illphated
Cowgirl of the Crimson Frontier
Published on illphated.com
Mars was never meant for settlers—it was meant for dreamers with backbone.
And she had both.
They called her Cass Monroe. But out past Olympus Mons, folks just called her Ma’am. Wrapped in a dust-worn suit stitched with the old stars and stripes, her holster creaked with the weight of old principles—faith, bloodline, and the flag.
The domed cities were full of compromise. Corporate laws. Oxygen taxes. Algorithmic morality. But she didn’t ride for that. She carved her own path across the red dunes, where satellites didn’t reach and values weren’t filtered through consensus.
The rifle she carried once belonged to her grandfather—earthborn, Texan, farmer-soldier. Now it was retrofitted for plasma bursts, but the trigger still answered to grit and resolve.
She wasn’t looking for war. She was looking for peace worth defending.
One evening, under the twin moons of Phobos and Deimos, she stood on a ridge overlooking an illegal drone mine set up by mercs paid in crypto and conquest. The workers inside? Refugees. Families. Kids. Pawns.
She drew her revolver—not for vengeance, but for justice.
By morning, the mine was dust and silence. The families walked free. And the stars seemed to shine just a little brighter over the Martian sky.
Someone once asked her what drove her.
She looked to the horizon and said, “God. Family. Country. In that order.”
And then she rode off into the vapor-glow, the Martian wind kicking up behind her, a lone sentinel on a lawless world.
Because the frontier may be cosmic, but the values stay eternal.