Ares

While humanity is spreading their wings, leaving Earth to colonize large bodies of the Solar System, their home planet's waring nations and internal political powerplays are tearing countries apart, increasing social and class divides. The President of the United States himself, Horton Willoughby III, is but a puppet to his wife's scheming, and governs over only Eastern America, civil war having caused a catastrophic divide down the center of the United States. Western America won't heed his administration, and international leaders see him for the political farce that he is.

Richfield Chan, a powerful industrialist, has never held or sought political office for himself. Nor has he actually manufactured anything, greatly preferring to buy up companies teetering on the brink-building them up or tearing them down. He sees in the United States a fractured government not unlike the companies he buys: an opportunity to seize power. Whether he is wielding it himself, or content to stay the marionette controlling his chosen puppet from the shadows, he makes his move.

Chan rallies his political and industrial allies into agreeing to send the seventh colony ship to Mars to rally the powerful to his Imperial aspirations and undermine the current United States president. Never mind that the previous six missions sent by the government had failed.

Never mindthat all prior colonists perished.

When the Ngu family-responsible for the successful terraforming and mining of the secondlargest asteroid in the Belt, Pallas-hear of Chan's plans, they realize that any follow-up rescue mission from Earth will arrive too late, and will be as ill-formed as the nations sending it. Four of eight siblings decide to leave their privileged lives behind to launch a rescue mission from Pallas, knowing their spaceship will get to the ailing colonists much quicker, and with the expertise and implements better chosen to aide in all of their survival.

For Billy and Teal, and the other Ngu siblings braving the voyage, know that their mission is a one-way trip. They either rescue the colonists and teach them all how to work together to survive on an inhospitable rock in space-not unlike the earliest days on the harsh asteroid they grew up on-or they somehow learn how to survive until another ship can be sent to rescue those who can endure.

Too longhave the "little people" been subjected the whims and follies of incompetentgovernments. It was time to make their own stand.