Mars, The Bringer Of War

by George P. Saunders

  Casey turned, regarding her as if perhaps she had suddenly gone insane. His first impulse was to come back with something cruel, something biting. But the expression in her face stomped on that impulse. Instead, he just shook his head.

  “I ... loved you. Once. A long time ago,” he said softly.

  Edna seemed gratified for the attempt at civility. She nodded, inferring as much as possible from his sad tone of voice. “Maybe if we had had children. My fault, I know. Bad plumbing.”

  “No,” Casey said. “I think it went beyond that, Edna. We started out with a stacked deck against us. We’re different people, and we had two chances to make it."

  "And what two chances were those?” Edna asked.

  "Slim and none,” Paul said, this time without acrimony, perhaps with a touch of wistful sadness. He looked back to the star map, and the blip representing the Sel ship breaking free of the Milky Way. “After fifteen years of marriage, I think it’s safe to say we made a mistake.”

  Edna wiped a tear away from her cheek, but continued to stare at him. “Now ... it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  Casey did not answer her. He glanced at Barry -- or more accurately, the Controller in Barry skin and clothes -- as it stared at both of them without batting an eye.

  The starmap was beginning to fade from view. And the eerie half-light replaced the panoply of stars around, above and under John Mars and his people. Mars, like Paul Casey, was feeling inpatient.

  “Ravers, take Lieutenant --”

  “Drakes,” the Marine assisted.

  “Drakes and Mr. Myoga, you stay with Ravers. Mr. Casey, you and I will team up.”

  “What’s the plan?” Ravers asked.

  Mars pointed in one direction. “Head out that way. We meet back here in fifteen minutes. Casey and I will move in an opposite direction. Sooner or later, one of us should hit a wall, or an exit.”

  “And then what?” Drakes asked.

  “If one of us finds an exit, or an entrance to someplace else, we come back here for the others.”

  “What if we run in to that thing out there?” Ravers said.

  Mars considered the question and said, “I don’t think you will.”

  Ravers almost grinned. “You don’t think we will. I feel safer already.”

  Mars ignored the sarcasm. “It came here and killed our wounded. You saw it. It deliberately avoided hurting those of us who were uninjured.”

  “I would tend to agree, Captain,” Myoga nodded in assent. “The robot acted more like a soldier drone. It followed a certain programming, and then once it had executed the function of that programming, disengaged from further hostilities against us.”

  Ravers eyeballed Mars and laughed humorlessly. “Okay. We do it your way. I suppose you’re still in command.”

  “Anytime you want the job...” Mars said, dead serious.

  Ravers held up his hands and turned on his heel, nodding toward Drake and Myoga.

  The Controller stayed close to Mars. Mars turned, aware of the boy’s presence.

  “You, my friend, will stay here with Mr. Simpson and the ladies. Okay?”

  The Controller again nodded agreeably: “Sure.”

  Mars frowned. “You okay, kid?”

  “I’m -- okay,” Barry said dully. He blinked once, for human believability. Mars moved off toward Simpson, who was staying close to Lisa Maynard.

  “Mr. Simpson, if you don’t mind, please stay close to the ladies. We’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” Mars said.

  “Will do,” Simpson agreed.

  Mars turned to Casey. “Ready?”

  “No, but what choice do I have?”

  Mars nodded wearily. “Like the rest of us, none at all.”

  Colonel Pierce Ravers had joined NASA, like Mars, late in his military career. Like Mars, he was a combat officer long before he was a space explorer. Unlike Mars, he had never ceased to have military interests. Ravers was an ambitious man. He had analyzed the nature of his ambition over the course of a lifetime; in his youth, he attributed such a thing to his color and creed. A black man in a white world, a black officer in a white man’s armed forces -- there was little difference. There was a tacit need for extra approval, for superlative performance. It was simply expected of him. If not from the “whiteness” of a world that cried plausible deniability of any underlying racial prejudice, than from himself.

  Ravers was a superior man.

  The world would know it one day.

  In truth, Pierce Ravers had few equals in his career. He was recruited by the NAVY Seals fresh out of Annapolis at the tail end of the Vietnam War, and was promoted through the ranks faster than any cadet in Naval history. Though he was being groomed for great things -- Joint Chief of Staffs, to name but one -- Ravers, like his friend John Mars, was meant for loftier destinies. A decorated field officer in as many covert military operations as John Mars had participated, Ravers had taken the opportunity to learn more of things covert through special training and experience with the Defense Intelligence Agency, a subdivision of the National Security Agency -- and working on a classified level that exceeded a “need to know” basis by even the President of the United States, his commander in chief.

  Thus, Pierce Ravers was a man of secrets. A man of very subjective concerns. A man, he realized day in and day out, of destiny.

  As Ravers moved through the dimly lit interior of the alien spaceship, he wondered how long he could keep his secret from the others -- and particularly John Mars. Though there was still a need for secrecy, he wondered if, ultimately, it would matter if they knew what he knew. He decided at last that he would let circumstances develop and then make an informed, conscientious decision.

  In the meantime, he would act like the rest of the survivors.

  Scared. Alone. Traumatized.

  Pierce Ravers -- a man of destiny -- knew how to play such a game very, very well.

  Mars moved ahead of Casey, though never so quickly as to lose the man out of earshot. Casey was nervous, scared, and out of shape. He was wheezing, and it sounded as if he was mildly asthmatic.

  “What if we run in to an alien?” he rasped.

  “If it’s one of the scorpions -- run. It’s the only advice I have at the moment,” Mars said.

  A nagging question continued to burn in Mars’ mind: Where were they being taken? There was nothing outside of the Milky Way except interstellar gases in an otherwise empty vacuum a hundred square trillion trillion miles wide and square. The starmap which so courteously detailed their exit from the Milky Way deemed fit not to provide the answer. Somehow, he, John Mars, must be the key. He had made First Contact, a year ago. A hostile First Contact with an alien species. Mars had deduced long ago that the aliens themselves were probably not terribly different in appearance than their mechanical counterparts. A logical piece of empirical deduction. It was natural that any species would duplicate itself robotically; Mankind on Earth was already attempting to do the same thing on their fundamentally primitive technology of artificial life.

  But why had these aliens come back, hunted him down in particular? Why not just attack Earth in response to his own counter-attack on the alien robot?

  He concluded that Myoga was probably correct. The alien plan for all of them was beyond their imagination at the moment. It was also logical to conclude that sooner or later -- the details of that plan would be forthcoming.

  Ahead, through the perpetual dim lighting, Mars could make out a solid surface. A wall.

  “There,” he pointed, and Casey squinted into the darkness.

  Directly ahead, detail began to form. The wall stretched out, it seemed, a mile in either direction -- at least well out of detectable sight. The light was brighter along the wall, though the source of the light was indiscernible, short of it emanating from someplace above. Mars moved forward, and touched the surface. It was smooth, though there was some give to it, as if it were composed of some highly durable gelatinous material. Mars remembered his fir
st impression a year ago, on the moon, as he stood atop the alien robot as it freed itself from the lunar dust to kill his entire crew.

  “It’s alive,” Mars said in a whisper. “Bio-mechanical, I think.”

  Casey stiffened and wiped sweat from his face with his jacket. “What, like it’s intelligent or something?”

  “No, not intelligent. Partly organic, is my guess. And,” Mars paused, touching the wall; the wall quivered slightly, then remained motionless. Mars nodded, confirming his hypothesis: “Definitely sensitive to touch.”

  Mars continued to feel the surface, and then began walking along the edge of the wall.

  “Any reason we’re going this way?” Casey inquired.

  “None at all. If you’d like, you can move in the opposite direction. We can meet up in ten minutes back here.”

  “That’s okay,” Casey said, and edged closer still to the big astronaut.

  A noise suddenly echoed behind them. Mars froze, turned his head. Casey tried not to breathe and wheeze. The sound was familiar.

  It was the giant robot.

  “Oh, shit,” Casey hissed in despair.

  “Quiet,” Mars said, putting a comforting arm on the other man’s shoulder.

  The robot scorpion stomped into view. And stood almost directly overhead. Mars knew it was assessing them, making a determination.

  “Move,” Mars said. “Not quickly, but make it look vigorous.”

  Casey did not question the order. He followed Mars, in a quick stride, staying along the wall edge. The robot took two steps forward on its six appendages, and continued its analysis. Mars and Casey kept to their pace. In a moment, the robot scorpion turned -- and moved off into the darkness.

  “It didn’t attack,” Casey said.

  “Like I said -- I think it’s a kind of watchdog.”

  “A watchdog. For what?”

  “For anything injured and useless,” Mars said, still hugging the wall edge and increasing his speed. "Probably programmed to cull and kill according to a pre-assigned criteria."

  “Remind me not to get a hangnail,” Casey quipped, though there was no humor in his voice whatsoever.

  Mars suddenly stopped.

  "What is it?" Casey asked, fear in his voice.

  Mars looked at the wall, dimly illuminated by some distant light source high above. A small crawlway gaped pitch blackness in front of him. An intermittent glow flashed weakly from someplace deep inside. Mars crouched down to and squinted into the darkness.

  "Must lead to the ship's interior," he muttered.

  "You can't be sure of that. Who knows what kind of monstrosity is lurking in there," Casey protested, though he shifted uncomfortably on his feet glancing all around himself.

  Mars moved forward, and entered the crawlspace. Casey almost pounced on him, grabbing his arm.

  "You're not going in there, are you?"

  "I was planning on it, yes," Mars replied coolly.

  Casey swallowed hard. "No way. Not me."

  Mars considered the other man's declaration, then shrugged and nodded.

  "Fine. Stay here."

  And with that, he disappeared into the tunnel's maw. Casey hesitated for perhaps a second, then followed.

  Once inside the crawlway, the interminable blackness seemed to instantly be replaced by a kind of internal lighting of which no immediate source could be identified. As he marine crawled through the narrow tunnel, Mars decided that the illumination was produced by some kind of unique metallic property along the lines of phosphorous. Or, more probably, some unfamiliar piece of alien technology for which there was no immediate explanation. Understanding the crawlway's iridescence was something Mars had only momentary interest in; more compelling to note was what lay directly ahead, only ten feet away.

  "It's hot as shit in here," Casey beefed from behind.

  Mars agreed, but did not respond. He stared ahead, and pulled himself along the smooth metal crawlway. Covering the other end of this crawlway was what appeared to be a simple grate. Nothing more. He turned to Casey.

  "Back up."

  Casey complied without complaint, as Mars shifted himself uncomfortably in the small crawlway, angling his body in a way where he could kick the grate outward with his feet.

  "Push against me, Casey," Mars ordered. Casey understood what the big man was trying to do, and propped himself against the astronaut's back. Mars lifted both legs, pulled them against himself, and launched his feet forward with every ounce of strength at his disposal.

  The grate smashed outward against their alien hinges and clanged against a metal floor someplace beyond. Mars dragged himself to the lip of the tunnel, and saw that the crawlspace was only two feet above groundlevel. He jumped down to the floor and looked around himself.

  The chamber he now occupied was enormous, filled with what appeared to be gigantic powerplants of some kind. The ceiling seemed to rise up a mile or two and electrical currents flickered across the space above in complex, colorful matrixes, the purposes for which Mars could not even guess. Casey hopped down from the crawlspace and regarded the new chamber as well.

  "Good god," he said softly.

  "My guess -- the ship's power source," Mars said.

  The open quality of the chamber was consistent with the size and proportion of the alien machines they'd encountered so far. The two men turned a corner and stopped as a new vision confronted them -- one more familiar, yet more horrific than any they'd yet seen, with the exception of the giant robot itself.

  "Oh, no," Mars said softly.

  Row after row, at least fifty of them, the holding tubes glowed faintly and then only just bright enough to view the contents. As Mars and Casey approached silently, the remains of human beings could be clearly discerned.

  "They're from --"

  "Yes," Mars said, his voice choking. "They're from the plane. The ones who didn't make it."

  He looked at one particular victim. Hilary, the young flight attendant who had worked with Brenda. Her eyes were slightly open, her face scarred from the explosive burns of the Sel charge, and most of her clothes had been stripped from her body.

  "How did they get here?" Casey asked dully.

  Mars thought the question through, and could only come up with one plausible answer. "Same way we did, I guess."

  And then his eye caught something that froze his blood in the marrow.

  One cryo tube at the end of the first row.

  In it was Anna.

  Wes Simpson and Lisa Maynard watched what they thought was Barry Newman, a frightened, bemused 12 year old boy staring out into the void. The Controller now turned toward them and fixed its stare on the remaining survivors of Flight 399. It realized that Simpson and the girl were watching; not that it cared ... it, too, was watching. And learning.

  "Poor boy," Lisa said quietly, her empathy for Barry momentary overwhelming her own grief.

  Simpson nodded. "When I was his age, both my parents died. It’s not easy.”

  Lisa reached out and touched his hand.

  Simpson continued staring at the boy, though his lips tightened. "I don’t particularly want to die at the hands of some mechanical goblin. Seems like a dumb way to go."

  Lisa understood. "You sound angry."

  "Pissed off," Simpson turned, and grinned slightly. "I’m a Texas shitkicker from the old days. I like a full-on fight. If my time is coming up, I want to go out kicking butt."

  Lisa smiled warmly at him. She liked this big man's intelligence and simplicity. She sighed and found herself leaning against him. "I'd settle for a drink in Amarillo."

  "That a promise?" Simpson turned, putting his arm around her shoulders.

  She extended her right hand, which he took. "Bet on it."

  The Controller turned suddenly with the approach of footsteps. Ravers, Drakes and Myoga materialized out of the blackness.

  "Find a way out?" Simpson asked.

  Ravers took a breath, and regarded the small survival party before him. "Nothing.
Just miles of wall and space. If we're inside a spaceship or vessel of some sort, it must be the size of a mountain."

  "What about Captain Mars?" Lisa asked.

  Ravers frowned. "I thought he would be back by now."

  "Maybe he ran into one of those things," Edna said, slurring her words slightly. Her flask was empty, Ravers noticed. But what she said concerned everyone, sober or otherwise.

  Brenda started shouting. "Barry! Barry!"

  Everyone turned to her as she looked at them. "The boy. He's gone."

  Mars ran across the enormous chamber, uncaring of any obstacles that might lie in his path. The light was very dim, in fact the most significant luminosity appeared to be emanating from the cryo-tubes (or sarcophagi … he was loathe to consider the word, but it loomed in his mind like a specter). And the term was not inappropriate, given the fact that almost all of his crew and passenger contingent, now dead, occupied the tubes in toto.

  Casey, as was his habit, scurried behind Mars, never comfortable with leaving too much space between himself and the astronaut.

  Mars touched Anna's cryotube and brought his hand back in pain. He stared at the glass-like material, hostility mounting. It was some kind of freezing unit, that was for sure, set at such a low temperature as to actually feel agonizingly hot to the touch.

  Liquid nitrogen? No, an advanced alien race like this would be beyond that. Something else they were using, the bastards.

  "They’re all dead," Casey whispered, fear and awe displacing his usually churlish tone of voice.

  "No!" Mars said defiantly, but in the back of his mind, he agreed with Casey’s assessment. On closer inspection of the other cryotubes, it was very clear that many of the victims were, in fact, deceased. Anna herself looked dead … but he refused to accept this as a foregone conclusion.

  Mars looked around himself, searching for something with which to free Anna. A metallic protrusion from one of the other cryotubes appeared to be the only thing remotely available. He didn’t know what function served and at this point, he didn’t care. Without hesitation, he ripped it free and in one clean movement, brought it thundering against the faceplate of Anna's cryotube.