SSE of Shady Sands, American Mars, March 17, 2144
"So what are we here for again?" asked Sam Carson impatiently in that Chicagoan accent of his as he took another bite out of his prepackaged cheeseburger.
Kevin McFly, a Ventura, California native, looked up from his hot dog. They were eating lunch inside an airtight Martian Surface Personnel Carrier (MSPC), used for long range transport of humans. The interior had plush seats with a number of bunks above in the front half, and amenities, such as a kitchen, bathroom, shower, and a small game room. At the very back was an airlock, leading outside. The MSPC was autonomously driven, but manual controls existed and could be exerted in case of emergency.
McFly explained. "Our satellite scans of the Shady Sands area picked up a major magnetic disburbance from this site. We have been sent out here to check what the hell is causing the disturbance."
"So while we are here, eating our crap packaged lunch, while Kane and Jarvis are out having fun out on the surface?"
McFly chuckled. "Well, they
did win the coin flip."
Suddenly, Carson's comm cackled. "Guys, you had better get out here. We found something."
Carson unclicked the comm from his belt and replied, "We'll get there in, uh, ten, fifteen minutes maybe. We'll finish eating first."
After finishing lunch, Carson and McFly suited up and entered the airlock. There was the hiss of depressurization, and then the outer door opened to reveal the shifting red dust of the Martian surface.
The two spacesuited figures stepped out and trotted over to the crater where Kane and Jarvis were standing, looking around. There was a large, dust-caked, corroded, metal hill half sunken into the ground, almost like a crashed airplane. Or, for that matter, a crashed spacecraft.
Kane turned to greet the newcomers. "It is, in fact, a crashed spacecraft. This is what has been causing the magnetic anomalies."
McFly walked over and used two fingers to rub some of the dust off the wreckage. "Do we know what spacecraft it is exactly?"
Jarvis walked over to one section of the hull and wiped some of the dirt off with his suit glove. There were markings, heavily faded but still legible: MARS COLONY SHIP - ODIN - 2107. Jarvis cleaned off another section below it, revealing a faded UNSC logo. McFly gasped, "My God - it's the lost
Odin spacecraft!"
Carson walked over to look at the markings. "Well, we now know what happened to
Odin."
Odin had been the UNSC's last Mars colony effort, launched in 2107. However, in January 2108, as
Odin had reached Mars orbit, the spacecraft, with five hundred people aboard, had lost contact with UNSC Ground Control.
Kane explained, "We have circled this whole piece of wreckage, and it is not big enough to be the whole spacecraft. We think that it is the front third or front half, we forget the exact size of the original ship."
McFly asked, "What is on it, do you know? Can we salvage anything?"
Jarvis thought, "Well, the database was rumored to have plans for a Martian space elevator, among other things. Those plans were lost. Perhaps we can retrieve them?"
Carson commented, "That would speed up our plans for a Shady Sands elevator. We could start building much sooner than we expected."
