BANDIT ORIGINS

 BANDIT ORIGINS

(An excerpt from ‘To Live and Die on Mars #111’)

Martian Year 86. Summer.

The sun slowly emerged from the horizon over Corona Hills, bleeding through the digiton haze like a dying ember, the atmosphere thick with the hum of quantum processors embedded in the city’s bones. Four strangers stood in the shadow of the Air Recycle Station, their futures already written in the fine print of a community service contract.  

Ari was first, small but coiled tight, gold chain glinting against his throat. He eyed the others like he was calculating how fast he could take each one down.  

Fozi loomed beside him, an ox-shaped mountain of muscle and burgundy fur. His claws flexed idly, shredding the air.  

Lumo stood apart, four eyes flicking across invisible data streams only he could see. His fingers twitched, manipulating digitons solving a mini-puzzle game in his mind.

Ren hovered inches off the ground, silent, his Grey Martian face unreadable. His thoughts brushed against theirs like cold fingers.  

Then Koko Deska waddled in.  

---  

The alien boss was a grotesque parody of authority—bloated, greasy, his gelatinous body barely contained by a too-tight suit. He wheezed as he moved, his voice a grating buzz.  

"Line up, maggots," he spat. "You belong to me now."  

Ari smirked. "Yeah? What’s the return policy?"  

Koko’s face darkened. He snapped his fingers, and four grey uniforms materialized in the air—standard-issue prisoner garb, stiff and stinking of industrial cleaner. Three of them flickered into existence on Ari, Lumo, and Ren, the fabric adhering instantly to their bodies.  

Fozi’s uniform popped into the air—then dropped to the ground. Too small.  

Koko sneered. "Guess you’re naked, beast."  

Fozi’s claws flexed. "Guess you’re blind."  

The boss paced in front of them, his shock rod tapping against his palm. "You’re here to work. Not think. Not talk. Breathe when I say breathe. You piss, you eat, you sleep on my clock."  

Lumo’s fingers twitched. "What if we don’t?"  

Koko leaned in, his breath rancid. "Then I fry you like a circuit and recycle your bones."  

Ari yawned. "Sounds fun."  

Ren’s telepathic voice slithered into their minds. “He’s scared."

Fozi cracked his knuckles. "Good."  

---  

Koko assigned them to the filtration pits—a maze of corroded pipes and malfunctioning vents where the air was thick enough to chew.  

Ari wiped sweat from his brow. "So. Who’d you piss off to get stuck here?"  

Lumo didn’t look up from the console he was hacking. "Stole a senator’s digiton cache. You?"  

"Stabbed a guy." Ari grinned. "Worth it."  

Fozi grunted. "Tax evasion."  

Ren’s black eyes gleamed. “Existing."

Ari laughed. "Best crime yet. Being a fucking Grey Martian!”

---  

By midday, Koko had screamed at them six times, threatened shock treatment twice, and thrown a power ball at Fozi’s head.  

It missed.  

Fozi caught it.  

He crushed it in his fist.  

Koko’s face twitched.  

Ari leaned in. "Boss? You look like you’re about to piss yourself."  

Koko backed away. "Get back to work, scum."  

Lumo watched him waddle off. "We should kill him."  

Fozi nodded.  

Ren floated higher. “Yes."

Ari stretched, gold chain catching the dim light. "Guess we’re a team now."  

The alarms would blare soon. The MARS sign would flicker.  

But first—they had a shift to finish.

——

The break room stank of ozone and synthetic protein. A single flickering holo-screen (which was really just a materialization of their mind) buzzed in the corner, broadcasting Corona Star System propaganda—smiling politicians, stock footage of terraformed oceans, the usual lies. The boys slumped around a dented metal table, slurping electric green nutrient slime from cracked polymer bowls. It tasted like battery acid and nostalgia.  

Ari stabbed his spoon into the sludge. "This shit’s worse than prison food."  

Fozi swallowed his in one gulp. "Tastes fine."  

"Of course you’d think that," Lumo muttered, pushing his bowl away. "Your species eats rocks."  

Ren levitated a spoonful to his featureless face, the green goo dissolving into his telekinetic field. “Better than Koko’s breath."

Ari snorted. "Dead rats moulding in SHIT is better than Koko’s breath."  

The holo-screen flickered to a news segment—another corporate warlord signing a "peace accord" with the Corona government. Same script, different tyrant. Lumo’s four eyes narrowed.  

"Look at that," he said. "Another oligarch pretending he didn’t just buy a planet."  

Ari followed his gaze. "Which one’s that? The guy with the diamond skull or the one who looks like a melted candle?"  

"Does it matter?" Lumo tapped the table, his voice low. "They’re all the same. The Corps own the laws, the government owns the guns, and we’re just batteries in their machine."  

Fozi flexed his claws. "So break the machine."  

Ren’s black eyes gleamed. “Already broken, amigo. Just no one’s admitted it yet."

Ari leaned in. "Alright, professor. Explain it to us dumbasses."  

---  

Lumo exhaled, fingers twitching like he was typing midair. "The Corona Star System runs on two things: digitons and delusion. They sell us the fantasy of freedom while they mine our data, our labor, our fucking dreams. You think the Menu’s a tool? It’s a leash. Every wave you send, every thought you monetize—it all feeds back to the towers." He jerked his chin toward the skyline, where the quantum spires pulsed with stolen energy.  

Ari whistled. "Damn. They teach you that in hacker school?"  

"Taught myself." Lumo’s voice was sharp. "Read the fine print on the citizenship contracts. They own your memories the second you upload them. Your joy, your grief—commodities. And the Grey Martians?" He nodded at Ren. "They’re just hyper-stellar fuel to them."  

Ren’s telepathic voice was ice. “They take. We run. Or we fight, guey.”

Fozi cracked his knuckles. "Fighting’s better."  

---  

Ari spun his spoon on the table. "So what’s the play? We can’t exactly storm the capital with four fists and a telepathic shrimp."  

Lumo smirked. "Why not? The system’s a house of cards. One hard shove and—" He mimed collapse.  

"Deep," Ari said. "Also suicidal."  

“All living things die," Ren intoned. “But not all truly live."

Fozi blinked. "That’s deep."  

Ari rolled his eyes. "Shit, these motherfuckers are SMART."  

Lumo ignored them. "The point is—there’s no justice here. No grand design. Just power, and who’s willing to take it." He leaned back, arms crossed. "So why play by rules rigged against you?"  

The slime in Ari’s bowl bubbled ominously. He took another bite. "So we’re back to ‘life’s unfair, steal shit.’"  

Fozi nodded. "Simple."  

Ren hovered higher. “Truth often is."*  

---  

The break-time buzzer screeched in their skulls. Koko’s voice boomed over the intercom, dripping with faux cheer. “Hope you enjoyed your meal, slaves! Now get back to work before I recycle your lungs!"

Ari stood, stretching. "Alright, bandits. We steal, we lie, we survive. Fuck the rules."  

Lumo adjusted his stolen uniform. "Fuck the rulers."  

Fozi crushed his empty bowl in one fist. "Fuck Koko."  

Ren’s psychic laughter echoed in their skulls as they walked out—four shadows against the digiton haze, stepping into the light of a lawless future.

——

The air in Corona Hills tasted like burnt copper and static. The digiton haze clung to the hills, distorting the skyline, making the skyscrapers flicker like bad transmission. The MARS sign loomed over the city, glowing faintly through the smog, a relic from a time when this planet still had novelty.  

Ari spat over the railing of the Air Recycle Station, watching his saliva evaporate before it hit the ground. "This place smells like a fried circuit board shoved up a dead man’s—"  

"We get it,” Lumo muttered, his four  eyes scanning the readouts on the filtration console. His fingers moved fast, adjusting settings the others couldn’t even comprehend. "The air’s poison, the boss is a fat leech, and we’re stuck here until we rot or riot."  

Fozi cracked his knuckles, the sound like snapping bone. His ox-like frame took up most of the break room. "Riot’s faster."  

Ren, the Grey Martian, sat cross-legged in the air, floating just above the floor. His telepathic voice echoed in their skulls like a whisper from a dark room. “Koko Deska eats our hours. Pays us in scraps. One day, he’ll slip."

Ari grinned. "Or we’ll make him slip."  

---  

Koko Deska waddled in, his gelatinous body straining against his uniform. His species had no neck, just a bulbous head that merged into a swollen torso. He smelled like spoiled fruit and industrial grease.  

"Break’s over, maggots!" he barked, voice like a malfunctioning speaker. "Lumo, why’s the intake down?"  

Lumo didn’t look up. "Because the system’s older than your dignity."  

Koko’s face darkened. He raised a stubby arm, a shock rod materializing in his grip via his HEART MENU. “You wanna fry, smartass?"  

Ari stepped between them, gold chain glinting. "Hey, Koko. You ever think maybe the reason this place sucks is ‘cause you’re in charge?"  

Koko’s beady eyes twitched. "You got a death wish, human?"  

"Nah," Ari said. "Just a real strong life wish. And you’re in the way."  

---  

The plan wasn’t complicated.  

Lumo hacked the station’s safety protocols. Fozi prepped the airlock. Ren disabled the surveillance drones with a telepathic pulse. Ari supplied the motivation—mostly in the form of creative insults.  

When Koko stormed into the filtration chamber, screaming about quotas, he didn’t notice the vents hissing louder than usual. Didn’t see Lumo’s fingers dancing across the control panel in his Menu-attachment.

Then the pressure differential hit.  

Koko’s body bloated, his flesh straining against his uniform seams. His scream turned into a wet gurgle as his eyes bulged, veins popping like overfilled balloons.  

Ari watched, chewing on a stick of synthetic nicotine. "Damn. He really WAS full of hot air."  

Fozi triggered the emergency purge.  

Koko exploded in a mist of alien viscera, painting the walls in shades of green and gray.  

---  

They stood in the aftermath, breathing hard.  

Ren floated over the carnage, black eyes unreadable. “Now what?"

Ari wiped Koko’s guts off his gold chain. "Now we run. Steal. Live like kings ‘til they catch us."  

Lumo smirked. "They won’t."  

Fozi cracked his neck. "Better not."  

Lumo continued. “I have a friend across town. Name’s Ronnie. He’s cool. Got a vehicle pod and everything.”

“What’s the car?”

“Neptune V. Vintage, baby. Supercharged drive.”

Ari and Fozi eyed eachother, chanting in unison: “Fuckin niiiiiice.”

The alarms started blaring. The MARS sign flickered through the haze. Somewhere, the city kept turning, uncaring.  

Ari grabbed a fistful of digiton-charged air, feeling the quantum static between his fingers. "Welcome to the bandits, boys."  

The air hummed. Skyscrapers breathing, digitons whispering, the whole rotten city grinding forward like a rusted gear. The Bandits stood in a loose semicircle, the glow of emergency lights painting them in jagged streaks of red and shadow.  

Lumo flicked his wrist, summoning his MENU with a thought. A holographic viewfinder materialized in the air, framing them in a rectangle of shimmering gold. A single red marker dot blinked into existence, hovering just beyond their reach—the camera’s focal point.  

"Alright, ugly bastards," Ari said, cracking his neck. "Make it count."  

Fozi flexed his claws, the razor edges catching the light. Ren levitated a few inches higher, his Grey Martian form eerily still. Lumo adjusted the settings with a twitch of his fingers, then stepped into frame.  

The MENU chimed.  

CAPTURE IN:

3…

Ari bared his teeth, electricity crackling between his knuckles in jagged arcs.  

2…

Fozi raised his fists, hyper-stellar energy flaring around his horns like a crown of lightning.  

1…

Ren’s telekinetic field ignited, distorting the air around him into a visible haze.  

0.

The flash was silent—no shutter click, just a pulse of white light that seared their silhouettes into the quantum frame. For a single, frozen instant, they were gods. Then the moment passed, the energy dissipated, and the red dot winked out.  

Lumo snatched the captured image from the air, spinning it for them to see. Four figures, half-lit, fists crackling with stolen power. No uniforms. No chains. Just the Bandits, raw and real.  

Ari grinned. "Now that’s a wanted poster."  

Fozi grunted. "Or a death warrant."  

Ren’s voice slithered into their minds, amused. “Same thing."

Lumo saved the file, then wiped the MENU from existence with a flick of his fingers. "Time to run."  

The alarms would blare soon. The MARS sign would flicker.  

But first—they had a revolution to start.

They ran.

ATILA