War Of The Worlds

No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth
century, that humans were watching keenly, intelligences greater than
their own, and yet as mortal as their own.

* * *

"We're approaching the surface too fast. Open shutters three, five and
seven one half turn each."

The bronze-skinned man nodded a curt acknowledgement and cranked three
tiny brass handles set into the plush, leather upholstered interior of
the vessel. The ship, christened The Beagle, juddered slightly as the
descent slowed.

"Miss Adler, can you see anything from your side ?"

The redhead, statuesque in her leather and buckskins, peered through
the porthole at the indigo skies above, the ochre and rust landscape
below. "Nothing, Professor. Just boulders and dust."

"Moreau ?"

The corpulent, fishbelly-pale figure at the back of the sphere squinted
through the telescope. "The same."

The Professor sat motionless at the centre of the ship, like a spider
in the centre of its web, his narrow mouth twitching ever-so-slightly
as, behind the sunken and dark eyes, the brain that had once earned him
the Mathematical Chair at the University of Wessex, made calculations
of approach vectors and ballistic trajectories. The crazy engineer,
Robur, had flown to the edge of the atmosphere and the Lumiere Brothers
had only made it from Earth to the Moon as had the late Professor
Cavor. This, however, was to be the ultimate trip, a true space
odyssey.

"Greystoke ?"

The bronze-skinned figure hunched over in the base flicked the long
hair back from his eyes and grunted with a shake of his head.

The Professor's mouth twitched once again as the negative reports were
fed back to him. The journals could not have been false, not if that
yellow-skinned fiend in Limehouse, that Devil Doctor, had wanted them
so badly. They could not have been false.

"Coming in to land. Strap yourselves in."

Greystoke pulled the webbing belt tight around his barrel chest; Moreau
and Adler did likewise.

But the Professor just sat there in his spider's hunch, still
motionless, still plotting.

* * *

A matter of hours later, four figures loped and bounced across the
crimson landscape, weighted boots churning up fountains of pink dust,
their breath misting and demisting elaborate snowflake patterns on the
glass of the brass and teak helmets hastily acquired from the
submersible, Nautilus, before the rebel mariner captain realised they
had ever been aboard.

"There's nothing at all, Professor." Irene Adler's voice crackled and
squawked through the wireless set. "We're wasting our time. We could
die here."

"I thought you had a reputation as an adventuress, Miss Adler, or
should I call you Miss Lola Montes ?"

Irene pouted, continued to follow the group. "I thought this would be
the adventure of adventures, much more exciting than&;#8230; than
scandals in Bohemia or some such&;#8230;"

"Yes, quite, but you are all here for similarly-selfish reasons:
Greystoke to hunt and tame beasts he has never dreamed
of&;#8230;"

The jungle lord grunted again from atop a rock where he crouched and
pawed the stone like some huge cat. "Adventures mean little if you
don't survive to share them."

"I believe you almost didn't survive your expedition to&;#8230;
Skull Island, I believe it was&;#8230; to capture the giant ape,
Kong. You only narrowly beat Challenger and Quartermain there."

Greystoke scowled within his helmet. "You hear much, Professor, yet you
know nothing."

"I know enough. Like I also know that Moreau back there wishes to bring
back a host of live specimens in order to carry out experiments on
them&;#8230;"

"In order to increase human capabilities." Moreau's voice was almost
petulant, "by blending in extra-terrestrial genetics."

"Insane." Adler barely muttered the words. "This whole venture is
insane."

The Professor whirled, long, gauntleted fingers squeezing the woman's
wrist with surprising strength. "This venture has taken two, long years
to organise, Miss Adler. And it is only fitting that today should be
the day we land on this planet. May 4th 1893. Two years to the very day
since I sent my old nemesis over the Reichenbach Falls." The Professor
smiled momentarily. "I doubt very much that he's dead, you know.
Colonel Moran saved me so I imagine that Mister Holmes had a similar
arrangement with his wretched brother." He pressed his faceplate up
against Irene's hand, blew a kiss. "He spoke very highly of you, my
dear, so my sources tell me. To him, you were The Woman." He released
her. "But enough tittle-tattle, the game's afoot."

And, his energy belying his years, off he bounded once again.

* * *

For days they searched the alien landscape, bivouacking where they
could, returning to the Cavorite Sphere when the dust storms blew up,
but still, they found&;#8230;

"Nothing." Moreau slapped his pale fist down on the leather arm of his
seat within The Beagle. "The journals are fakes."

"The journals are not fakes." The Professor's voice was as flat as the
landscape beyond the hull.

"Think of it, you've been deceived into travelling all the way out here
to almost certain death, whilst that Oriental maniac takes control of
your empire in London." The scientist smirked. "Napoleon of Crime
indeed&;#8230;"

"The journals are not fakes. Anyone who thinks so may feel free to
return home in this ship. I shall remain here." The Professor held up
one of the volumes, bound in dark-green hide. "These are genuine. What
they describe, exists&;#8230; out there. What they describe will
provide me with the means to rule England, if not the Empire." All was
silent for a moment. "So, if you wish to leave, just say so. I won't
stop you."

"You know we wouldn't have a hope of getting back alive without you."
Irene Adler sighed an exasperated sigh.

The Professor smiled his usual, quick smile. "Well, it seems like we're
in&;#8230;"

"Look !" Greystoke pointed through one of the portholes; the others
pressed their faces up against it.

Out there, amid whirling clouds of red dust that could flay flesh from
bone, something moved.

"What do you think it&;#8230;"

It was just a blur from this range, a dark and shapeless thing that
shuffled and stumbled along, becoming ever darker as it moved ever
closer.

"It's hard to tell what it is." The Professor squinted through the
eyepiece of the brass and mahogany telescope. "What I can tell you is
that it must have seen us, because it's heading this way." He stood
upright. "Lord Greystoke, Miss Adler, ready the rifles if you
please."

The adventuress and the Lord of the Apes primed and loaded a half dozen
of the weapons, ready to take on whatever it was out there.

The Professor stared through the telescope once again, as that same
whatever drew ever closer, ever closer, and then&;#8230; then it did
something quite, quite unexpected.

'Rat-tata-tat tat' came the knock on the ship's hull. The Professor
smiled wryly. Everyone else just stared. "Moreau, would you please be
so kind as to let our visitor in ?"

Within minutes, the lumpen, misshapen mass stood among them, and then,
it threw off the hides and rags that had protected it out there in the
storm.

The figure beneath was lithe, yet muscular, his bare torso wrapped in
some sort of metallic harness, rusting blades and battered but
exotic-looking pistols hanging from it. The dust-pregnant hair was
long, shaggy and streaked with silver, as was the beard, but the eyes
glowed with a steady fire. "Gentlemen. Lady." The voice, when it came,
had a distinct Colonial twang, a drawl of the southern United
States.

The Professor offered his hand. "John Carter, I presume." The man took
it, his grip tight. "I am James Moriarty. Delighted to make your
acquaintance."

Carter squinted at them. "English, huh ? Long time since I heard that."
He chuckled mirthlessly. "Long time since I heard anything."

"I have your journals. Accounts of yours about this planet, about the
people, the beasts, the science."

Carter smiled and flopped into a chair. "Left them in the cave a fair
few years ago. As for the science, it sure didn't do them a lot of
good."

"Can you take us to your people ?"

"I can take you to their graves. That's all that's left of them."

Moriarty's smile faded like the distant sun dropping over the horizon.
"All that's left ?"
"Everyone's dead. Dejah Thoris, Tars Tarkas, everyone." Carter put his
face in his hands. "There was this mysterious plague, see ? Wiped out
millions within a single cycle: the green skins, the insects, the
invisible guys with the deep voices, the things with the tentacles,
even those weird critters with no ears. The survivors started pointing
fingers, casting blame, and then the missiles began flying." There was
the mirthless chuckle once again. "Seems like I gave 'em all some kind
of infection they weren't set up to deal with. I killed 'em all as sure
as if I put a bullet through 'em."

"But the cities, the machines ?"

"All gone, vaporised. Not even ruins left. I barely got out into the
deserts, the wastelands in one piece. I wish I had died there." He sat
up, took a long breath and smiled. "You people here to take me home
?"

"You're all there is ?" Moriarty's face masked over, became a
scowl.

"As I said are you people here to take me home, because if you are,
you're wasting your time."

Moreau's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean ? Don't you want to go home
?"

"Even if I wanted to, I can't." Carter stood up and stretched. "The
wars sealed off my only route back to Earth, but the funny thing is,
and you'll laugh at this, but before they died, once they did their
tests and found out it was good ol' me who caused the plague, my people
also found out that there's more than one type of fatal infection and
that it can spread in more than one direction."

Irene Adler shook her head. "Would you care to explain ?"

"I was told it's something in the air, but if I, or if you went back to
Earth, the disease we're now carrying, and it's," he faltered over the
words, "ninety-nine percent contagious, it'll wipe out everyone. We're
okay as long as we're here, but anywhere else&;#8230;"

"You're lying !" Moriarty slammed his fist into the brass bulkhead,
ignoring the pain as the blood squoozed between his fingers. "You just
don't want us to obtain your knowledge."

"Only knowledge here is in my head."

Moreau laughed. "This is priceless ! If you return to Earth you'll rule
an empire of corpses ! We are all there is."

"No, he's lying." Moriarty's voice rose in pitch. He pulled a pistol
from his pocket, aimed it shakily. "Tell them you're lying."

Carter remained calm, remained smiling. "Kill me if you like. Won't
change a goshdarned thing, scuse my language, Miss."

Moriarty's arm wavered more, his eyes sparkled with tears. "You're
lying." The voice was a cracked whisper.

He had dreamed of raising the Union Flag over the Martian capital. He
had dreamed of returning to Earth with all the powers of a god.
He had dreamed, but the more he stared into John Carter's eyes, the
more he realised that the dream had faded like a sepia photograph that
had been left in the sun.

"God save the Queen." And with that, he pushed the gun barrel into his
mouth and squeezed the trigger.

And the Red Planet became that little bit more red.

* * *

The four of them gazed down at the corpse. Irene turned to the
American. "What you said about the plague, the war, about you being the
only survivor," she smiled nervously, "that was a lie, yes ? To trick
the Professor ?"

Carter smiled back, pushed his hand through his hair. "Well, ma'am, the
plague did happen. The war did happen, sure. As for me being the only
survivor though&;#8230;"

The air around him shimmered and flexed, there was the stench of hot
metal, they felt their skin tingle and itch, the hairs rising.

The pewter-grey figure with the opal-black eyes that now stood there
raised a spindly arm; what was gripped in the elegantly-elongated
fingers was&;#8230; well, none of them had ever seen its like
before.

"As for thisself being the only nondead," they heard the creature's low
rumble of a voice but its lips remained in a rictus grin, "that is not
the total truth."

They found that they could not move. Their brains sent signals to their
limbs, but those signals became lost in transit.

"Thisself's planet was much like yours before the terran, JohnCarter,
came. Once all realised that he was the cause of the plague, all
eliminated him, broke him down to his basic components and recycled
him. The civil war did follow, but even in victory, all found that the
land was uninhabitable, so all retreated to the ancient caverns beneath
the surface. There are many of us there, our technology is almost gone
and our planet is now dead." The thing held in the creature's fingers
began to glow, to pulse. "All require relocation."

The crimson light spread out from the creature's hand, enveloped it,
enwrapped the frozen, earthly trio and the dead Professor and it
enfolded the entire interior of the sphere.

There was a long, eerie silence.

There was a brief, eerie noise.

There was a long, eerie silence.

The grey creature now stood alone. He glanced down at the dark patches
on the polished floor and the smile faded.

It stepped from the sphere, its long toes digging deep into the Martian
dust. It turned and blinked its black eyes at the Earth ship.

Then it stared up at the bright blue-green light burning steadily in
the dark amber skies.

It turned and stared once more at the Earth ship.

And it grinned once again.