RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.11 HEADS WILL ROLL

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.11 - HEADS WILL ROLL

By Steven Novak

Scattered around you are the bodies of the Martians you’ve just dispatched, their normally gray fresh singed and burnt from the blasts of your laser pistol. The room smells like a barbeque. It smells like day old fried chicken.

It smells oddly delicious.

In ten seconds the Janitor King or the reinforcements for the corpses sprawled at your feet, or possibly both, will undoubtedly come rushing through the door. Your first thought is to use the light transporter that brought you here in the first place to get the hell out. It’s a perfectly reasonable plan. It makes complete sense. Plus it would be easy. It’s also the best chance you have for survival. It’s exactly the kind of plan you would have jumped at fifteen minutes ago.

Too bad this isn’t fifteen minutes ago.

Things have changed dramatically since the former “King” of Mars asked you to come with him and allowed you to log into his data cube. You aren’t the same person that woke up buried beneath Malloy’s underpants just twenty-four hours ago. You aren’t the same confused and fearful schmuck just trying to survive.

Sure, you still don’t fully understand what’s going on, but you think you might have the answers tucked safely into the pouch around your waist. You’re done running and you’re through being scared. If the bodies of the chicken-smelling Martian corpses at your feet prove anything at all, it’s that whoever is about to burst into the room should be scared of you, not the other way around.

Kneeling down, you snag a second pistol from one of the Martian corpses, and then a third from another. You grab a nearby rifle and toss it over your shoulder as well as a few percussion grenades, and a laser-knife – which you slide into the loop on your belt. After arming two of the still smoking pistols you point them at the still-closed door. Let them come and get you. Let them try. It’s about time you stopped searching for answers like an idiot and started trying to make some instead.

It’s time you grew a pair.

What comes next is mostly a blur. A group of Martian reinforcements blasts their way into the room and starts firing. Your body moves even before your mind has time to formulate anything remotely resembling a plan or a maneuver. This is muscle memory at its finest and most dangerous.

In no time at all the room has become a mass of laser beams, wild debris and billowing clouds of grayish black smoke. You’re sliding, and firing, and spinning, all while shooting holes in the chests of the attacking Martians at an astounding rate. One of the Martian guards manages to get close enough to take a swing at you with a four foot long laser-sword. You dodge the wild strike by dropping low and blast a hole in his stomach with one of your pistols.

Your other pistol takes off his head.

You’re moving too fast for the Martians to handle – your shots are too precise. Behind you something explodes. A severed Martian arm smacks you in the back of the head. A fiery torso slides across the bloody floor beside you, spinning like a top and spraying blood in every direction like a sprinkler. You ignore it.

As the Martians begin retreating into the hallway outside the room, you instinctively follow. They aren’t getting off that easily. No one is getting off so easily – not with you – not ever again.

Hoisting the corpse of one of your attackers into the air, you use the Martian’s body as a makeshift shield and continue to press forward. With your free hand you start firing into the crowd of reinforcements crammed into the tight quarters of the hallway. Though it’s difficult to get an accurate count through the smoke and the noise and the explosions, you think there might be thirty of them.

A Martin head explodes like a balloon inflated just a bit too far. A chunk of Martian brain bounces off the side of your ear like a NERF ball soaked in cottage cheese.

Better make that twenty-nine.

It takes you less than ten minutes to dispatch the remaining twenty-nine Martian guards, and the fifteen or so that swarm in afterward. A half an hour after that and you find yourself holed up in a modestly sized room in one of the Martian slums on the outskirts of the colony. You rented the place under a false name and used some Zircons you stole from the uniform of one of the corpses during your firefight.

You’re nibbling on some dinner you purchased on the way over – it's chicken. The gunfight left you very hungry for chicken. Go figure.

With a bit of creative tinkering you manage to connect the data cube the Janitor King gave you to the room’s rather crummy and remarkably simplistic Martian Television set built into the wall. The thing is so old it doesn’t even offer a brain interface – so old you’re surprised it even turned on. There’s absolutely no reason these two things should ever work in conjunction with one another, but making them do exactly that seems almost laughably simple to you all of a sudden.

You chuckle audibly; a lot of things seem simpler these days.

In no way prepared for the sudden jolt of information, the viewing screen of the ancient television begins to hum as the contents of the cube pop onto the monitor. The interface of cube and this antiquated bit of Martian technology isn’t likely to last long, and when the circuits are fried both contraptions will likely be useless.

You only need a few minutes though – five at the most – five measly minutes and you’ll have your answers.

Moments before the firefight you were smart enough to transfer the contents of the NOSSA surveillance cameras to the data cube. You need to finish watching the video you started earlier.

You chuckle to yourself again. In a weird way the Janitor King was right – turns out it does hold the answers to all your questions.

Quickly coding the transmission to the night in question you watch the screen carefully and notice the all too familiar forms of Saleen and Malloy entering quietly into your quarters back on Earth. With a wild static-buzz the camera shifts to the room's interior and follows the pair as they make their way past your couch, into the kitchen, and then through the door leading to your sleeping quarters.

The screen turns to static once again.

The television you’ve interfaced with is starting to overheat. The information is far too large for it to handle. It’s falling apart quicker than you imagined.

It won’t last much longer.

The static on the screen morphs into a twisty distorted image that stretches dramatically, leaving the feet of Saleen and Malloy on one end of the screen and their heads on the other.

With one hand you smack the side of the Television with your palm, “Come on you piece of junk. Hold together for a minute more!” Instantly the image clears.

You can hardly believe what you’re seeing.

Saleen and Malloy look to be standing alongside your bed. Not only that, but you’re standing right beside them – at least the you that’s dressed in black with dark make-up smeared across your face.

Even weirder than that is the fact that there seems to be another you lying sound asleep beneath the covers.

Like shaking a Frisbee loose from a tree, or the act of smacking that last bit of ketchup from the bottom of the jar, the bizarre image knocks loose the confused memories hidden previously within the folds of your brain. Immediately everything comes flooding back.

You’re not you.

You were never you.

Before the television screen overheats and fizzles out with a puff of smoke, you watch as Malloy fires a laser pistol at the you that’s snuggled under the covers with a stupid grin on your face. The blast opens a hole in your chest so large there’s barely a chest remaining when it’s over.

You were the secret weapon all along.

It all makes sense now. It’s all so clear. That’s why Big Boob Bob seemed to feel such a kinship with you. That’s why he was always winking at you and smiling knowingly. That’s why Malloy was so pissed and confused when you escaped. That’s why your memories have felt so disjointed, and uneven, and distant - they aren't even your memories.

You’re not an accountant. You were never an accountant.

They used the likeness of the accountant to get you into NOSSA and onto the transport to Mars.

Lifting your hand to your face you watch as it begins to morph into a shimmering, slimy blob of gelatinous goo. A moment later it transforms yet again into something more closely resembling a Martian hand, and then again into its original form.

You’re not you.

You’re nobody.

You’re a machine that’s gone haywire – an overheated television that’s burnt out.

The plan was for you to assassinate president Womack with the help of Bob, and then the pair of you – and a few others like you – would replace the Martian presidential cabinet and take over rule of the planet.

The plan failed.

They tried to use you. They tried to turn you into something you apparently had no interest in becoming.

No, you’re not you. You’re everybody. You’re anybody you want to be. And you’re going to make them pay.

Less than a week later, back on Earth, Tan’s body washes up in the sewage system underneath NOSSA headquarters. A day afterward Richardson’s laser blast-riddled corpse is discovered in stretched out in his bedroom. Only fourteen hours after that Saleen’s Amazonian-esque body is found stuffed into her modest locker in the NOSSA training center. Quite a few bones were broken and rearranged in order to get her in there, and it takes a day and a half and a laser-cutter to get her out. Only a day afterward, the NOSSA headquarters are burned to the ground. An investigation brings to light the fact that the company was neck deep into illegal experiments with Mutagenic Cell Alteration – which in layman’s terms means you.

A month later Malloy’s body is discovered in seedy hotel down south. He knew you were after him and had been on the run for some time.

While staring down at the corpse the investigating officer pulls the bed sheets covering him away from his body and is taken aback for a minute by what he sees.

He calls over the first officer onto the scene, “Was he like this when you found him?”

“Yep, exactly.”

“What the hell happened to his junk?”

“Dunno…guess someone cut it off.”

THE END.

RETURN TO CHAPTER 1

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.10 HACKING OFF ALONE

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.10 - HACKING OFF ALONE

By M.J. Heiser

Possibilities swirl through your mind. You can't help yourself from a fleeting desire to know exactly what it was that led to this -- specifically, how in the hell did you end up in Malloy's locker, anyway? The only memory you have from just before that moment was a normal one, of slipping under the sheets in your quarters, glancing at the TID (time information device), and taking a deep drink out of a bottle of water next to your bed . . .

"I really need an answer if the plan is going to work," the Janitor King says, a tone of strained patience in his voice.

"You say this thing has all the answers," you say to him, lifting the datacube slightly in your left hand. A beam of white light catches a corner of the crystal-like material, and the light splinters into a prism.

"It has all the answers a human would need," the Martian answers politically.

"You didn't answer my question. Does it have everything?"

"What are you getting at?"

"You're asking me to take part in yet another conspiracy. I don't like conspiracies. I like the thought that by agreeing, I could save both of our worlds, but what if I'm being played for a sucker? That's been happening to me a lot lately. I don't want to be involved in a murder, no matter how deserving the target is, if I'm being lied to."

The Janitor King smiles at you. "Quite understandable, and a quality anyone would desire in their leader."

You roll your eyes. "Save the political bullshit, okay? I just want to know that I'm getting the real deal out of this." Once again you heft the datacube. "I want to see what's on this."

"Very well," the Martian says, rising from his desk and offering you his seat. "Use my terminal."

You sit down. The chair is obviously designed for the unusual ergonomic needs of a Martian body, but you hope you don't have to use it for long. Naturally, you're familiar with the terminal setup, and you slide the datacube into a notch right above your lap. A holographic screen appears in front of you. Electrons swarm into a recognizable graphic interface, and you're offered an option to view the contents of the datacube in either Martian or Human English.

You turn back to the Janitor King, annoyed that he's standing over you. "Do you mind?"

He looks startled. "What?"

"I want to be alone with this."

"Why?"

You sigh. "Because you may be hiding some tricks up your sleeve. Maybe you've preprogrammed the terminal to show me some really impressive stuff that isn't on the datacube. Maybe you have a dagger and you'll stab me if I look at the wrong thing. It doesn't matter. I want to see what's really on the cube, and I don't want you here."

He's obviously disappointed, and you wonder if you don't sense a bit of outrage coming off of him -- but he nods. He can't do otherwise. Your logic is sound. "Very well, but how do I know you won't make a copy of the information and abandon my proposal?"

He has a point, damn it. He seems prepared to concede your condition, so you know you have to be willing to concede his. "What if I promised you that if what I'm looking for is on this cube, I will gladly go along with your plan?"

A smile spreads on his strange, but noble, face. He nods. "Will 20 Earth-minutes be sufficient?"

"Yes."

"I will return shortly," he says. He may have been surprised and a bit shocked by your desire to see this thing alone, but he's leaving. There's a chance there's good stuff on the datacube after all.

You reach out and touch the electron surface of the screen and choose to view the contents of the cube in English. A directory opens in front of you, listing options for Agriculture, Space Travel and Exploration, Mathematical Theory, Physics, and Women. Your eyes grow wide at the potential knowledge spread in front of you, but you have time only for a cursory glance through the subdirectories in the Agriculture and Women sections (topics include "Growing a field of wheat on a cup of water" and "How to answer the question Do I Look Fat in This?") before you abandon the cube altogether and head instead for a root menu in the terminal.

After all, the one question you want answered right now can't be answered by the datacube containing the Martian equivalent of the Book of Life. You want to know what happened to you.

You hack into the Martian Overworld databank and cross your fingers. If the Martians were as smart as they claim, then they would have hacked into NOSSA's systems for some interplanetary spying. You hit paydirt in less than a minute. You hold your breath and route an encrypted tether from the Overworld systems into the NOSSA surveillance camera files. You're sloppy, but it doesn't matter. You'll be done in less than 15 minutes. You code the transmission back to the night you remember, falling asleep in your own bed, and you switch on the feed from the camera positioned in the hall outside your quarters. You fast forward through the speedy commerce of neighbors heading to bed and rising for work and sneaking bed partners into their rooms. You take special note of the time you would normally be leaving your room to head to work yourself.

There is no activity from your door. You watch anxiously until all of your accountant neighbors have headed off to the great desk farm, and just when you think you must have fast-forwarded past something important, you notice something very strange.

You see yourself, and the image before you makes your blood run cold. It's you, undeniably so, but you're wearing something you've never seen before, a black mercenary's smock and a face of black paint. Your movements are quick and graceful, but there's no mistaking the fear in your eyes as you look around you and access your quarters.

You rewind a few times, watching this other You move like a scared cat and go inside the room. You're just getting used to the idea that either you have a twin or you've been up to some really strange shenanigans when you notice two more figures approaching your room. They're beyond suspicious -- they're familiar. Saleen and Malloy are making sure they're alone in the hall before accessing your quarters and slipping inside.

A loud noise startles you out of your focus, and with a few deft gestures, you log off of the terminal and yank the datacube from the slot. The door to the Janitor King's office flies open, and a squadron of at least a dozen armed Martian toughs enters the room. To your distress, you realize their weapons are drawn and their faces are shielded behind gas masks.

"Step away from the terminal," warns one of the toughs, gesturing at you with his raised laser rifle.

"Yeah, sure, of course," you say, and you step sideways and out from behind the desk. You shoot an accusing look at the terminal, and too late, you realize the Janitor King must have activated a remote-monitoring system. Stupid, stupid, stupid! you think to yourself.

"You are under arrest for accessing confidential Martian Overworld systems," the armored tough-guy intones gravely.

"Great," you reply. "Just half an hour ago I was going to rule the world."

"You will be executed 30 Earth minutes from now."

"What?" Your breathing has stopped. Maybe your heart has too.

"You are not on Earth. You are on Mars. Our systems of justice are a little different. All the evidence we need has been recorded and will be transmitted to your embassy after your execution."

He's smug, and you're terrified. The thing is, you've been terrified for nearly a solid 24 hours now, and you can't bear any more. It feels like a fabric inside you has been growing thinner and thinner, and it finally gives way and releases the animal lurking just below the surface.

"I don't think so," you say, your voice coming out in a silky purr.

The Martian tough guy freezes. "I beg your pardon?"

"You should," you say. "My name is Wallace, and I'm a trained assassin."

The Martian is quick, but you're quicker. He blasts a shot of laser energy at you, and you lift the data cube and let the shot hit the angled corner of the storage device. You know from your training what will happen next, and you're deeply gratified to see the laser split into multiple rays. The prismatic components of the laser are unstable, and they're capable of piercing Martian armor, which they do. Martians fall all around you, including the leader. Only five remain, and you make quick work of the stupidly surprised survivors with your own laser pistol, catching each of them at the joint of the armor between neck and shoulder.

You blow a theatrical breath over the barrel of the laser gun and tuck it away, then stow the datacube with its intact contents into a pouch at your waist. You have maybe 10 seconds to consider your options before either the Janitor King or the Martian guards' reinforcements arrive.

Will You...

A. Run out of the office with twin laser pistols blazing?

B. Use the light transporter to return to either carry out or prevent an assassination?

C. Use the light transporter to return to the NOSSA vessel to track down answers?

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.4 LET SALEEN OPEN THE DOOR

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.4 - LET SALEEN OPEN THE DOOR

By Richard "RJ" James

Before the door is even fully open, you can smell the stench of Malloy and his sweaty junk. Thankfully, he is fully clothed this time around, but that does little to calm the nerves you feel seeing him again in such a cramped space.

Saleen snaps to attention, throwing in a salute for good measure, as Malloy enters the room.

“Are we ready for the operation?” Malloy’s voice is full of arrogance and male pride. Mayhap that would quickly change if Saleen knew that, when kicked in the giblets, he hit the floor as if he had dropped a sandwich.

Malloy catches your eye and the smug smile slips from his face as if it was greased.

“You!” He wheezes, and even at this distance, you catch a whiff of garlic. In fact, the smell seems to be emanating from the man in general.

As fast as you can, you whip out your laser pistol and fire a warning shot that goes just a little awry. Actually, the blast from your laser pistol comes within a hair’s breadth of castrating Malloy. Wafting over the top of the garlic aroma pouring into the room from Malloy, there is the scent of singed pubic hair.

“Right. Now that I have you attention, I want you to listen to me.” The words are having a hard time coming out of your mouth. You are still in a state of shock that the laser pistol worked.

Malloy sidles into the room. Both his hands are covering his crotch, which is still slightly smoking. Saleen crosses her arms over her considerable cleavage and looks down at you with disdain.

“I know what you’re planning and I’m not going to let you get away with it. I’ll hand you over the GBI and let them deal with you.”

“PAH!” spits Malloy, and not just in the figurative meaning either; he actually clears his throat and spits a wad of greenish phlegm at you. The wet lumpy mass splats across your face. As you wipe your face with your arm, you realize that you made a mistake almost as big as being held up with a finger, with or without the PEW sound.

Sure enough you feel a quick flash of heat and the arm that’s holding your laser pistol is now wriggling on the floor. You look down at you arm in shock. Malloy’s voice sounds again, but you miss most of what is said; all you know is it included the words “Galactic Swirly.” Knowing that this cannot possibly be good you turn to run, but Saleen’s strong arms lift you effortlessly from the floor. She drags you toward the bathroom, where you see the fate that awaits you.

The toilet doesn’t look like it’s been cleaned out in a while and again you can taste the after effects of the chicken curry from last night. Your head is forced under the murky water. You can feel the merciless boot of the Amazonian Saleen on the back of your neck.

You struggle with all your one-armed might but to no avail; with the taste of pre-owned chicken curry in your mouth and within kissing distance of a floater lurking round the U-bend you expire and pass from the galaxy… which is really for the best when you think about it. If you could think about it. But you can’t, because you’re dead… in a toilet.

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 4

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.3 RUSH THE DOOR

REDPLANET STOWAWAY CH.3 - RUSH THE DOOR WITH YOUR LASER PISTOL

By John Elrod III


Following your instincts, you point your new toy at the door and pull the trigger; nothing happens. You turn the laser pistol over in your hand several times, looking it over as if you had any idea of its inner workings. Throwing in a couple whacks and a few more trigger pulls, even one with the pistol precariously pointed at your face -- lucky for you, a small, unseen LCD screen on the pistol's grip reads, "Unrecognized DNA -- Pistol locked" -- you come to the frustrating conclusion that you will have to figure it out as you go.

"I will have to figure it out as I go,” you say aloud, to nobody in particular. You're acting peculiarly; first, almost lasering your face off, and now, speaking in narratives to the wind. Strange.

You rush to the door, damned pistol in hand, with an unexpected smile on your face. You flash back to summer days spent playing Cops and Robbers in the backyard with your little sister. She always got to be the Cops because your parents insisted you let her win. "She's a girl, and your sister," they said. Though you enjoyed being the bad guy, their condescension still infuriated you. In fact, it's the basis for your entire being, if you think about it -- which you do, quite often. "She's so smart,” they said. "She's class president."She's valedictorian.” "She's going to college." "She didn't wreck the family sedan." "Where did we go wrong with you?" These were all building blocks to the foundation of your current predicament, really. Her unwavering success is what drove you to take that night course in accounting -- why else would you? The constant comparison to her annoying perfection is why you applied so many years ago for the lousy temp job at NOSSA, that you knew you would never get. Who cares if they only hired you because nobody else applied and the last guy committed suicide by self-inflicted headblows from a calculator? That's all ether now. Look, where have you made it? That's right, Mars. I guess you showed them who the real moron is -- it's her -- even though the process has likely doomed you. Where's she, huh? Stuck back on Earth, in some dead-end job -- Assistant D.A.? Pssh -- and a loveless marriage with two little bast--

WAIT -- stop flashing back, you moron!

Shaking your jowls to the point of dizziness, you snap back to reality, or something like it, and realize you've somehow missed the door and are headed down a corridor, toward an electrical station. You struggle to halt your legs' motion, but they're unresponsive.

"What's happening to me?" you can barely think, as you glimpse a neon green, diamond-shaped sign.

"CAUTION: Methane gas. Gas mask required in this zone," it reads, but you're too bleary-eyed to make it out.

You're exhibiting the symptoms of methane gas poisoning. Slowly, the methane has deprived your brain of oxygen. Your cognitive faculties are all out of whack, your mind is having difficulties deciphering your environment, I'm pretty sure your hair wasn't on fire earlier, and worse yet, you're charging directly into thousands of volts of pain.

"Is that a dinosaur?" you can't help but ask yourself, "No, it isn't... well... this is Mars; so, maybe it could be. Stop! Focus on the matter at hand!" you whisper, as you've lost the ability to control your vocal volume.

Either the length of this corridor is uncanny, or you're not exactly moving nearly as fast as it feels. Nevertheless, you're desperate to stop. You spot a low-hanging chain and grab for it.

"Got it! -- shit, a snake!"

Powering through your delirium to realize a moment too late the absurdity of that thought, you're unable to grasp onto the chain once more. Your backwards momentum carries you, finally, through a thinly-paned sliding glass door and, forcefully, you crash into a wall of fuses, circuits, and a bunch of those little knobs that go "click-click-click" when they're turned too fast. An obscene amount of electricity coursing through your veins, you can think only of that dinosaur, or was it a sofa? A sofa? On Mars? Definitely a dinosaur. Definitely.

Meanwhile, a group of perplexed men in gas masks -- who moments before were doubled-over in laughter watching you slowly meander the ten foot corridor to your death -- are now dodging sporadic lasers from the overheated pistol still lodged in your crisping grip.

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 3

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.3 STUFF (AND SHIT) HAPPENS

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CHAPTER 3: STUFF (AND SHIT) HAPPEN

By Richard "RJ" James

Hoping against hope to finally and irreversibly get the smell of Malloy’s soiled shorts out of your nose, you head left, slamming the door as the sound of footsteps creep down the corridor behind you.

It is soon apparent that maybe you made a mistake.

You can no longer smell Malloy’s sweaty junk, but you can now taste on the air the after-effects the galley’s chicken curry had on the crew. The other downside is that you can see said after-effects bubbling lazily in front of you in a giant pool.

Before you get a good look around the room you see a guard making his rounds. On his hip he is carrying a holster that is devoid of its weapon. The location of the weapon does not remain a mystery for long as the guard takes a long look down the sight of the laser pistol before squeezing off a shot. The red beam neatly dissects a long, brown bowel log that was floating on the surface of the cesspool.

The guard chuckles to himself and secures his laser back into its holster. While he has his back to you, you decide that your need is greater than his and move slowly forward.

You crouch down and use all of the stealthy skills you possess, namely crouching and sneaking. The metal grating is behaving itself under your weight as you move carefully forward. You slowly reach out your hand and place it on the butt of the laser pistol when another turd surfaces for air. In a heartbeat the guard grabs your hand and, mistaking it for a gun, aims it at the floating stool.
Squeezing your finger, the guard fires what he thinks is a shot and you oblige him by making a sound you think is approximate to that of his pistol, namely PEW!

When the turd doesn’t fall apart in a blast of red light, the jig is up. -- Or mayhap it was because a laser pistol actually doesn’t go PEW. Either way the guard is on to your game.

With some quick thinking on your part you pull your hand from out of his grasp and point it at him as if it’s a gun. Your adversary, caught off-guard, raises his hands.

“Right, take your pistol out of its holster and place it on the ground in front of you. I don’t want to have to use this thing,” you say, waving around your “gun.”

The shaky guard does just that. He realizes a moment later that you don’t actually have a gun, and that he has been held up with a finger and a very un-convincing PEW sound.

As he moves to pick up his pistol again you turn your “gun” back into a hand and shove him. The man staggers backwards before flailing his arms trying to regain his balance. The one thing that would be really useful at that moment would be reduced gravity, but sadly – for the guard anyway – that is the one thing he doesn’t have, and he falls into the soup, screaming curses that are both very imaginative and very insulting.

As you bend down and scoop up the laser pistol you hear footsteps close to the door you came through. Glancing around the room you see a service hatch hanging open from the ceiling with its ladder lowered.

You need to make a choice.

A. Rush the door with your newly acquired laser pistol?

B. Pretend to be the guard you've just dumped in the poop?

C. Use the ladder to enter the service hatch?