Mars
Tharsis National Park

After so many months in the gunmetal steerage of a frigate's underbelly, the man-made paradise of Mars is almost too much to bear. When the Wargods throw down their bags on the doorstep of Karen Ng'Mei's cabin, Flight Lieutenant Levi looks out at the landscape of Candor Chasma - terraformed Eden nestled in a valley seven times as deep and broad as the Grand Canyon - and shakes his head.

"This was a terrible idea," he says. "We're never going to be able to go back."

Schooner pushes him into the pond.

They have three days. They use them. Paragliding in Martian gravity is intoxicating: all the joy of flight without the need to strap on tons of angry metal. They fly to the Tharsis Bulge, where Olympus Mons' nearest flank broods on the horizon. The six-kilometer escarpment juts like the lip of a battered pugilist, but the mountain is so enormous that its peak is well past the horizon line and nearly above the atmosphere.

On the second day they eat barbeque on the shore of Valles Marineris Lake, layered against the Martian cold. The water is crystal-pure, melted from the ice of impacted comets. They miss the maglev home. 

When they finally make it back to the cabin, hours later, Simms collapses in exhaustion on an upper bunk. Karen, Olefumi, Levi and Laporte play a bluffing game with bottle caps on the kitchen table as the other Wargods build a fire.

"My parents were friends with an Elder," Laporte offers.

"Bullshit!"

Laporte grins up at Olefumi. "No bullshit. Gimme a cap."

"No wonder Simms calls you a society girl." Karen Ng'Mei tucks her legs under her and thinks. "I was a graphic designer before I went Fleet."

"I'll buy it." Levi scratches at his scalp, shaved bare after he lost a bet with Simms. "So, the Indus deck crew and I once tested the shock clamps on the hangar deck by strapping my Kent in and firing the afterburners."

Karen, Olefumi and Laporte gasp in shock. "You did not. Simms must have killed you!"

"Oh, she was furious." Levi glances up at the sleeping Simms. "I can prove it. The Captain talks in her sleep, and she's on a hair trigger. Behold."

He raises his voice slightly. "Captain, about the incident with the shock clamps. I - "

In the top bunk at the end of the room, Simms starts yelling in her sleep, muffled by the pillow under her face. "FLIGHT LIEUTENANT LEVI, I HAVE ALWAYS TAKEN YOU FOR A SECOND-RATE ITEM OF HELMHOLTZ TRASH, QUALIFIED AS A PILOT ONLY INASMUCH AS YOU CAN YANK YOUR FLIGHT STICK LIKE A LONELY TEENAGER, ALIVE ONLY BECAUSE YOUR ANCESTORS WERE DUMB ENOUGH TO SETTLE A PLANET SO HOSTILE THAT COWARDICE WAS THE ONLY VALID SURVIVAL STRATEGY! AND NOW I FIND THAT OPINION WAS A CONSIDERABLE OVERESTIMATION! SO IF YOU EVER - "

She flails her arms, gets tangled in the sheets, and falls off the bunk. A moment before her impact with the floor, she wakes up and says "Fuck!"

They do not stop laughing until she pulls rank.