“I don’t get it,” Jan said with a grunt. He slammed his booted foot onto the shovel until it scraped past whatever rock he’d hit this time. “Mars was first inhabited by robots.”
Sonny snagged the rag out of his back pocket and wiped his forehead. It left a dirt-streaked path of mud across his bald pate before he tucked the bandana carefully away. He leaned on his own shovel, taking a deep breath of the bubble’s UV-sanitized air that never stopped smelling like hospitals. “So?”
Jan kicked his shovel again, but this time left it stuck in the dirt. “So why’re we doing the hard work? We have borer machines. My secondary on the trip here was manifest master. They broke already, when my crew’s barely here a year? All dozen? A dozen borers, gone missing? Didn’t the first two crews bring any?”
He received shrewd concern in reply. “You just came here from engineering late last week. You know why we’re tunneling?”
“‘Course.” Jan looked away from his partner’s gaze. “Cancer rays. We stay underground, it eases the burden on the bubble. Good habits when the electric’s good enough we don’t need to worry.”
“Mmm.” Sonny sliced through some dirt with the ease of long practice. “Used to do this back on Earth, you know. Gardening. Thought I’d be part of the gardens, selling Mars-grown veggies at the weekly market.”
“All hydroponics now,” Jan mumbled.
“Mostly cared for by ‘bots,” Sonny agreed. “You know what use humans have on Mars?”
Jan waited for the answer in shadowed light flickering with the buzz of fluorescents. It didn’t come.
“First colonizers,” he ventured. “I guess we set things ready for the next crews. Test the path. Might make things seem worth it when Bubble Two’s open and we can talk to some new faces. When’s the next shuttle get here again?”
“Preparing the way,” Sonny said, and smacked his fist on top of the shovel. “Guinea pigs.” His smile grew grotesque. “Canaries in the tunnel, you could say.”
Pushing his shovel away, Jan spun in a dusty circle. “We’re more use dead?”
“As long as the scientists learn from our deaths.” Sonny contemplated the path that was marked out for them, even though it led into darkness. “Thing is, they did use borers for a while. And before that, they built an overland path between Bubbles One and Two overland.”
Jan dropped his shovel. “What?”
“I came with the first crew,” the balding man said. “The very first. Last left, too.” He tilted the blade, carefully letting the loose grains trickle into the container on the floater that held similar discards, piled high with reddish powder and hard-cracked dirt. “We laid track, even. Two lanes, enough for a rover each way.”
The shovel lay abandoned, Jan ignoring Sonny’s outreached finger. “Why’re we bothering then? We didn’t sign up for this.”
“Didn’t we?” Sonny leaned down and picked up Jan’s shovel, pressing it into the man’s unwilling gloves. “We signed up to colonize Mars, whatever that meant would come.”
“I don’t get it.” Jan leaned the shovel against his chest and shoved his hands into his overall pockets. “What happened?”
“Wrath,” Sonny said. “Havoc marked its path, no matter where we laid track. We tried five times. Radiation bursts, dust storms, the commander gone mad and stabbed his second. We stopped after we lost the doctor when he hallucinated he was inside the bubble and detached his helmet.”
Jan swallowed, then tucked his shovel into its nook on the floater and ran a hand through the containerized dirt piles. “That’s horrible. I saw the graves, but no one would talk about what happened. I didn’t want to pry.”
“We tunneled after that,” Sonny continued, as if he hadn’t heard the other man. He clicked his own shovel into place. “Got the basics with the borers, or mostly, but we’re left to clean up the loose debris and set the path for tracks. We’ll leave the rovers topside. A tram gives more protection.”
“Protection?”
Sonny hauled himself into the floater’s seat and flicked the switch three times, then pressed the orange button twice. The floater hummed to life, and the bald man turned to look at Jan.
“Why, from whatever ate the borers, of course.”
***
Inspired by this week’s havoc-filled prompt from Cedar Sanderson and this image. My prompt went to Leigh Kimmel – check it out over at MOTE!
