I widen my eyes at Fiona, and she looks down, sadly.
“Yes,” she says. “I understand. Thank you, Minos.”
“Dumb bitch,” he sneers, and looks back toward the road.
I resolve then that I will kill him. My biosuit is designed for close-range killing, while his is better suited for long-range targets. I should be able to do it quickly when he is distracted, but it’s best if I can contrive a reason to keep Fiona out of his sight while I risk the kill.
I feel my lip trembling with rage, and my ears pull all the way back. I consider jamming my fingers through his eye sockets, I could–
“Fenrir,” Minos says in Marauder, so that Fiona cannot understand. “One thing I forgot to mention. I’ve put a kill switch on myself. The moment my heart stops beating, I convert all my biofuel to pure energy. Boom. And if you try to get me away from her, I can manually detonate.”
I clench my teeth to suppress my rage. I need to get to Cygnus. He’ll let us both go into their settlement, and Cygnus will have to help us find a way out of this.
And then I start to consider all the hundreds of different ways that Minos could go back on his word at the last minute, and I mentally prepare for each and every one.
17 Fiona
The days pass slowly, and when we’re only about two days from the pole, we notice we’re going to run out of water before we reach Cygnus’s settlement.
The buggy has a condenser on the roof, and it slowly grabs the minimal moisture from the Martian atmosphere, condensing it into water. But it’s not enough, as the Marauders chug water like animals.
“Way station up ahead,” Minos says. “Time to get some extra supplies for the last leg of the trip.”
I’m lying in the back compartment, pretending to sleep. Since Minos is speaking English, however, I know he wants me to hear.
He’s never gone into the back compartment to sleep, never let me and Fenrir have a few moments to talk. Even if he had, I doubt I’d feel safe saying a word for fear he’d somehow overhear it.
I can tell that Fenrir is preoccupied–hopefully he’s planning a way to get free of Minos–and I don’t buy for a second his sudden change of attitude toward me.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Minos buys it either.
“Let’s show Turret Woman here what Marauder bartering looks like.”
Fenrir looks back at me, giving me a worried expression.
“Fenrir,” he says. “You guard the buggy, the female and I will barter together.”
I see Fenrir’s jaw clench at that, but he doesn’t object. He must be biding his time until we are out of the buggy. I don’t know what the full plan is, but I figure our best chance to take action is when it’s time for us to go to Cygnus’s settlement. To my sister. I still can’t believe it’s really her, and I try not to get my hopes up too high, as Minos might be dangling that in front of me to keep me compliant...though Fenrir seems to believe it’s true as well.
“Mask up,” Minos says.
His biosuit begins to cover him and change into a tanned white skin. He slides on his own oxygen mask and tank, though he doesn’t really need it.
I affix my mask and open the tank. I need the tank, as I can’t survive with so little oxygen. Human bodies aren’t as adaptable as Marauders’ bodies, and despite centuries of terraforming, the Martian surface is frigid and barely has any oxygen. It’s a miracle that humans have managed to get the atmospheric pressure high enough that we can forego full pressure suits.
“Let’s go,” Minos gestures.
I zip my coat all the way up and tighten my scarf.
He opens the door and freezing Martian air rushes in. We both get out of the buggy. The doors shut behind us, leaving Fenrir alone inside.
The way station is just a small building. It looks like it could hold a maximum of three or four people , and most of the structure seems designed to pump polar ice. There are long tubes and pipes jutting out of the building and plunging deep into the Martian soil.
“I couldn’t find any weapons in Nuevo Quito,” Minos rasps through his mask. “Laws are too strict there, or I didn’t know where to look.”
I ignore him and trudge toward the way station. I’m getting used to walking in Martian gravity by now, but the heavy coat, tank, and mask all weigh me down and make it difficult to walk with full mobility.
Minos doesn’t seem slowed down, as he quickly overtakes me with long strides.
“Try to keep up, woman,” he grunts.
It makes me want to walk slower. Even when Fenrir was ordering me around after we first met, I could at least feel a modicum of respect in his voice. With Minos, there’s only hate.
“Water, food, and weapons,” he says. “If all goes well, I’ll be able to raid Cygnus’s and your sister’s stores after we kill everyone, but–.”
“I thought you said you’d let Aura and me go.”
“Everyone except you two, I mean.”
“So you’ll let us go with no supplies, to wander around the poles to freeze, starve, or die of dehydration?”
“Would you rather I kill you now?” he asks.
“You would if you didn’t need me. But you need me.”
He shrugs his shoulders and keeps walking.
“Why do you want weapons, by the way? Don’t you have your biosuit?”
“It’s best to conserve as much biofuel as I can, for the massacre.”
A chill goes through me, and it’s not from the Martian cold.
When we’re a few hundred meters from the way station, three armed figures step outside. They are holding large rifles, all pointed right at us.
“Hands up as you approach, and drop any arms,” one of them shouts across to us as soon as we are within earshot.
Minos raises his arms, and I do the same.
“We’re unarmed,” Minos shouts. “And how about you? You got any more weapons or men in there?”
“Plenty more where that came from inside,” the man in the center shouts across to us. “But all it takes is one bullet, so don’t get any ideas.”
Minos speaks in a low voice, barely audible to me a few meters behind him.
“On three,” he says. “Drop tits first to the ground.”
“Why–?”
“One, two, three–.”
I fall to the ground, and I hear gunshots roar out.
As soon as I hit the ground, I look up.
Minos’ biosuit has hardened like armor in front of him, though it’s still thin in back. The bullets are bouncing and plinking off his thick armor, and there’s something flying through the air toward the shooters.
It looks like it may be disc-shaped, but it’s moving so fast that it looks more like a blurred streak.
When it reaches just to the right of the shooters, it cuts suddenly left at a sharp 90-degree angle. I see the heads of two shooters fall off their bodies, and their guns keep firing as they fall limply to the ground.
The third shooter’s gun falls from his hand–no, just part of it falls, the front half–and he’s left holding just the grip and stock of the rifle, which he tosses to the ground.
Minos is rushing toward him now, and just when I think he couldn’t run any faster, he...turns into a bear.
A massive, purple bear. He moves even faster toward the man, who dives in desperation toward his fallen comrade’s rifle.
Just as he reaches for the gun, the disc flies back around and cuts off his hand.
“Fiona!” Fenrir’s voice calls out from behind me. I turn around to see Fenrir behind me. “Run back to the buggy, get in, and drive as far away as you can!”
I look at him with wide eyes, though he can’t see my fear through the tinted face mask.
“Go! Minos is rigged with a kill switch! My biosuit can shield me from the blast, but I need you to get far away. Go! Now!”
I take a deep breath and then run back towards the buggy as Fenrir told me to do. When I look back, Fenrir has transformed into a bear as well, and he’s
rushing toward Minos.
18 Fenrir
I shift to bear form and charge toward Minos. I need to get closer to him to use my biosuit’s full power, and bear form will get me there fastest.
Minos shifts back to Marauder form as he reaches the rifle, and he rolls into it and snatches it up off the ground.
Still in bear form, I will my biosuit to form a long tendril. One of the fallen men’s rifles is much closer to me than it is to Minos–who is still out of range–so I stretch toward the weapon with my tendril.
The biosuit stretches to its limits, and it reaches so far that my whole body is left unprotected for the duration. I’m almost one-hundred meters away, and my tendril forms a hand as it approaches the second rifle.
Minos turns back and notices what I’m doing. Suddenly his bio-disc–which was heading straight toward me–cuts wide and severs my tendril.
I pull back the remaining mass into myself as I shift back to Marauder form. The severed tendril pulls itself into a sphere, and continues rolling toward the rifle.
The disc arcs back around, and before it can even start toward me again, Minos opens fire with his rifle.
My tendril fuses back into me just in time, and I form a hardened shield. I don’t have enough mass to shield my whole body, so I form it into a handheld one.
I raise the shield toward Minos and fall to my knees, shrinking my massive body behind the teal shield.
I feel the impact of bullets hitting the shield a few times, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I see Minos’s disc zoom into view and make a sharp turn.
Just before it reaches me, bullets slam against the shield again.
Right before the disc is on me, I swing the shield around toward it and dive into it. I will the shield to shrink down and become denser, to become stronger. The shield is so small that I barely manage to move it in front of the disc. Just before I slam the disc with it, a string of bullets tears into my leg.
When I hit the disc with the shield, sparks fly, and the disc bounces hard away from me, wobbling precariously. It will have to arc around for a while before it gets enough speed to strike again.
I grow the shield once again and cut off the gunfire before more bullets can cut into me.
My leg is oozing blood, and when I try to stand, pain lances through my entire body. I try to move through the pain, but my leg goes numb and I fall back down. I keep the shield held in position, and Minos holds fire. He knows it’s a waste of bullets to hit me when I’m shielded; he won’t fire until I have to split my defense to deflect his disc again.
But before that can happen, I transfer my focus to the severed sphere of my biosuit.
It’s dangerous, because I can barely keep my body holding the shield at the correct angle, and there’s no way I can deflect the disc with most of my consciousness in the spherical biosuit fragment.
I shouldn’t need to deflect the disc again though, because the sphere is right on the fallen shooter’s body, next to his rifle. I shape two hands out of the sphere to grab the rifle. From the sphere’s vision, I can see Minos with his rifle trained on the shield in my hand, and the disc circling back around for another attack.
Though I have just a few moments, it’s more time than I need.
The sphere’s hands aim the rifle right at Minos, and the movement alerts him. It’s too late though: all his biosuit mass is in the disc and I pull the trigger before he can even move.
I don’t let go as the gun rattles off, and bullets cut through his body. When I see a shot blast right through his skull, I bring full focus back to my body.
With Minos dead, his disc falls uselessly to the ground and slides across the ground dozens of meters away from me.
I pull my knees into my chest and slam the shield onto the ground, bracing myself against it. I spare a look back and see our buggy as a mere speck on the horizon. Thankfully the Seraphim Fiona listened to me.
I pump all of my remaining energy into the shield, and my stomach roars with hunger as I drain all my energy. The hunger makes me dizzy and lightheaded. I’ll likely pass out soon, but hopefully I can stay awake for–
A brilliant flash of light, like lightning cutting open the black of night, erupts, and though I’m pressed against my shield with my eyes clasped shut, it still nearly blinds me through my eyelids.
And then I feel the first force of the explosion. Small pebbles of Martian soil slamming against the shield like a dust storm. The shield begins to shake and tremble in my grasp, and I can hear and feel, deep in my rattling bones, what seems like an earthquake roaring across the ground, straight toward me. The shockwave.
When it’s just a few dozen meters away, I spend the rest of my energy and order the shield to encircle me. It cuts out all light and hardens around me. I spend every last bit of biomass to harden the shield. There’s nothing left for inertia dampening, and the sphere is blasted away by the shockwave. I’m sent flying like a barrel dropping over a waterfall.
My back slams against the sides of the shield, and my leg, still full of bullets, sears in pain.
The worst of the shaking starts to die down, and I can tell the sphere is losing momentum as the shockwave weakens with distance from the center of the blast. And then, without warning, the sphere stops dead. The last thing I feel before totally blacking out is my skull slamming against the inner wall of the sphere.
19 Fiona
I drive as fast as I can, though I still feel like a coward for running away while Fenrir fights that monster. I let my rational thoughts win out though: if I try to be a hero, I’ll get in the way. Even though I’m “Turret Woman,” I don’t have any form of weapon, and I sure as hell don’t have a way to fight something as dangerous as a Marauder’s biosuit-turned-death-boomerang.
And I have to drive fast and can’t waste a second, because there’s going to be a huge explosion.
Irrationally I want the explosion to not happen at all–for everyone to be safe. Fenrir told me he could shield himself, but what if he was just telling me what I wanted to hear? Saving me while sacrificing himself?
And rationally...rationally, I need there to be an explosion. If I keep driving and nothing goes boom, then it means that Fenrir lost the fight, doesn’t it?
I order the rear-facing camera to zoom in as I drive, and just as the camera finds Fenrir–a small speck on the horizon–a huge dome of white light materializes behind him.
I watch it grow, but within seconds the camera is flooded, and the screen is nothing more than a bright white light.
I keep driving, and moments later I feel a deep rumble. I’m at least two kilometers away now, but Mars is still shaking...and Fenrir can’t be more than a few hundred meters from the center of the blast.
I slam on the brakes. A few more dozen meters won’t make any difference, and I need to get back to him as soon as I can once the dust settles.
“Dust storm approaching,” a voice speaks out from the dashboard.
“It’s not a dust storm,” I mutter, as small debris begins to slam against the outer hull of the buggy.
The white light begins to die down, and based on the fact that I’m still alive, I realize I cleared the worst of the blast.
But what about Fenrir?
I whip the buggy around in a furious 180-degree turn, and I drive full speed ahead toward the epicenter of the blast.
There is a thick cloud of dust lingering from the explosion, and some medium-sized boulders are glowing red from the heat of the blast.
“Fenrir,” I say, “Please be okay. Please…”
He’s strong. He’ll survive. I keep telling myself that over and over as I drive.
Soon I make out the ruins of the way station. There’s almost no remaining evidence of the building itself, just a small square of regular-colored soil framed in singed black. And then I notice snapped-off pipes spilling out of the soil like gutted intestines. They are spewing water out into huge pools. At least we’ll be able to get something to drink.
Once I reach the station, I pop the door open and jump out.
I turn back in the direction I came from, and I walk toward where Fenrir would have been. Where he will be.
The dust was too thick to see while driving, but outside of the buggy, and after some time has passed, the dust begins to clear. The pale sun becomes visible again, and I see the molten rocks cooling from fiery white-hot to a cooler orange.
Anxiety builds in me as I search with no success. I’m standing right around where Fenrir was when I saw the blast erupt, but there’s nothing here. I see only a patch of tall rocks in the distance, and so I head toward them.
After a few minutes of walking, reaching a few hundred meters from the rocks, I see a purple shape rise up in front of the rock wall.
Fenrir.
He takes a few steps toward me, then collapses to the ground.
I rush toward him. I run as fast as I can in my heavy clothes, and I breathe heavily into the oxygen mask. The mask begins to fog up as I pant hot breath into it, but I don’t stop running.
“Fenrir!” I shout, almost on top of him.
“You did well,” he says, his voice rasping.
“Are you okay?” He’s well enough to stand, but I can’t help but worry.
I slide down on my knees beside him, and I look at the bloody pulp that is his leg. It’s oozing blood and full of gushing holes.
“Shit, Fenrir…”
“It’s fine,” he says. “I heal fast and fully. Just bring the buggy around and get me.”
“You got shot like…” I count the holes. “Five or six times! And you got literally blown up.”
He laughs, but it turns into a wheezing cough.
“Stop laughing, you idiot.”
He smiles. “No, I didn’t get blown up. I encased myself in my biosuit. The plan was to let the shockwave just roll me safely away while shielding me from the heat.”
He looks back up at the tall rocks. “But I guess I slammed pretty hard into these...bashed my head really hard and knocked me out. Basically just a bad bump. It will heal.”
Marauder Fenrir: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars) Page 10