The Mars Identity people didn't want us to try taking back Earth. In a way, they and the Grounders were on the same side.
Matt spoke first. "Marv!" he shouted at the walker. It towered high above us. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you have stayed on precious Mars?"
Matt had a point.
Below the walker, the pulse cannon's red glow died and began to intensify again. The two dozen remaining Grounders waited behind it, silent. Marv was the one in charge here. Even the Great Council guy in the black robe waited. Marv would give the orders.
"This needs to stop," Marv said, voice booming over the speaker. "I left Celeste with Fiona. She's going to make sure that Fiona launches more of us Identity folks. The Great Council needs to stay protected from her idiocy."
It was an alliance, then. I was beginning to see how this whole thing worked. The Identity people were good sports when it came to losing. Lap dogs, maybe. The Grounders must offer them perks to keep the rest of us on Mars.
Marv and his girlfriend had won the fight at Base A and forced Fiona to launch Marv after us.
She had even told us to watch out for the second cylinder. Then Marv tracked us using the capsules in our guns.
I still had mine pointed at the Grounders. If I fired, I would kill some of them. Matt could do the same, and we'd save ourselves from the pulse cannon.
But then Marv could crush us with those metal feet or annihilate us with whatever he had used to blast apart the side of the dome.
I eyed Matt. He shook his head.
"Surrender," Marv said, "and we will let you live."
I took a breath and stood up tall. In the face of death, my Earther status was shining through. My duty was to fight these Grounders as my grandfather had. I hadn't forgotten who I was after all. The hooded man from eight years ago couldn't take that away from me. "Why are you helping the Grounders?" I shouted. "You know what they do to people."
The Grounders remained silent and emotionless. I felt as if I were starting at a bunch of wax dummies. Marv shifted behind the glass window of the walker. I caught another flash of his green flesh. "You've heard the Grounders' side of this story," Marv said. "Fair is fair."
I eyed Matt again. "The Grounders' side?" I hadn't heard anything. Besides, the Grounders might torture my parents or convert them. They were killing the Earth. Nothing made that forgivable. There was nothing the Grounders could tell me that would change my mind.
"Marv!" Matt shouted. "The Grounders destroy people! They don't have any mercy!"
The pulse cannon intensified. My knees trembled.
More Identity people would stop us and aid the Grounders. Earth would die. Matt and I were the only two people in this invasion fighting for our cause. My parents were doomed.
"What is your decision?" Marv asked. "I hate to destroy fellow colonists. You will cause me problems if I have to kill you, Matt."
I couldn't give up.
The pulse cannon was still charging. A hum filled the air. The Grounders waited. All Marv had to do was give the word, and Matt and I would disintegrate. Our particles would rain onto the grass to join the others. I could run back towards my house, but I would never outpace the walker. Marv would crush me under the machine's wide, elephant-like feet.
An Earther didn't give up.
Gun in hand, I rushed the Grounders.
"Tess!" Matt shouted.
I aimed.
Fired.
I swept the rippling beam across the front of the pulse cannon, now glowing with a bright red inside. Popping sounds followed. Grounders grasped at their necks. Smoke rose from collars. The Great Council member dropped his hood to reveal a middle-aged guy, one who might have once had a family, and the disgusting blob attached to his neck. It smoked and turned black. Grounders fell in silent agony. The survivors scattered away from the pulse cannon.
The beam died.
I had five minutes before I could use this again.
"What are you doing?" Marv shouted over the speaker.
I ran past the cannon as the walker took a gigantic, terrifying step away from me. The ground trembled as its enormous foot sank into the ground. I would die now. Marv would crush me.
"Girl," a Grounder woman said, running at me. "You are not fair."
The walker took another step, its segmented leg missing me by a meter. I pulled my fist back and punched her in the shoulder. She stopped, rubbing it with a neutral expression.
"Give me my parents!" I shouted. I swung again, striking her in the jaw. "Give me my parents back! You're not going to make them like you!" I didn't care anymore that they'd lied to me. They were my parents. My family. I had to protect them.
I lunged at the woman. We went down. I punched and screamed obscenities as the walker took another step. Marv was turning around so he could see me. So he could attack. I swung again, hitting the Grounder woman in the eye as her collar flipped down, revealing the horror. She raised her arms to protect herself, but I turned my rage on the blob on her neck. I wrapped my hands around her neck, digging my fingers into the flesh of the Grounder.
It felt like a mushy tomato. Its skin popped as I dug my fingernails in. The woman's body went into spasm, and she shook as if electrocuted. She was going into a seizure. Her eyes rolled into her head, leaving only milky white. The Grounder pulsed around my fingers. I pulled. Red tentacles parted with skin. They thrashed. The woman fell to the ground, limp. Dead.
I held a red worm with thrashing tentacles. The injured creature pulsed, appendages whipping and searching for something to grasp. One of them wrapped around my thumb, squeezing as if it were pleading for its life.
I stood, disgust washing over me.
Marv turned. The green headlight fell on me.
And then the tentacle whipped again, landing on my arm.
It inched towards my neck.
Towards my brain.
It needed a new host to survive.
I shook my arm, trying to cast it off, but it was no use. The creature wriggled, sticking to my skin, holes filling with purplish-red ooze. Something stabbed into my flesh. I screamed with the pain. Around me, more Grounders fell as Matt fired his heat gun. Marv let out another horn blast, ready to attack.
The Grounder pulsed.
It was feeding on my blood and healing.
Then it would crawl up my arm and take my brain.
"Get off!" I shouted, prying at the creature with my free hand. It refused to budge. My rage turned to cold terror.
Matt appeared at my side. "Tess!" he shouted, letting the heat gun fall to his side. He grabbed onto the Grounder, pulling, but the creature continued to feed, pulsing. Marv watched. I wanted to faint with the pain. A wave of dizziness washed over me, making the world dark.
"I didn't want to have to kill you," Marv shouted over the speaker. He had the voice of a fanatic, of someone who didn't think. "You could have had a good future on Mars. You could have accepted--"
"The cannon!" Matt shouted, releasing my arm.
The pain in my arm intensified. I imagined a needle of fire under my skin. A horrible pressure built. How much of my blood would the Grounder suck out of me?
The tripod blasted its otherworldly horn again. It faced us. In the eerie light, I could see Marv. His hand hovered over the middle of the dashboard.
Over the smoke bomb button.
I shoved the pain out of my mind and searched the back of the cannon. It was our only chance.
There were buttons. Lo
ts and lots of buttons. I prayed that the now-dead Grounders had already prepped this thing. I had no idea what to do.
A lone red button said FIRE in black letters.
Marv stood before the cannon, right over our ruined walker as if daring us to try to take shelter. Something clicked, and a small black shape dropped from the tripod, ready to explode and suffocate us.
I would have to kill a human. Someone who belonged on Earth, but had forgotten his place in the universe.
I slammed my hand down on the button.
A red blast filled the air, and the cannon roared as black smoke exploded and spread underneath Marv. I stepped back. A shock wave shook the world, shaking the Grounder off my skin. It hung off my arm, finished feeding, and dropped to the ground. Matt grabbed my injured arm and pulled me away from the cannon.
It was the strangest sight.
Marv's tripod stumbled as the pulse cannon blasted away its legs. It fell, causing Marv to fall right into the spreading black smoke. Green light reflected off the black particles, making them look like a swarm of vaporous death. The cloud spread.
Matt and I ran.
The fact that the pulse cannon had blasted apart some of the black particles might be the only reason the two of us still breathed and lived. Dark tendrils raced along the ground, trying to grasp for us, but I held my breath. I jumped over bodies. We bolted out of Woking Park and onto the street, breathing in the gross smog that still hung in the sticky air. We left Marv and the one surviving Grounder in the dark vapor, which was no doubt leaking into Marv's tripod.
When we returned, he would be dead.
"Don't stop." Matt stumbled.
"Matt!" I stopped. I would not leave him behind, even as the black smoke advanced on us. I pulled my shirt over my nose, wishing that I had my gas mask. Matt seethed again, grabbing his broken arm.
I pulled him up as a tendril of smoke reached his leg. It spread like a disease, consuming everything it touched. I was glad that the neighborhood surrounding Woking Park was dead and evacuated by the Enforcers, that every house was dark.
"Go!" I shouted, coughing on the usual smog that hung over everything. "We need high ground!"
