I was seven years old when my father died. He was one of the first native Martians; conceived, born, and raised entirely within the tunnels. He was on a routine powerplant checkup out on the surface when he suffered a massive stroke. The medical team was deployed of course, but they were too late, and my father was brain-dead at 45. It was impractical to keep a body alive and breathing when there was no hope of life, and on Mars, practicality trumped sentiment. They pulled the plug a few days later, my mother at his side. His body was cremated, and the ash was mixed into the concrete lining of the tunnels, his remains forever part of Mars Base Alpha.

Sometimes, I wish I could have died the same way: out on the surface, having lived a good life, and with hope for the future.

I had been trained in mechanical engineering by the best minds on Earth and Mars. Mars Base Alpha had no need of tourists, or philosophers, or artists; it needed regular maintenance and repairs, and lots of it. The Moon has its razor-sharp dust that will slice your lungs from the inside out if inhaled, and grind away at anything it touches. Martian dust is smoother, the sharp edges having been smoothed out from millenia of dust storms. But it still was far nastier than Earth dust, which had an atmosphere and water vapor to keep it down. Any mechanical device on Mars would eventually wear down, and far quicker than on Earth. Our smelting facility was mostly complete by this point, and it was high time to begin manufacturing our own parts to replace the worn-down ones.

Today, a few days before my 20th birthday, I was replacing a mounting bracket for one of the surface-based heat pumps. Even though all moving parts were completely enclosed, the pump itself vibrated one of its mounting brackets loose. The Martian dust found its way between the two surfaces, as it does, and began sanding away at the aluminum mounting bracket. I was tasked with studying the wear in-person and come up with a long-term design solution.

My safety partner and I performed our last suit checks in the airlock, making sure the radios worked and that the helmets were securely locked in place. She gave me the thumbs-up, and I returned it, then pressed the button to depressurize the airlock. Nobody ever goes on any kind of EVA without a safety partner; they can help you if anything goes wrong, and they’re an extra set of eyes, ears, and hands that can help out as well. My safety partner was a few months older than me; we’d been taught side-by-side. While I studied mechanical engineering, she studied chemistry. She’d gotten her suit fitted to her last winter, and had done enough trips outside to qualify as my safety partner today. For obvious reasons, the commander doesn’t pair people together if they’re both wearing new spacesuits. No sense in doubling up the risk of a failure.

Mars Base Alpha ran at a full 1 atmosphere; with the underground tunnels, there was no need to make do with lower pressures. Now that I was through puberty, my body wouldn’t change much for the next few decades, so I had finally received my own custom-made mechanical counterpressure suit. It was capable of holding the equivalent of one full atmosphere purely mechanically, so I didn’t need to go through the lengthy overnight pre-breathing ritual that slowly lowered the pressure in the airlock to prepare my body for the older low-pressure, 100% oxygen atmosphere EVA suits.

This excursion made me a bit nervous, and not without reason. My suit was custom-fitted to me only, and while I’d tested it before, today would be its first major trip on the surface.

This section is WIP

The air was slowly evacuated from the airlock, and we watched as the needle in the pressure gauge dropped. A minute or two later, the light went green, and I disengaged the door lock and pulled the door open. It was a hazy early morning on Mars, and the airlock exit cast a long shadow ahead of us on the dusty surface. In the distance, the sea of backup solar panels was visible through the haze; for safety reasons, the energy generation and storage plants were a few miles distant from the main tunnel cluster. My buddy and I made our way