A Short Martian Tale {by Anthraxus}

Pete looked up from his portable drilling rig. The sun was just setting on the Martian horizon, casting the ledge he stood on into sharp relief against the rest of the volcano. Looking down into the valley below him he could see the faint blinking light of the settlement in the distance. He had heard from some other miners in a bar in Ibraxia that this was supposed to be the biggest single settlement on Mars, but from this distance it didn't look like anything special.

Of course the modular design of the Settlements made them all look somewhat similar from a distance. His drill peeped loudly over his comm unit, indicating that it had finished coring the osmium vien he had found. He tallied up the quantity and radioed in the amount to Central Trading. He got back a rapid response, "$47 Mars Dollars." He swore under his breath as he accepted the proposal and queued his unit to drop the osmium into a delivery drone package. He knew the vein hadn't been very large, but he had hoped that it would fetch more than that. The fact that there was really only a single buyer for all the ore that was mined on the planet really crimped his desires for an expansive mining empire.

He watched as his mining unit ejected the aerial drone that rocketed up to its cruising altitude of a kilometer and zoomed off towards the horizon. Pete had never actually been to Central Trading, but he knew it lay in the center of the "civilized" region of Mars. Grimly, he keyed in the sequence to shift his mining unit to transport mode and guided the large piece of machinery down to the rocky plains that surrounded the volcano. Blinking into the setting sun, he keyed in the coordinates of the settlement, knowing that there was little, if anything, of interest between here and there.

His comm unit beeped again, an incoming signal from his homestead security units by the tone of it. He quickly brought his mining unit to a halt as he punched up the message. "Intruders detected. Range 1000 meters. Tenative identification: Slyfox light scouts. Activating Yamoto Gun defense." Pete chewed his lip as he anxiously waited the report. Here he was, over 300 kilometers from home, and being searched by the scouts of the very governor of the Settlement he was headed for.

The name of Slyfox was a whispered legend around the bars and red light districts of the numerous settlements of Mars. He was supposed to be one of the biggest, baddest, wealthiest of the immigrants to the Red Planet. The majority of Settlements that one would stumble across, especially in the core quadrants, bore the multilingual signs of "Governor: Slyfox, Protection by: Wild Wicked Ones".

While he was lost in his thoughts of his misfortune at being targetted by the legendary Slyfox, he received a new message from his homestead mainframe. "Auto-defenses failed. Perimeter breached. Cache stolen. System reinventory commencing." Again he swore. Well, he thought to himself as a shrill wind began to swirl the dust around his stationary unit, At least he couldn't have taken too much. Glad I just recently bought that new lightsaber, or my loss would have been much worse.

He turned his mining unit away from the beacon signal of the Hub Settlement. If Slyfox wanted to snatch his money like that, he sure as hell wasn't going to drop any of his hard earned cash in the crowded brothels and bars of the Settlement. Sighing, he directed his unit off to the north, his eyes scanning the approaching dunes for a convienant place to settle for the night. As the unit rolled forward he made a note for himself, "Spend more on defenses. Buy better Security systems." Next time, Slyfox, you won't catch me so unaware. he thought to himself ruefully.