Martian Intafada part 6

Sometime later Khalid walked into a large pressurized cavern with a banner running along its wall proclaiming it, Mars Rifles and Rockets Corporation. There were three assembly lines set up, one to make gauss rifles the second to make the projectiles the gauss rifles would fire. It was the third line that made Khalid smile, there they were making rockets. The rockets had been Khalid’s idea; he had remembered a simple formula of 63% potassium nitrate, 27% sugar and 10% red iron oxide.

This had been made when digging out a new cavern they had discovered large deposits of both sodium nitrate and potassium chloride. The rockets they were making using this formula were able to lift much larger payloads on Mars than they would have on earth; because of the fact that on Mars they only had to deal with.38g instead of 1g as on Earth. Also despite the Japanese terra forming projects wind resistance was still no where near what it would have been back on Earth.

Khalid strode into a small office directly off of the main room; this was where Mohammed Hatta designed the tools that the Martian intafada would use. Khalid had received a message that Mohammed had to speak to him urgently.

“Asalam Alaikum Mohammed, what is so urgent that I am creeping out into the darkness and missing my beauty sleep.”

“Alaikum Asalam brother, I have fantastic news. Brother Abdullah has discovered the Zubrin landing site. Inshallah, if the tanks have held and the wind miner there is still working there should be several thousand liters of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. I have already drawn up planes for a rocket plane that we could build. We just need you to help us go get it”

The two men discussed further and decided that Khalid would pretend to take one of the big eight wheeled trucks out to scout the path of the railroad. He would meet up with Abdullah who would have a trailer with Tanks on it to siphon the hydrogen and oxygen if the tanks were indeed still full.

The construction of the rocket planes would require that six more men ‘die’ on the railroad project, so that they could build 4 of them with out pushing back the time table that the Martian Intafada leadership had agreed to.

While Khalid was there, Mohammed showed him how well the bulldozer’s makeover into tanks was going. They had solved the problem of seeing out by outfitting the tanks with periscopes, as they did not have armored glass. The tanks would also tow the multi-tube rocket launchers. Every thing was on schedule Mohammed assured Khalid.