Chapter 1

Overhead, the dropship rumbled away, the light and flame of chemical thrusters sending shadows skittering across the barren landscape as it sought to clear enough room from the small group of humans and equipment to activate its much more powerful fusion drive en route back to orbit.

“Sierra Charlie 81 here, we have touchdown”

Team leader Maddox’s voice crackled over the radio.  There was too much dust in the air for laser communication, and the stellar radiation that whipped across the surface of Mars was enough to disrupt and garble the encrypted transmissions.

“This is Phobos Relay, we read you Sierra Charlie 8, status please”

The distant transmission was garbled, almost impossible to understand.  Nervously, Bruce checked the readouts inside his helmet.  The miniature geiger counter and radiation filters all read within normal ranges for Mars.  Of course, that meant it was almost 30 times the normal dosage on Earth, but his Mark 3 MarsRanger was rated for it.

That meant something else was disrupting communications.

“Our rovers are finishing automatic checkup now, 83 and 85 report in.”

“Power, life support, and batteries are green,” Trey called back from the rover far to Bruce’s left.  “Minor dust buildup on some of the exposed gearing but it’s all within acceptable tolerances.  83 and 84 are ready to go.”

Next to Bruce on his rover, Elena leaned closer inspecting the complex readouts of the instrument panel before activating her radio.

“This is 85.  We are good on power, life support, drive and batteries.  Nothing unusual to report.”

There was some activity on Maddox’s rover as the pilot checked its instruments.  Like Bruce, the team leader had his retractable roof open and was doing a once over on the outside of the vehicle while his technical specialist checked the readouts.  It was rare, but sometimes a micrometeorite or even something as mundane as gravel would damage the alloy casing of the cart in such a way that the integrity sensors wouldn’t pick it up.  Bruce had only seen it happen once, but having to leave a rover in the red sands and take on an extra passenger in the cramped vehicles hadn’t been fun.

Still, it had been a treat compared with the dressing down that corporate had given them.  Never mind that it had been Jensen’s rover that had broken, not Bruce’s.  Never mind that the issue had been missed due to someone skipping routine maintenance on the electrical system.  The entire six person team had to endure the Vice President of Eagle Base yelling at them for almost a half hour.

Diana Aldridge was half the reason he’d transferred from base security to the recon teams.  The woman was frighteningly efficient at handling the day to day operations of the two thousand workers, guards and scientists.  She was also just the ordinary kind of frightening.  Recon was dangerous, sweaty and lonely, but at least it kept him from Eagle Base for fairly significant amounts of time.  Plus, Bruce was always a bit lucky.  His team spent almost as much time at Cheyenne Base, New Tampa and Asimov Base refueling and resupplying as they did back home.

“All clear on our end Phobos Relay,” Maddox’s voice crackled across the radio.  A flash of light from the dropship and a wave of static marked it sparking its fusion drive.  “We’re ready to go as soon as you give us the okay.”

The radio clicked, leaving Bruce with a couple seconds of white noise before the team on the moon replied.

“No dust storms, temperature nominal and you should have at least 6 hours of sunlight remaining for your solar cells.  There’s still some interference, but that’s what you’re out there to investigate.  You’re cleared to move Sierra Charlie.  Good luck.”

Maddox slapped his hand down on the roof of his rover.  Bruce could practically hear the mad smile on his voice.

“Buckle up boys and girls, we’ve got an anomaly to investigate.”

Bruce clicked an acknowledgement joining the response from Sarah, SC84.  He slipped back into the rover, pressing the button that closed the top.  He couldn’t access the magnetic acceleration assault gun mounted on his vehicle from inside, but the car’s life support system could do its work.

Carefully, he connected the oxygen hose to the back of his suit as the ambient heat inside the rover began to rise.  The interior of the rover was never fully pressurized.  The reasoning went that operational doctrine prevented recon teams from ever removing their suits while on a mission, and pumping warm oxygen into the driving chamber would only encourage such activity.

Every scout team knew the actual reason.  Oxygen was expensive and air locks were bulky.  If Bruce needed to pop out of the vehicle to use the mag gun or perform a visual inspection, they would have to vent the entire amount deployed.  Larger vehicles could be pressurized, but the simple economic pressure of hungry shareholders kept Andy, his partner, and Bruce from riding in comfort.

“Hey Bruce,” Andy began over the internal communication channel, his voice clear of static as it traveled through the wiring attached to the oxygen tube hooked into Bruce’s back.  “Do you think the anomaly is the Chinese?  Maybe the Euros?”

“No clue,” he replied, leaning forward to check his half of the consoles.  Andy was their team’s specialist and scientist.  Bruce was the muscle.  Six years of active duty service in the brushfire wars of Africa and South America had earned him a coveted spot as a security guard on one of the Mars ‘colonies.’  Despite that, the company didn’t allow for dead weight.  The long slow trip riding a fusion torch out to mars had been spent in accelerated study where he had functionally earned a master’s degree in the environmental and electronic suites built into most of the MarsCorp equipment.  He might not be as adept as Andy with the specialized instruments used to monitor the air, radiation, and mineral samples they gathered, but the older man was his partner, not his superior.  Both of them did their share.

“I haven’t heard about either of them moving,” Bruce continued, almost feeling the other man’s attention despite his eyes remaining on the shifting red dust of the planet’s surface.  “I also haven’t heard anything about Russia’s space program.  They keep making noise about landing a probe, but we’d have at least three month’s notice. If it is the Euros, it’ll probably get kicked to the lawyers for months if not years to settle competing claims.  If it’s the Chinese, well.  That’s why they put guns on the rovers.  It’s not like they’re for space bugs.”

They drove for almost a minute in silence, the electric whir of the rover’s engine and the rumble of its wheels as they trundled over rock and sand.

“Is it true what they say?”  Andy asked.  “Were the Chinese here first?  They won’t shut up about us being ‘imperialist occupiers.”

Bruce frowned at the readouts.  Whatever had been messing with their radio had reduced radar visibility to barely a mile.  It was better than nothing, but the thin atmosphere of Mars didn’t fade to blue like on Earth.  You could see for miles and miles, practically make out the curvature of the planet if a mountain didn’t get in the way.

“It’s complicated,” he replied.  “There was a Chinese scientific outpost here when the first two torchships made it to orbit.  The crazy idiots had sent about four people out here on chemical rockets.  It took them almost a year as they soaked in radiation from both the sun and their poorly shielded drives.  Poor bastards were as sick as dogs when we landed.

“Of course, they also had set up their dome on land that had been claimed by a MarsCorp robotic surveyor.”  Bruce shrugged.  “Corporate is pretty sure they had someone inside reading the mineral reports and sent the team out to ‘claim’ the land in a chemical rocket before we finished building the first big fusion ships.”

“I don’t like that kind of complicated,” Andy said nervously.  “Complex geological formations?  Sure.  The hints of organic compounds that we keep finding with no real trace? That’s fascinating.  Firing guns more powerful than anything we have on Earth over a border dispute?”

The man shivered.

Bruce chuckled, tapping the magnetic accelerator pistol at his hip.  It could fire a 0.59 caliber, 15mm round at 4000 feet per second before the stabilizing fins and internal engine could kick in.  ‘Semi-smart’ ammunition had taken some getting used to, but there wasn’t any question that pistol could outclass a squad mounted gunpowder based weapon back home.

“Low atmosphere,” Bruce responded.  “There isn’t much for lasers to ionize so we can make them more powerful and shoot them further, and for kinetics, there’s nothing to slow down slugs.  We can build things bigger and shoot things further up here.  It’s better to just posture and scare the other guy off.  I don’t think anyone wants to actually get involved in a shooting war with the kinds of ordinance both sides are packing.”

The rover whirred, practically soundless as they bounced over the red desert, low gravity letting the slightest incline send them flying for a second or three.  Bruce took another look at his instruments before glancing up at windshield.

He frowned behind his faceplate.  Rocks and sand stretched off into the distance.  Far away he could see one of the vast chains of mega mountains that loomed over the martian plains.  The ones near Eagle Base weren’t quite as high as Everest, but Bruce had seen his share on Mars.

No, what stood out like a sore thumb was the pyramid.  It was far away, blending into the foothills of the mountain chain, but after years of watching for any possible threat from the back of a moving vehicle while deployed, Bruce had gotten good at noticing when things were out of place.  The lines of the structure were too precise to be natural.  Every instinct in the back of Bruce’s brain screamed that there was something off, and a quick glance at his instruments confirmed that worry.

It wasn’t on the satellite maps.  Even the scans of the area that had found the magnetic anomaly the scouts were here to investigate hadn’t picked it up.  All they showed was empty plains.

Worse, the interference that was building.  The rover’s built-in radar and lidar was barely able to give them readings around 500 feet away.  SC 83, Trey, wasn’t even on his instruments.  Bruce could still see Maddox’s rover, but it was a ghost, blurry and jumping around.

“You see this Andy?”  Bruce asked, pointing at the flickering display.  “Interference is getting worse and that pyramid isn’t on the aerial photography.  Maybe the Church of the Starry Sea is right.  Something weird is going on up here.”

“Pyramid?” His partner questioned, squinting out the windshield.  “If you say so.  I’m focusing on driving at the moment.  I don’t know if it’s the wheel or something more serious, but the rover is barely responding.  If I’m not careful the entire rig will flip.”

Bruce glanced over at the other man, pursing his lips before he looked out the windshield again.  The pyramid was bigger.  Maybe a mile or two away and growing closer rapidly.

He chewed his lower lip for a second, unsure exactly how to process the situation.  Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him.  Andy didn’t see the pyramid.  At the same time, everything else was getting stranger and stranger.  Orbital scans had revealed magnetic spikes coming from thin air in the desert and now their radio and systems weren’t responding right.

Whatever he did, it would have to be soon.  The three rovers were moving quickly over the sandy surface of Mars and they’d be at the structure in a matter of minutes.  Finally, out of ideas, Bruce leaned down and tapped the radio, thumbing to the encrypted frequency their team was using.

“SC 81, do you see the pyramid at our one o’clock”

The radio hissed back angrily, garbled chunks of words slipping between the chaotic braying of static.

“Repeat that 81,” Bruce tried again.  “I can’t hear a single thing you’re saying.”

“Meet at-” the rest of the sentence from Maddox was drowned in the sound of a rushing waterfall, but the team leader’s vehicle changed course slightly, shifting so that it was angled toward the pyramid.”

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