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.5 JUST RUN!

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.5 - NO PLAN, JUST RUN!

By Steven Novak

You watch as Bob waddles his way through the bustling crowd of locals, tourists and foreign dignitaries flown in from Earth that have crowded the concourse of the Cydonia Mensae docking station. He comes to a stop at the entrance to the male restroom, and looks over his shoulder to see if anyone is watching him. Ducking behind a pylon, his body molds and twists itself, transforming into something more resembling a lump of shiny, partially transparent clay. A moment later the newly formed blob of sparkly goo morphs itself yet again into a rather leggy blonde with a set of obscenely large breasts shoved into a top so skimpy it might as well not exist at all.

Big-Boob Bob chuckles into his hand and slides into the female restroom unnoticed.

You’d shudder at the grossness of the situation if you had the time – which you don’t.

There are bigger problems at hand than Bob’s pervert tendencies. You need to get as far away from Bob’s oversized chest balloons as you can. You need to tell someone about Malloy, and Saleen, and Richardson and whatever it is they all have planned. You need to warn someone – anyone – of what’s going on.

You may not know the details, but you know someone if going to die and you can’t let that happen.

You need to get away.

You need to run.

You need to run right now.

Your feet don’t wait for your brain, and before you know it you’re barreling full speed through the crowd. You slam full force into an elderly couple doing a bit of window-shopping at a tiny store specializing in an even tinier array of useless Martian trinkets. The old woman’s face mashes against the glass with a fleshy-wet thud. Her teeth pop from her gums like they were shot from a cannon and shoot onto steel walkway below.

To no one in particular you scream out, “There’s going to be an assassination!”

Common sense and reason has long since become a thing of the past for you. People need to know what’s going to happen, and the best way you can think to tell them is to yell it at the top of your lungs.

So what if that doesn’t make sense? You aren’t thinking straight and you honestly don’t care.

You aren’t cut out for this sort of nonsense. That much is painfully obvious at this point. Perverts named Bob that can turn to silvery piles of goo . . . Malloy and his gray-haired dangly bits . . . it’s all become far too much for you to handle.

You’ve only been to Mars once in your life – just after the first Mars/Earth War – and it smells pretty much the same. You never forgot this smell. You’ve always hated it. It’s like an acidy burp after a belly filling night of Mexican food – like guacamole dipped in piss and left in the sun.

You hate this place and you want to go home.

After busting through a group of women and smacking one with your forearm, you knock over a crippled man in a hover chair then grab a ten-year-old boy by the collar of his shirt and hoist him into the air so violently his boots fall off.

Pulling him so close to your face that your spittle begins to puddle on his light brown flesh you scream into his flared nostrils, “SOMEONE’S GOING TO DIE KID! DO YOU HEAR ME? THERE’S GOING TO BE AN ASSASSINATION!”

Staring into your wild eyes and your sweat covered face the boy is instantly reduced to a jittering, sobbing mass.

Someone yells something at you from the left. Another person curses at you from the right. The cripple you knocked over whips his suitcase in your general direction. The father of the child you’re swinging like a sack of potatoes rushes in and tries to pry you loose from his son.

When that fails, he punches you in the face.

Within moments a mob of people has swarmed you, grabbing and clawing and kicking, all while screaming for someone to call the police. Through the wild mess of legs and torsos you spot leggy Bob and his massive jugs watching you from across the concourse and shaking his/her head in disbelief.

You try to point in his direction but no one is listening. Someone steps on your hand and snaps your finger like a stick of space jerky. The crowd is far more interested in beating on you, and they’re doing a mighty fine job of it to boot.

The next few hours are a blur really. Someone’s shoe connected with your temple and rattled your gray matter – after that everything seems hazy and disjointed. You can recall the police arriving – you think. You were cuffed – maybe.

Did Bob mash his boobs in your face and tell you to blow?

No, that couldn’t have happened.

There was a hover ship of some sort. Then you were scanned. At least you think it was a scan. It could have been any number of things really.

Eventually things begin at last to sharpen up and you find yourself lying face down on a steel bench. You’re dressed in a crunchy-stiff one-piece jumpsuit. A nagging pain has managed to settle the curve of your lower back, and getting yourself into an upright position again proves to be a difficult task. Across from you a set of four-inch thick laser bars are humming softly, sparking occasionally with blue-tinted twinges of electricity.

You’re in jail.

A rather beefy Martian emerges from the shadows to your left with a dangerously serious grin stretched across the leathery, gray toned contours of its face.

Reaching up with one of its boney, freakishly long fingers it begins unzipping the orange jumpsuit it’s stuffed into that’s clearly a good three sizes too small.

In a monotone voice it says only four words, “Take. Your. Clothes. Off.”

For a moment, your heart stops.

The alien then adds on two more, “Bend. Over.”

You’re in for an awfully long night.

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 5

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.5 WALLACE, THE ASSASSIN

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CHAPTER 5 - WALLACE, THE ASSASSIN

By Tomara Armstrong

Saleen moves in slow motion toward the door; her long stride and gangly arms cut through the atmosphere like knives. You grab the bill of your cap and pull it down low on your brow, broaden your shoulders, and step into the shadows as Saleen opens the door.

“Captain,” she greets Malloy. “Feeling better?”

“Yes! I just heard on the radio… that ASSHOLE who damaged my goods is floating in the septic pool. Marinating… until someone is willing to fish the SLIME out.”

You see Malloy smile, probably for the first time ever, as he plops down on the leather sofa in the middle of the room. “Ugh,” he grunts; he then grimaces and rubs his junk.

You close your eyes and try not to laugh, but your shuffling feet draws Malloy’s gaze.

“There you are,” Malloy grunts. You give him an exaggerated nod. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on the transport headed to Cydonia!”

You look at Saleen. She shakes her head,.“The conference starts in a few days, and the world’s leaders should have already started checking in.”

You wipe your hands on your pants, nod, and begin to make your way to the door.

“Hold it!” Malloy demands. You freeze, staring at the door a mere five feet away. With a deep breath, you pull your cap down lower and spin around to face the captain. “Good luck, soldier.” You nod, swing around equally fast and practically sprint out the door.

As you tunnel through the labyrinth of halls and corridors, you see a couple of people dressed in the same uniform you have recently acquired. “Hey,” you say to them. “I… uh… was assaulted by that intruder… was knocked out... I can’t remember how to get to the transport.”

They point to the right and you take off down the corridor, following the bend. There are three transport cradles, but only one pod door is open. As you close in on it, the scanner reads Cydonia.

You step into your transport pod and red lights are flashing. You push the large green button to signal you’re present and ready for take-off with five minutes to spare. You stare at the lights and whirling gizmos of the control panel and try to absorb all of the information you’ve just been given.

You are apparently on your way to Cydonia to assassinate some world leader, and you have no idea who it is. You can’t even fly a transport. You start to laugh and shake your head, “Me, an assassin.”

“Pretty funny, huh?”

You jump as you notice a man that resembles your Uncle Ernie buckled into a seat in your pod. He’s eating potato chips and has a trail of crumbs and grease down the front of his grey sweatshirt. “Uh,” you fumble.

“Yeah you don’t look like an assassin to me either.” He tips the yellow bag on its side and pours the remnants of greasy potatoes into his mouth. “But that’s ok… we can help each other out,” he crunches.

You continue to stare at him as he dusts his hands off on his sweatshirt and extends one toward you. “I’m Bob.”

You take his salty hand, “Hi, Bob. I’m…. I’m …” You’re trying to remember who you’re pretending to be, but you’re drawing a blank.

“Wallace, I know… The assassin.” He digs in the bag beside him on the floor. The doors lock, and the pod lights begin flashing again.

“So I’m the assassin. You are… the pilot?”

“Nope.” He pops the cap on a Diet Coke and takes a long swig. “Auto pilot. You should buckle up.”

“Oh.” You sit down and strap yourself into the seat next to Bob, still wondering about his role in this mission. You watch as he digs around in his bag.

“I’m the secret weapon,” he says as he continues to dig.

“Come again?”

He turns and looks at you with a seriousness you hadn’t noticed before. There’s a flicker in his eyes and the corner of his mouth twitches. “I’m… the secret weapon,” he says.

Bob smiles as his face melts into an unrecognizable blob. His body shifts, twists, and turns, settling into the lovely form of Saleen; dark eyes, big hands, and all. She winks at you and quickly molds back into regular old Bob. “Oh,” you mouth as Bob returns to his bag on the floor.

“Parcheesi?” He produces a board game and sets it up between the two of you. “We have about half an hour until we land on Mars’ surface. I’m blue… you?”

“Uh… green.”

Bob is very good at this game, and in the 25 minutes you have been in the pod, he is one roll away from winning the whole thing.

“Bob, is there a plan? I have a bit of a head injury… it’s coming back to me… slowly,” you lie.

Bob laughs. “We should be docking at Cydonia Mensae soon. We have a room booked at the Hilton, but we will have to take a shuttle into the city from the dock.”

You nod and consider your possibilities of escape. You are no assassin, so that option is definitely out . . . but what about Bob? How can you ditch this guy? If you ditch him, will he go and finish the job?

You don’t get the chance to think about it too long; the pod begins to slow and bumps to a stop. The hatch opens and the cab lights begin to blink red, signaling your arrival. “Welcome… to Mars,” a female voice booms over the loudspeaker, “Remember dock number 4-5-3-7-1 Cydonia Mensae. Grab a drink at… the Terminal, get your Martian souvenirs at… The Hot Spot… Refuel at…. The --”

“Let’s go,” Bob pushes past with his bag over his shoulder, “I need a drink.”

“Me too.”

“First I need to take a leak.” Bob heads toward the men’s room. “I’ll be right back.”

You look around the dock, trying to come up with a plan.

Will you...

A. Run. No plan, just go-now!

B. Grab a drink with Bob and challenge him to a drinking contest in hope of getting him drunk and ditching him?

C. Go along with Bob. Enjoy a free hotel stay at Cydonia's luxurious Hilton - you need a vacation, so let NOSSA's corrupt pony up while you figure out how to be the hero?