NationStates Jolt Archive


Visions of Mars

23-02-2004, 05:50
Kagrenac stared across the misty wasteland, thick plumes of Mallbertan manufactured atmosphere crawling slowly, hungrily, like a viscous primordial lifeform, pushing forward between spires of alien rock and deep crevasses never plumbed. Phobos was a bleak moon, deplete of all life but Mallbertan, and of course the now departing Roanian forces.

His footsteps rang tinnily through the carbonsteel and smooth stone observatory, one of the few areas which pierced the frozen crust of this strange planetoid; the Mallbertans were, in general, far more comfortable below than above. Not him though. He was old; old enough to remember when the skies above Mallbertan prime were clear, and a weak pale sun would beat down, warming the tortured Mongolian steps. It was strange to look once again on an open sky, even if it was as black and star speckled as this one.

Mars rose slowly into the sky, red orb striped and blotted with the greens, browns and blues of the ongoing terraforming. It was strange indeed to look down upon it; Kargrenac had not gotten over the feeling he was about to plummet down towards, falling silently for hours before striking Martian soil.

Below the small observation room was the huge ring which would form the basis of a Stellar Accelerator; a huge gauss cannon used to propel ships and cargo into orbit, even beyond. Once complete, it would be used to hurtle the chunks of minerals harvested constantly by thoughtless claws below back home, to land with dull thuds into some dusty Mallbertan crater.
Bajon
23-02-2004, 06:22
OOC: Mars is quite well along in the terraforming... was... Well, there is an Ocean, covering most of the north half of the planet, as well as a large sea in the south. Most of the land is still red. And, since Melkor just unleashed a buttload of nukes and chemicals all over mars... yeh...

PS: Dangit! I was going to use "Kagrenac" as my next major character... oh well. (Morrowind rules!)
23-02-2004, 19:53
bump
24-02-2004, 05:24
Far above the now mist shrouded surface, a tiny observer satellite spun awkwardly through orbit, like a tiny fish caught in a sudden current, hurtling between the tiny moon of Phobos and the Martian surface below. The Mallbertan atmospheric conditioning was all but complete; the surface of the planetoid was now covered in a thick smoky haze, blocking out all but the highest ridges and completely obscuring the Mallbertan colonies. A hundred million drones, mindless fleshy automatons, once human now an extension of Mallbertan command inhabited the tunnels and shallow arcologies below, stripping it of minerals and constructing all manner of obscure and arcane facilities.

The Phobos base was to provide two things: a convenient stepping stone between the profitable Mallbertan mining vessels and the dusty steppes of their mogolian homeland, and a strategic location from which to observe the tumultous relations of Mars.