Dialogue

Here is all the dialogue for all of the pages. The finished pages contain slightly modified dialogue, but for the most part this is what I wanted to say.

Title page:

The Martian Vanguard

  

Page 1:

It was a very long day….

  

We were air dropped by the modified cargo haulers half a mile from the lines

  

There weren’t very many of us in my squad.

There weren’t many of us on Mars period.

  

The haulers had to go back to be refitted for clearing the mist, so we had a couple hours to wait before moving in.

  

It was unnatural. The mist that is.

The folks behind the lines weren’t exactly sure why it was there. Evidently there was no meteorological reason for it, but that was never my thing. My family had a background in physics and mechanics, none of that weather stuff.

 Page 2:

Rightly speaking, this story started over 200 years ago, and on earth.

It started as a joke. “why not send our CO₂ to mars?”

But then they thought about it.

So they aimed a massive modified pressure vessel at mars, setting it to crash directly into the southern Ice cap…

…and even though it seemed stupid and ridiculous, they found the money and launched it.

Page 3:

After it did what it was supposed to and thickened the atmosphere, and people started paying attention to it... …They saw that against all expectations it was working.

After some careful monitoring and a couple more ships sent to mars

It became a much, much greener world

And when it became green enough to support life, earth sent out a colony ship

It held all of earth’s best and brightest, sent out into the void to shine.

Page 4:

Except as the Martian colony developed, earth fell into decline. This continued for near on a century, until one day the Martian built interplanetary sensors picked up a massive radiation spike on the planet. Earth died as many had feared, in nuclear fire. But mars moved on, or it tried to at any rate. The loss of humanity’s birthplace hurt many, but what could we do?

Then one day, sectors on the south side of the planet began to literally go dark. The weather satellites picked it up first, showing that cities and transport lines had lost power and been covered by a thick cloud layer that was not responding like any kind of natural formation. Then refugees started showing up, bringing stories of things rising from the ice, things that brought cold death to anything that stood against them.

Page 5:

So now I waiting in trenches dug using modified farming equipment… …watching an unnaturally persistent wall of mist.

My squad is waiting for our angels to soar overhead and clear the cloud cover.

And as we wait the field artillery made by backyard Physicists and Mechies like me and my family set up behind us.

When the ground pounders set up we’ll be ready to set boots into soil that has been taken from us… …taken by something from the ice

Page 6:

I don’t know how it works… … but seeing our angels clear away the clouds and mist and bring in the sun was the best moment of that bloody, bloody day.