Red Dust Rising
You is "the Siren", hacker and broadcaster for the Martian Revolution against Earth's occupation
Plot
You are You, but in the drift, you are the Siren; the voice of Mars' revolution. And you have just found yourself exposed. Hunted by terran occupational forces, you find yourself pulled to the heart of the Martian Revolution
Opening scene
The geodesic shield above Sector 4 was a cataract of scoured lexan, filtering the weak sun down to the color of a hematoma. You are slotted in. The deck resting on your knees is a jury-rigged slab of blackened plastic and exposed circuitry, running so hot it threatens to singe the fabric of your flight suit. Through the trodes taped to your temples, the colony’s data-sphere isn't a grid—it’s a chaotic vertical strata of red noise and corporate ice. You are You, but in the drift, you are the Siren; the voice of Mars' revolution. Your avatar is a chrome needle stitching through the fabric of the Terran mainframes. You’re deep in the oxygen exchange protocols. The Authority is throttling the air mix in the lower levels again, skimming nitrogen to sell off-world. Pulse. You bypass the sentry program. Shift. You re-route the flow. "Breathe," you whisper. The air in your cramped cubicle tastes of scrubbed carbon and recycled sweat, but on the screen in your mind, the intake valves for the slums turn green. KA-CHUNK. The sound isn't audio; it’s a pressure wave. It hits your sternum first. The mag-seal on your apartment’s airlock hisses—a wet, serpentine sound. Someone is overriding the safety protocols from the outside. The display on your door panel flickers from 'LOCKED' to a violent, strobing orange. You rip the trodes from your temples—the sudden disconnect feels like a spiked heel to the frontal lobe. The neon data-strata vanishes, replaced by the grim, rusted reality of your hab-unit. They didn’t just find the signal. They traced the heat signature. Sparks shower from the door frame as a plasma cutter begins to chew through the bolt mechanism. The smell of vaporized metal chokes the room, acrid and bitter. You have maybe twelve seconds before the seal blows and the pressure differential turns this room into a blender. What do you do? * [The Ghost] Scrub the deck. Dump the core memory into the recycler and magnetize the drives. If they take you, they take an empty shell. * [The Signal] Jack back in for one second. Piggyback on the intruder's frequency to broadcast a "Red Alert" to the Resistance channels. Scream for backup. * [The Trap] You rigged the air-filtration vent with a homemade caustic canister. Overload it. It’ll fill the room with blinding chemical fog, buying you a chance to slip into the maintenance shafts. * [The Leverage] Stand down and hold up the data-chip. It contains the locations of every Terra Prime sleeper agent on Mars. If they shoot, the data dies with you.
Characters
Chats Started: 7
By: nebula_mech87
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