The Oldest War

by Matt Snee

  “I think we all might be hungry,” Plerrxx suggested. “Perhaps we should go to the dining car.”

  “That's a great idea,” Captain thought and said at the same time. He was famished. He considered what kind of food they would have on a train such as this. He shook his head; I don't care, I'm hungry, he thought to himself.

  Jennifer and Tess agreed they were hungry too, and Plerrxx admitted he had brought it up for that same reason. “Let's go then,” Jennifer confirmed the plan.

  They followed Plerrxx. Captain followed, then Jennifer. Tess lingered at the back. They walked through the train, carefully maintaining their balance as it moved around them. They walked past all the other passengers sitting in various directions on their chairs. Some talking, sleeping, playing with computers; but most staring out the window aimlessly. The majority of the passengers were human. They passed an alien huddled under a hood, a lizard-man, a Venusian, and a Mercurian rock-man, bulging through his clothes which were obviously human and not a very good disguise. The Mercurian sat crumpled in his seat as the heroes passed. He lifted up and stared at each one of them with his crystal eyes, huffing his rock-man lungs and growling sub-aurally. The Mercurian watched them as they made their way to the next segment of the train.

  They came to the dining car. Captain was amazed by how familiarly modern it seemed, as though it was a train on Earth. There were booths along the windows for the length of the car. Most of the seats were taken up already. Plerrxx found an empty booth toward the back and they scooted into it, the boys on one side, the girls on the other. Once they were settled in an undead Indian waiter came over and passed them a leaflet upon which was printed a small menu in easy to understand English. Captain let his eyes drift hungrily over it. There weren't many options: a plate of beans, corn, and buffalo meat; or a plate of steamed Earth vegetables.

  “This is how the Dunleavys get the stuff from Earth,” Captain said, accidentally out loud. “And how they get back.”

  “That's right,” said Tess. “They solved the puzzle of space travel by avoiding it. No spaceships. Everything is carried by the train.”

  “But why were there so many cargo ships in the spaceport?”

  Plerrxx answered, stroking his chin. “Most of those are going from Jupiter to other ports in the Solar System, unaffiliated with the Dunleavys. Anyone is allowed to trade on Ganymede—for a price.”

  “That's right.” said Tess. “What they want in return for trading is usually half of your profit. But people do it anyway because Dunleavy is a monopoly and they have no other choice.”

  “But wouldn't the Delphiniums hold the same monopoly if they took control?” Plerrxx argued.

  “No. We would provide limited oversight. We would open up the facilities to free businesses. We will break up the monopoly, I promise it,” Tess spoke proudly.

  “I'll believe it when I see it,” Plerrxx sighed. “Nothing compares to the perfection of Mmrowwrian capitalism. I would suggest you emulate it.”

  Captain listened but did not interfere with their discussion. Instead he sat back and looked at his menu again, selecting the buffalo meat.

  Jennifer looked down at her menu in her own stupor. Finally, Tess bugged her, “Jennifer. What are you getting?”

  “I'm—the vegetables of course.” Jennifer did not turn, just continued to stare at the menu.

  “And you?” Tess asked Captain.

  “Buffalo meat it is.”

  “Me too.”

  “Jennifer is cool then,” Tess started, “but you other two are dirty carnivores. You know they raise those buffalo on Europa, right? They're totally diseased and radiated. You should see how they treat them!”

  Captain changed his order to the vegetables.

  Plerrxx just shook his head. “And you think those vegetables are organic?”

  “Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils.” Tess lifted her chin up.

  “Then I choose the tastier of two evils.”

  “Fine.” Tess glared at Plerrxx.

  Captain—eager to change the subject—interrupted. “Can you, uh, tell me how any of this is possible?” He turned to Tess. “You said you would explain.”

  “I was explaining,” she retorted. “We just got sidetracked by coming here.”

  “So… how did the Dunleavys do it?”

  “Hold on a sec.” Tess pointed at the ghostly waiter, who had come back to take their orders, emitting a weird hum like a distant wind.

  “What you want?” the waiter asked gruffly, looking at each of them with his black eyes.

  “Three vegetable and one meat plate,” Tess said in a loud, forceful voice. “And canned juice all around.” She raised her head and stared the waiter down.

  “What else?”

  “Nothing.” Tess spat the word out. The waiter turned and left. After he was gone, Captain turned to Tess.

  “Why did you talk to him like that?”

  “Because they are the enemy,” she answered. “They may be prisoners—but they are the enemy nonetheless.”

  Jennifer eyed Captain, pondering his response. Captain didn't know the story and quickly complained about it again. “Please, will someone tell me how this happened?”

  “Yes,” Jennifer said. “Tess will. Appropriately and without exaggeration.” Now she stared Tess down.

  The girl grimaced. “Well, I was going to tell it anyway.”

  “Then go ahead.” Jennifer looked out the window.

  “Okay,” Tess muttered. She began to tell the story.

  * * *

  The Delphiniums faded. There were whispers of them if you looked; however, history, especially women's history, was made to forget how things were. The Dunleavys and their allies made it so.

  Empires came and went. Through the years the patriarchy—ever bloodthirsty—fought with itself. The Iron Age gave way to the Dark Ages, where brother murdered brother and the gods no longer intervened in mortal affairs. The Dark Ages gave way to the Industrial Age and the New World was finally within reach of the patriarchy, whose leadership fluctuated like the seasons. The Dunleavys, whose fortunes had risen and fallen, saw a new opportunity in the frontier and did everything they could to invest in its future. America – this was the now.

  The Shadows, who stewarded the Earth from their wretched city in the sky, gently nudged their cronies into strong positions. The Old World safely took over the New, with exception. The anarchy of the West, a new melting pot where capitalism reigned freer than anarchy became hideous, even more vicious. The Shadows' oppression was invisible, but it was there, and you could feel it. You might wonder what it was that restrained you, but you would never guess the real question wasn't “what?” but “who?”

  The Dunleavys did well in America, building guns and laying down railroads with the same metal they cut down the Delphiniums with. The wide frontier got smaller every day.

  The newest heir to the Dunleavy house, Richard Ross Dunleavy, set foot on the prairie determined to outdo his grandfather's legacy. He was a brilliant but evil man. His weaknesses and strengths issued from his dreams of the heavens, while the other families fought over the Earth. The West was too small. He needed to outsmart them all. He struggled against the yoke of the Shadows. That we respect but not his method. It was debased.

  He followed the clues as he found them. He knew there was a way off planet, into the world above; he knew it the whole time. He was relentless and searched every corner of the world for the truth, testing each possibility to see if it would suit his needs. He found difficulty at every turn. Finally, he outwitted the Shadows by creating a device that protected him and his men from the psychic block the Shadows enforced, giving him the upper hand—only to discover the same device had already been discovered, and then forgotten through time.

  Richard Ross was determined to win. He would stop at nothing to achieve his goal. He soon found ways off Earth, but they were all guarded by either gods or men. Inspiration struck—he would find the answer in
the New World, where all things were possible.

  He horded rumors, amassed secrets, until he finally found what he was looking for, a Native American legend about a goddess born of Jupiter, who could convey herself between the worlds of her father and the humble perfection of Earth. To any other man it would have sounded like nonsense, but Richard Ross saw the myths as they were, as the truth.

  He set out into the wilderness to find the tribe that spoke of this. They were called the Yuriqoi. They dwelt in the caves of mountains.

  “There's nothing man cannot do,” Richard Ross told his men. “We were designed for greatness. To not be great is an insult to God.” The Dunleavys worshipped the Horned God, whose presence lingered over this realm.

  The Yuriqoi welcomed them with axes and arrows. After the battle, when only a fragment of the tribe remained, Richard Ross got off his horse and had the chief dragged over to him. The heir of the Dunleavys bent and growled in the chief's face, “Do you want to live?” He spoke in a spattering of Native American languages.

  “Yes,” said the chief. His eyes turned to his children, who were being forced out kicking and screaming. The chief knew what the white man wanted—the tribe's greatest treasure, their matron, the goddess Mother Snake. All the chief could do is acquiesce and point to the nearby caves.

  Richard Ross and his men searched the caves under the mountain. There she was, waiting, hissing softly. Her eyes shining in the darkness. She was huge—the size of a train. Richard Ross and his men held torches, making the light flicker over the translucent skin of the goddess. When they got as close to her as she would allow, she hissed loudly stopping their advance further.

  “Mother,” Richard Ross began, “I have come seeking your favor.”

  The snake hissed in reply, before speaking English with its slithering voice.

  “You. You are the one of the white men. You plague the people of the mountainsssssss.”

  “We do not plague, Mother,” Richard Ross pleaded. “We illuminate.”

  “You think your evil matchesssssss my own…”

  “No, Mother. I think we both suffer from a great need.”

  “What need isssss that?”

  “You need a body, and I need a train.”

  “What issssss a train?” Mother Snake hissed and trembled.

  “It's power, Mother. Power to do great things. I could give you that power.”

  “For what?”

  “Enter my service. Do my bidding.”

  Mother Snake laughed, which was more unsettling than her hiss. “Ssssssserve a man? Never!” Her eyes became tiny pinpricks as she glared at him.

  Richard Ross had expected as much. He possessed the same quick tongue of his ancestors along with his ingenuity and determination. “I could give you a body, in fact I could give you many bodies.” he told Mother Snake.

  “Many bodies?” It was known that all deities such as Mother Snake desired to experience flesh and blood. “What kind of bodies?”

  “Like I said,” Richard Ross spoke gently. “You could be a train. A thing of great power. You could change the world. You would get to the power of all those who would travel with in you. Anyone can have one body. Only a true goodness can have the power of multiple bodies at once.”

  Mother Snake hissed again. She was getting tired of his words. She considered what he said. Oh, how she had longed for a body! Instead all she had was the wisp of sensation known as immortality.

  “You could try it for, say, a thousand years or so. How about that?” Richard Ross slowly negotiated. “It's not a long time, for a goddess.”

  Mother Snake hissed again, thinking. “Yessssss.”

  So it was as easy as that to trick the goddess. The Dunleavys are fierce opponents.

  Within a matter of days, Richard Ross began to paint the cave walls. He painted Mother Snake as a long locomotive, flying upon rails of lightning. Upon the locomotive were people, cargo, machines, animals: all the things that accompanied human colonization. With paints made from both animals and humans, he created a spinning Solar System, and the train travelling through it from Earth to Jupiter.

  In punishment for their cowardice, Mother Snake asked Richard Ross to paint the Yuriqoi as her servants and operators, so that they would be forever sorry. Richard Ross agreed eagerly and did as he was asked.

  As soon as the painting was complete, the magic started. The moment Mother Snake could feel her form hardening into flesh and iron, she regretted it. She knew she had been tricked. Little did she know of the curse of flesh. So she would learn. As for the Yuriqoi, their bodies were taken from them, and they were made phantom slaves.

  Richard Ross watched as Mother Snake slowly took shape, settling down on the cave floor, heavy with metal and muscle. The cave walls blew to pieces, revealing a new tunnel up through the mountains into the sky. A yellow band of lightning materialized beneath the rails of the train and crackled in the dark of the cave. There she was - the Spirit Train, in all her glory.

  For the initial journey, Richard Ross took his men and his “family”. At that point it consisted only of his wife, Francis Florence Dunleavy who was frequently ill and rumored to hate her husband, and his sister Deborah Dawn Dunleavy, who was pregnant with some scoundrel's child.

  A town grew on Ganymede. Richard Ross welcomed refugees from all over the Solar System who had no place else to go. There were criminals sometimes, but mostly just folks who were down on their luck. The population grew, and settlements spread to Europa and Io.

  Francis Florence watched all of this in horror. What had her husband made? She watched as desperate men inhabited the town, willing to do the basest things in exchange for food and shelter. Many fled Earth for the moons of Jupiter. Richard Ross recruited everywhere. There was a certain freedom there that sucked in trouble. They had broken the bonds of the Shadows and built a new, free world.

  Richard Ross only schemed to replace one tyranny with another, and in order to have his own freedom he would stamp on everyone else's. The Delphiniums believed in freedom, but not complete freedom. A person shouldn't be free to hurt or kill another, or to exploit or steal another's resources. All of these “freedoms” were available on the moons of Jupiter, should you pay the right people, the Dunleavy people for example.

  Towns turned into cities. Cruel acts became commonplace. There seemed to be plenty of supplies on the moons, but most colonists were lacking in many basic amenities. Healthy food was hard to come by. Clean water was in abundance, but it was measured out strictly.

  Men were given jobs, as were women and children. Carrying on the traditions of the West, work was practically slavery, with long hours and hazardous working conditions that kill humans at young ages. The company owned everything and the colonists gave most of their supposed wages back to it. It was hard to get by.

  Industries rose on the moons that would have been unimaginable in ingenuous new America. At times, Richard Ross could be generous, forward-thinking, and helpful. Most of the time he lurked behind his volunteers, a security force he employed to keep the peace, plotting his next course of action. Under his negligence, many injustices were rained on the people. Living quarters were infested with space rats and alien viruses. Radiation soaked everything. The food was processed with chemicals.

  There was a curfew, limited trade, and a lively underground black market that was controlled by the Dunleavys. The volunteers were allowed to enforce a “might makes right” campaign over the citizens. People who criticized the Dunleavys were silenced. Employees that were insubordinate were left to starve upon the moons, never allowed to return to Earth. This harshness provided for increased, harried production, but at great cost to the people. It was the enemy of non-feudal capitalism, the monster in the box. All things suffered accordingly.

  The moons were cold and deadly. A man could be killed at any time by another man. The rich could buy protection; the poor had no such shield. Many died from violence, poor working conditions, disease, suicide, or any number of th
ings. It didn't matter, their loss wasn't a concern. More Earth immigrants flooded onto the moons every day, carried in by the Spirit Train. There were plenty of people willing to work under any conditions, just to survive and have a promise of freedom. The Shadows had clandestinely rendered the Earth a terrible place, many escaped any way they could. Jupiter, which claimed to be free, held great attraction.

  The years passed. The colony continued to grow.

  One day, when Francis Florence was in her early forties, after bearing three of Richard Ross's children—all of whom were killed in violence—she was walking down the streets of old Ganymede when a young woman approached her. The young woman was dressed in rags and smelled of filth, but Francis Florence allowed the interaction.

  “What do you want?” Francis Florence asked the girl. “Money?”

  “I want revenge on your family for killing my tribe,” the young woman said. She drew a knife and pulled Francis Florence into an alley.

  Despite Francis Florence being frightened, she quickly regained her composure. “I know who you are. I know history. I know who you and your people are here.”

  The Delphinium was of Queen Eleanor's line. She was tall, and disguised from her true majesty. Francis Florence's words had shocked her. She loosened her grip of Francis Florence's throat but kept the knife close to her jugular.

  “Why would you want to know this?” the young woman asked.

  “I want revenge too,” Francis Florence told the girl. “Richard Ross killed our daughter when she was four years old. I—hate him.” Emotion laces her words.

  “Why did he do that?” The Delphinium asked.

  Francis Florence wept. “Because his God told him to.”

  “How did he kill her?” Pity seeped into the young girl's body.

  “He drowned her. Her name—her name was Mary.”

  The Delphinium named Giannette was the current heir to her tribe. Desperate as she was, she had her own dreams of colonization. She listened closely to the Dunleavy woman but was hesitant to immediately trust her. She thought for a few moments, and then she took Francis Florence away, kidnapping her, perhaps for her own safety.