Dr. Yem Teni dismissed his drowsy college class, reminding them of the homework he’d assigned over the weekend. The pitiful handful of students filed out of the room, and Dr. Teni closed the four-dimensional screen projection and turned off the test modulation systems. So few young people were interested in Tertian history—so few people, in general—he wondered if that class was even going to be offered at Mars University next year.
Yem had always been obsessed with the planet of Tertia, and everything about it, especially its ancient people. He sniffed to himself as he walked down the hallowed, thousand-year-old corridors of Nelson Hall, dodging groups of fresh-faced students, not more than children, in his eyes. He bet most of them were majoring in Terraforming Studies. That’s where all the money was—the future, bulldozing the past. Why, their ancestors had come from Tertia! How couldn’t that be fascinating?
As he came back to his office, his own personal museum stuffed from floor to ceiling with ancient Tertian texts, he noticed his university-mandated A.I. assistant android blinking rapidly on his desk.
“What is it, Vima?” he asked the tiny android, and it popped up with a clatter of metal, steadying itself on spidery legs. It projected a list of holographic messages as it spoke.
“Two urgent messages from students requesting to drop—Tertian Ancient History 1001.”
Yem groaned to himself. Those were two students he couldn’t afford to lose. The cutoff to drop a class was Monday, and unfortunately, he had no choice in the matter.
“Approve them,” he grumbled to Vima. “What else?”
“One urgent message from—Dean of Provost Affairs, Goref Undelmeyer.”
Yem nearly swallowed his own tongue. “W-what does it say?” he said, taking a drink from a cup of day-old caffiwater sitting on his desk.
“‘Dear Dr. Teni,’” Vima began, “‘I trust this semester finds you well, and I also trust that you are working hard on finishing the thesis required for your consideration of continued tenure here at M.U.’”
Yem spat out his caffiwater into the air, making a delicate spray through the holographic projection. “What!?” he blurted.
Vima continued, “‘As you have already been informed, your thesis will be due by the beginning of next month, and will be judged by a board of your peers in the History department. If you would like, you may turn in your abstract and thesis statement ahead of time—’”
“No, wait, wait!” cried Yem, and Vima stopped talking. Yem ran his bony fingers through gray, thinning hair, afraid that he might lose the rest of it in one fell swoop. “When? When did he say anything about this?”
“There are—three—unopened messages from Dean of Provost Affairs, Goref Undelmeyer from the last year. Shall I read them?”
“What’s the first one?”
“First message, dated—nine—months ago: ‘Dear Dr. Teni, it has come to my attention that your classes have been losing students at an alarming rate each semester, along with all other Tertian Studies classes. After a lengthy discussion with the Board of History Studies, it was recommended that the Tertian Studies major, minor, and all of its classes, be removed from the curriculum.’”
Yem felt his knees go weak. He sank down into his chair while holding the edge of his desk to keep him steady.
“‘Since you have been tenured here at Mars U. for nearly twenty years, and have never taught a class outside of Tertian Studies, we have decided that you may keep teaching Tertian History as an elective under one condition: you must provide us with a thesis pertaining to the relevance of Tertian Studies in modern Mars culture. You will have two weeks to appeal this decision—”
“Stop,” he muttered to Vima, who gratefully shut up. Emotions roiled around in his stomach, making him dizzy and sick. Every breath felt like it could potentially be his last before his heart gave out. “That—that scat-eating…! I can’t do it in one month! Oh gods, what am I supposed to do?!”
He stood up, though the action nearly made him fall flat on his face, and wandered around his tiny office like an animal stuck in a cage.
“Would you like to send a reply to—Dean of Provost Affairs Goref Undelmeyer?” asked Vima.
“No,” he replied weakly. What could he say, anyway? One month wasn’t enough time to research and write a thesis… it wasn’t even really enough time to write one with all the research in hand, which of course, he didn’t have.
What choice was there, though?
Yem steadied his thudding heart, then sat at his desk-screen and researched like he’d never researched before in his life.
One Sunday afternoon, in the deserted Mars University cafeteria, Yem sat waiting anxiously for his contact, picking at a hangnail on his thumb. This plan was insane. And yet, it wouldn’t just give him enough research to justify his existence as a professor. It would fulfill all of Yem’s seemingly impossible lifelong dreams.
If he didn’t die in the process, of course.
The double doors of the cafeteria swung open, revealing a man silhouetted by the ruddy Martian sunlight, and Yem knew it had to be the only man insane enough to travel to Tertia. He just had a… look… about him.
He was tall, tanned, and blonde, wearing tight, rust colored military getup bursting at the seams with bulging muscles, which were only held back by otherwise seemingly useless strappy things on his arms and legs. He sauntered into the cafeteria, his gigantic combat boots thudding slowly on the floor, squinting with piercing blue eyes, frowning with a battle-scarred mouth. He nodded to Yem, ambled over, sat at the bench opposite him and placed one enormous elbow on the table.
“You must be Dr. Teni,” he said, in a low, gristly voice, with the distinctly deepened vowels of a thick Isidisian accent.
“I am,” he replied, trying not to cringe as he greeted his ticket to retirement. “And you must be… Barge Slaughter? Am I pronouncing that right?”
“Lieutenant Barge Slaughter,” Barge corrected him, with a bit of a sneer. “906 Spaceborne Division. Part time adventurer.”
Yem blinked. “Uh… right. Sure.” He coughed, getting his mind back on track. What loving mother would name her son Barge? “Lieutenant, I saw your advertisement looking for a…” he couldn’t help but sigh, “a sidekick? For a mission to Tertia, of all places?”
Barge leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across his bursting pecs. “That’s right. And I’ll be the one asking the questions here, doc.”
Yem snapped his mouth shut into a thin line. Oh, this was such a bad idea.
“I want to know what makes you think you’re the right guy for the job. You don’t seem like you’ve done much… dangerous work in your lifetime.”
“Well,” said Yem, ignoring the gibe, “I’ve studied Tertian history professionally for over twenty years, and unprofessionally, for my whole life… or since I could read, I suppose.”
He chuckled. Barge did not. Yem continued.
“I’m in possession of a countless number of Tertian texts, a lot of them military in nature, some regarding uranium deposits—”
Barge shushed him violently, whipping his head around at the totally empty cafeteria. “You trying to invite everyone? This ain’t a party, doc. This is a serious treasure hunting mission.”
“Right, of course,” said Yem, attempting to humor him. “Anyway, I believe with my years of experience, that I’d be a perfect fit to be your… partner.” He absolutely could not force himself to say the word ‘sidekick’ again.
Barge squinted and grumbled something under his breath before speaking. “You do understand the danger of this mission, right? That no one has been to Tertia in over four hundred years?”
“Yes.”
“That no one knows what’s down there, no one’s even scanned the surface in centuries?”
“I’m aware.”
“Well, pardon me, doc, but it doesn’t look like you could handle whatever fauna might be in the Tertian jungles waiting to kill ya’.”
Yem looked down at himself, mostly skin and bones. He couldn’t really argue with Barge; he could see himself losing a fight with a medium-sized dog.
“But,” he continued, “nobody else answered my ad, so I guess you’ve got the job. If you’re up for it, that is.”
Yem quieted down his inner child, who was screaming with excitement to go to a planet he’d only dreamed about.
“Yeah, sure,” said Yem with a shrug. “When do we leave, Ba—Lieutenant?”
“Now.”
Yem froze, blinking vacantly.
Barge jerked his head at the double doors of the cafeteria. “Ship’s outside, ready to go with all the equipment.” He stood, towering above Yem like a chiseled statue. “Let’s move out.”
“W-wait!” Yem stammered, making Barge raise an eyebrow and frown. “I need some things from my office! And won’t I need a change of clothes, or something?”
Barge’s scarred frown turned into a smirk. “Not unless you plan on shittin’ your pants, doc.”
Yem couldn’t help his exasperation from showing. “Please, please stop calling me ‘doc.’ It’s patronizing.”
“Why? Doc’s the perfect name for a sidekick.”
Yem let out a low groan as Barge turned to amble back to the double doors. When this was over, he’d be perfectly happy to never see the Lieutenant again.
Dr. Teni triple-checked the meager bag of belongings he’d taken with him, hoping they’d have enough to navigate to a suitable uranium deposit, even though there was no way they could turn around and go back at that point, anyway. They had already passed a couple of crumbling satellite ruins that had fallen out of Tertia’s orbit.
He brought out a fragile book written in one of the Tertian’s many ancient languages and half-studied it while glancing at the ridiculous amount of stuff behind him. The Lieutenant had stocked the cargo hold of the ship with a worrying gun-to-mining-equipment ratio, one that made him wonder if the man flying the thing wasn’t just a narcissist, but a psychopath, as well.
“There it is,” said Barge. He shifted down, and the scene that greeted them almost made Yem forget about his space sickness.
They had the perfect view of vast, azure blue oceans, wisps of white clouds, snow capped poles, lush, verdant forests that meandered into equatorial deserts. Yem nearly forgot to breathe. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The third planet from their sun. Tertia, in all its glory.
“Where to, doc?” said Barge, rudely ripping Yem out of his fantasy come true.
Yem flipped to a map in his book, found a large island continent in Tertia’s southern hemisphere, then pointed to the inner bend of the southern part of the island.
“Here,” he said. “This spot held the single largest uranium mine for most of Tertia’s history. If there’s any uranium left on the planet, it’s there.”
“Right,” Barge grunted, and Yem had just enough time to prepare himself for Barge’s insane landing technique of positioning themselves parallel to the planet and dropping straight down. Yem was absolutely certain they were going to die as alarms started to blare, warning them of overheating and atmospheric pressure. Finally, the ship’s landing jets sent up a spray of red dust, creating a small cloud that totally obscured the landscape. The engines slowly shut down with a whir, and the dust cleared, giving way to a vast, flat arid plain dotted with strange desert shrubs.
Barge strapped himself with two huge laser guns, as if he fully planned on shooting things with both hands full, and gave Yem some sort of pointy stick with steadily blinking lights at the end of it.
“What’s this?”
“A uranium scanner,” answered Barge. “Ya’ stick it in the ground. Let’s go.”
Yem took his book under his arm and the scanner in his hand. As they stepped off of the ship, the massive pull of Tertian gravity hit Yem like suddenly being strapped with sandbags. Mars had its own artificial gravity, of course, but Tertia somehow felt more solid. He could feel his organs drop, had to concentrate on lifting his feet instead of shuffling. Barge, of course, being ninety eight percent muscle, didn’t seem to notice.
From far away, in a large bush, a flock of birds sprang from their hiding place and squawked and chirped as they flew off in a tizzy of colorful feathers. Yem laughed with delight. Wild birds hadn’t flourished on Mars, though every effort had been made to introduce them, and the only ones alive were kept as pets and zoo animals. To see them thriving, free and wild, brought a sheen of tears to his eyes.
Then he saw what had made the birds scatter.
“Barge,” he whispered as the Lieutenant fiddled with his guns. Barge looked up and his blue eyes went just as wide as Yem’s.
A tribe of about twenty dark-skinned Tertians were walking towards them, bows and arrows at hand, cautious but curious. Yem felt his knees go weak. This would be more than a thesis paper—this was groundbreaking… impossible, even. Everyone knew humans had gone extinct on Tertia after the last Great Climate Shift six hundred years ago.
Apparently, everyone was wrong.
Before he could say anything, Barge and his clattering of guns moved towards the tribe, with both hands on both triggers.
“Oh, gods, no!” muttered Yem, feeling his stomach drop even further.
“Greetings,” said Barge stiffly, which elicited no response. Their eyes were on his ray guns, the strings of their arrows stretched taut and ready. “Who’s the leader here?” he asked.
More silence from the tribe. They glanced unsurely at each other. The only man without a bow, a man about Barge’s age with a curly, graying beard, folded his arms across his chest.
“You then?” said Barge, idiotically pointing at the man with the tip of his gun. The tribe erupted into chaos, screaming wildly, pointing their arrows at him.
Barge, not nearly as alarmed as he should have been, dropped the hand from only one of his guns, keeping his finger on the trigger of the other. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, an arrow let loose and struck him in the throat.
Yem instantly dropped his pointy uranium stick and fell to his knees. He was going to throw up, for sure.
Barge let out a garbled cry, then twitched and writhed on the ground for a moment before going silent. The tribe, quiet now that Barge was slowly bleeding out onto the sands, started to pick at his clothes and guns curiously.
Then, the leader noticed Yem kneeling and shivering next to the ship.
Tears streamed down Yem’s face, not as much for Barge as for himself. “Please, please,” he begged anyone who might have been listening, “please save me…”
He closed his eyes tight, then opened them to see the whole tribe standing around him, looking down in what seemed like confusion, and perhaps pity. Their bows were slung around their shoulders, not ready to fire, like they were for Barge.
The leader reached into a small leather bag at his waist, pulled out a chunk of dark, red… something… and handed it to Yem. Yem took it gingerly, sniffed it, and realized it was meat. Real meat, not lab-grown muscle fiber. Perhaps they thought Barge had been starving him.
Yem took a bite of the stringy jerky and chewed it. Despite being so tough it hurt his teeth, it was absolutely delicious.
“Kangaroo,” said the leader, pointing at the meat in Yem’s hand.
“Yes, good, very good,” said Yem, nodding. The leader smiled with bright white teeth, and the others chuckled. It didn’t matter if they were making fun of him or treating him with genuine pity. As long as they knew he wasn’t a threat. This was their world, and it always had been, and in a way, none of it would ever truly belong to any Martian again. That had been poor Barge’s mistake. Yem finally felt a strong pang of pity for him. Surely he had family on Mars, someone who loved him, who would want to know he was gone. But Yem didn’t have a clue how to work any of the controls or communication devices on the ship. He was stranded. Maybe forever.
His head was feeling like it would float off of his shoulders, when another tribesman handed him a different dark red bit of foodstuff.
“Quandong!” he said, smiling as Yem ate that too. It was some sort of fruit leather, sweet and tangy.
Yem slowly got to his feet. A few men were exploring Barge’s ship, but didn’t bring anything out, apparently not interested in guns and mining equipment. The leader slapped Yem heartily on the shoulder, said something he didn’t understand, and motioned him to come with them.
Yem didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was a shame Dean Undelmeyer wasn’t going to hear about this, or anyone on Mars, for that matter.
He took one long, last look at Barge’s corpse, but had to glance away before he lost his marbles. Some part of him had just died, too, the part that contained everything he thought he knew. He realized, somewhat ironically, that he was still holding on to his ancient book for dear life. The tribe, speaking quietly to each other, walked back the way they’d come, but for some reason, Yem couldn’t move, stuck between the retreating tribe and the ship.
The leader broke away from his men and came back to Yem, using both hands to gesture, unequivocally, that he wanted Yem to come with them.
Yem forced his feet to move, then. They all went quietly back into the bush, leaving the alien intruder and his spaceship behind in the swirling dust.
This had originally been published on reedsy prompts, which is a really fun site, but once a story has been published somewhere on the internet, most literary publications won’t consider it. I could have looked harder and shopped around for somewhere that might publish it, but I figured I’d just put it here! Why not.
Oh man, this was a lot of fun! Always love a story about a failed academic! Also laughed out loud at Barge Slaughter
Cool stuff 🤓👍