The Mars Outpost: Surviving Tharsis Montes

Storyline: by the year 2077, the US Mars program has had a functional self-sustained base on Mars for about 15 years. Cargo ships move back and forth with goods, a journey that takes just more than a year. Our hero is adventurous cargo pilot Guy Reisling. About this time, space science on Earth and star observatories conclude that a rather large asteroid will either hit the Earth, or come very, very close to a strike, in about five years. But our story is not about the meteor. The novel spans this five year period, during which time the Eastern Russian-Islamic/Ukrainian-Hindustan space program alliance on Earth, secretly launch their own ships to Mars, to take control of the US base there by force, and provide for themselves if and when the approaching asteroid actually causes significant Earth devastation. The US Mars base operations, with about 230 people who live and work there, are peaceful and scientific or research oriented only. The base has no weapons or only very few, and functions year round in the hot and cold, very thin, almost non-existent Mars atmosphere, an airtight high-tech fortress at the feet of the towering Tharsis Montes mountains. Guy Reisling and his crew, Mars program director Lynn Rodgers-Smith, Mars-base commander Bojji-Than, and other colorful characters, have a year to prepare for the advancing Russian-Islamic ships, and then must somehow find a way to defend the base itself and residents, as the US Mars ships sent to save them, led by experienced space pilot and Mars fleet commander Winton ‘Kick’ Berle, finally arrive months later. At the same time, international intrigue back home on Earth, creates an East-West conflict between the competing space programs, and their considerable value to the future. As the story opens, cargo pilot Guy Reisling is called up by his commanding officer at Vandenberg spaceport, for a flight path choice he was forced to make on his last trip to Mars. Soon, Vandenberg spaceport is the scene of a scientific conference, where details about the approach of a distant large celestial object, which may hit the Earth, are announced and examined. Other voices suggest strongly that Eastern space alliance programs are ready to launch their own ships towards Mars. We meet other characters: one woman on her maiden voyage to Mars has been sent to repair the radio communications system at the Mars base; Guy’s co-pilot, who has minor health problems that later become more difficult; the staff at the Mars base, a jovial bunch, who spend many months preparing for the arrival of the hostile ships; Guy’s lover Lila, and her job at the mid-point space dock; the program manager for the secret Russian space launch facility, hidden in the deep woods of the Ukraine, and his devoted assistant, a young woman off the streets of Moscow; foot soldiers and laborers at Mars, on both sides, who must somehow manage the insane surface war in oxygen suits; the fleet-commander on the ‘enemy’ side, a ruthless and venomous soldier, with a singular goal to take the Mars base, or destroy it; the ‘doves’ among the science leaders back home on Earth, struggling to maintain a peaceful space program posture; the four-person US Presidential Counsel, now thrust into two wars at once, one on Earth, and one in space; and many others, all part of the ‘first real war in space’. After Guy is re-instated to flight ready status, he leaves again for Mars, but before he arrives, the Eastern program alliance secretly launch five ships much like his own, loaded with soldiers and weapons, on the way to Mars only months behind his ship. Before he is even halfway to Mars, the Russian-Islamic ships overtake him, and attack with an electro-magnetic weapon, leaving his ship floating dead in space, with dwindling air-supplies and no power, millions of miles from help. The Mars base teams have their instructions from Earth, to prepare for the invaders, they have almost a year to get ready, and create a perimeter circle of outer structures, small air sealed ‘igloos’, that soldiers on the US side can use to defend the base. Shortly, the US launches its own fleet of ships to Mars as well, to enter the conflict the ‘enemy’, but only eight ships are ready to fly, with Fleet Commander Winton Berle at the lead, but months behind the enemy on the long voyage. By the time the intersecting pathways of many lives, lovers and adventurers, and these important causes, meet in orbit around Mars, many decisions and choices on both sides, lead to a surprising conclusion, amid sand storms, war footing threats and ultimatums, secret weapons, conflict and war back home on Earth, and an approaching meteor that no one really can prove either will, or will not, hit the Earth after all, five years after the beginning of the tale.