The River That Burned Green – Founding Night of TB Mars
14. The River That Burned Green
The fire snapped, throwing sparks into the thin air, the neon river humming beside them like some alien electric vein. The tents glowed faintly in the background, strange Martian cocoons that made the whole camp feel more like a fever dream than a campsite. Bikes rested nearby, silent silhouettes, chrome catching flashes of green from the water.
For a long time, nobody spoke. Just the pop of fire and the faint hiss of wind moving across the dust. Then Patch cleared his throat, rough as gravel.
“You boys remember Earth?” he asked, cigar stub glowing like a second campfire in his teeth.
Dex laughed, young and sharp. “Don’t know if I ever knew her in the first place.”
But Grit shifted in the firelight, staring into the green glow. “I remember,” he said, voice low. “I remember cities burning. I remember people lining up for scraps while satellites fell outta the sky like dying stars. And I remember us — not runnin’ for bunkers, not bowin’ to nobody — just ridin’. ‘Cause ridin’ was all we had left.”
Torch grinned, tossing another piece of scrap wood onto the fire. “Damn right. They said the world ended. I said the world just lost its shine. Pipes still rattled. Gas still burned. Wind still cut the same. As long as I could hear an engine breathe, I didn’t give a damn if the sky was fallin’.”
Sol leaned back, his goggles reflecting the flames. “That was the thing, wasn’t it? Everyone else looked up — waitin’ on saviors, governments, miracle rockets. Us? We just looked at the road. And when the whispers came about Mars tickets, I figured… hell, why not? The road don’t stop at Earth.”
Dex shifted, restless. “And MarsCo let us in? Still don’t believe that. Half the time we looked more like ghosts in leather than candidates.”
Patch chuckled. “They wanted specialists. Engineers. Builders. Medics. We were all of that. Just not their kind. But we could make broken things run, and MarsCo knew damn well that counts when you’re tryin’ to build a world from scratch.”
Torch raised his bottle, the fire painting his scarred knuckles red. “And so they strapped us in and shot us across the void. I still remember it — sittin’ there, stomach in knots, thinkin’, Hell, I hope they remembered to pack the whiskey.”
That drew laughs around the fire. The green river pulsed, as if it was in on the joke.
Grit’s face stayed serious. “You all know it though. This patch —” He tapped the leather across his back, the skull-and-snake catching both firelight and river glow. “— this didn’t start on Mars. Shadow of Death was born in the ruins back on Earth. We brought it here. We didn’t just found somethin’ new. We carried somethin’ old. Brought it across the void.”
The fire fell quiet again. The only sound was the river’s hiss and the low hum of cooling engines. Then Sol broke it, voice calm, deliberate.
“And that’s why we’re still here. Not ‘cause MarsCo allows it. Not ‘cause colonists tolerate it. We’re here ‘cause brotherhood don’t rust. You can’t burn it out, you can’t bury it, you sure as hell can’t buy it.”
Dex strummed a few off-key notes on a homemade banjo he’d pulled from his kit. “Hell,” he said, grinning, “we oughta put that on a sign.”
Patch shook his head. “Nah. Signs don’t last. Stories do. We tell it. We live it. That’s enough.”
And so they did. Around that neon river, their voices turned to laughter, their memories twisted into lies and truths, their scars softened into stories. The fire burned down slow, and when silence came again, it wasn’t empty. It was full — of Earth’s ashes, Mars’s dust, and the unbroken chain of chrome, leather, and loyalty that carried them across it all.