[… August 13th, sunny]
Wang Qiang wrote the date on the header and looked at the endless sand dunes outside the window. He sighed and closed the diary.
There was no beautiful scenery here at all. It was a desert. Other than sand, there was only sand. The boring scenery and the boring life caused him to rack his brains for a long time every day just for this diary of a few hundred words.
But this was good. Otherwise, how could he kill the boring time?
He looked up at the clock on the wall and saw that it was almost time. Wang Qiang stuffed the diary into the drawer, got up, and walked to the door.
When he walked through the corridor, he didn't see a single person.
No matter how vast Mars was, for the twenty colonists living here, it was a relatively closed environment. After finishing work, everyone habitually returned to their rooms and locked themselves in a small closed circle. Some wore Phantom helmets, and some stared blankly at a book.
Sometimes Wang Qiang even thought that if the kitchen was equipped with a food delivery drone, would it be possible that he would never see his neighbors again?
A closed environment often breeds psychological diseases.
There were more and more people seeing a psychiatrist, so the psychiatrist's work was getting busier and the schedule was always full. Even the only psychiatrist in the colony almost suffered from depression due to overwork.
But Wang Qiang was fine. He still had his diary, a friend who occasionally played billiards with him, and a job that wasn't too boring.
After a simple rinse in the bathroom, he took out his equipment from the closet. After carefully putting it on, Wang Qiang stepped through the buffer room and the wind shower room and walked out of the base.
His boots sank into the gravel, and the dim light shone through the gaps in the dust.
Wang Qiang raised his head, narrowed his eyes slightly, and looked at the turbid sun.
Just as he stepped toward the rover, a communication window suddenly popped up in the lower right corner of the holographic screen inside the helmet.
He pressed the button and the captain's voice sounded in his ear.
"… Today's mission is canceled. Drive the rover back to the garage and immediately come to the central square of the colony."
Wang Qiang was stunned and asked inexplicably, "What happened?"
"Reinforcements are here."
Reinforcements are here.
When he heard these four short words, Wang Qiang's heart was instantly filled with an uncontrollable joy. It was as carefree as the first rain after three years of drought.
Wang Qiang hurriedly jumped on the rover and drove it into the garage in the colony. He got off without stopping and trotted to the colonial square.
When he walked through the trapdoor, he found that the other nineteen colonists were all there. Captain Hong Zewei stood in the middle of the square, holding a stack of papers in his hand and reading, while the others surrounded him and listened carefully.
Everyone's faces were brimming with excitement from the bottom of their hearts.
He had been waiting for the stars and the moon, and finally, the Emperor's Division had arrived.
Wang Qiang pulled his friend and asked in a low voice.
"What is the captain reading?"
"A letter from Earth!" The friend said excitedly, "I heard that Celestial Trade created a column for us and collected about 10,000 greetings from Earth!"
"Are you sure they're just greetings?" Wang Qiang asked with a strange expression.
With the quality of the internet, he would not believe it even if you beat him to death!
"Ahem, of course, what's being read here is filtered. There are tens of thousands of letters in total. How can they all be read?" The friend glared at Wang Qiang with a look that said "as long as you know", then continued to look at the stack of letters in Hong Zewei's hand.
Looking at the envelopes, Wang Qiang's heart suddenly surged with an indescribable feeling.
At least, they, the "Martians", were still remembered by their fellow countrymen on Earth. Every word was filled with concern, and he couldn't help but think of the blue planet, the magnificent sea, and the palm leaves swaying in front of his house …
Sniffing, Wang Qiang suddenly remembered the reason why he canceled today's mission and rushed back as soon as he left. So he immediately looked left and right, but he was surrounded by familiar faces.
"Didn't they say that reinforcements have arrived? Why don't I see anyone? "
"The letter was brought by the reinforcements and dropped from the synchronous orbit." The friend grinned and pointed to the sky. "It's almost time."
Wang Qiang looked up and saw the transparent graphene dome above the colonial square.
"… Let's welcome our new friends, the second group of colonists!"
There were cheers in the square, people opened the champagne, and let the bubbles spray.
Such enthusiastic cheers hadn't been heard for a long time since the day the colonial cabin landed.
Wang Qiang no longer paid attention to what Hong Zewei said at the beginning and what he said at the end. His gaze was already glued to the turbid sky until the dark blue light particles appeared. They grew larger and larger, closer and closer to the moon. Finally, they set off the figure of the object behind them.
The rectangular colonial cabin was like a stone monument placed upside down. The shape design inherited the consistent style of Future Heavy Industries shipyard – large opening and closing. It was dropped from the synchronous orbit by the Seagull-class transport ship and landed next to the colony under the reverse ejection of the plasma engine.
The muffled sound of impact came from the soles of the feet. The base of the colonial cabin was deeply embedded in the sand, and the billowing dust instantly drifted over a distance of thousands of meters.
After the first colony, after a few months, Celestial Trade left its second footprint on Mars.
Although it contained a total of 110 people, the newly landed colonial cabin was much smaller than the original colonial cabin. The newly landed colonial cabin was only loaded with tools and materials urgently needed by the new colonists and the colony. There was neither a reserved living space nor an attached functional cabin such as a production workshop.
Ten large rovers shaped like buses came out from the side of the colonial cabin, carrying more than a hundred colonists from Earth and driving in the direction of the colony.
Among the colonists were engineers who had worked on the Moon colony, technicians specializing in industrial automation design, and even chefs who came to improve the colony's diet, or composers who decided to dedicate their lives to art …
In addition to these ordinary colonists, there were ten people with special identities.
They were soldiers belonging to the Orbital Airborne Brigade of Celestial Trade. Nominally, they were there to maintain the security of the colony, but in fact, they were there for the secret five kilometers underground.
The colonial garage opened, and large rovers entered.
The old colonists prepared a grand welcome ceremony for the newcomers and welcomed their new neighbors from afar.
The colony hadn't been so lively for a long time, so the welcome ceremony was particularly grand. It didn't take long for everyone to be welcomed into the cafeteria. All kinds of wine and delicacies were served on the table. Captain Hong Zewei raised his glass and announced the start of the banquet.
The welcome ceremony was a joyous one for both the guests and the host, and it swept away the low morale of the colony.
After five bottles of champagne, Wang Qiang burped drunkenly, and his eyes drifted with his swaying consciousness.
At this moment, he suddenly noticed that in an inconspicuous corner of the banquet hall, a man with a ramrod straight posture walked up to the captain, gave a neat military salute, and seemed to say something.
As for the specifics, he didn't have the time to find out.
Wang Qiang was dragged by his friend to take another sip of whiskey with a high alcohol content. He felt dizzy, and finally, his forehead had intimate contact with the table, and his drowsy consciousness finally fell into the abyss …
It was probably the happiest he drank since he came to Mars.
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