You were driving the motorcycle while I sat in the sidecar.1 We raced across the wind-swept, dusty plains of Mars, zipping past the burnt out wrecks of vehicles scattered along the roadside. We couldn't understand why they had sent only the two of us to fight the entire Chinese military. Nor could we understand the goals of the Chinese, which seemed not to be conquest or capture of resources, but simple indiscriminate destruction.2 Settlements, individual vehicles out on the road, vast empty stretches of landscape: there was no obvious pattern to the targets of their bombing.
The motorcycle puttered to a halt: we were out of fuel. We both turned a glance to the west, where we could hear the distant hum of Chinese dropships. I checked over my rifle while you tried to get the motorcycle started again: we might still be able to get another mile or two out of it. We had plenty of ammo—we'd salvaged everything we could find from the wrecks we passed along the road—but it really doesn't manner how many rifle shots you fire at an armored dropship.
While checking the rifle, I noticed two small red bumps on my wrist. My heart sank. I pulled up my sleeve and found another one near my elbow. There was no fauna on Mars save for a species of winged stinging insect that had been brought to the planet accidentally in the early days of colonization, and which had continued to evolve under Martian conditions. The insect's venom operated in a curious manner: the first few stings were harmless, but once a person had been stung five times, some sort of saturation point was reached and the person would die within seconds.
I already had three stings that I could see. The fact that I wasn't dead meant that I hadn't reached the deadly fifth sting yet, but for all I knew the damned thing had gotten into my suit and I could go down at any moment.
The sound of the dropships, now louder, snapped me out of my thoughts. Was that a dark blur now visible on the horizon? I looked at my wrist again, climbed out of the sidecar and began unloading half of the ammo cases. You glanced up from fiddling with the motorcycle and asked me what I was doing. I pointed at the canyon to the north. "You can hole up in there and ride this out. I'll stay here and draw their attention."
A bang, a puff, and the motorcycle suddenly sprang back to life. You tried to coax me back into the sidecar, but I waved you to silence. You needed to get as close to the canyon as you could, and every second you spent arguing with me added to the distance you'd have to run.
I carried my half of the ammo behind a cluster of rocks and laid it out for easy access and reloading. I sat down with my back to the rocks and listened: to the fading hum of the motorcycle as it carried you to the north, to the growing rumble of the dropships, to the unceasing Martian wind.
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Notes:
1It sounds odd, but the other character in this dream was not a specific person. Rather, I just somehow knew that it was "you," the person to whom I would later recount this dream, whoever you may be.
2I honestly have nothing but positive feelings towards the Chinese, but I guess this doesn't prevent my subconscious from casting them as our most likely rival in a future intrasolar war.
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