Terre Rouge

By Robert E. Hastings

Earth is dying. Space expansion is vital for the survival of the human species, and the Mars colony is the first crucial step. Failure is not an option, and the Earth Union will do anything to ensure its success, regardless of the cost.

Crofton "Hobie" McCullough is an extreme example of humanity's total reliance upon technology. Despite his perceived agoraphobia, he finds himself thrust into a battle for survival and must confront not only the dangers within the Badlands, a treacherous and vast desert wasteland, but his own personal demons as well.

            After Bake Turner, brother of Hobie's unrequited love Paige, goes missing in the Badlands and is presumed dead, a cataclysmic solar event causes the city of Terre Rouge's dome to fail, leaving the Mars colony exposed and vulnerable. The EU suspects sabotage, but was it an act of terrorism? 

Venturing into the Badlands despite his condition, Hobie puts his life on the line to protect Paige from the numerous dangers lurking there, including the savage Ferals, seeking answers while also hoping to win her love. 

Meanwhile, the EU has launched an assault to not only put down the terrorist rebellion and save the Mars colony and mankind's future, but to totally annihilate those responsible. 

But, at what expense, and will Hobie and his group be caught in the crossfire?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BellingsBooks Publishers Switzerland
• Release date: Nov 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9783952499115

Robert E. Hastings

Robert Hastings was born and raised in Indiana, where he earned his Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Indiana State University. “Terre Rouge” is Robert’s debut novel. Robert currently lives in southwestern Florida with his wife Kim, son Nick, and yorkie Junie B, and is currently working on his next novel.

Book preview

A Novel

Robert E. Hastings

Legal notice: No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and the author.

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PERIHELION BOOKS

BellingsBooks Publishers c/o Bellingswood Group GmbH 

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Cover by Crackpot Artworks

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First edition published in November 2019.

Copyright © 2018 by Robert E. Hastings

ISBN 978-3-9524991-1-5

Content

Prologue

Part 1 – The Day the Bubble Burst

Part 2 – The Badlands

Part 3 – A Brave New World

Part 4 – Rods from God

Part 5 – A Tangled Web

Epilogue two years later

About the Author

Prologue

At eleven-eighteen, September first, 1859 AD—aka CE, for Common Era—a solar super-storm hit the Earth with a wave of energetic particles causing telegraph poles and wires to catch fire, and papers on operator’s desks also reportedly burst into flames. Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson, amateur English astronomers, had independently observed and recorded the solar flare. The white flash of light they witnessed was, in fact, a massive Coronal Mass Ejection—CME. That CME became known as the Carrington Event.

But this occurrence happened in the now distant past, in the meager beginnings of the Technological Era. And while the solar super-storm was considerably destructive back in that era, one had to consider the damage and chaos that would result by such an event should it occur in our current technological age.

Our reliance upon technology and satellites had reached a critical point, and such an event today would be devastating. It would have a tremendous impact on those who relied on technology, those who were accustomed to having machines do all the work for them.

And, that was precisely what occurred in 157 CME—Common Mars Era—the twenty-second century on Earth, to our Mars colony. Due to some as yet to be determined systems failure, the satellite shields failed, and the entire Mars colony lost all power and communications capability. The Earth Union, known as the EU, had to assume the worst, which was that the compromising of the satellite shields was due to sabotage, or perhaps a terrorist attack.

Earth, meanwhile, had been unaffected by the CME. However, the EU had made a gigantic investment in the success of the colonization of Mars. Earth was overpopulated and would someday run out of resources available to sustain human life. In order to save the human species, it was necessary to begin colonization in space. Mars was to be but the first step, and failure was not an option.

Early indications were that the sabotage may have been the work of the Ferals, humanoid beasts that were rumored to inhabit the Red Planet. But were those brutish beasts real, intelligent beings, or merely creatures of myth? Raids on supply transports between the domed cities of Mars suggested that the monstrous beings were very real, indeed. Within hours of the CME and loss of communications with the Red Planet, the EU dispatched a fleet of warships to remedy the situation.

Using the Einstein-Rosen Mars Bridge—ERMB—the fleet was expected to reach Mars space within a matter of days, or Mars sols. But, with absolutely no communication available, the situation on Mars was unknown to the EU. Therefore, what happened there in those first few sols, the EU understood, would be critical to the success or failure of the Mars project. It was imperative, then, to ensure that the Mars project did not fail.

Failure meant extinction.

PART 1

The Day the Bubble Burst

"And the day came when the risk to stay tight as a

bud became more painful than the risk to blossom."

–  Anais Nin

The Day The Bubble Burst

1

Bake Turner was dead. Rumors and speculation were that that he’d been killed by the mythical Ferals, but the official word was that he’d been lost in a sandstorm. I wasn’t sure about the Ferals thing, but I was certain that the sandstorm scenario was a load of crap.

Whatever the case, I was still having trouble coming to terms with his death. He was larger than life. A man’s man. A hero. And now, he was gone.

Paige was still devastated by the news, as were her parents. Paige, a strong young woman, the strongest person I knew, could deal with anything, but the death of her big brother, her only sibling, was extremely difficult for her to bear.

Despite my problem, I’d held onto my vow to always be there for her, to give her a shoulder to cry on. She was doing her best to tough it out, but I could see the pain buried deep down within her beautiful eyes. She may very well have been able to fool others, but I knew her too well.

I’d known Paige for the better part of my entire life. She was my girlfriend. Well, not girlfriend, but my girl friend. She was my best friend, and at times, I think, the only true friend I really had. We’d been inseparable for as long as I could remember, as her parents and mine were and have always been the best of friends.

At times, I secretly wished that we were more than just friends, but I was too afraid to let her know how I felt; afraid that my deep feelings for her wouldn’t be reciprocated, unrequited love and all. And I was afraid if I told her and she didn’t feel the same way, it could somehow damage or diminish our friendship. I guess, to my way of thinking, it simply wasn’t worth the risk.

A part of me thought she understood how I felt, or at least suspected it on some deep level, but we’d never discussed it. It would have killed me if I’d told her that I loved her and she didn’t feel the same way.  It would have been even worse if I also lost her as a friend. I just couldn’t fathom my life without the close bond we currently shared.

So, as for me and my problem, Paige had a secret nickname for me. In private, she called me Bubble-boy. Often cyber-bullied by classmates when I was younger because of my condition, they tried to make me feel inferior, like a loser, but I never let it get me down. Those fools didn’t know me, and I never gave any credence to their harsh words. Words from those that weren’t close to me can never hurt me. You know, sticks and stones and all.

Still, if any of those bullies were to call me Bubble-boy, I’d have been totally irate. But, when Paige said it, it was done with no malice or cruel intent. It was a pet nickname, and more of just a gentle coaxing to try to get me to come out of my shell. I know when she said it, she was on my side. Always.

My real name was Crofton McCullough. My parents wanted me to have an archaic Anglo-Saxon name after some ancient Earth ancestor, but my father started calling me Hobie for some odd reason when I was little, and it stuck. The name seemed to fit me somehow. So, I had two nicknames, one public and one private.

I’d never really understood why Hobie seemed to fit me. Was it my personality, or my looks? I was what I’d like to call a lean, mean seventy-five kilos, wiry, like a middleweight fighter. That’s very unusual in this day and age, as men also tended to lean toward the heavier side.

My hair, like Paige’s, was sandy blond, but with a reddish tint. I kept it medium length on top, but shaved closer on the sides. I had this platinum blond, almost white, streak in my hair on top from a birthmark on my scalp. I used to hate it, but had grown to appreciate it. It was like my trademark.

Anyway, Paige called me Bubble-boy because I never, and I mean never, left the house. She said that I was isolating myself from the real world, and that I was afraid of the real world. That was my problem, and maybe she was right.

Our parents, the McCullough’s and the Turner’s, had been the best of friends since they met in college. The Turner’s were like my second parents, and I’m sure the same held true for Paige with regards to my parents.

As for Paige, she was the most beautiful human being I’d ever known, both inside and out. Perhaps not a classic beauty, not the tall, gangly, supermodel body type with the high cheek-boned perfection of old Earth back in the twenty-first century. No, she was more on the short, full-figured side, with medium-length, dirty blonde hair. Others may have said that she was pretty or cute in a girl next door kind of way, but to me—spectacular.

As for her full figure, most folks in society today tended to be heavier than those back on Earth in days gone by. This was true on both Earth and on Mars, the latter of which is where I was born and raised. The days of the rail-thin supermodel had gone the way of the dinosaurs.

It wasn’t that people didn’t try to stay fit, it’s just that we had a more sedentary lifestyle. That was due to technology handling everything for us. In spite of the lack of physical things to do, Paige worked out, as did I, and she was in great shape.

Anyway, back to me and my problem. No one ever left the domed cities and ventured out into the Badlands, except for Paige’s dead brother, Baker. We had technology to see to the ins and outs of social communication, so why go out? And, as far as the Badlands outside of the domed cities, forget about it!

So, bottom line, was I really that different from everybody else? Sure, I guess I was a little on the extreme side, even for 157 CME—and yes, humans had lived on Mars for one-hundred, fifty-seven Mars years now. Anyway, in my defense, no one really went out much.

As for the 157 years, that meant Mars years. A single Mars’ year was approximately six-hundred and eighty-seven Earth days. Sols, or a Mars day, were about the same length as Earth days, so each year here was almost twice as long as a year on Earth.

Perceptually, those initial Mars years had been even more than double those of Earth. Life had not always been easy here. Quite the opposite. Even in the early days on Mars, after the terraforming, life had been brutal on this desolate, savage planet. The pioneers on Mars lived harsh lives, building this place into a habitable planet for future generations. Many of them died young, struggling to make their way in this hostile place.

And now, we lived in the safety of domed cities that protected us from that harsh environment out there, as well as from the creatures that everyone said had somehow survived the terraforming and thrived out in the Badlands. We owed our ancestors much for their efforts. But, by the same token, they were partially responsible for our more inhibited lifestyles.

As for me, I didn’t see the need to go outside. With technology, I visited my friends, attended a virtual college, worked out and stay-cationed in the Sim room, which could supply virtually any scene a person desired. Auto-drones with humanoid automaton deliverymen brought us all the groceries and supplies that we needed.

My friends, the few that I had, tolerated my quirks. As for Paige, she summed it up nicely, even though her theory had never previously been tested. You’re agoraphobic.

I supposed that there could be at least a smidgeon of truth to her assessment. I do admit that I’ve always been the lone wolf type, and somewhat of a home-body. Ah, hell, who am I kidding, I dread even the thought of leaving my house. But, agoraphobic? I just don’t know. As I said, the theory had never been tested. One thing I do know is that I’d never really trusted anyone, not fully. 

Other than Paige, that is. We’d been tight ever since I could remember, like family, inseparable. If we were like family, then we had to stick together through good and bad. Bake’s funeral was set for today and, naturally, Paige expected me to go. I told her that I would. Nay, I’d promised her! So, that was a given. I’d go.

Bake had disappeared in the Badlands around eight weeks ago. The searches, as well as all hope of finding him alive, had been abandoned just a few sols back. Obviously, it was to be a closed casket affair, as his body had never been found.

I think Paige and Lucy Kim, Bake’s on-again, off-again lover, still harbored some small hope that he was alive out there, somewhere. If so, they were the only ones riding that ship. But no, I thought that ship had sailed. Harsh though it sounded, all signs indicated that Bake was most assuredly dead. And thus, his funeral had been arranged.

I truly wished with all my heart that I could believe he was still alive, but my mind couldn’t make that leap of faith. I really wish I could, as, being an only child myself, Bake had been like a big brother to me. He tended to be very hard on me, just as a big brother would be. I think he simply wanted to make me better, and in more ways than one.

Deep down, he’d thought that I was a coward for never getting some gonads and stepping out into the world, as he’d once put it so eloquently. But, other than that, he’d never ridiculed me in public about it. He’d saved the insults when we were alone. Two-and-a-half years older than Paige and me, he tended to look out for us.

And, even though he’d been missing for approximately two months, it still seemed so surreal that he was actually gone. Bake was a mountain of a man, with chiseled features, a square jaw, and bronzed skin from the desert sun. He was a throwback to those early settlers on Mars. He was a hero. He wasn’t supposed to die, especially so young.

The news of Bake’s disappearance had shaken us all to the core. It just could not be true. Not Bake! But, for me at least, the acceptance of what had happened out there that day sank in once Lucy set up a sit-down with Paige and me, via Three-D teleconference and vividly recounted to us the whole story of what had happened the day Bake had gone missing.

Lucy was not only Bake’s lover, but she’d also worked with him at DroneTec Industries, the largest company on Mars, if not the entire Earth Union. Lucy worked in the control room and had been monitoring Bake’s activities out in the Badlands.

That’s actually how the two had met. Lucy said she just had to meet the crazy bastard that had the balls to go outside the domes. Bake didn’t have to go out there himself. We had automatons for that. Massive and powerful machines, automatons basically did all of the service-related jobs, from maintenance to deliveries and such, as well as police and military.

No humans in harm’s way, the slogan rang. Limited AI of the automatons notwithstanding, that was the slogan everyone used. Anyway, Bake seemed to love it outside, working with his hands. As I said, he was somewhat of a throwback to the old days.

If a person looked down from space, from the viewpoint of the Virgin Industries Interplanetary Space Station—VIISS—in Mars orbit, they’d notice that the surface of the red planet was still eighty percent desert wasteland, with some forestation scattered about, mostly in the Oceanis Vastita Borealis region.

Near that oceanic area was what would appear to be a patch of bubble wrap oddly placed on an otherwise barren planet. That bubble wrap was, in fact, the various domed cities clustered within close proximity to one another amidst the surrounding plains known as the Badlands.

The largest of those bubbles was the city of Terre Rouge, the capital city of Mars, where I lived. And, to continue Bake’s story, just outside of that largest bubble, unnoticed from space, was a small structure indiscernible to the eye unless the viewer zoomed in even more closely.

That speck, which actually stood between eighteen and nineteen meters in height, was one of three Mars Magnifying Transmitters/Receivers—MMT—modeled after Wardenclyffe Tower, also known as the Tesla Tower. The MMTs supplied the entire Mars population in each of the domed cities with intra-planetary communications and energy, as well as powering the domes which protected the cities from the severity of the external environment.

On Mars, the plan from the very beginning had been to not repeat the same mistakes humans had made on Earth. No pollutants filling the air and damaging the ozone, or filling the heavens with gases causing the greenhouse effect.

Global warming, or Climate Change, as it had also been called, had been pretty much ignored, or at least not appropriately acted upon, until it was much too late. It had resulted in the current Ice Age from which planet Earth was only now beginning to recover from.

Another vital piece of the plan on Mars was that humans would not overpopulate the planet and consume all of her natural resources as we’d done on Earth. The EU had finally acted upon the infinitely increasing population on the planet, stabilizing, somewhat, the ongoing population growth on Earth. Earth’s population currently stood at around eight to nine billion people.

Unfortunately, our retroactive approach was too little, too late. Starvation and disease resulting from the planet’s overpopulation would have undoubtedly led someday to our own extinction. All families now, by law, were limited to two children. Even so, the damage had already been done.

Therefore, it became imperative to expand. Mars was merely the first step. Of course, we were still looking for other habitable planets throughout the galaxy, which we hoped to populate soon. First Mars, next the galaxy, and eventually the universe, as if it was our sovereign right.

The MMTs had been built about thirty Martian years ago, roughly fifty-seven Earth years, by DroneTec. The Towers look like a radio tower with a semi-circular head on top, or kind of like a giant toadstool, though some say it resembles a giant phallic symbol. Richard Head III was the current President and CEO of DroneTec, and one could easily imagine the rather unimaginative puns associated with the name.

Dick-Head was the most common of them. Richard not only was Richard the Third, but he was also the third in line with that name as head of DroneTec Industries. His grandfather oversaw the building of the MMTs.

Getting back to Bake, he’d been outside the domed city of Terre Rouge, performing some routine maintenance on the MMT. Bake was the head engineer and maintenance tech for DroneTec. Bake’s friends, peers, subordinates and superiors alike, all joked that he must have had a few screws loose to voluntarily venture out into the Badlands to work on the machinery. Send the automatons, they’d constantly urged him, but to no avail. 

No one, no human being, did manual labor anymore, especially when it meant exiting the safety of the dome. No one in their right mind ever wanted to go outside of the domes. The air was breathable, due both to terraforming and over a century and a half of emission of oxygen and other gases from the domed cities. Fast-acting, genetically engineered flora had done the job of putting out oxygen. Even so, it remained dangerous out there in the wild Badlands for many reasons.

Rumors spread about savage creatures that dwelled within the Badlands. The terrain was still mostly dry, arid desert land, which posed a very real threat of its own. Sure, a few forests had sprung up nearby and in various locations around the planet and, without those forests, sparse though they may be when compared to Earth, there would be no air to breathe outside of the domes. Even so, the desert environment was still extremely harsh and dangerous.

Another factor was that the air outside of the domes was not purified as it was inside, and that purified air within the domes reduced the possibility of diseases—although Bake often argued that opposite was actual true. The sterile environment inside also lowered the human body’s ability to fight diseases due to our weakened immune system. We would have no resistance, he said, to virulent strains we might encounter outside of the domed cities.

Bake had graduated with honors from Musk Technological Institute with a degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. He was a respected member of the management team at DroneTec, and had been with the company since graduating from college about three Martian years ago. 

Bake, being the throwback he was, loved the feel of the sun on his back as well as the extremes in temperature. The temperature when he started work at seven o’clock that morning was a mere minus-three Centigrade, but six hours later it had risen to forty Centigrade. 

And the wind was unrelenting; it caused the sand shifting across the desert floor to coat everything in its path with a fine red dust, including Bake. Inside the domes, the air temperature was regulated at a fraction over twenty-one Centigrade. 

All electrical and mechanical systems, including transportation, fell under Bake’s aegis. With that much weight on his shoulders, he was very busy. You wouldn’t think he’d have the time himself to perform manual labor tasks of which he could simply assign to his very able underlings, but he found work outside the domes and away from people a great form of stress relief.

The transportation systems took a lot of his attention. No one actually drove these days; self-driving hover cars did it for us. One simply instructed one’s vehicle where to go. The commercial traffic also utilized auto-drones as well as automatons that did all of the manual labor.

Also, most police forces were made up of automatons and drones as well, and, for the most part, the only humans working in the police and military were programmers and tech operators, along with the city mayors and police chiefs that were the so-called brains of the outfit.

Back to that day, though, Bake was working on the MMT, particularly the solar regulators that operated the solar shields that protected the Mars satellites and space station from solar flares. The job was semi-annual routine maintenance, basically. Nearly any of his techs could have overseen such a mundane task from their desks, performed by automatons, but Bake insisted on taking care of it himself.

Lucy paused to smile as she told the story, remembering watching as Bake momentarily removed his goggles, which protected his eyes from sifting sand, and pushed the brim of his hardhat back as he wiped his sweaty brow with his thick forearm. She remembered how he’d smiled as he gazed across the red landscape. 

Lucy continually worried about Bake, and she always monitored his site very closely. Even so, she also understood that he could handle himself should a problematic situation arise. She had several other monitors at her work station that also needed constant monitoring. That being said, Bake was naturally her main focus. Thankfully, everything seemed to be running smoothly that day.

But only moments later, back in the DroneTec control room, Lucy had momentarily glanced away from the monitor observing Bake’s worksite. That had proven costly and, on this day of his funeral, because of that fact she would bear an even heavier heart. Understandably, she blamed herself, though everyone else knew it was not her fault. But, she wouldn’t hear it.

Lucy was a thin, statuesque young woman with raven-colored hair. She had a pretty face with large eyes and a small nose and mouth like an anime drawing.

She and Bake had an on again/off again relationship over the years that seemed to fit both lifestyles well. Even so, whether they were on or off, she didn’t like Bake venturing out into the Badlands. They had always stayed close,