Cities of Mars

Chapter 1 – A City Away

Chapter 1 – A City Away

Bob Churnod watched the bleak Martian landscape zip by through a grimy train window. Mountains and canyons and rock-strewn plains... it was all the same, really. Just useless land. Even the air was useless, what little of it there was. Only one thing in sight had any real value, and that was the sun. It was setting, and the sky, normally a pale orange during the day, had turned blue in the west. Bob had never been to Earth, but he knew from pictures and video that the colors were the opposite there: the sky was blue during the day, but turned red or orange at sunrise and sunset.

The train was southbound, so the day would be longer than the previous one. That was good. He always liked coming home. The north polar cap was depressing, and the best part of his job was heading back towards the equator with a trainload of ice. Ice mining was a Martian necessity, of course, and it was steady employment, but he never really got used to the loneliness and stark environment. And the dark. That was the worst part. But his two-week shift was over, and now he'd get a whole week off to recuperate.

He risked a glance at the guard. The man looked as bored as Bob felt. He sat in his sturdy plastic compartment, arms folded across his chest, and watched the miners through the transparent partition with half-closed eyes.

In some ways, the return voyage was the most dangerous part of being a polar miner. The men were at the ends of their ropes. Tempers were raw, patience was nonexistence, and violence was not uncommon. They were all technically free citizens, but they were treated like criminals anyway out of necessity. The shift was never truly over until a miner made it home safe and sound.

Bob shifted his gaze to the other miners. Some were seated, but others were on their feet, standing in the aisle. Standing and walking were allowed, encouraged even, since unused legs tended to stiffen up, but it still made for a delicate situation. A few miners huddled nearby, murmuring to one another and casting furtive glances at the guard. One of the men was Jerome Warski, a known troublemaker. He was a tall, lanky sort, with a quick temper and a quicker fist. He despised the rigid environment of the American Sector on Mars, and he wanted more than anything to defect to Nerio, the city for all nations but of none. The Nerians wouldn't have tolerated him for long—they were very tough on crime—but that didn't seem to matter to Warski. He brought the subject up virtually every day, and it was a wonder the cops hadn't picked him up for sedition. It was probably just a matter of time, though, and Bob wasn't keen on getting lumped in with him, so he tried to keep his distance when possible.

Unfortunately, Warski wasn't content to keep any sort of distance. The man was slowly making his way forward towards the guard. Just a little step every now and then, hardly enough to attract the man's attention. But he was definitely closing in, and the hairs on Bob's neck stood out. Something was going down.

Bob darted his eyes around, looking for an escape route or a hiding place or anything that would get him away from whatever was going to happen. There was nothing. He was on a train car full of miners, and there was simply nowhere to go. It was the last day of the trip, which meant the sleeping quarters had been cleared out and locked down as a theft preventative measure. They were now all stuffed in the embarkation car, waiting to get off. Any breach in the car's construction would cause a deadly loss of atmosphere, but claustrophobia still took its toll, and frazzled men didn't always make rational decisions. Sometimes they tried to break through windows. Sometimes they tried worse things.

“That's far enough, Warski,” barked the guard. He was safe from the men, locked away in his clear polymer cage, but an altercation would mean additional paperwork, so he had a vested interest in keeping the peace. He moved his hand to the sedative lever. “Return to your assigned seat. Now.”

Warski stopped, shrugged, and grinned. “Just getting a little exercise. No harm meant.”

Bob glanced up at the ceiling, expecting the nozzles to fill the car with sedative gas at any moment. He'd been gassed before, as had most of the men, and it wasn't fun. There weren't any permanent effects, but it left him with a hangover that lasted for two days. When you only got seven days off between shifts, two days was a big deal. He shut his eyes and hoped the better angels of Warski's nature got the upper hand.

“Don't worry,” Warski said to the guard. “I'm going.” He turned and shuffled back the way he came.

Bob exhaled with relief, and he resumed looking out the window. The American Sector, or “AmSec” as the government acronym went, was visible now, a few shining interconnected domes glinting dully under the Martian sun. They had a slight orange tinge due to a thin film of dust. The train headed straight for AmSec's docking and distribution area.

Several tunnels led away from the domes like spokes from the hub of a wheel. They connected AmSec with the domes of the other national cities as well as with Nerio, the one place not under the jurisdiction of any Earth government. His eyes drifted to it, the grandest city-state on the planet. It had started out as a collection of domes, like the other cities, but now those “domes” were mostly flat-roofed. The Nerians were constantly upgrading the place.

Like many Americans on Mars, and probably many people from the other national cities, too, Bob longed to go there. The foundation that ran Nerio had rules, of course, but it mainly left the people to themselves. He'd give almost anything to defect to it. Ice mining paid very well, but it couldn't provide the things he wanted most out of life.

A ruckus caught his attention, and he turned. A man was staggering forward, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and holding his belly. A dark stain blossomed on his coveralls, and his fingers were red and trembling. He raised his other hand towards the guard.

Bob looked for Warski. Sure enough, there he was, watching the wounded fellow with murderous eyes. He must have stabbed him on his way back. That was the whole point of Warski's little “exercise,” Bob realized. It was just an excuse to pass by his intended victim, to get close enough to stick him with the knife.

The guard cursed and reached for the lever.

Bob sighed. The next two days would not be fun. He thought of his wife, Gloria, and the stress that his “gas hangover” would add to both their lives. It wasn't fair to him, and it wasn't fair to her, but that was life in AmSec. The gas hissed, and the last thing he saw before losing consciousness was one of the domes of Nerio, teasing him cruelly through the haze.