The hub came in at a height of one hundred meters, approaching the crater rim, and then following the start of the gully, a formation suspected of being worn an age ago by flowing water and then finished by the Martian wind.
Seven video feeds, one from each of the six smaller drones and one from the hub frame they slotted into, showed on the displays. Many of the cameras focused not just below or ahead, but out to the side and even the rear. While outside the crater rim there had been some signs of disturbances from projectiles ejected by yesterday’s impacts, once the hub crossed the crest of the rim, the destruction was undeniable.
What had once been a tired landscape of worn ridges and eroded stone was now a collage of thousands of smaller impact craters, one each from the larger projectiles thrown out by yesterday’s meteors. Amongst the fresh scarring of craters spread a thick field of rock and fractures that had been hurled up or exposed during the impact and pummeling rain of devastation.
Before the hub even closed on the two wrecked landers or passed over the airlock entry to the lava tube, the crew of Mars Command One could see the site was a wreck.
Commander Tung said, “It’s worse than I expected.”
Yong agreed with a nod. “So where is Wei?”
Tung frowned, and then said, “Send out the drones. Get three to cover the closest meteor impact, one to the lava tube entry, and two can go to the landers. Use the hub to find the rover.”
They watched the video feeds one by one jerk as Yong fed in each drone’s target and the relevant machine disengaged from the hub frame. The camera shots then became chaotic as they sped off in different directions.
One of the displays caught the sun rising above the horizon, the vista a mix of gold, pink, and red with dashes of purple. That feed was from a drone coming down towards the original basin. The machine then turned out of the gully to close on its designated lander.
Many of the feeds were now dominated by an eclectic mix of colors as they flew over the debris field.
Commander Tung and Yong studied the displays as the drones one by one settled into place.
None of them showed any movement, just torn up rock, debris, and ruin.
The hub was the last camera to move into place. The frame showed the rover. The pummeled vehicle sat half crushed and buried under a fall of rock, the cab clearly ruptured.
But they couldn’t see anyone.
Where was Wei?
Commander Tung asked, “Where is he?”
Yong suggested, “Back in the lava tube?”
“It’s dawn, he should be outside and getting away.”
“Sir?” Yong asked, under no illusion something was being held back from him.
“Set the drones on collecting all the data they can onsite, but have the hub scour the area around the rover, heading away from the crater rim. Set it to look for boot prints.”
“Wei’s escape?”
Tung nodded. “Yes. Find his trail and we’ll get our answer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if you find something, bring the other drones back to the hub, and then set it to follow the tracks on autopilot.”
Chapter 19
Yanjiang Er (Base Five Two), Mars
Ghost led Wei to her rover as the horizon brightened, the sun due to rise soon. The old, battered vehicle was heavily modified and sat there with a trailer hooked up. The original vehicle, what showed from under the modifications and camouflage work, was not unlike Base Five Two’s rover. The most obvious change was the heavy use of camo paint schemes, extended solar arrays, and a solid trailer with a bunch of dusters hooked up to the back that looked like something out of some dystopian future.
Wei could see the dusters would be used for erasing the worst of the rover’s tracks by blasting streams of Mars’s notorious fines. The dust would then settle, softening any sign of the vehicle’s passage.
He opened a channel and asked, “Do they work? Are they enough?” He walked down the side of the rover to take a closer look at the rear of the trailer. As he did, he noticed there were other units connected to them, some as simple as curtains of flexible plastic strips that obviously worked to smooth out any furrows the vehicle left behind.
She followed him, but kept glancing back at the base. “Yes, they do the job. Any thorough search will still find our trail, but if you’re talking about orbital-based cameras, we’re usually okay. We don’t normally come this close to a base in any case, most often parking further away, and then we go in on foot.”
“To raid our supplies?”
“To take what we need or to grab salvage. We never take everything.”
He frowned, his gaze drifting from the dusters to the debris field around the rover.
Rocks and boulders were everywhere, marking what had only yesterday morning been a field of orange sand and a scattering of small rocks.
Something caught his eye. A black bit of debris sat between two large rocks, half buried in the dirt. This wasn’t another rock; it had a geometric shape.
He stepped closer and knelt down.
Behind him, Ghost asked, “What are you looking at?”
He reached forward to pick it up.
The object looked as big as his clenched fist, but was like caltrop, having four arms that reached out. All of it was scorched.
He answered, “I’ve found something odd.”
The closer he looked, the more mysteries it revealed. The end of each short arm was hollow and had opened.
“Don’t!” Ghost suddenly warned from behind as she put a hand to his shoulder and pulled him back.
He fell over, dragged away by her surprising strength. “Why?”
“Come, we’ve got to go. Now. I’ll tell you about them once we’re on the road.”
“Them?”
“Yes. Really, we’ve got to get away from here. Once we can get enough distance between us and here, I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
“We need to go. Really. I’m supposed to be gone by sunrise with or without you.” The glow on the horizon indicated dawn was only minutes away. “We’ll die if we stay. Once we’re safe, I’ll tell you almost anything.
“Okay.” He could hear the tension in her voice. Besides, he was exhausted and his suit needed replenishing. He figured hearing about the odd caltrop could wait.
The rover bounced along the terrain, a rolling plain of rocks and stones occasionally marked by low dunes to one side. The small hills were beautifully sculpted, created over eons as Mars’s gentle winds gathered fines, gently laying them out to create a dreamy landscape.
Wei had missed sunrise.
Not long after he had gotten into the rover and removed his helmet, Ghost had insisted he take some water and a protein bar. Soon after, in spite of his relief at being safe and her rising sense of urgency, he had fallen asleep.
When he later awoke, they were driving along an elevated stretch of exposed bedrock near a wide crater’s edge, giving them good visibility into the basin. Straight away, he could see it was his crater down there, Base Five Two’s, as both of yesterday’s impacts were clear, although a haze of orange and tan dust hung in the air, with another on the far horizon where the first meteor had come down.
In some places, the haze was thicker and held a different hue. Wei knew there was a possibility some outgassing was happening down there. Some of it would be underground pockets of water ice escaping as vapor. The disturbance to the geological strata, which were not yet well understood, was also likely to have other knock-on effects.
Wei was still tired and figured he’d only slept for an hour or so, but now that he was awake, he found he had too many questions to go back to sleep. He stretched and sat up.