Two technicians floated off the space elevator into
the center of the relay station in the Martian thermosphere tethered high above
the Ares Vallis Dome. One man, one
woman. The technicians busied themselves
setting up one of the four wedge shaped med-bays for the incoming transport.
Outside the port holes they could see a transport
approach the relay station. The shuttle
adjusted itself shooting white tufts of air from nozzles scattered around its
smooth windowless fuselage. Within
minutes the transport docked with the relay station and the technicians boarded the
transport by way of a small docking arm.
The transport was small and dimly lit. The man walked hunched over so as not to hit
his head as he approached one of the two sets of pods packed together inside
the transport. The pods were just large
enough to hold a person. They were
featureless besides a small glazed viewing window located above the head-end,
and a read out screen in the middle, that displayed the vital signs of the
immigrants inside.
The two technicians wordlessly assigned themselves
each to a pair of pods. The man peered
inside his pods and saw a male immigrant lying in stasis. Just beside the immigrant, in an identical
pod was the immigrants duplicate. With a
few quick key strokes to the read out screen the man began transferring the
consciousness of the immigrant who had been born on Earth to the duplicate that
had been grown in transit to Mars. Two
minutes later the old Earth-born body of the immigrant was nothing but an empty
vessel and the new transport-grown body sat up carrying with it the
consciousness of the immigrant.
The man ushered his immigrant back to the med-bay,
as did his female counterpart. Routine
tests were conducted as robotic arms, connected to endless tracks that
cross-crossed the stations walls, floors, and ceilings, delivered tools and
supplies to the technicians. As the
tests were being concluded the stations automated systems spoke in a calm and
even tone: "Warning, air pressure drop detected." The man swung
around and looked out the port window over his shoulder. Blue flames were creeping around the edges of
the window.
Without warning the one of the walls of the
med-bays across the station collapsed on itself as if a huge invisible fist had
punched a hole in the wall from the inside out.
The immigrant on the table in front of the man slammed into him sending
him into a wild zero gravity spin. At
the same time, all of the air was sucked out of the station through the hole in
the wall. The man hit one of the
stations walls and was able to stabilize himself. Looking around he watched as everything
rushed towards the hole in the stations walls.
Both immigrants were tumbling end over end. He watched helplessly as
they flew through the opening and were lost.
It only took the station 7 seconds to raise the
walls to the damaged med-bay and seal off the hole. 15 more seconds and oxygen was resupplied to
the remaining med-bays allowing the man to fill his lungs with air again. Along with the air came sound. The automated systems were still speaking,
saying "...air-pressure restored. Warning, hull breach detected. Warning, fire detected. Attention, proceed to the exit..."
The man looked around the station. Floating debris cluttered his line of sight,
but he could make out a body floating about on the other side of the
station. It was the woman technician. The man dodged debris and crossed the
station, pausing briefly to peer down through the space elevator shaft at the
center of the station. Blue flame coated
everything below him. The fire swirled
slowly as it expanded and burned. The
man reached the woman and found her to be knocked out. He called for an automated arm to retrieve
her body and bring it back to the transport.
With the elevator drowning in a pool of flames, the transport was the
only escape route available.
The automated arm dragged the woman along the edge
of the station back to the transport.
The man held onto the woman and was pulled along too. As they glided towards the transport the man
ordered the station to open a communication channel to the dome below. The station spoke again, but this time it was
the voice of someone back on the surface.
The man explained what had happened and asked for help, but there was
nothing anyone back on the dome could do to help him. The transport would provide temporary
protection if the station burned up, but the transport wasn't designed to
survive reentering the Martian atmosphere.
The recommendation from the dome was to board the transport and use it
to fly to another relay station and get back to the planet through another
dome.
The man guided the woman onto the transport and
sealed the hatch behind him. He punched
the button labeled 'detach' on the center console. The transport didn't move or make any
sound. From inside the windowless
chamber he couldn't tell if anything had happened. Before he could wonder any further a muffled
explosion went off and the transport was sent into a sickening spin. The man struggled to grab hold of the woman
as their bodies were thrown around inside the tight quarters. Once he had her, he held her tight against
himself and tried to stabilize them both as the transport whipped around and
around.
The man put his hand out to brace himself against
one of the walls, but he had to pull his hand away quick. The walls were hot. It was then that he realized that the walls
were beginning to turn a shade of dark orange.
A couple seconds passed and the walls grew brighter orange and he could
feel the heat radiating off of them. The
station had pushed them away in the blast he had heard and they were now
tumbling back towards the planet, burning up in the Martian atmosphere.
The man did his best to keep himself wrapped tight
around the woman and stay away from the walls, but the heat was becoming
intense and the ship was rotating in a wild pattern. Just before the heat overwhelmed the man and he
lost consciousness he caught a glimpse of something strange through the view
window of one of the pods within the transport.
An immigrant's earth-born body was still inside, though now it was empty
vessel. The immigrant's consciousness
had been transferred to another body - the same body that had been swept out
into space back on the relay station, yet its eyes were opened and it was staring
back at the man through the view window.
* * *
Rodrigo stopped his salvage hauler just outside
the Ares Vallis wind farm as soon as he saw the fireball in the sky. The relay station was on fire. He watched as the whole station was swallowed
by the smooth blue glow of a zero-gravity fire.
Suddenly the station seemed to crack in half and the perfectly formed
fireball was pushed out in every direction.
It was frightening yet beautiful.
Rodrigo stayed and watched the fire grow and
spread across the sky. Soon debris could
be seen streaming across the sky as it burned up in the atmosphere. Suddenly something large came flying out of
the sky and crashed a few miles away off in the middle of the wind
turbines. Rodrigo emptied his trailer of
the miscellaneous scraps he had been collecting all morning, jumped back into
the hauler, and speed off in the direction of the crash. Today, he thought, is going
to be a good salvage day.
When Rodrigo located the wreck it was still
smoking. Right when he saw it he knew
what it was. The transport was embedded
in the ground at the bottom of a four foot deep crater. With heat gloves on he tore a whole in the
hull of the transport with his cutting tool.
A sickening smell was coming out of the whole he had cut. As he cautiously lowered himself into the
dark and steaming hull he was overwhelmed by the smell of burnt flesh and hair.
Inside where two people intertwined tight together
that were burnt beyond identification.
Rodrigo checked the bodies to see if they were still alive. To his disbelief they both were still
breathing. He knew he had precious few
minutes to stabilize both people before they succumbed to their injuries.
He wiped his gloved hand across the view window of
one of the pods in the transport and found it to be empty. With his other hand he wiped the connected
pod's window and saw an immigrant still inside.
Immediately he knew what he was going to do. He went back to the two blacked bodies and
pried them apart. He could now see that
one was a male and the other a female.
From the look of things it appeared as though the man had wrapped
himself around the woman to protect her during the crash. As a result the man was in much worse shape
and needed attention first.
Rodrigo dragged the body to the empty pod and
sealed the man inside. He wiped off the
read out screen of the pod and prayed that the pod was still functional. The screen was light up and began displaying
the vitals of the man inside the pod. He
was in worse shape than Rodrigo had thought.
Stabilizing him in the pod would be impossible. If the man was to live
Rodrigo would have to do something more drastic.
Rodrigo queued up the bio-cycle procedure on the linked
pods, setting the pod that contained the burned man as the host. With a heavy heart he took one last look down
through the view window into the immigrant’s pod and punched the start key.
With one burn victim sorted he turned his
attention to the other. However, just as
he loaded the woman into the last vacant pod he heard a noise outside. The read out screen showed him that the woman
was stable within the pod. He knew had time to think about what he would do
with her but first he had to find out
how close the snooper drone had gotten.
He half crawled out of the transport's hull and
found the pentaped drone surveying his hauler from a few paces away. Rodrigo hefted his cutting tool in his hand
and walked over to the drone. The drone
watched him intently as he raised the tool over his head and crushed its metal
body in one blow. I'm all in now, he thought to himself. Other drones were sure to arrive soon. Rodrigo had to get moving. He had done all he could for the two crash
victims, now all he could hope for was that his gamble on them would be worth
the sacrifice he had made for them.
Rodrigo started up the hauler once again and began
to drive himself, the transport shuttle, and the three bodies out of the wind
farm and away from the mangled drone.
Rodrigo's comm device chirped loudly over the rumble of the hauler. Rodrigo's partner spoke from the device,
"I'm getting a lot of chatter out of the dome channels, what have I gotten
myself into?"
"I've collected some valuable scrap, and I
smashed a drone. I'll explain when we meet up, where are
you?" Rodrigo replied.
