illphated
Red Dust, Neon Rain
The dust on Mars tasted like rust and regret. Kaelen felt it coat her tongue every time she risked a breath outside the recycler’s closed loop. Above, the sky wasn’t the hopeful blue of the terraforming brochures; it was a bruised twilight of magenta and violet, bleeding into the permanent electric glow of the Off-World colonies. Rain, thin and acidic, sizzled against her armor, each drop a tiny ghost against the oppressive hum of the neon signs that littered the horizon. They advertised lives no one here could afford, in languages few still spoke with any fluency.
Strapped to her chest, seven-year-old Lien slept, her small face serene in the soft pink light of the lotus insignia on Kaelen’s breastplate. On her back, nine-year-old Bao was a solid, reassuring weight, his helmet resting against the nape of her neck. They were all that was left of Sector 7, of the life promised when OmniCorp moved their division to the Ares Arcology. The life that had evaporated in a flash of plasma and the shriek of failing structural supports.
They were walking toward a rumor—a ghost signal on a pirated frequency promising passage from a decommissioned spaceport called The Boneyard. It was a fool’s hope, and Kaelen knew it. But a fool’s hope was the only kind left on Mars.
She shifted, adjusting the weight of the custom-built carrier rig. It was scavenged, like everything else. Part military-grade chassis, part infant-transport, all desperation. Her rifle was mag-locked to her thigh, its power cell indicator blinking a patient, deadly green. She hadn’t used it since the riots, and prayed to gods she no longer believed in that she wouldn’t have to again.
A spinner sliced through the bruised sky, its underbelly lights sweeping across the desolate plains. Kaelen froze, pulling her family into the shadow of a colossal, derelict mining machine. She held her breath, the recycler hissing in protest. The spinner’s searchlight washed over their hiding spot, a sterile white beam that promised order and execution in equal measure. Lien whimpered in her sleep, and Kaelen gently rocked her, her heart a cold, hard drum against her ribs.
The light moved on. The spinner continued its patrol, a predator cruising a sea of red sand.
Kaelen waited until its engine hum was just another layer in the planet’s melancholy soundtrack before stepping back out into the neon rain. She looked at the distant, flickering lights of The Boneyard. It was still a day’s walk, maybe more. Another day of rationing nutrient paste and recycled water. Another day of being hunted.
Bao stirred behind her. “Mama?” he whispered, his voice a tiny crackle over the private comm. “Are we there yet?”
Kaelen looked up at the indifferent, beautiful, terrible sky. She thought of her husband, lost to the dust and the chaos. She thought of the life they were promised. An ill-fated promise, from the very start.
“Almost, my love,” she lied, her voice a perfect, steady calm. “Almost there.”
She took a step, and then another, her boots crunching in the red dust. A lone figure carrying the future on her back, walking toward a ghost, under a sky that had already forgotten their names.
