She nodded. “Then trust me with what has happened today as well. There are few places we can speak of it freely, but this is one of them. There are hidden cameras here, but I have had them compromised.”
“Compromised?”
She smiled. “Fixed, just like our hackers in Shanghai have done to NASA’s orbiter feeds.”
He looked around the room. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Beijing Command is not the only faction with an interest in Mars and access to hackers.”
He nodded, on one hand relieved, but on the other concerned he was only sliding deeper in to some grand conspiracy.
She leaned in and kissed him again, this time full on the mouth.
Soon he was too distracted to worry.
Chapter 23
On the road to Sanctuary, Mars
They set off at sunrise, Wei eager to get underway. He was still anxious as he came to terms with his squad’s demise and the realization that if he’d stayed back at Base Five Two he would now be dead, vaporized by a weapon that shouldn’t have been on Mars.
But there it had undeniably been…
…just like the Chinese weren’t supposed to be.
He sighed at that, at the layers of lies and deceptions.
They were supposed to be building a new world of adventure and prosperity, but instead it all came wrapped in the intrigues of the old world they had left behind.
The truth of it all jaded him, so he tried to turn his mind to simpler things, like the beauty of Mars and the joy of coasting across its stark surface as the sun rose in the east.
Ghost seemed well rested, but in no mood to talk as she quickly reviewed a data pack from her people and then got them underway. The silence left him time to think.
Here he was on Mars.
Riding with a beautiful Renegade.
Free.
His world had changed in ways he would never have imagined.
Like so many others on the Mars Command One mission roster, he was an orphan and had been trained for this life since he was a child. The training had been hard, but fun. They had been primed to seek adventure and toil on huge enterprises that promised grand rewards.
Prosperity would be his!
But not just his, also his family’s. Because that was the reward for service. To retire with great honor and grand rewards in the new colonies.
Wei knew he should savor the drive across the bleak landscape. In the coming years, it would change. Once the need for secrecy was gone, markers would line the roads just as bases and mines would no longer have to hide. There would be communication towers and other structures, even cables that did not need to be buried or covered with matting. Some of the smaller craters would be domed, while canyons would be tented and turned into green habitats to live in.
He hoped he survived to see it!
In time, people like him would not just spread across Mars, but build a new Chinese civilization.
Beside him, as the morning wore on, Ghost checked some readings as she drove.
He asked, “Are the trailer panels charging?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she stayed focused on her driving.
There were a few sections where the rover passed through shallow gullies that held enough of a dip to rattle the rover’s frame.
Ghost looked back after each such crossing, checking that the solar panels and connections remained in place without becoming loose.
After the third such gully, she cursed.
Wei asked, “The solar coupling?”
She nodded. “Yes, the trailer panels. They’re not charging at all.” Ghost looked behind again, something catching her eye. She frowned and turned back to check on where she was going.
Wei asked, “Is something else wrong?”
“I saw a glint in the sky back there. A drone or something. The sun is reflecting off its solar panels.”
Wei turned around and also looked. He couldn’t see much, but there was dark speck in the sky behind them. “Should we stop now and fix the coupling?”
“We can’t stop, not now.”
“We have to.”
“Not while that’s back there. We’ll go through the night, we’ve got the power for it, and then we’ll get to Sanctuary and wait there.”
“Sanctuary?”
“It’s a waystation we set up. A supply dump. We can stretch out and sleep there. We can also recharge the rover without needing to be out in the open.”
“And how much further from there to our final destination?”
“A few more days, but if I have to drive through the night to Sanctuary, I guess I might need some time for sleep tomorrow. Look, let’s not overreact now. We’ll keep going and keep a watch on the drone to see if it’s following us. It’s possible it’s just doing some survey work, but I haven’t seen anything about scheduled flights.”
“Would your people even know?”
“If we did, they would have mentioned it when they asked me to come out looking for you. There’s enough strange things going on in general out here for a stray drone to not be such a surprise.”
Wei frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Look, there’s some things I’m not really supposed to talk about, like how many Renegades there are where our assets are, but I guess I can talk about the weird stuff.”
“Give some examples.”
“When did you finish your training, you know, back on Earth?”
“It was only a year ago.”
“I can imagine people told stories of things besides the Renegades?”
“Yeah, like unknown ships that were detected and a whole colony of women.”
She turned and looked at him, scowling at his naivety.
The penny dropped. “Oh, there is a women-only colony?”
“Wow, there’s so much you don’t know, but I guess I can’t blame you for it.”
“So your colony was it?”
“Let me put it this way; your base was one of five trialing lava tube habitat techniques for Mars Command One, right?”
“Yes?”
“And under Mars Command One there are five different sets of bases trialing different habitat techniques, right?”
“Yes, five secondary rings of bases, all answering to Mars Command One.”
“Well, who do you think my base answered to?”
“Well, Mars Command One, of course?” He paused, thinking on it. “Didn’t you?”
“No. Something you won’t have been told is that there are multiple Mars Commands, each with their own sets of mission bases trialing settlement techniques.”
“What?”
“I answered to Mars Command Two.”
Wei was stunned.
She stole a glance at him, and then turned back to watch where she was going, but couldn’t help but chuckle.
Finally, he found his voice and asked the question she expected. “And all those bases under Mars Command Two are just for women?”
She laughed. “Yes!”
“Wow!”
“There are other amazing things happening, too, you know. It’s not all red dust.”
“Like what?”
“The meteors and other ships. There’s stuff no one really knows about back in Beijing.”
“The meteors?” His thoughts were of the strange thing he’d seen near the back of the rover trailer before they left Base Five Two. The scorched caltrop. “What was that black spiky thing you stopped me touching?”
“It’s from the meteor. A pod. I’ll show you when we reach home.”
“A pod?”
She turned to him. “They’re seeds.”
Wei’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“The first one that hit knocked out two bases. Another one hit the Earth’s moon a few years later.”
“Where do they come from?”