Red Dust of Mars

by Christopher Wills

  chapter 13

  The News

  Alice: “…and we just have time for this last story Ted.”

  Ted: “Thanks Alice. News just in. Fishing fleets from all over the Eastern Pacific are racing to reach the coast of California after reports that Humboldt Squid are swarming. One observer suggested there could be up to a million Squid just off the coast.”

  Alice: “That’s great news Ted. I love a Humboldt steak. Incidentally, is it Squid or Squids?”

  Ted: “Merriam Webster suggests either or Alice.”

  Alice: “Thanks Ted. So that was the World News for today. Remember people, unlike other news channels we deal in facts. We don’t make this up.”

  chapter 14

  “There’s nothing here,” Gunny stated the obvious. “No farm, no bunker.”

  “Are we sure we’re in the right place?” Jethro asked looking at his communicator

  “Yes sir,” confirmed Brains. “I’ve double checked the coordinates and my gyro navigator app agrees.”

  “What the fuck is…?” Gunny started

  “Not now Gunny,” Jethro interrupted. “Ask her later when you’ve got a couple of hours to spare.”

  “Aye sir.” Gunny grinned.

  “Gunny get the team to do a complete micro search of the area. I want to know what they find, absolutely anything, a footprint, a hair, a paperclip, anything that indicates someone or something was here.”

  “Aye aye sir.”

  Gunny organised the search by grid squares. Jethro paced about in a confined area not wanting to contaminate the search. He noticed Walker lying down on the ground.

  Is he taking the Mick? Should I have a word with him? No, let it go.

  The search concluded but nothing was found. Jethro’s mind was blank. He couldn’t think of what to do next except maybe to return to the Blackbird.

  What would dad do? He’d ask for help. Dad was never too proud to ask for help.

  Jethro gathered the team

  “Right team. I want ideas. The farm should be here but it isn’t. There’s nothing.”

  “There’s not nothing sir,” said Walker.

  “Go on,” said Jethro.

  “If you crouch down closer to the ground.” Walker crouched down. “You can just see depressions in the shape of buildings.”

  I wondered what he was doing.

  Jethro crouched down and he could just make out straight lines that formed rectangles. “You’re right Walker. Well done. But what does it mean?”

  “Err, stating the obvious sir,” Brains said. “It means the dust and constant light winds may have filled up any traces left of the farm and buildings.”

  “I’ll buy that. But what about Maddy?” Jethro was worried about her. He had tried to communicate as soon as he landed and had tried a couple more times but received no replies.

  “If she observed the whole thing,” said Gunny. “She might have done it from higher ground like those hills over there.” He pointed.

  To the West there were the low foothills of a distant mountain range.

  “We could try the ground radar sir.” Brains suggested.

  I forgot about that

  “Gunny. Take Brains and the ground radar, toward those hills. Maddy said she was in an underground bunker.”

  Gunny and Brains removed the ground radar from the equipment compartment on one of the hoverbikes. It was a light hand-held probe connected to a shoulder pack. There was also a receiver module that plugged into a communicator to display the results. Gunny took the module and walked beside Brains as she operated the probe. They started searching straight away so they could collect comparison data for when they reached the search zone.

  Jethro sent out two pairs as roving patrols and detailed the remaining four in the team to set up a defensive position in the foothills.

  He tried to communicate back to the ship but couldn’t get them. He tried to communicate with Major Misere but he couldn’t get him either and he tried again to reach Maddy but that link was dead also.

  There must be a problem with the satellites. Maybe the aliens had taken the satellites out.

  He reached the team setting up the defensive base. They chose a good spot in a depression between hills so they wouldn’t be spotted from afar. The tents were infra red reflecting and each hoverbike had an infra red cover so hopefully if they had to stay the night they wouldn’t be found except by accident.

  After sundown the temperature would fall to minus seventy degrees centigrade so not a good idea to remain outside. A Martian day, a Sol, is a few minutes over twenty four hours but the temperature drops substantially after nightfall, a bit like on deserts on Earth, so Jethro wanted camp to be set up.

  The roving patrols found the camp. They report that they had found nothing so the aliens they had seen earlier had hopefully moved out of the area. Jethro set up a perimeter guard ready for the night, with remote detectors and a couple of manned guard points.

  Brains found him.

  “Sir? We’ve found something.”

  chapter 15

  Brains took Jethro and a couple of other troops to the search area.

  They had found a signature for some sort of underground hollow.

  “It’s too regular to be natural,” said Gunny.

  Jethro agreed but they couldn’t find a route in. It was as if something like a large tank had been buried underground then all traces filled in, trapping whatever or whoever might be in the tank.

  “What do you think Gunny?”

  “We’ve covered the entire area sir and this is the only thing we’ve found.”

  “Brains. Anything to add?”

  “It’s big enough to hold a person and food and other kit, and it’s a regular shape, which suggests human made.”

  “Or alien made sir.”

  “Yes thanks Walker. Suggestions anyone?”

  “I suppose someone’s got to say it,” said Marine Walker, with a glum knowing look on his face.

  “Go on say it Walker.”

  Marine Walker shook his head as he said. “We dig.”

  “Great idea Walker,” said Gunny. Guess who’s the first volunteer?”

  Walker searched about in his equipment compartment of his hoverbike and got out his entrenching tool, a design which had survived over four hundred years. It was a small light carbon steel tool that served as a saw, a pick, an axe and a shovel depending on how the blade was oriented. Walker set it to pick mode to loosen the soil.

  Jethro stepped in and opened his hand. “May I?”

  Walker’s jaw dropped. He tentatively handed his tool to Jethro.

  Jethro took a swing and started digging. It was hot work in his space suit and one of the reasons he wanted first shift was to find out what might be a reasonable time to put a shift in doing the manual work.

  Everyone took part in the digging including Gunny. It was bloody hard work. After a couple of hours they appeared to be getting close to the whatever it was in the ground. It was buried about 2 metres below the ground level so only the closest inspection with radar would find it.

  Finally about three hours before Sundown they reached the top of the container. It was a steel tank similar to the kind of thing that stored fluids. When they uncovered the top, Jethro stopped the digging.

  “Silence.” He took hold of the entrenching tool and banged on the part of the metal container that they had exposed.

  There was no reply so he banged again and waited. Still no reply.

  “OK. Carry on digging. I want enough of the top of this exposed and enough room around it so we can cut into it.”

  They carried on digging until there was enough space and Brains set up the cutting tool.

  “Be careful Brains. Assume there is somebody alive inside that thing so don’t set the cutter on too high OK?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Jethro and the Gunny retired some distance.

  “What do you think Gunny?”

  “I think we have about two
hours before the temperature on the surface here plummets.”

  “You’re right. We’ll open this tank then retire for the night.”

  “Aye sir.”

  Jethro returned to the container but before he got there Brains was heading towards him.

  “Something wrong Brains?”

  “I can hear banging sir. It’s coming from inside the container.”

  They rushed to the container and sure enough someone or something was banging in a kind of pattern.

  “What is it Gunny?”

  Gunny smiled. “It’s Morse code sir.”

  “What on earth is that?”

  “It was used a few hundred years ago. It’s a combination of taps that represents a dot or a dash and together they make up the letters of the alphabet. Someone inside that tank is trying to communicate with us.”

  “Do you understand it then?”

  “No sir. Far too old school for me.”

  “Brains?”

  “No sir, I know of it but I don’t know it. The military abandoned using it years ago on the grounds that communicators were far more powerful.”

  “Walker might know,” said Gunny. “He’s old school and knows a lot of odd stuff, sir.”

  Gunny fetched Walker who was resting after his exertions with the pick. “Walker do you understand this?”

  Walker nodded. He did understand the message sent from inside the container.

  “Do you want it exactly sir?”

  “Word for word, if you would.”

  “The message reads ‘You fucking alien Squid blobs if you can understand this message when that hole opens I am going to blast you back to whatever arsehole part of the universe you came from…’

  Jethro laughed. “I think I can safely say that’s Maddy. Can you message her back Walker.”

  “Do you want me to wait until she’s finished her message sir?”

  “Err, no. We might be waiting a long time. Just message her, ‘Hello Maddy, still swearing I see.’”

  Walker took a metal bar and started tapping on the container. As soon as he started, the tapping from the other side stopped.

  “I’ll repeat the same message a couple of times, sir. It used to be standard practice.”

  Jethro nodded. He guessed Walker repeated the same message three times because he detected the pattern repeats, then Walker stopped.

  There was a delay then some rapid bashing.

  “What’s she saying Walker.”

  “No idea sir. Too bloody fast for me. I’ll tell her to slow down.” He tapped a short message.

  Another delay then slow measured tapping, repeated twice.

  “She said. ‘Is that you Jethro, you miserable bastard?”

  “She always was direct. Tell her. ‘Yes. It’s me.”

  Walker replied then paused then more tapping.

  “She says ‘prove it.”’

  “She always makes things so bloody difficult. No don’t say that. Say, ‘You never managed to beat me at Star Worlds.’”

  There was a long pause then.

  “She says ‘Jethro. Is that really you?’”

  “Just say ‘yes Maddy old girl, it’s me, Jethro, old man.’”

  There was a long pause after this. Then there was a hissing sound to the other end of the container, the bit that was still covered in earth.

  “Withdraw 10 yards and cover. Do not fire under any circumstances unless I give a direct order.”

  Everyone except Jethro retired the ten yards. The hissing stopped and slowly a pile of earth about a metre across rose from the ground and kept on rising until it was followed by a metal cylinder a couple of metres high with a glass slot at about one and a half metres from the bottom.

  Jethro saw the tension on his team.

  “Steady,” he reminded them.

  Another hiss and a door slid open revealing a personal lift and out flung a blur rushing at Jethro and knocking him to the ground.

  “Jethro. Jethro. Jethro.”

  Jethro tried to get up but wasn’t able to.

  “Maddy?”

  “I knew you would come. Jethro. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She kept trying to kiss him but it was silly whilst wearing a space helmet.

  “Maddy?”

  “Yes.” Still space helmeting him.

  “Can we stand up now?”

  Finally Maddy stopped and allowed him to get up.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. I’d like you to meet my friend Maddy.”

  Maddy looked around with her mouth open. Maddy thin as a rake wearing an old beaten and ragged space suit that looked on its last legs. Through the glass helmet dome Jethro could see her smudged face and straggly hair suggesting she hadn’t washed for a while.

  “Oh.” She pretended to brush her hair down with her hand before she realised she wore a helmet and must have looked a bit strange.

  “When did you last eat Maddy?”

  “Err. I’ve been saving my food.” She kept looking around with wide eyes.

  “Brains will take you to our camp just up there and get you cleaned up. We’ll join you in a few minutes and have some scran.”

  “Scran?”

  “Food.”

  Maddy was too dazed to say anything more.

  “Brains, make sure her suit is one hundred percent and get her some food and water OK?”

  “Sir.”

  chapter 16

  “Maddy. Are you ready to tell me what happened?”

  She looked at Jethro. “I’ve got it on film.” She passed him her communicator.

  “Gunny. Come and watch this.” Jethro connected it to the larger screen on his hoverbike.

  The film began with landscape scenes of crops and the farm buildings inside biodomes, and the low hills where they were now close to the bunker they had found Maddy in. Then they were looking at the sky and four little dots heading towards the screen. The dots got larger and larger, then Maddy’s dad appeared and was shouting for Maddy to go to the bunker and that he and Mum would join Maddy in a short time. By the time Maddy got to the bunker and turned around the four dots had become four large craft.

  Jethro had never seen craft like them. They appeared to be made of metal and were each as big as the EMV but with no apparent guns on them so not obviously fighting craft. Each was shaped like a teardrop with the rounded end at the front and the pointed tail at the rear. As they got close to landing, six legs sprang from inside them and supported them so they looked like 4 giant insects shaped like teardrops.

  The film jumped about a bit. “I was moving closer to the bunker,” Maddy explained.

  Each of the craft dropped a large ramp from the front and one of the spiderbots they had seen in the desert walked down the ramp.

  Jethro was sitting next to Maddy and felt her turn away. He put his arm around her.

  Maddy’s dad appeared on the screen waving a low powered laser at one of the spiderbots and shouting at it. The spiderbot raised an arm and a beam of light shot from the arm and Maddy’s dad fell to the ground. Maddy’s Mum appeared on the screen and she rushed to his side and she too was blasted by the light and fell beside her husband.

  The filming continued but it was shaking all over the place as the spiderbots didn’t appear to notice they were being filmed. Maddy would have been a couple of miles away.

  The spiderbots clustered around the dead couple and then each spiderbot bent its legs as if it was getting down onto its knees.

  “They’re not going to pray are they?”

  Jethro shot a glance at Gunny who immediately shut up and mouthed sorry.

  A door opened in the chest of two of each robot and a small Squid like figure appeared. They seemed to float in the air. They had two long tentacles that dangled almost uselessly below, touching the ground and a collection of shorter arms like a plate of spaghetti whirling in front of them. Even at the distance they were filmed Jethro could see they were translucent.

  Jethro could feel Maddy sobbing into his shoulder which h
e supposed was good as she wasn’t good to bottle it all up.

  The Squids went to the dead couple and manoeuvred over the head of Maddy’s parents. Then in a flash one of them descended onto Maddy’s dad’s head and using its short arms pulled the head up towards its own head where a terrifying beak appeared between the parting arms. The beak smashed into the skull of Maddy’s dad like it was breaking into an eggshell and it tore pieces of brain from the skull.

  Once the first Squid had eaten its full of the brain it retreated and the other three lunged in, first to the head to eat the brain then to the rest of the body to tear off flesh and eat it. They didn’t repeat the process with Maddy’s Mum because one of the spiderbots picked her Mum’s body up with its two front legs which also acted as arms and held the corpse.

  Jethro was stunned that despite a few wavers Maddy was able to keep the camera trained on them the whole time as he could barely watch. Gunny was silently shaking his head. When the Squids finished their grisly meal they appeared to be full of energy and they had each become opaque.

  They re-entered their robots and started dismantling the farm buildings. A large craft, much bigger than the teardrops appeared and landed. A huge ramp dropped out of its belly and some large robots on tracks rolled down the ramp. These robots seemed independent of the spiderbots and spread around the farm stripping everything and loading it back on the large craft.

  The spiderbot holding the corpse of Maddy’s Mum climbed up the ramp into the belly of the large craft and then appeared later without Maddy’s Mum. It must have deposited the corpse for some reason.

  The filming of the farm ended there. Then there was a brief bit of film in the surrounding hills with the voice of Maddy saying “Snoopy” quietly and after a short time with presumably no luck the film ended.

  Jethro was sick in his stomach and he could see Gunny wasn’t happy.

  “Sir. Can we…?”

  “We have our orders.” Jethro knew the Gunny wanted to hunt down the spiderbots they had seen earlier and kill them. He totally agreed with him but knew that the mission was far more important than satisfying the primeval urge to kill for revenge.