For five years the four had trained together for the first manned flight to Mars. All, two men and two women, an American, a Canadian, a Japanese American, and an African-Australian were astronauts, having spent one tour on the International Space Station during training and another four months as they prepared an orbital launch of the SpaceCorp-owned spaceship Explorer. An over-burn of its rockets due to sabotage during departure dooms the Mars mission and leaves the Explorer and crew no choice but look for a new planet or asteroid to colonize. That's what the US military and intelligence agencies wanted everyone on Earth to think. In truth, the Explorer was on a dual mission, one to prepare a venue for colonization and the other a militarized mission to test a new device in space. There was no going back after they found what they were seeking.