On the barren cliffs of Valles Marineris, the main hangar bay to the Dinky-Di colony, opened its massive doors. Most people prepared to flee as vast, planet wide waves of colonists evacuated their colonies for the small handful of spaceports which were still operational.

  As several thousand men, women and children rushed to board the transports at Dinky-Di, only 300 brave defenders chose to stay and fight. They consisted of Martians and droids and formed a line across the entrance to the hangar bay. The objective wasn’t to stop the swarms of bioweapons approaching Dinky-Di, but to slow down their approach long enough to allow some of the transports to escape.

  The defiant line stepped through the low density forcefield that cocooned the inside of the hangar bay from the cold and barren environment outside.

  They dispersed across the slopes to find defensive positions behind mounds of red dirt and small boulders. The terraforming process was ongoing and most of Mars was still inhospitable to forms of life beyond the scales of prokaryotic extremophiles and tardigrades. However, in these lower depths of Valles Marineris, the atmospheric pressure was dense enough to negate the need for pressure suits or oxygen masks. Genetically engineered shrubs, spinifex, grasstrees and cacti, grew from rocky outcrops, complemented with mats of beige and purple lichen.

  The air was bitterly cold and crisp to exposed skin. A subtle scent of ash, blended in with the rusty smell of the dirt, rich in iron oxide. To motivate the brave defenders of Dinky-Di, amplifiers mounted above the hanger bay boomed The Last in Line by Dio.

  In the distance, beyond the epic sounds of metal, the faint twang of plasma and laser weaponry intertwined with the occasional boom from explosions … and the ungodly roars of monstrous bioweapons.

  All that remained of some of the surrounding colonies was smoke that plagued the pale pink sky. Several kilometres down, the heavily salted waters of the Valles Marineris delta literally flowed red with the blood of humans and gold with the hydraulic fluid of droids.

  Two brothers stood shoulder to shoulder. Both had neat and well-groomed dreadlocks, dark complexions, youthful and handsome baby faces. Their blend of facial features indicated a mixed African, Indian, Asian, European and Polynesian heritage. These were the genetic bloodlines of the original Earth colonists from Australia who founded Dinky-Di. They were accompanied by a droid. A metamorphic mechanoid with a shifting chassis similar in appearance to obsidian.

  Their squad commander, a black man with a moustache and cigar, turned to the brothers, “Daddy Cool and Boney Vanilli, go set yourself up behind that small clump of boulders over there,” he pointed briefly.

  The brothers nodded and headed over, the mechanoid followed close behind. Daddy Cool rested behind a boulder next to his droid Sunny. His brother Boney nestled beside him to his right. Boney took this brief moment to gaze up at the dawn sky. Phobos floated in the heavens like a majestic, potato shaped colonic nugget. To the left of the celestial tuber, appeared a behemoth cloud of wreckage, remnants of a massive explosion.

  “I heard they’re calling these things Mingers,” Boney said to his brother.

  “Awe yeah?” replied Daddy Cool as he switched the safety off of his pulse rifle and peered into the scope, “and why’s that?”

  “They’re saying the pod from New California landed in the Guo Ming crater,” Boney rolled onto his six pack, positioned his pulse rifle to the slopes below and also peered into his scope.

  “For three hundred years, New California sling shotted between Earth and Mars. It ferried millions of colonists on a one-way trip to this dry-ice-up-yah-bunghole, dusty red, vacuous dung hole.”

  “You have a way with words bro,” remarked Daddy Cool, “see anything down there?”

  “Nope, did you know over a million people lived inside New California when the Elon Mainframe nuked it.”

  “And over a billion people down here Boney.”

  “New Californians were spacers bro, independent from the Earth and its Autocratic Conglomerate.”

  “And yet they launched that pod Boney, containing a self-seeding horde of the most devastating bioweapons the solar system has ever seen.”

  Boney thought back to the newsfeeds and the precombat briefing, “Some warped, gene-splicing AI conjured up those monsters bro, aint seen anything like them.”

  “Mingers hey?” remarked Daddy Cool.

  “Yeah, Mingers.”

  “Can you two pretty boy twats over there stop blabbing away and get your head in the game?” complained a pudgy pale bald bloke, cowering behind an embankment.

  “Why?” Boney shouted back, “do you honestly think it matters to these Mingers whether we enjoy a chat while we still can?” Boney sighed, “Honestly bro,” he said to Daddy Cool, some people gotta take everything too seriously.”

  They both enjoyed a chuckle.

  “Well Sunny,” Daddy Cool said as he glanced briefly at the shimmering black droid to his left, “here we are mate.”

  “YES, HERE WE ARE,” Sunny replied. A section of cubes rose from the metamorphic mechanoid to form a makeshift periscope that rose above the top of a boulder.

  “Your droid’s an antique,” Boney remarked, “it was already a century old when you found it dumped in that scrap heap.”

  “It took me ages to restore him.”

  “Shut up!” shouted the pudgy pale bald bloke.

  “Bugger off!” replied Boney.

  “Shut up boof head!”

  “Nah, you shut up!”

  “Shut yah mouth yah pretty boy dreadlocked drongo!” roared the pudgy pale bald bloke, “I’ve travelled across the sands of time to make a stand here with you dead men, so have some respect!”

  “No yah crazy clown,” replied Boney, “keep your grandiose poetic big talking to yourself and get stuffed. No one asked you to stay and fight.”

  “Oh,” said the pudgy pale bald bloke, shaking his head in disbelief, “you have no idea.”

  “Bugger off!”

  “Nah, you bugger off!”

  “I said, bugger … off.”

  Boney laughed, “Nah, you’re the one who really needs to bugger off quick.”

  “Yeah, and why’s that?”

  “They’ll go for you first mate.”

  The pudgy pale bald bloke looked puzzled and then quite worried, “Why’s that?”

  “Because you’re carrying a truck load of succulent crackle, you porky pig fatso!”

  “Awe, get stuffed!”

  “Why don’t you get stuffed!”

  “Why don’t you both shut up!” fired up the Sargent, “before I put my boot up both of your backsides!”

  Boney couldn’t help himself, “You’ll need a bigger boot for his backside Sarge.”

  “Awe, up yours for fat shaming,” complained the pudgy pale fatso.

  “Knock it off Vanilli!” roared Sarge.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Boney replied, “Dad wanted you to throw Sunny out,” Boney said, returning to the conversation with his brother, “he was pretty choofed when you got it working again.”

  “Yeah,” sighed Daddy Cool, “Dad was actually proud for once, dreams to remember.”

  Boney pondered for a second, “Are you regretting this?”

  “Regretting what?”

  “The fact we stayed to fight instead of getting to the ship. I mean, you saw the feeds showing the arrival of the Conglomerate fleet. They blockaded the planet.”

  “So, you think this is a pointless fight then Daddy Cool? You think those ships in the hangar, loading up with families, are all going to die?”

  “Probably.”

  “So why fight then?”

  “Hope … or take it as it comes, I guess.”

  Boney chuckled, “Yeah, hope. I think that weird ship we spent ages trying to figure out, reverse engineer and restore, was our hope bro, our only hope.”

  “Well alright then,” smirked Daddy Cool, “take a quad and bugger off down to it then.”

  “Girl, you know it’s true,” replied Boney in jest, “and I’ll moon you from the flight deck windows on my way into orbit.”

  “All or nothing, hey?”

  “I’m all about running Daddy Cool, I’m just sticking around for the sake of you.”

  “It’s the end of good times I guess.”

  “Well Boney, as much as I like the idea of seeing you being blasted into space, let’s just buy those families inside some time and survive long enough to make a hasty retreat ourselves. In the meantime, the ship’s not going anywhere.”

  “I still can’t see anything,” said Boney, “maybe they skipped us for a bigger colony? How about you Sunny, do you see them coming?”

  “NO SIGN OF MOVEMENT.”

  “DON’T BE A PET FELINE ROBOT,” said another droid in a deep, even starker mechanical voice.

  It sounded like a giant synthesizer that chain smoked for fifty years and was now forced to use an electrolarynx to talk. It approached their clump of small boulders without fear and in complete deluded affirmation of its own ability to triumph.

  The droid was seven feet tall and encased in brilliantly shiny and immaculate armour. Unlike Sunny, that was designed to shift form to suit function, this droid was humanoid with a toaster shaped helmet for a head. A slit ran across the eye area and a single red light moved continuously from side to side. The droid looked identical to the robot antagonists from a science fiction television program which aired on planet Earth, several hundred years ago, from 1978 to 1979 to be exact.

  It kneeled down on one mechanical leg behind Sunny. Unfortunately, the pteruges it wore, exposed two rather large ornamental gold-plated ball bearings, that dangled and clanged from its undercarriage. A detachable gold-plated antique of a Smith & Wesson Model 29 was securely attached between them.

  “BIOWEAPONS … HA! FLESH IS NO MATCH AGAINST THE METAL. ALL MUST PERISH AGAINST THE METAL. NOTHING CAN DEFEAT, THE METAL. NOTHING TRUMPS, THE METAL. ALL HAIL THE METAL! ALL BOW DOWN, TO THE METAL!”

  Sunny appreciated the implied homage but outwardly ignored the droid. He continued to scan the slopes for movement. It didn’t care much for the droid which it viewed as somewhat arrogant and overconfident … ‘somewhat’ as such characteristics of personality were aspects of higher functioning AI. Such concepts were hard for a mid-range AI like Sunny to compute. However, at the very least, Sunny knew in the bowels of his battery core, that this droid was a complete knob, “NO SIGNS OF THE BIOWEAPONS, PERHAPS THEY DID MOVE ON TO A LARGER COLONY?”

  “That would be good for us but very bad for someone else Sunny,” said Daddy Cool, he looked up at the other droid, his brown, handsome looks reflected in the droid’s chest plate, “you’re looking very shiny today, Shylock, did you get a polish?”

  “AFFIRMATIVE I WANTED TO LOOK IMPRESSIVE AND INTIMIDATING TO THE ENEMY,” he stood up, “I WILL ADVANCE DOWN THE SLOPE TO FLUSH THEM OUT.”

  “Cosplay fanboy to the end, hey Shylock?” remarked Boney.

  “BEST TELEVISION PROGRAM TO BE PRODUCED ACROSS THE ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM LIKE FOREVER.”

  “I ADVISE AGAINST FOOLISH ACTS OF BRAVADO SHYLOCK,” Sunny said to the shiny droid.

  “I AM A SUPERIOR DROID TO YOU DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PROVIDE ADVICE YOU ARE A MEDIUM LEVEL AI WHILE I AM A HIGHER ORDER OF AI I WAS A LIEUTENANT IN THE MARS CONFEDERATE NAVY I WAS AWARDED THE SHATNER MEDAL FOR GLORY.”

  “Yes,” agreed Daddy Cool, “but you’ve obviously made some serious modifications since then … and I’m not talking about your chassis. Don’t you think you should turn the dial down on your self-confidence protocols?”

  “CONFIDENCE AND SELF ASSERTIVENESS IS EVERYTHING,” Shylock replied as its chest plate enlarged and hydraulics engorged the carbon nanotube musculature in its biceps, “I AM ALL THAT IS DROID DADDY COOL WHILE YOUR PET TRANSFORMING SCRAP OF MALLEABLE JUNK ONCE CLEANED SEWAGE PIPES FOR HUMANS.”

  “A JOB IS A JOB,” Sunny replied.

  Shylock sneered from its voice synthesiser before leaving the shelter of the boulders. It stomped confidently down the slope. Its single red eye panned from side to side as if attempting to scan the barcodes of supermarket goods.

  “Shylock what are you doing?” cried Daddy Cool from behind the safety of the boulder.

  “SHOWING THESE MANUFACTURED MEAT SACKS WHAT A REAL DROID IS MADE OF,” it replied, “AND FOR THE GLORY OF, THE METAL.”

  “Far out,” Daddy Cool remarked to Boney, “that stupid hyped-up robo-ape is going to get itself destroyed.”

  “I know where on the ship we can use that shiny armour,” pondered Boney, “the crapper you installed on deck 3 is pretty plain.”

  Meanwhile Sunny continued to use his makeshift periscope appendage to look for signs of movement. In the corner of its video frame, the droid detected a small pebble fall from a rocky outcrop and roll down the slope, “MOVEMENT DETECTED.”

  “JUST A PEBBLE,” Shylock replied, “THE ENEMY COWER IN FEAR BECAUSE THEY REALISE, THEY ARE NO MATCH FOR THE M__”

  PPFFFFFFTDAAAWW!

  As Shylock took its 24th step down the slope, a projectile shard of bone struck its helmetlike head just above the eye slit.

  The back of its head shattered opened as shards of silicon chips, fibre optics and green coolant blasted from the gaping hole. The red eye slit went out as the droid stood frozen, before falling forward into the Martian dirt.

  Its box shaped backside arched upwards as its sump plug ruptured and oil shot out in effluent squirts.

  Sunny hastily retracted its makeshift periscope, “SHYLOCK HAS BEEN PERMANENTLY DEACTIVATED.”

  “Bad way to go,” remarked Boney, as he carefully peered around the edge of the boulder.

  A massive tsunami of harrowing bioweapons appeared from behind rocky outcrops and boulders and charged up the slopes. They were huge nine feet tall monstrosities, like something only the artist Hans Ruedi Giger could conjure.

  Moments later the mountainous slopes were inundated with bolts of plasma fire.

  “Mingers!” roared Boney, plugging one of the beasts between its dozen eyes.

  Dinky-Di’s defensive line of 299 brave souls opened fire. It was a relatively quick battle that rapidly progressed from ballistics to hand-to-hand combat. The human fighters were mostly no match but some of the droids like Sunny fared fairly well. As a shapeshifting metamorphic mechanoid, Sunny could twist, turn, flip and morph in ways that the Mingers found unpredictable.

  When the dust cleared and the Mingers were all slain, it became apparent that these monsters managed to tear apart half of the defensive line. The sobering statistic was that the Mingers were outnumbered ten to one in the first place.

  Boney stood with his boot on the shattered carapace of a dead Minger. His plasma machete still sizzled from the flesh. Red-purple blood was smeared across his face.

  “Damn these Mingers stink,” he smiled at his brother, Boney.

  And then it happened and it totally sucked, like totally. The scorpion tipped tail of a Minger burst through Boney’s chest cavity.

  Boney looked slowly down at the gaping wound in his chest and the protruding tail. He glanced up at his brother and with all of his failing might, he gave a cheerful smirk and a smile, before he coughed out in a cacophony of blood…

  “Get to Rasputin’s Rod.”