Under the Moons of Mars by John Joseph Adams Page B

when Kaz showed a knack for fixing things, Gar Kofan took him on as an apprentice.
Soon Kaz had gained a spot in the back of the wagon to sleep on, a knife and pistol of his own, and food.
    And life was . . . acceptable, Kaz thought.
    At least when people weren’t shooting at him.
    The Jedwar, Aav Kanan, had designs on becoming a jed, if possible. He was always roaming the wastes, looking for new conquests, or new ways to raise his stature. One day, everyone knew, Aav Kanan would challenge a jed and kill him to take his position.
    “Gar Kofan?” Kaz asked, as he followed behind. “Aav Kanan never comes out here to the northwest. It’s filled with Zodangan or Helium scouts who would strike at us from the air.”
    Gar Kofan glanced up. “Then there must be something important enough to bring him out here.”
    And that was all he would say about that.
    In the rocks among an outcropping nearby, a small council had gathered around Aav Kanan, who gestured at them to approach. “Hurry up, cripple,” he snarled at Gar Kofan. “We don’t have much time before the attack.”
    Kaz climbed up the ridge behind Gar Kofan and Aav Kanan, struggling to keep up. Even infirm and half blind, Gar Kofan’s days as a warrior left him energetic and strong enough to outpace him. When Kaz managed to catch up, Aav Kanan was pointing in the distance at a canal and the high trees that ran along its sides.
    And at the massive building that squatted there.
    Two hundred feet high and dominating the landscape for miles, it was a building that brought a smile to Kaz’s lips. Unlike the city of Warhoon—stripped down, crumbling, reused by a people who had no idea how it had even been built—this building gleamed with purpose. It had been built and it had been maintained, and whoever had built it . . . their craft, their purpose seemed to call out to Kaz.



“The Red Men don’t want us out here, near this . . . thing,” Aav Kanan said. “Which means there must be great riches inside. Look at how massive it is.”
They all stared for a long, silent moment.
    “There was only one doorway in, that I can perceive,” Aav Kanan said mildly, breaking the silence.
    “Do you want us to try and tinker the doorway open?” Gar Kofan asked.
    Kaz saw straightaway this was not Aav Kanan’s intent. Not if he was planning to attack so soon.
    “I want you to set the detonator for a very large explosion that will disable the doors,” Aav Kanan said. “You will throw it inside that structure when the doors open. There is a guard or a keeper, who comes out once in a great while. The next time he does, we will be nearby to throw the bomb inside, thus wrecking the door’s closing mechanism, and we will storm it and take our plunder and be gone before the next flier comes overhead. The Red warriors might be able to fly, but their stupidity is that they keep regular schedules.”
    Gar Kofan snorted, along with all the other warriors, but Kaz remained silent. Schedules, he thought, were perfectly sensible things. He had to admit, however, if you were guarding something valuable, it was foolish to be predictable.
    The Red warriors—if indeed they had built this great building—had assumed the impenetrable walls were all the protection they needed. The flier patrols were an afterthought.
    One the Warhoons would exploit.
    Aav Kanan’s men were nervous about using explosives. They, like most Green Men, were uniformly excellent marksmen with a rifle, but preferred fighting hand-to-hand with swords. “Real weapons for real warriors,” they said.
Back in the wagon, Gar Kofan and Kaz set to building a powerful explosive and fitting a timer to it, while Aav Kanan paced around muttering about time.
    If time was of such essence, Kaz thought, then maybe Aav Kanan shouldn’t have sent for them at the last minute.
    But it was not in the nature of Warhoons to plan too far ahead.
    A strange warrior once fought a great fight in the arena when Kaz was just out of the egg.