A rust coloured sky stood above a rust coloured world. The dust stained Jackson’s suit. He heard his breath bouncing off the perspex dome of his helmet and the whir of the pumps that kept him alive. Beyond the layer of material and plastic of his suit, the thin atmosphere of Mars threatened to suffocate him into a fatal sleep. He had thought about it, they all had at least once in their lives. Walk into the Wastelands, take off your helmet, and smell the sweet air for the first and final time. Some had even done it.

  Red dust coated the maintenance cover of the walker, the stuff was everywhere on the planet, and it got everywhere. You found it in your underwear, in your coffee, and it even managed to find its way inside hermetically sealed bags. He wiped it away with the side of his gloved hand and worked to unscrew the bolts with his drill. He opened the hatch and inspected the circuit boards within. Most showed signs of burnout, but a couple could be salvaged. He removed the positioning clips and placed the boards in an antistatic bag. He left the maintenance cover loose, the walker would never function again and it would show others it had been scavenged.

  He climbed down the huge machine, its four legs sprawled in all directions. He had scavenged the pilot pod, leaving it a mess of ripped out control panels and wires. It had taken him four days to work the whole machine. His boots scrunched in the dust as he made his way back to his truck. The UNIT Scout was a large terrain vehicle, one of the few that still worked. The micro reactor was still intact and it just needed refuelling with water to keep it rolling. The tires came up to his waist. He opened the door and put his bag on the passenger seat, walked around the vehicle and got in the driver’s side.

  The Scout whined to life and the displays warmed up. He dumped it into gear and made for the habitat in the distance. The large dome was like a cataract nestled between red mountains. The carbon glass was coated in a sheen of dust.

  His earpiece pipped as the AI requested to speak to him. “Yes, Chad?” said Jackson.

  “‘Ello mate,” said the AI with a cockney accent. “Where the fuck have you bin?”

  No matter how much he tried, Jackson couldn’t stop finding Chad’s persona annoying. The planet’s AI had been stuck in ‘Mental Mode’ for about eighteen years. “Just finished stripping down that walker I found.” The Scout rocked through a rough patch of rocks. “It’s getting slim pickings out here. A lot more boards must have fried in the solar storm of eighty-eight than we thought.”

  “Sounds fucking great,” said Chad. “Anyway, bit of a fucking situation over here.”

  “Why what is it?” The Scout’s rear end drifted and he steered out of it. The vehicle bounced its violent dance.

  “Fucking lifesupport unit in Sector Twelve’s fucked.” For some reason, ‘fuck’ was the go to word used to make ‘Mental Mode’ sound edgy.

  “Alright, I’ll be there in thirty minutes, I’m fifteen minutes out from Primus and need another ten to get through clean up.”

  “Cool, I’ll let ‘em know you’re on your fucking way.”

  The earpiece pipped as the call ended. “Woah, shit,” he said as he steered into a soft patch of dirt. The Scout tank-slapped, but he managed to recover it. He drove up a rise, a stone outcrop to his right and as he crested the hill, he was welcomed with the best view of the dome of Primus on the whole planet. Four miles wide, and four thousand feet high. He could make out the buildings and support towers within.

  He took a heartbeat to admire it before wrestling with the steering wheel on the descent. The winding Western Road led him right to Gate Four. The huge airlock was about two hundred feet high. In the Glory Days, the gates allowed walkers, diggers, and even cargo transports to pass. Now, it only served mere ants in comparison. On the stained white wall of the gate building was a large ‘4’. He drove the Scout inside and joined the queue of traffic waiting for the gate to cycle, which it did every thirty minutes. He put the truck into park and let the reactor idle. He grabbed his tile and tapped through it to find a track to stream. After a few taps, heavy metal blasted into his earpiece.

  A loud boom hammered the truck and a cloud of dust rained from the roof of the gate. He watched as the massive external door began to creep across the opening. Half way through the closing of the door, the dust blowers kicked in, huge fans forced the red dirt out of the airlock in a cloud that would dance across the Wasteland until it dissipated.

  The outer door closed with a thunderclap. The internal door yawned open at the same speed, for it was the same design as the external. He checked his watch. A lot of traffic today, he thought. It’s gonna be hell getting through the cleaners.

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  He waited in line for the halo that blasted atomised water at high pressure over the vehicles. Every effort was made to prevent the dust from entering the habitat… but it still found its way in.

  When it was his turn, he edged the truck to the cleaning station and dropped it into park. The halo blasted the vehicle, the powerful jets could be heard just over the sound of his music. The cleaning cycle stopped and the halo shuffled forward, ready for the next vehicle. Jackson jammed the truck into drive and made for his parking slot. He parked and shut down the truck, the reactor spooled down to a soft nuclear hum. He grabbed the antistatic bag and hopped down from the cab.

  Jackson kept his helmet on, the airlock was operated at external air pressure to speed up the cycling time of the gate. If they ever were to use the third door into the habitat, then the gate would have to do a full cycle or there would be a pressure differential in the habitat that would cause a hurricane of air to shift towards the gate.

  Instead, he used the passenger airlock. He joined a group, it looked like they were getting in an elevator. The airlock cycled and air blasted into the chamber as it got them to habitat pressure. The internal door opened and helmets were unclasped and removed, revealing sweating heads. He did the same, welcoming the taste of freshly processed air and the lack of the smell of old sweat from his suit.

  Beyond the airlock were rows of benches and hooks. He went to a spare spot and unscrewed the seals of his gloves, lobbing them onto the printed bench. He unzipped the pressure seal of the suit and took it off, hanging it so it looked like a deflated man. He stood in his grey bodysuit and unplugged the power and data cables that attached it to the suit’s computer. He felt the climate pipes deflating as the suit power disconnected. He undid the catheter tube, and was now separated from the suit. He grabbed his bag and suit and made his way to the lockers.

  He shoved his suit into the locker and peeled off the bodysuit like a second skin, throwing it inside. Jackson grabbed his street clothes and joined the crowd heading for the changing rooms in his underwear.

  He found a changing booth and locked the door. The catheter was always the most uncomfortable part, unless you wanted to piss yourself in your suit and walk around with it all day. Jackson pulled on the yellow tube, it snaked out of his penis and he deposited it into the biohazard bin. He threw on his street clothes, a simple pair of black cargo trousers and a green polo shirt. The Interstellar logo was stitched on the breast. He left the booth and made his way to the exit.

  Outside, the habitat was alive with noise. Foot traffic was busy across the entire dome city. Despite the best efforts of the Governor’s office to manage the restricted food capacity, mouths continued to increase, thanks to the lack of contraceptives in storage. A teenager on a balance board almost took him out.

  “Watch it, dude,” said the kid as he whizzed into the crowd.

  Jackson could only tut and shake his head. He grabbed an autonomous bus to Sector Twelve. The self-driving bus moved at a snail's pace, but it was still faster and easier than walking across Primus.

  Twelve was a dive, full of Daka addicts. Thanks to legalisation back in 2030, the synthetic drug industry had boomed. Eventually, Daka dominated the market thanks to wealthy backers. It just so happened, the founder had decided to retire on Mars. He brought an entire fleet of Starships filled to the brim of his product, just to secure his one hundred percent market share on the then new colony.

  Now addicts smoked it to forget the Starships stopped coming decades ago. To forget that this four mile wide dome was the only world they have left. That beyond the carbon glass was nothing but dust, rocks, and the decaying detritus of a time that had passed millions of years ago.

  Jackson hopped off the bus and the smell of Daka filled his nostrils. He saw the square brick building of the life support unit, standing five stories high. He made for it, avoiding dealers and hookers as he went.

  He scanned his tile and the door opened.

  A tall, thin man with a polished bald head was inside. He was the mayor of Twelve, Jon Willox.“Ah,” he said, “Chad said you would be coming.”

  “Sorry it took so long, a lot of traffic at the gate today,” said Jackson.

  “Scavenging has become a booming industry,” said Willox.

  “Yeah,” said Jackson, holding up his silver bag of goodies.

  “How long do you think before the unit will be running again? I have a lot of angry constituents who don’t like how the air tastes stale.”

  “No idea, I need to take a look at her yet,” said Jackson. He went to a control panel and put the unit into diagnostic mode. The display said it would take twenty minutes for the checks to complete. “I’ll give you a call with an update.”

  “Alright, I’ll leave you to it.” Willox removed a black stick from his pocket, he offered it to Jackson who waved him off. Willox took a drag on the stick and blew out blue mist. The scent of Daka filled the control room. The mayor showed himself out.

  The display beeped and the schematic of the unit had a red box around something. He brought it up, and a snake of pipes and cables had a label underneath: Heat Exchange.

  “Shit,” said Jackson. “This is going to be an all nighter.” He left the diagnostic running as he made his way through the building-sized machine to inspect the damage.

  The Heat Exchange was twenty metres high and ten wide. He could see black marks where the unit had over heated. He shook his head and got to work removing maintenance panels. He smelt burned plastics, heated metal, and ozone, the bane of any engineer for it foretold a hornet’s nest of destruction within.