2025-05-24 12:31:43Although the air is breathable and Mars is now habitable, I marvel at how the red planet hasn't changed its character despite human civilization. The day is ending, and the reddish-pink skyline is giving way to a faint blue as the sun sinks beneath the horizon. Even here, under glass domes and artificial skies, the sunsets feel ancient.
The air is rich with smells—each street saturated with spices from different regions back on Earth. It’s a reminder that people came here in fragments of culture, trying to stitch old lives into a new world.
Pedestrians push past in a hurry. “Excuse me!” I say after bumping shoulders with a woman. She doesn’t turn, doesn’t apologize—just keeps moving. Everyone’s trying to squeeze in a little more life before the temperature drops.
The evening here is still hot. Excess carbon dioxide keeps the heat pressed close to the ground, even after sunset. Shops stretch the length of the boardwalk—open stalls, robotic vendors, flickering signs. Electric vehicles hum by, low and constant. From a balcony above, a violin weeps over a raspy, soulful voice belting out Bella Ciao.
Then, from a nearby window, I catch the sharp sound of a couple mid-fight.
“You cheating slut! You can’t even clean the house!”
“You brought me on this rocket saying we’d be rich, and now look at us!”
Glass shatters. A plate maybe. I walk on. Her screams blend into the city’s static hum, like background noise in a movie you've already seen too many times.
Then I hear it—an unmistakable rhythm from the 2010s, raunchy and nostalgic. I follow it down a narrow alley lined with bar fronts and neon holograms. The music hits full volume. Doors pulse with flashing lights. Skimpily dressed women, hired ambiance, lean against the doorframes.
“Need company?”
“Special price tonight?”
One woman approaches me. She’s young, in a black pleather crop top and miniskirt, stilettos clicking against the pavement like a countdown.
“We could find a bar with a higher class for someone like you.”
I smirk and shake my head.
“Suit yourself,” she says, brushing my arm as she turns. “You look tense. I give a full-body massage.”
The door hisses open behind me, and I walk inside. The club is dark and cramped. Music pulses with too much bass. Laser lights cut through thick air like claws. It smells like sweat, smoke, and synthetic perfume.
I smile. “I found him.”
He sits at the bar like a shadow that refuses to dissolve—tall, hunched, twisted. A monster at first glance. A man underneath.
A woman leans against him. Blonde braids, likely Ethiopian. She laughs as he takes a drag from a joint and passes it to her.
I walk up and tap him on the shoulder. He turns.
His face is a wreck—scarred, sunken, misshapen—but his eyes are bright hazel, steady, painfully human.
“Old friend, it’s been a long time,” he booms.
“Jarek, you’re damn right,” I reply, loud over the music.
He leans and whispers to the woman. She glances at me, smiles knowingly, kisses his cheek, and disappears into the dancefloor haze.
“You always hated this shithole,” Jarek says, eyes narrowing. “What brings you to the Rim?”
I shrug. “Thought I’d buy you a drink.”
He snorts. I pull out my glass-thin com device, trace a circle. A 3D hologram hovers—an account balance in his name.
He freezes. “Don’t fuck with me.”
“They say you’ve been to every region.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Urban legends.”
The bartender sets down a polished canister and a single shot glass. Jarek nods. Liquid hisses into the glass.
“You still don’t carry a phone?” I ask.
“I heard about the TMP expansion,” he says, then downs the shot in one go.
“So why such a generous f*e to take me out there?”
“You saved my life. Who else would I trust with this?”
He exhales, the tension in his scarred face softening just slightly.
“You remember how we met?” he asks.
I nod. How could I forget?
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Chapter 146: The Broken Command Chain
The village square looked unchanged from the night before. Lanterns swayed above the mud-brick walls, their glow smudging into the early dawn. Smoke from cooking fires twisted into the mist. The sound of children—real laughter, the kind no battlefield could imitate—still drifted through the streets. But inside the safehouse, the air was taut. The team had gathered around the scarred wooden table. The maps were spread out. Weapons leaned against the walls. Everyone’s eyes turned when I entered with Helene. They knew something had happened. I didn’t waste time. “I took her to the border,” I said. The words hit harder than I’d expected. A ripple of silence spread around the table. Sefu’s jaw clenched. Rana leaned back, eyes narrowing. Even !Gareseb, usually unreadable, sat forward, as though the admission shifted the weight of the entire room. Only Helene kept her gaze steady, though her fingers drummed once against her thigh before she stilled them. “You what?” Ka!ri br
Chapter 145: The Claws in Outskirts
The village breathed like it had been forgotten by history. Smoke curled from cookfires. A dog barked in the far square. Lanterns swayed on ropes strung across mud walls, casting an amber glow over the cobbles. Children laughed—actual laughter, sharp and startling after the silence of missions. For the first time in weeks, I saw a place that hadn’t been stripped hollow by war. Helene walked beside me, her stride clipped, her chin high. Every order she’d snapped tonight still vibrated in her muscles. She wanted to be seen. She wanted me to see her. “General,” she said, too quickly, “if there are debriefs… I can help collate—” “No debriefs tonight.” I kept my voice even. Her eyes flickered. Relief? Anticipation? She didn’t hide it well. When I told her to come with me, she didn’t hesitate. She jumped at the order, climbing into the ATV like a cadet summoned to a secret. Tires crunched over wet sand as we left the square. Lanterns fell away behind us. The edge of the village was dar
Chapter 144: Trail of Breadcrumbs
Olympius hummed like a hive at night. From its command centre, Chancellor Adebayo herself appeared on our holo-feed, her face illuminated by shifting tactical maps. She did not delegate this order—she delivered it. “General,” she said, voice like carved stone, “a convoy was lost on Earth, along the Kosi Bay border. One UN Space Force courier truck remains abandoned. You and your team will retrieve it. Contents classified. Ensure return intact.” We set out under the Earth night, the air heavy with salt from the nearby ocean. Kosi Bay sprawled below, a liminal land where Mozambique bled into South Africa, mangroves twisting like skeletal guardians. Rain-slicked roads led us inland, where the abandoned fleet waited in silence. No Martian dust here—only the humid breath of Earth, thick with unseen eyes. Perfect — I get what you want here. This moment should serve as a layered undercurrent beneath the survival horror tension, almost like a flicker of interpersonal drama breaking through t
Chapter 143: The Ghost Village
The rain did not stop; it exhausted itself. That was the difference. It didn’t fall in any final crescendo, no thunderclap or crack of heaven, just thinned until the drops came like stuttered breath. Then silence. Then the sound of the world dripping, streaming, coughing itself dry. I stood at the edge of the waterlogged field, helmet turned up to the bruised sky. Steam lifted in low plumes where warm earth met the cold downpour’s retreat. It looked almost holy—like incense burned in mourning. My men were still hunched, shoulders bowed beneath their exo-shells, mud welded to their knees. None lifted their heads. They knew, as I did, that reprieve was not mercy. It was revelation. The rain had not cleansed us. It had only unveiled the wreckage we’d been too soaked to see. Bodies were half-buried in sludge. Some of them ours. Some Rakes, their blackened carcasses twitching in final spasms, waterlogged and eyeless. The pools reflected red where the dust had mixed with the storm. The s
Chapter 142: The Silverlining
The holo-flares of Olympus shimmered into focus above the tactical dais, and with them, the air grew heavier. Chancellor Adebayo’s presence did not require weight of flesh; the gravitas of her voice alone bent men like iron under a forge. She sat at the apex of the council chamber, framed by the shadows of her pantheon, her eyes as merciless as the void. Her decree was plain. “No interference. No deviation. Mars is under Helene. Earth belongs to Olympus.” I stood stiff before her light-formed projection, sweat and dust clinging to my skin. Around her, the others—Kaul with his restless fists, Kwan hollow-eyed from sleepless research, Denar hunched and growling, Rhane gleaming like a dagger in silk, Corvell with laughter edged in menace, and Oniru, calm as a priest intoning prophecy—each nodded, each bent to her word. But I did not bow. “Then explain this beacon,” I said, forcing the words through clenched teeth. “Survivors broadcasting from Earth, in the middle of the flooded plain
Chapter 141: The Fire in the Dust
The hum of the repair bay still clung to my ears when the call came through. Olympus never waited for silence, it always pierced through noise, the way gods cut through prayer. Helene was already there, her visor reflecting the pale green shimmer of the command-link. I joined her reluctantly, my body heavy from Aftermath Schema, but there was no time for weariness. The hologram unfolded in the center of the chamber, Adebayo’s silhouette framed by the polished obsidian glare of her council. Her voice was calm, almost bored, which made the words that followed colder. “A technosignature has been detected,” she said. “Patterned. Non-random. A vessel, or what remains of one, sits beneath the desert haze. It emits across spectrum bands. Ordered energy. Not natural. This cannot be ignored.” Helene stepped forward before I could answer. “Then we will not ignore it. My unit will investigate immediately.” She didn’t even look at me, but I could feel the weight of her challenge, the way she m
