Playthings of Death

Bengor jumped from a deep comatose sleep. His head was spinning and he was sick. Something terrible must have happened to the ship if the shocks and vibrations were strong enough to wake a Martian from his coma.

Still in his sleeping hat, he passed through the portal in his room to find the source of the noise. In the metal hallway of his mothership, his eye cleared up instantly. If there was any blood in it from the sleep, it was now gone, and he could clearly see two Plutonian warriors trying to get air gloves off of a dead Martian on the floor. It seemed to be Marpick.

Bengor started shaking and sweating, but quickly calmed down. He quietly cursed at himself, for acting like an Earthling. Carefully, he drew the plutonium club from the sheath in his back. Using the tips of his feet, he approached the Plutonians. He was lucky that their ass-eyes were closed, which was not often the case.

Ever so slowly, he lifted the club above his head, and then pressed a button on it. A beam of light hit one and chained to the other Plutonian, and they fell limp immediately.

He was lucky again. A chain shot from a plutonium club was a very rare case as well.

The dead Martian was indeed his brother-in-law Marpick. He was missing two plongs from his head. Cruel bastards, Bengor thought. Why’d they have to do that? However, he knew full well that Plutonians had a tendency to needlessly torture prisoners, almost like Earthlings.

But what the hell happened to the ship? Where is everybody? Why are the sirens not blaring? He clearly remembered the mobilization – the Plutonians were hunting them since Uranus. Mars was supposed to be their final battlefield. He remembered he felt his comatose sleep coming somewhere around Jupiter.

By the hundred suns, Marpick was the navigator, he thought. If he is dead, who is piloting the ship? Are we hijacked? He wasn’t sure whether warships had auto pilots installed, but he was sure that this one didn’t have it. It was too bloody expensive.

Donning Marpick’s body armor, since he wouldn’t need it anymore, Bengor stepped towards the bridge, unsure of what he would find.

All hallways leading to the bridge were empty, with the exception of a dead crew member here and there. It looked deserted, and creepy, even to a Martian.

What he saw at the bridge sent deep shivers down both his stomachs.

There where once was a command dashboard, now was a huge hole, probably created by an unauthorized use of a megablaster, which is what their instructors focused on in training. Another large hole was in the floor. It was, however, filled with a Plutonian ugly head. In the corner of a room, an Ancient Sentinel of the Old Empire was brooding.

Bengor stood petrified. He deeply doubted that Ancient Sentinels of the Old Martian Empire still existed.

Let alone that one of them was traveling with them.

The Sentinel had his huge, caped back turned to him. He was staring through the giant window into the universe. The visor covering his eye was a just a scramble of wires going inside the back of his head. His blood blue cape, reaching to the floor, was stained in a few places with fluorescent yellow of Plutonian blood. As far as they were concerned, they lay about the room, tossed like garbage (which they were, in Bengor’s mind), with their snouts twisted in painful expressions.

The Ancient Sentinel did not move when Bengor approached him. Something beside him did, however. Smiling as only cunning creatures do, a small, crooked, pale, old Martian appeared, rubbing his plong.

When Bengor was a larva, he read about Sentinels, and knew who that was. The Interpreter. Since Sentinels could only communicate in brain waves, certain Martians were trained to receive their thoughts via a chip in their cortex. But the thoughts of a Sentinel were so powerful and barely comprehensible to regular Martians, that even the best lost strength and stamina, even the years of their life, communicating with them.

They also had a very strange way of talking as a result.

“Wh… what are you doing here?” Bengor asked, staring at the Sentinel. He did not move a muscle, but a barely audible hum reached Bengor. It was more like a deep vibration in the air than sound. A deep sigh.

“Thing same you ask could we,” the Interpreter replied in a raspy and hoarse voice.

“What happened here? Did we win? Where are the other Plutonians?” Bengor kept asking, not waiting for a reply.

“Win we did think you do? Now important not is that. You for task have we,” the Interpreter said.

“A task? For me?”

“Yes.”

Bengor flinched when the Sentinel moved his arm. It rose slowly until it was at shoulder height, and then he pointed two fingers towards the Sun.

“Earth to there you send will we. Help for them ask will you.”

“By the suns, it must have all gone to the deep if we are asking the Earthlings for help! Help with what? Will you tell me what is going on?” Bengor pleaded.

The Interpreter looked at the Sentinel for the briefest of moments before he answered.

“One last are you. Race our survival continue to you up is it. Plutonians of rest the care take and stay to have we. Moment any here be will fleet their. Waste to time no have we go now!”

With a wave of his other hand, the Sentinel opened a portal right below Bengor, who fell through, without the time to cry out. The Interpreter praised the Sentinel’s accuracy.

With a small space anomaly, he found himself dropping into an alley on the outskirts of Amsterdam, Earth, in the middle of the night. The shock made him vomit, and the fear of drowning started creeping up. However, he realized that Marpick’s armor still covered most of his torso. Good. He could survive in Earth’s atmosphere long enough to find a creature capable of mating and extending the Martian population.

Finding someone to mate, especially in Amsterdam, was not really difficult, as any Earthling might guess.

Trying to find shelter, he ran through the alley. He interrupted a couple having lazy sex, but they were both drugged and saw him only as a bad trip.

In that time, in the orbit of Mars, the last Martian ship Blood Lagoon was being surrounded by Plutonian ships, ready to open fire.

The Ancient Sentinel of the Old Empire removed his visor. His Interpreter squealed weakly at the sight.

“It is time,” the Sentinel said, in a voice deep as the grave, and just as cheerful. Then he pressed the button on his glove detonator and everything around them stopped existing.