Mars Rising (Domeworld Saga Book 1)

by John Corwin

  "How do you reckon they keep it so cold in there?" Scarlett asked as they walked the perimeter path.

  "Sarah told me the surface of Mars is already extremely cold." His voice choked up when he said his sister's name, but he seemed to steel himself with a deep breath. "Keeping a habitat cold is probably easy. He waved an arm around the jungle. "Keeping this place hot is the challenge."

  "It seems impossible." Scarlett stared up at the huge trees. "Growing this much plant life would take decades."

  "Trees like these take decades to grow so tall," Max said. "That probably means the founders built this place a very long time ago."

  "Centuries, maybe." Scarlett shuddered. "That means Earth—" the thoughts preceding her words brought more pain than she could have imagined, especially for a home she'd never known.

  "We missed that funeral a long time ago." Max's voice was soft, a hint of the same pain Scarlett felt reflected in his tone. "We're Martians now, Scarlett, and that's what we'll always be."

  She squeezed the moisture from her eyes with the heels of her hands and nodded. "If we never knew Earth, why does it feel like I lost a friend when I think about its death?"

  He put a hand on her arm and gave a gentle squeeze. "Earth is still in our bones, in our blood." Max walked to the edge of the path and picked up a handful of dirt. "Look, we brought it with us. That means we came from the same dust as our ancestors."

  Scarlett pressed her hand against the dirt Max held. "Mars is like a surrogate mother."

  Max smiled. "Not a father after all."

  For one perfect moment, Scarlett held Max's gaze and felt no anger—only the deep flawless peace of two souls looking past the flesh for the first time. Max's eyes widened slightly and Scarlett wondered if he felt it too. All too quickly the moment passed, the souls vanishing back inside the battered flesh that had seen and experienced too much pain to forget for long what this world had done to it.

  Max cleared his throat and dropped the dirt. "Let's go see what the west has in store for us."

  The western dome held a vast savannah with scrubby trees and an arid climate. Herds of deer-like creatures roamed in the distance and Scarlett spotted a pride of lions lounging in the shade of a tree.

  "Look at the dome," Max said. "It has a different shape to it."

  It was barely noticeable at first, but Scarlett noticed how distorted the sun looked. "It reminds me of a magnifying glass."

  "It's how they focus the sun and make it hotter."

  "Why isn't the one in the jungle shaped the same way?" Scarlett asked.

  Max shrugged. "Maybe it is, but it's not as pronounced." He plucked a strand of dry grass and motioned back toward the airlock. "Let's head back and go look at the south."

  They stopped at the northwest shelter for lunch then trekked to the southern marker. Once again, they found a hidden door, but on the other side of the airlock they found a tunnel with a steel rail hanging from the ceiling. A sign on the wall showed the picture of a box hanging from the rail, and beneath it, simple instructions.

  Please use the call button to activate the tram.

  Max found a button on the wall and pressed it. A chime sounded, echoing into the distance. Several minutes later, the screech of metal on metal emanated down the tunnel, and a windowed steel box with seats whizzed into the station, slowing to a stop. The doors slid open and Max and Scarlett stepped warily inside. Another button told the tram to go. It whined to full speed and clacked down the rail for what seemed like several miles until it reached a small station at the other end and the door opened.

  Scarlett stared back down the dark tunnel. "Why is there a tram for this tunnel but not the others?"

  "Wherever it leads is a lot further south than I thought," Max said. "It felt like it turned west a little too."

  Gathering her courage, Scarlett activated the airlock door. Whatever waited on the other side was something different than what they'd encountered so far and she didn't know what to expect. Max's eyes betrayed his own apprehension as the inner door clicked shut. He pressed the other button and the pair braced themselves for whatever waited on the other side.

  A large sign, the words scorched but still readable greeted them.

  Welcome to Utopia! You have earned your reward.

  "Utopia?" Max said. "What in the dome is that?"

  "I read it in a book once," Scarlett said. "It's supposed to be a perfect place, like paradise."

  They stepped around the sign and found hell instead. A forest of blackened trees stretched before them. The scent of old ash and new growth mingled in the air. The forest looked untouched to the west, but torched limbless trees stood sentinel in the east, the ground scarred with gray and black. Beyond the trees, she saw gray line that was too straight to be ash.

  Max saw it too. "Is that a road?"

  They jogged through the forest, clouds of ash rising at their every step and reached a meadow with new flowers poking through the remains of their charred predecessors. The strip of gray was indeed a road leading south. They didn't need to travel far to see what waited at the other end. Buildings taller than Overlook reached toward the transparent dome overhead and at the center, a shimmering tower that touched the dome at its crest. Unlike the windowless concrete buildings in City 7, these constructs seemed to have nothing but windows along every square inch, many of which were shattered, gaping wounds from whatever calamity had visited this place.

  "Looks like there was a war here," Max said. He walked to the road and sat on a bench situated at the end. "What do you reckon happened?"

  Scarlett joined him on the bench and stared at the city, unable stop thinking about one thing. "Max, the dome is clear and the center building reaches all the way to the top."

  "We could see everything from there." Max jumped to his feet. "Let's go."

  The walk held unpleasant surprises in store. Cow skeletons with strips of hide still hanging from the bones littered a field. On the other side of the road stood the shattered remains of a huge house. Destroyed vehicles and skeletal remains of humans lay all around. A stray cow grazed in a field of green untouched by the battle.

  "They must have had an insurgency," Max said, drawing the blaster pistol from his holster and holding it at the ready.

  Scarlett took note of the positions of the vehicles, some of them facing toward the house while others looked as though they'd been defending it. "I think it was a civil war. It looks like both sides had access to heavy weapons and machinery."

  Max peered inside one of the mangled jeeps and pulled a molten blaster from inside. He and Scarlett looked through some of the other vehicles, but the occupants and their belongings had been burned, leaving nothing salvageable behind. The inside of the ranch house lay in shambles, a staircase obliterated by explosion, charred bones and clothes the only remnants of the fighters. Despite the poor state of the house, lights still shone in some of the rooms meaning the electricity in the dome still worked.

  Scarlett nearly fell into a gaping hole where once been a family room. Lights flickered in a basement below. A scream ripped from her throat at what she saw in a blackened crater below. Max rushed to her side and gasped as illumination revealed piles of bones. Some were clearly the remains of children killed when the house was attacked.

  A strong arm gripped her shoulder and pulled her tight. Scarlett buried her face in Max's chest, breathed in the scent of his sweat and fear, but beneath it, felt the steady reassurance of his strong heart. They might be the only two people living in this entire city. Considering what the inhabitants had done to each other, Scarlett almost preferred it that way.

  "Let's go, Deputy." Max helped her up and led her through the blasted wall outside.

  "I told you not to call me that anymore." Scarlett almost felt to weary to argue the point. "Let's go to the city."

  Max's eyes narrowed and he pointed to a mound of dirt with a skeleton sprawled on the top. "Is that a bladewheel?" He walked over to the base and dusted off a white unit
with blasters mounted to the sides of the pedals. "Even this thing is weaponized." He pressed a button on the side and received two red bars on the charge indicator.

  "Might be enough to get one person to the city," Scarlett said.

  Max walked around the mound and returned with two more bladewheels. "Looks like they rode here on these things." He traced a finger along shiny panels on their hulls. "They use solar energy to recharge. I wondered how it was possible for the batteries to hold energy so long."

  Scarlett took one from him and set it on the ground. A tether with a button looked as though it fired the blasters, but they required separate battery packs from the one that powered the motor. She mounted the bladewheel and guided it in a circle in the middle of the road. "Seems to work fine."

  Max hopped on his and drew his blaster. "Let's be on the lookout, okay?"

  Scarlett readied her weapon and hoped she didn't have to use it. Destroyed vehicles and skeletons littered a path of destruction all the way to the nexus—the dominant structure in the city center. The streets bore whimsical names—Lily Lane, Beaver Run, Yellow Brick Road—completely unlike the generic labeling in City 7.

  Max stopped and stared at the grand but battle-scarred sign in the war-torn plaza outside the building.

  Utopia City Hall.

  Scarlett tried to ignore the gaping holes in the street and square, the stares of empty skulls. The marble statue of a man lay broken near its pedestal. The inscription on its base was stained with blackened blood and scarred by blaster fire: Founder Musk.

  Chapter 39

  Max gaped at the statue. "Is that one of the founders?"

  Scarlett tried to imagine the awful carnage that must have led to this scene and shuddered. "If this is supposed to be a paradise, why did they have weapons? Why did they kill each other?"

  "No idea." Max squeezed between concrete barricades at the entrance to the building. "Nothing about this place makes sense."

  Scorched red carpets and charred staircases led up to the second floor in the building. Sunlight reached through the glass ceiling far above all the way down the massive atrium. The building seemed to be an empty shell aside from the second-floor offices.

  Glass elevators hung in open shafts along the inner walls, their cables reaching toward a platform circling beneath the ceiling. The crushed cage of one elevator had spilled its occupants out on the floor when it had fallen during the conflict.

  Max tested the buttons on one of the elevators, but failed to get a response from it. The power in this building appeared to be out. Scarlett paced around the outside of the staircases and found a steel door hidden to the side. She pulled it open and found a stairwell dimly lit by emergency lights.

  "Over here," she called and Max soon joined her.

  He grunted and started climbing. Scarlett couldn't imagine how many stairs lay between her and the top of this behemoth structure and knew any thought of it would only discourage her, so she followed Max and put one foot in front of the other. They paused for a break on occasion and reached a door at the top over an hour later.

  Max opened the door, stepped forward, and yelped. He flung out an arm to keep Scarlett from stepping through the door. "The platform is damaged."

  Made of glass ribbed with steel, the platform was already unsettling enough to look at. The gaping hole waiting on the other side of the door made Scarlett dizzy with vertigo. There were no bodies up here, but the damage to the walkway indicated someone must have been up here during the fighting, meaning someone had probably plunged to their death.

  A shiver ran through her body and her legs went weak with apprehension.

  "Look," Max said, pointing to glass stairs leading to another walkway circling the roof outside. Bracing himself on the door, he edged along the foot of remaining platform at the edge of the hole and made it to an undamaged section.

  Scarlett steeled herself and followed him, refusing to look down for fear she'd go weak in the knees and fall. Max gripped her arm and pulled her the rest of the way, and then they climbed the stairs and went outside. The platform crowned the peak of the building. A skeleton with a charred hole in the skull and a blaster near the hand sat outside next to binoculars mounted on a stand.

  "I reckon he took a better out than most of those below," Max said. He opened his mouth as if to speak and froze, eyes on the horizon.

  Scarlett gazed upon the vista. This building and dome rose higher than any of the other structures, offering a clear view of the massive red plain with black cliffs rising in the distance.

  Max pressed his eyes to the binoculars and gasped. Scarlett found another pair on the opposite side of the crown and swiveled them across the horizon. She found the jungle dome to the northeast and the translucent dome of City 7 to the northwest. A breath caught in her throat when she saw tunnels and domes branching off to the west of it, forming a semi-circle that seemed to put Utopia at its center. The only home she'd ever known had more secrets than anyone knew.

  All but the last of the other structures bore translucent domes like City 7. The fourth lacked a dome and a gap in the concrete wall indicated it was still under construction. Massive metal towers with hooks dangling from cables stood idle in the midst of the structure and Scarlett wondered where the builders were.

  "I count four clear domes like the jungle habitat," Max said. "And another that's only half built."

  Scarlett drew back from the binoculars. "Three city domes to the west and northwest and one incomplete."

  "Including this place, that makes eight completed domes." Max looked through the binoculars to the west.

  "Max, this is the only place with a clear view of everything." Scarlett leaned on the railing and welcomed the rush of dizziness sweeping over her when she looked down. "I think this is where it all started."

  "I think you're right." Max joined her at the rail and gazed at the dead city. "Every dome out there, full of scientists experimenting on societies and ecosystems, and they don't even realize they're part of the experiment themselves." He glanced at their long-dead companion. "How long does it take someone to decompose down to the bone?"

  "Depends on bacteria and the elements," Scarlett said, borrowing from the textbooks she'd studied to become a deputy. "Could be five to ten years."

  Max nodded. "Let's do some detective work."

  They returned to the ground floor and walked up the staircase to the offices there, but it was too dark to navigate. They walked around the first floor and found a maintenance room bathed in the dull glow of emergency lighting behind the staircase. Blaster fire had damaged the main electrical panel.

  Max pulled off the panel and examined the cables leading into the main switch. "The lead cable is melted." He touched the thick rubber insulation at the top of the cable and jerked back his hand.

  "That's a stupid way to see if you'll get shocked," Scarlett said. She pushed him away from it. "I learned a thing or two from maintenance, so let me take a look." The main breaker had switched itself off. She pushed down on it just to be sure. That only meant power to the building wouldn't turn on, but it didn't mean the lead cable wasn't electrified.

  Using a piece of flat metal she'd procured from the broken elevator in the lobby Scarlett loosened the clamp holding the broken piece of cable to the main breaker and then knocked it out. Max gripped the insulated part of the lead cable and pulled it down to the clamp so Scarlett could tighten the clamp.

  Pale faced and perspiring, Max stepped back and breathed a sigh of relief. "I don't like playing with live wires."

  "Let's hope it's still live," Scarlett said. "Else we'll have to find flashlights." Using a long pipe, she stood back and pushed the breaker, but the switch was too stiff. Max added his might to the effort and the breaker snapped on.

  The panel crackled and popped, spitting sparks across the room. Max and Scarlett dove for the door, but when they reached the hallway behind the staircase, cool white light flickered on in the LED bulbs overhead.

  Jubila
nce flushed through Scarlett's body. "We did it!"

  Max leaned against a wall, eyes wide. "I thought we were dead for sure."

  Scarlett laughed. "Not yet."

  They went back to the offices. The mayor's office held a lone occupant in a chair with a blaster burn through the ribcage and out the back of the chair. The computer screen on the desk had a large hole through the center. Max and Scarlett went room by room but all of the computers had been blasted.

  The room at the end of the hall marked Operations, was barricaded shut from the inside and three skeletons with blaster burns on them lay outside the door. It appeared they'd been shot from behind while trying to break through the door.

  Max knelt and examined the blue uniforms worn by the dead. He tore a patch off the sleeve and fingered a blue symbol with green patterns on it. "I've seen this image somewhere before."

  It tickled Scarlett's memory as well, but she couldn't place it. "I saw those patches on some of the bodies inside the ranch."

  "The attackers outside wore black uniforms," Max said.

  Scarlett closed her eyes and thought back to the horrors she'd seen. "Most of the bodies aren't in uniform at all. I think those people were civilians."

  Max slammed his shoulder against the barricaded door. "If we're lucky, the computers inside this room will still work."

  "It doesn't appear the attackers made it inside." Scarlett said and raised her blaster. "Stand back."

  Max saw the weapon and stepped back. Scarlett blasted the door handle, leaving a blackened hole where it had been, then blew chunks of wood from the hinged side until there was little left of the door but smoking pieces.

  "Sometimes you scare me half to death." Max blew out a breath and hauled the remains of the door into the corridor. Two heavy metal cabinets had been shoved over to bar the way. Bracing their backs against one, Max and Scarlett were able to shove it out of the way and enter the room.

  Behind a large wooden desk sat another skeleton, the soft light from the computer screen filling the empty eye sockets with light. Scarlett moved the chair out of the way and looked at the icons on the screen. The date and time showed Octavas 23, 2055.