Warbirds of Mars: Stories of the Fight!

by Неизвестный

  Father James Cansino looked to Rabbi Maltz. Without looking back at the priest, Maltz shrugged. “I tried standing too. This guy,” he nodded at the Martian, “he doesn’t hate the sound of his voice.”

  Not taking his eyes off the Martian, Father James Cansino took a seat. “Excellent,” the Martian said. “The Rabbi and I have been meeting for about three weeks now, and it seems he’s out of his depth. We reached a point where I needed to learn more. We have been discussing something very important: your Bible.”

  “He thought all religions were equal in America.” Rabbi Maltz said. “I told him you coulda fooled me.”

  “Religious tolerance is one of the foundations of America,” Father Cansino said with as much pride as he could, inwardly returning to that old question of whether or not he’d live to see a Catholic president. It felt good to be uncertain about things like that again. “What do you want?”

  “To talk.”

  “About?”

  “Rabbi?”

  Rabbi Maltz folded his palms across his stomach. “He’s not kidding. He wants to talk about the Bible.”

  “Count me out,” Father Cansino stood up. “You collaborate? Let it be on you. I’ve got work to do with my flock, Rabbi.”

  “Father,” Kalen said. “Rabbi Maltz has no love for me, my people, or what we have done.”

  “This isn’t the first time the Jews have dealt with this,” Maltz said, not looking up from his chair.

  “Tell him why you’re here.”

  Rabbi Maltz sighed. “He showed me a printout of all the women at the Memphis breeding farm and all the new transports to the Dallas factories. He said every ten minutes that we talk, I can pick someone to be moved back to their families. He marked the women as ‘infertile,’ so they’d never go back.”

  Cansino looked at Kalen.

  “And...” Kalen said.

  The Rabbi’s shoulders rose and fell. “Last week he had one of his guards take me to the storeroom. Puts a shopping cart in front of me and pulls one for himself. Says ‘fill up.’” He still couldn’t look at the priest. “Blankets, antibiotics, soup, bread, anesthetic...” He made a spiraling motion with his hands. Father Cansino looked at the Martian.

  “The same offer extends to you, Father. I will ask for nothing more than information. You are free to leave and not answer, however I want you to remember the fate of those you condemn to the farms and factories.” Father Cansino froze. “You are a teacher, yes? That’s why I asked you to come here. I wanted one like you. Teach me.”

  The Rabbi shrugged his thumbs when the Priest looked at him, as if to say I wish I had a better answer.

  Cansino put his hand on the chair and sat down.

  “Excellent. The Rabbi and I were talking about some important characters here. Moses and Pharaoh, David and Goliath, and I do want to talk about them more, Rabbi...” Kalen said, turning away and going for something on a smaller desk by the window, “...but I was reading ahead.” He came back with a book and an illustration. “And I wanted to learn about him,” he said, plopping the book and artwork down on the table. Father Cansino felt a cold hand grip his throat.

  The book was Paradise Lost.

  The illustration was the Devil.

  “Tell me about Lucifer.”

  “The last rally was a disaster,” Colonel Jewkes said. Behind him, the map of America had changed. The lines of control had expanded eastward. A disquieting three-eyed Martian skull and crossbones was now over Michigan. “As of 2200 hours last night, Detroit fell to the Martians.” Josie Taylor closed her eyes. Hunter Noir inhaled deeply, and Jack Paris patted Josie’s hand, shaking his own head. Only Mr. Mask showed no reaction, his face hidden behind the gas mask he constantly wore. Jewkes nodded at his aide, who proceeded to pass out a folder to each of the Martian Killers. “Martian general by the name of Sodak Jutt was in charge of the invasion of Detroit and most of the Northern campaign.”

  “Been wanting to get my hands on him for a while.” Hunter sneered.

  “You got no monopoly on that,” Jack said to Hunter as they opened their folders. “Chicago resistance got up close to him, took his eye out.”

  “Someone did more than that,” Colonel Jewkes said. “He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  Opening the folders, there were photos of the Martians surrounding rubble. In the middle was a sprawled body, half under the rubble, its arm outstretched. The Martians pointed, confused as they discussed their slain leader. “How do we know it’s him?” Hunter asked.

  “The lab analyzed these photos six ways from Sunday,” Colonel Jewkes said. “The marks on his sash, the scar on his eye. We know he was there at the Battle of Detroit. If that’s not Sodak Jutt, it’s a good likeness with nothing to gain by faking his death.” Colonel Jewkes flipped through his packet, pulling out a new photo. “The king is dead. Long live the king. This one you’re looking at right now? This is our new public enemy number one. We are now operating under the assumption that as a result of Sodak Jutt’s death, the Martian North American invasion falls fully under the jurisdiction of Kalen Tengel.”

  “What do we know about him?” Jack asked.

  “Like the Kaizer, he gave himself a nickname based on our history. He calls himself the Fallen Angel.”

  “Kalen Tengel, Fallen Angel,” Jack said, letting the words roll off his tongue.

  “Cute,” Hunter said.

  “There’s something else,” Jewkes said, nodding to his aide. She walked over and shut the lights off while Jewkes retrieved a canister of film from behind the podium.

  Felix Edgemar had grown up on a farm in the heartland. When he left the University of Kansas in 1938, he was lucky enough to get a job developing chemicals and fertilizer in Topeka. After Pearl Harbor, there was an increased interest in food production, and he developed projects working on improving the fertilizers.

  When the heartland fell, he kept moving, kept putting his chemical engineering knowledge to good use. He made thermite bombs and homemade mustard gas. When the Martians captured him, they put him to work making advanced fertilizer to grow more crops for the invaders. He’d done his best to leak mold into the supplies and spoil the crops. He even managed to start building an ammonium nitrate bomb.

  Before he could complete it, the Martians found it.

  Now, sitting in his cell, arms chained above him, four weeks’ worth of beard growing on his face, Felix Edgemar was ready for another round of torture. He heard the footsteps on the concrete floor. They were slow and deliberate. His eyes looked up at the door. His brain had come to associate the senses together with the experience of an interrogation. Bright light stung the eyes. Footsteps strode into his ears. The smell of the Martians filled the cell. Pain bombarded his body. He tasted his own blood.

  The footsteps weren’t supposed to be slow.

  Where was the pain?

  A Martian shadow stepped closer. Its face was different somehow. The Martian’s frame was leaner, but it was more than that. The face had something oddly intelligent about it. As he looked up into the three eyes, Felix Edgemar thought he saw something evocative of a human face.

  “Felix Edgemar,” the Martian said in a remarkably smooth voice. It was unsettling to hear a voice so calm from a Martian. It meant something new, and Felix wasn’t sure he could handle anything new at this point. “How would you like to make a deal?”

  “I don’t deal with Big Heads.”

  “Ah that wonderful American quality of labeling entire races with insulting titles,” the Martian seemed to smile. “It seems I am part of a proud American tradition.”

  The Martian blocked out the light. Felix could look at its face. The features were fine, expressive. Was the Martian wearing a cloak? It moved in and out of the light, never letting Felix’s eyes adjust completely.

  “I got another tradition coming for you,” he said.

  “The bomb? I’m not here about the bomb.” The creature stepped right in front of Felix, “I’m interested in y
ou.”

  “I’m not talking.”

  “I don’t want you to talk.”

  “What, then?”

  The Martian smiled. “How would you like to kill some Martians?”

  The music played over the black and white film. The images on the screen scratched and popped as the grainy footage gradually smoothed out. The narrator’s voice was serious but optimistic, happily detailing the events onscreen.

  “...another daring rescue by the Last Outlaws. This time it’s out of Boulder, Colorado.” The footage showed a ruined and desolate town before cutting to a shot of a few dozen dirty refugees, smiling into the camera.

  “They were takin’ us to the center,” one man said, looking at an interviewer somewhere off-camera. “I thought it was curtains for us for sure. Then they came.”

  The screen changed to an aerial shot, lasers blasting out of a cannon on the side of the plane. Something exploded down below. Anti-aircraft blasts shot up at the camera. “Striking from their secret base, the Last Outlaws eliminated the defense transport before boarding the refugees on their ship, the Liberator. Dropping them off in the Free West, the refugees all made it to San Diego safely.” Cutting to a little boy, the narrator’s voice changed. “What do you think happened?”

  “They saved us,” the boy replied, grinning.

  “And what do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “I wanna be an Outlaw too,” he said, holding up a collector’s badge to the screen.

  “Yes, the Last Outlaws,” the screen faded to a more stylized, more official picture of the logo. The logo showed the outline of an eagle’s profile, swooping toward the left. In its talons, a Martian skull cracked under the fierce grip. “The last best hope for American freedom comes from these brave souls risking life and limb to protect Americans.”

  “Did we sanction this?” Josie asked.

  “But who are the Last Outlaws? And where did they come from?” The graphic cut to a live-action shot. Standing on a hill were four blackened silhouettes. From behind them a light bright as the sun blasted powerfully, casting four long shadows.

  It cut to a separate shot in a bombed-out industrial setting. Out of the darkness and rubble, a figure stepped out clad in a black fedora, long black duster, and a gray shirt. A scarf masked the lower half of his face, while the top of his face seemed different somehow. Obscured by makeup, his face seemed to have a vaguely exotic look to it. “Apache Knight,” the narrator continued. “Raised on a reservation and trained by the same Apache warriors who once plagued the Old West, today he fights on...” the scene cut to a quick action shot of Apache from the back, as he steadily advanced at an out-of-focus Martian down a long hall. Guns blazing, the Martian staggered back before dropping. A slick camera cut changed to Apache Knight throwing a tomahawk at the camera. Then it was a close-up, Apache Knight looking around with focused eyes, pulling a gun out from under his coat. “Watch out Big Heads, the Apache is on the warpath.”

  The camera shifted to a flying ship. Jack squinted in the dark, trying to place it. It looked vaguely like a B-24 Liberator with heavy Martian adjustments, but there was something different about it; even without the Martian equipment, something looked off. As Jack pondered the design, the narrator continued. “Next, Captain of the Liberator, Adam Holiday.” After giving a wide shot of a hanger with airplanes and half-cannibalized Martian vehicles, it cut to a shot of a handsome, square-jawed figure, stepping out from a ramp under the plane. He smiled at the camera, laughing at some off-screen joke. “Coming home after the latest adventure, Holiday has only one thing on his mind.”

  “I want to get back out there,” he said, in a close-up interview. “As soon as I come back, first thing I want to know is when I can get back out there.”

  “Do you have anything to say to any Martians who might be watching this?”

  “Thanks for the toys.”

  The shot cut to Holiday in a tank-top, covered in grease, as he wrenched something into place on the side of the Liberator. “Not just an expert pilot, but a first-class mechanic, Adam Holiday has taken Martian technology and adapted it.” Now a shot of Holiday looking at blueprints at night, a single bulb illuminating his plans. He reaches over with a pencil, circling something, before drawing a line over to another part of the paper. “Tirelessly working to contribute to the fight against the Martians, Adam Holiday keeps ‘em flying high before taking the Liberator out for another spin.” The last shot was a cockpit-view of Holiday driving the ship down while pulling the triggers. The flash of laser-fire reflected on his goggles, as the camera cut to another aerial shot of Martian installations exploding under heavy fire.

  “Everyone’s pitching in to help, including the lovely Violet King.” The screen was filled with a shot of a beautiful girl looking up from a map and smiling. “Navigator and part-time nurse, Miss King risks her life just as much as the men in the fight against the Martians.”

  It cut to Violet bandaging a child’s arm in some kind of lab or hospital setting. “So what makes you want to fight against the Martians?”

  “Oh, fighting Martians isn’t important,” she said, turning sideways, her nurse’s uniform straining against her physique. “What really matters is we Americans helping each other, not killing Martians,” she said, punctuating her comment with a wink at the camera.

  “Rounding out the group, the most mysterious threat to the Martian menace, the Skull.” The camera zoomed in on a muscular figure, a black and white mask adorning his face. It cut to a montage of the Skull in the gym, lifting weights, hitting the heavy bag, skipping rope, and practicing with a set of Eskrima batons and swords. “Trained in the fighting arts of the East and the West, the Skull is adept at combat, be it with blades...” The Skull ripped an M1919 machine gun off its tripod mount, blazing at unseen adversaries in a ruined town, “firearms...” The Skull walked down a hall. A Martian invader tried to grab him from behind, but a quick Judo throw flipped the bear-like Martian down off the camera, where the Skull proceeded to direct his punches, “...or unarmed.”

  “When asked for comments, the elusive Skull lets his actions speak louder than his words.” It cut to the Skull sitting in a small office. “Why do you wear the mask?” the interviewer asked.

  No response.

  “How did you come to join the Last Outlaws?”

  No response.

  “Why do you fight?”

  The Skull half-turned, pointing to something off-camera. The camera pivoted to follow, observing the American flag waving outside the window. The Battle Hymn of the Republic quietly played on the soundtrack.

  “In the ongoing fight against the invaders, the Last Outlaws’ work is never done.” A shot from the plane then, as Apache strolled up the ramp, Violet and Adam laughed together behind him, and the Skull came up from the back. “As they embark upon another mission, all we can say here is thank you, Last Outlaws, God bless.” The music swelled as the camera changed to a shot of the Liberator flying into the sun. As the plane vanished in the sunlight, the sun shifted to a picture of the Last Outlaws’ logo.

  The room was silent as the lights came back on. The projector was wheeled off to the side, as Colonel Jewkes stepped back up in front.

  “These canisters are showing up in movie theaters all over the free territories.”

  “Who’s putting them out?” Hunter asked.

  “We don’t know. We do know a group of prisoners scheduled for vivisection were rescued outside of Boulder. Survivors’ accounts say they were rescued by the Last Outlaws.”

  “And the cameras just happened to be there,” Josie said.

  “Maybe we inspired them,” Jack said. “I wouldn’t mind being a big movie star.” Colonel Jewkes held up the film reel. “We’re monitoring this for the time being. Anyone hears anything, make a note of it. I don’t know what this is all about, but we cannot let it go.”

  “What were you?”

  Felix looked at the source of the voice. Sharing the couch with him was a squa
re-jawed blonde-haired prisoner about his age, chewing gum. “Chemical engineer. You?”

  “Airman.”

  “You shot down?”

  “August 2, 1944,” he replied. He looked back at the door to the office. Felix looked across to the other couch. There was a tall, muscular man younger than Felix. The skin was tan enough that Felix couldn’t quite place the man’s race. Next to him was a girl, early twenties. If life in America had gone on the way it should have, she could’ve passed for younger, but it was tougher to fool men in the Martian era. You wore the years on your face. She clutched her hair nervously. Life for women was difficult under the occupation. It was obvious that even in her half-malnourished state, the dress barely hid the natural curves on her body as she scratched the armrest. “What about you?” Felix asked. Her blue eyes flicked to Felix. It seemed the gap between the couches became an abyss.

  “Hey,” the airman said, extending his hand and sliding a stick of gum forward. “What’s your name?”

  She stared at the gum for a second before sliding a stick out of the packet. “Lillian,” she said, taking the gum.

  “Lillian, I’m Adam.” He nodded sideways, not taking his eyes off her. “This is Felix.” He turned to the last one. “And you, big fella?”

  The door opened like a gunshot.

  “My favorite humans.” Kalen Tengel entered the room, striding purposefully behind the desk. Behind him, Martians strode in, carrying boxes and large rectangles wrapped in white paper. Felix wondered if this was another raid of American art. Lillian flinched nervously at the sight of the Martians. Adam reached out a hand toward hers. Felix never saw if it reached. As soon as Kalen’s guards had dropped their burdens off, they left. “Now. Have you heard of the resistance faction known as the Martian Killers?”

  “I heard,” Adam said, raising his hand. “Don’t know much about them, but I heard the name.”

  “Good, good.” Kalen Tengel opened a drawer and pulled a few folders out. “You know you humans...” he opened them one at a time. “We come here with technology far beyond what you have, you’re hopelessly fighting amongst yourselves, and yet you still resist. My companions...” he blinked his three eyes, “...have a hard time. They want to use force. Crush you. I am different. I have studied you, examined your stories, your culture, and I know you—Americans especially—you’ll never stop fighting. Not really. Because look at us.” He spread out his arms, his vast maw opening wide, “we’re the perfect enemy. Inhuman. Unreasonable. There will be no peace treaty, because you will never believe for one second that my race has anything less in mind than the absolute enslavement of yours.”