Mission: Harbeasts of Mars Read online

  8

  Two nights later an odd thing happened. I woke up to what I thought or felt was an unusual sound in my cell. It was very dark, all lights were out except the dim lights coming from the windows of the guard shack across the hall, and the guard on night duty was most likely asleep. Giren once informed me that the night duty guard on our cell block was particularly lazy.

  I could hear the soft snores of one of my cell mates in the next cell. Kiernan, I think. But there was something else. It wasn't my imagination. It was a faint sliver of light seeping into my cell from between one of the square panels on the wall behind my bed. I could feel a faint, cool breeze wafting through. The sound was the faint, irregular tapping of the panel's metal corner against the wall. After my eyes adjusted as best they could to the dark I rose silently from the bed and crept toward the faint light. I glanced toward the guard shack outside in the hall. The pale blue light was on indicating that someone was inside but I saw the flashing and quick streaming of light and pictures indicating he was busy watching some entertainment or gaming on one of the wide holo-screens. Or had fallen asleep while doing one or the other. I didn't see any shadows shift against the walls in the booth.

  Had this sliver of light always been there? And had I just missed it the first few days of my captivity, being too preoccupied with my problems to notice? Or had it appeared only tonight? I couldn't recall having ever noticed it before. But I wasn't completely sure, which bugged me.

  The night air was cool and I worked a hole into the middle of one of my thin blankets and threw it over my head like a poncho and pushed at the panel. It wouldn't budge. I then tugged carefully at it to pull it out. There was a little bit of give and I continued to work at it. I stopped and listened to see if I'd awakened anyone. If I had, they were silent. I began working at it again until I'd managed to get it loose, making a wider opening. The panels were large enough for a person my size to squeeze through but I found that on the other side of the panels was a serrated edge. I'd managed to assemble some thin cuts on my hands but my blanket at least gave me some protection for the bulk of my body. Feeling excited, I squeezed through the panel opening and found myself in a small corridor. I had to bend down to walk down it. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled on all fours. Soon the corridor widened until I was able to stand and walk down. There was a corner and on coming round it, I found a standard issue blaster on the ground.

  All of a sudden, the talk of games became pertinent. I wondered about the “little games.” Head games. What were the chances of me escaping this place and also coming across a blaster too? And so easily? I stood and thought about my options and the possible reasons for this. What would I meet or see if I continued down this path? Was it a trap? If I used this blaster, was it rigged” Would it malfunction so that if I tried to defend myself, I would injure or kill myself? What would I encounter if I continued? If I took the blaster and went back to my cell, I could disable or even kill my jailers? Even if I were to attempt that and succeed, I was sure there were many cameras here and had I tried that, I would bring down the entire security force on myself. I would never get past them. No. I would go forward.

  I went through several scenarios in my mind as I made my way through the dark tunnel: Who would leave this blaster out here by accident? How did it get here? Who left it here for me to find? Little games, eh? I thought. I decided I would play their game. Perhaps there would be some loophole or careless entry point they'd forgotten that I could exploit. Or some lightening providential chance whereupon I could grab my freedom.

  I'd thought briefly of taking the blaster back with me to my cell and using it later at a more opportune time. Against a guard. Perhaps I could get access to a bigger lasgun. But if I did so, I would have to blast my way through too many guards. I would never escape that way. There were cameras around, surely. If they were around, they were well hidden.

  I stopped for a few seconds. I heard nothing but the roaring of rushing blood in my ears. I examined the blaster carefully. I didn't detect anything off the bat that would suggest something was wrong with it. I tucked it in inside my blanket poncho and continued. The corridor path took me down steeply for a time and then up sharply, so much so that I had a hard time climbing up without sliding down. Struggling, I finally made it back to even ground. I figured I must have gone underground and now I was back above it. Far down at the end I saw faint light coming through a grate. I crept as quietly as I could toward it and upon reaching it, peered out through the grate. It led directly outside. I could hear distant noises of mechs working somewhere on the grounds but I saw no one. I was sure this was by design. I thought of what to do next. I would need to find a hiding place or vantage point where my blaster would be of good use defending my position. I saw a number of lonely rocky hills and crags in the distance that I could hide in. A fantasy, but I had nothing else.

  I gingerly touched the grate. Nothing happened. I pushed on it and at first it didn't budge. I pushed at it again, this time with considerable strength and then it did move. I searched for any attachments and pushed at it again. This time two ends on the top and bottom right side came off. I slipped out and satisfied that I saw no one around, I ran. It was that time between night and twilight dawn, right before it gets light but not quite night time anymore. I saw the energy fence up ahead. At one ten foot wide section, the energy bands seemed to fizzle and crackle as if weak. Every few seconds the energy would go out. I bounded toward it and waited for it to go out again. I centered all my thoughts upon escape by any means, no matter how foolish the attempt or inevitable the capture. I thought fleetingly of saving a laser shot for myself if I were to fall back into their hands, but I couldn't truly consider that. I had a family. Suicide was not an option. Only escape.

  I waited until the second I saw the energy field once again go out and I ran.

  To my disappointment, the grounds near the Triskelion property were solid and flat but cleared of the pebbles and rock that littered the surrounding desert. I expected to stumble but found the ground soft under my feet. Once I ran far out enough I collected the sharpest looking rocks I could find and then continued on my run. I passed through a field of moss-like greenery and then back into sandy desert. I searched for any hideout farthest from the main station and surrounding properties. As dawn approached I'd scouted out a possible hiding place afar off. I'd been traveling, I guessed, for at least forty-five minutes before I caught wind of my pursuers. I could hear the rough motoring of expensive vehicles roaring toward me. They were still at a fair distance and I was nearly close to my hideout, a tall, craggy, thin spike of rock jutting out of the sand like a huge finger. I hid my blaster under my makeshift poncho and stood my ground, turned and waited. I saw, not Dr. Lafayette but some other man, a human, I thought. He was whooping and making ridiculous war sounds and yells, crashing toward me in the sand. I waited silently. Sand flew up in thick sprays and left wide, drifting dust clouds where the wheels of the vehicle touched the ground beneath. Crashing through a large sand dune his vehicle nearly turned over and he wheeled and leaped into the air and then bared down toward me again. I was ready for the fool, fool that I was for coming out here.

  I gathered my rocks from my poncho and waited until he got within range. Behind him I saw two more vehicles approaching. I would have to work fast. As he rounded me, getting ready to fire I could see his face leering with glee, thinking he'd beaten me, an easy kill. He reached for a high-powered gun.

  “I see you've given up already. Come on! Give me some sport, man! Tell ya what? I'll call Lafayette and tell him to give you an even bigger head start!” He shouted to me. He then roared his vehicle up again as if sitting upon a rearing horse and turned around in a circle, making deep grooves in the sand with the tires. Quickly, I threw several rocks into the front grate of his sandrover. At first they appeared to do nothing. But then I heard the engine make a labored sound and the hum of the engine changed. I threw several larger ones in, most of them hitting and passin
g through the wide grilled grate and I could hear the vehicle gasp. It slowed down considerably and quaked slightly. Then it made a loud, clanking sound. Those damned moon buggies! I thought ruefully. Very fine particles of sand and dirt clogged them up so easily. Larger pieces getting up the wrong pipe or getting stuck in the wrong component could stop them altogether. However, the rocks wouldn't truly disable it, and that wasn't my goal. It slowed the vehicle down and surprised the hunter momentarily, his expression turning from glee to surprise and then fury. His face flushed red and he let loose a foul stream of insults, peppering them with “subhuman” and “stupid beast”. He reached for his weapon but I had mine out already and trained on him as he tried to maneuver his vehicle to a halt. I dashed up and circled his vehicle, firing several shots. He fell against the backseat support column and out the side door without a sound. I grabbed his long range blaster and made my way toward the rock just in time for the other two vehicles to circle around their felled hunting comrade. I heard an outraged scream from one of the men which filled me with satisfaction. I scrabbled up the rock, finding footholds and crevices for climbing wherever I could. I surprised myself at how fast I'd made it to its small crevice, where I could look down upon my enemies who had just reached my rock. I fired the short blaster, searing small cuts and a hole into the metal hood of one of the vehicles that had come circling my hideout. The third one reversed backward. That one was Lafayette. I then took up the long range blaster and burned a hole as big as a head into the front hood of the second one. I fired again and blasted off the front support columns of the vehicle. The hunter then tried to reverse and make his way out of firing range but it was too late. I fired again, searing the vehicle in half and its two occupants in it. Shots were fired up at my hiding place and I fired back. Lafayette and the two others in his vehicle stayed well out of firing range. One of the men with Lafayette had a long range blaster more powerful than even the one I'd taken and he seared a fair bit of rock from my hiding place. Voluminous clouds of dust rose in the air and bits of rock rained down to the ground. I fired back and each time I did they came back with even more firepower. Little by little they were cutting the rock I was hiding in, away.

  We went this way for over an hour. There were no ships flying overhead, no one to see or hear any cry for help, if I could even get one out. At this rate they would wait me out or cut down the rock from under me. I thought about going out in a blaze of fire. Right as this thought crossed my mind I watched from my view behind a slab of rock as Lafayette took out a bull horn. I could see him smiling, even now.

  “You've proven to be more interesting prey than I'd first suspected, Robert. But you must realize this can't last. Come out now and I'll make it easy for you.” I was enraged.

  “Make what easy for me?” I shouted.

  “Your capture. We still have you. I can make this very unpleasant for you, Robert. Come down.”

  “You're not upset that I just killed three of your friends?” He smiled.

  “What interests me is how you managed to get a weapon?”

  “I took it from your friend back there after I threw a wrench in his rover.”

  “I know that. But how did you get the other one?”

  “I found it! Maybe you shouldn't leave things like that lying around, Lafayette!” I shouted. “I'm not coming down. And if you come any closer, I'll blast your rover into the outer rim!” I thought I could hear him chuckle and then he gave some kind of directive to the other two men. There was someone else sitting in the seat behind Lafayette in the front. It was the young man. Lafayette said something to him and he took out a device from under his suit and aimed it at me with an amplifier attached. It was the remote for the collar around my neck! I tried to fire off another volley but then I felt a blinding, white pain so powerful that my eyesight went red, then I saw white and then everything melted from view into blackness.

  . . .

  I found myself strapped to a hospital bed. I had injuries. I was able to move slowly, even while in pain, so I surmised they couldn't have been too serious. My sight was blurry. I felt and heard movement around me as I fainted back into the depths of sleep. I knew that I'd been drugged and the drug was taking over. The question in my mind before I fell asleep was who'd let me find the lasergun? Thomas? The man in green? If I ever could get out of here I wanted to thank that man. I was captured but still alive. And now I suspected that I had an ally in Lafayette's inner circle.

  9

  The next morning I was taken on a stretcher to a large operating room. My entire body was scanned with a sensor wand. After that came the examination. In the beginning, when I resisted their attentions in trying to get me to take my clothes off, one of them produced a tiny remote in her hand and she pushed it. The collar around my neck blazed with light, causing me to scream out.

  “There now. Let's be cooperative. We don't want any more trouble. All we need are DNA samples. I'm surprised Dr. Lafayette allowed you out in the first place,” she scolded in a tone like that of a school instructor lecturing a child.

  “You don't have enough samples already? And what do you mean?” I shot back, irritated. She didn't answer but simply gazed at me coolly, tapping the remote. I glowered at her and the remote but did as I was told. They had taken my suit and stripped off my coveralls and gave me what I could only imagine was their version of hospital clothes, a gray tunic and thin gray half mast pants. I sat shivering and naked in the room, enduring their archaic and barbaric medical examination. I was poked, cut, injected and prodded in too many ways and in orifices I do not care to mention.

  Lord, how I hated it! I wanted to both kill and then die! I hated them and I felt a growing fear at what they might eventually do to me. Would I eventually sprout extra non-working appendages that would rot or turn gangrenous? Would I grow another eye or be fed poisonous medicines or some other cruel thing so that they could simply watch my reactions? Would they just cut me open to see how my body would react to pain? I didn't know that these kinds of barbaric things still went on in the world. And then I remembered that I wasn't on Earth, where such barbaric practices and painful medical techniques had long been abolished in nearly every nation.

  When this final humiliation was done they had taken several tissue samples, another blood sample, semen, urine and stool samples and even some of my hair. I was then taken back to the small hospital room and given something to eat and drink, a leathery tough pork chop with some bland applesauce, a small salad with no dressing, and a shriveled baked potato. Afterward, I was subjected to various physical endurance tests of which I must say I passed at least half of them. I was exhausted.

  I was taken back to the hospital room where Dr. Lafayette was waiting for me. I stifled my desire to spring upon him and attack him. I felt physically trashed and wouldn't have gotten far anyway though crushing this desire was hard. I merely looked him over. I didn't see his whip. But he had that awful bright, smile on his face that sliced like a knife as he looked down on me. I was fastened to and hoisted onto the bed by a large medical mech as if I were a newly slaughtered pig.

  “I find you more interesting after our little excursion game.”

  “Oh, is that what you call it? Hunting humans down like prey?” He chuckled in that merry, avuncular way of his.

  “Come now, Mr. Astor, you've survived it, just as I'd hoped. Not particularly bright but you're strong, tougher than you look. You belong in the human gene pool. I like that in the specimens I capture, human, alien or animal. We need more people with that tough constitution! You gave good sport, as those in the hunting life like to say.”

  “You actually approve. What a relief,” I said, my voice dripping with as much sarcasm as I could muster. His smile remained but the tone of his voice grew a steel edge.

  “Careful now, Mr. Astor.” He trained his Arctic blue eyes on me. “I'm a patient man, but it has limits in the face of disrespect. I could have you flayed alive and dismembered this minute. Right now, you amuse me. Don't anno
y me.” Alright, Bob. You're dancing on thin ice here. The objective is to find a way out, alive.

  “You don't feel bad that I shot down some of your friends?” I asked. His smile became hard and his eyes darkened slightly.

  “I have no friends,” he said. “Only acquaintances. I was disappointed in their deaths, but when one's time is up, one's time is up. They wanted to have at you. So I let them. They lost. Anyway, we had a short look at one of your blood samples. The blood sample we originally took from you showed some very interesting things, Robert. As well as your other tissue samples. You seem to have alien DNA in your genes. For that alone, what you did earlier is forgiven,” he said. I said nothing at all. Here was a cold, cold man. He went on, his gaze becoming more intense. I thought my blood would freeze into smoking ice his look was so disturbing and I wondered briefly whether he was more than man.

  “I wonder, how a man can have so much alien DNA, but he, for all intents and purposes, looks like a normal human being,” he said, his keen gaze making me feel as though I would wither, but I held myself together and remained noncommittal. I shook my head as if I didn't understand him.

  “Junk DNA,” I said flatly.

  “Oh ho! We almost dismissed it as such. But it isn't junk DNA. In fact, there is really no such thing as junk DNA. Only DNA functions that we have yet to understand. The aliens here, the Miku, the Glia and Suwudi, all have the same basic DNA. You, on the other hand, have a different sort of alien DNA. Something we've never seen before. The codes and information in this type of DNA are radically different, though somehow also related to the other races of Eraut. Why yours is so different is the mystery here.”

  I said nothing.

  “You have no idea how this happened to you? No unusual operations or medical examinations in the past?” He pushed.