The Last Message

When she was a small lass, she used to dream about the stars. How they glowed for the dark and were chased away by the sun of the day. How she wondered what could be seen from space. How small was the world around her that they would look comparable to beetles from way up there.

As she grew older, she would amuse her younger dreams and chase after them. Enrollment for college, she entered the space cadet program. Not long after she became top of her class, she was offered a placement for the world's Project Mars program.

The purpose of the program was to have the team members create a colony on Mars and start humans future to the stars. The program begun when rovers were sent to the planet to collect and analyze samples of the ground and atmosphere. They were tasked to secure an area where the team could land and set up the base for research and development. The teams job was to research the local samples collected by the rovers and develop the tools and technology that would be needed to create the colony on Mars. Lastly, they would send a message to Earth for a preselected group to be sent to Mars to start up the colony and there they would stay and operate from as humans expanded to other planets of the Sol star system before they expand to another galaxy.

At least, that was the plan. There was always a chance the program would go south. But never would they have thought how south the plan would go.

Early on, the program had twenty members of the team that would start the settlement on Mars. Each member excelled at the task the Earth's Project Mars board members gave them. Hers was one of the hardest jobs, set up a steady dual-way broadcast between them and Earth so that the board members can see how far they progress and the team can check on the ones they left at home to go on the journey to Mars.

At the start, all the parts of the program were on schedule. The water supply was created by day three, the base was made by day seven, and the food was planted on the shelves of the greenhouse by day ten. All that was left was her job to set up the broadcast between Mars and Earth.

That's when the problems began.

Day twelve, a storm developed overhead. The best guess for how long the storm would last ranged from a month to three years based on data collected before they set foot on the ground. The agreed upon plan was to stand by and hope for a short storm.

Three months later, the storm overhead had ravaged parts of the complex made and the gusts were too strong to go out and weld back together the parts that had blown off.

By the fourth month, the storm seemed to lessen up and the team began the welds to put the base back together.

She set out to create the broadcast between Mars and Earth, on the search for upper ground that would allow the team to connect and send messages to Earth. Then get back further orders for the settlement's development.

She found an upper elevated area that overlooked a vast valley. From the rovers reports, that valley use to be a lake of fresh water. Now the lake was barren, not a drop of water to be seen.

She began setup of her tools to make her part of the overall plan. Once she completes her part, she's suppose to get new orders from the project leaders from Earth. She was not done yet, when a small meteor crashed on the ground of the valley below her. She looked up to the sky to see other meteors that were on the way down. She had to get out of there and look for cover. The area was open, not much cover could be found other than a large boulder down the slope from her. She was fast to roll down, her tools left there as she took what cover she could get from the large boulder as meteors crashed on the ground all around her. She looked to the sky to see when the meteor shower would end, that's when she saw the huge meteor that was gonna pass Mars but seemed to be on a trajectory toward Earth. Maybe she can get a message out to them fast enough, they can launch nukes to change the path of the meteor.

The meteor showers would not stop. Large rocks crashed on the ground around her as she made her way back to the elevated area that she left her tools on. Some of her tools were taken out by the meteors but she should have enough supply here to create a one-way broadcast to Earth. She looked up for a moment to see meteors crash down around the base where the rest of her team were hopefully safe.

Took an hour to set up her tool to send a message to Earth. She was unsure on the strength that would be produced would be strong enough to reach Earth, but she had to try. "Mayday, mayday, for anyone that can hear my message. There's a huge meteor on a trajectory for Earth. For anyone that can hear my message, the meteor's on the way to Earth. Contact the defense department and NASA, they urgently need to get my message."

She would look to the sky once more, the meteor was far out of the range of her eyes and could no longer be seen from a naked eye, but the showers fell all around her, almost comparable to a creep barrage where a plane carpet bombs an area. She felt just as helpless underneath. Unsure of even the message's chance to reach Earth. That message would be all she could send as a meteor at last falls down upon her small elevated broadcast area.