The Lovers War & Other Stories

By Darvin Martin

A killer of dreams stalks nightmares across a blasted earth. Soldiers play a deadly game of politics and passion on war-torn Mars. A failed suicide gets pulled into the struggle between ancient spirits. Bringing together dark fantasy, myth, folklore, future science, and dystopia, this collection of five short stories explores the shadowy, dangerous spaces that exist between love and duty, commitment and regret, vengeance and forgiveness, death and transformation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Darvin Martin
• Release date: Aug 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476236742

Darvin Martin

Darvin is an avid roleplayer, XBOX enthusiast, and bibliophile. He's also a devoted husband and father. When he's not writing Dungeons & Dragons adventures for his friends or obeying the demands of his cats, Darvin likes to write poetry and short fiction about the strange characters and stories that appear in his head just before falling asleep at night and waking in the morning. He roleplays and writes fiction to stay sane, but he works as a diversity consultant and career counselor to pay the bills.

Book preview

The Lovers War & Other Stories

By Darvin L. Martin

Copyright 2012 Darvin L. Martin

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Lovers War

Caretta

A Day Without Rain

Dreamkiller

Sorrow

Introduction

People ask me why I write the weirdness that I do. I've never really thought about a good answer until I published this eBook and realized that I needed some kind of introduction besides the Table of Contents. When I think about it, I realize that there are three factors that came together in my childhood that pushed me to start writing fantasy and science-fiction. First, we were poor. Second, because we were poor, I didn't grow up in the best neighborhood. Third, because we were poor and living in a bad neighborhood, my father had a 2-pronged plan for keeping me out of trouble: I wasn't allowed to play with the kids living closest to us and he also made sure that I had as many books, comics, video games, and toys that any budding nerd could ever desire.

While other kids were out riding bicycles and playing football, I was running from Trolls with Bilbo Baggins, cutting a bloody swath of destruction with Conan the Barbarian, and trying hard to unravel the mysteries of the Martian Chronicles. I wasn't interested in visiting the local swimming pool but spent hours at the arcade, my cassette player blasting Megadeath into my ears while I blasted dragons and robots on video games. All of my school art projects featured space battles, monsters, and knights; my bedroom was decorated with pictures I had drawn of werewolves, demons, and skulls. I wrote short stories endlessly and can still remember the feeling of complete satisfaction when my father would sit down, read my latest tale, and offer me his praise and criticism. He always took me seriously, never treated my writing like anything less than the creation of a real writer, and encouraged me to keep at it, keep creating new worlds, and keep telling my stories.

Thanks, Dad.

Writing is a very personal thing for me and its one of the few ways that I get to explore my own vulnerability. When you write, you put something of yourself, some bloody, raw, wounded part of you, into the words and images; its a way to castigate the shadow, to purge the blood of its poison, and to confess your sins, all without having to endure real pain and shame. The stories collected here cover a span of almost 15 years in my life and were inspired by a number of different events, both wonderful and tragic: my mother dying from cancer, my first love, becoming a teenage father, the end of my first marriage, the joy of my second marriage, my lack of self-control, my search for the meaning of God. Its all in there somewhere, which may explain why my eyes tear every time I read the end of The Lovers War or why I love the transformation taking place in Caretta so dearly. In fact, as I wrote that last sentence, the one you just read, I realized that in some way all of the stories here are about family--all the pain, sadness, strife, passion, love, and sacrifice that goes into creating them, how they Begin, how they End, and what happens between those two poles.

I hope you enjoy what you find inside and I appreciate the time you are taking to read my work. Maybe you'll find some of your own stories inside of mine.

Lux et umbra.

The Lovers War

It is as a soldier that you make love and as a lover that you make war.

-Antoine de Saint Exupery

My wife ambushed us at Fort Clinton.

Our unit howled across the barren, rust-colored vastness of the Elysium Planitia, the magcoils propelling our Talon LAV’s filling the Martian dawn with their distinctive whistling growl. Although their human pilots were silent, the robot brains inside our Talons and combat suits spent the time conversing in electronic bursts of data; satellite maps of the terrain, pilot condition, anticipated combat scenarios, onboard and portable weapon readiness, and a hundred other bits of information scrolled across the inside of our visors in digitized text and hi-res images. The sat-map on our HUD’s showed Fort Clinton and Freedom Tower--the 300 meter tall volcanic plug it perched on--at 60 kilometers and closing; we were moving fast and would be inside the Combat Zone in less than ten minutes.

Other relay scans popped open beside the first, showing satvids of more than a dozen crabguns taking up positions around the top of the tower; soldiers were moving in behind them to provide support fire, their bodies thermal ghosts onscreen. Contact in nine! I yelled into my helmet mike, looking back at my squad. "Maintain 20 meters between Talons! Three hundred meters vertical is going to put us at a tactical disadvantage! Don’t make it easy for the bastards to kill us!

The 5th Recon Platoon is waiting for us on that tower! They know we’re coming! Captain Nwosu's forces will throw everything they’ve got at us and try to keep us from cresting! They're called Big Kill: lets make damned sure we show them why we’re called Hell Hounds!

Fourteen other voices cheered in unison: Oorah!

Why is she doing it? First Lieutenant Abassi asked on our private comm, his Talon twenty meters away and pacing mine at three o’clock. The war is over. We won. They’re just civvies. Why does she keep attacking the colonies?

I don’t know, Abassi, I lied. It doesn’t matter. She’s a war criminal and the UEC is paying us to stop her. Don’t ask questions; keep your head in the mission!

Are we really going to kill her, Shango? Abassi asked, using my real name, not my rank. That made it personal; he was talking to me as a lover now, not just a soldier. Are we really going to kill our wife?

I was silent, brooding. I could hear anger in my lovers strong voice, but also pain and tension. Was he angry at me? At our wife? Did it matter either way? It didn't; couldn't.

United Earth Command didn't care that I was married to their prime target; they knew I would complete the contract. Send a monster to catch a monster.

I found her lying across our bed wrapped in cool shadows, face wet with tears, a holo of Zuri held tight against her naked black breasts. The war's over, I said, showing her the news vid on my e-pad. The seppy's issued a surrender this morning, honey. United Earth Command is going to decommission the Hounds later today.

Now what? she said, her voice colder than the black spaces between stars. She stared at the holo, not at me.

Now we go back to being civvies, I said. Now we get our lives back; we get our marriage back. Bassi's on his way over to celebrate. I think we should propose to him tonight, make it something real."

That was when she looked at me and I knew; it was in her eyes, something hot and hungry, something bleeding that needed to make the world bleed.

Our Talons crossed into Promethei Terra and orbiting Mars Command frigates started hitting the Combat Zone with harassing fire; Big Kill wouldn't be flanking us or riding out to meet our charge. Barrages of 200mm plasma shells exploded like miniature super novas to the left and right, our LAV's roaring through a safe tunnel of firing solutions and targeting parameters. The black monolith of Freedom Tower rose like a god above us as we closed the distance.

Blazing through super-heated air, swirling smoke, and blasting flame, we hit the base of the volcanic plug; control rockets ignited on the Talons, launching all fifteen of us vertical until we were screaming up the side of the tower, the ground speeding away beneath us. Weapons hot! I yelled a heartbeat before Big Kill opened up on us with everything they had.

It took us ten seconds to scale the tower.

As planned, we spread wide to draw their fire, our Talons d-screens angling forward in opaque shields of solid energy as the fusillade slammed into us. The rangers had fortified the roof with crabguns, 50mm autocannons mounted on robot crawlers clutching the sides of the tower, grav-harnesses stabilizing gunners while they tracked and fired with blinding speed. It was like flying through a snowstorm of blazing white tracers, my vision tunneling as the world burned around us.

Ne-Ith and I stood just outside the playground d-screen with the other enlisted parents, watching Zuri run, scream, and giggle with a dozen other children. Our hands found each other and we stood silently in the red, Martian dust, our combat armor smeared with blood and soot; an hour earlier we had been killed thirty-two seppy guerrillas in the Valles Marineris, turning their ambush into a slaughter.

Spotting the golden lion's head emblazoned on Ne-Ith's helmet, Zuri broke away from her frantic playing and ran to the screen, laughing, a happy rush of braids, black skin and golden ribbons.

Ne-Ith and I crouched in the dust, pressed our gauntleted hands against the screen, and nodded at our daughter. It was our way. Zuri did the same, pressing small hands against her side of the d-screen so that we could imagine feeling them through the hard energy. I love you, she told us in sign language; you are our joy, we responded using the same.

It was our way.

My visor telescoped, bringing a rangers face so close that I could see her blue eyes flaring reflected cannon fire, the defiant snarl of her lips as she pulled the trigger. I locked onto her left eye and, with a thought, sent a burst of dazzling laser energy ripping up the tower wall to cut both her and the crabgun into pieces of flaming debris. All along the curve of the tower Talons were returning fire, their nose turrets spraying bright death up the wall to shred our enemies and their war machines; blood and charred bits of combat suits sizzled against our d-screens as we plowed through the grisly fallout. I turned three more rangers into splashes of red against the yellow Martian sky, their crabguns continuing to fire on auto before my Talons lasers turned them into flying