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The Trojan War

Here Are "The Portals" To My Other Pages.

"REGENERATION" Prologue
"REPLICATION" Ch#6
"STAR SCROLL" Prologue
"UNCLE BENTHOR" Ch#1
"THE FRIENDS OF ING" Ch#2
"THE BLACK WOLF" Ch#3
"THE BATTLE OF ELAH" Ch#4
"BURDEN OF TIME"
"CIRCLE OF PRECESSION"

"ORION LION'S WELCOME PAGE"

"SPACE EXPLORATION, COLONIZATION & TERRAFORMING"

Chris Dolan's Home Page

"The Trojan War" is Chapter#4 of my new novel, "Regeneration." Because I have made so much available of my first novel, "Star Scroll," I felt it only appropriate to make more of "Regeneration" available as well. The genres of the two novels are quite different, the first is a fantasy and the second is pure science fiction. But both have an extensive amount of astronomy interests, and that is why I have chosen to post them on my web page. Please feel free to comment on what you like or dislike in my guestbook.

Chapter 4 THE TROJAN WAR

“Now the goddess Dawn climbed up to Olympus heights,
declaring the light of day to Zeus and the deathless gods”
From Homer’s “The Iliad”

The approaching dawn of a new day creeped like pink fire through the receding dark shadows which covered the surface of the planet Mars. Phobos, the larger of the Red Planet’s two moons, spiraled unerringly west-to-east along a fast low orbit--just within the upper regions of the thin Martian atmosphere. The 28-mile long potato-shaped moon was beginning its third revolution of the planet in less than one twenty-five-hour Martian day.

Likewise, the third eight-hour work shifts had already reported for duty within the Navajo Space Port, the Lewis One Biosphere and the Mount Olympus Complex located within Phobos’ massive Stickney Crater. On one side of the eight-mile wide crater, which was Phobos’ dominant geological feature, the honey-combed circular-silos of the Navajo Space Port’s landing bays could be seen blinking red or green along their respective occupied or unoccupied bays.

The surrounding upper-rim of Stickney Crater overshadowed the remote colonist strongholds within its protective embrace. Navajo’s control center had been built along the sloped cliff that over-looked the space port, making it vaguely resemble the Navajo Indian cliffs on Earth after which it had been named.

Nestled close to the opposite wall of the wide crater sat the great luminous dome of the Lewis One Biosphere. Protected under its filtered dome, grew all the orchards and gardens that supplemented oxygen and food for the moon’s limited population of five-thousand colonists.

The Mount Olympus Complex sat in the very center of the crater and was the colony’s primary-hub of communication and transportation. Its underground network of subways provided access to all work and residential areas. Deep under the 150-meter-high mount, which had been constructed from mining-debris, was located the inner-moon metropolis of Globus. The bottle-shaped five-meter-long by one-meter-wide city had been named after the famous 20th century research scientist, Dr. Al Globus.

Stickney Crater’s large center-mount had been dubbed “Mount Olympus” by the first colonists, because it was heavily decorated with large white radar and satellite arrays which made it look like an ancient Greek ruin. Multiple solar-power plants had been constructed within smaller impact craters scattered across key areas of the huge crater floor.

The metropolis of Globus had been meticulously architected deep within the center of the moon by expanding and reinforcing the original tunnel networks which had been mined to excavate some of Phobos’ much-needed natural resources. The planned city-layout, along with all its streets, gates and subways, ran symmetrically along the moon’s controlled center of gravity.

Long lines of solar-paneled power stations ran out along the exposed surface of the heavily cratered moon like spokes emanating from Stickney Crater’s central hub. Solar energy was Phobos’ main source of power, although wind turbines and geothermal energy plants on the Martian surface were also supplying power to Phobos along part of its orbital path.

Phobos’ controlled population was a strange diversity of science engineers, elite military personnel and cream-of-the-crop penal workers who possessed certain skills that proved quite useful to expensive scientific and military ventures. Because of the wide diversity of the populace, a caste system had emerged over the colony’s short history comprised of civilian intellegencia, military jar-heads and penal slave-workers.

Chief energy engineer, Dr. Jason Scott, sat in his small AGT3 aeroglider transporter within the silo of minor-launching-bay 6D while running through the final items on his checklist before his scheduled launch to the Martian surface. His tools and standard-issue survival equipment lay neatly stacked and tied down in the small storage compartment behind the pilot seat.

The little aeroglider was old and a little banged-up in appearance, but he knew it would safely carry him to the surface and back. The one-seated military craft was often picked by civilian personnel who did not possess the necessary flight skills to operate larger, more complicated space vehicles.

He typed in his last entry of routine checks on the craft’s old-fashioned computer terminal and relayed the results to the control center. Within moments, he received final clearance for launch and settled himself comfortably back into the form-fitted pilot’s seat.

Jason stared out for a moment at the circular pattern of rotating stars still visible beyond the wide rim of the moon crater. Phobos’ manipulated spiral orbit, which gave the little moon its false gravity, caused the phenomena. The stars were rapidly fading against the onslaught of the new morning’s advancing pink light.

After typing in the final auto-pilot sequence on the cockpit’s worn keypad, he proceeded to launch his little aeroglider. The round anti-gravity pad of his launching silo silently reversed its polarity and quickly repelled the AGT3 out beyond the moon’s rim. The initial 2.5G thrust pushed Jason deep into the protective padding of his pilot seat until the last throes of the receding moon’s gravity and air turbulence through the thin Martian upper-atmosphere dissipated.

Able to move freely again because of near- weightlessness, Jason sat comfortably as the on-board computer initiated further auto-pilot instructions to his aeroglider. He could still sense the weak drag of the craft’s backward deceleration from the orbital speed of Phobos, and then watched as the nose of his AGT3 dipped downward toward the rust-colored surface of Mars.

His chosen landing site north of Valles Marineris was still semi-covered with the long shadows of the early morning. His launch at surface-dawn would give him the benefit of a full day of sunlight to inspect a problem he had pin-pointed in one of the wind-turbine sectors.

He watched the desolate beauty of the Martian “Great Rift Valley” rush up at him until the AGT3’s long glider wings were expelled slowly from the bullet-shaped fuselage and unfolded with a series of mechanical groans.

The AGT3 began to respond quickly, leveling itself out into a slow circling descent while the computer took wind and air disturbance measurements. He squinted against the glare of the bright sunlight as his aeroglider brought the cockpit directly back into the sun’s rays on a wide turn.

He pulled down the visor on his pressurized space-suit and watched as wisps of very fine dust streamed over the long wingtips of his aeroglider. A great dust storm, visible far to the east, would soon sweep over his target area in a matter of days. For the moment though, the silence and serenity of being alone on a mission to the surface of Mars felt very exhilarating to him.

His thoughts wandered randomly from upcoming power-grid checks to his family back home in Southern California. Then he remembered Angela. The unpleasant termination of their relationship five years before at the University of California at Berkeley still bothered him occasionally when he was completely alone.

He wondered how she was faring with her political-activist obsessions which had been the root cause of their demise. They had met during an energy conference in college and had carried on a long four-year relationship despite their many varied interests.

When he had gotten the opportunity-of-a-lifetime to travel to the Netherlands to study wind-turbine energy, Angela had brushed him off without explanation or warning and had never answered his many attempts to contact her. He loved his ensuing travel and work in Europe, but he had never quite gotten over her absence in his life.

Sunlight gleamed off a long line of towering wind turbines ahead of him, bringing his attention back to the present. Each of the 110-meter-high turbines towered above the boulder-strewn surface of the desolate plain below. Far to the north-east, he could make out the sudden rise of the younger volcanic plain called the Chryse Region.

He took control of the craft from the auto-pilot and skillfully lined the nose of the AGT3 on a west-to-east path parallel to the turbine power-line. The wind turbines had been constructed on the surface along the orbital path of Phobos in order to make power transfers as easy as possible.

The wind-turbine power-line stretched some 500-kilometers from the Tharsis Bulge all the way to the northward-turning rifts of Valles Marinis. The geothermal energy stations were located along the western end of the turbine line, near the volcano-populated area of the Tharsis Bulge.

A road/runway had been scraped clean of the surface’s ever-present regolith-like debris along the northern side of the turbine line, and Jason effortlessly landed the AGT3 softly on the path and rolled to a stop in a cloud of fine red dust. He retracted the glider’s long wings noisily into the fuselage and activated the solar-powered batteries on board. The AGT3 could now be used to transport him by land along the road to each of the wind-turbine towers on his checklist.

After radioing Navajo Space Port that he had landed safely, he turned the transporter around and traveled westward two kilometers to wind-turbine tower Juliet-12. The tower had not been functioning over the past two weeks, and Jason wanted to check its control center himself to find the problem. He could see that the tower’s gigantic propeller was motionless long before he arrived at his destination.

Tower Juliet-12 was the twelfth of thirty wind-turbines in the Juliet Sector of the power line. Each sector was alphabetically named starting with Sector Alpha and ending with Sector Nancy. The entire power-line was composed of fourteen sectors and 420 towers.

Each sector contained two anti-gravity launching silos that could be used to send his AGT3 transporter back to Phobos. His craft was outfitted with a small anti-gravity propulsion generator which would allow him to easily maneuver the AGT3 behind the passing second-orbit of Phobos in order to land back within the Navajo Space Port.

Jason surveyed the tower from his vantage point on the ground but could find no visible sign of failure. He turned his craft and steered it between the four monstrous pillar-like legs that held the tower steady even in Mars’ unbelievably strong sand storms. A small elevator-hanger was located directly under each of the towers control centers.

He opened the outer section of Juliet-12’s hanger bay by entering its access code into his computer. He then drove his AGT3 into the bay and activated the hangar’s elevator to take him up under the tower’s control center to its pressurized main entrance.

The solar-powered elevator slowly lifted the AGT3 up under the tower’s belly. Jason remotely opened the control center’s bay door above and allowed the hangar’s elevator to take his craft up into the main entrance. The elevator stopped with a jolt, and then he closed the outer door and began to pressurize the bay so he would be able to temporarily leave the AGT3.

Once the bay’s green light came on, he opened the craft’s cockpit and climbed out. A metal stairwell led up to the tower’s robot-controlled brain center. He took off his helmet after running a check on the air supply within the tower and curiously climbed the stairwell while looking for anything out of the ordinary.

He could make out the form of the tower’s small mobile robot as it sat motionless in front of the tower’s computerized control panel. One of it’s four extendable arms was locked in a frozen position as if it had been shutdown in mid-stride. Upon closer inspection, Jason discovered that the robot’s power supply coupling was disconnected.

He rescrewed the robot’s power-supply coupling snuggly into place and then scratched his head. The robot’s solar batteries were also dead-as-a-door-nail. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of the situation, so he began a systematic search of the control room to see if he could find anything else unusual.

Much to his surprise, he found that the tower’s entire emergency cache of oxygen and food was gone. The most distressing discovery though, was the stunning fact that the turbine’s two huge generators were missing. Jason was forced to conclude that the evidence pointed to nothing short of theft or sabotage. He was completely intrigued by the discovery.

“Who would do such a thing...and why?” he asked himself in the quiet of the control tower.

Whoever had stolen the equipment, their efforts would be for nothing. There was no damage to speak of, nor was the problem of replacing the missing turbine generators a particularly difficult one for a military aero-copter. Jason could only imagine that whoever the perpetrators were, they had not necessarily acted out of some dire purpose, but rather out of necessity or even desperation.

He began to investigate the plain below him through the control center’s cameras to see if he could discover any evidence of surface-vehicle activity near the power line. Sure enough, a trail of two APTV’s, all-purpose-terrain vehicles, could be clearly seen leading off to the north. Then again, perhaps that was what they had wanted him to think.

There was nowhere to escape satelite detection in the northern volcanic plains, but to the south and east were thousands of hiding places in the deep trenches of Valles Marinis. He had heard rediculous rumors of banished rebel colonists living under the surface of Mars, but he had never seen any real proof which ever documented their existence. He wondered who the rebels might be, where they had come from, and what they hoped to accomplish by living in isolation under a hostile planet.

Something he knew for sure was, they required air, food and power to survive. The fact that they had taken those items from Juliet-12 could only mean that they were experiencing some difficulty supplying those needs from their own secret under-ground facilities.

Jason returned to the AGT3 and logged a report of his findings, as well as an order requisition to replace the turbine’s two big generators. The sheer size of those generators, despite Mars’ one-third Earth gravity, would have required a large, well-experienced team to detach and remove from the tall tower. He wondered how they managed to gain entrance to the control center without the proper access code.

Leaving the sabotaged tower behind him, he made the rest of his lengthy routine checks within the sector. The day was growing short by the time he returned to the vacinity of Juliet-12 and stared long and hard at the APTV tracks that led off to the north. They were the only evidence left by the rebels, and the tracks would soon be blown away by the relentless sand storms of the Martian Spring which soon overtake the area.

He drove to the nearest Juliet Sector launching tower and entered the control center to wait out the remaining Martian-hour of time left before his return launch to Phobos. Instead of a wind turbine attached to the control center, a launching silo had been inserted in its place. The moon was on its second revolution since dropping him off and would be passing overhead within the hour.

He thought of Angela again. She was as brilliant as she was beautiful, and he felt bitter disappointment that she had not pursued her first-love as an energy engineer like himself. He had returned to Southern California after his training in the Netherlands, but she had mysteriously dropped off the face of the Earth.

For some reason, he recalled their vacation trip to Acapulco, Mexico. They had made love on a deserted white-sand beach at night under the Moon and stars while the warm Gulf wind tickled their bare skin. His heart still ached at his vivid memories of her.

“Angie...what the hell happened to you?” he whispered quitely to himself.

A loud beep from his AGT3’s radar screen startled him terribly. While his heart raced, Jason watched as the hurtling radar-blip representing Phobos raced across the screen toward his location. Hurrying to make the final launch sequence entries, he fumbled nervously while muttering under his breath. Then the silo suddenly launched him upward from the 110-meter-high tower at a force of 3.5G.

“Damn her anyway,” he muttered again while trying to ease the awkward position he had been caught in during the moment of launch.

The auto-pilot kicked in the anti-gravity generator and his craft rocketed steadily up through the hazy atmosphere. Soon after, the glider’s wings extended themselves in order to give the AGT3 mobility to turn. He watched as the computer turned the aeroglider westward and climbed toward an altitude of 9380 kilometers.

He sucked in air and shook his head as he caught sight of the rear-view camera. Phobos spiraled in from behind and overtook the speed of his tiny craft. Riveted by the stunning size of the 28-mile-long moon, he unconsciously ducked within his cockpit as the moon slowly passed overhead like a giant spaceship.

Jason felt the gravitational tug of the moon lift his AGT3 closer toward it while pockets of air turbulence and water-vapor outgassing from the Sun-exposed moon buffeted the wings and fuselage of his craft. The spinning moon was a dirty metallic-gray in color and was pock-marked with numerous impact craters and long grooves that were most likely the result of the collision which had caused Stickney Crater.

He curiously watched some of the grooves rotate out of sight, thinking that they looked like snow-ball-trails down a hill-side. He was so close to the surface that he could easily make out lines of the solar-panel stations running across the moon surface like a gigantic spider-web.

Jason strained his ears as he became conscious of an audible warble of sound coming from the moon which changed in pitch as it finished passing him. He thought it sounded something like a train horn with a high pitch as it approached, but then changed to a low pitch after it passed by.

He could at last see the eight-mile-wide Stickney Crater filling the front view from his cockpit as the auto-pilot brought his AGT3 in behind the moon and reversed his anti-gravity propulsion to attract itself to the Navajo Space Station’s gravitational homing-beam.

The computer linked itself with the control tower and effortlessly brought the aeroglider in on a standard approach pattern with permission to dock in minor-landing-bay 7B. Jason watched the spaceport complex lights rushing up at him until his craft leveled itself out horizontally in order to land upon the strobe-lighted circular landing pad below.

The AGT3 landed so softly he barely even felt it touch the ground. The landing-pad soon began to descend into its silo while the bay-door closed overhead to form a dome on top of the silo. The bay was then quickly pressurized and a work crew appeared to attend to the aeroglider.

Releasing the cockpit hatch, Jason removed his helmet and climbed out to walk toward the exit ramp that would take him down to the under-ground railway. The electrically-powered rail-transporter would take him back to the Mount Olympus Complex, where he could catch another shuttle down to his quarters within the inner-moon metropolis of Globus.

He had a lot to think about from his trip to the Martain surface. A large waiting line of first-shift personnel just getting off work detail were already ahead of him. They were a mixed-crowd, and the individual groups gathered among themselves while talking or complaining of the shift’s duties and events.

Jason knew almost all of the civilians in the crowd but he rode in silence after finally catching an outbound transporter to the Mount Olympus Complex. All he could think about was initiating increased satellite reconnaissance of his wind turbines, and then tracking down a unused spectrometer terminal so he could begin investigating some of the geographical areas south of Sector Juliet.

He did not see the two robotical engineers who watched him carefully as he sat in deep thought. They followed him through the crowd afer he exited the surface-bound subway and picked a near packed sub-surface railway that would take him down into the moon’s depth’s to Globus.

The Trojan War - Part 2

“Men are so quick to blame the gods:
They say that we devise their misery.
but they themselves--in their depravity--
design grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.”
From “The Odyssey of Homer”

The secret submartian settlement of Troy was located deep within the vast cavern networks under Valles Marineris. The original scientific outpost from which Troy had blossomed could trace its 30-year history back to the pre-construction period of the ENC-funded power-lines built between the Tharsis Bulge and Xanthe Terra.

Starting in the year AD 2054, ENC military-supervised work-details were shipped to the surface of Mars to construct the much-required solar, geothermal and wind-turbine power-lines needed to support Phobos’ huge energy needs. ENC’s future economic plans were to sell Martian energy reserves via microwave-beams back to Luna and Earth.

The cheap labor force was comprised solely of exiled political prisoners from Earth who were forever banished from their home planet of Terra. The unfortunate multitude of workers were then heavily used as slave-labor during the deadly four-year construction period.

The penal-workers had not required much military security, since the surface temperatures dropped as low as minus 140-degrees-Celsius. Escape from the ENC labor camps only meant the agony of certain death without crucial supplies of air, food and shelter from the relentless elements of frigid cold and radiation from space.

However, during the tedious and life-costly construction period, a small group of hand-picked prisoners managed a successful escape, helped from-afar by an elite group of Phobos’ intelligencia population who were sickened by the hardship and death-rate of the penal population.

The Phobos-based group of civilian sympathizers took on the dangerous responsibility of transporting critical food rations and air-supplies to the escaped prisoners. No military search parties were sent out after the missing run-aways because their guards simply wrote them off as more victims of “death by accidental exposure.” Mortal accidents occurred daily in the labor camps, so no one investigated the loss of a mere dozen laborers.

The same secret group of diverse scientists and engineers, who had nick-named themselves the “Athenian Senate,” had used a series of submartian caverns deep under the treacherous expanses of Valles Marineris for experimental purposes. They had explored the caverns after their discovery by a resident seismologist, searching for evidence of microbe organisms in the Martian crust.

After disappointing results, the scientists had abandoned their outpost under Mars which they had code-named Troy. It remained completely unknown by their hated military counterparts. They left the bare-bones outpost amply supplied with life-support shelters powered by geothermal generators for future experiments.

The dark submartian caverns had been formed by massive underground rivers as a result of the wide-spread volcanic eruptions from the Tharsis Bulge. The tremendous heat generated from Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System, along with its smaller companions, had melted great areas of sub-surface permafrost and channeled the water runoffs into Valles Marineris.

The mammoth, water-canal valleys were 500-times more spectacular than the Grand Canyon in Arizona, which had been similarly formed by the melting glaciers of the Earth’s last Ice Age. The 1200-mile-long rupture in the Martian crust bore testimony to the powerful seismic-activity associated with the formation of the Tharsis Bulge.

The cavernous complexes under Valles Marineris were truly beautiful, but unfortunately they become just another prison for the escaped penal workers and their Martian-born children. The Trojans were forced to live out an ironic “second exile” in order to avoid the constant satellite surveillance from both of the Martian moons above.

Over the passage of thirty years, the hidden population of Troy had grown too large from additional escapes, natural births and recruited civilian advisers to continue to support a robust population of 1000 citizens. New underground outposts, which the Trojans built themselves, became necessary to alleviate the heavy burdens which taxed their life-support systems.

The Trojans became particularly adept at salvaging abandoned ENC vehicles and equipment left on the surface during times of construction, which gave them an ample, though old and battered, motor-pool.

Rust on Mars was a terrible problem. Oxidation of exposed iron-based metals quickly rendered cheaper tools and equipment useless for the tasks they had been created for. Nevertheless, the tenacious ingenuity of the Trojans allowed them to excel in modifying unwanted ENC junk into usable equipment again.

The fine micro-dust regolith which plagued ENC surface outposts was far less of a problem within the sealed cavern complexes of the underground city. As time went by though, the Trojans learned by trial-and-error how to protect their rust-camouflaged transports and equipment during above-ground salvage operations.

Great seasonal sand-storms within the towering valley rims of Valles Marineris, as well as its surrounding plains, even gave them the added protection they needed to maneuver by instrumentation over long distances above ground.

The construction-savvy Trojans were taught how to mine metals from under the surface, and then how to build machine lathes with which to make replacement parts for their broken equipment. No one in Troy went a day without working for there were even jobs for little children who could walk.

On Phobos, the Athenian Senate’s original members passed on their legacy of support and protection to new counterparts taking over duties within the civilian-operated Lewis One Biosphere and the Mount Olympus Complex.

Dr. Lisa Holloway was the most recent Senate Leader of the secret society and its hidden agenda. Lisa’s official title was Chief of Operations over the Lewis One Biosphere, having majored and excelled in botany and horticulture at the University of Texas A&M. She earned wide renown for her work in the Kodak Biospheres of the Alaskan wilderness.

Lisa was a 52-year-old widow with no living family. Her husband, John, and her only son, Codie, had died of the return of the Black Plague which decimated the North American populace just after the turn of the century. She was a bit stocky for her 5’4” frame, but she was not unattractive by any stretch of the imagination.

She usually kept her black-gray hair short-cropped out of necessity like most of the biosphere women. Occasionally though, when the impulse hit, she grew it out longer and kept it in a braided bun on the back of her head.

She had often adopted Trojan children and took care of their educational needs. She had, on occasion, even brought stowaways to the biosphere to train them in agricultural advancements, sending them home to Troy to lead new operations and Lewis One-funded experiments.

Over her seven-year tenure, Lisa Holloway had also personally recruited young students from universities on Earth who were politically sympathetic and eager to take part in both her biosphere and the Trojan experiments under Mars. She felt both elements would be crucial to the success of impending developments to terraform the planet.

Dr. Angeline Davies was just one of her recruited “Earther Advisors” now living with the exiles in Troy. The brilliant 29-year-old woman had made a name for herself at the University of California at Berkeley as an energy engineer, but her diversity of knowledge in other areas had made her a well-sought-after recruit long before her graduation.

Angeline’s last five years living in Troy had been filled with the almost daily emergencies associated with providing enough geothermal energy to support so large an outpost. Her uncanny genius had been particularly evident to Lisa Holloway during the construction of a soil-convergence plant which was used to break down Martian soil for valuable elements.

A wealth of much-needed elements such as water, oxygen and nitrogen were just waiting to be extracted from the deep permafrost under the surface of Mars. The trapped nitrogen was vital to the success of Troy’s growing number of experimental underground biospheres. To Lisa’s relief, Angeline’s new plant had alleviated the tremendous burden upon LOB to provide for both populations.

Lisa was pondering a recent problem that had come to her attention concerning a promising young engineer from the science wing by the name of Jason Scott. The meticulous engineer’s findings from his last run to the surface had produced a disturbing report.

Her last staff meeting with Navajo’s commanding officer, Major Keven Blanchard, and Globus Mayor Paul Diamond had been a bristling 30-minutes filled with speculative warnings about the possibility of dangerous rebel forces secretly camped on the Martian surface.

The Mayor was particularly outspoken about the stolen wind turbine generators, which he believed proved the existence of an organized militia ready to sabotage ENC’s long-range plans to terraform Mars. Little did he suspect that the generators were desperately needed to repair Troy’s atmospheric-recycling plant.

Lisa had offered no hint of knowledge concerning her fledgling community, but her fears for their future safety now dominated her thinking. If the military stepped-up any search operations in the Valles Marineris region, the entire hidden population of Troy might be discovered.

She cringed to think of what Major Kevin Blanchard’s jar-heads might do if they found any evidence of the hidden Trojan outpost. No doubt, its citizens might all be labeled as anti-government forces funded by rebellious Earth-countries set to undermine ENC’s political and economic rule of Mars. Their capture might end in re-enslavement, or even worse, military execution.

Lisa formulated a hasty plan of action to warn her people under the surface of impending satellite scrutiny, which would also mean spectrometer scans of the entire Martian power line and its surrounding territories. She nervously suspected that pin-pointed spectrometer readings might expose the emitting heat and power-output of the Trojan caverns.

A meeting with the members of the Athenian Senate was set for 19:00 hours that evening. She would lay the entire problem out before the rest of the senate members and ask for advice. Twenty heads were better than one, and she hoped someone might have a suggestion or two which might relieve some of the horrible danger they all faced.

She wondered how the other members of the senate would take the startling news. For thirty years the senate had feared the possible day of discovery. If they became involved in the allegations, they all might suffer exile and penal convictions which would ruin years of scientific achievement, to say nothing of the remaining years of their lives.

Her watchdog informers had followed Jason Scott upon his return to Phobos. He was already working on his own to investigate his findings, having locked himself away within the control room of a satellite array within the Mount Olympus Complex.

She wondered just what kind of man Jason Scott was, as she poured over his file on her computer console. One fact kept screaming out at her from the three-dimensional screen. Jason Scott had graduated from the same university as Angeline Davies, and he had attended classes the same four years she had been enrolled.

Jason Scott looked at the spectrometer readings he had managed to run during Phobos’ last orbit above Valles Marineris. He was a bit disappointed with the results. The great sand storm on the surface had finally enveloped the entire area in a hazy red cloud of 250-mph driven micro-dust. Phobos had passed over the area so quickly that none of the sub-surface readings he had pin-pointed were of much use.

He decided to set the robotic-arrays on Deimos to scan the same areas on its next pass over the area. The smaller moon’s higher and slower orbit would give its spectrometers a much better opportunity of giving him the evidence he was looking for.

He had been up for over 18 hours, and his eyes wee starting to burn with irritation. As he scooted his wheeled-chair over to another console, he saw Dr. Lisa Holloway approaching his array control room on the security camera.

Scott thought it odd that his boss would seek him out during third-shift hours, and he wondered what could be so important that she had to personally talk to him herself. He buzzed her in the security door and waited for her to climb the stairs to the pill-box-shaped control room that over-looked the south-sector arrays. She nodded to him as she entered and walked over behind his back while he entered commands for the Deimos control-center.

He felt her place a hand on his shoulder and saw her reflection on the console screen as she studied his new spectrometer requests. She looked a bit tense, even worried, he thought as he continued to work without interruption.

“Hi Scott. Have you made any progress yet on your spectrometer readings?’ she asked in her casual but authoritative manner.

“No. The damn storm on the surface is the worst I’ve ever seen. This spring seems to be one of the most intense storms on record,” he answered as politely and business-like as he could muster.

“It’s a bad one all right,” Lisa answered while wandering over to his other terminal to scan the readouts still up on the console.

“So, now you are bringing in the high artillery?” she asked with a hint of pensiveness in her voice.

“Yes. But it will be another 14-hours before the Deimos arrays will be positioned correctly in orbit to carry out my requests,” he answered while studying her body language.

“I’d like to talk to you in my office after sunrise. There are a few questions I want to cover concerning your latest surface mission,” she stated while lifting her aristocratic chin high in the air.

“Very well. I haven’t slept for a long time. I’d like to get some shut-eye so I can be ready to work some more on this situation. I want to get to the bottom of those missing generators and find out who is responsible.

“Alright, come see me about 09:00 hours. My door will be open,” she said while giving him a wink and turning to leave.

He watched her as she slowly walked toward the stairs and came to a halt as if pondering some question she had forgotten. She turned and looked at him for a moment, but then waved good-bye and left. He shook his head as he watched her leave the complex on the security camera.

“Damn. I wonder what the hell all that was about?” he whispered to himself as he made his last entries and prepared to take advantage of the five-hours of sleep she had allotted him before their meeting.

Angeline Davies looked over the power readings of the two new generators she had helped install on Troy’s main atmospheric-recycling plant. The old ailing generator and its backup had suddenly gone down, forcing most of the Trojan populace to lock themselves in their private-home units while an emergency team was sent to the surface to find replacements.

Angeline had tagged along with the surface crew to the Juliet Sector of the wind-turbine power line. She had accessed the control room of one of the towers through Lisa Holloway’s emergency com-link on Phobos. It took them days to disconnect the two huge generators from their gyro-synchronous propeller mechanisms and lower them to the surface for transport back to Troy.

During their stay, they ran dangerously low on air and food and were forced to re-supply themselves with Juliet-12’s emergency rations. They had planned to use the borrowed generators only long enough to repair their own ailing units and return them, but their desperate actions had been discovered too quickly.

Angeline had disconnected the control-room robot’s power supply as a stall tactic for the robot would have immediately exposed them. She had hoped that the approaching seasonal sandstorm would allow her returning repair crews to reach the tower during the robot’s black-out period. It had just been bad luck that someone very clever and observant on Phobos had discovered her hastily-made plan.

When they left the tower, they retraced the tracks of their one GEM, giant-earth-mover, transport off to the north. A number of access tunnels had been laser-cut over time through the gray-black volcanic northern plains to give the Trojans easier mobilized access to the surface. The deadly steep trenches of Valles Marineris were just too treacherous for huge transports to descend.

The tower’s 30-year-old generators were still in tip-top running order, thanks to the efficiency of Phobos’ unlimited resources. Lisa Holloway had chewed her out, though, for her decision to borrow them. Old Iron-Sides, as the Trojans lovingly referred to her, pitched-a-fit that she had not been included in the process.

The huge flood-worn cavern in which the atmospheric-recycling plant had been built was dimly-lit by reflected light from computerized sky-lights. The tiny, mirrored port-holes were cut at angles through the radiation- protective crust overhead. The sky lights had saved untold energy costs during daylight hours.

The plant itself resembled the hub of a titanic spider web. Octopus-like arms of atmospheric conduits ran in and out of the centrally located complex to all its adjoining caverns. The conduits were all fully expanded again as the generators pumped recycled air to the stranded city populace.

Angeline’s nose suddenly itched, and she squinched it around like a rabbit trying to relieve the facial annoyance which was inaccessible under her pressurized helmet.

Her actions only tended to agitate the sensitive nerve endings within her nostrils, and she felt a sneeze rising up like a geyser within her. She took in a big gulp of air and held her breath, bracing herself against the explosive inner force she would have to deaden within her lungs and sinuses.

The first sneeze vaulted uncontrollably through her entire body, causing her to spastically jerk her head downward. Somehow she managed to control it from expelling out of either her mouth or nose while she heard herself do a little muffled whimper.

She stood perfectly still and exhaled slowly while making a long sigh. She anticipated another sneeze, and sure enough, it began to well up within her all over again. She wondered why the damn things always came in pairs, as she braced herself again for a second barrage.

It came and went as quickly as the first, but this time the hearing in her right ear plugged as if too much ear-wax was in the way. She swallowed hard a few times while adjusting the air pressure in her helmet, and gradually her hearing returned to normal.

The first thing Angeline heard through her headset was laughter from the group of workers assisting her. She looked up at them and rolled her eyes in disgust. All three had gleaming smiles of anticipation as they inspected her face shield. To her relief, it was perfectly clean and clear.

She had experienced trouble before with random bits of micro-dust and her allergy-prone nasal defenses. Once, she had sneezed so much that she had to be taken back to the main shelters because her entire face-plate clouded over. She had never lived that embarrassing little episode down, and she often bore the brunt of jokes at their social gatherings.

“You OK, Angeline?” asked Tom Fletcher, her top mechanical assistant. The old man was getting a little slower for his 65-years, but his wit and intellect were just as sharp as ever.

Tom had played practical jokes on her for weeks after her first allergy incident. He had stuffed her helmet full of allergy medicines and hankerchiefs at her first staff meeting, and all but publically humiliated her in front of the entire Trojan staff when she retrieved her pressure suit to leave.

“Yes, Tom,” she spat sarcastically back at him while the rest of the group chuckled all over again. When Angeline recovered her poise and concentration, she finished inspecting the humming generators output readings.

“The new generators seem to be holding up quite well. I think the danger is finally past, thank God. We should probably keep a close watch on these for a while though,” she said while retrieving all her tools.

“I’ll stay a few hours and make sure they continue to run smoothly. If anything changes, I’ll give you a holler,” offered Patricia Holmes, the oldest of the native-born Trojan offspring.

Pat’s penal parents were both Brits, but her accent leaned more toward the American tones of Lisa Holloway’s private English classes. She was 28-years old and was rather tall and lanky even in her pressure suit.

“Do you mind if I stay along with you?” asked 27-year-old Adriano Marcuz, who was Pat’s team partner and not-so-secret admirer. His father was Italian, but his mother was Dutch.

“Suit yourself,” she shrugged with fained indifference.

“Already am,” he retorted with a grin while styling his pressure suit for her.

“Ha, Ha,” Pat replied while eyeing him shrewdly.

“But if you’re going to stay here with me, mister, you’re going to have to work!”

Angeline and Tom quietly made there way toward one of the two small land cruisers parked near the complex. They chuckled to themselves as they looked back to see how the two love-birds were doing.

Angeline was secretly grateful for them. They had saved her, for the moment, from any more embarrassment from Tom, as they had managed to take the attention off of her uncontrollable sneezes.

Angeline drove the battery-powered cruiser through the cavern entrance that would take them back to the main residential area of Troy. They rode in silence, watching the expanded conduit fluttering overhead within its couplings in the glare of the cruiser’s headlights.

The couplings were metrically-marked, and served as underground map finders and directional signs. she pondered what road she had irreversibly taken the Trojans down by her decision to steal the wind turbine generators. Sure, the moment of emergency had been met, but she wondered if a new, reaterdanger now lurked unnavoidably around the next corner.

Jason Scott peeked into the office of Lisa Holloway. The spacious curved-room gave a birds-eye-view of the large forest nursery below, which was just one of many sections under the huge protective dome which covered the six-kilometer surface of the Lewis One Biosphere complex.

The office was empty and he was a little early, so he invited himself in and watched through the observatory windows as workers below tended to the forest of conifer trees which were the main oxygen producers for the entire Stickney Crater colony.

Some of the workers were attending to soil nutrient levels, while others trimmed dead branches for future soil production. Still others collected cones, whose seeds would be saved to forest the Martian surface during future phases of the ongoing terraforming project.

Supervisors took carbon dioxide and oxygen levels from the biosphere’s atmosphere, extracting some of the trees oxygen output and regulating the carbon dioxide input from Globus, Mount Olympus and Navajo.

To the right of the conifer forest, grew great fields of cabbage and lettuce. Besides also producing oxygen, the leafy plants provided the human and animal population with vast supplies of food.

To the left, he could see the orchards which produced all the fruit and nut food crops. Orchard seeds were also being collected and stored for future surface plantings as well. Different varieties of birds and insects inhabited the biosphere’s expanse, perfectly balancing the delicate space-garden’s ecosystem which would one day be carbon-copied on the martian surface below.

The forest blocked his view to the north, but he knew all the grain fields grew in abundance there. The entire complex was criss-crossed with roads and paths, park benches and picnic tables. The LOB Park, as the colonists referred to it, was the favorite place for all to come and relax while enjoying an Earth-like environment during leisure times.

The under-ground areas of the biosphere were being utilized for fish farms, mushroom, bean-sprout and water-chestnut nurseries. The main sewage plant was also located beneath the surface, recycling valuable water supplies and creating new soil and fertilizers.

Jason turned and examined the walls of Lisa Holloway’s office. She had three-dimensional photographs of her Austin, Texas hometown and her deceased family members over her desk. A variety of exotic plants and aquariums decorated the walls, which left little room for much furniture.

He walked over to her desk and picked a bright red apple out of a large fruit basket and began to eat it. The Macintosh apple was firm, juicy and sweet, and he sat down in the visitor’s chair in front of her desk to wait for their appointment.

Lisa strolled in momentarily, with her hands and smock soiled from morning chores in a vegetable garden somewhere.

“Good morning, Jason,” she said politely while removing her smock and moving to wash her hands in a small sink.

He finished eating the apple, core and all, licking his fingers while waiting for her to come and sit down. She studied him from across the room while drying her hands and then slowly moved to her comfortable chair behind her desk.

“I’m glad you could come and see me this morning. Did you sleep well,” she asked pleasantly while making small- talk before going directly into the reason she had wanted to talk to him.

“I got five hours. I’m still tired, but I think it should last me for a while. I have a lot of work to do, still,” he said without smiling.

She studied him carefully and nodded. He seemed a bit irritated at her request for a meeting, so she felt reluctant to share too much of the truth of the situation with him.

He seemed somewhat cold and impersonal to her. He was a man who lived entirely for his work. He had no friends or relationships to speak of, although there were a number of young women interested in him.

“I asked you here this morning to talk to you about using the Mount Olympus Arrays without permission. I can’t have anyone and everyone locking themselves in control rooms during non-work hours. Such action will be a detriment to your work duties and to those who must work with you.

From now on, you must properly make your requests to me personally. I don’t like loose-cannons that work on little projects alone. You were invited to Phobos because you exhibited excellent team-player traits. Remember the habits which got you here in the first place, and get with the program. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Scott?” she said in her best lecturing voice.

“Yes, MZZZ Holloway, my mizzztake,” he replied while his face flushed red. She was trying to stop him from getting to the bottom of the missing generators. He could not understand what her part in the scheme was, but it really pissed him off that she was standing in his way.

Lisa sighed deeply and tried to put herself in his position. She was being unfair to him, but she had no other choice at the moment. He obviously could not be trusted with the whole truth of what he had uncovered.

“I can see you’re upset. I think you’ve been working too hard, Mr. Scott. I want you to take the next 36-hours off. Go sleep, walk in the park, visit some friends, but do not work on this little obsession of yours. That’s an order. This meeting is over.”

Jason sat in his chair while looking indignantly into Lisa’s hard-set eyes. He started to say something, but bit his tongue and slowly walked out. He had 36-hours of free time and she had relieved him of duties. He decided it was time to take a walk on the surface of Mars.

The Trojan War - Part 3

“For now began Night,
with her sullen wing,
to double shade the desert”
From “Paradise Regained”
by John Milton

The electricity of anticipation ran like wild-fire throughout the entire Phobos-based colony shortly after the announcement came that the long over-due Flying Dutchman was about to dock at the Navajo Space Port.

The one-of-a-kind space galleon, high-lighted by its seven-tiered solar-wind sails, resembled more of a flying circus than a gold mine. Still, it was by-far the colonist’s favorite port-of-call vessel because of it’s unusual crew, and it’s unparalleled construction, and it’s unequaled merchandise, and it’s unbeatable entertainment.

Everyone watched in awe as the Flying Dutchman’s spectacular solar-sails had to be retracted before the galleon could enter gravitational orbit with Phobos. The great ship then had to be tethered on stabilized gravitational-beams emitted from the Navajo Space Port because of the atmospheric turbulence behind the Martian moon.

Only the front-half of the ship’s spherical hull could be seen by the Phobos colonists, but upon that golden, 10-kilometer-in-diameter hull was laser-etched the greatest collection of laser-art ever created.

The sheer size and beauty of the eye-boggling art-work had helped create the Flying Dutchman’s extraordinary legacy. Each of the panoramic scenes ran for thousands of meters in length and depicted famous views from a variety of Earth’s classical myths and epics. Every last laser-etch had been the work of the galleon’s own talented crew members.

The select crew of the Flying Dutchman was comprised mostly of handicapped-people--who were far from handicapped in the weightlessness of space. Even their quadriplegics had been neurally-implanted with delicate limb-enhancers.

When first attempted, the neural implants had been lethargic at-best in the Earth’s heavy gravity. But far beyond the confines of their former prison world, the implants gave their users total freedom of movement at zero-gravity. Indeed, the unchained citizens of the Flying Dutchman literally soared about their ship with the care-free abiliteis of the Greek gods and heroes depicted on their vessel.

The crew made the majority of their living through the magnificent trading post contained within the spacious grape-fruit-sectioned bays of their vessel. Provided within each of the twelve sections, were a number of live entertainment and recreation facilities, weightless-sports facilities, music & arts shops, old libraries full of rare magazines and books, and just about anything else one could imagine related with rest and relaxation.

The owner and proprietor of the Flying Dutchman was Captain Grady O’Toole. The old man was a curious cross between a despicable pirate and a lovable foreign diplomat. To say that he was only a colorful personality would have been a grave injustice.

Captain O’Toole was a retired military commando who had been severely crippled during the short, but violent, Caribbean War in the year 2031. After the economic decline of the USA, the Central American City States, which bordered the Gulf of Mexico, banded together to compete with the Euro-Nation Conglomerate’s economic strangle-hold on the West. CACS hoped to compete with ENC by monopolizing on the Panama Canal’s shipping lanes to the Pacific.

The ENC became angered by the unreasonably high Caribbean tariffs which were placed upon their huge merchant hover-crafts. The ENC finally declared war and forcefully took control of the enlarged canal, which was the Western Hemisphere’s key geographical location. The ENC’s unmatched military hover-craft superiority allowed their armies to ride on cushions of air over both land and sea.

ENC’s combined naval might simultaneously stormed ashore in Miami, New Orleans, Havana, San Juan, Panama City, and all the rest of the CACS capitals in the final decisive battle. Though the fighting was intense and costly, the ENC invasion literally crushed the CACS’s political stability and brought to an end any hope of Western economic resurgence.

Captain Grady O’Toole had nearly been killed in the blood-bath over the city of New Orleans and the strategic mouth of the Mississippi River. The hover-craft he commanded took direct hits from old American war-ships guarding the Gulf of Mexico. Most of his crew perished, but the overwhelming maneuverability of the invading ENC armada soon sank the old relics of the prior century’s military might.

Grady lost both legs and an arm in the explosions which demolished his destroyer-class hover-craft. After the war, he suffered from post-war depression and an unwillingness to return to Dublin as an unproductive war-cripple. He felt he would burden his family, so Grady retired from active sevice with full military honors at the age of just twenty-five.

He took up residence in battered Panama City as a merchant hover-craft captain, where he spent the next twenty years drowning himself in alcohol and self-pity. Despite himself, he managed to succeed in everything he touched. When space colonization became popular among the well-to-do merchants, he bought into a business venture for salvaging mining equipment left behind on Apollo Asteroids such as Goleuka, Ida and Castalia.

While in space, he discovered unsuspected peace and purpose. He vowed to return to Earth and recruit veterans like himself, as well as any other physically-handicapped people who dared to reach for the stars and experience the true freedom he had found.

From that moment on, he and his crew of misfits began to dream, engineer and finally build the Flying Dutchman, while laying the “against-the-odds” foundation of achievement which it stood for.

Captain Grady O’Toole had reached yet another challenge at the ripe old age of seventy-eight. At zero-G, he still had the vitality of a young man. He was discovering a pleasant new axiom concerning the possible extended usefulness of the elderly in space.

Most of his original crew had grown old along with him, but he had found many other young volunteers who were willing to learn from their wisdom and knowledge. Those young men and women would ensure that the work which had begun would be passed on to future generations.

Grady remained fiercely loyal to his citizens over the years. He sought out every plausible economic gain for their community’s survival, which had won him the scrupulous buccaneer reputation from those who opposed him. But at the same time, he had earned the endearing title of honorable ambassador from those who supported his ideals.

Jason Scott looked over the endless rows of used mining equipment which were neatly stacked in organized display cases. He found a reasonably priced laser-torch, and asked the attendant hovering nearby to demonstrate it for him. The youth picked up the torch along with a rusty iron bar, and after turning a triple-somersault while rising ten-meters in the air, he sliced the 8-meter-long pole into four even pieces.

The young, black teenager was strapped into an ultra-light-weight mobilizer-harness with full joint-flex capability. At the age of sixteen, Hector Perez was the youngest crew member of the Flying Dutchman. He had broken his neck while diving into a river from a bridge near his home in Havanah, Cuba.

Grady O’Toole had brought the lad back with him from his most recent shuttle-trip to Earth. Hector’s IQ of 212 had already earned him degrees in mechanical, robotical and architectural engineering. Having been a quadripelgic since the age of five, Hector had also developed amazing skills as an artist by painting with his mouth.

His recent transition to full mobilty through the miracles of neural stimulators and leading-edge mobilizer-harness technology had been swift and easy. Hector had already begun incorporating his full range artistic skills in his dorm by painting large murals on the spacious walls.

“It works like a charm,” said Hector matter of-factly while tossing the laser torch back down to Jason Scott.

“Yes, I see,” Jason replied while teetering uneasily on his magnetic boots--which were a requirment for all non-ship personnel in the open bays. Phobos’ citizens were simply not used to the weightless environment of the Flying Dutchman.

“How much?” Jason asked speculatively, while looking over the well-worn paint, scratches and dents that covered the protective housing of the old laser-torch.

Hector rose toward the ceiling momentarily while contacting a negotiations supervisor. He returned in a half-minute with a big smile.

“For this little jewel, Senior, I am asking ten bushels of citrus produce, ten bushels of grain, preferribly wheat, ten bushels of fruit and nuts, and ten bushels of potatoes.

If you don’t want to barter in goods and services, then just pay me 200 Deutch Marks,” quoted Hector without so much as a blink.

“The hell, you say,” commented Jason while running some quick numbers in his head of what his little shopping spree would cost.

“Look, I need six other items today. I’d be willing to pay 1000 Deutch Marks for the whole lot,” offered Jason hopefully. He had never liked bartering.

“That depends on what else you need, Senoir,” replied Hector patiently.

“Alright, for starters, I need a small surface spectrometer with full seismic-scale map capability. Next, I need a good one-man anti-grav suit with three days of extra air supply.”

Then I will need a hand-held satellite compass, a one-million candle-power spotlight, and a mobile microwave trasponder, and a fully sealable, emergency surface tent and heater with 10k-btu output,” listed Jason while watching Hector repeat the items into his microphone.

Within seconds, a group of attendants came with all his gear in tow. They placed all the items in a row on the magnetic-counter in front of him and allowed him to look over his potential merchandise.

Jason clicked on the solar-rechargeable spotlight while keeping its lens face-down on the counter. The little unit was strong enough to sterilize a man with its intense beam, but he might need it during the dark Martian nights.

He made a few quick entries on the satellite compass and then toyed a bit with the surface spectrometer. He was surprised to see the patch-insignia of the “ENC-Gargoyle” stensiled over the breast pocket of the anti-gravity suit. The Gargoyle had been missing for twenty years and was presumed lost somewhere beyond Jupiter. Jason wondered how the Flying Dutchman had come upon the suit, but he said nothing.

“I think this will do nicely. Thank you for your help, he said while paying Hector with ten, dog-eared, 100-Deutch Mark bills.

My pleasure, Senoir Scott. When you finish your trip, think about returning your equipment. I’ll buy all of it back...a little less for the wear, of course,” returned Hector, just a bit too cordially for Jason.

He walked awkwardly in his magnetic boots along behind the attendants as they made their way toward the nearly abandoned Section-9 main aisle. Most of the bustling ship’s business was booming in the lower entertainment sections.

There wouldn’t be much use for the vast supply of savaged mining equipment during this visit, expecially with the spring sand storms raging on the surface below.

Jason wondered if he had made every possible preperation for his secret trip to the surface. He had saved the most suspicious items on his checklist to be aquired from the Flying Dutchman.

If Lisa Holloway were to get wind that he planned to drop to the surface of Mars for the next three days, he might be heading back to Earth about five-years ahead of schedule.

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