The walls of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s main conference room were lined with mission badges, planetary maps, and models of deep space probes, all reminders of what the agency had once accomplished, and what it now hoped to achieve again.
Director Franklin Holt stood at the head of the table, hands behind his back, posture impeccable, an echo of his Marine days.
“Let’s begin,” he said, nodding to the room. “This is Emily Harrison. She’s the reason we’re all here.”
Emily stepped forward. Her red pixie cut caught the overhead light like fire on a blade. She didn’t glance at the seated team, Rocco with his sandaled feet propped on a chair leg, Dr. Alejandro Hernandez quietly calculating something on his slate, and Dr. Rachel Thompson tapping her stylus with sharp precision.
The room dimmed as Emily cast her tablet to the holoprojector. A massive wireframe of Jupiter rotated above the table, its pale blue moon Europa magnified beside it. Then Mars: red, dry, airless, joined it, stark and waiting.
“Everyone knows terraforming Mars is a pipe dream under current mass constraints,” she began. “It’s too small. Can’t hold an atmosphere. No mass, no magnetosphere, no long-term climate stability.”
She flicked to the next slide, Europa glowed white. “My thesis was simple: if Mars is too small, make it bigger. Strip-mine Europa. Use fusion drives to transfer the mass onto Mars’s surface. This gives us mass and water, unlocks the CO2 at the poles and kick starts weather patterns.”
“That’s insane,” Rocco said flatly. He didn’t even look up from his tablet. “Europa’s not quite the size of Earth’s Moon. That’s not enough to solve Mars’s gravity problem, and even if it were, how are you not triggering a global extinction event every time you hurl moon-chunks into a planet?”
Emily didn’t blink. “We don’t drop it all at once. This isn’t an asteroid strike, it’s orbital delivery.”
She tapped her screen again. A new model appeared: Mars surrounded by a fine web of orbital paths, thousands of small objects tracing spirals toward the surface.
“We break Europa down into manageable masses using laser cutters and controlled explosions. Then we deploy high-precision fusion tugs to guide the material into orbit around Mars.”
She zoomed in on the simulation. Each chunk slowly descended in a stable spiral, bleeding off speed over weeks or months before touching down.
“Controlled entry burns, parachute systems, even magnetic repulsion for the final descent in sensitive zones. It’ll be like rain, not a hammer.”
Rocco glanced up now. His expression had shifted, still skeptical, but curious. “You’re basically soft-landing a trillion tons of rock.”
“Exactly,” Emily said. “We’re changing the planet’s mass and surface chemistry without turning it into a hellscape. No shockwaves. No nuclear winter. Just… deliberate gravity.”
A pause.
“Still sounds like science fiction,” Rocco muttered. “But at least it’s not planetary homicide.”
Emily continued, “More important than mass is magnetic shielding to prevent the atmosphere from being stripped away by solar radiation.”
She brought up a new simulation, a mesh of satellites forming a ring around Mars, slowly spooling out energy lines. “We deploy an electromagnetic net using low-orbit satellites. It mimics Earth’s magnetosphere. Traps solar wind. Prevents atmospheric loss.”
Dr. Hernandez finally spoke, voice slow and measured. “Fusion could power the net. More importantly, fusion gets us the mining fleet. High-efficiency plasma drives. No fission radiation to deal with.”
He looked up. “I’ve got four almost working prototypes in Nevada right now. We just need scale. And fuel.”
Emily nodded. “Once the field’s up, pressure builds. Temperature rises. We seed with algae. Cold-water fish. Hardy mosses. Then cold-weather plants once the jet streams stabilize.”
“All of this,” Rocco muttered, “is built on the assumption that we can operate an entire mining ecosystem on one of the most hostile moons in the solar system. My bots in the Everglades don’t deal with ionizing radiation, ice crusts ten kilometers thick, or geysers that shoot 100 miles into space.”
“You’ve automated invasive species harvesting across fifty square miles of swamp,” Emily shot back. “You’re the only person on Earth who’s turned ecosystem management into a fully autonomous operation. If anyone can do this, it’s you.”
Rocco blinked, then smirked. “Still insane. But thanks.”
Holt cleared his throat. “Dr. Thompson?”
Rachel stood, smooth and sharp as a scalpel. She rotated the hologram with a flick of her wrist, overlaying shipping routes, fuel calculations, and trajectory paths between the Jovian system and Mars.
“Even if you solve mining and fusion,” she said, “our models show we’ll need a supply chain capable of moving two billion metric tons over two decades. That means orbital docking stations, asteroid deflection protocols, and cargo shielding we haven’t even invented yet.”
Holt broke the silence. “You’re asking us to put all our resources into this. I’ll take this to the decision-makers, but you’re asking for something huge. The political landscape is messy right now. Some of the higher-ups will want to focus on military applications, others on scientific research. This isn’t just about technology. It’s about the future of the planet, the future of the United States. And it’s going to be hard to get approval for something this risky.”
Emily folded her arms. Of course it would be a tough sell. Nothing about moving a moon was ever easy. The budget was tight, and the political divisions were deeper than ever. There was pressure on all sides: some wanted immediate returns, others were more focused on military advantages. In the end, the challenge wasn’t just technical, it was political, too.
Holt continued, “Project Tengri dropped Venus’s temperature by 300 degrees in ten years. If they finish first, they don’t just win a planet, they set the rules.”
Emily spoke before anyone else could. “This isn’t about beating them. Let them have Venus. I’m not proposing we react to their work, I’m proposing we choose a different path. Mars can be ours, not because we win a race, but because we build something better.”
Rocco smirked. “Spoken like someone who doesn’t have to ask Congress for a budget.”
Holt stepped forward. “She doesn’t. I do. And if I’m going to make this pitch stick, I need more than good ideas. I need hard numbers, logistics, risks, and timelines.”
“You’ll have them,” Emily said. “We’re not pitching a miracle. We’re laying out a mission. We build the fusion engines. We outfit the mining bots. We send a scout crew to Europa to establish a robotic hub. First materials get delivered to Mars in under a decade.”
Holt nodded, then looked around the room. “Then you’ve got work to do,” Holt said. “Theory just became orders.”
Holt stood before the panel: a half-moon of budget directors, military analysts, and intelligence heads, all seated beneath the seal of the United States. The air was dry. Still. The kind of silence that didn’t wait … it judged.
Behind him, the screen flickered to life: Mars, vast and lifeless, hung against black.
“We are not in a space race,” he said, voice sharp. “We’re in a land grab.”
Click.
Venus filled the screen, partially shrouded in its sulfuric clouds, with bold overlays of Chinese orbital infrastructure. Below it, a banner: Project Tengri: 2035 – Present.
“China has formally claimed Venus. Terraforming is well underway. They’ll send crewed missions in under ten years. When they do, they’ll be the first nation to claim sovereign presence on another planet.”
Click.
A comparative graph showed two diverging trajectories: one for China, bold and steep; one for the United States, leveling off.
“If they succeed, they don’t just claim a planet, they define what off-world expansion looks like. They’ll control the narrative, the tech, and the economic future that comes with it. We either match their ambition, or get used to a second-tier orbit.
Click.
Mars again. Dry. Barren. Waiting.
“Our opportunity lies here. Dr. Emily Harrison’s plan offers a viable path to colonization: not by increasing mass, that’s science fiction, but by making Mars capable of holding an atmosphere.”
Click.
A wireframe animation played: Europa, icy and distant. Then massive tankers drawing water, plasma engines flaring, delivering payloads to Mars orbit.
“Europa is our water source, enough to hydrate an entire world. The plan is to transport and melt that water into Mars’s lowland regions. That unlocks the frozen CO2 reserves and begins a feedback loop: atmosphere, heat, pressure.”
Click.
Now a net of satellites glowed around Mars.
“Next, a synthetic magnetosphere. Satellites in low orbit projecting electromagnetic fields to mimic Earth’s. Shielding Mars from solar radiation and atmospheric stripping. Without this, any atmosphere we create won’t last. With it, we give Mars a sky.”
Click.
A visual sequence: algae blooming in shallow basins. Rivers forming. Clouds swirling above crater lakes.
“This isn’t about fantasy. This is about infrastructure. About building something no one’s ever built before, a second Earth.”
He paused. “China made their claim. They chose Venus. Let them have it.”
He looked around the room, not to beg, not to bluff, but to press the truth.
“We don’t need to compete with their planet. We can build our own.”
The panel was silent. He could read the doubts in their faces: the scale, the risk, the cost.
President Monroe finally spoke. Her voice was smooth, low, deliberate.
“It’s a hell of a pitch, Director Holt. But I’ve seen hell of a lot of pitches.” She leaned forward slightly, eyes locked on his. “This plan is audacious. Impossibly expensive. Scientifically unproven. And politically… radioactive.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Holt said, meeting her gaze without flinching. “And if it works, it redefines American leadership for the next century years.”
Silence again, thicker now. Around the table, expressions were shifting. Not agreement, not yet, but calculation. They were imagining what it would mean to say yes.
Monroe glanced at her aides, then back to Holt.
“Would you mind stepping out while we confer?”
He nodded once. “Of course, Madam President.”
He collected his tablet, gave one last glance across the room, and exited to the hallway. The heavy doors shut behind him with a hydraulic hiss.
The hallway was colder now. Holt’s mind returned to the day China’s president announced Project Tengri. They had tried, he’d led the team, digging through every piece of data they could find, but the thread never appeared. They had hidden it well.
The supposedly exploratory space launches, the materials research, the increased spending thought to be bio-weapons even. he’d failed to see how they all connected.
From inside, he could just barely make out muffled voices. No shouting. That was either a good sign or a very bad one.
Minutes passed. Ten, then twenty.
Feeling the weight of the past press on his chest. But what if I’ve missed something again? What if we’re too late to catch up?
He exhaled slowly, focusing. Doubt doesn’t win wars.
Then the door creaked open. A young aide in a dark suit stepped out and gave him a curt nod.
“They’re ready for you.”
Holt stepped back into the room. The air inside felt different, thicker, charged.
Monroe gestured toward the seat he had vacated. “We’ve reached a consensus.”
He sat. Eyes across the table watched him, guarded but curious.
“The proposal is bold,” Monroe said. “Risky. Politically volatile. But if even half of what you outlined is achievable, we can’t afford to let it go to waste. You have preliminary approval to begin Phase One: planning, personnel, projections. We’ll unlock funding on a conditional basis. You’ll report monthly. And if the Chinese so much as sneeze in Mars’ direction, we expect escalation options on the table.”
Holt exhaled, slow and steady, the tension in his shoulders finally easing.
“You just bought yourself the biggest provisional budget in history, Holt. Make it count… or I’ll be the one cutting it.”
Convergence is available on Amazon in print / ebook form, as well as on youtube as an audio book.