Climbing Olympus

Cora Marisovna (#litres_trial_promo)

Jesús Keefer (#litres_trial_promo)

Rachel Dycek (#litres_trial_promo)

Cora Marisovna (#litres_trial_promo)

Stroganov (#litres_trial_promo)

Rachel Dycek (#litres_trial_promo)

Jesús Keefer (#litres_trial_promo)

Boris Tiban (#litres_trial_promo)

Boris Tiban (#litres_trial_promo)

Rachel Dycek (#litres_trial_promo)

Jesús Keefer (#litres_trial_promo)

Nastasia (#litres_trial_promo)

Cora Marisovna (#litres_trial_promo)

Jesús Keefer (#litres_trial_promo)

Boris Tiban (#litres_trial_promo)

Rachel Dycek (#litres_trial_promo)

Jesús Keefer (#litres_trial_promo)

Rachel Dycek (#litres_trial_promo)

Rachel Dycek (#litres_trial_promo)

Cora Marisovna (#litres_trial_promo)

Rachel Dycek (#litres_trial_promo)

Jesús Keefer (#litres_trial_promo)

Rachel Dycek (#litres_trial_promo)

Dmitri Pchanskii (#litres_trial_promo)

Stroganov (#litres_trial_promo)

Rachel Dycek (#litres_trial_promo)

Jesús Keefer (#litres_trial_promo)

Boris Tiban (#litres_trial_promo)

Rachel Dycek (#litres_trial_promo)

Jesús Keefer (#litres_trial_promo)

Rachel Dycek (#litres_trial_promo)

Boris Tiban (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

RACHEL DYCEK (#ulink_e8da9f5a-9301-515d-aa8d-f8cccaa40bad)

UNDER A SALMON SKY, the rover vehicle crawled over the rise, looking down into the cracked canyons of Mars. Without a pause, the rover descended a tortuous path into the gorge, feeling its way with a thousand sea-urchin footpads.

The site of the old disaster lay like a broken scab: fallen rock, eroded fissures, and utter silence.

Alone in the vehicle, Commissioner Rachel Dycek held a cold breath as she looked through the windowport at the debris crumbled at the bottom of the toppled cliffside. The avalanche had been enormous, wiping out all thirty-one of the dva workers who had been tunneling into the canyon network of Noctis Labyrinthus, the “Labyrinth of Night.”

Around Rachel, the wreckage still appeared fresh and jagged. Even after a full Earth year, the pain burned inside her. Another loss, the largest link in a long chain of disappointments, against which she had kept her face of stone. Russians were good at enduring, but inside she felt as fragile as stained glass.

The weathered rock walls of Noctis Labyrinthus formed barriers of reddish oxides, gray silicates, and black lava debris—all sliced a kilometer deep by ancient rivers. For millions of years, the entire planet had barely changed. But now, after six decades of terraforming activities had bombarded the planet with comets and seeded its atmosphere with innumerable strains of algae and free-floating plankton, Mars looked raw. The terraforming had awakened the planet like a slap in the face—and occasionally Mars lashed back, as it had with the avalanche.

The rover’s engines hummed, and the telescoping sea-urchin feet underneath made popcorn-popping sounds as the pressurized vehicle scrambled effortlessly over the rough terrain. Letting the Artificial Intelligence navigator pick its best path, Rachel brought the rover Percival to a halt next to a stack of granite boulders. Back at Lowell Base, operations manager Bruce Vickery had reserved Percival for later in the day to check his remotely placed instruments, but Rachel had traveled only a hundred kilometers. She had hours yet before she needed to worry about getting back.

Alone in this desolate spot, Rachel felt as if she were entering a haunted house. She listened to the intense, peaceful emptiness. Then she began working her way into the protective environment suit. The slick fabric was cold. The chill never went away on Mars—but it slithered up her legs, hugged her waist and shoulders, and clung to the damp sweat of her hands as she worked her fingers into the tough gloves. It took her fifteen minutes, but Rachel was accustomed to suiting up by herself; she didn’t like the interference of too many hands.

Technically, she was not supposed to be out in the rover by herself, but Rachel was still commissioner of Lowell Base—for the moment, anyway—and she could bend the rules. She had logged her intentions on the vehicle assignment terminal as “historical research.” Duration of outside activity: half a sol (which was the correct term for a Martian day, though the fifty human colonists at the base simply called them “days”). And she had set out across the sprawling wilderness by herself, leaving Lowell Base behind.

Rachel sealed the suit and powered it up. A thin hiss echoed in her ear, and the stale metallic smell of manufactured air spilled into her nostrils. Pressurized, the suit puffed up, pushing the fabric of the suit away from her skin and making her feel less confined. The oxygen regenerator on her back burbled as its chemicals reacted to make air thick enough for her to breathe.

Lowell Base environment suits were lighter, more streamlined than the bulky monstrosities the original visitors to Mars had been forced to wear. After many decades of terraforming, Mars was more hospitable to human life, nearly as pleasant as the worst day she had lived through in Siberia.

Rachel clambered through Percival’s sphincter airlock and stepped out onto the powdery red dirt of Mars. With a crackle like wadded tissue paper, the cold wrapped around her body, and she turned up the suit’s embedded heaters so that she could stand tall.

On the eve of her forced return to Earth, Rachel Dycek felt a profound sense of displacement. But she wanted to return to this place one last time, to see her shattered expectations, to see the buried dreams of Dmitri Pchanskii and his dva group who had given up everything for Mars, even their lives.