Notes

Red

The door was built into the side of a cliff, but about a foot of Martian dust had accumulated in front of the step. A red square was emblazoned on the front, with the yellow image of a hammer and sickle right in the center. Years of sand-blasting storms had taken their toll, chipping away at the edges of the paint until it was jagged and faded. Only the slightest outline of the letters "CCCP" were still visible.

“Definitely Russian,” Commander Davis radioed back to the Mars habitat facility. “Soviet Era.” That had been the working theory ever since the door had been identified in one of the rover’s photos, but no one had been sure until now. The Russians had steadfastly denied that they’d made it to Mars, much less that they’d established some sort of colony. But who else could it have been? Who else had a secretive space program?

The hatch was locked, of course. “Should we knock?” Rodriguez joked. Commander Davis gave the door a hearty pound, but no one answered. Their drill, originally built to excavate soil samples, wasn’t exactly equipped to cut through solid steel. Instead, they bore holes through the red rocks around the hinges until it crumbled apart and the door came crashing down. The airlock was dark and silent.

Davis and the crew entered the facility. The winding hallway descended deep under the mountain. They passed by room after room, full of bunk beds for sleeping and a large cafeteria with neatly stacked trays. Some of them held computers larger than the rover they’d driven over here. There was an entire floor of greenhouses, now just full of withered stalks and brown soil.

“What do you think happened here?” Hatfield asked, shining his flashlight on a teddy bear that had been abandoned in the hallway.

Finally, the expedition found the colony's inhabitants in some sort of large gathering space, like an auditorium. The door was sealed from the outside, with no escape. Through a thick window covered in scratch marks, Commander Davis could see decaying bodies in red jump suits. Some were holding others in one last embrace. Others were apparently trying to escape through some sort of vent, with little luck.

“Commander?” Norvolisk, the only member of the crew who could read Cyrillic, trained his flashlight beam on a sign. “This hallway leads to the General’s office, it says.”

This door also had a lock, strong enough to be a bank vault. But it was open. There was a single body at the desk with a pistol in hand and a hole through the forehead. Also on the desk were a stack of journals, each marked with dates ranging from 1963 to 2002.

“Day 1,” Norvolisk read aloud. “The Soviet Republic of Mars is hereby established with the purpose of keeping the People’s Revolution alive even in the event of catastrophic war on Earth. Should the Americans learn of this installation, we would most certainly be a target for attack, and cannot live on the surface in plain view. Therefore, my crew of two hundred is busy hollowing out this living space…”

“Damn,” Rodriguez said. “How in the hell could they establish an off-world colony without us knowing?”

The journal that Norvolisk was reading started listing off what supplies they’d brought with them, which (while interesting) was really not the question on everyone’s mind right now. He dropped that and picked up the most recent one, last dated March 21, 2002.

“After 12 years since the last reply from Earth,” the final entry read, “I am forced to conclude the worst: there has been a nuclear war, and our comrades are destroyed. The replacement parts for the water recycler will never arrive. Even this failsafe colony will not be enough to keep the human race alive. Instead, we will all die of dehydration. Faced with that consequence, I had no choice but to exercise Protocol 92 and terminate the colony in a quick and relatively painless way. The gas was deployed at approximately 16:00. Their screams…” There was a tremor in Norvolisk’s voice as he read the entry. The page was spattered with small flecks of blood. “Their screams will haunt me even after I take my own life. Should humanity ever rise from the ashes and return to the red planet, know that we tried. Long live Father Lenin and the People’s Revolution.”