Orphans of Middle Mars: Book One of the Chronicles of Middle Mars

by CJ East

  Kinch walked around the far side of the boulder and found a small ledge to sit upon. He checked his visor statistics, oxygen canister ‘A’ depleted, canister ‘B’ at 20%. He unslung his backpack and inspected the last remaining canister. He replaced the spent container, setting it next to him upright against the rock ledge.

  “The Lord has departed me Ichabod, stand in mock testimony of an Earthman who took a short repose in your shadow.” He noted the melodrama in his words, but let it pass as his time was winding down. There would be time to make his peace with the memories of his family and his doomed course of action at the Colony. He couldn’t help to think there was no purpose in his life.

  The ground beneath him was cold and barren. He moved his heavy boot scraping across the surface stirring a waft of dust into the blowing wind. His eyes lifted to the imposing cliffs, not two football fields from him, magnificent in their heights, endless in their stretch across the horizon.

  There were columns, arches and delicate structures one savage storm from disintegration. Even in death we are fragile, he thought. His attention was pulled to the dark scar on the base which was his ultimate goal. Long and deep, he studied it and the rubble which stood between. As he examined the line, the surface seemed to give, as if it had depth, as if it wasn’t a line of dark red rocks, but the shadow of a cleft.

  Patience was a skill he had mastered. He waited for his eyes to take in every shadow, perspective and position. It wasn’t a formation at all. He traced the retreating shadows showing the depth of a long, deep gash at the base of the cliff face.

  A shock of adrenaline hit his system, causing him to stand and swing the empty pack onto his shoulders. A new adventure renewed his determination to plunge forward. His steps were quicker, lighter, as he sped across the desert landscape.

  Fifty, then a hundred, yards passed without notice until the fallen boulders became obstacles to negotiate. There were twenty foot broken pieces of cliff, then a mammoth fifty footer he had to circumvent. He could no longer see the base of the cliff in the shadows of the disintegrating boulders until he climbed the slow rise of an immense sand dune. Fifty yards in front of him, he saw it.

  The red sand flowed up to meet the cliff base, and spilled into the long, smooth crescent of a cave arch.

  PART FOUR

  Cavern

  Many moments past as Kinch stood dumbstruck before the cavern, no sound except for his rapid breathing and the hammering of his heart in his ears. He studied the unusual sight before him - a smooth-arched cave at the foot of these high cliffs. The sand before him seemed to splash against the cliffs in frozen waves, up the red dune slope and into the mouth of the strange entrance. A stream of sand flowed deep into the cave colored with a gradient shadow from bleached pink to blood red.

  The structure captivating his thoughts was the smooth curve of the arch above the entrance. It was not natural. It was symmetrically balanced, perfectly shaped in mathematical proportion. Could it be carved? It had an appearance of intelligent design - the force of a will of perfection onto an imperfect medium.

  Was this structure random, or was there intent, purpose, and design? This ancient arch cut into a cliff could be the greatest discovery of human history, Kinch thought.

  He searched his memories for the geological time line of Mars. Because of its smaller size in comparison to Earth and its heavy iron composition, the planet cooled much quicker than Earth. When Earth was still molten rock, Mars had formed land masses and an atmosphere, water and other criteria for life. By the time life appeared on Earth, our older, smaller sister planet was dying.

  The liquid iron center of Mars cooled, causing the core to contract and the magnetic field protecting the atmosphere of Mars to weaken. The constant barrage of the sun and coronal ejections dissolved the life supporting atmosphere into space. The shallow seas and deep oceans blew away with the atmosphere, leaving nothing on the surface except a cold, lifeless desert.

  Kinch felt an involuntary gasp in his throat as the suggestion crossed his mind - did intelligent alien life exist, flourish, and die on a planet which started its life cycle long before ours? He took an unconscious step forward, drawn to the mystery luring him inside.

  The sand dunes rose from the boulders behind him and crashed against the cliff face of Orestes like a thousand year-old wave. Kinch trudged up the sloping dune, the heavy boots of his suit digging deep holes and causing long slides of sand to flow behind him. His breathing became deep and labored as he scaled the slope, stopping at the entrance of the cave.

  His eyes adjusted to the deep shadows to reveal the dune stretching deeper into the cave and upward, filling the cave mouth. He entered the cavern with caution, his head craned upward to the construction of the arch. Seamless and smooth, with no tool marks - the entrance was ten feet thick until reaching the darkened chamber. Kinch stepped further into the shadows until his helmet sensors flashed pale LED headlamps, lighting the dune before him.

  He raised his field of vision to the top of the dune twenty feet away. The small lights exposed the summit and the darkness beyond as he staggered in a tight circle. A tingle of fear and excitement flushed over his skin at the immense, empty space. The shadows receded from his headlamps exposing a huge inner cavern, the walls reflecting a smooth, polished surface. The surface walls appeared to have depth, and yet reflected his helmet lights like a deep, smoky mirror.

  Kinch turned his back to the entrance, the rise of the dune in the darkness surrounding him. He continued climbing the swooping rise of the dune. He plunged the beveled iron tip of his staff deep into the dune and slogged his way, leaving avalanches of sand in his deep footsteps. The bar helped to stabilize his climb, bending towards the summit, his head leaning into the hike and his field of vision confined to the dune before him.

  The pale blue LED light reflected off the sand as he raised his head to see the few feet of dune remaining before him. There was a sudden, strong change of lighting. The far walls of the gigantic cavern were glowing with a bright inner white light. He gasped in pure amazement and steadied himself on the bar. His headlamp sensors flashed off as he surveyed beyond the dune, into the vast expanse of a cavern the size of a professional sports stadium.

  He was a hundred feet above the cavern floor, atop a massive sand wave invading the huge entrance inches per year for untold time. He stood at the crest of wave - halfway to the top of the immense cavern, looking down the sheer drop of the dune. He stood on a wind-blown cliff of sand that dropped until long fingers of sand stretched towards the far side of the chamber.

  Kinch yanked the bar from the sand and thrust it deep into the dune’s summit, pulling himself to his full height. It was breathtaking, standing at the edge of such a large, empty space. There was no way to reach the floor below. If he did, he could never scale the sand wall back up. It was difficult to not plan for a return journey.

  On the far side of the cavern was the entrance to a hall. It was unlit, but appeared to be a huge descending corridor. Was the cavern floor once the ground floor before the passage of time filled the cave entrance with a mountain of sand? How old is this construction? Where did the next passage go?

  A sudden tingling began to ripple through his mind. It was a familiar sensation, the same pressing awareness of danger he had sensed from Viktor’s mind portal. He spun around, but found no movement. The strong sensation was physical, like a touch, warning him of a threat.

  With the sudden sound of a fast breeze, the entire crest of the sand cliff slid out beneath his feet and spilled down to the floor. Kinch tucked into a protective ball and rolled down the dune wall end over end. He landed hard on his head, sending arms and legs flailing, the wounds of his left arm and shoulder awaking in pain.

  He slid to a stop on his visor and was buried deep by a subsequent wave of flowing sand. His right arm was pinned to his chest beneath him, locked under hundreds of pounds of sand.

  In the blackness of his vision he could make out the faint blue light from his
headlamp above his visor. He tried to move his damaged left arm without success. He arched his back upward and felt movement in the heavy weight pressing down upon him. His right arm slid from under his chest and scraped along his helmet in the vacuum he had made beneath his body. He could hear the crunching grind as he worked his hand forward and upward. The crunching sound caused the tightening fear of claustrophobia to crowd in as he determined he was not going to die in this sandy tomb.

  Kinch worked his glove through the sand like a turning auger. Digging forward and up his hand broke through to the surface at the full extension of his arm. He scooped wild swaths of sand away, reaching backwards until his entire forearm had free range of movement. He worked with a frantic urgency, his breathing escalating and the irrational fear of suffocation gripping the back of his skull.

  He began to dig out above his head and shoulders. The sound of his arm scraping across his helmet and the falling of large sections of sand upon him gave him the hope to claw faster. He saw light when he breached his head and twisted on his side in a flailing panic, knocking down large sections of dune from above his buried body. Sections of the dune slid down upon his midsection in discouraging blows, burying him with solid swells of sand, only to be attacked and swiped aside.

  The panic of being trapped could no longer be held back. He twisted again at the waist with hectic movements, his back now exposed, his hips trapped deep in the sand. In desperation he slammed his palms down to chest level and pushed upward with all off his strength, trying to perform a one and a half arm push-up. He felt his hips and legs begin to lift and a vacuum form beneath them. He bent his legs forward and began an urgent run through the shifting sand. He leaned forward until his arms could no longer support him. With a final, irrational lunge forward, he swam out of the dune and started another downward roll.

  He felt his boots dig into the sand, regained his footing, and began an uncontrollable sprint down the slope, away from the smothering sand at an unsustainable angle. He fell forward, diving headlong. He tripped, skidding on his chest onto the hard chamber floor, and flipped over facing the swallowing dune.

  His wounded left arm and shoulder pulsed with pain as he imagined the stitches ripped. He pulled himself to a seated position facing the sand cliff, wincing in pain and panting for breath. The warning pressure in his mind had passed. He dropped his head between his knees and tried to take deep, slow breaths. He had to keep moving.

  Kinch composed himself and rose to his feet. He was no longer in the God forsaken sand, but standing on the solid floor of the cavern. The same strange material as the walls, a hardened composite of metal and glass, with some eerie inner white glow.

  His bar rested on the empty floor a few dozen feet ahead. He grasped it like a javelin and eased the beveled edge down onto the dull surface. A thick, metallic tone reverberated through the room. He lifted it again and slammed the cold chiseled end into the floor again, but no mark was made.

  He turned in a slow circle as the tone echoed throughout the chamber. “Life support stats up,” he said to his suit. Small dials appeared on the right side of his visor. Thirty seven minutes of oxygen left was the warning from a red flashing display. “Stats down,” he said as he turned toward the unlit passageway.

  What he wouldn’t give now for a few more oxygen canisters. Twenty minutes ago there was no use for them, he would have considered them as nothing more than existential weakness in postponing the inevitable. In an instant his perspective had changed and his passion for life returned. The events at the Colony seemed so insignificant now. He stood inside a structure which proved intelligent life on Mars. He had discovered a technologically advanced cavern far beyond our ability to reproduce.

  Kinch hoisted his bar and jogged across the chamber floor to the far passage. The passage was a semicircle four stories tall. As he came closer he slowed to a brisk walk looking up, absorbing the enormity of the passage. What traveled through here?

  Around the exterior edge of the passage were geometrical shapes, non-repeating, appearing to form some type of writing. The huge ten foot symbols projected from the wall and did not have the white glow of the cavern walls, but had a red hue.

  As he closed on the threshold he noticed the dark floor sloped downward at a steep grade. The walls and floor were made of the same hardened material as the cavern, but there was no strange, inner glow. “Mark elevation,” he said to his suit computer. With his first step into the huge tunnel, the floor and walls burst into light - illuminating down the long, descending tube in an instant.

  Kinch marveled at the technology and the grand scale. He could make out the long distance before him in the straight, descending grade of a huge tunnel wrapped in some strange unbreakable material; both a sensor and a light source. This was ancient alien technology surpassing anything he had imagined.

  Miles of the tunnel stretched before him. And then what? Kinch smiled to himself in a starting hop and rushed down the sloping tunnel. He could hear his heavy steel-lined gravity boots clanking on the hall floor. He slowed to a sustainable downhill pace, racing to the end of the line.

  Twenty minutes later Kinch could see a dark spot in the center of the hall. He picked up speed, feeling something important waited ahead. The darkness at the end of the tunnel was more than the absence of white light. Another distinct blue color glowed from the darkness into the hall. Kinch slowed to a walk at the end of the hallway. He bent over and put his metal gloves on his encased knees, catching his wind.

  “Gauges up,” he ordered, staring down at the floor. Six minutes of air estimated the flashing life support gauge, but the burn rate would slow now since he wasn’t running. Breathe deep and slow, he thought. He looked at the elevation from the point where he had marked it. Over a mile and a half down.

  He raised his head and looked towards the end of the hall. Beyond the darkness at the end of the hall a strange blue light burned. It didn’t have the same dull depth as the walls and floor, it was brighter and pulsing.

  He turned around to see the tunnel had darkened behind him, the top of the tunnel first. He stepped to the edge of the unlit entrance and found another large domed chamber with a level floor. This chamber was wider and taller than the hallway, yet not as large as the upper chamber.

  Kinch stepped through the threshold, and, again, unseen sensors flashed the walls into light. The chamber wasn’t a dome, but a half-dome sealed by a huge wall reaching form the tallest point of the dome down to the floor. He scanned the chamber to find it vacant, except for a door flowing with liquid blue light. He approached the ten foot door with a cautious curiosity.

  On the right side of the door, over the arch, were a set of eyes with a thick vertical line between them. The left eye was closed the right was open.

  Kinch checked his gauge, two minutes of oxygen. He scanned the room again, dead end. He could either die in this empty room or see what was on the other side of the door, if it was a door. He spun the chiseled end of his pry bar toward the blue wall of light. He adjusted his grip to the back quarter and stepped towards the light.

  “I really hope you don’t have a live electric current,” he said clinching his teeth as he the bar penetrated the light. The light gave no resistance, no sound and no shock as the beveled edge disappeared into the light. He continued pushing it through the door until his hand came to the edge of the blue light.

  When he shifted his feet and slid the bar back, the surface was stripped clean. The opaque gray of the iron now shone like newly poured iron. Kinch brought the whole bar out of the light, and held it near his visor examining the surface. The length he had pushed through the blue light gleamed like polished silver. The dirt, sand and oxidation had disappeared.

  He brought the bar down and peered into the deep blue pulsing of the door. He scanned the flashing life support gauge in the corner of his visor, less than one minute of oxygen left. The bar rolled in his loosening grip as he tossed it through the doorway. Nothing - no explosion, no distant crash. He
stared into the deep glow. A thought came to his mind from Kafka and he murmured to himself, “The thorn bush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.” He took a deep, nervous breath and stepped into the light.

  Middle Mars

  Stepping through the blue barrier set every nerve in his body ablaze, spiking a fear reaction and ceasing in an instant. The sensation was a quick pain like passing ones’ hand through a campfire. He felt limp and sick after the burning, his suit electronics went dead and the environmental pump stopped its quiet hum. There was no light in front of him, complete darkness and silence enveloped him.

  His strength drained from his body, he stumbled forward trying to remain standing. The dim blue glow behind him did little to pierce the surrounding void as he fell back on his rear. There would be mere seconds of oxygen left in his suit without the circulation pump. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them feeling like he may vomit in his suit. He sensed his poisonous carbon dioxide exhales starting to enter his bloodstream.

  He dropped his head and closed his eyes. He let out a long sigh and opened his eyes to the waiting darkness. His eyes adjusted or were playing tricks as he was able to see his enamel-clad limbs in the blue light behind his back. He peered down with a curious stare at the ground.

  The darkness gave way to jagged forms under him, sharp like long teeth in all direction. He moved his glove expecting to break off hard crystals, but found them made of a pliable, thin material. He gripped hard and pulled a handful as he lifted his head. He felt the distinct snap of dozens of stems. They lay in his open palm in front of his visor as he stared with open-mouthed astonishment. Blades of grass. Organic. Respiration.