The Literate Mustache

When Daedalus returned from its 4th trip, it was quickly retrieved and dismantled. Plans for a manned mission scale-vehicle had been developed to maturity and were ready to be enacted. The 3 functional prototypes were brought up to spec, and 2 more were built, as construction of the drive units was very expensive, and all of them were assembled into a drive core unit, running in parallel. Experiments had determined that while mass was a negligible factor in the operation of the drive, the warp bubble had a limited effective range, and it was theorized that an inadequately enveloped vehicle would experience a similar anomalous catastrophic failure as the original Lucerne probe. This core was then sent up into orbit where a vehicle was being constructed that used the existing Lucerne II vehicle as a basis. The vehicle, dubbed Light Racer, was a collaborative effort between ESA NASA, JAXA, Roscosmos, the Australian Space Agency, and several private aerospace manufacturing companies. In addition to funding construction and providing parts, they also fronted further funds for constructing more drive core units, as well as to investigate feasibility for mass manufacturing. By the time Light Racer was complete, they were approximately 5.5 months behind the still en-route supply ship, and they estimated a few more weeks for acquiring personnel. Brakstad and Foss both volunteered and were put on the shortlist. Sdiri was considered, but scheduling conflicts prevented her from making a commitment. Montenegro, in addition to being enrolled in Université PSL and unable to delay his academic commitments for such a significant period of time, was not considered for the mission due to not having the necessary qualifications.

The supply ship finally arrived, deployed its cargo landers, containing 7.5 tons of foodstuffs, and started on its slingshot maneuver to begin transit back to Earth. Literally the week afterwards, Star Racer successfully dropped out of warp over Mars. They deployed their landers, performed one orbit to reorient, and then jumped to warp again. The landers contained a team of 12 people, 6 more buggies, building equipment for greenhouses and the start of a more permanent settlement, and 3 tons of food. The landers themselves were also able to be dismantled and their parts repurposed. Read immediately took charge, and sent 6 people, Foss and Brakstad among them, and 4 of the buggies to make contact with the 2 Aresian communities nearby and make trips to deliver 4 tons of food to each location, the remaining food and personnel to be transported to the first discovered community. Read and Hall had discovered that the communities were operating on latent geothermal energy as a power source, by way of a few power stations that functioned on a similar principle to steam turbines back on Earth, but using dry ice mined from the polar ice caps. Energy output was obviously enough to keep the walker vehicles functional and the artificial lighting in their caverns on, but the pressures from cycling the gas between hot and cold, the coolant zones long since dried up, and the planet's surface temperature doing the job in its place, to drive the turbines had been slowly diminishing over time as the planet cooled, and combined with corrosion from the CO2, Hall and Read estimated that they were operating at about 40-60% of their original output. They requested replacement turbine blades at the required specifications coated in a corrosion resistant enamel to be delivered at earliest convenience. They arrived with the third wave of landing parties, along with engineers to study the turbine system and make the repairs.

The fourth wave of landing parties arrived with two-way landers. They arrived to an almost unrecognizable scene, looking like a high-tech colony town from the American old west, using prefab buildings instead of façades. Included among the personnel were a few journalists and a film crew, who were all eager to document the ongoing relief effort, which had recently passed its first anniversary. Read and Hall, both now officially record holders of the longest time away from Earth, were told to go home. They steadfastly refused initially, but were eventually convinced that the work would continue just fine in their absence, and officially welcomed their relief: Caleb Moss, a Canadian man, astro-botanist and agricultural bioengineer; and Binyaarns, an Indiginous-Australian woman, engineer and mechanical technician with a respectable amount of flight experience. Read and Hall stayed for a another week, getting to know the newcomers and making sure the details were sorted out as the responsibilities were transferred. Read and Hall returned to Earth, and immediately became involved in the Martian relief effort Earthside.

The two Aresians who were brought to Earth were also brought over with the fourth wave of landing parties to present the remaining inhabitants with an opportunity. Many sovereign nations on Earth had opened their borders specifically for Aresians to emigrate and make new lives for themselves there. The logistics of the offer would only allow a handful of people at a time, as Tsukikage Station could only accomodate a few people at a time for gravity therapy, as the station was still used for regular crewed missions. Not many Aresians took them up on the offer at first, only five people, who were quite young, took them up on the offer, and three of them came back (which was a very complicated situation and ended up necessitating a crowdfunding campaign to pay for a private space agency to send them up to Tsukikage Station so they could rendezvous with Light Racer when it returned from the next trip), but their improved physical condition spurred more to try moving to Earth. Soon, there was a small, but steady stream of emigrants. But while some were leaving, many more were working hard with the relief teams to bring their communities back to strength. Routes between the various nearby communities were established, and outposts near them were constructed. More of the communities across the planet - some of them were, tragically, completely dead - were found, contact between them was established, and suitable landing sites were identified, and more outposts established. A rough census was taken as soon as most of the communities were found, and across the entire planet there were only 1.2 million individuals. While as many were searched for and found as possible, there was an underlying worry by many people on both sides of the relief effort that some were missed.

The research done into AHK-drive mass manufacturing eventually led to more cost effective ways to construct drive units as needed, which allowed for more interplanetary vehicles to be constructed, which led to a higher frequency and volume of landing parties and supplies, which led to more orbital infrastructure around both planets to be constructed to accommodate the craft, and soon a permanent orbital docking facility was built over Mars for shuttles to move between. Fuel and spare parts for the shuttles were occasionally brought with the landing parties for restocking, and many Aresians were trained to operate as crew for the docking facility. It eventually was given the name Vaughan Hub*, after one of the mathematicians working during the Apollo 11 mission, Dorothy Vaughan. Soon, a semi-permanently settled community on the surface near the first underground community was officially established, and named New Lucerne. The underground section was repurposed for exclusively agricultural work (in addition to greenhouses on the surface), and all Aresians were relocated to houses on the surface. The interspecies Martian colony grew, and eventually became host of a dedicated research facility, where research on AHK-drive technology, terraformation, artificial gravity generation, and many more technologies would be performed. It was here that the first non-physical variable permeability barriers - in lay terms, shields - were created.

*The docking facility would eventually be renamed in 2109 to Je'Ur Memorial Station, for one of the two Aresians who first came to Earth, after extensive remodeling.

The Sol system was becoming more than just a wonder. It was becoming a home. Because of the push for AHK-drives on manned vehicles to help the people on Mars, the solar system was now able to be crossed, by manned crews, from one end to the other in a matter of days. By 2075, there was at least one crewed mission in orbit over the outer planets. The construction of an orbital colony over the Jovian moon Europa, in part to serve as a conduit to study its frozen oceans, began in early 2076, and was touted as humanity's greatest achievement (more due to good press and PR than by any objective metric - many people believed it to be stolen valor; and still considered the Aresian relief effort of even greater significance). But it wouldn't be long before this achievement, and even the Aresian relief effort, was dwarfed by a discovery even greater....