The Martian Viking (12 page)

Johnsmith rolled out of his bunk and walked down the aisle separating the sleeping prisoners. As he approached, Captain Hi, hefting a heavy, strapped bag, smiled.

"Heading home?" Johnsmith said.

"Yeah, for a while at least," Hi replied.

Johnsmith stuck out his hand. He noticed that Prudy rolled her eyes, but Captain Hi shook hands firmly. "Some things about Mars
are
better, you know," he said.

"I don't know what," Johnsmith said.

"Well, for one thing, it's clean here, and it's not crowded, and there's real work that needs to be done."

Johnsmith wondered if the captain knew that they were being trained for combat against a non-existent enemy. He was about to ask Hi that very thing when somebody shouted: "Arkies!"

Arkies? Johnsmith didn't know what Arkies were, but, judging from the reactions of those around him, they were terrifying. Hi's face paled, as did those of his two crewmates.

"Shit," Co-pilot Prudy said. "Can you believe this is happening
now?
"

Hi didn't answer her. He merely reached into his kit and pulled out a .38 revolver. As he loaded its chamber with five shots, Angel Torquemada rushed into the room carrying a rifle with a red laser sight mounted on it. Behind him wheeled a bulky robot. Casings on its sides sprang open to reveal more rifles, grenades, and antipersonnel weapons. Whiplike appendages dispensed these to the waiting prisoners.

It suddenly occurred to Johnsmith that his question was about to be answered. Whoever, or whatever, the Arkies were, they were the antagonists the prisoners were trained to fight. He found little satisfaction in this realization, though. He was far too frightened for that.

One of the robot's flexible arms thrust an automatic weapon into his hands, which Johnsmith recognized as a Hungarian semi-automatic that he had been thoroughly trained to use. A magazine had already been inserted, and Johnsmith hefted the gun with a practiced air. He felt his heart thumping huge in his chest. He was about to meet the enemy for the first time . . .whoever the enemy was.

The clear, plastic corridor glowed red with particle beam fire. Johnsmith found it difficult to breathe steadily, and sweat began to trickle down the sides of his face. What was he supposed to do?

"One by one, out that way," Angel Torquemada said in a firm, clear voice. He pointed toward the barracks entrance. As a result, Johnsmith was among the first to go, along with Hi and his crewmates. They ran through the other buildings until they were inside the airlock leading to the landing area. Sergeant Daiv was standing by, ordering them into pressure suits as they entered the airlock in threes.

Hi, the co-pilot, and Johnsmith were the first ones through the outer door. It closed behind them immediately.

Johnsmith had not been outside since his arrival at Elysium. Despite his fear, he was struck by the totality of the Martian darkness. Only the blaze of particle beam fire momentarily lit the barren landscape. Johnsmith turned to see the airlock door opening again, and three pressure-suited figures emerged, moving cautiously with their guns held out in front of them. He hesitated to leave the compound, with its surrounding glow, even though he stood outside the buildings themselves. A crimson beam that scorched the sand near his boots made him move, and move quickly. For an instant, a plume of dust and smoke followed him, and then he was thudding through the blackness.

"Move it, move it, move it," Angel Torquemada commanded, as though he were physically inside Johnsmith's helmet. "Fan out. Don't give them a massed target to shoot at."

Johnsmith ran hard and fast, not knowing where he was going. He followed Angel Torquemada's orders as best he could, but he had no idea where the enemy was. He stumbled once, but did not fall. After that, he lifted his feet higher, feeling as though his knees might clip his chin. Torquemada's calmly issued orders—sometimes using individual names, sometimes speaking generally—sounded clearly over the ragged sound of Johnsmith's own breathing. Deadly red lines of light flashed in the night again and again.

"Biberkopf!" Torquemada shouted. "Hit the sand!"

Johnsmith's guts froze. It seemed as if he could not thrust himself to the ground, as if he could only crouch here in the dark while the particle beams crisscrossed all about him.

But somehow he went down, shocked to the bone by the impact, in spite of his pressure suit's padding. A thin, bloody thread of lethal light swept an inch or two over his head.

"Jesus!" He'd almost been killed! What the hell was he doing crawling around on his belly in the dark? He was a college instructor, for Christ's sake!

"Up, Biberkopf!" Angel Torquemada commanded.

This time, Johnsmith didn't hesitate. He leaped up and charged head first into the night. Gasping sounded inside his helmet. Somebody was running next to him, close enough to transmit her voice helmet to helmet, her body briefly illuminated by the beam flashes. Johnsmith crouched, still running. His boot struck some obstruction in the sand, and he tumbled onto the ground. Beam fire swept past him, and he heard a scream that turned into a sizzle. And then his own breathing was all that he heard.

Johnsmith felt his bladder let go, and thanked God that his pressure suit's filtering tubes would absorb it. For a moment, he felt humiliated by his incontinence. But then, as if the mechanical contrivance that had saved him from soiling himself were part of his actual physical self, he suddenly became convinced that he could not be harmed. It was insane, but he let all doubt slip from his mind. Some primal urge forced him onward toward the blaze of enemy fire. He might die if he went forward, but it would only be his body. His spirit would die if he lay in the dirt while others died around him.

A long, tortured scream rose up from deep inside him, racking his throat as it deafened him in the enclosed space of his helmet. But he took heart from his own battle cry, firing a burst in the direction of one of the red beams.

Laser fire came from the compound, and Johnsmith's courage grew with the knowledge that he and the other charging prisoners were being covered. As long as their assailants were kept busy, there was a chance that some of the prisoners might reach the enemy stronghold alive.

A red flash illuminated a running figure ahead of Johnsmith. He recognized from the man's gait that it was Captain Hi Malker. Johnsmith wondered where Felicia was.

He heard another person screaming, this one almost comically gurgling his last. Johnsmith did not stop to see who it was.

The fanning red lines of enemy fire made a V shape on the horizon, very close now. Johnsmith could see approximately where all the shooting was coming from. He didn't know how many of his people had made it this far, but he was sure that those among them who were still breathing could see the enemy's position, too.

They would be there soon. Johnsmith picked his feet up even higher, running so hard that he thought his heart would burst. Hi was just ahead now, his back looming. In another second, Johnsmith would overtake him.

Hi suddenly vanished, dropping down the back side of a mound that had been virtually invisible in the darkness. Gunshots thundered from the ancient arroyo below. The particle beam fire ceased abruptly, and Johnsmith lost his way.

He heard Hi's static-sizzled shouts, so he could not have been far away from his friend. But Johnsmith didn't know where to turn. He tried to move in the direction in which he had last seen Hi, expecting to fall into the arroyo. But he kept on running, until he was certain that he had gone too far. Trying to double back, he heard Hi's voice.

"Let go of me, you bastards," Hi shouted.

"Bring him along," an unfamiliar voice said. Johnsmith was so close to the enemy that he was patching into their helmet to helmet communications.

Grunts and gasps followed, the sounds of a struggle. But Johnsmith still had no idea of which direction the sounds were coming from. The voices became fainter, and fainter, and then faded altogether.

A searchlight swept across the darkened desert, revealing the odd prisoner crouching with weapon extended. But there was no sign of Hi and his captors.

Feet spread wide apart, Johnsmith pivoted quickly, facing in first one direction and then another while the light played over the landscape. He saw nobody but his own people. It was impossible, but there it was. Hi and his captors had vanished without a trace—in an instant.

"Where did they go?" Johnsmith cried. "What the hell is going on here?"

"All right, Biberkopf, calm down." It was Angel Torquemada. "Stay where you are—and shut up."

Johnsmith shut up, hearing only the sounds of his own breathing and the ceaseless Martian wind. Again, the searchlight swept over the battlefield. Again, Johnsmith saw nothing but sand, rocks, and his fellow prisoners. In their pressure suits, they could have been male, female, friend, or foe. But by their confused postures, he knew that these people were those he had trained with: Sergeant Daiv, Alderdice, Felicia, Frankie Lee Wisbar, and the others.

The searchlight sweep was ineffective, revealing nothing but the prisoners. Johnsmith could not imagine where the enemy had taken Captain Hi.

"All right," Angel Torquemada said, "everybody back to the compound. They're gone."

Gone? Gone where? How did they pull this disappearing act out here on a virtually flat desert? Was he hallucinating? Had the constant use of onees damaged his nervous system permanently? None of this made sense to him.

He headed back toward the compound. He had no desire to stay out here in the cold, airless Martian night any longer than he had to, despite his curiosity. As he moved toward the warm glow of the compound's lights, it occurred to him for the first time that he had just been in combat. It had been neither as glamorous nor as frightening as he had imagined it would be. He had been shot at, and he had been very close to being captured. If he had overtaken Captain Hi, it might have been him marching off towards who knew where—or cut down by beams. He was disturbed that they had taken Hi, but he was elated at the same time, knowing that he had survived mortal combat. For the first time in many months, he thought of Beowulf the Geat. Had Beowulf felt this way the first time he had carried his axe into battle, triskelion shield protecting him from the missiles of his enemies?

But Johnsmith had no shield. Perhaps armor was not the order of the day at Elysium. Why should it be, when prisoners were readily available? The dregs of Earth's full employment economy would never run out, so long as things continued as they were. As a result, the draftees on Mars were readily expendable, and minimal protection was afforded them.

Protection against whom? At least Johnsmith knew they—the Arkies—were human now, which is more than he had known ten minutes ago . . .if the battle had lasted that long.

"Come on," Angel Torquemada ordered them from somewhere in the darkness. "Do you think we've got all night?"

Johnsmith and the others made their way back to the compound through the darkness.

In the morning, after a short exercise period, they were ordered to go to an underground meeting room. It was a larger chamber than Johnsmith, Felicia, and Alderdice had been taken to before. In fact, all the prisoners were assembled, along with Sergeant Daiv. Even Prudy was there, sitting in the front row and wearing a dour expression. Torquemada stood at the podium.

"We lost three people last night," he said. "One of them was the Captain of the Interplan ship, who was about to leave Mars. He and his crewmate probably shouldn't have fought, but they did. We're grateful, but now the ship is stuck here until the Conglom can figure out what to do about it. Most likely, they'll dispatch a pilot from the polar region to fly it out of here, but if they have a shortage, they'll have to bring somebody in from the Belt, or even from Luna. It could take months."

Johnsmith didn't really care what happened to the Interplan ship. He wanted to know who had been shooting at them, and who was dead, and what had happened to Captain Hi. As Angel Torquemada droned on, he began to suspect that such explanations were not on this morning's agenda. Johnsmith felt somewhat cross. It had been all but impossible to fall asleep after the skirmish last night, and he feared that the entire day would drag interminably, with this evasive lecture serving as an appropriately vague starting point.

"Who were those people we fought last night?" A voice rose out of the assembled prisoners. It was Felicia, a fact that made Johnsmith very nervous. Torquemada was not likely to appreciate her unauthorized sense of curiosity.

"I'll tell you who they were," Angel Torquemada responded, surprising everyone in the room. There was a breathless moment before he finished: "They were the people who want to kill you."

Somebody laughed, but Felicia was undeterred by Torquemada's snide answer. Without hesitation, she said, "And why do they want to kill us? What have we done to them?

"Never mind all that," Torquemada said. "Just remember that these are the people who want to kill you."

"But what do they want to kill us
for?
" demanded Felicia. "A bunch of fucking
onees?
"

"Burst," said Angel Torquemada with chilling authority, "shut up and sit down."

She was livid, and she glared at him for a few seconds, but she slowly did as she was told and sat down.

After that, the briefing went as if nothing extraordinary had happened. Within five minutes, they were back in the training area. While they were waiting for Sergeant Daiv, they discussed the possible purpose of the meeting.

"It was as if Torquemada was saying that this is business as usual," said Alderdice.

"That's right," said Frankie Lee Wisbar. "It
is
business as usual around here."

"But why? Do they just want onees?"

"Apparently. Torquemada doesn't really tell us
why
they want them, but they do want onees."

"But how do they live? And where?"

Frankie shrugged. "Somewhere outside."

Felicia started to ask another question, but Sergeant Daiv's bellowing voice cut her off. It was time for martial arts training, he said, not for talking. There was no arguing with Sergeant Daiv, of course, but Johnsmith knew that the issue was not dead. The dialogue resumed during their meals, and, though their gymnasium activities precluded such talk, continued in the quiet moments before they went to sleep at night.