The Oldest War Read online

  As soon as they were clear of the asteroid belt, it came into view - a dirty, peach-striped sphere, cast high in the firmament. Days passed, as it enlarged until it seemed like it was filled with an inky paste, bound by speckled mushroom bands shot through with rust. Through the hours it bloated visibly before their very eyes, revealing intricate melted contours of its counter-rotating cloud belts in ever-maddening detail.

  Jupiter: A minuscule black blemish, the shadow of a moon. The bloodshot oculus, that centuries-old coiling tempest… the Great Red Spot. All the swirls of storms like worms crawling in milk – Jupiter.

  Nothing in life had prepared Captain for such vastness; a planet that could swallow a thousand Earths. He sat in the cockpit of the space-hopper, aghast, never having experienced such a sensation. Jupiter became everything. It expanded beyond sight, and its radiance—composed of chewed, sickly sunlight—seeped through the opaque hull of the ship. Behind them the sun shone, but in front of them there were only squalls and radiation.

  Jupiter was one of the foulest hells, and its conflagration of high-energy particles and shrieking electrons were only a hint of its dangers. The Death Dream was like an evil spirit swarmed with liquid metallic hydrogen, high-speed ammonia droplets, invisible planetary rings, and a host of moons. It wasn't alive; but neither was it dead. People on Earth thought of it as just a big pile of gas, never imagining that Jupiter could be infested by anger, wrenched in sorrow, or anything greater than their own souls. It was a planet. It was a god. It reigned over this region of space with its thorny malevolence.

  While the crew trembled in the emaciated light, they were bombarded not just by radiation and magnetic forces, but by the planet's hate, by its fear-inducing size, and by its crushing gravity—all elements of the god's wrath. Jupiter, its power intact, touched all things from this distance, and its mood bypassed all gates of the human body. The three of them felt trod upon, down, insecure; their braveness decayed; their plans wobbled.

  * * *

  It made Jennifer nostalgic. When she had been a child, her parents had taken her to Jupiter every winter, as a lark. Jennifer could remember sitting and staring at le Rêve Mort, wondering what secrets lurked within, her skin afraid, her eyes wide like wings. Now, anticipation rattled through her bones. She hadn't been to Ganymede—the largest moon in the Solar System and the seat of the Dunleavy Iron Empire—for over twenty years. Has it changed? She wondered. Has he changed?

  If you are killed, you gain heaven, Jennifer thought to herself, remembering the Bhagavad Gita, as the infernal storm god floated before them. Triumph and you gain Earth.

  * * *

  One night they floated together as they ate dinner, Jupiter's dirty, ruined light pulsing through the windows. It had been a long, silent day, and it was a long, silent supper. Jupiter soured all their moods.

  Captain broke the silence. He turned to Plerrxx and asked, “Hey—what were you doing on Mars, anyway?”

  Plerrxx thought for a moment and then replied, “Looking for an answer.”

  “The answer to what?” Captain was always curious.

  “To my life,” the cat-man answered slowly. “To my problems.”

  Jennifer stared at the Mmrowwr, but said nothing.

  “What kind of problems, Plerrxx?” Captain tried to be cautious with his questions.

  Plerrxx let out a cat sigh and then purred sadly. “As I told you, I cannot go back home to my people.”

  “Because you committed a 'transgression?' ”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe we shouldn't pry,” Jennifer suggested. She caught Plerrxx's gaze.

  “Maybe you should not,” Plerrxx agreed.

  “Come on,” Captain argued. “It's your turn.”

  The Mmrowwr frowned, his cat nose tilting up, his brows wrenching. “I suppose I have told you nothing,” he began, “but I cannot tell you everything.”

  Captain took it as an invitation to continue. “What were you doing on Mars, Plerrxx?”

  “As I said, I was looking for answers,” Plerrxx told them. “Answers to myself. Answers to the Mmrowwr. I told you before, no one truly knows where the Mmrowwr came from. Our race just awoke from cryosleep, after what appears to have been hundreds of years. This occurred in the late Martian Age, and due to this, the Mmrowwr and Martian cultures have… connections.”

  “But didn't Jennifer say that the Mmrowwr came from the future?” Captain asked. It was only one of his many questions.

  “There is evidence that points in that direction. But the Mmrowwr never accept any fact as absolute. We believe we came from the future, but we also hold in our heads the possibility that we did not.”

  “So, no one knows?” Captain was astonished.

  “No.”

  “And that's why you were on Mars? Because you were looking for… connections?”

  “Yes,” Plerrxx answered. “I was examining the data histories of Martian robots to see if there was any mention of the Mmrowwr prior to the Awakening. I was trying to find evidence of us, somewhere in time other than the future.”

  “That's a risky endeavor for such an outlandish idea,” Jennifer spoke at last.

  “I had to know!”

  “Why?” Captain couldn't stand the suspense.

  The Mmrowwr kept silent.

  “Did you find anything?” Captain pressed on.

  “No,” Plerrxx finished.

  * * *

  “What do you need to do on Jupiter?” Jennifer was curious about that.

  Plerrxx turned to her. “I have an appointment.”

  “We have plans already,” Jennifer said. “We have a dinner to go to.”

  “A dinner?” Captain had not yet been told of this plan.

  “Yeah,” Jennifer explained, “I radioed ahead. A reply just came through. My friend—we are going to meet him for dinner.”

  “Then while you 'have dinner', I will attend to my own business.” Plerrxx confirmed seriously.

  “Who are we meeting?” Captain asked Jennifer. “Do we have time for dinner?”

  “We have time. The Tiamatites have bought us time.” Jennifer brushed a strand of hair back from her face. “I know it seems silly, but there's certain ways things need to be done.”

  “And who is your friend?” Plerrxx questioned.

  Jennifer hesitated to answer. “Jon Jason Dunleavy.”

  Plerrxx nearly jumped out of his seat. “Jon Jason Dunleavy? How do you know him?”

  “He's an old friend.”

  Plerrxx shook his head cynically. “So you know the Dunleavys. That explains a lot.”

  “Who are the Dunleavys?” Captain asked them.

  “They're the ones who built the Jupiter colony, where we're going.” Jennifer was brisk.

  “When did they build it?” Captain understood nothing of their destination.

  “Almost a hundred and fifty years ago.” Jennifer told him.

  “But…” Captain rubbed his right temple. “People were still riding on horses and dying of consumption back then. How could someone have built a space colony?”

  “With evil,” Plerrxx sent.

  Jennifer glared at the cat-man. “There were sins committed, but it was a long time ago.”

  “ 'Sins…' ” Plerrxx exhaled and frowned. “That's putting it lightly.”

  “How did they do it?” Captain asked again.

  “With magic,” Jennifer clarified.

  “So these Dunleavys… they run the colony?”

  “They're the masters of Jupiter,” Plerrxx contributed.

  “And they're going to help us?”

  “I think so,” Jennifer said softly. “I hope so. Jon Jason—I can trust him. I've known him since we were kids.”

  Plerrxx was incredulous. “God, I know who you are now! You're the goddamned lost princess of Saturn, Jennifer Malhotra, of the Malhotra clan! How could I not realize it!”

  “My name is Jennifer Pichon,” she said, proudly.

  “The whole Solar Syste
m thinks you're dead!”

  “I was dead.”

  “Princess of Saturn?” Captain asked her clearly confused.

  “Surely, you knew!” Plerrxx sighed. “Your mate is royalty. Rich beyond our wildest dreams.”

  “No,” said Captain, a little disappointed with her lies. “I didn't know.”

  “It doesn't matter,” Jennifer said.

  “It sort of matters! People are going to freak out when you return!”

  “I don't know about that,” Jennifer said.

  “You're a fool, Jennifer,” Plerrxx told her. “All you ever consider are your little plans.”

  “That's not true.”

  Plerrxx floated away from the table and off into the cabin.

  “Who is Jon Jason?” Captain asked her.

  “An old friend,” she said. “Look, I'm sorry. I didn't think the… princess stuff mattered.”

  “It doesn't matter,” said Captain. “But the truth does.”

  * * *

  As they drew nearer to Jupiter, they traversed a threshold beyond which it was impossible to see the entirety of the planet at once; it simply engulfed the universe. The four Galilean moons, among their insignificant siblings, were distinct now, but still infinitesimal compared to their all-encompassing lord. Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa—more than moons, true worlds just born small and a great distance from Father Sun. They were like four sallow children, grimacing.

  Finally, to everyone's great relief, one of them came fully into view: Callisto. Even it, with its desolate, frost-bitten face, pocked and dirtied by numberless craters—a testament to nature's brutality—comforted them. Ugly and inhospitable as Callisto seemed, it was paradise compared to the blistering howls of the Death Dream.

  The days passed.

  A million miles or so past Callisto lay Ganymede, their destination. The trio was not only rapt, but anxious as they watched Jupiter's greatest moon pulling closer. Here was the seat of Dunleavy Iron, a human corporation which lorded over the region with impervious grandeur, crouched like a spider over an ancient palimpsest—spectral and eroded crater—with great machines plunging below through the miles of ice. One of mankind's greatest secrets, it was home to millions of colonists who had fled Earth for one reason or another. Its storm-battered, glacial surface was almost inhospitable; still the colonists made their lives upon it. Far deeper were Ganymede's greater truths - the mammoth subterranean chambers that filled the icy crust, and below, a dark ocean that had never seen sunlight. The people lived in all these places, in various sicknesses.

  This was Captain and Jennifer's approach, and it was exhausting. Their skin tingled because of the radiation. Plerrxx gave them pseudo-metallic pills to swallow. A low rumbling could be heard and felt, coming from everywhere. It was the noise of Jupiter's storms. They were tight in the planet's grasp.

  Ganymede descended, and they descended into it.

  * * *

  At eight thousand feet, the space-hopper began to wade cautiously through a thick, soggy carpet of dark nimbostratus. It was considered excellent weather on Ganymede, which was used to monotonous pounding blizzards, which helped block out some of the invisible poison that Jupiter drooled down. As the trio punched through the clouds, their eyes were treated to a dismal, faintly grayish, undulating wasteland, meagerly ornamented as best the planet could with a few chalky streaks of ice ejecta from rare surface impacts; it was as if greedy Jupiter had long ago siphoned off any precious colors for himself.

  Per regulation, they were making their descent fifty miles outside the spaceport, and were promptly ordered to slow down to a trot by two Dunleavy security “gnats” (noiseless iron dots like twirling trucks that hastened beside them and began scanning for threats). The spaceport was barely visible in the hazy distance. A large, colorless smudge on the horizon, veined haphazardly with the hopeful combustion trails of endlessly ascending ships. Beyond that waited only Jupiter, seething.

  The gnats allowed them to pick up the pace. The spaceport came rapidly into focus. There it lay, nestled in an ancient eroded crater, at first glance completely underwhelming; not the imagined slick shiny lines of proud space-age architecture, but boring rows of drab iron buildings and towers so square they seemed to be folded out of cardboard. They suddenly noticed the ships! There were bewildering shapes which mocked physics, colors that twisted the retina, and materials one couldn't even approximately name. To the left, a giant rainbow-colored orb flickered like a convulsing lollipop; to the right, something like a tangle of string could only be described as “waltzing” through the air. It was astounding science fiction, truly mad, and Captain forgot that they themselves were snug in the belly of a huge, gleaming insectoid ship made out of crystal and prickly fur.

  This panoply of sights extended for miles around them.

  “You can't see it from here, but there's a sort of slums that surround the spaceport,” Plerrxx pointed out. “But anybody with any money lives underground, in the ice, or below it in the ocean.”

  “Why do the rich live below?” Captain asked.

  “Because it's safer, and warmer. There's less radiation.”

  “Have you been here many times?” Jennifer asked the Mmrowwr. “You seem to know it.”

  “I suppose I have. Though I know the gambling dens of Europa most of all.”

  Jennifer turned to Plerrxx hoping for further description. The cat-man said nothing more on the subject, instead he pointed at the space-hopper dashboard, which had begun to blink in exclamation. “It looks like they're pulling us in now,” Plerrxx told them.

  From their new vantage point above the spaceport, Jennifer could make out the slums below them carved out of uncertain plastics and heaped iron. Figures in ragged environment suits traversed the narrow streets amidst the constant wind. There were things that looked like cars floating around in the lower air, over the buildings, flashing complex colors and iridescent noise. Steam billowed up from holes in the streets, refuse from the underground.

  Jennifer hesitated to speak. “I'm a stranger here myself,” she said at last.

  They watched as they plummeted carefully. The space-hopper gently smoothed out, its legs readying for landing. They dipped between the buildings. A dock was revealed below them. The space-hopper groaned and clunked down onto the ground, jarring them all in their seats. They felt the tractor beam fade and let go. They had landed.

  “Now what?” Captain asked. He turned to Jennifer, as did Plerrxx. She was their undisputed leader.

  “I think,” she said, glancing out the window, “You'll see our welcoming party has arrived.”

  Captain looked out the window himself.

  “Uh-oh,” he said.

  2. The Welcome

  All coins visit Ganymede; half stay.

  –Trader's saying

  Upon opening up the space-hopper's airlock, they found themselves surrounded by dozens of armed men, most wearing cowboy hats and sporting mustaches. The men aimed their rifles at the heroes in dangerous question.

  “What is this all about?” asked Jennifer, shocked and scared, but feigning being politely perturbed.

  “Princess Jennifer Malhotra!” announced a grizzled voice at the back of the men. Jennifer peered in the stark light of the spaceport and saw a tall, thin old cowboy sitting on top of what looked like an iron, robot horse. Though the man had aged quite a bit, Jennifer recognized him immediately. His name was Harleson, one of the Dunleavys' “volunteers” – the dominant security force on Jupiter.

  “It's Jennifer Pichon, as it always has been,” Jennifer bellowed over the men. “Malhotra is my mother's maiden name, not mine.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Harleson back, “If you are Jennifer, you are Malhotra, and should be treated as such. We've had impostors before. You're supposed to be dead. Where are your parents?”

  “They are dead,” said Jennifer. “But I am not.”

  “How do we know it's you?”

  “Jon Jason Dunleavy would know me in an
instant,” she told him. “And so should you. I am Malhotra, and I am more than you. Do not treat me or my friends like criminals. The Dunleavys are my equal – you are not! I command you to order your men to lower their weapons!”

  Harleson spat on the ground. “Aye, I suppose you're right. Men, lower your weapons.”

  The volunteers lowered and shouldered their rifles.

  Jennifer turned to Captain and Plerrxx, relieved. “It's okay,” she whispered. Captain smiled back, but Plerrxx looked obviously afraid, and for good reason - a black, cylindrical ship hovered over them, shining a bright blue light directly on Plerrxx. While dark-garbed police floated out of its belly, a bird like voice shrieked over a loudspeaker, “Lzlspdid! Amlidjdty!”

  Captain shielded his eyes as the police descended. There outfits, upon closer examination, were more like space suits complete with glass helmets slightly obscuring narrow vulture-like faces inside.

  “It's the Concatenation Police!” shouted Jennifer. She turned to the volunteers. “What is this, Harleson?”

  She thought she caught a grin on his face. “Out of our hands, milady. Seems like your friend here broke the Moroder Treaty.”

  The Concatenation Police seized Plerrxx by the arms. While he struggled against them and emitted a telepathic cry for help, it was short-lived. They placed a brace around his neck that made him slump, unconsciously to the ground.

  “Plerrxx!” Captain yelled. He fought against the police, who shoved him but did not go further. In a second, they floated up back to the Concatenation ship, the Mmrowwr in their arms, and disappeared back into the craft's belly. A sliding door slid behind them. Without a thought, the Concatenation ship whisked off into the horizon.

  “Noo! Plerrxx!” Captain cried. He looked to Jennifer, whose eyes were helpless and full of fear.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Jennifer demanded, a tear falling from her eye.

  Harleson dismounted his horse and parted the group of lawmen. He was accompanied by a gray haired, wizened but plump and dignified old woman whom Jennifer recognized - the Dunleavy's majordomo, Mrs. Elizabeth. She had aged greatly, but was instantly recognizable through her stern, pinched face. She spoke in a measured tongue, professional.