Lords of Mars

By Colin Yeoman

(A standalone novel from the Custodian Library Archives).

 

Ambition. Courage. Treachery. Honor. Survival.

 

A determined cast of characters strikes out to conquer the New World. Each must confront their own desires and fears as they face the arduous task of laying the foundations for a new civilization.

 

With another unauthorized release from the Custodian Library Archives, activist and whistleblower, Josiah Lamples, takes us to a time before Earth's official historical record and reveals more of the truth uncovered by his team's startling discovery* in the hostile sands of Mars.

 

Will we repeat the mistakes of the past, or can we learn from them?

 

(*see Memories of Mars)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Colin Yeoman
• Release date: Aug 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781990968501

Book preview

25051940

MARS / noun

the ancient Roman god of war and agriculture

Foreword

AFTER I agreed to join the Custodian cause, Dr Redman and Max gave me one week to pack up my apartment and ‘civilian’ affairs in preparation for what would be a one year boot camp-type introduction to the organization. In truth, I really only needed a day to pack and spent the rest of the week browsing their archives deep beneath the city (in retrospect, the freedom I was given, as a new recruit, to explore this amazes me) to develop an overview of their operation and their history.

My point of entry was the journal of Sefu Wekesa, given to me by Dr Redman during our first meeting. Digging deeper into his story in the Archives, I was intrigued by his numerous references to a man named ‘Cal’. Over the years, with much cross-referencing and patience, I was able to piece together information on this man; Caltram Nechtanos.

He spent an uncertain amount of time working for the Martian Republic, as what can best be translated as an ‘Extractor’, or Damage Control Facilitator, before leaving this position for matters of conscience. An Extractor was an operative who evacuated persons of interest from ‘hostile’ situations, neutralised key disturbances, and gathered intelligence. I use apostrophe marks for the word hostile because, at the time of the exodus to establish the colonies, Mars was supposedly a peaceful society, not having known war or conflict for many generations. There’s also some evidence that Extractors were attributed psychic abilities and functioned as interrogators for the Republic.

I believe this manuscript is particularly notable because it documents the beginnings of what would become the organisation known as the Custodians. What follows is a compilation, by my own hand, using extracts from Caltram’s personal journal, woven together with historical records from the Custodian Library Archives.

Note: Names of places and equipment have been contemporized for ease of reading. Earth was known as ‘Eden’ to the people of Mars, but I have chosen to refer to it as Earth in this manuscript for the sake of simplicity.

JOSIAH LAMPLES / Cygnus-5

PART I : Departure

MARS

1.1

THE LIGHT from the torch in Orin’s hand glistened off the beads of sweat on their brows. The team did not want to draw attention to the room by turning on the light and having it escape through the gap beneath the door into the cargo tunnel outside. The air smelled of dust and industrial chemicals and caught in the back of her throat.

Orin suppressed a cough. ‘We’ve made it this far, people.’ She despised how her high-pitched voice emphasized her youth, but she was determined to succeed. She wore the white coveralls of her station but noted some of the men shifted uncomfortably in the same coveralls, which were, for them, a deception. ‘Now we finally get to make a difference.’

In response; some murmurs of agreement and a restless shuffling of feet in anticipation of what they were about to attempt. She needed to raise her voice more than what felt safe, to be heard above the activity in the tunnel. Vehicles transporting crates of supplies, workers shouting orders and teasing each other, the beep-beep-beep of tankers transporting the hazardous fuel and materials required for the long journey. The tunnel was the cargo entrance to the elevator’s shaft. The elevator, known as the Tether, used an extinct volcano as its base and extended up to a docking port in Mars’ atmosphere high above.

‘Remember, you don’t do anything until they’ve surrendered their weapons. Then you’ll need to move fast. Understood?’

Her team nodded their response. The ground shuddered, vibrations from the enormous cargo elevator arriving at the bottom of the Tether’s shaft.

‘For Mars,’ she said.

‘For the Fallen,’ they replied in unison.

For now, they still needed to exercise restraint, so they denied the urge to charge out the storeroom and left, individually, in two-minute intervals.

*

THE QUEUE stretched before Cal and only now, after three days, was he close enough to see where it divided towards the two doors which would determine their fate. One door, lit with a blue lamp above, was the GO portal and the other was STAY, lit red. Earth and Mars. He estimated now only half a day’s wait from his position.

The Departures Hall through which the line of people meandered had been moved into a vast cave deep underground to avoid the meteor impacts. Electricity on the planet was permanently diverted to support essential services and the emergency lights barely managed to illuminate the cavern – the rough walls were a series of jagged shadows, the people about him mostly faceless silhouettes. The air units hadn’t been designed to handle the number of people now crowding the space and the air was wet and foul. It smelled like the end. If you had made it into that place, it reassured you all hope for Mars was lost.

Indeed, most people didn’t need any reminder of this. News reports broadcast images of the remains of cities on the surface, crushed by meteorites. Ruins of ruins. Craters where cities had once stood. Pictures of the blistered corpses of people who had been caught by solar storms. Tremors, sometimes felt on the other side of the planet, which accompanied the meteor showers. Everyone older than thirteen years had memories of the surface. The days before the Mars’ radiation belts were neutralized and all the lakes had disappeared. Cal was lucky enough to have seen surface water during a family vacation to a dam in Echo Valley when he was a boy. The dam was constructed in a desperate attempt to store water on a planet that was withering and dying at an astonishing rate. When Cal’s family was there, the water level was so low there were remnants of cultivated vines that had been farmed in the valley before it was flooded with the dam water. Now the only water to be seen was collected from ice sheets on the polar caps, and processed into canteens for sale at exorbitant prices.

And yet, Cal wasn’t ready to surrender. He was not one without hope. He watched the people waiting in the cavern. Men with wrinkled clothes and days’ old stubble, and women with dishevelled hair, their faces pale. There were generally two discernible emotions on display. The sunken, dark-ringed and dull eyes of those who’d lost all hope, and then there were the restless stares of those whose rational thought had given way to fear. Earlier he’d seen a man walking toward the gate marked ‘REPUBLIC’. This was access-point reserved for those in leadership and crew, or the skilled people who had been chosen to help build the colonies on other planets. This man was tall, thin and dark, with a slow gait as if reluctant to leave. He displayed neither of the arrogance of the elite, nor the guilt of the pre-selected, as they passed those who, like Cal, had to spend days in a queue waiting to discover their fate. Those people subject to the cruelty of chance. The ‘GO’ or ‘NO-GO’ gates. Would they face an almost certain death in the underground networks of Mars, or the chance to live and breathe the fresh air on one of the chosen planets? The tall man was calm, almost impassive, and appeared to Cal to carry an air of sadness, or regret. Cal was transfixed, because the man’s demeanour was in such stark contrast to the surrounding desperation. And then he was gone. He went through the ‘Republic’ gate and on to the Tether. The Tether would take him up to the Docking Port in the stratosphere, and from there, a shuttle to the transport vessel. The rumour in the Departures Hall was that the next transport ship to be boarded was the Spero, and it was destined for the water-planet, Eden (Earth). It was a planet which sounded even more vibrant and fertile than the paradise written of in the scrolls. It was possibly even more magnificent than Mars had once been.

Behind him in the queue, some people still lay asleep. Keeping their place in line but too exhausted to stand, or too cold to get out of their sleeping bags. Others tried to pacify their children, but had long since run out of creative distractions. In the half-light, Cal battled his own fatigue. He shifted his weight from side to side in an effort to relieve his aching feet. The rhythm kept him from falling over, but still he drifted seamlessly between wakefulness and a semi-conscious state. The stench of unwashed bodies and urine reminded Cal of a refugee camp he’d been assigned to, shortly before his decision to retire from the Service.

He was lying in a camouflaged Observation Post, on a rise in the hills above the refugee camp, when the meteorites struck. The camp was enormous. Its round, white habitation modules stood in the red-brown sand of the valley. The modules were arranged in concentric rings, at the centre of which were the water collection nodes, and the feeding area. This area also served as the community centre, where people socialised and bartered goods. Earlier that day, Cal had mingled amongst the people of Zone 3, gathering information on a rumoured uprising and monitoring a person of interest. The people in Zone 3 were from the city of Attis, which was destroyed in a meteor shower. They lived in camp while more of Mars’ lava tubes were being converted to underground cities. The conversions were massive undertakings, and the people grew restless in their displacement, hence Cal’s assignment to the area.

It was late afternoon and, as the sun dipped toward the horizon, a gentle breeze lifted the fine Martian sand. It swirled like a rust-coloured mist through the valley. When the breeze became a wind, most people retreated into the living modules. A few still wandered about, masks covering their noses and mouths, reluctant to spend any more time inside the cramped quarters. Dust storms could rage for many days without reprieve.

Cal was preparing to leave the Observation Post when he saw a flash of light in Zone 6, on the south western edge of the communal area. His colleague, and Section Leader, Eris, had been working that zone and hadn’t yet returned to the OP.  A moment later another flash, this time amongst the living modules in the northern section, and then another in the south east – Zones 1 and 4 respectively. Flames blossomed about the flashpoints as the sound reached his position.  Three deep explosions shook the ground. A few more impacts further up the valley. Small ones, Cal noted. The Meteor shower sirens rang out, too late, urging people to the bunker caves in the cliffs above the camp.  The fires spread fast. Despite being against regulations, people would hang clothes out to dry on lines between their modules, and the modules themselves, supposedly fire-retardant, were old. Even considering these factors, the fire spread unbelievably quickly. Smoke. People stampeded and crushed each other to escape to the bunkers. Screams. Children and the elderly trampled beneath the rush.

He hurried out from the OP, across the valley, against the tide of people moving to the bunkers, and towards the burning camp. His Section Leader, Eris, wasn’t in radio contact because she had been working undercover in Zone 6. Zone 6 was already decimated and reduced to ash when he arrived. He learned later that she wasn’t in that zone, or any of the affected zones at the time of the impacts, and she’d been assisting survivors in the bunkers when he’d arrived on the scene. The heat in Zone 6 was intense, but his solar suit - though being one of the older models distributed to refugees - was still an effective barrier against it. As he searched the area for survivors, an acrid smell assaulted his nostrils and burned in the back of his throat. Considering the elements involved in the blaze, he couldn’t explain it. There were no survivors in this section, only corpses. The body of an old man lay crushed and face down in the burnt soil, one of his legs twisted unnaturally at the hip, perpendicular to his body.

This is how Cal remembered the event. And it was his job to observe and record. When the official reports were released, they said the people were given ample warning and, due to regulations being ignored, the death toll was unnecessarily high. He didn’t get the chance, but he had wanted to inspect the other impact sites further up the valley, because he didn’t find any evidence of meteorite impacts in the refugee camp’s smoking remains.

A man in a Security uniform startled Cal back into the present as he ran past him towards a commotion at the front of the queue. The line leading to the GO/NO-GO gates was a tidy single-file. The only factor determining whether a person in this standby queue left Mars, or not, was their position in line. If the person in front of you went right, through the GO gate, you went left. Left behind. A crude, cruel system. It was easy, once near the gates, to count out the places and determine which gate – and fate – was to be yours. Two men grappled with each other. One of the men was apparently connected to the young woman and child next to him, and the other was alone. They were shouting but Cal couldn’t discern the words. The man from Security, tall and muscled and distinct from the crowd in his crisp, light-brown uniform and shock of blonde hair, moved with an athletic economy. He didn’t call out or say anything as he approached the men. To the first man, the single man, he delivered a blow from behind with a cupped hand over the man’s left ear. He followed this with a fist to the opposite side of the neck. The man’s knees buckled and he fell to the earthen floor. The tall man stepped over the slumped body and shot an elbow up beneath the remaining man’s chin. This man fell back into the woman with him, knocking them both to the ground, blood streaming from his mouth where he’d bitten through his tongue. More security personnel arrived on the scene, and the blonde man motioned them to remove the injured men, as he took hold of the woman and child. All were escorted out the Departures terminal. This swift and brutal display of