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lost half the crews on this relief. That’s not much to celebrate.”
    Half the crews! It was no wonder they were in a somber mood.
    “What about the bodies, surely they should take them back to their families and loved ones? It doesn’t seem humane, burying them here on Mars.”
    “You’ve got it wrong, they don’t bury them. Whatever gave you that idea?”
    He shrugged. “I just assumed, I guess. So what does happen to them?”
    Josh stared around to make sure that no one else was near enough to hear. “It’s a Tauron custom. When they defeat someone in battle...”
    “Yes?”
    “They rip the bodies to pieces. Then they eat them.”

    * * *

Chapter Two
     

    Granat watched the humans crossing the distant Nepenthe Valley. His thick lips drawn back in a sneer, for they were like insects, scrabbling in the dust and sand for the junk that others had discarded. Except that no one had discarded the precious trevanium, so it was not for the humans to take. It belonged to them, to the Taurons. He’d vowed to destroy any human that dared to stand in their way. Bring back the trevanium and defeat the humans, it was the mission they’d charged him with. One he’d pledged to carry out until the end. They reached the site and he watched the drilling crew set up their equipment on the Plain of Xanthe. They unloaded the solar powered buggy and placed the drilling rig over the shallow hole they’d dug the day before. He smiled, their sensors had picked up the activity in the Nepenthe Valley, so all he had to do was assemble his squad and wait for the pale slugs to return. He glanced across at his four troopers. They were more than he needed for such a simple operation. Perhaps he would take the humans himself. No, his men needed the experience, so he’d allow them to participate in the slaughter.
    He was Granat. The most powerful warrior that Planet Tauron had ever known. At nine feet tall he was a foot higher than most of his compatriots and his skills learned in the gladiatorial arena were second to none. For some reason, these humans disliked fighting! How could anyone dislike fighting? It was meat and drink to him, as it was to most Taurons. They learned from their earliest days, how to fight, and how to kill. It was the only way they could survive, by honing and building their battle skills so that they were always ready to face any threat. Here on Mars, the humans had proved to be a more difficult proposition than they’d at first realized. Despite their puny size and apparent dislike of war, when they were attacked they fought back hard. It was why he’d been brought to the planet. It was good, the harder they fought, the more he’d enjoy killing them. And afterwards, the ceremony of tearing the bodies limb from limb, drinking the blood and then there were the warrior’s songs. It was a good life, truly. He looked down again, it was time. The drilling crew were intent on their rig, they wouldn’t see them coming. He nodded at his men. They would take what was their right, nothing less.
    It was the Taurons who’d first discovered and exploited the precious mineral. For twenty years they’d travelled vast distances across space to reach this miserable flyspeck of a planet that the humans called Mars. They’d invested immense resources to exploit the precious resource and transport it back to Tauron, where it was needed so badly. It was not something they could ignore, for trevanium had the rare ability to scrub polluted air to make it breathable again. After thousands of years of building and advanced society, Tauron, unique in the Alpha Centauri system, was a planet polluted to the very edge of distinction. By a miracle they’d discovered trevanium here on Mars, and by making one last gigantic effort had put the enormous resources of Tauron into mining it and bringing it home. That meant the development of faster than light speed travel, a process that had bankrupted and pauperized almost the entire planet.