Outlanders Page #2

A short story I intend to build into something bigger. It details my experiences, as well as the experiences of others I served with, during our tours in Iraq.

• Science fiction

								


But that was a joke. The biggest fucking joke.  And we were about to be the worst god damn punchline. Not only was there intelligent life on Mars, there were two different species of it.  What a surprise.  The Death Eaters, that’s what the people of Mars had come to know them as, weren’t the biggest shock.  The biggest shock was the Squatters.  Humanity already had an inkling about the existence of the Death-Eaters, and their appearance on Mars made a lot more sense as the big-brain types unraveled the mystery of the Squatters.  Those were indigenous.  Except they weren’t.  Time and research had shown that almost every structure we had discovered on Mars was built by them, but what really fucked everything up is that they were simply human.  They looked a little different.  Life on a low-gravity planet will do that, and Griff never bothered to learn how they lived in the Mars atmosphere, or any of that history.  He wasn’t a researcher, he was a soldier.  Shoot, move, and communicate.  

Griff continued staring thoughtfully through the door, his memory hazily recalling the rooftop firefight he was in so long ago, and his initial encounter with Squatters.  They coordinated that attack on the rooftop, Jones had died, the first of so many.  Griff’s eyes closed as he tried to push the vision of Jones’ twisted face out of his head.  He reached for his glass and slammed its contents down his throat.

F*ck.

The Orbisun’s blinding light spilled into the room briefly, and a loud creak hailed the opening of the saloon door.  Griff kept his eyes shut, not wanting to see the bright light.  A heavy footstep announced the entrance of something large, followed by another, the dull thuds prompted Griff to open his eyes.

A large bipedal being stood before him.  It was tall,  so much so that it had to duck to get into the door.  Griff looked up at it, and he guessed it was easily close to two feet taller than him.  It wore a sort of woven poncho pulled over its head, its ocean-hued skin needed as much protection from the Orbisun as any human’s, maybe even more.  Griff knew there were specialty shops that provided protective clothing to them, though none of them would openly admit it.

It wore a round brimmed hat pulled low to hide its face, the brim was flat and low, also for keeping the sun out of its eyes.  

It’s eyes.  That’s what Griff had always hated the most.  Their God-damned eyes.  They were large white discs that seemed to glow in low light.  The worst part was that they never fucking closed.  Maybe the damn things never slept.  It would go a long way into explaining why they were so hard to ambush.

Griff eyed it, venom and hatred burned in his eyes.  25 years worth of contempt and suppressed memories bubbled just below the surface, and slowly Griff rested his hand on the old revolver slung to his hip.

“What you want, Death Eater?”  He spat the words out, hating that they even had to pass his lips.  

It stared at him, lifting the brim of its hat a little bit.  Those hideous white disks stared back at Griff, stabbing at him, piercing him.  All Griff could think about was grabbing one of the tarnished and pitted spoons that lay behind the bar and prying them out of the monster’s god-damned head one at a time.  

They hated the term Death Eater.  Not because the words bothered them, but they understood the context.  The derogatory hate that came with the term was not lost on them.  After the war ended, and some form of integration and reconstruction happened, most had stopped using the term.  They were just called people by those that post-dated the war.  The few old-timers, those like Griff, had still harbored enough hate and disdain that the words fell from their lips like a river flows.  

Those eyes stayed fixed, motionless, seemingly lifeless, “I need your help,” it said.  

They didn’t speak, they had some kind of telekinetic power and they simply pierced your mind with their thoughts.  Once you’d been around them enough you understood how to block it, how to protect yourself, but communication with them was as discomforting as staring into their empty fucking eyes.  

“I got your help.  Right. Here.”  Griff responded, his fingers tapping the grip of his revolver.  “It will solve every fuckin’ problem you’ve got.”

No response.  No piercing echoes screaming through his head, no hollow whispers skulking through the nooks of his mind.  Griff waited, his fingers still tapped the grip, his eyes locked on those hideous white disks.  The alien shifted its weight slightly, its back-bending legs flexing slightly underneath the poncho it wore.  Its long arms flexed and relaxed, and its three thick fingers curled into a fist with its thumb, then relaxed.  First one hand, then the other, then both.  The forearms on them were huge, though the upper arms were much smaller by comparison.  

Horrible looking things, Griff thought.

“I know you, cattle.”  The words penetrated straight into Griff’s brain, a hoarse whisper that echoed deep in the recesses of his mind.  Hearing the word cattle gave Griff a shudder.  Fucking vultures, Griff thought, and gripped his pistol.

Both of them moved with a surprising speed and grace, given the sheer size and bulk each one was carrying.  The Death eater lunged forward, its three-fingered hand easily palmed Griff’s head like a ball.  Griff grunted and muffled in the creature’s grip, but had also swiftly removed the pistol from its holster, cocked it and jammed the barrel against the alien’s chest.

Damn it.  I gotta quit drinking, too slow, Griff thought.
The alien pulled the man’s head close to its, those harsh disks staring deep into Griff.  

The room around Griff swam until the bar, floor, and Death Eater all became a vibrant swirl of colors.  He tried to scream but his throat was cotton.  He tried to think, but his head was fog.  The world around him faded to nothing, before he was brought back, like an old movie slowly coming into focus.


The small concrete building served as a temporary base.  Another bombed out shithole for the soldiers to live in while they claimed inch after inch.  The squatters had long ago revealed their presence, and the war had progressed to the point where they were fighting with the anger and desperation of a people on the verge of extinction.  Humans had invaded, though it felt weird, because they were humans too.  Just different.  

No one had figured out why they were so desperate.  Those big brains weren’t sure if they were on the verge of extinction, or if they were that eager to defend their home.  Any time a Squatter was captured they refused to talk, and the linguist types and science types worked together diligently to comprehend their language, but soon enough none of it mattered.  The people on Mars found what had caused the indigenous people to fight so brutally and violently.  

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