Warbirds of Mars: Stories of the Fight!

by Неизвестный

  “You four seem to have escaped unharmed,” Hunter said.

  “Hunter,” Apache said in that low hollow voice, “what happened to your face?”

  “Long story.”

  “Ours isn’t.” He slid his fingers across his crimson scarf. “It was the Last Judgment. We escaped just in time.”

  “A crew of four piloting a Montana?” Jack shook his head. “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t cut any ice.”

  “The Alamo is more than a Montana” Apache gestured to the control panels around the bridge. All around the space, the panels, switches, and dials were overlapped with new screens and odd wires. Black screens sporadically flashed with green characters and symbols. From a second room off to the side, an eerie purple glow pulsed with a rhythmic beep. Everything looked functional but barely. Josie stared at an orange square on the side of the wall, with symbols on it.

  “This is Martian technology.”

  Violet waved a willowy arm over the controls. “Eagles had an incomplete Montana, but we salvaged what we could from downed Martian ships, tripods, whatever. With Martian computers helping, four people can operate it.”

  “Movies made it look like you did all this yourself,” Jack said, looking at Adam.

  Adam crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “I’ve done some of it, but Violet thought it would be better if it looked like I did it all.”

  “Too bad the Lost Eagles got omitted,” Hunter said.

  “Aside from how bad it would be for morale, I wasn’t thrilled about letting the world know a secret group of rebels rotted away thanks to a Martian biological weapon,” Violet looked skeptically at Hunter. “Don’t act like you share everything with the public.”

  Hunter peered into the darkened purple room. Stepping in, he lightly traced the edge of the control panels, his trench coat grazing the edge of the machinery. “You can operate the most powerful ship in the resistance. Why aren’t you out there with it?”

  Apache’s figure filled the door. Inside the room, Hunter Noir was bathed in the glowing light of the alien consoles. Apache Knight blocked out the light coming in through the door. “We’ll show you.”

  His jaw ached, and his teeth felt like they were dislodged or cracked. Shaking the cobwebs out, Felix pivoted himself over the side of the bed, his feet touching the cold metal on the ground.

  He swallowed, stinging his throat. He put his hands to his Adam’s Apple, and felt something different.

  A variation on something we’ve put into the Skull. Don’t worry it’s for your protection and nowhere near as severe as his. Felix tapped his throat. He could feel the reverberations running up and down his neck as the light hollow tapping sound echoed. There was something in there, something solid.

  Felix looked down. His knees felt good. A new injection of cartilage and a reinforcement of that healing serum the Martians had developed. Apache Knight had become a beacon of hope. In the process, he’d even managed to kill a few Martians. Felix suspected they were loyal to a rival Martian to Kalen Tengel—Sodak something-or-other—but in the end, a Martian was a Martian, and they all died the same.

  Standing up, he opened the closet doors.

  Trench coat. Fedora. Scarf. Gray shirt and black tie. The lightweight body armor. The holsters. The black gloves. Black pants. Black boots.

  He would never sing the praises of the Fallen Angel, but he had to give the Devil his due; putting on the uniform, something changed inside of him. He wasn’t Felix Edgemar anymore. He was a knight, a black knight, maybe, but a knight in service to the people.

  He lightly pressed the flat compartments at the back of his dresser. Each one rotated, displaying its contents.

  His guns. Tomahawk. Brass knuckles. Knife. The utility belt. At the bottom of the cabinet was a small container of makeup to muddy his facial features. The bullets would be provided later, but as he put the last bit of his equipment into place, he felt alive again.

  “Project Rainbow was developed by the government to cloak ships from enemies.” Violet lead them through the main path. “They tried it on a ship in Philadelphia, 1943. The Philadelphia Experiment was a failure, but the idea was never abandoned.”

  “Are you telling me this whole town is cloaked?” Josie asked. “Invisible to Martian scanners?”

  “Scanners and the naked eye.” She sighed, stepping up a flight of wooden steps. “The Alamo doesn’t just have Martian technology in it.”

  “Scarium,” Josie said. “The Martian energy element.”

  “Exactly. Enough to power the ship, but not enough to power it and keep it cloaked.”

  “But why Aragones? Why not just keep moving?” Jack asked, as the setting became more suburban. Hunter looked around, feeling distinctly out of place in the sunlight and ranch houses.

  “Supplies are easier to get and store here. We can still stay on the move with the planes.”

  “Easier defensive position. If you hadn’t used the right radio signal and the code, you wouldn’t have seen us either.” Adam pointed to the top of a building with a series of elaborate antennas and dishes. “If we don’t receive the right code on the right frequency, we don’t get seen.”

  Hunter pulled up the collar of his trench coat to block out the sun. “Sounds perfect.”

  “Far from it,” Apache said.

  “I gotta ask,” Jack said walking under a stoplight, “this doesn’t look like any paper town I’ve ever seen.”

  “Maps change,” Adam said. “It’s a prototype city. It was put together as an experiment. Back when we thought we were going to win the war by ’45, some Americans wanted to make a killing with the boys returning home. Federal Housing Authority saw a big boom coming up for the soldiers.” Adam reached over and touched Josie’s hand, a move only Hunter and Mask noticed. “Figured they’d build a city down here, ideal American city, as a test. Use Mexican resources and labor to make it.” As they walked, a bulldozer and a steamroller came into view on the side of the street.

  “Don’t remember seeing those in Norman Rockwell’s work.”

  “Invasion required a quick exit.”

  “Speaking of which, are you guys the only ones in this town?” Josie slowed by a swing set on a playground, fully-equipped with a slide, monkey bars, a sandbox, and an unused hopscotch grid. “What happened to everyone?”

  “Same thing that happened to the rest of Mexico; Fallen Angel bombed them into the ground. Survivors went to try joining with Fortress Panama.” The Martian Killers shared a glance. Early in the war it was decided the Panama Canal was vital to the resistance. Every country loaned whatever it could to Panama and the American forces there to keep it open. Hunter had been there. Jack had flown supplies to them. Josie had contacts there, and even Mask had gone on a mission of his own. Fortress Panama was an overpopulated concrete jungle that stank of gunpowder and crime. Some called it the hardest free zone to live in.

  “There’s no one left in all of Mexico?” Josie asked.

  “I heard there’re a couple indigenous tribes still out there,” Adam said. “See it as a chance for their land to be theirs again.”

  “One invader’s as good as another,” Hunter muttered.

  “So to speak,” Adam said.

  He knelt down, hands on his knees, back straight, and eyes closed. The Skull had just finished his evening katas, the martial movements he practiced.

  They’d done things to his brain. Injections. Wires. Blasts of radiation. He knew it had done damage. It was a struggle. Things blended together in his mind.

  “No false movements. Everything with intention.”

  Images came to him. He tried to make sense of them in the puzzle of his mind, to rearrange the pieces into the right order, like the moves of a kata.

  A cracked sign and stains on the floor, as he walked up the stairs to the gym.

  The feel of the opponent’s shirt, as he threw the man over his shoulder.

  The sweaty comfort of putting your own pair of gloves on.

  He
winced under his mask, struggling to control his breathing. He tried to separate the events into pre-Martian and post-Martian.

  Someone applauding as he stood victorious.

  Fire and smoke.

  Twisting his opponent down, wrenching the Eskrima stick under his throat, choking him out.

  It wasn’t just the movements in a kata, it was the rests in between.

  “The space between the notes,” someone said. Was there a saxophone? A piano?

  The first opponent. A jarheaded white guy in boxer shorts.

  Someone’s teeth on the ground, splattered in blood. White like piano keys.

  Martians watching from the side, typing, analyzing on their screens.

  The shine of the gold. A medal? A trophy? A saxophone?

  He tried to relax his body, to feel a thousand times heavier than he was, to let his muscles sink and relax. It wasn’t hard with all the metal and plastic injected into his body.

  A tournament board, so many names crossed off.

  The last opponent. Massive, dark-skinned, an arm wrapped around his windpipe, cutting off air and blood. His futile struggles.

  The judge coming over, holding his hand high with (three?) fingers wrapped around his wrist. Congratulations were offered. He was commended as the toughest one there is, the most skilled fighter.

  A reward was promised.

  What reward was it?

  The Skull touched his mask, his meditation complete.

  “How did you get these photos?”

  “We ran a raid on a Martian lab in Knoxville, liberating the prisoners there.” Apache pointed to a map in front of them. Each side sat across from each other at the conference table deep inside the Alamo. A series of photographs spread across the table showed the Martians hard at work on something large and metallic, vaguely oval-shaped. “That’s where we found this. They were testing the formula for The Last Judgment on the prisoners there.”

  “Where’re the new launch sites?” Hunter asked.

  Adam put another file on the table. “Here’s where we hit a wall. One’s in West Virginia.”

  “And the other?”

  “We can’t tell.” He opened the file with several different pages of Martian text. Occasionally there was a schematic of a piece of the satellite or a drawing of a chemical compound with strange Martian writing labeling each molecule. Finally, there was a map of the Broken States of America, with conspicuous diamonds around Philadelphia and New York City. “We can barely translate, let alone break the cipher.”

  “It’s encrypted?” Josie said, examining one.

  “Yes,” Violet said. “Can you crack it?” Josie looked up at Violet. Her sultry blue eyes pierced Josie, half-playfully, half-seriously.

  “What about your computers?’ Josie retorted. “Martian tech’s years ahead of ours. Have you tried running it through that?”

  “All our Martian tech goes into making the Alamo operable for the four of us. There’s not a lot to spare. Even if we did we don’t have that kind of equipment.”

  “A shame,” Josie said. “Now you need us.”

  “It’s a shame, alright,” Violet cast her eyes on Jack. “You’ve got your own...admirable qualities, though.”

  “This is it,” Apache said, his augmented voice drawing the Martian Killers’ attention. “Cards on the table. We need your help to decipher what’s on those sheets. Intelligence indicates the Fallen Angel wants these up and running soon.”

  “Where are you getting that?” Hunter asked.

  “Based on the photos, reports of the prisoners, transport schedules. They were liquidating the prisoners when we got there. Whatever they were testing, they were done with it.” Apache nodded at Adam and Violet, who stood up. The Skull stoically stood by. “If you want to be in on this, take the time. Let us know, but don’t leave here until you have a decision for us.” The Last Outlaws filed out. “We’ll be waiting,” Apache said, closing the steel door.

  “Anyone else expecting to hear the deadbolt?” Jack asked.

  “I was,” Josie said, taking out her Minox subminiature camera. She began taking photos of the pages. “Hunter?”

  “Where’d you hide that camera anyway?” Jack asked.

  “I’ll let you test your guesses later on,” Josie said, snapping another picture.

  “Are we done?” Hunter asked.

  “Finished,” Josie said. She slid the camera inside her jacket. “What do we do?”

  “We tell them we’ll think about it, and we take the papers back to New York.” He thumbed back his trench coat

  “And if that’s not good enough?”

  Hunter tapped his pistols. “We get to the plane any way we can.”

  “Do you think this is real?” Josie asked, holding up the folder.

  Hunter paused, letting his trench coat conceal his guns. “There’s an awful lot of smoke here, and an awful lot of mirrors...” he inhaled, thinking of the pictures of the Martians working on the satellite, thinking of the films of the Fallen Angel and the reports they’d received out of Detroit, Atlanta, and Boulder, “...but where there’s smoke there’s at least a little bit of fire.”

  “Agreed,” Jack said, nodding at the door. “Mask?”

  Mr. Mask tried turning the door’s wheel. It was stuck in place. Mask strained. No luck. He looked back at the crew.

  “I think we just got burned,” Jack said.

  The door shut behind them. Apache nodded to the Skull, who tapped a button on the wall. Silently, the magnetic installation started. The door would be immovable.

  “We did it,” Violet whispered.

  “Not yet,” Adam said, lightly kissing her.

  “Let’s get to the bridge,” Apache said.

  “Stop,” Hunter said. The Martian Killers exhaled, letting go of the wheel. “We aren’t moving this door. Mask can that blade do anything for this door?” Mask shook his head.

  “Can’t say I didn’t see this coming,” Hunter knocked on the door, listening to the vibrations echoing through the metal.

  “Must be something besides a deadbolt,” Josie looked at the walls. “Anybody smell any gas?”

  “It won’t be far behind,” Jack said. “How could we have been so stupid?”

  “Smoke and mirrors, flyboy,” Hunter reached into his belt, opening a small pouch. “Mask, Jack, grab the chairs.”

  Josie peered at Hunter’s hands. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Hunter’s shoulders rose as he met Josie’s eyes. “When a lovely flame dies, Josie...”

  Josie’s eyes widened as Hunter began going to work by the door. “Get back,” she said, walking back to Mr. Mask and Jack, pulling the remaining chairs with her.

  “What’s he doing?” Jack asked.

  Josie looked at the table, bolted to the deck. “Smoke’s about to get in our eyes.”

  The Last Outlaws climbed the stairs. Not a word was spoken as they entered the bridge. Each walked to their spot, as Violet put her headphones on. Apache punched a code into a number pad. Suddenly, a screen next to the Skull went blank. It slid off to the side to reveal a new set of controls underneath. Adam leaned against the door to the second control room, unwrapping a stick of gum. The Skull looked down on the deck from the windows.

  “Ready?” Violet asked.

  “Ready,” Apache said. “Preparing to transmit.” He typed some numbers into the pad. “Moving to a secure hyperline to Blackfire.” The machines hummed as Violet monitored the frequency. Adam looked at the Skull. Tapping him on the shoulder, he stuck his hand forward with a tiny silver sleeve in it.

  “Gum?” he offered.

  The radio transmission dish moved slowly atop the Alamo.

  “Cover your ears,” Hunter said, huddling down with the group.

  “What’re you doing?” Jack asked.

  “Composition-3.”

  “C-3?” Jack asked, sneaking a quick look at the door, while Hunter pulled up the sleeve of his trench coat, displaying his wrist-radio.

>   “Radio-detonated,” Hunter said. “Only one problem: only one frequency for all the detonators.”

  Jack huddled back behind the makeshift barrier of chairs before looking at Hunter press a button on the transmitter.

  “All?” he said as the button clicked.

  Behind Adam, the explosion lit up the control room. The smaller room kept the shockwave from expanding. The controls shattered, screens blackened, and wires bled from metal frames.

  The explosion shot through the open door, blasting Adam onto Apache Knight. Glass shattered. Violet rocked forward, her stomach slamming into the edge of the control panel as her headphones flew off. The Skull lost his footing.

  The frame of the bridge rattled as the explosion shattered into the air.

  Smoke filled the room. Hunter Noir stepped through the shadowy haze. Josie, Mask, and Jack rose up. “It’s open,” Hunter said, staring at the broken doorway.

  “What’d you mean ‘all’?” Jack asked, talking over the ringing in his ears.

  “I slipped a little onto the radio dish controls earlier.” He pulled out his Mauser. “Don’t want them calling for backup.”

  The Skull pulled Adam Holliday up. He slapped him once, and Adam began blinking. Violet’s headphones lay uselessly on the control panel as she sat up in her chair. Apache put one hand on the wreckage to pull himself up.

  “What the...” Apache trailed off. The Skull grabbed his shoulder, pulling him up. Apache stood on his feet, shaking his head. The bridge came into focus. Apache brushed Skull’s hand off, straightening his jacket.

  Violet flicked the activation switches on the transmitter. “It’s dead.”

  “They blew it up,” Apache muttered.

  “We can’t contact the Fallen Angel,” Violet said.

  For a second, the Last Outlaws were locked in a diamond around the bridge. Nobody moved as the unspoken story played out between them. The wrath of the Fallen Angel. Lists of slaves marked for salvation and freedom would be hurled into the abyss. The screams of the Last Outlaws would echo through Blackfire for weeks as the Fallen Angel meticulously tortured them on film.