Their first two weeks were indeed blissful; traveling by use of a rented Toyota Corolla MX100, Kera and he visited many Martian landmarks. Wandering across the green planet’s vast network of mega concrete roads, they met with a lot of curious people, many of whom came from all over Minarchy space.
The Travelers, for example, were hardcore Martian traditionalists; this group chose to keep their gene-mods and scoured the lands in small, heavily-modified trucks or cars. Rarely if ever, the rapidly turning into enigmatic nomads hermits, shared their time or spoke with others. Kera, it seemed, was an exception and through her, Boris experienced one wonderful evening talk plus many portions of delicious fish tacos.
Travelers were not aimless wanderers – they maintained Mars’s terraforming reactors and made sure that the magnetic field projecting towers were in perfect working order. Too many of them had been killed during the pirate invasion or kidnapped, never to be seen again, for the rest to leave their friends legacy to crumble. Indeed, local people also spent some of their free time and repaired a tower here, a terraforming reactor there.
However, for the Travelers, those random efforts were insufficient; they viewed every piece of terraforming tech not only as supremely important, but as a sort of monument to their fallen friends. Some of them were descendants of the original Martian settlers, terraforming techs, exo-archaeologists and exo-biologists. These people kept most of their now long gone, deceased parents and friends’ projects up and running.
Kera and Boris were stunned to discover that many of the smaller Precursor ruins had already been excavated, and even the tiniest bits thoroughly examined, studied. On occasion the scientists thought they’d uncovered something intact, but those artifacts came out just as ruined as the rest they’ve unearthed decades earlier.
Nevertheless, the Travelers found a piece of a piece of a mural and some metallic shards. While the mural piece was still undergoing reconstruction, the metal alloy had already been examined. Boris did not gasp with awe; early on, the Terrans had discovered the main Precursor ruins on the surface of Mars and around them they dug up buried parts made from an unknown metal alloy.
Studying it in complete secrecy, this discovery aided scientists of the day to create megasteel – a lightweight, ultra strong and durable alloy. Although some good quantity of that alien metal was available for further experimentation, no one could replicate it no matter how hard they tried. Even to this day, with all of their current advances in engineering, metallurgy, the Terrans were unable to forge more of this Precursor steel.
What these exo-archaeologists have discovered though was apparently some cheaply forged material, compared to the original of course, and the scientists claimed that could soon help metallurgists research a stronger form of megasteel. That was good news, indeed, but Boris was more curious of what the heck happened to the Precursors themselves.
One of the hardest things to think about was how a civilization so advanced could vanish, leaving virtually no traces. That someone or something went on a deliberate quest to destroy everything Precursor was beyond evident to him. He almost choked on a taco, when one of the scientists cited an old theory from the early space exploration days; its proponents claimed that Mars was the Precursor homeworld and they destroyed themselves by nuclear weapons.
Boris refused to believe that the enigmatic aliens were this stupid; moreover, that one small crater from a low-yield nuclear detonation was proven to be a reactor. Perhaps in the distant past other aliens visited Mars and that was their base which blew up, burned down in nuclear fire. For certain that facility was producing enriched uranium destined for nuclear bombs, that was why these first researchers assumed Mars got ravaged by a war.
After a couple of calm, blissful days driving and camping along roads less traveled, Boris spotted a modified planetary exploration vehicle. The thing was casually sailing in one of Mars’s channels and its occupants used a steam-jet to clean the channel’s walls. Kera was fascinated with the whole scene and he stopped their Toyota so she can observe.
In the end they were contacted by the vehicle’s crew; the Campers were a curious bunch, who spent their vacations and free time on Mars, maintaining its ecosystem. Cleaning the canals, seeding waterways, lakes and rivers with fish, even planting an odd forest here and there – this was what the Campers were doing.
They viewed it as a recreational activity and even though some of them fished or hunted on occasion, the bulk of their time was spent working. As it came to be, these enthusiasts were supported by the locals and many villages had small fairs when a Camper vehicle or a shuttle came to visit. Without exception the Campers were non-Martians; they indeed came from all over Minarchy space.
In recent times, their gracious hosts claimed, many aliens from the Star Blood became members of their group. For a Camper, the best thing to have was one of these old planetary exploration vehicles or ‘Squirrels’ as they called them. Perhaps Brynjar would’ve loved to spend these three days in their company instead, take the venerable all-terrain, amphibious machine apart, nevertheless, Boris and Kera still had a lot of fun.
For some strange reason, at least to somebody like them, it was only in the canals that fishermen could fish more types of fish. They stopped asking them questions about fishing and joined the Campers, who were actually master fishermen, conservationists and of course, cooks. Not on the same level as their captain, nevertheless, the quirky bunch were quite adept at barbecuing fish.
Seems that not using modern equipment like scanners or auto-assisted fishing rods was a tradition of theirs too. Kera helped them discover some sick fish by pure accident; she decided to scour the waters and uncover more of the swimming critters with her Link. Healing said fishies gained them quite a lot of points and even a one-year free membership in the organization.
As always, when Terrans formed a working group like this one, there were tiny fees collected to cover costs like seeding waterways and lakes with fish, repair equipment or replenish supply crates in their camping sites all over Mars. Honestly, Boris was willing to pay them the five credits yearly fee, but the people insisted – moreover, even after they discovered who he and Kera were, the Campers kept their cool.
They took holo-vids together, snapped holo-slides of the canal, their vehicle and even the food, but never their faces. After the three days were over, he left the jovial bunch reluctantly and Kera sang one of her new chords, teaching the fishies how to avoid old spaceship debris. This was how the critters got sick in the first place – chomping on some colorful control panel, its buttons made from space plastic, debris leftover of 1969 pirate invasion fleet.
Lately, the Campers had spent quite a significant slice of their budget to clean those wrecks and after leaving their Squirrel machine behind, Boris made a call. Seemed that even his organization had received reports of odd pirate ship debris discovered in remote locations. During and exactly after the terraformation process had been successfully completed, locals could care less about some dreck lying around.
They had other, much more important things to do – like fixing damaged equipment, rebuilding their settlements and making the planet livable. On occasion some farmer or rancher would collect and then haul said garbage off their property, but that they’d do only if the scrap was in the way. For years many piles of metal lay unclaimed, salvagers picking up an odd working part or piece of armor plating, after landowners gave their permission.
He had always assumed that the bulk of those were long since cleaned from the face of Mars, either reused or disposed of. Kera also found that peculiar, but he silenced his concerns – they were on vacation, not scavenger hunt.
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Dear reader, if you enjoyed this excerpt, please, pick one of my books and keep reading :D
I really like that Kera and Boris got to have this time to relax and help the fish.
👍🏾