Plague of the Living Crystals

(53,282 words) A plague gets loose on Mars and wipes out a Martian colony. Where did this plague come from? How is it able to breed on a lifeless planet like Mars? Or is Mars really lifeless? During the course of his investigation, Earth Based Affairs (EBA), Special Investigator, Colonel Danial Stark finds out about three laborers who stayed at the colony and may have ultimately been responsible for its destruction. Tracing their footsteps, he finds the ruins from an ancient civilization. Beneath the ruins, he finds a network of tunnels stretching for miles. Examining these tunnels, Stark finds clues that lead him back to Earth. On Earth, Stark goes undercover and risks everything to find out that a religious cult is using the Martian disaster to gain a political foothold with the ultimate end of taking over the world.