The Screes of Olympus

The Free Alliance of Scree E-Runners or FASER, the top team around, had run the scree slopes of all the system's mountains.

All except one.

Mons.

Olympus Mons.

The highest mountain in the solar system and by far the biggest scree slopes going.

Trouble was, everything about Mons was gargantuan.

The journey, the cost, the fragile Martian colony, the climb to the scree, the risks.

And no-one had ever climbed it, never mind run it's screes.

Dorn, an android and leader of FASER, welcomed the risks. He embraced the lethal challenge of the giant inclines and thought nothing of the monumental climb. 

Why would he, he wasn't human, but a metal athlete, the finest of all steel runners. He didn't care about anyone else.

No expense had been spared on these elite of society. The immortal Androids like Dorn ran everything. Even screes on Mars.

But most of the FASER weren't fancy androids.

Most were either ramshackle cyborgs or hybrids.

Cyborgs were still part human with mech outer bodies, usually the sad victims of dome explosions on Earth or solar bursts on the Moon. Like cheap Frankensteins, technologists had rebuilt their mangled bodies from second-hand scrap, old space junk, write-offs and even plane wrecks and they always left a human face, however disfigured. Upgrades were a necessary pain. Runners' legs wore out the quickest.

Hybrids were cyborg-lite. People from the system's colonies who had ripped an arm or a leg off in the zircon mines, which were quickly replaced with rusty prosthetics from the old rain-soaked hospital stores of old Earth.

Androids had nicknamed the pitiful cyborgs and hybrids Any Old Iron.

Or just the Iron for short.

And Androids hated the Iron. 

The feeling was mutual, so a necessary but begrudging tolerance for each other had evolved over decades in order for society to function across the worlds.

FASER was no different. An android at the top, the Iron taking orders below.

Dorn had told his runners that he wanted to do Mons and they should join him. If they didn't he'd report them to the techies for refurbs and get parts removed. Permanently. 

Grad, the unofficial spokesperson for FASER's Iron class, was the one who stepped forward in the runners' camp.

We think it's too risky Dorn, even for us. No-one had ever climbed Olympus Mons and you wanna jog down it's gravel! Besides, I'm down for new legs. I can't go until they're on. C'mon Dorn, even your AI brain must see it's a suicide mission at best!

Maybe for you Grad but not for me. What's up Iron? You all turned chicken since the moon run? I knew then you were a bunch of scaredy cats. Grad's softened your servos!

Careful Dorn, anyone'd think you were desperate for us to be there. Not like you that, the great Droid, who needs no-one. Maybe it's you who's chicken!

Well, boys, looks like old Grad's on a roll. Tell you what junkpile, if any you don't come I'll have may friend the Surgeon General take some Iron souvenirs for his office wall. Perhaps from your wives and girlfriends too! Yeah, that'd be more fun. How about that!

Dorn turned and stormed off to the equipment room leaving Grad and the rest to mull over the android's threat of their loved-ones' limb removal. 

What a robot bastard he is!

Yeah, a real shit jockey!

If it wasn't for us, FASER would be down the rankings with those fuckin' Parkour pansies.

Right on!

Grad rubbed his half-metal chin. 

Brothers, Dorn maybe a lot of things but he's not a liar. He would have us torn apart. I for one don't want me or my Missus hung on a surgeon's dado rail. I'll be going to Mars. Anyone else coming?

So it was decided. The Mons running expedition was to go ahead that Spring and FASER's prep became household news across Earth's colonies. 

Citizens and mine workers everywhere we're glued to their screens as Dorn oversaw the Iron readying the provisions, gathering essentials, stowing spare prosthetics and checking the ship. Grad upgraded his legs, turbo class.

On April First the loading had begun and was done by May First.

Dorn waved to his trillions of fans on screen, his superlative steel muscles glinting in the sunshine of Earth's Spring.

Look at him Grad, what a smug twat he is! He's going to get us all killed for his god-damn vanity! 

Leave him to it Crease. Remember my hybrid mate, it's a long way down from the top!

Grad winked at his best buddy Crease and shambled off to the waiting ship.

The Iron were grumbling. Dorn shoved them out the way as he took the pilot's chair. 

It's a bad omen setting off on May First! May Day, I fuckin' ask ya!

Maybe it should have been April First! We're just a ship of fools after all!

Quiet you Iron rabble!

Dorn roared and the crew were still.

The Mars ship zoomed into the blue and headed straight for the red planet.

Set on auto-pilot Dorn walked to the rear to assess the stores. 

Crease was there. He was pissing into Dorn's jet pack tank.

What are you doing Iron? How dare you tamper with my pack! This is insubordination you mutinous s junker! 

Fuck off Dorn, you tin pussy, you don't scare me!

I should do Crease. I should do!

With lightning fast movement the android took hold of the hybrid's aluminium legs and tire them away from his hip nerve bundles. 

Gore spurted across the hold and Crease floundered on the floor like a gutted fish.

The remorseless android stared at him, ripped off a healthy arm for the fun of it and tipped over the shelving onto what remained of Crease's soft body.

Dorn, spattered with blood, marched back through the ship to his chair and spoke over the tannoy.

There has been an accident in the stores. One of your kind has been killed. Clear it up.

Grad ran to the back and couldn't believe the carnage he saw and when he glimpsed Crease's deformed face through the fallen chests he gagged. 

Crease! Oh, my best buddy! What in God's name has he done to you? 

Instinctively Grad knew his friend was dead but checked his pulse anyway. His death confirmed Grad asked two of the rear crew to help him re-stow the shelves and prepare Crease for space burial.

It was a solemn May First, as FASER watched it's first ever dead member float into the void of space.

It was your May Day after all Crease and we weren't there to hear it buddy, for which we will be eternally sorry.

Grad stared at Dorn hard and something invisible passed between them. Something inescapable. Pure hatred for each other and the dawn of their mutual wrath.

The whole atmosphere of the ship changed that day too. The Iron were silent. Brooding. They glared at Dorn, who brushed them off as junker trash.

I don't care what you think you Iron scum. As long as you run the Mons scree I won't need to ring the Surgeon will I. 

They scowled. The Android tyrant had them over a barrel. A knife-edge, literally.

The prep for the climb was beamed across the system and households waited with baited breath for the actual run down the Olympian rock slopes.

Flying just above ground using rocket-shoes for the first inclines and jet packs for the vast upper crags , the towering summit was eventually reached and Dorn planted the FASER flag for all the Earth's colonies to gawp at, including the first tranche on Mars.

The Android held it tight as the Sun lit him up like a video star.

No-one else mattered to Dorn at that moment. As far as he was concerned he was FASER and Mars was his. The Iron could go hang.

Grad boiled inside. His loathing for Dorn mushroomed like a gamma burst. He knew in his metallic bones that the brutal Android had murdered Crease.

FASER! Ready yourselves! The screes of Mons are calling! See you at the bottom. If you die, you deserved it.

Grad glowered.

That's your idea of a pep talk is it?

Out of my way Cyborg filth. I don't need you or any of your Iron scrap.

With the cameras filming again, Dorn leapt onto the loose gravels draped around the peak, covering the giant cone like a field of teeth.

The rest of the runners followed and peered downwards at the bottomless expanse of the the Olympian depths.

The pace on the sliding slopes was like nothing they had ever encountered before. The sheer altitude afforded velocities unimagined and the scree racers quickly realized that they had embarked on an almost certainly fatal venture because of the tyrannical Android's threats on their families. 

One by one the Iron fell, consumed by the moving river of breccia and lost forever under the rocks. 

Grad heard each scream from his comrades as they perished as heros on the unforgiving and bloody surface of Mons. His human heart broke with every loss, as his upgraded  legs adjusted to the substrate and he ran even faster.

Passing Dorn on the lower screes was a mistake. He'd let euphoria get the better of him.

No-one else was allowed to win the race. Only Dorn the super Android.

Grad knew that and was about to slow down, when Dorn stopped the public streaming and aimed his kill-ray directly at his nemesis.

Boom!

Grad went down, a large gruesome hole opening up in his back and front, where the laser had gone straight through his tech gut. He fell backwards into the mobile surface and was immediately swallowed up. Only his blood-flecked face was visible through the stones.

Poor Iron Grad! And you could have won! Pity you had to stumble at the last hurdle! The public will understand and your wife will too I suppose, although I may still ring the Surgeon General about her. She's a pesky Borg like you isn't she?

Dorn stood over Grad and chuckled maliciously.

Grad smiled.

What's so amusing Iron?

Oh, you'll see Dorn. Let's just say you'll become a tourist attraction for future runners, you pompous bag of grease!

Codswallop! There's nothing you can do old bean. You're precious friends are all buried somewhere up there. And oh yes, I  crushed that imbecile Crease to death. Your best friend I'd been told. What a crybaby he was too. So what can you possibly do you cretinous Borg?

This!

Suddenly the scree around Grad began to shake violently and smoulder. It was starting to go white-hot and turn into fluid rock. 

The scree around Dorn too.

The android's steel feet began to melt and run into the smoking lava now pooling around Grad.

You see Dorn, when I upgraded my legs I asked for a nuclear pack too, on account of it being so damn cold on Mons. A small pocket atomic reactor really. I switched it on a few minutes ago! 

The unofficial leader of the FASER Iron laughed in triumph, as his sworn enemy's ankles liquefied and sank into the molten slurry, rendering him helpless and trapping him on the slope. His limb metals slicked with the heat and his laser gun fused to his hand

Everyone will know you shot me, me lying underneath you and all. We'll be slayer and slain melded together in chrome, a statue stood here forever on the bloody screes for all to see and for visitors to say,

There stands Dorn the hateful killer droid, as mad as a Martian hatter and at his feet, the heroic and humble Grad, slaughtered for simply winning the race of his life. Long live the Iron. Down with the droids! 

And so it was that over time the weather turned that May and the first of the Mars' rains washed over the two figures, their molten forms cooled and promptly solidified and as testified by countless new colonists, remain there still on the barren screes of Olympus Mons.