The Arc
Darkness gathered in the dunes of the red sand, as the shadow of Olympus Mons crept closer to the settlement town of New Danvar. Blackjack adjusted his diver's pack and looked up at the stars. Phobos was rising in the east for her first of three nightly tours around the red planet, for Blackjack that meant a night of sharing forgotten history and breaking in his new recruits for life in the deep.
"When the Ark called the divers to the cavern beneath Danvar, the sand tides turned for the scavengers of Low-Pub and as the Earth shifted closer to Sol, those same undercurrents carried humanity across the black of space to reclaim our red history."
Blackjack gazed at the young divers gathered in a circle around the faint red glow of his diver's lamp and pointed at the sand beneath his feet. "It's said that during their journey through the black, the Ark spoke to our forefathers in visions and promised a great city. Aries was to be a city to rival any of Earth, but when the hold unsealed, only endless dunes and the towering walls of Olympus Mons filled the horizon. Then, just as the last of humanity stepped from inside, the doors sealed and the Ark sank beneath the dunes and left the settlers to die in the burning sand."
Wide eyes of the young recruits gazed unblinking at dive master Blackjack. He let the moment build. This was why they were here, why they braved the tears of their mothers who cried and covered their faces when their sons and daughters cast tokens into Dante's Cup at the Choices Ceremony. Joining the Diver's Guild was a guaranteed journey into a dead past and likely a sand coffin in the deep red.
Dropping to one knee, Blackjack grasped a fistful of sand and began to let it slip through his fingers. "What began as frantic dives to recover the Ark, ended with something unexpected... the lost city of our forgotten ancestors was in fact not lost, but here buried beneath the sand."
"the labyrinth..." Jazz whispered to Harper as the dive master gazed up at the black, his dive light reflecting off his goggles.
"Yes." Blackjack grinned at Jazz and adjusted his ker over his nose just as the breeze kicked up a stinging dust, "Aries... The Labyrinth.. and more than we can begin to understand... a time capsule of life that saved humanity from becoming one with the sand now and a millennia ago. That's where we're going."
The recruits had tightened their goggles and shouldered their packs. "Good." Blackjack spoke silently into his jawbone transmitter. "Let's begin."
The recruits nodded and they all slipped beneath the sand.
The Red Deep
The sand closed in as Jasper flexed his mind and reached forward through the deep. Without the dive gear the sand this far down was as solid as stone and Aries like a delicate fossilized fern. The sharp spires of the city stood out in bright relief against the red haze of the deep sand.
"Harper. Jazz. Do you see the low building near the closest spire?" Jasper sub-vocalized into this jawbone transmitter.
"Yes." The answer came from both divers, as they descended towards Jasper's level, pushing their training to the limit as the threat of coffining grew.
Three months had passed since their first night of training, but this was their first trip to the true deep. Blackjack had trained them as teams of three for many reasons. For one, this deep it took two divers to return to the surface, taking turns leapfrogging, so one could rest in the fluid wake of the other's passing, while the third could serve as a life raft if one became injured. But, the true need for third, Blackjack only revealed just before the dive. The city was neither fossilize nor dead.
