Name - Michael Shultz

A cold, dark escape pod drifted in space. I wonder what went wrong?

The previous two Mars missions had mysteriously vanished without a trace. Our crew's objective, traveling to Mars aboard the Endurance 3, was to find out why. Volunteers for this third mission were not in short supply. Space travel was still an adventure, and space explorers experienced a special kinship with one another. Our modest crew was made up of the captain, two engineers, a Mars climate specialist, and myself, the weapons and defense specialist. Being a ground pounder from the United Space 1st Marine Corps, I looked forward to taking care of business on Mars. The crew was anxious during the two-month voyage to Mars, always alert in space to expect the unexpected., and even more so in light of the previous disappearances. Reading the latest data-cepts from Moon Station was the crew's main form of entertainment. I powered down to minimum tera-volts to conserve energy and kept my weapons ready for whatever lay ahead.

The ship entered Mars's gravitational field and maneuvered easily through the thin atmosphere. We docked with MEB and found the base eerily quiet. No life forms registered within range of my sensors. We secured the base and set about to restore power. The main power bus came online with just a simple reboot of the system. Upon restoration of station power, we were surprised to find MEB intact and undamaged. Once the environmentals had equalized, MEB seemed just like any other space base, except our crew of five, still in our climate suits, were the only inhabitants. We made our way to Com-Cent to look for clues as to what had happened to the station's normal contingent, as well as the two previous investigative teams.

The command area was fully intact. I found the base logs online and located the most recent videos. It appeared as if everything was fine up to the last entry. It was as if someone, or something, had shut the entire base down in an instant. The captain ordered the engineers to check out the adjoining geo-domes, while I retrieved more historical data from the logs. I traced log traffic back to the arrival of the first "rescue" mission to MEB. The events recorded were almost an exact duplication of the events surrounding the disappearance of the second mission. Everything was going smoothly, than suddenly nothing.

The engineers found nothing unusual in the other geo-domes. At a loss for answers, the captain decided to investigate further afield. In proximity to MEB was a mining operation for unobtainium, a critical power source used on Earth. The captain ordered the team to suit-up and reconnoiter the mining site. Our space ship, the Endurance 3, wasn't equipped with any land vehicles. Not surprisingly, it was a demo transport borrowed from a commercial space freight company, Honeywell Interstellar Haulers. We had to "borrow" it due to the emergency and the lack of other ships to support the mission. It's the old "bread and circus" kind of thing. The politicians, it seems, can never supply the Space Services with the necessary funds to properly outfit for its operations.

The team moved out and in minutes the MEB faded in the distance. We were on the Plains of Nevel, just beyond Gusev, kicking up red dust as we hopped across the surface. I needed to pace myself as the gravity was lighter than both Earth's, and the artificial gravity aboard the Endurance 3, and I could easily outdistance the rest of the team. Distances that would take hours on Earth could be traversed in minutes on Mars.

The portal to the mine entrance was open. There were no signs of anything amiss in the area. The mines were a great find by the first unmanned explorers. The discovery of unobtainium was integral in the evolution of primary energy provision on Earth. Ever since the 4th World War, the United Freedom Factor, the ruling body of the Earth, had been seeking a successor to hydrogen fuels. The pollution of excess water had become a major problem on Earth. We entered the mine area and took the lift to the bottom of the shaft. We expected to find the missing crews or their remains. My sensors registered massive distortion, presumably caused by the unobtainium lining the shaft. We moved down past 300 meters and found what appeared to be the most recent tunnel. I expected a mechanically excavated shaft, but instead found a natural void in the rock. There appeared to be a path carved through the faults and rock-outcroppings. We made our way down the path to a point where no further evidence of human mining activities could be found. The path continued, so we amped up our light packs and proceeded onward. One of the engineers at point spotted a glimmer in the distance. As we approached, we discovered a small machine, old and apparently non-functional. My scans revealed it to be a missing rover device from the 21st century known as the "Spirit". We moved further down the path and located another pair of small devices labeled Deep Space 2, Probe 1 and Probe 2. How did they get here so deep underground?

Suddenly, my short-scan scanner sprang to life, but by then it was too late. A fist size rock flew out of the darkness and smashed into the climate specialist's helmet, the resulting explosion rendering him headless.

The darkness came alive with scraping and shuffling. We strained to see something, anything, in the murky atmosphere. Then, they came out of the darkness. We fired our mag-weapons, but the explosive rounds didn't slow them down. They were rock-like in appearance with a surface that was red and crusty. We backtracked to the lift as fast as we could. They were flinging rocks with such deadly speed and accuracy that our team was being cut down before they could reach the safety of the lift. Only my superior speed allowed me to make it to the lift. I crashed into the lift and hit the Emerg-Up button. I shot to the surface in 20 seconds. My ultra-ped motivators activated automatically as I emerged, and I made it out onto open ground. I was moving rapidly away from the mine entrance when those things began to spring up right out of the ground. The small rocks that commonly littered the planet's surface became animated and lept to horrible life. They continued to grow in number and size until finally, I made it to the Endurance 3 and commenced the lift-off sequence. They had closed quickly and ferociously pelted the spacecraft with rocks and boulders. Warning lights lit up the command console, but the engines roared to life and I was off the planet. On the verge of escaping the Martian gravity field, the ship shuddered and the Endurance3's hyper-drive failed. I barely had enough time to punch out in the Emergency Pod before the craft fell back down toward the planet in a fiery stream of debris. The EP's thrusters barely managed to achieve escape velocity, but it was enough to carry me out into open space.

I activated the locator beacon and a data stream giving my location, direction and speed was sent out through the com-vox system. I don't know how long it will be before a rescue vessel finds me. Unlike the past teams, my data packs and video-mem will be analyzed to see what we are up against. The next time, they will send more than one Marine-Droid protecting a human team. It will be an entire squadron of my kind. It appears that there really is "life" on Mars...

Hoo-raa!

Master Sergeant Tracker III