Red Mars

The Martian Revolution is 14 days old. Arkady has dreams in which he sees his father. He’s woken by an alarm. Janet arrives to tell him that Nemesis—an asteroid that the revolutionaries launched at Earth as an offensive tactic—has been blown up. The asteroid is now destroyed, as they see on the video monitor. Arkady didn’t agree with the asteroid launch; he favors a more Swiss-style approach. He passes through the town, acknowledging his fellow revolutionaries. Phyllis calls him, demanding that he surrender. He refuses. The call ends. Arkady learns that the town’s oxygen supply has been sabotaged. As he ventures back to his office, he sees a light in the sky. Suddenly, people around him are “burning like torches” (557). The oxygen levels have made everything flammable. Arkady looks down at his own burning arm.

Nadia has realized how fragile the Martian towns truly are. They can be destroyed easily, like popping a balloon. In Lasswitz, she saw how the transnationals could pierce an atmospheric tent with a missile. She and other inhabitants huddle inside buildings. They try to repair the tent, piecing together what happened from jumbled reports on the news. Sasha calls Nadia, telling her about a damaged water station nearby. Nadia goes out to inspect the problem. Using the automated machines, she begins to cap the well to prevent a flood that would destroy nearby settlements. If the entire cliff comes down, she knows, many people will die. She fixes the issue and tries to announce to the world that she and the people around her are “non-combatants” who have nothing to do with the revolution. Nadia immediately turns to creating a runoff for the capped well to prevent an issue in the future. Once the situation is safe, Nadia plans to move to Fourneir Crater, where people are trapped inside buildings and need oxygen. She takes Sasha, Angela, Yeli, and Sam with her onboard two aircraft.

During the flight, Nadia inspects her work on the pipeline from the air. Ann and Simon send them a message, asking for help. They’re trapped in Peridier Crater, which is on their planned route. Ann reveals that nuclear reactor meltdowns are causing aquifers to break open and cause flooding, which Nadia and her team can see from the air. At Peridier, another atmospheric tent has collapsed. Yeli asks about Peter, the son of Simon and Ann. He’s on Clarke, Simon says, waiting for a place on the space elevator so that he can return to the surface of Mars. Nadia uses her engineering expertise to repair the damage to Peridier. They work at the town for a week, and after leaving instructions on what to do next, Nadia and her team move on. Simon and Ann join them.

Flying south, they learn that UNOMA has taken over the town of Burroughs. If they go to Burroughs and plead for the attacks to stop, Nadia fears that they’ll be arrested. Instead, they go to Elysium and set about helping reduce the threats to the city. Nadia thrives under pressure, learning new techniques and tactics for her repair robots. However, the repairs never seem quite enough. At the same time, reports from Earth reveal that the situation there is similarly bleak. Nadia distracts herself with work. Angela and Sam remain in Elysium, while Nadia picks up more members of the 100 for her travels.

After a brief stop at Hadriaca Paera to repair a puncture, they pass over signs of “human destructiveness.” They see many destroyed towns from the air. Nadia tries to keep her emotions in check by focusing on her work. The communications networks falter amid interference from the sun. They are, in effect, cut off from the media. They fly over a broken aquifer that has filled the Hellas mohole with water, effectively making the first lake on Mars. Ann and Nadia speculate about how Sax might be reacting to these sudden changes to the environment. A few days later, Sax sends an emergency message. He needs help, having become stranded in his vehicle while traveling to meet Chalmers and Maya. He joins the small team as they travel to Bakhuysen.

At Bakhuysen, they meet a small group of rebels. The rebels claim to be following a leader named Schnelling, who comes from Korolyov. The rebels share supplies and offer directions on how to reach Pavonis. As they travel at night, in a “strangely ritual” (587) fashion. Nadia is reminded of her flight on the dirigible with Arkady. She misses Arkady and the previous simplicity of her life. The next day, they land near the Margaritifer station, where an enthusiastic crowd greets them. Among the crowd is Steve, who worked on Phobos with Arkady. He suggests that Arkady was the last person in Carr. The people are celebrating Independence Day, pointing to television screens where a clock is counting down. Rebels have fitted explosives to the space elevator. The explosives detonate, destroying the asteroid Clarke and severing the elevator from Mars. Ann worries about whether Peter was still trying to board the elevator. As Clarke hurtles out into space, the gigantic cable of the space elevator crashes to the surface of Mars. The falling cable will cause widespread devastation and could kill many. Sax makes desperate calculations as to where the cable might fall. They follow news reports from around the planet as towns describe the falling cable. After the cable has completely fallen, wrapping itself around the planet, Sax compares it to an equator. Nadia joins the others as they fly over the fallen cable and the devastated landscape. Sax obsesses over the data, while Nadia reflects on the death and destruction. Arriving in Carr, they find “little heaps of blackened carbon” (596) on the ground. The bodies are burned beyond recognition, but Nadia scans each one until she confirms her worst fears: Arkady is dead.

Resuming their journey, they fly west for 11 days. Finding no one, suspecting that the satellites have been destroyed, Nadia is concerned about the lack of communication. She’s still in a daze, coming to terms with Arkady’s death. Ann and Simon worry about their son, while Sax and Yeli are concerned about their limited supplies. Nadia is alone with her grief. After they send a message to announce that Arkady is dead, Alex contacts them. He insists that the revolution won’t be stopped, though his words lack conviction. They arrive in Cairo, where Chalmers, Maya, Mary, and Spencer await them. Chalmers is in the midst of several high-powered meetings, trying to negotiate with everyone at the same time. Eventually, he pauses long enough to explain that he’s struggling to get those on Earth to stop seeing Mars as nothing but a resource. Both sides, he fears, have gone too far. He returns to negotiations, allowing the new arrivals time to reflect on what has happened.

Reports from Earth finally filter through, and the minimal coverage of the Martian Revolution depicts the uprising as a small scale scuffle. Chalmers knows that the transnationals own the media networks, so they can bend the news reports to suit their agenda. Nadia returns from a walk to find Chalmers standing beside Maya, who is sleeping. When Maya wakes, they all go to eat. Samatha, Evgenia, and Alex will soon arrive, Chalmers says, meaning that more of the 100 will be with them. As they gather to greet the new arrivals, an explosion rocks the convoy of vehicles. Sasha, who was rushing out to greet her friends, is likely dead, as are those in the convoy. They suspect that the attack came from Phobos. Nadia fetches a transmitter that Arkady gave her. When she finds no survivors at the blast site, Nadia is driven to action. She activates the transmitter, which sends a signal to Phobos. Many years before, Arkady and his followers fitted the moon with “a system of explosives and rocketry” (610). When activated, these rockets will crash Phobos into Mars. As the moon hurtles toward the planet’s surface, Sax tries to calculate whether they’ll be in the impact zone. As he calculates, the moon breaks up before impact. Pieces of the moon hit the surface elsewhere and cause great damage. Chalmers warns that UNOMA will soon respond.

As parts of Phobos rain down across Mars, Maya wants to do something. They’ll wait until night to make their escape. An attack occurs early that morning; the atmospheric tent is punctured, but the members of the 100 are wearing survival suits. They fight through the crowd, rushing toward the agreed-upon rendezvous point, when a mysterious stranger arrives. He invites the 100 to follow him, leading them through the confusion to a place where they can get into two vehicles. Michel Duval drives one of them. They set out for Hiroko’s hidden base, eventually switching to new “boulder cars” that can operate more stealthily and drive away through the canyons of Mars.