Yves Giraud - Kahnu

“Yes, both cams are recording. By the way, did you guys notice Phobos back there?”

She was pointing at an object in the distance. The Martian moon was clearly visible against the black background of space. Named after the Greek God, son of Ares and Aphrodite, Phobos was also the personification of horror to the ancient Greeks. Ebba had a fleeting feeling of dread thinking about it but shook the thought off as quickly as it came.

“Hey guys. We’re at T-minus two hours, fifty minutes. I think I’d like to do one more check run on the landing module. Ebba, you want to join me in the capsule?” called the commander from the upper level of MF3.

“I’ll be right there, Antonio.”

A few minutes later, commander Antonio Bardino and medical officer Ebba Andreasson were giving a whole new meaning to the term “Mile High Club.”

“Breathe, Vera, breathe.”

“Feww! Feww! Feww! Feww!” was loudly breathing Vera, inhaling and exhaling rapidly.

“Breathe, Vera, breathe,” repeated Ladli.

“I am, I AM!” she replied harshly, looking annoyed and obviously in pain.

Vera was lying on her back in the infirmary pod with Ladli, Liu, and Dedrick at her side. She was about to give birth to the first Martian baby. They already knew it was a girl. Her name had already been picked, and to do so, Vera and Dedrick had asked their teammates to help them choose a name they all liked. After a few days of pondering and several close contenders, the expecting parents had finally picked “Chasma,” a name François had suggested; a name that came directly from the very valley they called home, Candor Chasma, in the Valles Marineris canyon.

“I can’t believe she’s having the baby the exact same day the MF3 is landing. Of all times! Talk about coincidence. I hope it’s a good omen,” said Liu sounding concerned.

“Feww! Feww! Oh, sorry for ruining your day. Feww, Feww, I’m having a baby, here. Do you mind?” replied Vera in pain.

“I’m sorry, Vera, I don’t mean it’s a bad thing. I just mean it’s quite a coincidence, that’s all. I think it’s great, actually. I’m very happy for you.”

The smile on Liu’s face was almost genuine, but it also betrayed her longing for Najib. They had talked about having a child, someday. Now, it seemed she would never get to experience that joy. Her eyes slowly drifted out the window towards Mount Shamsi, where Najib was buried. She could not see the spot from there, but tears came running down her cheeks anyway. Two tunnels down, Sabrina, Tendai, and François were looking at several screens displaying graphs full of numbers, and a video of what looked like a bright shooting star in the orange sky. The burning trail behind it attested to its high velocity. MF3 was starting to enter the Martian atmosphere. Sabrina, leaning over to see the sky through the small porthole window in the pod, announced with excitement, pointing at a spot in the sky, “I can see it! There!”

Tendai got up to join her, and as both watched the ship trace a bright line across the sky on its approach, François, looking at the computer screen, commented on their approach, “Descent looks good. Trajectory angle is perfect. They’re right on target. Levels are—”

But he never finished his sentence. A sudden flash brightened the whole screen in front of him, and Tendai and Sabrina, watched helpless, as the ship exploded and disintegrated in front of their eyes, with debris engulfed in flames flying in all directions. At the same instant, all the readings in front of François went blank, and a big red “Complete System Failure” appeared across his screen.

“Oh, my GOD! Oh, my God!” screamed Sabrina, hands to her face.

They could not believe it. Tendai was staring at the scene, silent, in complete shock. François, who had stayed in front of the computer the whole time, turned to them, looking for some explanation of what had just happened out there, when he suddenly realized the ship was gone. They were all dead.

Back at the infirmary, an unfamiliar scream suddenly resounded in the habitat. All seven colonists recognized the sound of a baby crying. The first Human-Martian, Chasma, was born on November 22, 2034 at 16:25 Martian time.

The next few days were the most disheartening and strange the group had ever lived since their arrival on the red planet nine years earlier. They had just witnessed the crash of MF3 and the death of its four crew members and welcomed a newborn to the colony the very same day.

They had also never heard again from Lars or anyone from Earth after that last transmission, months earlier. They did not know it, but most of Earth was now lifeless. People had died so fast that entire cities had become ghost towns within hours, all public transportation and air travel had come to a complete stop everywhere in the world within days, and pretty much every continent was by now in a state of desolation. Most life forms, from vegetal to bacterial to large mammals, had already lost the battle, man included. Unless nature’s instinct for survival pulled a last second trick out of its sleeve and managed to stop the carnage, the blue planet would soon be a dead world. Once again, a new challenge had entered humanity’s already troubled story, but nothing had ever compared or even come close to the magnitude of the global disaster Earth was now dealing with.

François was leaning against the wall of the pod, silent.

Still envisioning the crash they had just witnessed, he suddenly felt a wave of anger.

“Fuck! I don’t know what to think anymore,” his eyes locked on the small porthole window, scrutinizing the distant landscape as if answers could be found there. “I can’t believe they’re gone. I mean, the ship made it all the way here. Six months in space without a glitch! What the hell happened? Why did it blow up? Why…?”

As he turned his attention back to Ladli and Tendai behind him, the hatch swung right open.

“It was sabotage!” interjected Dedrick as he entered the room. He was holding a small computer pad in his hand, facing it towards them so they could see the document on it. He had just found a communication from Lars, locked by a program in the main computer and set to be released today.

“Apparently, headquarters had sent this weeks ago, but they had a timer on it, so we wouldn’t see it until now. It says that the same group of religious lunatics who had tried to infiltrate the Mars First headquarters back in 25, had sabotaged MF3 before takeoff. Apparently, a magnetic device was hidden on the landing stage of the ship. It was detected too late, weeks after the launch. MF Headquarters was aware of it before the landing, but they chose to say nothing to the crew. They knew they couldn’t do anything about it, so they kept quiet. I think that’s what Lars tried to tell us in his last message.”

“What? I don’t understand. You’re saying Lars and the corporate guys let the ship take off knowing it would burn?” objected Sabrina.

“No, they didn’t learn about it until several weeks after take-off, when they were able to communicate with the affected onboard sensors. They just chose to tell no one, knowing it would have served no other purpose than to terrify the crew… The MF3 team never knew what was coming. Maybe it was better that way…”

“Fuck! I can’t believe this… Fanatics and their stupid ideologies! And now they’re all dead anyway. What a fucking waste!” Ladli wasn’t one to curse usually, but she was still in shock and justifiably upset.

“Well, as Dedrick said, maybe it’s better they didn’t know. What good would that have done, knowing for certain they were all gonna die, and there was nothing they could do about it…? I don’t think I’d want to know that months in advance, especially cramped in a small time bomb like that. You’d go crazy!” said Tendai.