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Welcome to the Round Robin, "Crash Site".
All members are invited to participate in this Round Robin exercise, but please adhere to the requirements of the ground rules.
This is a structured Round Robin, which means there are certain rules to abide by if you wish to participate. I ask you to demonstrate your respect for those who participate by playing by the rules of the Round Robin.
Rules.
1. You may not kill off any other character without the consent of the characters author.
2. You may not have your characters radically alter the environment.
3. Characters can not have special powers, but they can be skilled, or have innate natural abilities.
4. You may not end a story for another authors character without their permission.
5. You may not interact with another character unless you establish how that interaction is possible (i.e. no reading minds)
6. You may not violate these rules. Otherwise, you have complete freedom and discretion to contribute within the Round Robin as you see fit.
Set-up:
Your space ship has crashed landed on the surface of Mars. There were several ships that crashed at the same time, but no one knows exactly what caused the crash. Many people died as the result of the crash, but scattered survivors have pulled themselves from the wreckage, and now face the daunting task of trying to help others, and to survive in the harsh clime of Mars.
Luckily, there are scattered supply bases all over Mars. Together with that and your own resourcefulness, you may just have a chance to survive.
Emergency protocol for just this kind of situation calls for you to try and make your way towards Olympus Mons, which contains an empty colony base, and a communication's array which you may use to call for help.
However, before you can call for help, you will need to discover what caused the ships to crash, and gather together all remaining survivors.
This Round Robin is the story of your struggle, and hopefully, survival.
Your characters may be any role, as long as you establish what they are doing on Mars in the first place (example: Tourist, Miner, Scientist, Military attaché, Geologist, Doctor, Lottery winner, etc.).
****
I shall refrain from posting with my own characters, for I intend to occasionally throw out global, or specific situations, that individuals will have to contend with as they strive towards the empty colony base, the rescue of all survivors, and the discovery of what caused the crash.
Good luck, and may Deimos and Phobos look away. - Martian Proverb
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Fire rained from the sky. Through a thin and silent atmosphere came the long, loud, burning shrieks of fire and death to the Martian ground below. Silver metal exploded on impact, and huge billows of Martian dust was thrown high into the air. Even with one-third normal earth gravity, the ships fell as fast as stone.
All across the globe, metal ships high in orbit had plunged into the barren ground of Mars. There was almost no time to react, and the many who did act in time were lost on impact, or jettisoned off into the unknown Martian desert, far beyond the reach of any other survivors help.
Yet somehow, from the mangled wreckage of metal and machine, voices called out. Hands and bodies moved. There was confusion, panic, fear, and terror. Yet somehow, from the ruined ashes, the survivors rose, and with hope, set out towards a distant mountain that loomed far across the horizon.
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"Oh yeah, great plan! We're in some real pretty shit now!" the technician called out, dabbing the blood that steadily flowed from his forehead.
"Quiet," I shouted back, trying to get communications back online. Out of twelve people on our lander, ten were deceased and in various states of presentability after the inexplicable crash. The temptation to make it eleven was building with every word.
"We're crashed on fucking Mars, do you understand that you jarhead fuck? We're dead meat."
"Silence!" Whether it was the tone or the subtlely revealed sidearm, he hushed up and regained some measure of composure. Another moment of work revealed that the communciations array was FUBAR. "Now, let's start this again. What's your name?"
"Johnson, sir. Richard."
"What kind of parent names their kid Dick Johnson?" I asked, hoping to either get a laugh or piss him off enough to leave me alone. He shrugged dismissively, nervously glancing around the dark and dying lander's interior.
"Wolfe?" he asked. I nodded as I ripped the velcro nametape from my flightsuit.
"And don't call me jarhead." He didn't need to know that I was privately contracted for this program and he certainly didn't need to know the details. "According to diagnostics the rover hasn't been compromised. If we can get the outer doors open we should be able to reach the Olympus station in a few days and call for pickup."
"We should stay at the crash site, someone will be looking for us."
"Suit yourself, but I've still got a job to do."
"What job? Look around, the mission is over."
An hour later the doors had been wedged open and I drove the rover into the Martian desert. Johnson decided to come along after all. It may have had something to do with my proposal for divvying up the provisions. At least he can keep working on trying to raise one of the other landers on the radio, though so far with no luck. Damn peculiar.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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Meanwhile back at Olympus moon base the old crew weighted in antiticipation of food and supplies from home.
Then a voice broke the silence and muttered,“they should of called by now”.
The captain looks back solemnly and says, “they are probably just checking there equipment, we should here from them soon.”
Then over the deep space network the president calls. “Captain Clark, have you made contact with the new crew”.
Clark replies, “Not yet Mr President.”
The president pauses for a sec. “They say it is bad luck to right a speech for these times but I did. I know the dangers inherent in exploration and I know the public won’t be statistician without answers.”
At that moment Clark replied, “stick to what we know when you address the nation, sir. It could just be there radio got damaged and the technicians will have it ready soon.”
The president replies, “Clark you know that is not true. This aint the 1960’s”.
At that moment Clarks crew began to grow uneasy. “Should I dispatch a search team Mr. President, Sir” replied Clark.
“No” says the president. “My meteorologists tell me that that the conditions look good for a dust storm tonight and the Martian ravines can be hard to see with infrared. Your rover does not have the capabilities of the new RTG powered rover. If the conditions look good you can dispatch a crew tomorrow but keep it small. We need to squeeze every day we can out of that life support system we can”.
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They saw the ship go down in the ravine, Terry thought. Just great.
Suddenly, the airship cabin was alive with waving arms, pointing fingers, and other portions of excited earther tourists visible around the gondola seats.
“Did you see that!”
“Oh my God! Was that one of ours?”
“What happened?”
“They crashed! They crashed!”
“Crap! I spilled my drink!”
“That’s gotta hurt!”
“I can’t see!”
“Is everybody okay?”
“Argh! Your arm!”
“Sorry!”
“Oh, they’re dead.”
Someone let loose a squeaky little scream, and everybody began unbuckling at once to get up and move across the cabin. The tiny airship Marvin creaked and shifted on its landing gear under the strain of rubbernecking.
“It’s all right! We’re all right! Everybody please remain calm and return to your seats! Return to your seats!” Terry called to his passengers, pointing in the traditional “Sit down and let the pilot fly!” posture.
“We should go help!” came the inevitable voice from the rear of the cabin. It was the little one, Dennis, the guy who never seemed able to keep all his feet on the floor at the same time. He reminded Terry of his mother-in-law’s chihuahua. Of course, he’d be the one to want to mount a rescue mission with only a dozen (purely terran tenderfoot, barely even seen a spacesuit) Mars Society members.
Another passenger quickly seconded the motion. Terry thought about the prospect of climbing down a cliff into a burning wreck with this bunch, and didn’t want any part of it. There was probably nothing there that anybody wanted to see, but he refrained from pointing that out. “We’re going to call Olympus and get them to send out a rescue team.”
Dennis looked disappointed, and so did everybody else. Five minutes earlier, the passengers had been antsy and bored. Their day’s outing – complete with the “space suits” and “moon buggies” suitable for typical tourists - had been cut short by a sudden storm blowing in from their north. The coming front was probably full of fierce drafts and thermals. The wind was already threatening to blow the Marvin over with heavy gusts as it sat on the ground, and Terry was very eager to get them all home as soon as possible. He was also a little angry. That was no spring dust devil out there – this storm had to have been building for days, and now his budding little flying business was going to be grounded for weeks with no warning. As usual, he blamed the weather guys at Tharsis control.
It never occurred to him that there had been no warning to give.
Brian leaned over from the co-pilot’s chair. “Terry,” he whispered. “I can’t raise Olympus or any of the relays.”
More fun. “Well, the antenna’s busted or something,” Terry said in a low voice, his brow furrowing with concern as he checked the ship’s status. Unusual equipment failures just before a major sandstorm were never good, even if you were just about to crank up the engines and fly home. In fact, that’s when they were usually the worst.
“Diagnostic says we’re still receiving, but I can’t get the beacon.”
“It’s gotta be us,” Terry told him. Floating kilometers high on tethered aerostats, the Tharsis beacons were far beyond the reach of any mere duststorm. “Try another channel.”
Brian began diligently adjusted the frequency from one standard channel to the next. Shortly thereafter, Terry felt a puff of breath on his elbow.
He turned to look, and found himself staring at the head of his eldest passenger, a short little old lady named Ms. Reece, as she peered past his arm to peruse the Marvin’s glass cockpit from the bridge door. The most elderly person he’d ever seen in a pressure suit, Ms. Reece probably had the record for oldest person in space sewn up before Bob Zubrin toddled up the stands with his walker to watch the first Mars launch.
“Ms. Reece, please, buckle yourself back in. We’ll be leaving soon.” Hopefully to return to port, he thought. The winds were picking up. At this rate, they’d soon be beyond the Marvin’s ability to navigate them.
“Young man,” she began, and Terry’s shields instantly went up. At forty years old, he hadn’t been referred to as a young man since leaving Earth half a decade ago. “I trust you realize that we are the closest vessel to this crash site. By your tracking, we are only ten kilometers away. As such, we have an obligation to provide assistance if we can. It’s only fair.”
“We are attempting to raise a rescue party,” Terry responded, his lips getting tighter. “We will notify you of any developments. Now, please sit down.”
“Any luck?” she inquired immediately, before he could even blink.
“Ms. Reece,” Terry answered. “We will notify you of any developments.”
“Hold it!” Brian said, raising his hand to appeal for quiet. Unlike Terry’s previous effort, enough of the passengers had become focused on what was happening on the bridge that this time the call for silence actually worked. “I’ve got something on the radio!”
For a moment, the only sound was the Marvin’s lightly built hull creaking in the wind. Then Terry heard the static broken transmission. …
"We go big, or we don't go." - GCNRevenger
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All around Mars, the static of radio searches was broken for a brief moment by the sound of a continuous repeating ‘beep’. It was like something out of an old emergency broadcast system.
At least the old space hands knew, it could mean only one thing, the global communication relay satellites were down, or destroyed.
Emergency beacons had been set up on either pole of Mars, just in case of a situation where global and solar system communication was down. It was a warning that everyone was on their own.
There could be no instant communication relay to any point on the globe as long as that warning beep was playing. It signified a loss of radio contact with the satellite relay system, the underpinning of all long range communication on Mars, or even to communication calls to Earth.
It slowly dawned on many that they could only communicate over short distances, or with an extended line of sight.
Humans on Mars had never felt so alone.
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"Hey. Dick. Wake up." Wolfe threw a spent CO2 scrubber, hitting Richard in the chest and waking him.
"What, you got something?"
"We can forget about the radio, the entire network is down," Wolfe said without turning around. "And something's ahead on the radar, get ready for EVA."
It took nearly three hours to navigate the rocky terrain and ever-building dust storm before coming upon another lander, scorched and lying on its side. A hatch hung open with a single set of tracks leading into the desert. Wolfe and Johnson walked towards the wreckage cautiously.
"Survivors," Johnson said, excited at the prospect of someone other than the abrasive "Major" Wolfe who wasn't a Major at all, nor any other officer rank of a sanctioned military branch, American or otherwise. After the political fight to get even a token force of Marines stationed off-world certain quarters of the intelligence community had opted for a less damaging approach to getting the necessary expertise in place. The Marines merely made for a good cover when certain cargo couldn't be plausibly explained for civilian applications.
"Survivor. And not for long in this storm, on foot with no radio. Stupid." Wolfe flipped on his helmet lights and crawled up into the hatch, pushing the heavy door inward. Johnson followed for lack of anything more productive to be doing. Throughout the day they rummaged through the ship's cargo, pilfering food and equipment useful in their predicament.
"This one looks to be in better shape than ours, maybe we should sit tight and wait."
Wolfe glared back at him before carrying a few boxes of rations toward the hatch. "What are you doing?"
"Taking a snack for the road," he said flatly as he stepped out into the storm.
"We should stay until the storm blows over," Johnson's voice said, mixed with static as Wolfe ventured further into the storm.
"You do that." He climbed into the rover and departed to the West.
Olympus Mons was peeking over the horizon. To the North.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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Every communications satellite in the sky had stopped talking to the Marvin. The global positioning system had provided a wildly erratic fix that had ended with a rejected result, then ended abruptly in the loss of every GPS signal nearly simultaneously. It’s tracking system, once a node in a vast integrated traffic control network that spanned the entire planet, had been completely cut off from its central server. The blimp’s computers vigilantly continued trying to monitor it’s surroundings using only its own meager resources, scanning with radar and searching the communications bands for uplinks and other useable radio signals. But the only broadcasts it intercepted were telemetry from satellites in inclined orbits overhead, mostly encrypted, and none equipped to respond to Marvin’s automated hails.
Ominously, even the few satellites Marvin had managed to locate were now disappearing, one by one as their orbits crossed the zenith. Vanishing, some with a final mysterious rustle of static, some fading inexplicably, others with the final desperate shriek of a distorted carrier. Then, silence.
Something very wrong was happening in the heavens.
“Where are the broadcasts?” Terry asked.
“I’ll keep monitoring the Polestat,” Brian told Terry. “Maybe they’ll follow the emergency tone with a broadcast.” He didn’t sound hopeful. Thus far none had been forthcoming, and it seemed the polar statite would soon be all there was left. Little more than a glorified weather satellite, it also performed one other critical function for the people of Mars. On a world with globe girdling sandstorms and a dozen other hazards, it was part of the planetary emergency broadcast system. Practically the only thing left in the sky, it was now broadcasting an attention tone once per minute. An automated message, stating the danger and giving instructions to those affected, should have sounded in the Marvin’s cabin, but there was only silence between alarms.
“Yeah, do that, Brian,” Terry told him. And hope it does, he thought. Otherwise, this could get hairy.
“Can we access the weather feed?” Bob asked, hanging at an angle from the plastic door frame to see over Will.
“What’s wrong with your tracking?” Will asked, pointing.
Ms. Reece, arms crossed, had claimed the other side of the doorway as her own, and stood in it as if to dare all comers. There was a line forming behind her.
“No, we are not getting the weather channel,” Terry growled angrily, getting him a glance from Brian and little else. He was losing his patience with these people. Every single one of them wanted to fly the ship himself, and not one of them seemed mentally capable of remaining in a seat belt. “We appear to be having a minor control problem. It can’t hurt us if we just stay put. We will inform you of any developments. Please, return to your seats.”
Just then, a gust of wind caught the Marvin and jerked it sideways. People shouted as they were thrown about the cabin. Will fell backward, taking Bob with him, and Ms Reece ended up with her back against the starboard window.
“Thank you,” Terry said absently as his passengers were briefly distracted. “Where the hell did that come from?” he asked Brian as he turned around to take the controls. The rogue gust had tossed the ship back and forth through a wide arc, dragging its landing gear through the soil in a long curved trench. Marvin’s propellers whirled to life as it sat on the ground, wresting the ship back from the wind.
“Oh my,” Stacie gasped. “Look at the dust move! That wind has be going at least a hundred fifty miles per hour out there.” Muttered comments of awe issued from a few other passengers.
Dumb Earther. “I’m sure it’s not going that fast,” Terry assured the passengers. “Sandstorms rarely reach sustained winds over –“
Brian pulled the bridge door half closed and leaned over. “We just hit two hundred knots, Terry,” he said softly. “We can’t fly in this; it’s coming in too fast, and it’s only getting faster. We’re going to have to drive back.”
Terry swore, and not under his breath. “Damn it, Brian! If we pull the rip cord out here and drive off, the envelope won’t be waiting for us when we come back. It’ll blow off and shred on the rocks. That’ll cost us hundreds of thousands!”
“Marvin won’t fly against this, Terry, and it sure won’t land at two hundred knots even if we could get to Olympus. We’ve got to cut loose and drive in.”
“Damn it, Brian!”
“There’s something else,” Brian told him. “I ran the tracking back over the last hour. You’re gonna want to see what happened while we were outside.” He started the replay. “A little over an hour ago, everything was completely normal. Then we started losing satellites, like this one,” he said, pointing to the screen. In the fast forwarded view of simulated airspace being played back by the Marvin’s computers, a little pixel that had been passing over their position slowly, inexorably veered from its orbit, ultimately turning onto a downward trajectory that took it plummeting into the atmosphere. “That’s where tracking lost its signal. It had to have burned up. Then there’s the ships.” Brian skipped ahead to the track of what was clearly a lander, hopping from Hellas to it’s listed destination at Olympus Station. But it never made it. The suborbital craft was dragged downward, falling onto the craggy plains north of the Marvin, a hundred kilometers short of Olympus. “Tracking says this one made it down, and these two. That’s the transport we saw go down in the ravine,” he said, pointing with a pained expression to a new dot on a long downward pitch. “They didn’t make it. That’s going to be a major crash site.” The display paused, and the screen filled with little grey boxes. “That’s where we lost the satellites. All we’ve got after that is our own radar.”
Brian paused a moment, then added, “Olympus isn’t receiving, and even if they were, they can’t fly in this. Everything that’s tried has been forced out of the sky. There isn’t going to be an air rescue. If any help is coming, it’s coming overland, which could take days this far out..”
“What the hell is it?” Terry asked. He was the sort who usually got angry rather than frightened, but shock was threatening to get the better of him.
“I don’t know,” Brian said, shaking his head. “But it’s got to be the worst disaster that’s ever happened on Mars, and as far as we know, we’re the only working vehicle on this end of it.”
“Well, then we’ve got to go help!” Will said valiantly, shoving the door back open after eavesdropping on the other side of it. “We may be their only chance of rescue!”
“Yes!” Ms. Reece agreed. “We must see what we can do. It is our duty to come to their aid.”
“Bull!” Terry roared. “It’s the duty of the marines and the emergency service to come to their aid. We are going to pull up stakes and head straight back to Olympus as fast as we can go! Standard operating procedure for saving our asses! I’m not taking this crazy bunch into the middle of a killer sandstorm to put my butt on the line for people who are probably already dead anyway. Now, for the last time, shut up and sit down, all of you!”
“No, I will not,” Ms. Reece informed him, refusing to move. “You heard him,” she said, pointing at Brian. “It will take days for rescue teams to get here if they can’t fly in. Anyone still alive at that crash site could be dead by then, and we are only ten kilometers away. If it was you out there in nothing but a crushed lander and a suit, would you want the only people close enough to help to turn and run home to mama?”
“That’s it,” Terry said angrily, unbuckling himself. “Get up and help me with this, Brian.”
Brian stayed put, looking at him. The only thing his copilot moved was an eyebrow. “We’re legally obligated to assist here, Terry,” he said.
Terry stared back for a moment, exasperated. Then he turned and grabbed Ms. Reece by the forearm. “I said stop this and sit down!” he shouted, pushing the little old lady down the aisle.
“I will not!” she shouted. Lacking the physical strength to resist, she was carried backward and shoved into a seat, but gamely tried to get up again as soon as her back hit the cover. Her fellow passengers scurried out of the way, trying to avoid the scuffle. An anguished look was on every face in the cabin, and Stacie was starting to weep.
Terry shoved the old woman back, focusing on the ringleader to show the rest who was boss. “We are not running off to some crash site!” he shouted. “You aren’t in charge here, and you aren’t big enough to make me! So shut up!”
“I will not!” she shouted, still struggling to free herself.
“Hah! What are you people going to do about it, lady?” he shouted at her.
…
"We go big, or we don't go." - GCNRevenger
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