Story to deal with the Mars World...

The bones were lying out in the open. This was the Masters (as they’ve been known forever) at their best. So full of ego that they figured the sacrosanct nature of the stones and their dead would stop all beings from looking into the graves.
I didn’t care. I looked around. It had been some time since my masters had followed me out on a hunt, but it never hurts to be careful. Through my slit eyes the red landscape of mars was empty, dust swirls in the distance.
It was a good thing, as I went back to the transport that had been mine since I was raised up from the Earth. They didn’t need such things planetside, as at 20 feet tall they ate the distance with elongated strides. They made the transports especially for their chosen servants, making it easier for us to keep up with them.
I pulled back the pieces of netting over the bed of the transport, exposing the concealed illegal weaponry that I carried. Wait, I should explain that better. It isn’t illegal for me, a normal human. The masters are forbidden by law, when fighting amongst themselves never to weapons. We servants, on the other hand, are bound by no such laws. Those of us who are both resourceful and discrete, weapons are lying about like the bones before me.
The civilization of the masters is in downfall. There are those of us who have been around long enough to know what is useful from the discarded junk technology. We can fashion these objects from their ships into oftentimes overlooked personal weaponry. And with the amount of time that I’ve been here, my network of contacts can get me almost anything that I want or need.
I pulled out my first weapon, a modified Quaker. I laid that on the ground, because before I used it, I’d have to have my backup weapon in place. Once the aliens are flushed, they tend to be angrier than usual. The next weapon (my backup) was recognizable enough to any Master. It threw a radioactive beam, akin to the bombs that were recently used on the area of Sumeria, except localized into a beam.
Sumeria…that place is nothing but blackened ruined heaps now, smoking craters and charcoal grey dust floating slowly down. It’ll be uninhabitable for the next 4000 years according to my Master. It had been set off to stop one of the runaway Masters from setting up his own kingdom away from the others. These insurrections had become more often lately, with the Master’s Masters, or the King and Queen, turning their attention away from the outer colonies like Earth. Sumeria had been the first time they used Nuclears on any location on Earth. It must have been a very dangerous Master.
Usually, these Masters run to Mars if they aren’t insistent on setting up their own fiefdom. That’s where I come in. I’m the Prime Hunter to stop these renegades. I think the reason that they’ve got to be stopped, even on Mars, is that if they get away the whole system that the Masters have put in place seems to be shaky. That leads to fear, and then to dissolution of what we’ve got here as far as politicals go.
Fear upsets people beyond rationality.
Why don’t the Masters hunt for themselves? Some servants think that it is because they are so abhorrent to violence. This doesn’t explain Sumeria. I think I may be alone in the fact that I think the reason they don’t hunt is fear. They’re afraid of death. This may be because I hunt them, and see this all the time but still. It explains why they hide the bodies of their dead under gigantic rocks. It tells of their fear of death, not of the honor of the fallen.
I set my weapons up, put my goggles over my eyes, and shoved the end of the Quaker into the red dust of Mars. I noticed an odd formation near where the Quaker went in, it looked like some sort of face. Smirking to myself, I imagined it to be my prey, and stomped it out. I braced myself for the firing.
The Quaker shot, and it throbbed in my hands. It fired in bursts of sonics, and that’s what caused the crust of the planet to move when fired from a ship. That’s what the Masters told me when they raised me to this position, along with everything else I knew. They gave me that, in return for lifelong service. I thought it was a good deal. Especially now, when I’m out to kill one of their kind.
I flipped it off as the burial stone completely disintegrated. I readied the back up weapon to fire at the spot when I heard a voice behind me.
“I hope that was worth it. If someone else had seen that, they’d be so afraid of upsetting the runes on the stone that they’d kill you.”
I whipped around, and my beam weapon was snatched out of my hand. “Wha-?”
“Now, gray hair, be careful where you’re pointing that. What a look on your face! Your wrinkles are all standing straight!”
I started backing away slowly, faced with the master that I’d been hunting. He was short for one of their kind, reaching only three times my height, and his breathing apparatus undone. “You’ll die.” I said.
“Oh eventually. But by whose hand?” He replied, shrugging.
“Probably nature, if not by me. Your respirator is undone.” I nodded towards the machinations on his head.
“Oh, I know. I’m not worried, Death by nature is preferable to other kinds.” He said, and threw the beam weapon back towards the Quaker and the transporter.
I found myself facing the one I’m supposed to kill, who was unfortunately in between both my means of escape and my means of killing him. “I’m supposed to kill you.” I said, stupidly. I had no way to back that up.
“Yes, I’d imagine. No one comes out to the wastelands of Mars if they’re not on a mission.” He sat down in front of me, crossing his legs.
“Yeah? So why are you out here?”
“Please, sit. My mission is to talk to you.” He raised his eyes and looked at the Martian atmosphere, “ and then probably to die.”
“I won’t betray my Masters or my mission. Nor will I bow to you for some stupid kingdom you’re setting up.”
“Nor would I ask you to. I only want you to know something that I’ve discovered. Something that will rearrange your…loyalties.”
“To what purpose?”
He shook his head, and fully removed his respirator. “There, that’s better. The purpose? To make sure that one of your kind knows the truth.” He coughed out the last bit. The Martian air is deadly to any who breathe it for too long.
I said nothing, still casting about for ideas how I could end this. When you’ve cornered one, they usually start trying to bribe you, and talk, and keep alive longer. I don’t blame them, I’d do the same.
“Please, sit. I’ll die of atmospheric poisoning in a short period. Listen.” His eyes were open, pleading. I very rarely could stand against a Master when they spoke. I sat, but had things to say before I prepared to listen.
“The truth? The truth is that I’m a simple man, Anu’ska. I was born the fifth generation from the creation of the species, and it is pleasing to the Lord Osinara to be hunting you. My pride is my life.” I said, saluting hand over eyes as I’d done all my life in deference to the Masters.
“The fifth generation, indeed. And proud should you be, to be chosen for education by the Masters.” He said nodding, the words interspersed with more coughing. His eyes scanned my face as he paused for breath. “What do you think of the bombing of Sumeria?”
I was shocked. This was the first time any of the Masters had asked my opinion on anything, and like a fool I gave my answer right away in shock. “You are all afraid. Of something. I don’t think a master would cause that kind of fright.”
“You’ve spent a great deal of your life on Mars in pursuit of the frightful, and I’m inclined to agree with you.” My jaw dropped, and my respirator was loose, but not life threatening yet. I could only gape in surprise. No Master ever agreed with a human.
“They aren’t afraid of a Master. They’re afraid of something else. It appears there is a God that protects this planet, perhaps all planets. At least that’s what they were preaching in Sumeria.” More coughing, his nose starting to run with drops of blood. “Something started the humans there in an uproar. The Jews of the region began proselytizing to everyone else. It was a wildfire.”
“How do you know?”
“I was in control of the region. I ordered the nuclear attack. I was frightened.”
My eyes widened, and my hands hung slack as I sat there, taking this in.
“Now, as I’m dying, I need you to know the truth. You have been around the longest on Mars, and you have the respect of your peers. If this hysteria about a mysterious God continues, Earth may be a smoking crater in a very short time.”
I nodded. This Master may have been going into hysterics, but I knew that the amount of air he’d breathed would kill him. I didn’t need to worry about the bounty for his head, I’d harvest it later. I settled warily into a sitting position, where I could move fast if the hysteria caused him to do something crazy.
“You know the origin of the servants?”
“Yes. The masters took pieces of the lesser species, apes and chimpanzees and such, and bio engineered us.”
“No.”
“No?”
“We Masters live a long time. I’ll tell you what happened: We found you, preformed. It was frightening for us. You were the first species with intelligence that we had come across. At first there were calls for your destruction, then calls from calmer heads for your enslavement. You know what happened then.”
I nodded. But this wasn’t enslavement, it was employment.
“Where did we come from then?”
“I’m betting this mysterious God. The one who enflamed the people in Sumeria. We couldn’t even find anything that would appear on our scanners. It is something we have no experience with. The Masters voted for nuclear attack on the area that He has been appearing in.”
“So you destroyed it?”
“No.”
“How do you know? Surely it can’t be enflaming people there any longer?”
“How do I know? The God talked to me, and in all honesty, attacked me. I wrestled with it for quite some time, but could do nothing.”
“What did it look like?” His story was interesting, if not true. I didn’t know.
“He was bright, shining like a freshly polished bit of metal. I had to concede to Him. Then He told me: Well done! But it is from my race of man that one shall come who will wrestle me to a standstill. You have pleased me Anu’ska. You shall be my messenger to a man on Mars.”
“And he told me how to find you.”
He bent double coughing then, worrying me with his health. He staggered up, and fell over, lying on his side. “Why did the God want me?” I asked.
“Because you have respect for humans, something that has been almost taken out of the race of man by the masters. You must save the animals of Earth.”
“How? How am I to do this?”
“I don’t know…the nameless God said nothing except to give you this message. He said that you and the other humans would figure out what you should do.”
He coughed more then, and blood poured from his nose, a steady stream of red. He was not long for Mars. “I don’t know if I can do it.” I said.
“You must try, I go now to the God. I am now unafraid of death. Something that all Masters dream of being. The God has given me hope.” He rolled onto his back. He was wheezing, blood burbling out his mouth as well.
In the next few years after I turned his head in for bounty, and receiving extra pay because of the grotesque way he died, I organized and planned and found out more about this God. I had nothing better to do except prepare, and that was because I saw Anu’ska was correct about the future. More and more nuclear weapons and quakes were shaken out upon the Earth, and more and more people died. I heard the Master’s last words echoing from his death, and guiding me:
“You must save them, Noah.”