Prologue - Arrival · Novel

After a three-month journey between Earth and Mars, the NIBIRU PRIME reached its calculated orbit on Mars at 10:22 AM on December 2, 2031. Three months that sometimes felt like three days and sometimes like three years. In the final hours before orbital insertion, hardly anyone had slept, not out of fear, but out of a kind of anticipation that felt like a tingling beneath the skin. Now that the maneuver was complete and the engines had fallen silent, Mars rotated beneath them, still and rust-red, as if it had known all along that they were coming. Nibiru Prime hung motionless in its calculated orbit, a home that had been the crew's entire world for three months, and would remain so for the next few years as they built the true purpose of their journey on the surface below.

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What awaited them down there wasn't the crew's handiwork. It was the work of machines none of them had ever seen in operation. Eighteen months earlier, the first space cargo spacecraft had left a launch pad in China, carrying a load that sounded rather unremarkable on paper: construction robots. But what was written on paper didn't reflect reality. These machines could independently mine metals from the Martian soil, refine them into their purest form, produce glass and structural steel from them, and use both to erect domes large enough for entire cities in just a few months. There was a reason why Chinese robotics, of all things, had progressed so far while the rest of the world was still debating concept studies. Anyone who had followed the developments of recent years already knew the answer.

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The machines that landed on Mars fifteen months ago hadn't just built what had traveled in their cargo hold. They had searched further, dug deeper, discovered new resources beneath the surface that no one on Earth had been able to predict, and made even more of them than the original plan had ever envisioned. What now lay beneath the pale Martian sky was larger, more complete, more vibrant than any simulation had ever shown.

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Xiaotong Zheng had been waiting for this moment since the launch, rehearsing the channel in her head a hundred times. Now that it was finally open, the practiced words escaped her. When she called her grandfather, the boss of the Zheng Corporation, who had planned and made the trip to Mars possible, Xiaotong simply said: "Grandpa, we've arrived. Everything looks fantastic here."

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The reply wouldn't arrive on the other end of the line for several minutes. That had never bothered her. Some messages were more important than a quick response.

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The small lander for the crew is touching down near the settlement on the Martian surface. Leonov deactivated the security system with a touch of the screen. They are ready to disembark.

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The side hatch unlocked with a solid, mechanical click, and Sarah Carter was the first to step through, her boots kicking up red dust. Her breath quickened for a moment, gripped by excitement. "We did it," she said, half to herself, half to the others climbing out of the hatch behind her. "Really did it." Yuri Leonov, right behind her, patted her on the shoulder, his grin unmistakable even through the visor. "Say that again," he replied, "when we get back." It was the phrase he used to prematurely kill any celebration, but this time no one laughed at him for it. The third to emerge was simply silent, just standing there, slowly turning in a circle, as if trying to convince himself that the horizon really did stretch that far in every direction.

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Mitchell, Xiaotong, and Yuri Leonov came around the hull of the lander, and for a moment all six of them simply stood there, motionless, the greenhouse domes of the settlement glistening in the background—a deeply emotional moment. “Six out of twelve,” Mitchell said finally, his voice a little throaty, the atmosphere touching. “We’re the first—the others will come tomorrow with the freighter and the rovers.” Xiaotong smiled, a smile visible even through her helmet visor. “My grandfather won’t believe it until he sees the pictures,” she said, and for a moment she thought of all the years Weiguo Zheng had spoken of this very day, as if it were already a certainty, not just a hope. Someone—later, no one would be able to say for sure who—suggested taking a picture. Six figures in six different colored suits, standing close together, the red expanses of Mars and the domes of the settlement behind them, and for a single split second it looked as if they were just ordinary people posing together for a photo, not the first six of a project that was only just beginning to reveal its true scale.

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