On Mars

Taming Mars is a hard ask, something recognised from the earliest days of Mars exploration. Ultimately, what really turned out to need taming was the human propensity to strip resources from an ecosystem until it collapses. On Mars, you have to create useful resources, they aren’t just gifted to you… The now thriving Martian community had these lessons embedded in their culture, but even so, living on a world considerably less hospitable than central Antarctica was a struggle. Key individuals who had made the Mars experiment possible, both humans and SAIs, had to be constantly on the alert for potential threats, including a troubling new one – direct antagonism from vested Earth interests. Benstan, a prime mover in the founding of the Mars colony, and Protag, a sentient high-function android, become aware of this dangerous development thanks to analysis of Earth comms and had to steer the still-fragile Mars economy towards a war footing to stave off the threat. The regular export of colonists and materiel was interrupted and the Martians had to take desperate measures to establish a self-sufficient economy; an economy capable of fighting the hugely powerful industry of Earth, and one that would lead to the evolution of war machines capable of surrounding and neutralising a whole planet... This is the fourth and final novelette in this first series exploring interactions between humans and their future machine equivalents; characters from the first three meet on Mars.