Prologue

My adventure started with numbers.

10 9 8
And as the numbers were descending
7 6 5
I knew
4 3 2
My life would never be the same.
1
Lets rewind a little bit lets say 15 years.
Construction of the Hades missions began in 2018, when
NASA decided that they wanted to collect samples from Mars
when the theory about the Moon Landings being faked took
off. Something about the internet, I dunno.
The first manned mission to Mars happened in 2021, but
it was a huge bust. The shuttle exploded and crashed half a
minute after takeoff. There were no survivors.
2024, Hades 2 was afoot. They made it to Mars, but on
descent the parachute was broken so they all plunged to their
deaths. There were, again, no survivors.
2029, NASA was extra careful with the shuttles. Hades 3
was a success well, it would have been if the idiots
controlling that thing hadnt forgotten the samples back on

Mars. They could have learned a thing or two from the last
Hades missions, right?
So, to recap, Hades missions have so far been complete
flops. So, now, Ive been chosen from my humble beginnings
as a McDonalds employee, from my Masters degree in
Astronomy, Engineering and Physics, and my Sergeant rank in
the military, to be an astronaut for the Hades 4 mission.
Im James Barr, and Im going to be the 9th person to walk
on Mars.
And, over the radio, I heard
Blast off.
You know how sometimes life can go by in a blink of an
eye? At one instant, youre just woken up by your alarm clock,
then, it seems like its the blink of an eye, and suddenly,
youre at work, or at school, or, well at Mars?
The 273 days it took us to get to Mars seemed like a few
days. 6,552 hours in the span of what felt like 72. I dont know
why. I spent most of my time lounging in the den, playing
Mario Kart with my crewmates, or planning the construction of
the PEG, (the Plastic Environment Globe,) or watching TV. You
know, theres this show called Friends, and its about this
group of friends who live together in these apartments in New
York. Its pretty funny. I think I identify mostly as Chandler.
I also watched a show called Hannah Montana.
It sucked.

However, now that the trip is over, and the descent to

Mars is just hours away, its weird to think about, well, just
how fast stuff goes especially when youre on a spaceship
hurtling itself towards Mars at 8835.3km/h where any failure is
possible. We got here in a ship designed by SpaceX, actually,
called the Expot Falcon 19. Its pretty slow but it makes up in
size for what it lacks in speedIts 8km long, 3 km wide and 2
km tall. You may be wondering how they got the metal for it.
Well, they found an asteroid made of metal and decided
Wow, this doesnt look dangerous at all!, so they sent about
100 coal miners to space and had them extract every last
gram of metal. Untrained coal miners in space on an asteroid.
Really, Elon Musk? The metal revenue they received was 3
times enough to build the inside and outside of the Expot
Falcon 19. It was so big that SpaceX had to assemble
everything outside the orbit of Earth. The Expot Falcon 19 is
designed to hold 11,800 metric tons of weight, or around
26,007,200 pounds. Thats not including the ships weight
itself or the essentials and crew inside. The crew can walk
around the ship and place objects freely because SpaceXs
ingenuity allows us to walk in near-Earth gravity by rotating
the ship around a center point. Its pretty cool.
Speaking of crew Lets introduce them!
So, lets start with Private Taura MacPhee, former
biologist and chemist, a heck of a nurse, now a military
recruit, and surprisingly a rather worthy opponent in Mario
Kart.
We all have military backgrounds, its pretty annoying,
but NASA decided that we needed to know how to use guns if
we were to ever encounter aliens, or that one terrorist group
that is now starting a space program.

Uhh, we have Corporal Jue Yue Hold on a second.

Hey, Corporal? I yelled through the hallway.
Yes, Sergeant Barr?! he yelled back.
How do you pronounce your name again?! I yelled once
more.
Oh, for goodness sakes, this again?!
We have Corporal J-U-A-N Fernandez, pronounced Huan.
He apparently studied Meteorology in College and ran his own
taco store. Heck of a guy, and makes a mighty fine Tuscan
Chicken Panini.
Lieutenant Lola Vickers, formerly a receptionist at a midtier paper company somewhere in Pennsylvania. She went
back to college and got a masters in Astrophysics.
And finally, weve arrived at Commander Terry, Gunther
Terry. His father, Demetrius Terry, is the Director of NASA,
which seems like nepotism to me, right? He conducted the
previous mission to Mars, Hades 3. He was the one
responsible for leaving the samples in the PEG and wasting
billions of dollars on the mission, and yet, Demetrius didnt
fire him! You see how this connects? Hes smug, arrogant, and
thinks of himself as king of the Earth, and Mars heck, he
thinks hes king of the universe.
Wait, I forgot one more!

Mebby, my robot. M.E.B, (Mars Enviro Bot), is her actual

name but for the sake of simplicity I just call her Meb, or
Mebby. Shes pretty awesome, and I designed her myself!
Shes basically a rover that has giant arms. She comes with an
indoor heated and comfortable cabin, complete with radio and
cup holder. She also has giant tracks like you see on tanks,
and shes completely functional in space! Well, the
thrusters are a work in progress. She comes with an A.I which
scans and adapts to any situation.
JAMES! I hear the demanding yell of Gunther down the
hall. Dangit.
When he walks in, I can see that hes chewing gum from
his pack of Juicy Fruit. He pushes his glasses onto his face and
yells, TURN THAT COMPUTER OFF!
I turn towards him and say in a calm voice, Yes, sir?
I dont like your attitude he says angrily, WERE
DESCENDING TO THE CRATER IN 20. MINUTES. WHERE HAVE
YOU BEEN?
Ah, yeah. I got your memo, I say, you want to move
the departure to 12:30PM rather than 3:30PM? You do realize
that NASA explicitly to-
HEY! he screams in his ear-shattering high voice, HEY!
HEY! You idiot!
Start over! I retort, holding back a large yell.
NASA isnt your boss! I AM. I AM YOUR BOSS! We he
says quietly, are leaving In TWENTY. MINUTES!

He walks out and slams the door behind him, and he goes
next-door to Juans room. I can tell theyre having the same
discussion, judging by the yelling.
But, uhh I guess this is it. Time to shut everything
down.
Departure is in twenty minutes.
Departure time: 12:34PM, because Gunther forgot to put
his suit on, which took him 4 minutes.
Landing time: 12:36PM. It took what felt like a while, but it
would have taken even longer if NASA hadnt installed
thrusters to the descent vehicle which took us to the surface
at 183m/s. We were pulling some serious Gs so most of us
passed out, however, were alive.
Mars is awesome, yet freaky. Its hilly and red and
inviting but its so, well
Barren.
Assembly of the PEG took about a day. Just under 22
hours. We brought 30 tons of fertile soil for planting grass and
food, and 2 tons of grass seeds. With the ingenuity from the
smart-alecs from NASA, the grass should take about 3 hours.
Soon, well have a big, grassy area for living in, complete with
huge tents for us to live in.
Kind of like camping
Except on Mars

In a giant dome made of plastic.

Which, by the way, has a diameter of 3km, making the
area of the dome 7.07km2. Thats a lot of space to work in!
In the middle of the night, a person who shall remain
nameless destroyed something that is vastly important to the
mission.
Oh, what the heck Gunther decided it would be a fun
project to build a rock home inside the PEG, using Meb, so he
gathered some rocks through the airlock and used Meb to pick
them up and place them in such a way that it would create a
house for him to live in.
One thing, unfortunately, lead to another
And the PEG blew up.
Fortunately, the crew minus Gunther had intuition about
something like this happening, so we all kept our suits on, so
we all wore our M.E.Ses, (Mars Environment Suits). Well, we
wore them anyways because Gunther forgot to seal the
airlocks before loading the O2 into the PEG before we went to
bed.
So, since we didnt have oxygen, we dont have grass,
and since we dont have grass, we dont have food. And, since
we dont have shelter, there would be no way to grow food or
grass in the first place. NASA, the smart people they are,

decided to end the mission right there. So, today, were

heading back.
Everybody is extremely irate with Gunther right now. His
father, Demetrius, who runs NASA, fired him and is moving
him back as a recruit in JPL, in Japan. Hes moving him as far
away as possible from NASA headquarters in Washington.
But enough with Gunther, Ive had enough. Hes wasted
the last 3 years of my life, and because of him, were leaving
Mars. We all loaded ourselves into the MAV and Lola activated
the thrusters. The MAV burst into flames and launched us up
to zero-gravity heights. The trip up felt a whole lot longer than
the trip down. Probably because Im angry. That happens
when Im angry.
Gunther seems angry too, which was understandable.
Hes basically disowned and moving away from his father, and
he has to start his job life all over again. But, he seems like
hes planning something. Its a tad discomforting to see him
staring down Lola, especially since shes piloting the MAV.
Suddenly, he jumps out of his seat and pushes himself off
the wall over to Lola, and he pulls her out of her seat and
smashes her through the glass out into space. I see her
spinning around hopelessly, with a ton of smashed glass
puncturing her suit and flinging her around with atmospheric
thrust from her suit.
Gunther had left her for dead.
Juan and Taura tried to pin down Gunther as I jumped for
the pilot seat, but it wasn't enough. Gunther threw the two of
them against the wall and pushed me outside the MAV, into

space. Glass shards came with me, just like with Lola, when
she cut her suit and made atmospheric thrust...
Atmospheric thrust. I grabbed a shard of glass and cut my
gloves, which released a ton of air and sent me flying all
around. I regained equilibrium and flung myself towards the
MAV, which was now spinning uncontrollably. Oh, crap. I
thought, It's gonna fall back into Mars' gravity.
I reached the MAV and grabbed onto the handle on the
side. Gunther jumped towards me and yelled into his radio:
"I'M STILL YOUR BOSS, SERGEANT!" and pushed me off the
side again. Luckily for me, I had grabbed on to the MAV's
tether and had enough momentum to slingshot myself around
to the other side. I grabbed onto the window sill and smashed
the glass so I could get in. Inside, Juan and Taura were holding
onto Gunther by the arms.
I made a fist with my hand and punched his spacesuit
visor as hard as possible. His visor shattered and he lost all his
oxygen. As a final blow, I kicked him towards the window...
which made him scrape along the controls with enough force
to send us going down towards Mars at 183m/s.
Crap.
Fortunately for us, NASA always thinks ahead. We all had
parachutes! So, I jumped out the MAV along with Juan and
Taura and we free-fell down to Mars' surface.
I could see the surface getting closer, then suddenly, I
realized that my suit had a hole in it. The one I made earlier
that let me fly back to the MAV.

"TAURA! TAURA!" I yelled into the microphone.

Fortunately for us, we had spacesuits on, so we didn't have to
worry about those pesky wind noises.
"I KNOW, I KNOW!" she yelled, and dove down towards
me. She was always handy with duct tape, so when she got to
me she sealed both my gloves.
Honestly, duct tape should be praised.
~
Demetrius Terry, director of NASA, stepped up the red
carpeted stairs to the podium in front of over 4,000,000
people. This giant stadium he stood in was built in 2027, and
is used for giant public announcements, band concerts, or,
most commonly, used for NASA updates. It usually holds
1,000,000, but people obliged to cram in. Everyone wanted to
know what was going on with the Hades catastrophe.
"Last night," Demetrius began, "the Hades 4 mission
turned South. An unexpected and unplanned increase in O2
inside the Plastic Environment Globe lead to the bubble
bursting. The crew grabbed their things and took off to head
home.
"Unfortunately, the MAV which the crew was using
disappeared without reason. We suspect that the MAV
shredded under atmospheric pressure and fell down back into
Mars' orbit. We know nothing of the crew, except one member.
"Lola Vickers jumped out of the MAV before it disappeared
and used atmospheric thrust to bring herself back to the
Expot Falcon 19 safe and sound. We have now gotten an voice

conversation ready so we can communicate with Lola and

guide her back home." he finished, then turned on his
Samsung Universe s5, and opened up Skype. "Uhh, also
thank Microsoft for making this conversation possible. Hello,
Lola?"
"Gunther Terry is a traitor." Lola replied through the
phone. S'cuse me? Demetrius thought.
"Sorry, say that again?" Demetrius replied.
"Gunther Terry is a traitor." Lola replied through the
microphone. She began the story.
~
Taura and Juan had a safe and sound landing...
Unfortunately for me, things didn't go too well. Turns out, the
MAV shredded into pieces on reentry, so a ton, (literally a ton,)
of metal came crashing down, and one small shard of metal
decided it would be funny to land right in my back. Pesky
things.
Fortunately, Taura had a, what she said, "little bit of
experience" in doctoring. So, she pulled the shard out of my
back like a monster and gave me some metronidazole, just in
case there was rust on the metal. I don't want Tetanus.
Honestly, tetanus is low on my list of worries.
We're stuck on Mars. That kind of sucks, a lot. We don't
have a MAV, and we have no contact to NASA, because
Gunther, (who is now dead,) blew up the PEG. The way we

contacted NASA in the first place was from inside the MAV,
because that thing had a huge satellite dish on it.
Really, the only way we could contact NASA is by fixing
the broken satellite from the wreckage... or...
Meb! Mebby! She has a satellite dish! We could rig her
right up to send ASCII messages to NASA. We only landed
about 8km from the Hades 4 site. It would only take us about 2
hours to walk there!
We are all sitting around in a circle well, it's more of a
triangle. I perk up and say:
"Hey guys, Meb has a satellite dish. If we get to the
Hades 4 site, which is only about 8 kilometers away, we could
be in contact with NASA before lunch."
"That's not a bad idea," says Juan, munching on his Cool
Ranch Doritos, "not a bad idea at all."
Taura looked at him funny, and said, "Where on Mars did
you get Doritos?"
"Oh, uhh," he says, "you don't wanna know." Taura snorts
a small laugh, then the ball keeps rolling. Soon enough, we're
all laughing uncontrollably, rolling around on the Martian soil.
"Hey, guys...", he says, after snorting a small laugh. His face
goes all serious, "What about Lola?" He goes on to dump 7 or
8 whole Dorito chips into his eating tube, (we can't eat
without helmets on, so NASA developed these mini tubes that
have airlocks. We use them to eat without taking our helmets
off.)

Oh yeah... Gunther threw Lola outside and killed her.

"Way to kill the mood, Juan." says Taura.
"What?! I'm being serious." says Juan.
"Guys, stop fighting. We need to get to the Hades 4 site."
I say, standing up. Taura and Juan nod silently and stand up
alongside me. And, we start walking.
The walk took a while, but were here, safe and sound.
Meb is all fine. Juan and I are working on the satellite to send
ASCII messages to NASAs IP.
Taura is inside Meb working on the technical stuff.
Hey, James Juan says, pass me the wrench please.
Alright. I say, passing him the tool.
Hey, guys Taura yells from inside Meb, you may want
to see this.
Juan and I looked at each other, and slid down off of
Mebs roof onto the stairs, then walked up and entered the
inside. Taura turned the computer monitor to face Juan and
me. On the screen read a message from the Expo Falcon
19? No
Taura turned it back and read aloud: I really hope this
works Hey guys. I saw you all parachuting down to the
surface. I had a Skype conference with Demetrius Terry, told
him everything.

I looked at Juan, confused. He did the same with me. I

turned back to Taura and she kept reading.
Sorry I didnt tell you guys that I actually jumped out of
the MAV on purpose. I just didnt want Gunther to think I was
going to live.
And how did you live? I typed into the computer.
Bing! Another message. I saw you look out of the
window at me, James. Remember I was flinging around
outside?
Atmospheric thrust, yeah. I typed, You gave me the
idea of using atmospheric thrust to get back to the MAV when
Gunther threw me out the window.
Another message popped up:
I had the same idea. I wasnt cut by the glass shards,
James, I used glass to propel myself to the space station. We
were only 2km away, it took about 3 minutes.
Clever, I typed, so, whats your plan for us,
Commander Vickers? I typed, smiling.
Well, she replied, I sent down a spare MAV to you guys.
We only have two spares, however one isnt working. Do you
want the good news first or the bad news?
Uuuhhhh, good news first. I said.

The good news is, she replied, the MAV landed only
20 away, horizontally. Since Meb can run 200km/h, it should
only take about 10 minutes to get to where it is.
km

And the bad news? I typed back anxiously.

The bad news is, the MAV landed 20km away horizontally.
Vertically, it landed 25km away.
And where might that be? I typed angrily.
It landed on top of Olympus Mons. she replied.
I leaned back on the wall and threw my helmet to the
floor in anger. Olympus Mons is the tallest volcano in our Solar
System. 3 times taller than Everest, it stands at a whopping
25km.
Another message popped up on the screen.
Im not even done of the bad news yet. Lola said.
And that is? Taura typed.
It erupts in 19 hours.
Okay, so things arent awful. Things are not bad. Lola sent
us parts from the broken spare MAV, (and she actually aimed
this time,) so we can build a rocket ship out of Meb. She has
an aerodynamic shape because I designed her ingeniously.
Unfortunately, she has very little fuel left. Just enough to

get us to Olympus Mons and get us 15km upwards. We wont

be able to use her fuel to take off.
But James!, you ask, How are you going to take off
without using any of the fuel?
Ohohoh, youre gonna like this.
Taura, with her chemistry background, decided it would
be fun to make a giant bomb that could propel us 10km into
the air.
But James!, I hear you ask once more, How will you not
kill yourself in the process? And how would you launch a 10
ton robot 10km into the air?
Good question.
Well load the bomb into the thruster casings, so when it
explodes, the explosion-proof casing in there will keep the
atmospheric thrust going evenly out through each thruster.
But James!, you ask once more. Shut it, okay? I know
what Im doing!
So thats our plan. Itll take us up at around 54.3m/s,
bringing the total trip to a grand total of
2.172 minutes. Cool.
~
After Demetrius heard about the events involving Gunther
betraying the crew, he didnt care for his dead son anymore.

He stepped up to the microphone, in front of 5,000,000

people, plus the extra 4,000,000,000 that were watching from
home. Everybody on the planet wanted to hear more about
the crisis on Mars.
James Barr has come up with a plan to bring himself,
Juan Fernandez and Taura MacPhee home safe, along with Lola
Vickers. An extra MAV has been sent to Mars, but
unfortunately it landed on the supervolcano, Olympus Mons.
He will be using his robot M.E.B, or Meb, along with thrusters
and even a bomb as atmospheric thrust to launch themselves
all the way to the top of the volcano.
However, since its most recent eruption 25 million
years ago, Olympus Mons is going to erupt again, in exactly
17 hours. The volcano will most likely swallow the MAV whole,
and if the crew is on the volcano at this time, they will surely
die. The crew is doing whatever they can to bring themselves
home alive.
The last few words echoed around the stadium, and
hanged in the air. Then, every single hand in the stadium
raised, and 70% of people were yelling Mr. Terry, Mr. Terry,
Mr. Terry, trying to get his attention.
~
Weve finally arrived at the bottom of Olympus Mons. Its
happening. Taura is moments away from flicking the switch to
erupt the bomb.
Go, Juan says, and Taura braces herself, and flicks the
switch.

This is it.
--------------The three astronauts blasted up into the air. Taura
MacPhee was counting down until she had to flick the switch
for stage two, James Barr twiddled his thumbs nervously, and
Juan was thinking how much he would love to dig into a big
chicken taco right about then.
Taura yelled, Stage two! and flicked the second switch,
which was yellow. The robot, Meb, exploded into a faster
takeoff. They were just moments away from reaching the
atmosphere of Mars.
James looked out the window, admiring the red surface of
Mars. He saw it all going away, and he felt a bit
uncomfortable. Meb wasnt really used to going at such high
speeds like this. As he turned his head back to the status
monitor, something caught his eye. A thruster on Meb was
wobbling loose. He grabbed his toolkit and swung himself
outside the door.
Taura and Juan yelled at him, WHAT DO YOU THINK
YOURE DOING? to which we replied, SAVING OUR LIVES!
He grabbed on to the handle on the side of Mebs exterior
and shuffled across the steel wall. Once he reached the side,
he reached for his wrench in his toolkit Although it wasnt
there. Where is it? he thought. Then, it hit him. He had given it
to Juan to work on the satellite.
He tried to shuffle back to the door to get it, but it was
too late. The thruster fell off of Meb and the robot began
flinging out of control.

Knowing Meb was essential for getting to the top of Meb,

James climbed over top of Meb onto the other side, which was
the upwards side. He slid himself underneath a big handle and
prepared himself for extreme pain.
He was going to use his parachute to slow down Mebs
descent so she wouldnt break.
And since the parachutes were attached to their suits, he
had no other choice then to use himself to slow it down. He
pulled the parachute cord and immediately he broke his entire
spine, his legs, his arms and his neck. He passed out.
Meb slowed down immediately to a steady fall, and
landed atop Olympus Mons, mere meters away from the MAV.
Juan and Taura clambered out of Meb to find James. He
was laying on the ground and blood was spilling from his tornoff arms. He was breathing.
Taura and Juan grabbed his loose body and brought him
inside the MAV. Everything seemed like a giant blur to James.
He felt so much pain that it didnt feel like pain at all. It just
felt. It wasnt a hurting feeling. It was relieving, somewhat.
Oh, wait. He was on painkillers.
3 YEARS LATER
I stood watching the supplies for the PEG 2.0 fly away
from NASA HQ, Washington. It felt a lot like the first time I saw
the PEG supplies fly away, 6 years ago. Except this time it
looked cooler. NASA does this thing now where they color the
fire red and blue, and the smoke is black. Its awesome.

NASA is continuing the Hades missions despite the

constant, expected failures. Id say our mission went a lot
better than the previous 3 did, despite the death of one
person.
He did deserve it though.
Moving on
Lets address the crewmates lives now.
Juan went back to Mexico and restarted his taco
company, which he named Space Taco.
Lola went to Japan to get a job in JPL, because they were
one man short.
Taura moved away to Canada and got married to a man
named Tim. She told me she was expecting a child, and she
wanted to name him Jeffrey.
As for me? I was hired as the Commander for the Hades 5
mission. Unlike Gunther Terry, my former Commander, I will
actually be smart and decisive!
Surprisingly, guess where the location for Hades 5 is?
Thats right.
Olympus freakin Mons.

THE END