The Mars Projects

It all started about eight months ago. The summit for International Peace had just concluded their fifth session and a treaty between all the countries of the world was about to be signed. It was the Mars Projects that had caused all the nations to come together. When New Montreal on the Moon had been hit by the stray asteroid and a second and third had wiped out Sydney and Moscow back here on Earth, petty differences were, for a time, forgotten, and the Coalition for Planetary Unity had finally been listened to.

The Mars Projects had been an attempt by the alliance of the United States of North America and the Islands of Britain to create, maintain, and direct gravity fields in the late 21^st century. To what end, they never have said exactly. Both the Earth and the Moon were, in the opinion of the Alliance (as they were so called), too close to the Euro-Asian Commonwealth and therefore wouldn't make for good research sites. The recent Alliance colony on the fourth planet from the Sun was an ideal testing facility. The researchers were extremely successful with the field manipulations and were on the verge of perfecting a mobilized gravity generator unit when the accident took place.

Some people will tell you that it was sabotage while others will say it was an accident, but whatever the cause, three generators were simultaneously activated by an intense power surge: cause still unknown. All three generators were suspiciously directed towards the asteroid belt beyond Mars orbit. Before the auto-cutoff systems could activate or the researchers react, several asteroids were rapidly accelerated towards the facility. In the few minutes it took them to reach Mars’ orbit, the planet had moved on, paving the way for their unrestricted access to the inner solar system. The power surge had destroyed most of the facilities primary systems, and communications were not possible with Earth or any of the colonies on the Moon until it was too late.

The first asteroid impacted the Moon near the terminator, creating a shockwave that wiped New Montreal off the map. There had been no warning, as Earth based problems had all of the colonies’ equipment trained back on the homeworld. After New Montreal, though, air to space fighters were launched from seven different platforms in a matter of seconds, but, it was too late. A second and third asteroid came down on Moscow and Sydney, killing millions. The fighters managed to destroy a fourth and then turned towards each other. Three of the squadrons were from the Alliance and the other four were from the Commonwealth and they no doubt thought the cause was the other side.

Dozens of lives were lost and war was certainly imminent, but the Mars colony was able to contact the Alliance in time and the truth became known. The Unity Coalition stepped in almost immediately and the rest is where we were a little under eight months ago. The Projects are shut down, Mars has been expatriated, global peace and unity will be ratified into a treaty, and we’ll begin to repair the damage – to the colonies and to the world. That, at least, was what was supposed to happen. That was the end goal by which the nations were planning our future. That was before Jupiter.