Detection

Colby Smith sat alone in the science lab at her desk. The lights were mostly off, and the room was only illuminated by the glow from her computer screen. The energy saver lights annoyingly turned off if the room was unoccupied or, in this case, if the scientist was sitting still for too long. She had no idea what time it even was.

The subject of her labours was far from routine, but it engrossed her. She scrolled through pictures taken from one of the small number of satellites in orbit around Mars. Some were the same red dunes and craggy rocks of Mars, but others were not.

“This one maybe,” Smith muttered under her breath. She selected the picture and enlarged it to three times and focused on the little square shapes, blurry and indistinct, but decidedly put there by humans.

The next photo she opened came out much more clear. The squares in that picture were very clearly the buildings of a Martian habitat not-too-dissimilar to their own. Smith hit next and the third picture opened up a launch pad and parked rocket. She began to type into the report open on the second screen

Positively identified site as a habitat or logistics facility. Landed rocket, several large buildings, and landing pad all observed.

The next set of pictures was even more useful.

Tracks and signs of rover activity indicative of possible manned presence. No communications attempted. Electromagnetic (EM) emissions not observed.

Smith thought the lack of radio traffic was weird. She had the electronic monitoring systems surveying everything emitting from that site since they first detected it but there was just… nothing.

There were five missions on Mars. Green Mars Corporation was the first that landed with colonists, but there were others since that had either just arrived, or were setting up. The SpaceY mission was a failure, but it was also the closest to the Green Mars crew.

On the other side of Mars was the biggest; the New Mars Society. They were a large consortium led by tech companies that had established their base ostensively for research. Thus far, the intelligence Smith had gathered indicated that mining for rare earth minerals was their true priority.

Red Vistas was located south of New Mars near the equator. A smallish operation, the company was owned by a resort management company and was explicitly tourism focused. They were the latest to have arrived and were only just getting themselves established.

The fifth was Red Rock. While the New Mars and Red Vistas people were friendly enough with Green Mars Corp, it was Red Rock that was seen as their closest ally on Mars. They were focused on mining, and while they had little interest in the terraforming, they were happy to cooperate with the Green Mars colony on it.

So who owned this other site Smith wondered. She zoomed into the picture of the rocket on its pad, looking for a logo. None was visible. The plain grey rocket was indistinctly shaped and very generic looking. Smith closed the pictures and started reviewing telemetry.

The sensors had only detected the unidentified rocket when was well past the LaGrange Point between Earth and Mars. The colonies on Mars didn’t have much in the way of sensors looking back out towards Earth, and thus what information she could glean was fragmentary.

The initial landing process the mystery rocket underwent was not only unscheduled, but also silent. Like the SpaceY rocket, the vessel had approached so quietly that the science team watching the intruder had wondered if the rocket was out of control.

No EM emissions from rocket on approach.

The initial approach vector was such that Tara Dayton had considered having the crew shelter in the center of the habitat in the event the rocket came in hard, but when the braking rockets fired, they knew it wouldn’t be coming down near their habitat. The fact that the rocket had landed at a pre-established site shocked everyone.

“How did we miss it,” Smith muttered, looking at the strange habitat again. Green Mars Corp HQ hadn’t told them anything until they reported detecting the rocket, and Smith wondered how that was even possible. How could it be that they were unaware of a rocket launch? The fuel loads required to get a rocket to Mars, and then have it decelerate successfully were huge, so huge that you can’t confuse it with a regular orbital satellite launch.

Analysis indicates this is likely a manned site, that the launch was clandestine in nature, and that they intended not to be detected. Investigation into how this launch was not detected recommended.

The last sentence was a barb. It seemed ridiculous that nobody knew this rocket was coming until it was far too late to respond to its presence, and Smith was struggling with the idea it was ignorance or complacency on Earth that had caused this to happen.

Could it have been deliberate, she wondered. Why would it be? Who stands to gain by not telling the mission crew about it? Something wasn’t right.

A tap on the science laboratory door jarred Smith from her work. She stood to go open it, and the automatic lights all flicked back on. She toggled the door lock, thinking it was strange that someone knocked on a door that the science team all had codes for, but it all made sense when she saw Pamala Sheldon standing in the open doorframe.

“Oh, hey Pam, what are you doing here,” Smith asked, in a friendly, if confused manner.

“Hey Col’, how are ya,” Sheldon asked, striding into the lab.

“What can I do for ya,” Smith inquired, sitting back down at her desk.

“I was hoping you’d be able to show me some of the pics I’ve heard so much about,” Sheldon said coyly, “the new habitat I mean.”

“Tara said it’s classified,” Smith ventured hesitatingly.

“Yeah I uh, I know,” Sheldon said, blushing somewhat. “The uh, truth is I’m worried.”

“What are you worried about,” Smith inquired, feeling very weird about the interaction.

“It’s the mining equipment. Theirs. If they have any. I want to know what they intend to use. If they’ve found some secret stash of minerals I kinda should know,” she explained, wandering aimlessly around the lab as she spoke. It made sense to Smith that she’d be interested.

“What if they have though,” she inquired.

“Well, I dunno really,” Sheldon said lightly, “it’s like, I need to know first what they’re doing if we intend to do something about it. My Gamma-1 site is in that direction afterall…”

“I uh,” hesitated Smith. “OK fine, I’ll show you a picture of their rover you may be able to get something from that. But don’t tell anyone though Pam, I’m super freakin serious, OK?”

“Of course Colby, I won’t get you in shit,” Sheldon assured her, “what’ve we got?” Smith unlocked her screen while Sheldon sat down beside her. Smith quickly closed her notes seeing Sheldon’s eyes drawn to them. She opened the picture with the rover in it.

“This one here,” Smith said, pointing it out to Smith. “See how there are tracks leading away? It’s clearly been moving, and recently.”

“Ah right, OK,” Sheldon said, inspecting the picture, “see this area here? It’s a storage of some kind, and behind it that looks like a well digger.”

“So it’s for… water,” Smith wondered.

“Maybe, but it could easily be a sample drill too,” Sheldon explained, and seeing the confused expression on Smith’s face, continued to explain, “the drill could be used for rock samples. Like you drill down and analyze the ore that comes out. We don’t have one, we use the regular drill after electronic scans with the drones.”

“Why would they use one then,” asked Smith.

“Trying to stay undetected I’d wager,” Sheldon said simply.

“You think it’s deliberate,” Smith wondered pointedly. She thought it was very strange that Sheldon had these insights into the mission profile of these people, given that she didn’t know anything about them except for the fact that they hadn’t been detected.

“Of course,” Sheldon shrugged, “you don’t get to Mars on a comms blackout without a good reason.” Smith nodded; that made sense to her. “Do they have drones?”

“Lemmie see,” Smith said, opening another picture. She’d all but forgotten the security orders and panned through the shots in front of Sheldon until she found the picture she was looking for. “Is this a drone launcher?”

“Let’s see, zoom in a bit,” Sheldon instructed, eyes fixed on the screen. “Hmmmm no. Not one like ours anyway. I think it’s a comms array of some kind, but you’d have to ask someone else to be sure.”

“A comms array,” Smith wondered aloud, “that no one is using.”

“That we know of,” Sheldon interjected, “it could just as easily be that we’re not detecting the signals because they’re encrypted to look like background noise.”

“Is that even possible,” Smith asked.

“I dunno, I’m a geologist man,” said Sheldon with an exaggerated shrug. “But not using drones would make them harder to detect right? You can detect our drones with this gear?”

“Yeah, I can see the signals they emit, we need lots of telemetry and shit to make em work,” Smith said, security concerns long forgotten. “They’re pretty strong too, they kinda have to be for range.”

“I see. Let me know if you see anything else mining related will ya,” Sheldon asked cheerfully, and rose to leave.

“Sure, yeah definitely,” Smith responded as she left. She sat back down at her desk reviewing the pictures once again when a message popped up on her terminal telling her another observation satellite was passing the location. She opened the feed and watched the screen intently.

The feed was grainy at first, but as the satellite got closer it produced more detail. The habitat was plainly visible, metallic and shining in the light of dawn where it was. The habitat itself wasn’t much bigger than the Green Mars Corp habitat. It was low, likely only one story, but she couldn’t confirm. The roof was dusty, an indication of how long it had been there.

The grey rocket was still in the place on its pad. She focused in but nothing that would give a clue as to the origin was visible. She looked for the rover but saw that it had moved.

Rover confirmed to be operational, she noted down. Seeing a hose connected to the rocket, Smith added: possible rocket refueling operations underway.

With each passing second the images and video became more clear and distinct, and Smith became increasingly sure the site was occupied. Clearly visible were the oxygen harvesters, the water storage tanks, and the water vapor gathering units. It was all strikingly similar to their own habitat, yet definably different. Like someone had copied their setup without ever seeing it.

Life support infrastructure observed. Possible well digging or boring equipment noted.

The roof of the habitat, Smith realized, was actually lined with solar panels. The dust on them, she suspected, must have been thrown up by the rocket landing. As she zoomed in closer, she saw little drones on the roof sweeping dust off the panels.

Drone maintenance activity underway on rooftop solar panels, she noted.

Smith could see that the satellite was passing further away from the habitat. The views were getting a little less distinct and the picture quality dropped off slightly. She was just about to note that no human activity was observed when something caught her eye. The satellite barely had a view, yet it was obvious what she was looking at. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears as she typed.

Human activity observed.

There, blurry and distant on the screen, was a person in a suit staring directly at the satellite.

“Who the fuck are these people?”