Red Soil Through Our Fingers by N.A. Ratnayake

Author:N.A. Ratnayake
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: mars, space, corporations, exploitation, wealth disparity, mars exploration, workers rights, mars colony, colonization of space, colonization of mars
Publisher: N.A. Ratnayake

Nine

Karl Boyce had always thought the view from SolStream’s executive conference room on Phobos was nothing short of stunning. The larger, inner Martian moon was riddled with tunnels, pressurized spaces, and structural reinforcement to keep the whole thing from breaking apart. The outer luxury residences and high-end commercial office spaces that had windowed rooms were some of the most highly sought after properties in Martian real estate. The reason was the view he was taking in right now.

Phobos orbited closer to its planet than any other moon in the solar system, and more rapidly too. SolStream’s conference room was structured such that its floor was a giant window, looking down on the red planet below. Whenever Boyce stood in this room, he felt like he was flying — the red mountain ridges, pale glaciers, and dark valleys visible below as sunrise and sunset hit him multiple times per Martian day.

He finished adjusting the SolStream logo pin attached to his scarf, then fumbled for a scarf clip — essential in low gravity offices like this one, to prevent the accessory from simply floating wherever inertia sent it. He frankly would have preferred to have been rid of what he thought of as superfluous office fashion, but dress codes were driven by clients’ expectations. There were enough meetings with all kinds of people in a day that he might as well go conservative.

Below, Boyce could see the wide, low basin of the Hellas Planitia as it passed beneath them. Five hundred kilometers northeast of Hellas were the barely-discernible spaceport and city of Dao. North of Dao, the spaces between RBX’s settlements were vast and empty highlands — undulating ripples of rusty red connected only by over a thousand kilometers of supply lines. These lines carried the essentials for life northward along the edge of the Dao Vallis canyon like metal arteries.

A dozen major companies starting from landing points all across the red planet reached out with those arteries as far as they practically could in the race to claim territory. SolStream was not among these titans, the giant pan-solar corporations like RBX — but it aspired to be.

He reflected on how far the company had come.

Though still a relatively small company by solar system standards, SolStream had done well over the last ten years. The leadership began to see the company as an up and coming power on the frontier, and had wanted executive offices to match their presumed imminent appearance on the stage alongside the most powerful commercial entities in human history. After the most recent successful contract, their CEO, Dr. Hwang Jin, wasted no time in leasing these offices.

Boyce was a big part of that success. He knew it, Dr. Hwang knew it, and most of the company knew it. That’s why he was entrusted with relations between SolStream and their biggest client, the Rekos-Breland Xenomaterials Corporation. For years that relationship was also successful, thanks to his longstanding ties with Gareth before the man was replaced with Yoo Sun-Hee.

Yet Boyce also knew that such successes were fleeting in the current age of expansion.

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