The Dragon's Cave

Earth's economy is secured by the contents of the Martian Vaults. Is this good for Mars?

         "Daddy, why do they hide all the gold in that mountain?”
Jenny's voice was soft, her wide eyes searched her father's face, expecting answers big enough to match the view. Outside the dome of Mars City, an ancient volcano brooded like a sleeping beast on the red horizon. What looked like just rock and shadow to most people was, in truth, one of the most heavily guarded vaults in the solar system—its hollow heart stuffed full of precious metal.

         Jack gave Jenny's hand a gentle squeeze. “Because it’s the safest place in the solar system. And it’s not just gold up there—it’s silver, platinum, palladium... an entire mountain full of it.”

         Jenny’s gaze drifted toward the volcano.

         “It’s cheaper to store it here than on Earth,” Jack continued. “And Earth’s economies—most of them—use it to back their currencies. That mountain is the vault for half the planet's wealth.”

         She turned back to him with a furrowed brow, the kind of look that made Jack want to explain everything just right.

         “Earth soldiers are guarding it,” he said. “And the Martian Exchange lets people trade ownership without ever touching the metal. Mars takes a cut from every deal. We make more money selling the idea of ownership than the metal itself. And every time someone buys a slice of Martian land or a certificate backed by the mountain, we take a commission.” He smiled faintly. “We call it the Dragon’s Cave. You know why.”

         Jenny’s eyes lit up. “Like the dragon in my storybook! Sitting on treasure just because it can!”

         Jack chuckled. “Exactly. Except these dragons wear suits and carry ledgers.”

         She laughed—a sweet, silver sound that rang through the observation deck and echoed off the glass.

         “How much treasure is in the Dragon’s Cave?”

         Jack tilted his head. “Trillions. Enough to balance Earth’s entire economy on a Martian knife-edge. It all goes back to an old idea called the Gold Standard. If someone on Earth wanted, they could, in theory, trade their currency for gold. But shipping it? Too expensive. So the value’s real, but the gold stays right here. The system works… until people start asking the wrong questions.”

         Jenny’s smile faded. “But, Daddy… you told me we grow our food here. We build our stuff. Why do we need the mountain at all?”

         Jack blinked. That hit harder than he expected. Good question. Why do we still need the Dragon’s Cave? Why do we prop up a class of ultra-wealthy Earthlings who play games with digital gold while the rest of us juggle rent, air tax, and recycled protein rations? Why do we pay off-world soldiers to guard a treasure we’ll never touch? Mars is strong now—independent in everything but name.

         Two smartly dressed security guards approached. Jack held up his pass. He'd paid two days' wages to show Jenny this view.

         "Sorry, sir, you need to leave. You are not properly dressed."

         “This is our Sunday best. We look fine,” Jenny said, confused. Nearby bankers and tourists gave them sharp glances. Jack caught a whisper—“Hobos… what’s the world coming to?”

         He looked around, then took Jenny’s hand. “Let’s go, kiddo. Your mom’s had a long day—we owe her dinner.”

         Jenny took his hand, and he led her to the lifts and then down to the foyer. Jack felt humiliated but tried acting normally for Jenny's sake. It seemed to work as she was mainly oblivious to the people around her, her eyes still shining after what she had seen.

         The security guards showed them outside onto Musk Square. A large crowd had gathered there, watching the big monitor that overlooked the city center.

         Jack didn’t bother looking up at the massive screen overhead. He could hear enough to get the gist—“Greatest robbery of all time...” and “The money’s gone...” Earth news, no doubt. Irrelevant. Meaningless. And yet the square was packed with people, suddenly transformed into amateur sleuths in some Earth-fabricated whodunit. Jack had no interest in playing along.

         He gripped Jenny’s hand tightly and pushed through the crowd. Many around them wore breathing masks—tourists, newcomers, and weak-lunged imports from Earth. Their filtered visors reflected the dry red haze that hung over the plaza like a ghost. Twin filtration canisters jutted from their faces, hiding expressions Jack could only guess at. Were they smirking? Sneering? Hard to tell. But it was easier—safer—to assume contempt.

         Compared to their sleek suits and spotless visors, Jack and Jenny looked like vagrants. Dust-streaked. Barefaced. Real. He burned with humiliation, rage still simmering from being thrown out of the tower. His day off, his time with Jenny—and they’d expelled him like a beggar.

         They cleared the square and slipped into the broad emptiness of High Street. The storefronts were polished and pristine, but lifeless. No locals shopped there—prices were pegged for Earth tourists and Martian elites. This wasn’t Jack’s Mars.

         He veered into the back alleys, where the red dust was thicker and the paint peeled like old skin. Lights flickered. Roof panels sagged. Decay clung to the bones of the city like rust to metal. This was his Mars—the one built by miners, welders, and maintenance techs holding the colony together with grit and duct tape.

         Some lucky few from the slums made it into the hotel circuits—maids, servers, porters. They lived in corporate housing with climate controls and protein-rich meals, and they rarely came back to these streets. They didn’t have to breathe what Jack breathed.

         He didn’t wear a mask. Couldn’t afford one. Didn’t need one. He was a fifth-generation Martian—his lungs had adapted to the red. A genetic mutation, passed down from survivors. For them, the dust was just part of life. For outsiders, it was poison. Over the years, the weak and the wealthy filtered their air, while the poor filtered it with their genes—or died.

         Jack had long since learned to look through the plastic masks and see only distance. The masked elite, the tourists, the talking heads on the plaza screens—they didn’t speak for his world. Their concerns were about markets on Earth, politics on Ganymede, and scandals on Europa. Abstractions.

         Jack’s home looked more like a shipping container than a house—corrugated metal walls, grimy windows streaked with red dust, and a door that hissed when it opened, like it resented being used. After walking through the gleaming towers and sealed-air plazas of the rich, coming back here felt like returning to a forgotten corner of the colony.

         “Hi, honey,” he called into the silence.

         No answer.

         Sal was still at work, most likely. The shift supervisors at Colony Maintenance were notorious for squeezing every last second out of their crews. They kept the essentials running—food, water, heat, and air. Without them, the whole city would suffocate or starve. The pay was steady, if pitiful, but the hours? Brutal. And when something broke—really broke—they were expected to stay until it was fixed. No matter what.

         Jack dropped his bag by the door and let out a long breath. He was bone-tired. His job paid a little better—skilled engineering work at the rare earth processing plant. He was part chemist, part technician, part crisis manager. Mars had an abundance of rare earths, and without Earth’s environmental red tape, extracting and refining them was cheap, dirty work. Mars used to just export the raw materials. Not anymore.

         Now they built the chips too, high-demand, precision tech. It was smarter business: sell the finished product, make ten times the profit. The chip monopoly made Mars rich, at least on paper. Earth depended on those exports now, but the benefits? They flowed straight back to Earth. The major shareholders of Martian stockholder capitalism didn’t even live on Mars. They lived in estates on Earth, funding Martian senators who promised tax breaks and looked the other way.

         Jack sometimes wondered if the air was thinner in the halls of power—maybe that’s why they didn’t think clearly. Or maybe they knew exactly what they were doing, which was even worse.

         He glanced around the small living room. Stained cushions. A cracked light panel flickered faintly. Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose. This was life. Not glamorous, not fair. But it was real.

         Sal burst through the door like a storm, thirty minutes late and buzzing with energy. The airlock hissed behind her as she kicked off her boots. Jenny sat cross-legged at the table, pencil in hand, frowning at a math problem. Jack stood at the stove, stirring something fragrant in a dented pot, half-lost in the rhythm of cooking.

         “Hey,” Sal said breathlessly, planting a kiss on Jack’s cheek mid-stride. Her words tumbled out before he could ask how her shift had gone. “You won’t believe what’s happening.”

         Jack didn’t look up at first—still laser-focused on not burning the rice. But her voice had a charge to it, an urgency that made him pause.

         “...The Martian Marines have moved in —the Dragon’s Cave is empty.”

         That snapped him out of it.

         He turned. “What?”

         “Put the news on.”

         Sal was already fumbling with her mobile, tapping commands. The wall-screen flared to life in the corner, casting flickering light across their modest home.

         The newsfeed was chaos. A slick anchor with perfect teeth tried to sound composed, but behind him, the footage told a different story—the massive caverns of the caldera, echoing and hollow. Empty storage bays where bars of gold once stood in orderly, gleaming stacks. Gone. All of it.

         Jack stared, mouth slightly open. The Marines—Martian, not Earth—guarded groups of Earth soldiers, prisoners, sitting in the cave without weapons. Two top police officers from Earth blathered in split-screen debates, throwing around theories about the greatest heist of all time. No really knew how they'd done it.

         Then Sal leaned close and whispered, voice low and electric. “It’s happening. The revolution. We’ve taken our gold back.”

         Jack turned to her, eyes narrowing, the edges of his mind catching fire. “How do you know that?”

         Her lips curled into a smile that was both playful and deadly serious. “Because I helped. I laced the Earth soldiers’ oxygen feed with chloroform. They never saw it coming.”

         Jack froze. A thousand things rushed through his mind—fear, disbelief, admiration—but in the end, only one thing rose to the surface.

         He broke into a grin and wrapped her in his arms, planting a messy, exaggerated kiss on her cheek. She let out a surprised laugh, the sound bubbling up like a release valve. “You’re serious? You started this?” He glanced at the screen, "Those detectives do not have a clue, do they?"

         Sal nodded, glowing with pride. She tucked her head into his chest.

         Jack held her close, heart pounding. Not with fear, but with something that felt like hope. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t just watching history unfold.

         He was living it.

         And they were on the right side.

         The newsfeed cut suddenly to a new image—grainy, but unmistakable. A Marine general filled the frame, flanked by rebels in dust-streaked armor, plasma rifles slung over their shoulders. Behind them towered a mountain of gold, glinting in the dim light of a cavern that could’ve been anywhere in Mars’s vast underground networks.

         Jack leaned forward. “That’s General Valles…”

         Sal nodded, eyes wide.

         The general’s voice boomed through the screen:
“People of Mars. We’ve taken back what’s ours. Mars is no longer under Earth’s control. The spaceports are secured. Their soldiers captured. Our land and gold belong to the people again. From this day forward, Mars is free. Mars for the Martians!”

         Outside, a roar erupted—cheers, shouts, chanting.

         Jack looked at Sal. Then, at Jenny. They didn’t need words.

         Moments later, they were out the door and into the street, swept up in the tide of people pouring toward Musk Square—laughing, crying, singing, shouting freedom to the red sky.

         Mars was awake.
And nothing would ever be the same again.


Notes ▼

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GENRE: Detective
W/C: 1981