The Barsoom Project

Earlier, looking up toward the ridge they’d have to reach, they’d seen something that might have been an immense spider, a cross between a daddy longlegs and a tarantula. This could be its leg. There was a sharp, molded tusk fixed to its ankle, anchored by rivets in the chitin.

A second leg came probing, armed with a second tusk. Max was reminded of the fighting spikes mounted on the collars of pit bulls, back before the dogs were bred into animals so vicious they would no longer mate or nurse their young.

The spider’s torso emerged, six feet up.

It scuttled backward for a moment, as surprised to see them as they were to see the spider. Its black eyes were multifaceted, and slightly reflective. Max saw his own face in the creature’s orbs, distorted with shock and fear. Trianna whispered, “Why didn’t you chop it?”

Max winced. “I froze up.”

The creature opened its mouth, revealing a black, red-rimmed cavity. It hissed, and charged.

This was like no spider Max had ever studied in biology. Each of its legs seemed capable of bending in either direction. It flickered those leg spikes with disturbing speed.

The ledge was narrow, and Max backpedaled.

Behind him, Trianna said, “There’s a wider spot back about fifteen meters.”

“Get to it!” He started backing up. He tripped over his feet and fell heavily. “Oh, shit!”

A rifle fired behind him. He glanced back to see Trianna huddled on all fours to give Johnny his chance. Johnny, with carbine to shoulder, was firing into the thing as it advanced.

It slowed, licking at the blood, and came on.

Eviane watched Hippogryph for a signal. Somehow what they were doing, sneaking around to split the attention of the Cabal, seemed vaguely wrong.

They had found a boat, with provisions and dynamite. The canoe was shattered and bloodstained, and…

She rubbed her hands against her temples.

There was a fragment of a human foot in the canoe, as if something had risen from the depths and devoured the occupants. But they weren’t supposed to discharge the satellite. They were supposed to find the boat, and the dynamite, and blow up…

That was a different Game.

Game?

She smiled to herself, even as the confusion threatened to drive her batshit.

Game?

How could all of this be a Game?

And yet…

And yet… hadn’t she seen light shining through one of those monsters? Or a war club sailing through one of them? Yet they crushed physical objects. Or seemed to…

Could the whole thing be some kind of monstrous joke?

But why? Who had the answers? Max, dear Max had tried to tell her over and over that it was only a Game…

She watched Hippogryph, she looked at Ollie. Damned if it didn’t look like Ollie was having fun. He had stuck flares into his bandoleer now. It looked like an editorial cartoon of a Libertarian revolutionary.

Hippogryph (and what kind of a name is that?) wasn’t having fun. He was helping them pick their way through a maze of shattered masonry, and doing a fairly good, serious job of it. He was tired, though.

The masonry broke into a wider area here, as if whatever forces had destroyed this island city had found nothing to attack in this one spot. She looked across it. Again, it looked like the huge hieroglyph she had seen from the top of the ridge.

Hippogryph turned to them. “This might not be a bad place to set off the flares. Right out in the middle, there, and then hightail it back to the ruins as soon as anything shows. I think that we can fight a delaying action.”

Ollie nodded. “That sounds good to me.”

Eviane stared at Ollie. Had she seen his face before? Or Hippogryph’s? There was something familiar…

“Eviane? Sound reasonable?”

“Sure. Let’s do it.”

They stared out across the plain. Eviane was watching the sky. Things moved in the shadows, and they hunched close to the ground, suddenly very aware of their vulnerability.

“Ah-maybe this wasn’t a great idea…”

“The idea,” Ollie reminded him, “was to get the Cabal’s attention-”

“Preferably with minimal tissue damage.”

“-not necessarily to survive.”

“Nobody here but us chickens.”

Ollie and Hippogryph both had flare grenades. While they prepared to ignite them, Eviane watched the shadows.

Everything was so dizzying. So familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It was making her groggy.

Who was Michelle?

“All right, we’re ready here.” They had lashed eight stubby silver flare cylinders together into two bundles of four, and propped them up with snow. The wind that blew from over the great ridge of the plateau herded an eerie howling sound before it.

Ghost riders in the sky…

Ollie twisted the fuse ring on his grenade bundle. With a soft pop and a burst of incandescently white light, it ignited.

The glow was brighter than the eye could comfortably tolerate. Shielding her face barely helped.

“Come on!” Hippogryph yelled, as he triggered his own. He scampered back for the shelter of the ruins.

She ran as fast as she could, but back over her shoulder she saw the magnesium flares erupting into the sky, shooting fire up and up.