NationStates Jolt Archive

In the wake of the recent battles, something appeared in the Martian sky, which depending on your timestream may have last happened as many as two hundred or as few as five years past.

A large chunk of ice was pulled from the Martian Rings, and manuevered into its position over Phoenix Lacus. Five StarFish sat in a ring about the bright speck, guarding it. And within a week, green began to spread.

Deep below ground at the base of Pavonis, in the Necropolis of Patala, Reds and Greens chipped, ground, and dissolved away the martian rock. The giant biocomputer at the heart of the city sent out tendrils of neuromuscular fibers alongside, carving out a path to the southeast.

If the Menelmacari wished to deny themselves and the rest of Mars access to the Tree, so be it. But no one would destroy its purpose, especially not such insane aliens.

In Argyre, thousands of Reds and Greens cycled in and out of a growing tunnel beneath the Nereidum Montes, going in, chipping rock, carting it out, and going to sleep before getting back up to do it all over again.

Armies of diggers at Pavonis and Argyre continually dug downwards at a shallow angle into the Martian rock, the Peacock Army heading southeast while the Silver Miners travelled northwest. There was no machinery in the tunnels, save for enormous fans to continually circulate in fresh air. Machinery would make noise, and vibrations that could be seen by seismographs. This would take a long time, but it would forever remain secret until the Coordinators decided who and when could be trusted. The workers dug only by hand, or tentacle as the case may be, with pickaxes, shovels, powerful acids, and lithophagic organisms serving double duty as bioluminescent lamps in the darkness.

Under the direction of the gigantic computers of the Necropolii, the tunnels slowly expanded on perfect straight lines through the planetary crust, to meet deep underground somewhere near the triple-border of Sunset, Platonic, and Kekkosmaa.