<div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/f/fa/Mars_test.jpg)</div><table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Character name:</strong></td><td>Wing Commander Louise Cotter</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Location:</strong> </td><td>Standing outside the base</td></tr><tr><td><strong>With:</strong> </td><td> Everyone on the first shuttle (all player characters plus some NPCs)</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Doing:</strong> </td><td>Taking it all in</td></tr></tbody></table><br/><hr/><br/>I was back!<br/><br/>Thirty years after being pulled off the Red Planet due to some idiotic fuck-up, I had finally made it back here. And this time, I was in charge! This time there would be NO disaster, no six dead and ten injured in one monumentally stupid incident that could so easily have been prevented, and even if not, could have been much less severe if people had been less lax.<br/><br/>I looked around at the red-orange landscape with it's occasional dry-ice frosting, then up at the strangely pink sky. That was going to take some getting used too. They called the members of the second mission "pink-skyers" for a while after they came back, because they kept complaining about how weird the blue sky of earth was.<br/><br/>Aware that the entire world - in fact two entire worlds - were watching me via the TV camera mounted to the shuttle and listening in to my radio, I tried to think of something to say. Something dramatic. All I could think of was<em>Squeeeee!</em>I wanted to squeal like a little girl. Finally I managed to get my brain in gear. "Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to the New Frontier". Not quite on a par with Armstrong's 'One small step', or Gunther's 'This is History in the making'. (Leon Gunther was my hero when I was growing up - the first man to set foot on Mars, I had actually met him, once, briefly, before he died), but it would do. My words, I knew would go down in History.<br/><br/>Looking around I saw the others gathered by the shuttle, a cluster of white-suited figures with a handful of military orange suits in with them. This was shuttle one and would be staying with us. Shuttles two and three would be ferrying colonists and supplies down for the next two days, before returning to Earth with the MCM-1, the Mars Colony Mission one, the ship that had brought us here.<br/><br/>The base was more-or-less exactly as I had left it. Dust had piled against the sides of the surface structures a little, but not badly so. The observation dome stood clear and dark to my right, while in front of me the massive hangar and garage stood proud, testament to the second mission's building prowess.<br/><br/>Away to my right I could see the spoil heaps from the open excavation where Mission three had begun to dig a new habitat module. That would be one of our first tasks: complete that new module and add two more, ready for the second wave of colonists in twenty two month's time.<br/><br/>I walked slowly - or more accurately, bounced - in my military orange environment suit, to the small stone marker about three metres from the airlock. I knelt awkwardly and placed one hand on the stone, unable to feel it through the gauntlet. "I'm back, darling", I said softly. "I told you I would be, and I am. A lot has happened in thirty years, and I'm sorry you had to wait here all alone for so long, but I'm back now!"<br/><br/>My lover, Henrietta McNee, had been one of the six fatalities on Manned Mars Mission three (3M3). While the other five bodies were repatriated, Henny had written in her will that she wanted to be buried on the New World. I had pleaded, cajoled and threatened, hobbling out of the hospital on one leg, until the acting base commander had agreed to bury the body here. I was listed as Henny's next of kin, so I got my way.<br/><br/>After a moment of quiet reflection, I stood up again. "Right!" I stated in my best parade-ground voice. "Lets get this show on the road".<br/><br/>I moved purposefully to the main airlock, flipped the switch on the battery-backup to initialise the system, waited until I had a green light, then tapped in the code that I knew by heart. The light went red, and a horn sounded, faintly through the thin atmosphere as though from a long way away. And the main hangar door jolted, sending a shower of red dust swirling down, then slowly ground it's way up.<br/><br/>WE HAD ARRIVED!