Old Mars

Jason was the captain of the Argo because he had been elected to the position by the crew, though they were technically the crew of the Sand-shark’s Tooth before Jason became her master and gave the ship a new name. Likewise, the headman of Freehaven was the captain who had been elected by the community at large to govern them.

But simply because Jason had been elected once did not mean that he held the post for life. Just as he had challenged the authority of his ship’s previous captain, so too might his crew challenge his. One method would be for enough of the crew to be dissatisfied with his command that they mustered the quorum necessary to call for a vote and simply elected a new captain. That was how Jason had come to command.

The other method, a holdover from the pirates’ less egalitarian days, would be for one of the crew to challenge Jason to single combat, with the winner of the duel being the one who had proven himself fit for command. This latter method had seldom been used in recent generations, and never during Jason’s time as a pirate, in large part because the rules required that the combat must be to the death; but it was kept in the Articles as a tribute to the early pioneers who had risen up out of the waters and sought the freedom of the high sands, proving their worth not by persuasive argument but by the strength of their sword arms. It was the last vestige of a time before Freehaven had truly earned its name.

When Jason could see the ruins of the buried city from the deck of the Argo, it meant that they were almost home.

“Where is that beast of yours?”

Jason turned to see Tyr approaching. He had spent much of his time in recent days belowdecks tending to the needs of the Praxian refugees, leading them in recitations of scripture, sharing memories of happier days, and so on.

“You mean Bandit? I’m sure he’ll turn up sooner or later,” Jason answered. “He always does.” His leatherwing pet had flown off before their fight with the Praxian corvette, and Jason hadn’t seen him since. But it was hardly unusual. His “pet” was only one step removed from a wild animal and clearly valued its independence.

Tyr joined Jason at the railing and looked out over the buried city as it drifted slowly by. They could hear the muttering of some of the other crewmen, who still rankled at the presence of the Praxian “rabble” belowdecks.

“We were a better people once,” Tyr said to Jason in a low voice, glancing sidelong at the disaffected crewmen. “A great people. But the drought that dried our world, I fear, dried out the wellsprings of compassion in too many of us.”

When he had first arrived on Mars, Jason had been surprised to discover that the dominant life-form of a desert world was aquatic. But he had soon learned that, when life had first evolved on the red planet, Mars had been entirely shrouded in deep oceans. Complex civilizations had flourished in the ancient waters of Mars, vast city-states woven in a complex web of trade and cultural exchange.

But just a few thousand years before Jason’s arrival, that had all changed. The oceans had begun to recede, slowly at first, then more quickly with each passing year. Skeptics among the populace had argued that what they were experiencing was a natural cycle and that the waters had ebbed and flowed many times before. But the more forward-looking had seen what lay ahead if the seas continued to shrink. And they had a solution.

By the time that places like the buried city before them had been lost to dry land, a complex system of canals had been constructed, linking points of extremely low elevation where, it was hoped, the waters would be retained even if they disappeared from the rest of the globe. The populace relocated to these new sanctuaries, leaving their old homes behind but retaining as much of their former cultures as possible as they continued to exchange goods and ideas along the narrow canals that connected their new homes.

And for a few generations, it appeared that the worst was behind them. The oceans had receded drastically, but there were still waters in the canals and in the low-elevation sanctuaries. Life continued much as it always had, albeit under considerable strain.

But the drought that had dried their world had only slowed, not stopped, and in time some of the canals became shallower and shallower, until in the end they were no longer navigable by the aquatic residents of the sanctuaries. What had been a globe-spanning system that connected every living person on Mars became fragmented networks, isolated from one another, separated by the unforgiving sands.

Now all that remained of the once-proud globe-spanning culture were ruins like this buried city, where crumbling statuary, the spires of the highest roofs, and the tallest columns were all that rose above the sands, like an orchard of tombstones.

Jason looked from the ruins to Tyr, a solemn expression on his face.