THE CORONA CALENDAR Part 1

 THE CORONA CALENDAR (Part 1)

(To Live and Die on Mars #92 excerpt…)

The Blade hummed low over the black waters of Lake Kasei, its underbelly skimming the surface like a lazy insect. Lumo sat inside, cross-legged, fingers dancing over the holographic interface of The Menu. His four cobalt-blue eyes flickered with reflected light—data streams, encrypted waves, the ghostly pulse of digiton transmissions firing off into the smog-choked sky.

He was splitting himself. Not literally—not yet—but close enough. His consciousness fragmented, messages scattering like shrapnel across timelines, realities, encrypted channels. Somewhere, in a mansion perched on the cliffs overlooking Corona Hills, Karla waited. Pregnant. Furious.

He sent the first wave.

Karla stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, the digiton haze outside warping the city into a glitching dreamscape. The "MARS" sign flickered on the cliffs, half-eaten by the smog. She wore Atkan—a color only the rich could see—flowing around her like liquid prestige. The dress shifted with her mood, sharpening at the edges. She was pissed.

A ripple in the air. Then Lumo appeared—solid hologram, a shade—projected from some distant node in the city's memory towers.

"You look expensive," he said.

She didn't turn. "You look like a cheap transmission."

Lumo grinned. "Still got the bite." He stepped closer, the hologram glitching slightly as it breached her personal dampeners. "How's the kid?"

"Alive. Unlike your common sense." She finally faced him. "You're broadcasting straight into a Zemord-aligned household. They'll trace this."

"Let them." His voice dropped. "You shouldn't be here."

"I'm a guest."

"You're a prisoner with a velvet leash."

Karla's dress hardened into armor for a half-second before relaxing again. "I have protection. The family's invested."

"The family's evil."

She laughed, sharp. "And you're not?"

Lumo's hologram flickered. Somewhere, in another timeline, another version of him was doing something worse. Here, he just said, "I'm evil with standards."

A chime echoed through the gallery. Someone was coming.

Karla's gaze didn't waver. "If you cared, you'd have stayed."

"I can't stay. Not until this is done."

"Then don't pretend this is about me."

The hologram began dissolving. Lumo's voice fractured. "If they touch our kid, I burn this whole city down."

Karla smirked. "Promises, promises."

Then he was gone.

Back in the Blade, Lumo exhaled. The first message was sent. The next would be bloodier.

Ari's voice crackled through Lumo's Menu: "You done emoting? We got work."

Lumo cracked his knuckles. "Yeah. Let's go steal a war."

The Blade banked hard, cutting through the digiton smog toward the neon sprawl of Corona Hills. Somewhere below, Governor Amara was waiting.

And he wasn't patient.

———

Amara stood in the center of his war room, the jagged metal plates of his skull glinting under the crimson glow of Deimos' artificial atmosphere. His fingers flexed, rings clinking against each other as he scrolled through the latest intelligence reports on his Menu. Around him, his advisors scrambled like panicked insects, throwing out half-baked PR strategies and slogans that sounded like they were written by a malfunctioning AI.

"Mars First, Always!" one of them barked.

"Time is a Martian Construct!" another tried.

Amara exhaled through his nose, the sound like a bull preparing to charge. "If any of you idiots utter another slogan, I'm feeding you to the void."

Silence.

Then—a ripple in the air. Lumo's body flickered into existence beside him, arms crossed, four eyes scanning the room with detached amusement.

Amara didn't look at him. "I'm conserving rage for the Assembly."

Lumo's projection stepped closer, lowering his voice. "They're going to push hard on the calendar. The Council's already prepping their drones to paint you as a paranoid isolationist."

Amara's jaw tightened. "I'm not paranoid. I'm right."

"Doesn't matter if you're right if they control the narrative."

A muscle twitched in Amara's temple. The Keri Alu pulsed against his chest, whispering promises of power, of retribution. He could tear the Assembly apart if he wanted to. But that wasn't the game. Not yet.

"Fine," he growled. "What's the play?"

Lumo smirked. "Let them talk. Then hit them with the refugee numbers. The Corocoran gravitational drift. The resource drain. Cold, hard data. They can't spin math."

Amara grunted. "And if they try?"

"Then I leak the Council's secret trade deals with the Corocoran systems."

That got a chuckle out of him. "You're a bastard."

Lumo shrugged. "Takes one to arm one."

A chime echoed through the fortress. The Assembly was convening.

Amara straightened, rolling his shoulders. "Time to dance."

Lumo's hologram flickered, shifting into a data stream that coiled around Amara's wrist like a serpent. "Try not to kill anyone. Yet."

Then Amara stepped into the Assembly.

———

The void stretched endlessly, a sea of stars and holographic avatars flickering like fireflies. At the center, a massive projection of the Corona Star burned—their sun, their lifeblood—encircled by the planets, each pulsing with data streams and political agendas.

The audience of the Assembly shimmered as the Jovian delegation manifested—a cluster of luminous, insect-like forms suspended in the digiton haze, their bioluminescent patterns shifting like liquid mathematics. At their forefront, Ambassador Zyx'thalion coalesced into being, his form neither solid nor ephemeral, but something other—a being of pressurized hydrogen and ancient ice, draped in ceremonial robes of metallic foil that refracted Corona's light into prismatic accusations.

The Martian contingent bristled. Amara's jaw set. Lumo's hologram flickered at his side, a silent observer.

Zyx'thalion did not move in the way of flesh-bound creatures. He pulsed, his voice resonating not through air but through the Menu itself, vibrating in the bones of every attendee—human, alien, or machine.

When he spoke, it was not with words, but with gravitational intent, translated by the Assembly's systems into something approximating language.

A ripple passed through the mindscape. The Ambassador had begun.

And somewhere, in the depths of the Corona Ring, a fleet of unregistered refugees ignited their transport vehicles.

Millions of late arrivals joined themselves in time to hear the opening words spoken by the Alien Ambassador Zyx'thalion, his voice engulfing the Grand Assembly, under the watchful gaze of the Star Corona.

"Hark! Assembled kin of spheres and skies,

From Mercury's haste to Pluto's sighs,

We gather 'neath fair Corona's light,

To reckon time—yet none agree aright!

Behold, this Star, our golden lord,

Whose fiery breath doth time afford.

Yet lo! Each world, in prideful turn,

Claims its own dance—oh, how they spurn

The common tick, the shared decree,

That binds the heavens' harmony!

First, Earthlings cry, 'Our year is just!'

Three hundred days and six, plus dust.

Their moon doth sway their months in tune,

Yet Mars doth mock—'A shorter boon!

My year is long, my days are near,

Why bow to thee, O Earthly sphere?'

The Jovian moons, in chorus bright,

Do scoff and sneer at Sol's strict rite.

'What care we for thy star-born year?

Our king is Jupiter, severe!

His mighty pull doth mark our days,

Not Corona's distant blaze!'

And Titan, wrapped in methane mist,

Doth slow revolve—no hour hath kissed

Its face but once in sixteen days.

'Why haste?' it yawns. 'Let time delay.'

While Pluto, cold and scorned of yore,

Laughs grim—'My year's two hundred more!'

Yet hark! Beyond, where shadows creep,

The Oort Cloud's children, lost in sleep,

Whose orbits stretch in aeons vast,

Shall e'er be outcasts of the past.

No mortal mind shall e'er decree

A calendar for such as thee!

And lo! The stars beyond our gate,

Like spectral thieves, do lie in wait.

Their ghostly hands may tug and fray

The threads of time—some distant day,

When Scholz's kin or Proxima's sway

Shall steal our years and bid us stray!

What then, my lords? Shall chaos reign?

Each world its own, in vain disdain?

Or shall we craft a grand design,

Where all may mark in one great line?

A clock that ticks for moon and main,

From Ceres' rock to Neptune's plain?

Speak now! Let wisdom's voice be heard,

Lest time itself be but a word,

A jest to those who dwell afar,

Where other stars, like Corona, are!"

A hush then fell over the Assembly.

Amara materialized in his usual spot, a towering specter of muscle and metal, his red cape drifting in the weightless illusion of the mindscape. Around him, the Council's representatives shimmered into view—sleek, polished, their avatars designed to look benevolent. Wise. Trustworthy.

Bullshit.

The High Speaker, a gaunt figure with too many eyes, raised his hands. "Governor Amara. How kind of you to join us."

Amara didn't smile. "Let's skip the greetings. We all know why we're here."

A murmur rippled through the depths of space. The Speaker's avatar flickered, annoyed. "The unified stellar calendar is not an attack on Mars. It is progress. Unity."

"Unity that just happens to shift resource allocation toward the inner planets," Amara countered. "How convenient."

A new voice cut in—Councilor Veyla, her avatar a shimmering, ethereal thing. "Mars cannot hoard time itself, Governor. The refugee crisis in the Corona Ring demands—"

"Demands what?" Amara's voice was a blade. "More of our water? Our air? While Corocoran's gravity pulls their ships closer every cycle, and you lot sit here debating calendars?"

Lumo's voice whispered through the Menu, a private wave sliding into Amara's mind: "Hit them with the numbers now."

Amara didn't hesitate. He flicked his wrist, and a torrent of data erupted into the Assembly—refugee influx rates, resource depletion projections, the slow but undeniable drag of Corocoran's gravity destabilizing the outer colonies.

The Council's avatars glitched, scrambling to counter.

Veyla hissed. "These are selective metrics—"

"Then refute them," Amara challenged. "Unless you can't."

Silence.

Councilor Vexa Krios materialized in the Assembly's mindscape like a blade unsheathed. Her avatar—all sharp angles and smoldering ocular implants—locked onto the Jovian delegation with the cold focus of a targeting system. The digiton haze around her crackled with suppressed fury.

"Negligible difference?"

The word hung in the void, an insult wrapped in bureaucratic polish. She let the silence stretch, savoring the way the Council's projections flickered with unease. When she finally spoke, her voice carried the weight of orbital mechanics.

"Let's parse this lie with numbers instead of politics."

Her fingers twitched. A star map exploded into existence between the assembled avatars—Corona's golden heart at the center, threaded with crimson stress-lines that reached like grasping fingers toward Centaurion, Scholz Star, and the hungry dark mass of Corocoran.

"Jovian astronomers documented these perturbations before Earth's pyramids were dust." Another gesture. Time-lapse vectors unspooled, showing the Corona Ring's outermost asteroids drifting infinitesimally off-course over centuries. "Point-zero-three percent angular momentum theft per millennium. Small?" Her lips peeled back from carbon-fiber teeth. "Only if you ignore compound interest on a cosmic scale."

The simulation that followed was worse. A terraformed Mars eight thousand years hence, its atmosphere bleeding away into the void as Corcoran's gravity warped its orbit.

“Your negligible is our grandchildren's famine.”

Silence swallowed the Assembly. Even Zyx'thalion's bioluminescent patterns dimmed. Somewhere in the depths of the Menu, Lumo's presence brushed against Amara's consciousness like a grinning shadow.

She just rewrote the debate.

Amara watched the Council's avatars scramble to recalibrate their projections, their carefully constructed narrative fracturing under the weight of celestial mechanics. His reply to Lumo was a single pulse of thought, as sharp as an executioner's axe:

Now we hit them where it hurts.

And beyond the mindscape, in Corona Hills' central plaza, the animated statue of Karla began weeping digiton tears that sizzled like acid where they struck the pavement.

Lumo's presence curled in satisfaction. They're rattled. Push.

Amara stepped forward, his avatar swelling, dominating the space. "You want a new calendar? Fine. But Mars won't bleed for your illusions of peace while our enemies circle like vultures."

The Assembly trembled. The Speaker's extra eyes twitched.

The tension in the Corona Star System Assembly reached a boiling point as High Speaker Dain's projection loomed over the gathered delegates, his voice dripping with condescension. "Governor Amara, your obstinance is noted. But this is no longer a debate. By order of the Corona Star System, you will render Mars' temporal data for the new calendar. Compliance is not optional."

A murmur rippled through the assembled avatars. Councilor Veyla's lips curled in satisfaction as she added, "Your continued refusal only proves you stand against unity and progress."

Amara remained still, his metal-plated skull reflecting the starlight of the mindscape. When he finally spoke, his voice was dangerously calm. "You mistake my caution for obstruction. But very well... you want Mars' data?"

With a flick of his wrist, space itself seemed to fracture. A massive crystal materialized before the Assembly, its facets pulsing with centuries of Martian chronometrics. Gasps echoed through the void as delegates recognized the complete archive of Mars' temporal records.

"There it is," Amara said, his voice cutting through the stunned silence. "Every calculation, every seasonal record, every orbital trajectory my people have died to measure."

The moment Amara clenched his fist, the massive data crystal erupted in a cataclysmic detonation that seemed to fracture reality itself.

A shockwave of iridescent energy pulsed outward, sending jagged shards of crystallized memory spiraling through the void like dying comets. Each fragment blazed with trapped data - centuries of Martian chronometrics reduced to glittering debris. The explosion unfolded in slow-motion perfection: first a spiderweb of cracks racing across the crystal's flawless surface, then an implosion of violet light as its structural integrity failed.

The subsequent blast sent concentric rings of digiton radiation expanding through the Assembly's mindscape, distorting avatars and warping projections. Tiny crystalline splinters continued exploding in secondary bursts, each miniature detonation releasing cascades of corrupted time-data that swirled like metallic snow. The core of the explosion lingered as a perfect sphere of white-hot energy, its surface rippling with the last echoes of Mars' stolen memories before collapsing inward with a silent, devastating finality.

What remained was a slowly dispersing nebula of information shrapnel, its glittering remnants catching the distant light of Corona's star as they tumbled into eternal darkness. The explosion's aftershocks continued reverberating through the Assembly's connection grid, leaving delegates' projections flickering with unstable energy.

The Assembly's mindscape erupted into chaos as the crystal's destruction reverberated through the system. Delegates' projections flickered wildly, their shocked exclamations overlapping in a dissonant chorus. The Jovian contingent's bioluminescent forms pulsed erratically, their patterns shifting to emergency crimson. Councilor Veyla's avatar glitched violently, her mouth moving soundlessly before her connection stabilized enough to scream, "This is an act of war!"

Across the star system, public feeds captured the moment in frozen disbelief. In orbital habitats, crowds gathered around holographic displays gasped as one. Martian loyalists in Corona Hills' underground bars roared approval, their drinks sloshing as they pounded tables. The Grey Martian workers paused their solar harvesting, their large black eyes reflecting the explosion's afterglow in thousands of identical, unreadable stares.

On Deimos, security monitors showed panicked technicians scrambling to contain the data shockwaves rippling through the Menu's infrastructure. The Corona Council's emergency channels flooded with frantic priority alerts as the system's delicate balance trembled. Somewhere in the chaos, unnoticed by all but the most perceptive AIs, the first fragments of Lumo's data bomb began taking root.

"Amara!" Veyla's scream was barely audible over the digital backlash. "Do you have any idea what you've just done?"

The Governor's avatar was already dissolving, but his final words rang clear: "Ensured Mars keeps its own time. Good luck with your calendar."

———

Back in his Deimos stronghold, the real Amara exhaled sharply as he disconnected from the Assembly. Lumo's hologram flickered beside him, an uncharacteristic grin on his blue features.

"They didn't see that coming," the Xerran observed.

Amara flexed his metal-plated fingers. "They never do. But this isn't over."

"No," Lumo agreed, his four eyes gleaming. "Because while they were watching your little show, my last wave finished transmitting."

Amara turned sharply. "To who?"

Somewhere in Corona Hills, Karla's living statue shuddered as digiton tears began streaming down its face. The first ripples of Lumo's data bomb were already spreading.

The Star System wouldn't know what hit them.  

To be continued…

—-ATILA—-