Killer Bunnies On Mars
Arrival
After many years in space, the ship landed on Martian ground. Looming large on its unexpected arrival, it ignored all air control warnings and emergency broadcasts while positioning itself on the outskirts of the Martian city, Falcon-X.
Four miles away, Falcon-X’s city governor observed in disbelief the odd-looking object that had landed. Why me? was the first thing he thought. He pulled a nearby chair toward him with some effort and sat, letting his tired body relax. Patiently, he stared at his desk. On top of it laid a green piece of paper with a hand-drawn map of Titan and its coordinates—a token from his youth, when he had studied that moon for a journey he never took. Now, it was nothing more than an old paper adding to the pile of endless decisions on Martian immigration law that he had a duty to approve, reject, and question. A minute later, a loud noise shook into the core of his muscles. Before he could turn to see what caused the sudden sound, he heard it again.
“You miserable piece of …”
“Connor,” the governor interrupted, his eyes shifting back to the window from where he had first observed the landing. “So, you heard.”
“I saw it myself,” Connor corrected him. “It landed only minutes ago.”
“Any damage?” The governor asked.
“None. The laser perimeter activated as soon as the aircraft broke landing protocols.”
“So, we are safe.”
“Everyone has been ordered on curfew until further notice,” Connor said.
“Well, that’s that then,” the governor replied. And with his eyes fixed on the window, he heard heavy footsteps approach. The man who was now behind him was breathing hard and fast. The governor could feel a breeze of warm air pass across his bare neck. He let the silence last another minute, bored of the same drama he had endured all these years. Many years ago, those same steps would have given him goosebumps on the back of his neck. Now, he simply did not care enough to be afraid of him, or anything else. The governor turned his chair slowly and faced Connor.
“We’ve known for centuries that there will be a day when we meet intelligent life face to face,” the governor said. “We are predestined to find something in the Universe, something outside of our solar system, outside of our galaxy. We knew this day was coming. So, forgive me if I am not losing my mind over something that we have been waiting on ever since our fathers’ fathers left earth and many centuries more since then.”
“So, are you going to sit there and do nothing?!” Connor asked in disbelief.
“As I recall, they landed outside the city. My job extends to matters that pertain to Falcon-X itself. Attending to the ship is not my concern. That is your job, Connor.”
“This is not the time to stick to made-up job descriptions! We can be sure that whatever laws you are reviewing can wait, just as they have waited through past years.”
“Easy to criticize another man’s work,” the governor replied with a snicker, and he went back to staring at his desk, his eyes fixed on the old green paper.
Connor’s face became crimson as his eyes looked ready to pop out of rage, the small veins inside them boiling red blood. This would have been a disturbing image for anyone who had not seen him react the same exact way every time he didn’t get what he wanted. “I’ll send my squad to the perimeter,” Connor managed to say with his jaw clenched. Connor wanted to say more, to come back with a witty, offensive remark, but he also knew that he had gotten too old to be as quick a thinker as he had once been. Besides, that lazy governor he thought, did not deserve his wittiness. He would save his energy and wit for those bastards from outer space. They surely picked the perfect wrong day to show up.
“Perfect day,” Connor whispered, as he stomped his way out of the governor’s place with the same heavy steps that had brought him in. “Perfect time indeed,” he kept talking to himself, “when everything is going south, nonetheless.” Connor thought of all that was left on Mars, a mere two hundred thousand, err, two hundred thousand and two, humans, if you counted him and that pathetic sack they had as governor.
This lot consisted of the last unlucky remaining humans on Mars; those whose ship had broken down at the last minute while all the other ships migrated to Titan. This lot was made of those who for the past twenty years had waited for a rescue from their sister ships. Food and oxygen had been running low for a while, not to mention the slow death of intellect that came naturally when there was no future to build. And now, as if he had not enough to solve for, he had to deal with outsiders. “If things get too rough, I will deploy the hydro bomb.”
His last thought made him shiver, but heck, after everything he had seen, after everything he knew, he was ready to die if needed, and hell if he cared about that pathetic governor with his pile of sham decisions. As for those two hundred thousand souls, Titan probably had more than enough humans already. If this lot had been truly needed there, they would have been rescued ten, maybe fifteen, years ago. Anyway, if he could cut out at least a minuscule part of the disease of overpopulation, he would gladly do so.
The Meeting
Connor stood tall and stared at the outsiders’ ship in front of him. The ship’s systems had been turned off on landing. It was of simple design, nothing too elaborate or pretentious as human ships had been. Smart fellas, they know the comforts of traveling light, he thought, switching his focus to the city of Falcon-X, guarded and frightened. “Just like any other day,” he said, loud enough so his troops could hear him. “For the citizens of Falcon-X do not have to be visited by outsiders to be afraid of the ticking of their own existence,” he yelled even louder. Within a few feet from where he was standing, Connor heard a poor human soul whimper and cry out in fear.
“For hell’s sake!” he yelled again. “I will kill you myself if you don’t stop!” The young man quieted at once, his fear too great to look at Connor or the ship in the eye.
“Listen, you good-for-nothing lot,” Connor said, referring to his twenty or so group of frightened soldiers that he had handpicked to join him. “This is your lucky day,” he continued. “For centuries, humanity has wondered about intelligent and advanced life outside of the human realm. For centuries, we’ve looked at the sky and questioned if we were alone... But today, today, we know the truth. And if you lot happen to shit your pants because of it, then SO. BE. IT! But at least have the decency to show your pathetic human face to the truth.” One by one, the troops slowly raised their eyes to the ship. For the first time in its existence, the outsiders’ ship felt the cold mantle of human mistrust. “That’s it,” Connor said, “let them know we don’t fear them; let them know we have been waiting.”
Within seconds, a large panel from the ship contracted and let out an inhuman light that made all the Falconians think the sun had come up early. Blinded by the light, each human from the troop fell to their knees as they cocooned their heads with their arms. Connor stood still, his forearm serving him as a visor to block the light that was coming from all directions. As he struggled to keep his eyes open, Connor spotted three blurry figures in the ship. His knuckles grew white in gripping his blaster harder than usual, as he was sure they were approaching, but they were not walking, they were... “Hopping? Rabbits?”
Rabbits. That was the last thought in Commander Connor’s mind before he was disintegrated by One, the new outsider in Mars. Two and Three took care of the rest of the squad.
Miles away, the governor was getting up from his chair to activate the emergency gamma screen in the window. The bright light outside was giving him a headache.
After two hundred thousand and one Falconian citizens had been wiped out of existence, One, Two, and Three found the governor in his usual spot. Two chattered its teeth, Three thumped so hard that it echoed in the room. But One kept calm, as he did not see it as a predator. One hopped and stood, hopped and stood, until the distance between the governor and One was a mere four feet. The two creatures, human and outsider, let their eyes swiftly scan one another. There was silence. The governor found the outsider fascinating, and the outsider found the governor plain boring. But all four beings waited on each other as they had done so for centuries.
Cute little things, the governor thought of their modest, childlike size, they almost look like an evolved version of the animal that once inhabited the old and forgotten earth. They had fur, but the governor saw no softness in it. If he could have had the honor of touching it, he would have known exactly what it was, but he did not dare. He noticed they had short and erect ears, and fully extended feet that look like overly grown hands—and their blasters, far more advanced than he had ever seen.
Hopped and stood, hopped and stood. Two and Three approached.
Once together, the silence was broken by their own sounds; so horrific, so high pitched that if ‘dead’ had a cry, it would sound just like that. The crying continued for several minutes, forcing the governor out of his shock of fear and amazement, as he covered his ears with all his strength.
They are communicating, he thought. But about what? And… that magnificent multicolor fur, nothing could ever compare to it on the Red planet.
The governor thought about Connor, probably dead, and a subtle crease formed on his lips. Pleased at this thought, he let it go and moved on to thinking about the poor Falconians who were probably dead as well. They had it coming; he was surprised at how ruthless he sounded in his own mind. But he also moved away from this thought, the governor then imagined how quiet and empty Mars probably felt after centuries of colonization, after centuries of digging through rock. And all for what? He almost needn’t remember what his own life had been on Mars, nothing but red sand and metal, and that tiresome job that, almost by lack of luck, he had been destined to do since the ships had left, for the past “twenty years.”
Suddenly, in the middle of the chaotic noise in the desolated land of Mars, and with no further purpose left inside him, the truest of realizations came clear into his head; rescue from the sister ships was not coming. Those who probably arrived to Titan long ago were never going to send a ship to get the remaining two hundred thousand Falconian souls.
“Why would they?” he whispered. Resources, energy, politics—like so many centuries before him, when it had happened on earth. “Those bastards!” he wanted to scream in rage. Just like the stories his great, great, grandfather had told him…only those were worse: Two hundred thousand souls were nothing compared to the billions who couldn’t make it out of earth centuries ago. Still, humans were repeating history like it had never existed in the first place. His rage was visible now. “Who are we to condemn life to exist or to die!?”
Then, and almost by primal instinct of rebellion, the governor purposefully allowed the green piece of paper, that he had stared down on for so many years, slide off his desk as he reached out to touch One’s shiny fur in front of him. “Slimy scales,” he said, smiling at the touch of it as Two’s blaster disintegrated the governor in an instant.
There was a silence, no one knows for how long, as One, Two, and Three did not understand time. Then One, using his foot-hand, grabbed the green paper that had landed on the floor’s surface. The visitors saw the map of Titan and its coordinates, and all three broke into their high-pitched call; they knew where they would be heading to next.
THE END
Cover by: Jude Phillips
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, writing, or other electronic, mechanical or manual methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher. This work is fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual humans (alive or dead), events, or places is entirely coincidental.
