Why?
He staggered on, following a trail of bloody footprints. He’d scored a hit. Nice. As he ran, Flint thought about Prospero’s mention of a ‘Scotsman.’
Destro. Had to be.
Destro was known for AI systems, as well as other weapons that smudged the boundaries between ‘in development’ and ‘science fiction.’
That fast Flint understood it. The competing weapons designers. The ‘client.’ Backstabbing and sabotage were not exactly unknown to that crew of maniacs.
If Destro was afraid that another top-of-the-line weapons manufacturer would come and crowd him out of the market, what better way to handle it? Let the man finish his masterpiece―the Caliban exosuit and the Skyjack intrusion software―then discredit him during an inspection and take the system for himself. He could then sell it to Cobra without losing the broker’s fee; and Destro was genius enough to retro-engineer it.
It made sense, though Flint wondered at how twisted he was becoming if this made sense to him.
He rounded a bend and saw the open sky and the vast, black desert.
He saw Flash running at him, the smoking ruin of a laser rifle in his hands, his face flash-burned and bloody. There was an explosion and Flash was flung twenty feet through the air. Flint tried to dodge, but Flash was a screaming missile that struck him full in the chest.
-17-
Outside of the Island
Flint could barely breathe.
He crawled out from under Flash’s body, reached down to touch his friend’s throat, felt the pulse. Weak, but still there.
Pain was everywhere. Flash’s damaged laser rifle had struck Flint in the face, and blood dripped from a deep gash on his cheek. One eye was puffed shut and the whole world had a distant, tinny sound.
And the pain.
It was hard to find somewhere to put his thoughts that was not already flooded with agony.
It was all coming apart. Gunfire rattled on and on. There were screams from inside the complex and then a huge series of explosions. One, two, five…too many to count. Fires burst through the roofs of a dozen buildings sending showers of sparks into the sky so that it looked like the stars themselves were dying and falling.
Flint ran out into the compound, moving fast despite the pain, using hard cover instead of shadows, moving from tree to rock to wall, his pattern random and unsymmetrical. He was hurt, he knew that much. The warmth running down the inside of his clothes wasn’t all sweat. He could smell the sharp copper tang of his own blood.
His blood, and the blood of others.
Doc. Law. Scarlett, too. In his mind all he could see was blood.
Blood…and those things. The minigun drones. The Sprites. Were they real or was his damaged brain replaying the horrors of the last hour?
He ran and ran, his breath burning in his lungs.
He stumbled and went down, hitting chest-first and sliding, tasting sand in his mouth. He came to rest in the middle of the east parade ground. Exposed, vulnerable.
The screams began to die away. They did not fade like volume turned down on an iPod. They were cut off. Sharply, abruptly, in time with new bursts of gunfire.
Flint felt his consciousness begin to fade as fatigue or damage took hold of him.
“No,” he mumbled, spitting sand out of his mouth. “No!”
If he passed out now, he knew that he would never wake up. Not in this world. They would find him. Find him and tear him apart.
He tried to get to his hands and knees, but he felt too weak, too used up.
“No!” he growled, louder this time, and the harshness in his own voice put steel into his muscles. He rose, inch by agonizing inch until he was upright on his knees.
In the distance he could hear one of them coming.
A metallic clang, the squeak of treads.
How far? A hundred yards? Less?
Flint set his teeth and tried to get to his feet. No way he was going to die like this. If this was his last firefight, then by God he was not going out on his knees.
Pain flared in his side. He couldn’t remember what had hit him. Bullets? Shrapnel?
It didn’t matter, he forced one leg up, thumped his right foot on the ground, jammed the stock of his M5 on the ground, and pushed.
It was like jacking up a tank.
He rose slowly, slowly.
The squeak of the treads was closer. All of the screams had stopped.
Even the gunfire seemed to have died away.
“No!” he snarled and heaved.
He got to his feet and the whole world spun around him. He almost fell. It nearly ended right there, but Flint took an awkward sideways step and caught his balance.
The world steadied.
The squeak of treads was close. So close. Too close.
Flint turned.
It was there. Massive, indomitable against the firelit columns of smoke. It rolled to a stop ten feet away. It was like the minigun drones that had slaughtered most of his team…but this one was bigger, and with a hiss of hydraulics the black mouths of two electric cannons swung toward him. He raised his own gun.
The miniguns could fire more than four thousand rounds per minute, per gun.
He wasn’t sure he could even pull the trigger.
Flint bared his bloody teeth in a grin that defied the machine, defied logic, and defied the certainty of death that towered over him.
“Go Joe!” he yelled.
And fired.
Then something came out of the darkness to his left and slammed into the drone with the sound of a train wreck. There was a scream of twisted steel and one of the guns fired, but the rounds chopped a line through the sand a yard to Flint’s right.
From the tangle of wreckage a monster rose, gleaming and ugly and huge. It punched down at the drone, shattering the gearbox; it grabbed the active gun and tore it from the pedestal and flung the smoking weapon a hundred yards into the dark.
Then silence collapsed around Flint, and he sprawled onto the sand, his gun falling from his nerveless fingers.
The giant moved toward him, clanking with each step, its metal skin smoking. There was a hydraulic hiss and the faceplate rose to reveal the madman inside the monster.
“It’s over,” he said. “I set an EMP bomb. It will detonate in two minutes. The drones are done. Everything is done.”
Flint tried to speak, tried to form a word.
“W-why?”
Prospero smiled. A strange, enigmatic smile.
“You didn’t believe me when I told you earlier, Chief,” he said, “but I really have come to believe in the work. There will be blood—there has been blood, and I regret that more than I can express…but eventually this technology will make open warfare impossible. My drones were meant to fight other drones. That’s the point. Let the machines battle over politics and oil and religion. Let men be safe.” He shook his head. “There will be a new cold war. It’s inevitable. Cold as steel, Chief. The drones and iron giants will become walls between men, and ultimately men will have to stop killing each other.”
“Sounds nice,” gritted Flint, “but I have dead friends here who wouldn’t think much of that plan.”
Prospero waved his gigantic arm. “None of this was supposed to happen. This was sabotage. This is a perversion of everything I stand for.”
“You got into bed with Cobra,” Flint said with a cold sneer. “What did you expect would happen?”
Prospero’s eyes shifted away. “I had his word. The Commander. He gave his word that my systems would never be used against human assets. Only against other machines of war.”
Flint turned his mouth and spat blood onto the sand. “You’re a God damn liar,” he said. “Or you are the greatest fool who ever walked the earth.”
Prospero shook his head again. “You love war, Chief. You’re incapable of understanding the higher purpose in all of this.”
“Maybe. I know people, though, and you can tell yourself whatever fiction will get you through th
e night, but anyone who does this does it for one purpose only. Money.”
Prospero’s eyes were unreadable in the glow from the burning buildings.
“Believe what you will,” he said. “But then why did I save you?”
Before Flint could answer, the faceplate slid back into place and the Caliban unit stalked off. Flint could hear its clanging footsteps as it headed away―not into the desert, but back into the burning building.
Then the darkness and shock and blood loss reached for Flint and took him down into the world of shadows.
-18-
The Island
A Joe rescue team landed thirty-one minutes later.
By then the EMP had done its work and all of the drones lay still and silent. Merely machines now.
Medical teams were flown in from Area 51. Doc Greer was in the worst shape and he was airlifted to a Las Vegas hospital for emergency surgery. Scarlett, Law, Flash, and Flint were all battered, but none of them were in any immediate danger. Order would need a vet’s attention.
The only member of the team unaccounted for was Shock Jock. His body was never found and the search was ongoing. Had he been with Kong’s team? A mole inside the Joes? It was a horrible thought.
Or would his body be found buried under the tons of rubble of what was once the Island?
Flint thought about that as the chopper lifted him and the other survivors into the air.
Monster, Schoolgirl, Teacher’s Pet, and Jukebox were still down there. Bodies in black rubber bags. Heroes whose real names would never appear in any headline. Heroes who had died fighting a battle the public would never know about. What had happened at the Island was classified. The death toll would be attributed to an industrial generator explosion. There would be no medals awarded.
There would be four more photos on the wall of the Pit. And the world would move on.
Flint sipped water to wash the taste of blood from his mouth.
Prospero had gotten away. He had gone into the burning building and taken Professor Miranda in his steel arms and then…vanished. Walked out through the smoke, leaving a hole big enough for Law and Scarlett to pull Doc Greer’s body out to safety as the building collapsed in flames around them.
From the air, Flint watched the last of the buildings go crashing down. There wasn’t enough water in the desert to fight that kind of conflagration. It would all be ash and charred metal.
It was a defeat. The Joes had lost before, but this felt somehow worse. Dirtier.
Prospero was out there. The Caliban unit was out there. So was Skyjack.
Destro, too.
And Cobra.
Flint stared down at the destruction and ate his pain and endured.
This was a defeat, but the war would go on.
-19-
Ice House
The Commander sat in his chair and sipped a lovely red wine. The Goldberg Variations played softly, filling the room with beauty. On the screens in front of him Destro and Prospero were screaming at each other from two separate secure locations. Each of them had called him within twenty-four hours after the Island incident; each of them boiling with righteous rage. They screamed about betrayal, about the sabotage of efforts. They each vowed revenge and retribution. And seeded through their diatribes, each threw covert pitches at the Commander about how their particular technologies were the only sane course worth pursuing, and they fired off coded emails with revised prices. Over and over again, even as the war of screams and threats raged.
The Commander conferenced their calls together and sat back to watch the fireworks.
“Ah,” he said to himself, “I do love the free market.”
Author’s Note on “The Death Song of Dwar Guntha”
Celebrated anthologist John Joseph Adams is a frequent co-conspirator of mine. I’ve done stories for a number of his anthologies, ranging from apocalyptic to zombies to the Land of Oz. He’s always fun to work with, and he’s demanding enough to encourage writers to do some of their best work.
This next story is one I did for his book Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, which contains all-original stories set in the world of John Carter of Mars, the creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The anthology included stories by some amazing writers including Joe R. Lansdale, Peter S. Beagle, Garth Nix, Chris Claremont, S.M. Stirling, Catherynne Valente, and others.
My story, though set in that world, uses John Carter only as a minor supporting character. I wanted to view Barsoom through different eyes than the former Confederate soldier transporter from Earth. I wanted to tell the story of another kind of fighting man of Mars.
The Death Song of Dwar Guntha:
A Story of John Carter of Mars
-1-
My name is Jeks Toron, last padwar of the Free Riders, and personal aide to Dwar Guntha. When he dies, however he dies, I pray I will go with him into the realm of legends and that our song will be sung in Helium for a thousand thousand years.
That is not a heroic boast—I won’t fall upon my sword at the death of my captain; but I have been in a hundred battles with him, and we have grown old together…and war is not an old man’s game. For odwars and jedwars, perhaps, but not for fighting men.
Dwar Guntha? Ah, now there is a fighting man. Was he not with John Carter when the Warlord raided the fortress of Issus? Aye, he was there, leading the mutiny of loyal Heliumites against the madness of Zat Arras. He was a man at arms in the palace when Carter was named Jeddak of Jeddaks—Warlord of all Barsoom. And in the years that followed, how many times did Guntha ride out at the head of the Warlord’s Riders? Look closely at Dwar Guntha’s face and chest, and in the countless overlapping scars you’ll see a map of history, a full account of the wars and battles, rescues, and skirmishes.
Now, though…?
John Carter himself is old. His children and grandchildren, and grandchildren of his grandchildren are old. We red men of Helium are long-lived, but that old witch time, as they say, catches up to everyone. Guntha’s right arm is not what it was, and I admit that I am slower on the draw, less sure on the cut, and less dexterous in the riposte than once I was. Even the heroes’ songs for which I and my family have been famous these many generations have become echoes of old tales retold. In these days of peace there are few opportunities for songmakers to tell of great and heroic deeds; just as there are few opportunities for warriors to pass into song in a moment of glorious battle.
It seems to me, and to Guntha, that we live in an age of city men. City men, or perhaps “civilized” men, seek deaths in bed, just as our great grandfathers once sought that long, last journey down the River Iss.
We spoke of such things, did Dwar Guntha and I, as we sat before a fire, warming our hands on the blaze and our stomachs with red wine. The moons chased each other through the heavens, leaving in their wakes a billion swirling stars. Tomorrow might be our last day, and so many days lay behind us. It sat heavily upon Dwar Guntha that our last great song may already have been sung.
I caught him looking into the flames with a distance at odds with the hawk sharpness he usually displayed.
“What is it?” I asked, and he was a long time answering.
Instead of speaking, he straightened, set aside his cup, and drew his sword from its sheath of cured banth hide. Guntha regarded the blade for a moment, turning it this way and that, studying the play of reflected firelight on the oiled steel. Then with a sigh he handed it to me.
“Look at it, Jeks,” he said heavily. “This is my third sword. When I was a lad and wearing a fighting man’s rig for the first time I carried my father’s sword. A clunky chopper of Panarian make. My father was a palace guard, you know. Served fifty years and never drew his weapon in anger. First time I used the sword in a real battle I notched the blade on a Tharkian collar. Second time I used it the blade snapped. When Zat Arras fitted out the fleet to pursue John Carter after he’d returned from Valley Dor, Kantos Kan himself gave him a better sword. Good man, that. He was everything Zat
Arras was not, and the sword he gave was a Helium blade. Light and strong and already blooded. It had belonged to a padwar friend of his who died nobly but had no heirs. I used that blade for over twenty years, Jeks. It tasted the blood of green men and black men, of plant men and white apes. And, aye, it drank the blood of red men, too.”
He sighed and reached for his cup.
“But I lost it when my scouting party was taken prisoner in that skirmish down south. Now, why do I tell you, Jeks? That’s where we met, wasn’t it? In the slave pits of An-Kar-Dool. Remember how we broke out? Clawing stones from the floor of our cell and tunneling inch by inch under the wall? Running naked into the forests, wasted by starvation, filthy and unarmed.”
I smiled and nodded. “We were armed when we returned.”
Guntha smiled, too, and nodded at the blade. “That was the first time I used that sword. I took it from the ice pirate who sold us into slavery. I snuck into his tent and strangled him with a lute string, and for a time I thought I would throw this sword away as soon as its immediate work was done.”
“That would have been a shame,” I said as I hefted the sword, letting the weight of the blade guide the turn and fall and recovery of my fist on my wrist. The balance was superb, and the blade flashed fire as it cut circles in the air.
“And so it would,” he agreed, and his smile faded away by slow degrees. “Yet look at it, Jeks. See the nicks and notches that have cut so deep that no smith can sharpen them out? And along the bloodgutter, see the pits? Shake it, you can feel the softness of the tang and if you listen close you can hear it cry out in weary protest. I heard it crack yesterday when we fell upon the garrison that was fleeing this fort. Hearing it crack was like hearing my own heart break.”