Guns of Mars 21
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 6.3
The bounty man recognized that it was a great sluice as they rode down its descending length. Once, the polar ice cap had reached this point and here the ice was melted by heat that radiated from foundry towers that now rusted and sagged either side of the broad spillway. By means of some arcane technology, the ice was reduced to flowing water that rushed down toward the circular openings and into aqueducts bored in the rock. These fed the great canals that brought their life-giving flood to great cities in the south, cities that were now nothing more than graveyards.
That was in the days before the ice receded and the reign of the jeddaks collapsed. The jeds and jeddaks, the ruling power on Barsoom, drew their authority from their control of the global water supply. Even as the planet began to slowly die of thirst, their power and influence only grew stronger as scarcity increased. That was until the lack of water for man, beast or vegetation reached the crisis point and everything collapsed into the primeval struggle for survival that was to be the future of Barsoom until, finally, the world of men and tharks was forgotten, lost to the eons.
They reached the bottom of the sluice. The bounty man dropped from the saddle to lead the mounts into the dark interior of one of the cyclopean pipes. The curved ceiling rose high above them, the surface worn smooth by millennia of rushing water. The bounty man’s boot heels made an eerie echo off the vaulted walls.
“Remain here, out of sight,” he cautioned the thark. “Remember what I told you.”
“That I am safer in your company than I am with my own kind,” Kal said, making no effort to hide the bitterness in his tone.
“You know it’s true,” the bounty man said as he slid his rifle from its boot and trotted back toward the sunlight.
Once outside, he entered one of the structures that lined the granite slope. The interior was heaped with a scree of broken masonry and tile where the upper part of the structure had collapsed. What was once a broad stairway along one wall failed to reach the next level as its center span had crumbled. He made the top step of what remained of the lower section in a single leap. From there he launched himself once more and dropped in a crouch on the surviving portion of an upper story high above.
He approached a part of a western wall where a jagged subsidence had opened. He set aside his rifle and stood concealed in the shadows to peer through the gap. With the telescopticon to his eye, he scanned the crazed pattern of ridgelines to the north until he found the trio of riders. They were limned against an orange sky, the sunlight catching the tips of their war lances in winks of silver glare. They knew the land well and rode unerringly along a ridge that turned their course east. It was plain that they meant to reach the abandoned buildings here, probably to make camp for the night. This place had probably been a refuge for thark raiding and hunting parties for centuries.
“Damn them to hell.”
The bounty man turned from his vantage point to rush back to where he left his captive with their mounts.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
Might read this!