A beautiful thing

         The scene in front of the sergeant was an amazing clash of all the good and evil humanity had to offer, in one terribly beautiful instant. He had been sent to Mars nearly five years earlier, after retiring from the Canadian air force to earn a better income working for Horizons incorporated, a mining company which specialized in the extraction of rare minerals from both the moon and Mars. He was currently stationed in the primary base, overlooking the frontal defense.

“Twenty-five years ago I wouldn’t even need to be hired” the sergeant had thought to himself moments earlier.

         The second space race had been handled poorly, and everyone was paying for it now. When the first manned ships had landed on Mars, they were internationally funded by the wealthiest nations. An agreement was made that no country would be able to claim territory as their own. This had a spectacular ring of peace to it, and would have been great, were it not for two very unfortunate events to follow; within the next five years china had developed a massive space freighter capable of moving over 250 men and 10,000 tons of cargo between the Earth and Mars in five months, and large deposits of Rhodium were discovered just under the Martian surface. The potential for wealth was noticed by all the massive mining companies, who were growing desperate for new mineral deposits. Soon enough Mars was a flashback to the Wild West, no government, no laws, and one hell of a gold rush.

         The primary base which the sergeant was stationed on was the largest discovered Rhodium deposit on the planet, and was currently under attack by mercenaries hired by Rockwell and sons, a rival company.

“Gives hostile takeover a whole new meaning”, he thought.

          He had been in charge of overlooking the developments and giving orders to ground troops from his station in the crow’s nest, a small hovering craft 500 metres above the base. Everything had seemed a little odd from the beginning, only a handful of attacking mercenaries had revealed themselves for the skirmish, the enemy fire was light, and there was no aerial support. They had literally no hope to take any ground, nevertheless the largest, best defended base on Mars. Not to mention that the primary base was surrounded on all sides by other Horizons inc. controlled stations. Even if by some miracle Rockwell’s men took the base, they wouldn’t be able to hold it for more than a couple of days.
         
        That’s exactly what he had been thinking before the flash came. The Sergeant’s first reaction to the blinding light was shock, they companies had a treaty no nuclear weapons would be used. But then the harsh reality set in. There was no government up here, no one to hold Rockwell and sons to its word. An adjacent station, blown to oblivion, over 1000 men killed instantly. But for all the terror of it, he couldn’t help but be amazed by the beauty. He had the best seat of any human being to see it. The light cast in an orange and red hue by the weak Martian atmosphere, the pitch black backdrop of night sky, the column of deep red dust being flung miles off the surface of the planet; glittering in residual light. Here he was, on the surface of Mars, a testament to the remarkable powers of human ingenuity and ability to conquer. Yet for all the genius that had brought him here, the same squabbles and inability to compromise was responsible for the massive wall of radiation riddled dust closing in on him in excess of 200 miles an hour. “Amazing”, he thought. “This is the most beautiful, most terrible, and last thing that I’ll ever see”.