"Victory, you are clear for launch."
The Victory was originally a medium-class cargo lifter, the same ship that had carried Jason and the initial survivors away from the doomed Earth. It wasn't designed for this kind of precision orbital descent, so the scientists had spent days modifying the engine parameters and landing protocols.
At Jason's command, the Victory, loaded to the brim with personnel and supplies, decoupled from the mothership and accelerated away.
A descent of one thousand kilometers might not seem far in astronomical terms, but the shuttle couldn't simply free-fall vertically. It had to perform a controlled spiral descent to slow down the velocity.
On the Noah, fifty thousand pairs of eyes were glued to the main screens. The entire population held its breath, praying silently that the operation would proceed without catastrophe.
"Primary propulsion zone shutting down. Landing gear deployment in thirty seconds. Countdown initiated..."
"Reverse thrusters engaged... Velocity decreasing. Vector alignment one hundred percent..."
"Engaging landing buffer!"
The entire sequence was broadcast live. Jason felt a knot of tension in his chest. Theoretically, this landing was simpler than a lunar descent, but space travel rarely respected theory.
With a muffled *boom* and a violent shake of the camera feed, the Victory touched down.
Dust settled. The ship stood firm. Five hundred souls had successfully landed on Mars.
Batch after batch of supplies began to offload immediately. Engineers swarmed out to begin establishing the perimeter for the temporary base, while media personnel started their broadcasts.
"Hello everyone, I'm Gianna. We have successfully touched down. Behind me, you can see the initial stages of the Mars Forward Base construction. From now on, I will be your guide on this incredible journey..." A female reporter spoke into her comms, broadcasting live to the anxious audience in orbit.
A cheer erupted throughout the Noah.
The Victory had a total payload capacity of five hundred tons. The five hundred passengers accounted for roughly thirty tons, leaving the remaining four hundred-plus tons for heavy machinery, life support systems, and rations. The shuttle would need to make several round trips to ferry all the necessary equipment down to the surface.
The scientific team wasted no time. As the mission commander, Dr. Roman immediately began delegating tasks. He divided the scientists into four distinct teams of twenty, sending them out to conduct geological surveys in four cardinal directions.
The remaining personnel were tasked with base construction.
"I believe the probability of complex intelligent life here is infinitesimally small. Little green men likely don't exist..." Dr. Roman crouched down in front of a camera, picking up a chunk of red aeolian sandstone. "Look, we've run initial scans and found no traces of surface biological activity."
"However, we cannot rule out the existence of subterranean microorganisms. Bacteria from an alien ecosystem would be completely foreign to the human immune system and could be lethal. Therefore, biosafety protocols remain at Level 4. No exceptions."
He turned to his team leaders. "Your objective is to obtain first-hand data: atmospheric composition, potential biomarkers, geological stratification, and most importantly, locate a flat plateau stable enough to support the Noah for a planetary landing."
As the excitement of the landing faded, a strange, creeping unease began to settle over the five hundred pioneers. It was a subtle psychological shift, as if a sun that had been burning within their hearts had suddenly been extinguished, leaving a cold void in its wake.
This unease was largely ignored or suppressed. They told themselves it was just nerves. This wasn't a vacation; it was a high-stakes mission.
Humanity's first foothold on an alien world was fraught with danger, air leaks, extreme thermal fluctuations, construction failures, or unknown pathogens. With so many tangible threats to worry about, the intangible feeling of loss was pushed to the back of their minds.
Massive electric excavators roared to life, biting into the Martian regolith. The plan was to dig a basement level of approximately 1,000 square meters over the next two days, then cap it to create a pressurized underground habitat.
Until then, the Victory would serve as their temporary barracks and command center.
After the Victory completed its second supply run, two modular nuclear reactors were offloaded. Under the supervision of the engineering corps, the units were brought online. These were heavy-duty systems, each capable of outputting 500 Megawatts of power.
With that much electricity, they could electrolyze water, scrub carbon dioxide, and power industrial fabricators. Energy was the lifeblood of survival.
Inside a pressurized rover, Dr. Roman was intently examining a test tube filled with Martian soil.
"No protein response," he muttered, breathing a sigh of relief.
He was using a Biuret reagent test, a simple but reliable method for detecting peptide bonds. If proteins were present, the solution would turn violet. The liquid in Roman's tube remained stubbornly blue. No protein meant no Earth-like life.
It made sense. Mars was simply too cold. The surface was a freeze-dried desert, especially here at the North Pole where temperatures routinely dropped below minus one hundred degrees Celsius. Without a magnetic field, cosmic radiation scoured the surface, sterilizing everything it touched.
Next, Roman turned his attention to the atmospheric analyzer.
"Atmospheric composition: 95.32% Carbon Dioxide, 2.7% Nitrogen, 1.6% Argon, 0.13% Oxygen, 0.08% Carbon Monoxide..." He read the data aloud, comparing it to the orbital scans. "Trace elements: 210 ppm water vapor, 100 ppm nitric oxide, 15 ppm molecular hydrogen... It matches the probe data perfectly."
Roman didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. With an atmosphere like this, large organisms were impossible unless their biology was radically different from anything known to science.
"I didn't find any bacteria in the core samples from the ten-meter depth either," another scientist reported, his voice a mix of frustration and comfort.
"We can't rule out viruses without the electron microscopes back on the Noah," the scientist continued, "but without proteins... there shouldn't be life, right?"
He shook his head. On Earth, microbial life was tenacious. It was everywhere. If Mars had life, there should be something, a fossil, a chemical imbalance, a trace.
The total absence of evidence pointed to a dead world.
"Regardless," Roman said sternly, cutting through the speculation. "Until we have definitive confirmation that Mars is sterile, biochemical controls are not to be relaxed. Helmets on, airlocks cycled. Always."
As he turned back to his instruments, Roman felt an indescribable heaviness.
Is Earth truly unique? Is life that rare?but then where did the spaceship came from?
The Fermi Paradox weighed on him. If the universe was so old and so vast, why was it so silent? Aside from the inexplicable existence of the Noah itself, humanity had never encountered a single signal, a single microbe, a single ruin.
Why?
Humanity stood on the shore of a cosmic ocean, blind and ignorant, terrified of the dark.
Roman wasn't sure what he hoped for anymore. Did he want to find life on Mars, or was he praying that they were truly alone?