The sweat from Alex’s body seeped into his clothes in the heat of the resort. It was sweltering under the hat and scarf that hid his face. His blood pumping with the thrill of commanding the group of tourists, he shifted his clammy hands on the grip of the gun.
The Earth-borns focused on Ivan while the four hovercams held a steady, circular pattern above their heads, recording every move and every sound. Only the older man, still holding a barbecue fork after stepping away from his cooking, had anything which could remotely be considered a weapon. Upright like a spear, the prongs trembled in his nervous hand.
Ivan gestured with the barrel of his gun. “Throw the fork over there, away from you and from us.”
The man looked at the other tourists. They only stared back at him with stunned faces. He tossed the cooking implement onto the sand a meter from his feet.
“Get rid of it,” Ivan told Elea.
Elea reached for the barbecue fork and threw it behind her. It landed in damp sand where it was lapped by waves from the artificial sea.
“What do you want?” The older woman, who had first pointed them out as they advanced on the beach, stood resolute with her hands on her hips.
“We want to show everyone that privileged Earth-borns are lying around feasting on meat while the rest of Mars is starving.”
The smell of cooking was enticing. Left unattended, it had begun to burn, but after weeks of living on rations, even burnt meat smelled good.
Ivan pointed his gun at each of the Earth-borns in turn. “We need to take your WristTabs. Hold out your arms.”
Reticent and scared, glancing at each other for confirmation, they each raised an arm to form a line of WristTabs. All except the stocky man.
He looked doubtfully at Ivan’s weapon. “You won’t use that thing in here. A stray bullet could puncture the dome and kill us all.”
Ivan glared at the stocky man and lifted the gun to aim it between his eyes. “So when I shoot you, I’ll make sure the bullet rattles around your skull.”
Ivan’s vitriol was so embedded in each word that Alex almost believed he might do it.
“Don’t be stupid, Matt,” said the older woman. “Do what he says.”
Matt lifted his WristTab arm to join the others and tried to maintain his bravado. But a sheen of sweat on his shirtless, slightly saggy muscular chest suggested he was just as afraid as the others.
Sammi handed his shockgun to Ivan while he relieved the Earth-borns of their devices.
The older woman pulled back her arm after her WristTab was removed. Sammi threw it behind him to join the fork in the sea.
“If you’re here to rob us, I can give you money,” she said.
“Why am I not surprised you want to tempt us with money. Money is all Earth-borns care about,” said Ivan.
“That’s not true,” she insisted. “We’re on the year’s tour, here to experience the real Mars.”
“By being in a pretend version of Earth?” scoffed Ivan. “Not even the waves on the sea are real. There’s no wind in a dome to create them and Mars doesn’t have a big enough moon to cause a tide.”
Matt shook his bare arm resentfully as he watched his WristTab splash into the water. “Tourism from Earth brings in a lot of business for Mars,” he said. “You should be grateful we’re here.”
Matt’s sense of superiority sickened Alex and he relished the way Ivan was able to spit his own words back in his face.
“Grateful? That our labor and our sweat is making profits for Earth corporations to enrich their own planet?”
“What do you think pays for most of the things you have on Mars?”
“Matt!” warned the older woman.
Her admonishment seemed only to goad him further. “Mars-borns need to understand, they live under domes financed by Earth. Most of them were even built by people from Earth. Our World Government provides the MegaCredits for most of your terraforming projects. Without us–”
Ivan spun, aimed a gun directly at Matt’s chest and fired.
Alex juddered, almost as if he himself had been hit. Screams erupted from the tourists.
Matt fell back onto the sand.
Fearing he was dead – that Ivan had betrayed his promise not to hurt anyone – Alex stared at Matt’s convulsing body.
A dart stuck out of his flesh, firing electric shocks through his nervous system.
Ivan had triggered Sammi’s shockgun. The man was not dead, but unconscious.
Alex smiled under his scarf. Ivan had scared the tourists just as, in that brief moment, he had scared Alex. He should never have doubted Ivan, even for that second. Ivan held them all under his complete control and it was exhilarating.
The power in the dart depleted and Matt lay still.
Above them, the hovercam propellers whirred as they altered their positions to capture the action from all the best angles.
Ivan threw the shockgun back to Sammi, who caught it by reflex.
“Everyone listen!” said Ivan, taking a decisive step forward and pacing between the Earth-borns and the rest of his gang. “Do as I say, be quiet and no one else gets hurt.”
The slight man and the younger woman held onto each other. Alex surmised they were likely a couple. The other two stood apart: the barbecue man statue-still and the older woman watching Ivan’s every move with unease.
“Mars cannot be seen as the child of Earth any longer,” said Ivan, playing up to the cameras, stepping away from the tourists so he was no longer in the line of fire from the weapons held by his gang. “Mars will not be dictated to. We will not be stepped upon. Earth has exploited Mars for too long. We need to be allowed to govern ourselves, to work for ourselves! Not through some Terraforming Committee puppet of a blue-green planet three hundred million kilometers away, but proper self-government that doesn’t pander to the rich interests of Earth corporations.”
Energized by his words, Alex watched intently as Ivan spoke the truth, while the people who needed to hear it were forced to listen.
“When Mars has a problem, when we stare in the face of famine – where is Earth? More than six months away. Mars already has to face the future on its own, why shackle us to our parent like we are some sort of criminal needing to be punished? Meanwhile, Earth-borns lounge on an artificial beach, separated from the rest of us in a rich person’s resort, eating food that a starving Mars can only dream of.”
He kicked the neglected barbecue to emphasize his point. Pieces of hot metal and charred meat were propelled into the air. The tourist couple jumped out of the way before the burning grate landed on the sand where they had been standing.
“I am prepared to hold these Earth-borns hostage until our demands are met,” Ivan told the hovercams. “But I know that what I am asking will not happen today. So, take this as a warning. If nothing is done, there will be worse to come. Mars demands–”
A movement on the sand caused Alex to turn. Matt – silently recovered from the shockdart while Ivan had held everyone’s attention – was on his feet.
“Watch out!” yelled Alex.
Matt dived at Ivan.
He struck him in the stomach before Ivan had time to react. Alex saw the brief moment of surprise in his eyes before he was knocked backwards. A shot exploded from his gun before he hit the sand, sending a bullet directly above him.
“The dome!” cried the older woman. The other tourists looked up at where a stray bullet could have punctured the resort’s protective membrane. But Alex kept his gaze fixed on Ivan as he crashed onto the sand with Matt on top of him.
“Ivan!” shouted Elea, forgetting their directive not to use each other’s names.
The Earth-born, naturally stronger than even Ivan’s muscular frame, easily resisted Ivan’s attempts to break free. Tugging his scarf down, Matt revealed Ivan’s panicked face.
Pete fired his shockgun at them. But in the screaming and confusion, his aim was off and the dart landed uselessly on the beach.
Alex’s sweaty finger slipped on the trigger as he turned to face the grappling men. But their two bodies were intertwined. He couldn’t shoot the Earth-born attacker without risking hitting Ivan.
Matt reached for the gun in Ivan’s right hand. Ivan countered with his left fist, striking the Earth-born’s jaw and knocking his head backwards. Ivan turned to get to his feet.
The men parted for a moment and Alex took his shot.
The blast rang out across the resort, like the dome was cracking in two, with a force so great the recoil forced Alex’s hands to flick up as the bullet left the barrel. Elea screamed.
Alex waited for the Earth-born to collapse like shooting victims fell to the ground in films.
But it was Elea who fell.
She had stepped too close to the firing zone and Alex’s wayward aim had sent the bullet into her shoulder.
“Ivan!” she yelled as she lay on the ground, screaming in pain with blood seeping into her shirt.
Alex lowered his weapon in horror. He stared, unblinking, at Elea clutching at her wound. Her hands were unable to stop the bleeding and red oozed between the gaps in her fingers.
In that moment of distraction, Matt launched himself at Ivan a second time and the pair went sprawling. Ivan’s back struck the sand and Matt grabbed a wrist with each hand to pin him to the beach. Straddling him, Matt pressed the full force of his weight upon Ivan’s body. Ivan kicked and struggled, but he was outmatched.
“Drop the gun!” demanded the Earth-born.
“No!”
“You want to shoot more of your friends?”
Ivan glanced over to where Elea lay. She had pulled down her scarf to aid her labored breathing and it had revealed her face contorted in pain.
Ivan writhed in the sand, but Matt remained in control. He stamped one knee on Ivan’s left forearm. Ivan cried out as he realized his arm was still pinned down while the Earth-born had freed up his hand to reach for the gun.
Squeezing Ivan’s wrist so his finger couldn’t activate the trigger, Matt grabbed the barrel with his free hand and twisted the gun away from his opponent’s grasp.
With a victorious grin, Matt jumped clear and pointed Ivan’s own gun directly at him. Ivan was scrabbling to his feet.
“Stay down!” ordered Matt.
Ivan froze. Still kneeling on one knee, he looked up at the barrel. Matt’s finger curled around the trigger, ready to fire.
Pete and Sammi stood with their shockguns out in front of them, pointing them at the Earth-born with an uncertain aim.
“Put your weapons down!” ordered Matt.
Alex’s gun hung loosely at his side in trembling fingers. He had lowered it after shooting Elea. Or he assumed he must have, he didn’t remember. Time continued around him while shock left him paralyzed. Glancing at Elea, as she lay alone and terrified bleeding out onto the sand, only made it worse. Even without looking, he heard the panic in her breaths which became shorter and more rapid with each minute.
The gun Alex thought had given him power had actually left him powerless. He let the deadly weapon slip from his grasp and it thumped to the sand at his feet.
Fear and uncertainty in Pete and Sammi’s eyes stared out from their disguises. They hesitated. Neither firing, nor giving up their weapons.
“Think you can incapacitate me before I kill your friend?” asked Matt.
Alex knew they could not. A bullet might have stopped the Earth-born, if it could have been fired quickly and accurately enough, but the dart from a shockgun, even if it hit before Matt could fire, would still give him valuable fractions of a second before it seized up his muscles.
Sammi threw his shockgun aside.
Pete looked at Ivan as if asking for help.
Ivan didn’t move. It was the first time Alex had ever seen him scared of anything. “Do it,” said Ivan.
Pete tossed away the shockgun.
Matt grinned again in satisfaction. The rest of the Earth tourists relaxed. The legs of the younger woman collapsed from under her and she sank to the sand.
The wailing sound of an alarm blared out from the accommodation buildings.
“What’s that?” said the barbecue man.
“It’s a breach warning,” said Matt. “The first bullet must have shot a hole in the dome. Reduced air pressure will set off the alarm.”
Alex was breathing hard and fast. He assumed it was because he was terrified, not because the air was thinning. A bullet hole, even in a dome as small as the resort, would take a long time to cause critical oxygen and heat loss. He hoped.
“Anton, go call the Mars Security Service,” said Matt.
The barbecue man scuttled off down the beach to the shoreline where Sammi had thrown the tourists’ WristTabs.
The older woman went over to Elea and knelt beside her. “It’s OK,” she said soothingly, her voice barely audible above the wail of the alarm. “I’m a doctor, you’re going to be OK.”
“We can’t wait for the MSS to get here!” said Ivan, looking up at his own gun still aimed at him. “Half the atmosphere could have vented by then. It’ll kill you as well as us.”
Two Mars-born members of resort staff had run out of the accommodation buildings at the sound of the alarm and closed in on the beach party. “Everyone back to the safety room!” shouted one, a young and slender woman in a white tunic suit. “This is not a drill!”
She stopped when she saw the standoff. Her colleague, dressed in the same white uniform, and only two paces behind her, skidded to a halt in the sand.
“Let them go,” said the doctor, still kneeling beside Elea. She had her palms flat on Elea’s shoulder, one on top of the other, putting pressure on the wound which seemed to be stemming the bleeding. “What else are you going to do? Drag them back inside?”
Matt’s eyes narrowed as he glared at Ivan. “Stand up,” he ordered.
Ivan slowly got to his feet. He splayed out his hands to show he offered no threat.
“Ivan!” yelled Elea.
Where she lay on the sand, a patch of golden grains had turned crimson with her blood. Ivan said nothing. The regret on his face said everything.
“Let me up!” said Elea. She lifted her chest against the pressure from the doctor’s palms.
The doctor pushed her back down again. “You can’t get up, you’ll bleed out.”
“Ivan, don’t leave me here to die!” Elea’s eyes filled with tears of pain and fear.
“You’re not going to die,” said the doctor. “I’ll look after you.”
The searing wail of the alarm was breaking through the defenses of Alex’s ears. Screaming for attention and pulling him out of shock.
Matt gestured with Ivan’s confiscated gun. “Go on, leave. Before I change my mind.”
Ivan looked down at Elea with regret.
“Don’t worry,” said the doctor. “I’ll look after her. If you try to move her, you could kill her.”
Whether Ivan believed her or whether he preferred to save himself, it wasn’t clear. “I’m sorry, Elea.” He looked to the others. “Let’s go.”
“Ivan!” Elea’s scream turned to sobbing.
Ivan had already turned away from her and was running the best he could across the sand. Pete and Sammi ran after him.
Alex paused as he neared Elea. He wanted to say sorry, but fear and shame had stolen his voice.
The resort staff hustled for the tourists to get back into the building.
“I need a med evac pod!” the doctor called out to the woman in the white tunic.
As he turned to follow his friends, it seemed to Alex that the Earth-born was really helping her. Even though, above her head, the atmosphere was leaking out of a bullet hole in the dome. He tried to understand why she would do that, moments after Elea had been pointing a shockgun at her. But he didn’t have the mental capacity to reconcile the contradiction. He needed to escape and turned to run, struggling to catch up with the others as the sand shifted under his boots with each step.