An American family, living in a colony on Mars has to struggle to survive when the colony becomes prematurely independent due to a nuclear war on Earth.
Catastrophe
We open with KYLA HAYES, a US Federal Marshal, who goes through the motions of performing her boring job. Mars has been a low-crime zone, and the most novel thing that has happened to Kyla lately is that Mars University has been given her an experimental robot partner named HENRY. Kyla’s job suddenly becomes interesting when someone tries to murder an executive of the powerful Daedalus Corporation, and Kyla is sent to investigate.
RAY HAYES, Kyla’s husband, is an energetic politician in the American colony who tends to poke his nose into all kinds of problems because he’d like the glory of being a founding father of Mars. An old friend of Ray’s, a Pakistani politician, asks Ray if the whole Pakistani colony can take refuge on American territory because conflicts on Earth between India and Pakistan are spilling over into the Martian colonies and violence is erupting.
Kyla and Ray attend a birthday party for GARRETT, their teenage son. Garrett’s sister POLLY befriends the daughter of an upper-class family, and gets invited on a girls’ sleepover outing in a Martian rover to a local canyon.
Kyla and Henry investigate the attempted murder and discover that the executive who was attacked is running a smuggling ring. Ray ends up on a train with the Daedalus vice president who is targeted for assassination. Ray nearly gets killed when a bomb destroys a train car.
All hell breaks loose when the war between India and Pakistan results in a nuclear exchange. A Pakistani man who lost his whole family on Earth steals a construction rover to try to kill the daughters of the Indian Prime minister—who happen to be on the outing with Polly. Kyla is horrified when she realizes that Polly could be collateral damage in this attack. Kyla and Henry rush to save Polly and her friends. The grief-stricken Pakistani tries to push Polly’s rover over a cliff, but Kyla arrives in her rover in time to save the girls.
The family is reunited in time to attend a public briefing on the situation on Earth. The nuclear war between India and Pakistan will cause a nuclear winter. Earth’s population will consume the world’s food supply within two months. Everyone who can get on a transport and escape Earth will do so. And Mars doesn’t yet have the resources to deal with them. Ray and Kyla realize Mars is in big trouble.
And Kyla has a killer to catch.