Starship Legacy: A Novel by Not Elon Musk

…Continued!

The patch job complete, Luke allowed himself a deep breath of stale, recycled air. Another repair, another tiny victory against an environment relentlessly hostile to human life. His gaze was drawn back to the framed image of Earth, the distant blue marble that never fully exited his mind. Five years on Mars, and the homesickness was less of a gnawing ache, more a constant companion. He'd long accepted it. Sacrifice was a currency on this red frontier.

His gaze drifted across the hab module's communal space. Sarah was in the botany lab, her dark hair pulled into a messy ponytail, hands stained with Martian soil – a testament to her determination to bring a sliver of green to this barren world. Further down, in the workshop, the whirring of power tools signaled where Ben, ever the tinkerer, battled the unforgiving wear and tear inflicted upon their equipment. Even Mark, a notorious loner, was slumped at the comms station, presumably buried in reports rather than face another round of mind-numbing rover maintenance.

They were a mismatched crew, thrown together by a grand ambition and the unforgiving selection process. Yet, forged in the crucible of Mars, they had become something more than colleagues. They were a colony in microcosm, a stubborn testament to survival.

Luke's eyes snagged on a faded poster hanging askew above the dining table. A stylized Starship, backed by a panorama of crimson Martian hills. "Colonize Mars – The Adventure of a Lifetime!" it proclaimed in bold letters. Just above them was a smiling, younger Elon Musk. The lines around his eyes were less prominent in that image, his characteristically disheveled hair yet to be shot through with gray. Below the image, a hastily scrawled note, faded but still legible: "For posterity – Ben, with a truly terrible sense of decor."

Luke chuckled, a warmth spreading from his chest. He knew, even when the going got tough, when the isolation gnawed, when a dust storm rattled the dome and the Earth seemed a universe away, that spark of adventure remained. That spark was why Musk's dream had become their reality. It was what would propel them from this first base to outposts spread across the planet, from survival to a legacy carved in Martian dust.