Martian Dragons

by Ian Woodhead

  Di-Malok leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment and contemplated where that former avenue would have taken that young and arrogant junior officer. He imagined an alternate version of himself commanding one of the Emperor's battle dreadnoughts as he lead them and his fleet of support cruisers, destroyers and smaller but no less deadly Devastators against their ancient enemy.

  The last word he received from their timeless war against them was the enemy had wrenched two more star systems out of the Emperor's grasp. It appeared that the enemy were in yet another expansion phase. In the last phase which occurred two hundred years ago, they lost almost a third of their vast territory to these unknown aliens. If they continued to push, then it is conceivable that by the time their current Emperor did announce the list, the names written on that sacred parchment could end up fighting over a few pitiful ruined star systems with the dire knowledge that the enemy were about to overrun the remains of the greatest Empire that this galactic sector had ever seen.

  Was it too conceited to think that if the promise of power, willing mates, gemstones of fine meat had not pulled him away, then he alone might have found some way to stop these foul vermin from fragmenting and destroying their magnificent empire?

  He closed the images. It was not conceited at all. Until they encountered this highly advanced species of equally aggressive predators, their species had not encountered another race of sentient creatures capable of even standing up to the great Dionion Empire. To announce that another empire existed, possibly even greater than their own, was liable to get the idiotic Dionion who made the statement repurposed.

  Di-Malok believed the strategy and dogma which had worked so well in the past could not apply to a species possibly more advanced. How could it work? Beating a weaker opponent, one who could not effectively fight back required little or no skill.

  The Dionion belief that no other living creature could possibly be more advanced or superior did nothing to help their fight against these aliens either. Di-Malok stopped dead. He thought back to everything that happened to him since waking up. Every movement, every thought and every conversation played on this belief so perhaps it was not some acceptance that their superiority over every other living creature could be true but an unshakable fact. “Even though this is not the case anymore?” So, perhaps it is this misguided belief that led their lead strategists to commit their forces into battles that, in reality, they could not possibly win? Meaning that they were the ones chiefly responsible for killing their soldiers and not the enemy.

  It felt like a paradox to think that he could come up with some winning strategy which could remove his unknown operators and defeat their enemy by employing this same misguided belief which told Di-Malok that he was superior to every other lifeform, especially every other member of his species. Surely, he could not be the first Dionion to realise that without a strategy change, their Empire would cease to exist?

  Paradox or not, Di-Malok had already committed himself and his loyal crew onto this path. It would either work, which meant, this system would finally fall, their enemy would be dead and he would be the next Emperor. If it failed, then he really would end up being somebody's chair.

  The Comms package from his ship softly beeped. His preparations were now in place. He ensured his route back to his ship was secure before opening another Comms package, this time to the entire complex.

  “Fellow citizens of the great Dionion Empire. By now you will have heard that our last push to wipe the deviants from the fourth plant in the system has failed. Procedure and law compels that we study why this happened, before launching another attack.” Di-Malok could almost hear his operators hurriedly activating their silent assassins and readying them to kill him, depending on the outcome of his remaining speech. He did not intend to disappoint them. “That is not going to happen. Another wave is already on their way which will soften our enemy before the next wave arrives.” He paused one more time before he added in the final blow. “There are twenty-six thousand civilian personal and eight thousand soldiers in the complex. There will be no more sending of a few repurposed criminals to that planet to die in vain as very shortly, you will all be going. This pointless game with the Terrestrials ends now. This system is ours. Fellow Dionions, prepare for war, prepare for victory and prepare to feast upon the corpses of our enemies!”

  Di-Malok knew his time here was fast running out. He needed to get to his ship before his operators silenced him for good. He stood up and took out the item which the Bayan slave gave to him earlier. “Listen to me, chair. I know the Inner Cardinals left all your senses intact, meaning you are aware of what will happen to my body if the people who did this to you catch me.” He placed the small fusion bomb on the surface. “If you seek revenge for what they did to you then absorb this device and leave no scar. The proximity charge will do the rest.” He stood up. “One more thing before I leave. I do not regret hurting you. I may be different but I am still a Dionion.”

  He waited until the device sank into the flesh before turning and fleeing.

  Chapter Twelve

  Shades of Grey

  His Danu vacsuit softly bleeped while politely informing Deck Commander Tollan Billas that his heart rate had increased to three percent above optimal levels. He considered ignoring it for a brief second. That changed when its insistence got on his nerves, instead, he told it to fuck off before muting the damn thing. Billas still made an effort to try to bring his heart rate down to optimum rate. He had no intention of allowing this traitorous piece of alien wizardry grassing him up to the men in suits up on that ivory tower.

  “Carstairs” he growled. “What part of keep your eyes on the target do you not understand?” He ran across the rugged landscape and stopped close over to the sealed airlock, resisting the urge to punching the sloppy marine on his way to the only viable entrance into this section of the base. His gaze digested the screen data, displayed a few centimetre's above the door panel before returning to his position. Billas didn't need to ask Edison how much longer it would take to cut through the security lock. His second in command knew his beans, unlike the rest of these worthless sad excuse for soldiers in his small unit.

  Billas checked the life stats for the remaining two remaining soldiers in his unit. Both Adams and Falkirk were doing fine. Neither of those idle bastards were showing any evidence of increased heart rate. Then again, why should they? The two marines were nice and cosy aboard their dropship. Adams in the cockpit and Falkirk operating the pulse cannons. Billas swiped away the info when Edison signalled that the lock no longer existed and they were free to enter.

  “Okay. We go in standard formation. You know the drill,” he said. Carstairs crept forward and took up position behind an overturned rock hopper while Edison scanned the airlock for any hidden explosives. Billas doubted that they'd find any. The Marauders weren't here long enough to plant their usual assortment of deadly anti-personal devices. Billas wasn't taking any chances, despite the explicit instructions given to him by the suit's. As far as they were concerned, his reduced team should have no problem with walking straight into the base and shaking the hand of the base's liberators. Shaking his hand? If Billas could get away with killing the meddling bastard, that's exactly what he would have done. That dirty bluelander deserved shooting in the face for causing all this disruption. Thanks to him, his daughter could end up dead.

  Billas had everything under control until the land-lover turned up and ruined all of his carefully crafted plans. He even had figured out a way of getting his daughter back from the clutches of that new Marauder commander. All Billas needed was a little more time. Well, all that was in the past now, he could only hope that the new Marauder will be happy with a straight exchange. The land-lover for his daughter.

  “Give me a status update, Adams.”

  “All is quiet our here, sir. There is nothing moving within a million klicks. Apart from our ships, that is.”

  “Okay, alert me if they're any changes and both of
you, stay sharp. There's no telling how many Marauders have left on the surface, or under it.”

  He received a quiet chuckle before the Comms went dead. Adams, like every other human marine knew the story of what came up through the red dirt, over two centuries ago and, somehow, brought their species back from the brink of extinction only to involve them all in a much wider conflict.

  Billas gently stroked the side of his faithful human made energy pulse rifle, manufactured up on their capital ship. It might not be as effective as anything designed and constructed by their so-called allies but considering their species had nothing nowhere as deadly as their stuff just two centuries ago, he didn't think they had done too bad. Granted, their spies procured the tech from the Danu and the human scientists had a small amount of success in retro engineering the stuff but still... He smiled to himself. Their species had done pretty damn good for a bunch of talking apes. Talking is apes is what the Danu called their species when they were out of earshot.

  If only those legendary explorers had these babies back then. Those ancient Mechs would not have stood a chance.

  He still remembered the time when he just happened to overhear one of the Danu deckhands refer to his species in that derogatory manner and just for that split-second, Billas had the urge to throw every single one of those high and mighty, tight-lipped arrogant fuckers right out of the airlock and watch them all simultaneously choke and freeze on the Martian surface.

  Billas had generally got on with the deckhands, they weren't usually as pretentious as the other castes. They were more willing to talk to him about their past too, something the others never did. Even the one who left the comment about the human being not that too different from their simian relatives had no problem in sharing their stories.

  Billas hearing the tail end of one such story about a Danu pilot who once entered an improperly calibrated quantum gate and instead of the gate flattening him and his machine to one atom thick slice of dark matter, it threw him back hundreds of years in time.

  He so wanted to hear what happened to that pilot, what adventures he had, whether he found a way home of if he died in the ancient past but alas, it was not to be as the deckhand telling that particular story did not wish to repeat the tale. Billas had no idea whether this actually happened or if it was just some old sailor's tale. It didn't matter, the premise of the story had stuck in his mind. It reminded him that the other species had their own stories to tell.

  Eddison managed to get the airlock open. He threw in a stealth proximity drone waited for it to relay back any relevant information. Once he was convinced that none of them would be vaporised by any hidden enemy, he followed it inside. Carstairs went in next. Billas ran in after them, watching the info from the drone as it sped up through the corridors, continuously scanning for signs of Marauder life signs. The drone was programmed to only detect the enemy and not engage them. The drones were still not powerful enough to do that. Human built tech had some catching up to do before that happened.

  Billas thought about the remnants of that story he heard. How great would it be if he was able to travel back to the golden age of human ingenuity and present this weapon to a bunch of resident lab-geeks? Sure, the humans in that time period were busy trying to destroy each other but at least they only had the one species to worry about. The tech inside this humble device might have given them a fighting chance when their legendary astronauts finally got to the dead ball of red rock.

  He sighed heavily before unmuting the Danu vacsuit. It might have given their species a some leverage when they finally encountered both the Dionion and the Danu battlefleet. He imagined himself living in a different timeline where all three species were treated as equals instead of the other two races looking at the humans as pets, as inferior creatures, fit only for doing the most menial of tasks.

  Billas had never told anyone about how he felt about the other Terrestrials. Keeping his opinions to himself seemed like the wisest move, despite knowing that he wasn't the only human who shared his resentment. The suits clamped down hard on any human who openly showed hostility towards their new friends. He could not work out why the suits had this bizarre compulsion to look upon the Danu and the Velicions as their saviours, and think the human race should be forever thankful of their intervention two centuries ago.

  What would have happened if those Mechs, which, by the way, no Terrestrial had ever claimed ownership of, had never awoken when their astronauts first landed? Billas liked to think that perhaps, the new world might have found some other way of uniting their species, instead of it turning into yet another battleground. He sighed heavily yet again. Billas knew his history well enough to know that wouldn't have been the case. The governments were already losing interest in space exploration by the time they intercepted that signal.

  It was more of a likely scenario of never encountering the Mechs on the surface of Mars that their species would not have made it to this point in time. The rival factions were already getting looking for any excuse to start another war.

  Billas wasn't too sure but if believed he'd just argued himself full circle. Okay, so most of the human population were living a sugar-coated existence, utterly unaware of the daily conflict happening millions of miles from their homeworld but at least they were safe. At least, they were no longer trying to kill each other. Surely that had to be better than the alternative? Not to mention that once this Marauder threat had ended, both Terrestrial species had already promised to share their massed knowledge with their new 'pets'.

  Edison signalled the all clear. There were no more Marauders left on the base. The only activity spotted by drone belonged to all three terrestrial species, waiting for them in the control room. Billas relayed the news to the capital ship before ordering Edison and Carstairs to accompany him up to their waiting 'heroes'.

  It was time to get this mess sorted out. By that, he intended to ensure that the individuals who had messed up his plans were dealt with in a way that ensured his hands stayed clean. For the sake of his position, his command and for his daughter.

  He waited until Edison and Carstairs to secure the inner airlock, before he re-entered the base. The two men moved into the next section and initiated another scan. They had gone through this rigmarole many times before and knew what to look for. The Marauders usually left a couple of nasty surprises for them, either explosives or poison gas canisters. Billas still believed that they wasn’t here long enough but it didn’t harm to take the extra precaution. His men must have believed the same but that knowledge did not hamper their search.

  Billas watched them through the section window, feeling so proud to have men of such calibre under his command. Even Carstairs showed skill and diligence as he passed the scanner along the walls. Then again, what else did Billas expect? If Carstairs did happen to miss anything, he'd be the one finding himself missing most of his face.

  The men gave the signal then moved into the next section. Billas gave the all clear signal to the dropship then entered the next section. By the time the back-up squad had arrived, he should be ready to deal with the prisoners.

  He still hadn't worked out how to persuade the enemy commander to swap the land-lover for his daughter. Billas already knew why the alien wanted him, that was obvious, yet not so obvious to the suits? If Billas could discover his secret before handing the human over to the new governor then perhaps he might have the chance to stop this damned war for good?

  The commanders would simply farm the planet, taking the Papal Police, the special forces, as well as any of those land-lovers not too drugged up and press them into a fighting force, equip with the non-human weaponry and then blast them towards the enemy. Their chances of survival might not be that great but Billas was pretty sure the surprise attack would show the alien menace not to fuck with the human species.

  “Divide and conquer,” he murmured. That was how he should deal with these so called heroes of the hour.”

  He walked back over to the outer airlock, at t
he same time his drone returned. Billas viewed the data that the machine had collected. Ryan and his gang of thugs had turned his base into a slaughterhouse. Their apparent efficiency with dispensing with their alien enemy almost made Billas change his mind over what he intended to do. The prisoners had killed more Marauders than all his own marines put together. They would make a formidable death squad. So much more capable in dealing out death than his own current motley bunch of disobedient fools.

  The choice was made and, as unfortunate as it was, Billas could not back out, not if he wished to see his daughter back in his arms. “Divide and conquer,” he repeated under his breath while watching his remaining two crew members approach the outer airlock.

  Billas operated the cycling procedure, eager to get this over with. The rest of the base staff wouldn't be back planetside for about another hour, which gave him time to get this mess well and truly sorted out.

  Adams and Falkirk tipped him a sloppy salute as they entered the base. Billas just nodded back, he decided to file their borderline insubordination to be dealt with at another time. He waited for their Danu vacsuits to realise that it really was safe for their occupants to breathe before outlining his plan to them. There really wasn't much of a plan, only to ensure the human Land-lover was separated from the others. He didn't care what happened to the prisoners, in fact, Billas doubted that even the rest of the personal would notice if they were all to quietly vanish. Only Ryan mattered. He needed to get him to a safe place.