Lustris

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

But that's not quite right. Your eyes "hear" light and both senses use the same heuristics. Faint or small objects are far, clear/big/loud objects are close. And my eyes have seen enough spacers expel their last breath into the vacuum to clearly hear their screams every night.

But Jim, who is 26, Martian-born, and a profane and impatient ass, says he doesn't give a shit about my drivel. "Shut up and finish your repair so I make my date with Riviera."

I sigh and start curing the sealing gel he's preloaded into the dome crack.

Mars Dome L, Lustris to its inhabitants, is on the edge of the Cerberus Fossae fault line, and contrary to conceptions that Mars is geologically dead, has some seismic activity. Enough for minor earthquakes to crack a dome every once in a while. While the cracks aren't enough to penetrate to the protected air inside, and definitely not sufficient to harm the superstructure, our division repairs them to prevent problems down the line.

I don't even want to think about the political fallout if the Earth Martian Authority allowed a dome to truly crack and lose air. It'd just provide grist for the Martian separatists, and there'd be more speeches, more crackdowns, and alcohol would get even more expensive. Better to repair the crack, keep the EMA happy, and keep my booze cheap.

I'm waving the curing lamp and mostly zoned out when I notice a new hairline crack forming next to the split I'm repairing. Astonished, my eyes follow the new crack into the distance and I see two bodies inside the dome not too far away..

"Jim! Jim!" Jim turns around from whatever he was focusing on and sees the new widening crack. "What the fuck?"

I point out the duo 50 meters over and 100 meters down and we use our grapple lines to belay over to get a better look.

Jim asks, "Are they inspecting new damage from the inside of the dome?" I don't respond as we shimmy over. Everything about this is wrong. Fiberglass fractures are fixed on the outside before the inside and we should be the only crew in the area.

Jim and I notice their automated glasshammer at the same time. Jim says, "Shit... they're causing cracks in the dome."

I ask, "Why would anyone do that?" as Jim hops on the horn, "Dome L Control, this is Dispatch L-3, we're at marker 58-4 and people inside the dome appear to be trying to crack it!" I tune out Jim's side of the conversation as I focus on trying to get the attention of the men on the interior of the dome.

It's hard to see through 4m of dome, but one waves at me as the other operates the hammer. Within a minute a significant dome crack appears to be forming on their side, one that is perhaps a meter deep into the dome, and the hammer stops. As one starts packing bags into the crack, the other shoos me to leave, and I finally realize what they're doing.

"Jim, we've got to go now!"

"What!? Control just told me they're sending out a team. It should be here in 20 minutes."

"That's not quick enough Jim, they've loaded the crack with what I'm guessing are explosives. They're getting out of dodge and waved at us to get out too."

"...shit! I'm moving."

Jim and I don't speak as we scramble up our lines. We could engage the climber on our belts to pull us up, but we're much faster when we climb ourselves. If our arms begin to give out, we could engage it to rest them, but enough adrenaline is pumping through me that it doesn't matter.

As we're racing up, I'm mostly in shock. When your planet is constantly trying to kill you, it gives society a common purpose. Mars society survives against the odds, and in the process we've tapped into the underground aquifers, thickened the atmosphere with CFC agents, bioengineered cyanobacteria to live under rocks on the Martian surface in order to fix nitrogen and convert CO2 to O2... Most of these terraforming pipe dreams won't produce results for a thousand years. But the domes let us live and thrive here now.

Every child knows the great effort each dome takes, and the fact there are 52 now is little short of a miracle. Of course, if silicon dioxide wasn't the most common material on Mars, there's no way the domes could be constructed. But experimentation has yielded a flexible and strong SO2 fiberglass that is used to build domes that trap heat, are transparent enough to allow light in, and that still filter out enough REMs that life here isn't irradiated. Nearly unlimited fusion power doesn't hurt either.

Domes range from smaller 1km domes to massive 30km domes, and each dome has at least one fusion plant constantly running temperatures of 800C on Martian air (which is practically pure CO2) to turn it into oxygen and carbon monoxide. The oxygen is used inside the domes, the methane is released, and excess oxygen is used for propellant. An oxygen "tax" ensures some O2 created through this process is put into the Martian atmosphere.

But there's no profit in bombing a dome. The Martian atmosphere is still toxic to everyone. While some Martians have begun taking CRISPR supplements so that their bodies are better adapted to low gravity and don't require as much Oxygen, that's another long term project that will take generations to have any impact, and some think it will be too little to matter. Those taking the supplements require ~0.3% less Oxygen right now, and in an atmosphere still 95% less dense than Earth's with 15x less Oxygen, anyone breathing pure Martian air will perish rapidly.

15 minutes later, my arms are burning, Jim has built up a 50 meter lead, and we're still 5 minutes from our docking point, when the Dome reverberates below me and a shock slams my entire body into the side of the dome.

I look down and see 4 full 50m fiberglass panels shattered, leaving a gaping 100m hole in the dome below us. Even thought the hole is a good 150m below me, edge effect turbulence from the thicker atmosphere escaping below begins spinning me on my line until I mag-snap myself to the dome.

Jim belays back down next to me, and we take a moment to examine the damage. A 100m hole in a 20km dome isn't going to degas the interior overnight. It will take days for the air to fully exchange. Enough time that the EMA may be able to tarp it, seal it, and repair it before people die. But in the meantime, the dome residents will start feeling something most have never felt before... wind.

"Mary, I think I'm going to miss my date with Riviera."