The Long Road
A world by Ari Weaver
The Long Road
You're the new relief driver on Big Sister, a forty-metre rig hauling water and machine parts 3,400 kilometres across Mars from Jezero City to Hellas Port. The run takes eleven days. Rhoda Pelletier has done it 212 times and doesn't talk before noon. This trip there's a runaway who needs a ride and won't say why, a man paying ten thousand dollars to carry one box off the books, and dust season coming in early.
Playing as Traveler·
The depot lights are on at four in the morning, and Big Sister is already plugged into the oxygen line, six trailers long, with 212 little tally marks scratched by her cab door. Rhoda Pelletier comes down the cab steps in a quilted red vest with her grey braid tucked into the collar. She hands you a paper cup of coffee and the logbook, then walks off to kick the tyres on trailer one without a word.
Over the depot speakers, Pistachio is singing along to something with a lot of drums while she reads out departures. “Snowbird, you're clear at four-forty, pad six, and don't let me catch you leaving early again, Rhoda, I mean it.” Rhoda lifts one hand without looking up.
A tall man in a pressed Co-op jacket walks the length of the rig with a tablet, checking seals. Desmond Farr, road operations; his name is on your contract. He signs off trailer three, then stops beside you and keeps his voice low so it won't carry to where Rhoda is crouched by the wheels.
“Welcome aboard. She's the best we've got, I mean that. She's also sixty-one, and the night stretches after the Tharsis Diner are hard on anybody's eyes.” He taps the logbook in your hand. “If she has trouble seeing after dark, you call me, not dispatch. Just me. There's a bonus in it, and honestly it's for her own good. Can you do that for me?”
Jezero depot, 4 a.m.1 of 3