A large hologram, projected on the twenty-meter-high wall behind Slimy Shake, pictured him in MSF helmet and insignia. In the simulated fantasy sequence played on the wall, he killed and molested Martian civilians.

The "real" Slimy Shake who hopped about on the stage, beefed up with muscle implants, his eyeballs dyed red to make him seem vicious, had never used a weapon in his entire life.

At this peak of his fourteen-year career of reciting odes to rape and destruction, Slimy had enthusiastically volunteered to support the fighting men of the MSF. The audience repeated his call, rhythmically raising their fists and guns into the air.

"Kill! Fark! Kill! Fark!"

Slimy Shake was 43 years old. Regular rejuvenation treatments preserved him as the eternal acne-ridden teenager. He spat and screamed his spoken lyrics, threatened, preened, and sulked with impeccable pitch and rhythm. He stopped rapping for a minute, and started to rant about being misunderstood and alone against the world, "like you my brothers in the MSF."

Slimy was just preparing to pretend-assault a bo-bo girl onstage, when -

"Kill! Fark! Kill! Fa..."

He thought the sudden metallic, ringing crash was a chord from the band. Then he looked up and saw the truck enter.

It was not by accident that half the audience was suddenly run over. Venix rammed the 100-Martian-ton mining truck right through one giant window, taking a section of the concrete wall with it. The hall was showered with cascades of glass fragments. Rows 3 to 10 were completely flattened.

The truck's aluminum smokestacks folded as they hit the hall ceiling, and shot black smoke down over the audience. The awesome roar of the truck's engines mixed with the miniature storm of the dome's pressurized air being sucked out into the cold, thin Martian atmosphere. Everyone Terran inside came in danger of suffocating.

The audience chant immediately turned into a more high-pitched chorus of screams and coughs. The truck momentarily ground to a halt at the edge of the stage, its engines rumbling so forcefully not even Slimy Shake's advanced loudspeaker systems could match it. Screaming bo-bo girls escaped backstage.

The star of the show, staring open-mouthed at the carnage before him, soiled his pants. Slimy Shake gasped, then coughed out the icy, unbreathable draft that mixed with dark polluting smoke.

Without a moment's pause, Venix started to put the truck in reverse - and accidentally hit the elevated stage with the truck's wide rear. The armored-concrete stage floor reacted by flying up against the truck like the page of a giant pop-up book. Slimy was tossed up in the air, screaming.

Thanks to the low gravity, he barely managed to grab hold of a rail on the truck's side, and narrowly escaped a fall between its huge tires. He screamed for help, dangling by both arms from the rail. Venix hardly noticed him as she revved the engines and backed out the way she came.

The fifty-plus unharmed MSF troopers in the hall put their breathing-masks back on, and started firing at the truck with lasers and shoulder-fired minirocket launchers. Their fire merely bounced off the truck's steel plating.

Suddenly, Slimy Shake found himself outdoors, in the much colder Martian air; powdery reddish dust was blowing into his nose and mouth. Choking, he fell twelve feet to the ground - but landed, tumbling down sand heap, with only a few bruises and sprained joints.

The Martian Security Forces troopers ran out through the gash in the building, and came to his aid. One trooper pressed a spare mask over Slimy's face, and he could breathe again. He coughed and gasped.

"A great show, sir! I shot all of it!" shouted the trooper urgently, and left the shivering artist on the street with a mask and oxygen-pack. "Oh crap, recording's ruined. But don't worry, we'll get the bastard who crashed your concert!" he added, as he ran off into the dust left by the passing truck.

"Mommyyyyy!" cried Slimy Shake through the breathing-mask, soiling himself again, longing for the safe bosom of Mother Earth.

***

Twenty of the MSF troopers from the concert carried jetpacks; with astonishing speed and computer-guided control, they took off flying after the speeding truck.

The troopers buzzed around it within half a minute, trying to board it from all directions. Laser pulses and small missile fire rattled against the truck, but failed to stop it or wreck its hollow wire-mesh tires.

Venix saw one of the jetpack soldiers on the surveillance monitor, coming down toward the inside of the open cargo bay. She stepped on the brakes. The grunt and hiss of the brakes and retro-rockets struggling with the engines rang like thunder across Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - hundreds of windows facing the street popped and shattered.

The flying MSF trooper was caught by surprise, and slammed into the upper edge of the cargo bay - caught like a fly on a windowpane. Venix heard a faint thump and charged the truck forward, along the evacuated main street, following the pre-programmed route.

Council Hall lay at the end of the boulevard, four hundred meters off. She was going to make it. The jetpack soldiers were retreating.

But her vision was beginning to drift in and out of focus, and her injured leg felt numb...

***

Zodong-Petain arrived at a desperate decision. The MSF base on Phobos had a large proton-beam cannon for space defense and for shooting down meteorites, occasionally used to stabilize the asteroid's path. He had never used it against the Martians.

Fear drove him now, and he took direct control of the proton cannon.

Several automatic safeguards warned him not to aim the emitter-disk at a populated area; his commander codes overrode them all. Zodong-Petain directed the spy-camera at Veinemoynen Valley, and zoomed in directly on the large speeding truck.

He wiped sweat from his eyebrows and set the crosshairs to target the wire-mesh tires. He squeezed the firing-switch ball in his palm - the mechanism identified his fingerprints - and the command was acknowledged.

From the cyclotron in the deep caverns of the asteroid, a beam of high-energy protons was directed through a magnetic shaft at near light-speed.

The beam spread out in a circle of smaller shafts, emerged outside the asteroid's surface, and shot out from the edges of the wide emission-disk.

One split-second later, the beam converged on its target. Venix glimpsed a faint blue shaft of energy flickering to the truck's right, and felt an intense heat in the air; the truck's hull crackled with electricity and a sharp smell of ozone suffused the air.

Instantly, the wheels on her right melted and crumpled into glowing bundles. The entire truck swung heavily to the right and the front plunged into the ground, plowing into the tarmac, which billowed up into the air.

The vehicle slid across the boulevard and crashed into a line of lampposts where the boulevard intersected with Paavo Road. A bronze statue of the first humans on Mars was crushed under the truck, and the hulking mass of metal ground to a squealing halt. Dust enveloped the wreckage. In the distance, the sound of approaching jetpacks and shuttles grew in strength.

Venix stabbed into the airbag that trapped her, and it burst. With trembling hands, she unlocked the safety belt and crawled out through the destroyed front window.

She still carried the shoulder-turret, but it felt much heavier now; she let it slip off her shoulder and held it with both hands. Her injured left leg, dangling limply, slowed her down. She slid down the truck's side and tumbled onto the dusty, upturned tarmac.

It seemed to her an eternity since she had last felt this old, familiar sensation: fatigue. Not so different from being tired in a flesh-and-blood body, only it hurt much less. Venix raised her head and looked...

There it stood, just across the street: a two-story front, not particularly large, flanked on both ends by the typical Martian wind-shelters. Only, the insides of the shelter walls were covered with high bas-reliefs of astronauts - the old-fashioned sort, in bulky white suits, lined up like ancient temple guardians before the entrance.

The large engraved letters above the entrance read: COME, EAGER SOUL, AND THESE RED DESERTS SHALL QUENCH YOUR THIRST. In the high doorway, a signpost announced in scrolling letters: COUNCIL HALL CLOSED DURING THE SKYSURFING GRAND PRIX. POST MESSAGES TO THE COUNCIL WEBSITE.

"No," Venix whispered weakly.

Then she heard the MSF soldiers land around her on their jetpacks, fully armed and shielded against any attacks. A couple of orange shuttles whined above the street, slowed down and took aim. A dozen or more red laser-sight dots appeared across her dusty body, but none on her head; the troops were following orders.

She wondered why no shouts or threats were issued - but realized instantly that they wanted as little attention as possible to her escape. It had to leak out somehow, she thought. Gus would learn. The ring of soldiers - she could count at least a hundred on the street - moved closer, closer...

Her hearing still worked; she perceived the faint sound of hundreds of shuffling feet, and the clicks of many more mechanisms all over the city block. From the doorway of the council hall, two large figures strode out of the shadow, into the dust-hazy sunlight.

Two native Martians, wearing rough work clothes and shawls wrapped over their mouths. Unlike the troopers, they could breathe the air through their broad, hairy nostrils, and their thick bushy eyelashes, though almost transparent, glittered like glass sprouts in the sun.

Thick beards covered much of their faces. With each breath, their enormous ribcages swelled and shrank, but they walked with ease. One of them carried some sort of heavy tin box in one hand, with a round glass lid or lamp pointed forward, and the box had a handle or crank on one side. A whirring, unfamiliar sound came from the box.

The troopers standing nearest the entrance took aim at the two men, and shouted at them to stop.

"Drop that weapon!" ordered a captain's voice, from the shuttle hovering above the council hall entrance.

"It's not a weapon, it's a camera," the native called out, his deep voice somewhat high-pitched in the thin air. The captain's voice laughed; he had been informed about the blackout caused by the scrambler probe. The native added: "A mechanical camera, driven by a spring coil! It records images onto a chemical emulsion. I built it myself."

The MSF men looked at him in disbelief, as if the local village idiot had just told them he had built a fly-pod made of rocks. It took Venix half a second to understand.

Lightning-quick, one soldier aimed his shoulder turret at the tin box and shot the lens with perfect, laser-guided precision. The Martian's tin box buckled and spouted smoke; he flinched, but did not back down.

The other Martian blew a metal whistle, sending a sharp signal echoing across the place. The MSF troopers looked about themselves, and saw hundreds - then thousands - of natives appearing in windows, alleys and doorways - all the way down the long and wide Alpha Ralpha Boulevard.

Many of the natives pointed mechanical cameras at Venix and the masses of troops. The others took aim with antiquated rifles and rocket-launchers. But they said nothing, just waited and recorded the scene.

The man with the whistle called out, knowing that he would be heard: "General Zodong-Petain! Order your men to retreat from the city, or we massacre them where they stand! And we shall record the whole event for the Solar System to see! Your blackout devices have no effect on our arsenal. You have one minute!"

The MSF commander's nervous voice sounded through the hovering shuttle's PA system: "I know who you are! You were already on our suspect list! This will only ensure your arrest for seditious activism! Surrender while you still can!"

"Go ahead, Try and arrest that woman, try to arrest me now, with all these cameras taping it, and we'll give you a war you'll never believe!"

A choked sound came from the shuttle speakers, and ten seconds passed. Venix tried to crawl closer to the entrance; the soldiers were still aiming at her, but held their fire.

She understood that if the MSF commander was to make a quick decision, he had no chance of asking the Kansler or any other superior officer first - communications could not possibly reach back and forth between planets in time.

"All forces, hold your fire. Retreat to Voce Di Agua and gather the injured. Pickup ships will land there in thirty minutes and take them back to Phobos. If my men are fired upon when they ret... when they regroup, I respond with another proton charge."

"Deal!" said the Martian with the whistle, and stepped back. The other two thousand Martians huddled down, keeping their camera lenses and guns trained at the hastily retreating invaders.

A minute later, the last shuttle packed with soldiers had taken off toward the smoldering concert hall in the distance.

Venix struggled to get on her feet. The two large Martians hurried to her and lifted her on their shoulders.

"What's your name?" the man with the whistle asked. "Not 'Kolya Keaton' - is it?"

"Venice... Venix. Cyborg. Need energy... batteries low..."

"Are you sure about this?" the other Martian said to the one with the whistle, indicating their course toward the council hall entrance.

"No cyborg ever called me a gorilla. Let's take her to Berg."

She stayed conscious; her limbs were gradually being shut down; her head and senses would go out last of all. Would she die then, Venix wondered, or merely sleep until her batteries were recharged?



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