Sk-3. Ghosts of Mars

Forty years ago, the slopes of Olympus Mons hosted the largest city on all of Mars, a cluster of 47 interlinked arcologies populated by some 100 million souls. At night, the entire mountain came aglow with city lights, sparkling brighter than the stars above. At the very peak of the mountain, in the caldera of the dormant volcano, was a massive tower two kilometers high, the tallest structure ever constructed, that shone a perpetual beacon of light up into the heavens. It served as a crowning capstone celebrating humanity’s first successful colonization of another world.

The Sarcophage swept all that away.

Nothing of Olympus Urbs remained, not even scrap metal or concrete foundations. The mining strains of Sarcophage had long since consumed any human structure present for the heavy metals they contained, leaving behind only great gouges in the landscape indicating where the arcologies once stood. When humanity’s forces retook the planet in 2057, they’d found the Sarcophage dormant and unresisting; a few volleys of positron fire left heaps of charred corpses strewn across the landscape.

After that easy victory, human presence on the Red Planet had dwindled; the species’ collective focus turned towards the titanic task of repairing Earth’s beleaguered biosphere. It would likely be a century or two before any cities rose here again; in the meantime, Mars remained nothing more than a ghost planet, all ash and dust and rusty soil.

A solitary figure walked among the tentacled corpses, completely at odds with the surrounding carnage. She wore no spacesuit or protective armor, simply a black dress that contrasted her pale white skin and hair. Her blood-red eyes surveyed the scene for the umpteenth time, and she felt the winds of Mars’ rarified carbon dioxide atmosphere sweep across her simulated skin. The wind did not rustle her hair or clothes, making her seem like a specter of death slightly out-of-phase with the physical world.

Kometka didn’t consider herself a specter of death, of course, but her muted, nearly emotionless mannerisms, blank expression and piercing stare often unsettled others. She didn’t particularly care about this, and never sought to make herself more of an amenable person like her sister. She was content to exist slightly apart from everyone, a silent observer. Her detachment was formed by her traumatic childhood, and was an integral part of her personality.

It also uniquely qualified her to understand the trauma of her lover. Two broken girls, both products of war-torn worlds, found comfort and solace in each other. Yet, even so, Lydia had been slowly slipping away from her. And so Kometka took drastic action, summoned the help of others.

That help arrived in orbit with a bright purple flash that was visible from the surface. Kometka’s eyes snapped upwards, and a moment later her audio sensors picked up a sonic boom indicative of a high-speed atmospheric re-entry. A bright streak of orange flames swept downwards at trans-sonic velocities, before braking with another loud boom a few dozen kilometers above and slowly drifting down towards her.

Kometka watched as the shuttlecraft transformed into a Gravity Frame and landed gracefully on the ground. A moment later, her radio sensors picked up a transmission.

“WE’RE HERE!” announced a peppy voice over audio comms.

“Hello, Sveta,” she replied. “I’ve been expecting you.”

******

Senior Lieutenant Lydia Tereshkova was the ranking officer stationed on Outpost One, if only by virtue of the facility’s small staff. The building perched on the rim of Olympus Mons’ caldera represented the only permanent human presence on Mars these days, hosting a dozen researchers and scientists. Most of them ranked as specialists in the Army, which technically made Lydia their commanding officer; in practice, there wasn’t much need to command this gaggle of nerds, considering they mostly kept to themselves and their obsessive research projects. The most exciting thing Lydia had done over the last six years was break up a bar fight.

Lydia was spending her days as she usually did… lying in her bed with the lights dimmed, dressed in a rumpled uniform with an unbuttoned shirt, staring vacantly at the ceiling, lost in a chaotic swirl of memory. She was startled out of this by a loud knock at the door.

“Come in, Kometka,” she said absentmindedly.

The automatic door slid open with a slight hiss to reveal three figures silhouetted against the harsh florescent light of the corridor. Lydia rose to her feet and smoothed out her uniform a bit; it was rare for anyone but Kometka to visit, so she put the tiniest of efforts into appearing presentable.

“Hello?”

Kometka stepped into the room, and the two figures followed behind her. As the closing door blocked out the light of the hallway and Lydia’s eyes re-adjusted to the darkness, she squinted to try and make out the faces of her unknown guests.

“Lydia, may I present… Senior Lieutenant Miette Levesque and Captain Sveta Levesque, both visiting on official business.” Kometka said in a clipped, neutral tone.

Lydia’s eyes widened. “Miette? Sveta? Really?”

The two stepped out from behind Kometka; Miette gave a small wave, whereas Sveta stood at ease with her hands clasped behind her back.

“Hello there, Lydia. Long time no see.” Miette said warmly.

“It’s usually customary to salute a superior officer, is it not?” Sveta said icily.

“Superior…” Lydia’s eyes snapped to the stripes on the shoulder of Sveta’s uniform, which did indeed indicate the rank of Captain that Komekta had just mentioned. Suddenly very self-aware, she stood ramrod-straight and delivered a crisp salute. “Ma’am.”

Sveta chuckled and stepped forwards, offering her hand to Lydia. “I’m just teasing, Lydia. Although it’s nice to see you still remember your discipline.” Her eyes roved up and down Lydia’s messy uniform.

Lydia took Sveta’s hand and shook it, noting her skin still felt cold to the touch. “Since when are you the model soldier, Sveta?”

“Since never,” Sveta said, grinning widely. “Seriously though, how have you been?”

“…Alright,” Lydia said quietly. “Surviving.”

“We really missed your presence at our Victory Day get-together two years ago,” Miette said. “And at me and Sveta’s wedding last year.”

Lydia’s eyes dove to the floor. “Yeah, sorry. I got your invites, I was just… busy.”

There’s a certain dichotomy to long-overdue reunions between friends. Sometimes they’re friendly and jovial, with incessant chatter and catching up. And sometimes they’re awkward and brusque, with people having drifted so far apart in the intervening years that commonality is lost. Whereas Sveta and Miette’s meeting with Maurice had been the former, their present circumstances swerved hard towards the latter.

There was a long, awkward silence, and lots of meaningful glances. Kometka, Sveta and Miette were silently exchanging text-based radio communication at speeds incomprehensible to mere mortals.

Miette: This isn’t going very well.

Kometka: I honestly thought she’d be happier to see you.

Sveta: I think we need to change our tack, try something drastic.

Kometka: What did you have in mind?

Sveta cleared her simulated throat and clapped her hands together. “So, Lydia, want to hear about the aliens?”

Lydia’s eyes widened. “Huh?”

******

Lydia’s quarters were too cramped for four people, so the conversation moved to the mess hall. There was nobody else around as the four girls took their seats on opposite sides of a table, but Sveta broadcast a sound-dampening white-noise field just to be safe. They were about to discuss highly classified information, after all.

“So, what’s this about aliens?” Lydia asked impatiently after everyone got settled in. “You mean aliens besides the Sarcophage?”

Sveta: There we go, we’ve got her hooked. Time to reel her in slowly…

Miette: Just be careful, Sveta. Subtlety isn’t your specialty.

Sveta: Pot, kettle.

Kometka stifled a small snort; with her sister and friend back in her company after so long, she realized just how much she’d missed them. She sincerely hoped Lydia took the bait.

“Alright,” Sveta said with a businesslike air, “obviously everything I’m about to tell you is highly classified, Omega-level. I’ve been granted permission to share this information with you on this occasion.”

Lydia rapped her fingers on the table impatiently. “Yeah, yeah. I understand.”

Sveta took a deep breath, then began her explanation. “Okay, so. 31 days ago, one of my instances near Venus received a signal encoded in tachyon-like quantum particles, some means of faster-than-light communication. The signal was also received at eight other points across the Solar System, including a radio telescope array in Australia.” Sveta held out her palm, and a transparent holographic projection displaying the message popped up above it, depicting a simple sequence of ones and zeroes. “The signal was encoded in exotic binary computer code, and contained a preamble with a sequence of prime numbers from 1 through 127, followed by a simple diagram of a hydrogen atom. We believe that portion of the message was designed to establish a common baseline between varying forms of sentient life, by expressing an understanding of the universal constant of mathematics and a representation of the most common element in the universe.”

Lydia whistled and leaned forwards. “Where did it come from?”

Sveta generated another hologram, this one displaying a series of twelve pulsing points of light connected to a central point via dotted lines. “The message included this, which we believe to be the co-ordinates of its broadcast point. The pulsing dots represent pulsars, and the dots represent the distance between the pulsar and the origin point in parallax arcseconds… or rather, the alien equivalent of arcseconds. I won’t bore you with the details of how we figured that out; suffice to say, it required a lot of stellar cartography and brute-force mathematics. Long story short, we’re 95% certain this message originated from Barnard’s Star.”

“Refresh my memory as to where that is?” Lydia asked.

“It’s a red dwarf star 5.9 lightyears distant from Sol, and with a dim enough apparent magnitude to be invisible to the naked eye. In cosmic terms, it’s our next-door neighbor.”

“Makes sense why they’d send a message then. Did the message just contain that?”

Sveta looked over to Miette, their expressions grim. Lydia watched them both expectantly.

“The message contained a long and elaborate set of pictographs, depicting an alien civilization that lives on a terrestrial planet in orbit around Barnard’s Star.” Sveta said, bringing up one of the pictographs. Lydia studied the image intently; it was a stylized depiction of a disc-shaped entity with six legs on its sides, two large claws on its front, and four smaller claws between the two large ones.

“That looks like… a crab?”

Sveta nodded. “Yes, that’s our consensus as well. This message was sent by a race of sentient crabs. Apparently, the terrestrial planet they inhabit in a water-rich world with a frozen surface and subterranean oceans heated by geothermal activity, much like Europa. The crabs inhabit both the oceans and the surface, having developed enough technologically to construct large metropolitan areas and enter the early stages of space travel.” As she spoke, she projected a series of pictographs that illustrated the crabs building cities and spaceships.

Lydia stared at the holographic crabs in wonder. “So they reached out to us to… what, say hello?”

Sveta’s expression fell further. “I’m afraid not.” She projected another pictograph, which showed one of the crab’s spaceships being split apart by spiny projectiles, which were fired from the unmistakable shape of…

“A Sarcophage,” Lydia growled, her voice dripping with naked hatred. She’d never forget what a Spineball looked like, as long as she lived.

Silently, Sveta displayed more pictographs. One depicted a Beelzezub slicing a ship in two, another a set of Belphegors hurling asteroids at the crab’s world. And the final pictograph showed a strain of Sarcophage with a cross-shaped shell and toothy tentacles ripping an unfortunate crab to shreds. The image was stylized, devoid of gore, but gruesome nonetheless.

“That’s a Spiralvore,” Lydia said, pointing to the shelled tenticular horror. “The Sarcophage phased them out when we started deploying the first Gravity Frames. I fought a few of them as a child.”

Sveta nodded. “The pictographs tell a very clear story: the Sarcophage came to their system in droves and the crabs didn’t have the resources to offer any resistance. They seem to have been driven back to their homeworld, hiding in the deepest geothermal vents or subterranean caves. The Sarcophage are bombarding them from orbit.”

“That’s standard tactics,” Lydia confirmed. “They’ll soften up a target with years of asteroid bombardment before launching a ground invasion. We saw it on Mars and Earth.”

“Exactly. And the crabs seem ill-equipped to oppose them,” Sveta said sadly. “None of the pictographs depicted them using any sort of weapons systems.”

“So, what… they’re sending us a chronicle of their civilization’s history? Hoping we’ll remember them after they go extinct?”

Sveta shook her head, queuing up another pop culture reference nobody would understand. “No, this isn’t exactly The Inner Light, so far as we can tell. The final pictograph in the transmission was this.”

As Sveta displayed the image, Lydia gasped sharply. It displayed the trademark silhouette of a Gravity Frame, firing blue flame from its head and destroying a horde of Sarcophage.

“That’s… that’s one of the first generation Frames, a-a… a Phantom, if I remember correctly,” Lydia stammered. “But if they’re six light years away, how could they possibly tell…”

“We’re not sure,” Sveta said. “We know they have some means of FTL communication beyond our scientific understanding. It’s likely they sent a ship or probe to the Solar System to observe us, and it relayed live images back to them. It’s also possible this probe is what attracted the attention of the Sarcophage.”

Miette spoke up. “Zehra believes the Sarcophage target species that have reached a certain stage of technological development, namely some manner of faster-than-light technology. Theoretically, the reason they attacked humanity back in 2021 was our nascent experiments with warp drive. It’s possible they targeted the crabs because of their FTL communications technology.”

Lydia frowned. “That’s an awful lot of speculation.”

“Indeed,” Sveta agreed. “However, every xenolinguist we’ve shown this to agrees on one point. This message is a request for help.”

“The crabs know we’re capable of fighting the Sarcophage,” Miette added, “perhaps even that we managed to defeat them, and they’re asking us to save them in turn.”

Lydia sat back in her chair, floored. “That’s… that’s incredible. An alien civilization is asking for our help… so, are we gonna help them?”

Miette sprang to her feet and drove her fist into the table, leaving a dent in the metal. “Of COURSE we’re going to help them! It doesn’t matter if they’re not human, we can’t just stand by and watch the Sarcophage destroy another civilization!”

Sveta grinned fondly at her wife’s righteous passion. “Damn right. The Politburo is in unanimous agreement; we always knew the Sarcophage were a galaxy-wide problem, and that we’d have to take the fight to other star systems eventually. This revelation simply sped up the timetable. We’re planning to send forces to Barnard’s Star as soon as possible.”

Lydia folded her arms and glowered. “So, what. You go charging in there and Moby orders them all to self-destruct again?”

Sveta knew Moby was a sensitive topic for Lydia, so she treaded carefully. “That’s one option, but Moby herself doesn’t think it will work. Her command protocols were specific to the infestation in the Solar System, and might not function universally. More likely we’ll have to destroy them the old-fashioned way.”

Miette clenched her fists. “That is to say, Gravity Frames, positron weapons and kinetic projectiles. We’re going in guns blazing, just like old times.”

Lydia folded her arms across her chest, and Sveta saw the old spark light up her eyes for a moment… but then it faded. “So, why tell me all this?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sveta said. “We want you to help us.”

“You’re the best Gravity Frame pilot I’ve ever seen,” Miette added, “and a fantastic commanding officer. We need your skills to save the crabs from annihilation.”

The spark was there for a moment again before vanishing. “I… I can’t…” Lydia said slowly.

“Why not?” Sveta pressed.

“I’m needed here,” Lydia said softly. “Here on Mars.”

Sveta squinted. “To what, command a base filled with a dozen scientists? That’s a job for a bureaucratic staff officer, not an ace Frame pilot.”

“Your talents are being wasted here, Lydia,” Miette added. “We just want to see you at your full potential once more.”

Lydia rose to her feet. “Like I said, I’m needed here. This is my home, and I’m not leaving.”

“Can I ask why?” Sveta said carefully. “With all due respect, Lydia, this was your home in the past, but now…”

“Now WHAT?!” Lydia spat. “Now it’s a gravesite? A dead world? A garbage planet the Politburo isn’t interested in colonizing again?”

“That’s not what I…” Sveta said desperately.

“Isn’t it, though?” she said, her voice rising with anger. “You said the same thing all those smug politicians back in Moscow said. ‘Oh, we have to take care of Earth first so we can't recolonize Mars, it's a dead world, not worth the effort.’ Fucking excuse me if I don’t like it when people talk about my home that way.”

“I…”

“I couldn’t save any of them, you know,” Lydia continued angrily, spittle flying from her mouth as her rant built to a crescendo. “Forty meters south-southwest of here, I watched my parents being eaten alive. Two kilometers north, my first lover died of a shrapnel wound. And forty-four kilometers south is where I boarded one of the last evacuation shuttles as the Sarcophage hordes closed in. That day I swore bloody vengeance, swore I’d come back someday and liberate my home.

“But what did we find when we returned to Mars, Sveta? You know damn well what we found... the Sarcophage lying there, waiting to be killed. Unresisting, unthreatening, completely docile. Not because of anything WE did, but because that little genocidal monster Moby just ordered them to keel over and go to sleep! I didn’t get my long-awaited vengeance! All I got was fucking target practice! Moby took everything from me, and then as a final insult, took my revenge away as well! Thus rendering my ENTIRE LIFE FUCKING POINTLESS!

“Well, I’m here now, back on Mars, and I’m never leaving again. I wasn’t strong enough to save my family and friends, and I wasn’t strong enough to avenge them, but at least I can stand vigil over their graves until I join them in death. That’s all that remains of this useless shell of the girl known as Lydia. Sorry.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Miette growled, rising to her feet again. She briskly walked around the table and socked Lydia, hard, in the jaw. The impact sent Lydia reeling backwards, although she stayed on her feet.

“What…?” Her eyes were wide as she rubbed her smarting jaw. Sveta and Kometka stared at the scene, shocked.

Sveta: The hell are you doing, Miette?

Miette: Trust me.

“Sorry, that pity party was getting a bit too much for me to handle,” Miette said angrily, placing her hands on her hips. “Christ almighty, Lydia. What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Wallowing near the graves of your friends? You want to sit here mourning the dead when you could be out there saving ACTUAL lives? That’s not penance or whatever, it’s just pure selfishness. What the fuck happened to the Lydia I used to know, the one who’d charge through hell or high water to save lives and kick ass? What do you think Yuri and Yayoi would say if they could see you like this?”

“You don’t… you don’t get to speak for the dead!” Lydia retorted, balling her hand into a fist. “They were MY friends, not YOURS! YOU BITCH!” She threw a punch towards Miette’s face.

The redhead didn’t dodge, or even flinch. The punch landed square on her left cheekbone, but had no apparent effect. Lydia yelped in pain and withdrew her hand, which was now reddened and swollen. Punching Miette had been like punching a brick wall.

Miette smirked. “You’re gonna have to try harder than that if you want to bruise a robot, Lydia.” She allowed her holographic projection to flicker for a moment, revealing the pearly ceramic of her Telepresence Doll body, to emphasize the point.

“That’s… that’s not fair…” Lydia protested weakly.

“Since when have I ever fought fair?” Miette countered. “Lydia, listen. You’ve been through a lot of shit… more shit than anyone else I’ve ever met. I’m not here to tell you how to litigate your trauma, or how to deal with your overwhelming loss; I’m not a psychologist. I am, however, your friend, and I know that sitting here moping over the dead isn’t doing anything to help your mental state. You want to honor their memories? Then get back in the game and help us save these fucking crabs. Help us ensure that no world falls to the horror of the Sarcophage now, or ever again.”

Lydia glared at Miette, not speaking.

After a minute of silence, Miette stood up and began to walk for the mess hall door. “Or ignore me, whatever. C’mon, Sveta. Let’s get out of here. We’re wasting our time.”

As Sveta rose to her feet with an apologetic look and Kometka sat stock-still, staring at the ground, Lydia looked at her bruised knuckles and heaved a large sigh. “Alright, fine.”

Miette stopped, but didn’t turn around. Lydia stared at her back. “Fine?”

“I’ll come. I’ll fight,” she said defiantly.

Miette turned her head, looking back over her shoulder. “…Just like that?”

Lydia grimaced. “…Plus one sore jaw, and I’m fairly sure I broke a few knuckles punching your robot face. But yes, just like that.”

Miette nodded, satisfied. “Glad to hear it. I don’t mind if you hate me because of this, Lydia, so long as you’re doing SOMETHING. I can’t stand watching someone I respect waste away to nothing like this.”

Lydia narrowed her eyes, staring at Miette for a moment, then burst into laughter. Kometka and Sveta looked at each other, confused at her sudden shift in mood.

“…Did I say something funny?” Miette asked.

“Yes and no,” Lydia chortled. “You stole that little trick from Captain Savitskaya, didn’t you? The old punching someone to break through obstinacy routine?”

“Was I that obvious?” Miette pouted.

“Yeah. It’s an old trick, one I have a lot of experience with,” Lydia replied.

Miette shrugged. “Well, I was on the receiving end of that fist once, back when I was all hotshot and no smarts. So yeah, I copied her a bit.”

“Needs work,” Lydia concluded. “Nice effort though.”

Sveta shook her head and sighed. “I can’t believe that worked out, somehow. Never a dull moment when my wife is around…”

******

As Lydia gathered her things, Kometka, Miette and Sveta held a little conference in accelerated-time virtual space.

“Well, firstly, let me say thanks,” Kometka said. “Nothing I said was getting through to her, and I lack the… force of personality you two possess.”

"I'm not sure if that was supposed to be an insult or a compliment," Miette mused dryly.

“Both,” Kometka replied.

Sveta groaned in frustration. “I can’t say I agree with your methods, Miette. I mean, punching someone doesn’t cure depression, let alone PTSD. I think you just pissed her off.”

“Pissed off is better than wallowing in self-pity. I wanted to spur her into action,” Miette retorted.

“I know about a thousand psychologists who would disagree with you. With all due respect, dear, let’s talk it through before you punch anyone again? It worked this time… arguably… but I think a more nuanced approach would have been appropriate. Hell, we probably need to refer her to a therapist once we get back to the ship.”

Miette narrowed her eyes. “We’ll leave that call up to the Admiral. And you’re one to talk about subtlety, Mrs. Ram-A-Gravity-Frame-Into-Your-Problems.”

Sveta rolled her eyes. “Shut up and kiss me, you incredibly sexy firebrand.”

As Miette leapt onto Sveta and started making out, Kometka shrank back. “Uh… I’m just gonna go…” she said quietly, and exited the virtual space.

******

“Where are Miette and Sveta?” Lydia asked, eyeing the two deactivated Telepresence Dolls as she shouldered a duffel bag filled with her things.

“Making out in virtual space,” Kometka responded with marginal disapproval, colored by a twinge of jealousy.

“Hah, they never change.” Lydia walked over to Kometka and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You asked them to come here, didn’t you?”

Kometka nodded. “I… was worried about you. You were spiraling, Lydia, and so lost in your memories that you ignored my attempts to help. I needed to try something drastic, though I didn’t expect it to be THAT drastic.”

“I imagine not,” Lydia replied. “I’m sorry, Kometka. I really am. I hate to admit it, but Miette’s right. This environment isn’t good for me. I know I haven’t been as… affectionate as I used to be…”

“It’s fine,” Kometka said, placing her own hand over Lydia’s and squeezing. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I’m a long way from happy, but maybe a sock in the jaw was a good place to start,” Lydia mused dryly. “We’ll see where this goes, at least. So are we taking the shuttle or…”

“No, we’re taking one of Sveta’s Gravity Frames back to the Earth sphere. The unit she and Miette landed in has a warp drive, so the trip should only last a few minutes. Let me ping those two necking lovebirds and we’ll be on our way.”

“Hang on…” Lydia said apprehensively. “Did you say… warp drive?!”