PEMAR's tracks ate up the miles in a teeth-rattling monotony, churning up enough dust for the geeks back on Earth to spot it with their telescopes. For a second, Floyd felt like waving. He didn't give in to the urge, since no one would see him inside this metal breakfast box anyway, and his two companions wouldn't have understood.

Well, Bones with his misdirected sense of humor would laugh at the grim reaper's bony face.

Leelawati wouldn't recognize humor even if it bit off her nose. That was assuming humor made it past her helmet. Since the thing was built to withstand even rocks flying around in a marsquake, it was unlikely.

"How much longer, navigator?" Leelawati asked.

Bitch.

"The man has a name," Bones said mildly. "It's Floyd."

"He's here to transport us to the station. When at the station, his purpose is to ensure functionality of the equipment at all times and to provide mobility services to the scientific crew. That's you and I, Doctor Jones."

"Djalu, my dear. We're going to be in this together for quite a while. Let's take it easy on the formality. Who needs family names, anyway?"

"It's Dr. Kalal, Dr. Jones."

"You're a pain in the back, that's what you are," Bones said.

Floyd tuned them out and focused on his driving. He would provide mobility, all right. If she didn't watch it, she might find herself transported to somewhere rocky and devoid of air sooner than she could say navigator.

Quite a while later, the coordinates had gradually inched up toward their destination. He switched on the external long-range camera, and there it was.

Home sweet home. At least for the next twelve months it would be.

Two domes flanked by squarish, chunky buildings that were connected by an elongated tunnel peeled from the dust. Originally off-white, the dwellings had already taken on a faint rosy tinge.

On Mars, the dust always won.

Black figures moved around the buildings, a bit like artificial guard dogs, only sporting too many edges and angles to be natural.

The droids.

At the edge of the compound sat the oxygenators, large squares with blades rotating in the ever-present wind. Their job was to suck up the carbon dioxide and spit out oxygen. There was plenty of carbon dioxide to go around, 95% of the planet's blasted atmosphere was filled with it.

To prepare for their arrival, the oxygenators and the field generators had been running non-stop for two years. The machines' combined efforts had created an atmosphere around the dwellings that wasn't exactly healthy, but at least they wouldn't have to wear spacesuits when stepping outside.

Which they would have to do a lot. There were plants to be seeded and grown, the environment to be explored and mapped, the compound to be extended for the next team to join them—yup, they would be busy. With a bit of luck, it would stop Leelawati from mouthing off all the time.

They weren't married, nor would they ever be, so he didn't need yackety-yak on a drip feed. Mona had overdosed him on that.

He wouldn't think of Mona now.

"Target in sight," he said.

"What target?" Leelawati asked.

"Lemme guess, a big, lime-green polar bear, waving the Alliance flag."

Beside himself, Floyd was intrigued. "Why lime-green?"

Bones tapped the side of his helmet. He'd be grinning again. "This is Mars, my friend. The inhabitants are bound to be green."

That didn't deserve a comeback.

"Ten minutes to target," Floyd said in a voice as monotonous as the AI. Yay, he could best the AI any time.

Floyd DeNeville, navigator, Jack-of-all-trades, master minion at your service.

They clanked past a satellite dish the size of a small garden pond, pointing at distant Earth. The thing had arrived in parts and been the first piece of equipment to enjoy the crash landing. Three years the droids had taken to assemble the antenna and get it to work. Yet another piece of technology for him to babysit.

You wanted it that way.

The compound grew with every rotation of the tracks. At least they could stand upright. Half of the training had been spent in gloomy tunnels and the cramped hellholes of the original compound. When too many of the prospective colonists went mouth-frothing mad, the tekkies had returned to the drawing board and threw out something marginally more humane.

Twelve months of Leelawati in a hamster cage. Unthinkable.

He brought PEMAR to a halt.

"We're here. All systems are nominal, which I guess is good."

"You guess or you know?" Leelawati asked, a snappish tone in her already sharp voice.

This time, he couldn't hold back. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"Don't squabble, children," Bones said, for once sounding serious. "We've arrived with only some bruises to show for our efforts. Thanks, Floyd, for getting us here."

"All he had to do—"

"Was to program the trajectory for the pod so the autopilot would take us to PEMAR and not somewhere a lot less conducive to our health. Then he had to calculate the right ground route, which means one that takes us to base camp without running out of battery juice. You give it a rest, lady. You're slowly starting to piss me off something chronic. Believe me, you don't want me pissed off."

"Hah."

But she shut her sniping gob.

Floyd snapped off the safety belt and scrambled from the seat. "I'll go first."

"Why?"

The blessed silence hadn't taken long.

"Because I know how things are supposed to look like. And I'm the one with the environmental scanner."

"Surely, navigator, you don't expect the Pacific Alliance to run interference? All their colonists are dead. And in the unlikely event they sent out another team, which then had to have overtaken us—"

"Unlikely, as you say. But their droids might be running wild. And if someone's managed to change their programming...well, I guess I need not say more."

For once, Leelawati kept quiet. With a bit of luck, that might even last a while.

The door hissed open and Floyd descended the steps, taking care to keep a good grip on the railing. He'd practiced in zero gravity, and this was way better, but it still would take him a while to get adjusted to his new environment where gravity was only one third of Earth's.

Puts a whole new meaning into the expression "a spring in his step."

His weighted soles kept him stable, little puffs of dust rising with each step. A quick scan of the terrain revealed nothing untoward.

Yet an odd sense of dread crawled down his spine.

Something wasn't quite as it was supposed to be.

He held out the scanner and let it travel over the antenna, the dome, the droids.

Nothing.

Then he saw it. One of the large struts that was meant to support the bigger home dome for the next crew was sagging. Not by much, but it was definitely misaligned, riding lower in the ground than the other three, as if the ground below had given way.

His mood plummeted to the planet's frozen magnetic core, where the giant dynamo that eons ago powered Mars's magnetic field lay silent and dead.

Someone would have to fix this shit. Someone meaning him.

Bloody Leelawati would laugh her ass off.

https://youtu.be/t8-xaMz4_ws

1183 words of 2281 - FIRST MILESTONE REACHED

This chapter is dedicated to @jinnis who's been doing a lot more SciFi than I will ever dream of. She's also in ONC this year, so please check her out. 

As to the technology described in this chapter - there ARE plans to create oxygen from all the Co2 on Mars. It would take some sort of shield to hold the stuff in - that's how Mars lost its atmosphere after all: When the magnetic field failed, the solar winds blew it away. All this happened a long time ago, but in the beginning Mars also had a wet climate and a proper atmosphere. It's a whole planet full of "what might have been". Until the asteroids came. At least, that's the most likely scenario.