‘No!’ He near-screamed, unable to tear his eyes away from what he’d just touched.
It was a body. A Martian body, clad in the rags that he’d grown up wearing. The torso was painted in crimson blossoms of blood, and a pool of the dark liquid had soaked into the sand around it. He thought it might have been a woman, maybe someone’s mother – the body had long, blonde hair, although it was matted and dirty. She’d lost an arm, and some hastily-wrapped bandages had barely managed to cover the remaining wound.
‘This was our last stand,’ Aunt Brenda said, breathing out deeply. ‘Our last village. I remember.’ A sob caught in her throat, and she held her face in her hands.
Before them, a land that had once been full to the brim with technological advances was now crumbling in ruin. The dusty, red Martian ground was buffeted by gusts of swirling winds, picking up dark sand and flinging it into the remaining debris and rubble from structures the Martians had once built. Scorch marks tortured the metallic, torn-up walls and fences, and desperate footprints through the Martian dust were everywhere.
‘The sound!’ Kia shouted, spinning around to try to identify the source of that awful whistling, now amplified and a hundred times louder than she’d ever heard it before.
Aunt Brenda grabbed both of the children and pulled them down into the sandy ground as an aircraft soared overhead. Long, silver and sleek, she recognised it as a ship from the Humans – the ones who now laid claim to this land of rolling red valleys and hills, home to feral beasts with hides that created the tents for their underground cities and now electronic monsters that were set upon them by the Humans. Tears fell from her eyes as the ship passed by, dropping down into the Martian dirt and mixing with the red to become a subdued shade of brown.
‘We need to find cover,’ Aunt Brenda said, before her chest was wracked with a horrendous coughing fit. She began to groan, and doubled-up on the ground.
Unsure of what to do, Xander looked around, and then up. For all of his life on Mars, ‘up’ had been a rocky ceiling, sometimes punctuated by holes which let through slivers of light. Now, he saw the evening sky, and the stars. He saw the two moons his parents often spoke of, Phobos and Deimus, and he remembered his mother saying that they were the two eyes of a greater power who would watch over him, no matter if he could see them or not. Well, he could see them now, hanging over a huge landmass – a mountain range containing a long-extinct volcano – and he wished they could protect him in some way.
The moons must have watched while this village was reduced to nothing. He could see scraps of life – the bodies, endless bodies that only became more numerous as he looked for longer, and columns that had been half-destroyed, as well as the buildings that were now hollow, burnt-out
shadows of their former selves. Somehow, he could both imagine and not imagine Martians living here, peacefully, before the first Human ships came.
‘Mother and Father lived here,’ Kia whispered to Xander. She had grabbed a fistful of sand and now let it blow out through her fingers as it caught a gust of wind. ‘This is topside. They always talked about topside. We’ve made it.’
‘I know.’ Their tone should have been celebratory, but both children knew they had nothing to celebrate. The Martians went underground for a reason, and the threat wasn’t gone yet.
In the distance, Xander noticed something glint in the light of the sun, and strained his eyes. It was something electronic; was it an arm? No, there were several, making their way across the red sand. The creation moved awkwardly yet speedily, swinging itself from one side to the other, exposed wires sparking from one of its arms. They did not only have their bombs to exterminate the Martians – they had monstrous robots to perform even more of the dirty work.
Xander was partly surprised they hadn’t let a swarm of them loose on the underground yet, to slash and burn the tent city to smoldering shreds.
‘Children, come here,’ Aunt Brenda said, raising her hand to the two. They hurried to her side, kneeling down in the sand, as she rolled her body with difficulty to meet their gazes. ‘You must promise me something.’
‘Anything, Auntie,’ Kia immediately responded, before Xander could even consider what she’d said.
‘Xander, your true name- is XÆA. Elon, your great great grandfather, … Kia,’ She mumbled, ‘Look after each other. Your mother and father looked after each other. They wanted to ensure that you are free, and Mars free.’ Her voice fainted and her eyes dilated, ‘You have only each other.’
Xander stood up, wincing as he heard more whistling from above and had to duck his head as another aircraft soared past, ready to launch another strike on the underground city. The Humans had ripped up his childhood and splattered his family tree in blood. Some said they came from the very same planet, Earth, but he couldn’t imagine that – how could his fellow beings treat him and the rest of the Martians with such heartless cruelty, like they were no more than animals? They escaped this once but what’s next? Where’s tomorrow?
Humans can be so cruel, even to humans.
The Blue and White 