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Red Dragon by Brian H. Roberts

GENRE: Science Fiction

BLURB

How do you fight a hidden adversary on Mars?

Dallas Gordon’s miners keep disappearing. Back on Earth, general Zhang Aiguo has seized control of the Chinese military and declared himself emperor.  His forces have secretly dispatched to the Red Planet to plunder EPSILON’s hard-won treasure.

Time is running out. Can Dallas Gordon and the Prospector team find Zhang’s hidden bases before they are all killed?

EXCERPT

Dallas heard nothing except the faint susurration of the wind against the outer dome wall.

Full panic washed across him. He quickly strode back into the common room. Luis, Allie, Nels and Ruth had just entered from the airlock. They and all four Chinese were taken aback at Dallas’s bleached countenance.

“What is it, Flash?” Luis cocked his head.

Dallas stopped when he reached the group. He fought to maintain his composure.

“Everyone’s gone. The base is empty. I found Robbie back in the Greenhouse, in the same condition as we found Number Two out at Site 7.”

Commander Chan spoke up. “Perhaps your people are outside working?”

 “I don’t know what would require them all to EVA at once. They were tasked with preparing for your arrival,” replied Dallas. He walked over to the communication console. “Maybe you’re right. Let me see if I can raise them.”

Then Dallas froze.

“Allie, come look at this.”

She stepped up beside him.

“The computer is off,” she observed. She quickly inspected the Bose-Einstein condensate quantum communicator unit beside the computer. The refrigeration unit, required in order to maintain the near zero-degree kelvin temperature of the Bose-Einstein condensate, was working. “But the Q-comm unit seems to be fine.”

She quickly pressed the computer power button to boot it up. Nothing happened.

“I guess this explains why comms are down.”

Dallas prepared to set his helmet back on.

“Luis, Commander Chan, please come with me.”

The two men put their helmets on and followed Dallas back into the airlock. He decompressed the airlock and stepped outside. He walked a few paces toward the lead ore hauler and stopped. Luis and Chan stopped on either side of him.

Dallas pointed to the ground between them and the hauler.

“Luis, what do you see on the ground here?”

Not fully comprehending, Luis paused to collect his thoughts.

“Well, I see your boot prints, my boot prints, and Allie’s boot prints leading from the hauler to the airlock. We didn’t EVA until you were inside. See over there?” Luis pointed back toward the airlock hatch. “You can see our prints where we waited for it to decompress so we could enter.”

Several sets of overlapping prints confirmed Luis’s account.

Dallas drew his attention back to the ground between their location and the hauler.

“Yes, I see all that. But what else do you see?”

Luis was confused. “I don’t understand what else you want me to see, Flash. There’s nothing else but sand.”

“Exactly. There’s nothing else. Where are the hundreds of boot prints that we’ve made on our hundreds of individual EVAs? Where are the RBI tracks that they made traveling between the base and the reactor array, or the landing/launch area?”

Luis felt the hair on the nape of his neck raise. “There aren’t any! They’ve all been wiped clean!”

Dallas finished Luis’s thought. “Just like what happened to Dave’s boot prints back at Site 7. Let’s get back inside. You and Allie get that PC up and running. We’ve got to report this to SaMMCon.”

Turning to Chan, he said, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I need to show you how we tapped into the MGPS communication band to coordinate with SaMMCon after we crash-landed. Right now, it’s the only link we have back to Earth. It may be the only way you and I can communicate if something like this has happened to your base, too. We may have to rely on each other if we can’t get any help from Earth.”

Chan signaled to Dallas to switch to helmet-to-helmet communication. “Commander Gordon, there’s something we need to discuss after we return inside your base.” Chan’s voice was nearly a whisper, concern etched across his narrowed eyes.

AUTHOR Bio and Links

In his first life, Brian worked as a contractor and civil engineer in bustling Seattle. Desiring a change, he and his wife traded big city life for the outdoor adventures of Central Oregon. His writing draws deeply on his lifelong loves of science/technology and adventure sports. His EPSILON Sci-Fi Thriller series now boasts two novels: Red Dragon and Crimson Lucre.

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