Colony

by Leigh Matthews

  FORTY-TWO

  Silver woke to the sound of voices, half expecting to be lying in bed beside Cooper or Cosima. Her body was numb, but she wasn't afraid. It had taken Silver a little while to consistently maintain her sense of self, but once she had drawn her boundaries, she had experienced a profound feeling of comfort at this new connection.

  Silver felt cradled in a soft, warm space. She knew she could open her eyes if she wanted, but she was content for now to explore her changing reality using her other senses.

  The body she had grown accustomed to was no longer her own, and while she had an idea of how to get it back, she wasn't certain that she wanted to. She was no longer a single entity with a discrete mind, and the wider consciousness brought with it a euphoric sense of belonging, of home.

  Silver couldn't yet make out individual voices inside her mind, but she gently pushed at the boundaries she had drawn and allowed herself to filter through the cacophony.

  The voices weren't memories or her imagination. Not like before. She had been joined by others, some she knew already in their original form, and some were new to her, civilians with whom she hadn't previously interacted. Silver isolated the doctor's voice and let herself fall into step with the woman's feet, feeling the planet's surface with each of the doctor's footfalls. She heard a woman speaking Russian, talking about Biodome Two. Then another voice, speaking Igbo. She had never mastered the language, but she understood everything the woman said. She knew that they were all aware of her presence in their minds as she listened to them talk about Aliyaah.

  Silver's connection with the women wasn't as strong as it was with the biodome and the area of the planet close by, but she knew that their link would grow as her body healed from the damage inflicted by Hadley.

  Reminded of Hadley, she became momentarily confused and thought for a few seconds that she could also hear his thoughts. Paying closer attention, she realised that what she was experiencing were the slow, subdued voices of the men walking behind the doctor and the other women. She could feel the soft, insistent swirl of dust and wind blowing across their naked bodies. The men's minds seemed dimly lit, functional but unaware of their purpose, or the wider life of the planet.

  Suddenly, a sharper voice cut through the murmur of the others. A fearful, cold voice of terror echoing in the cool, dark air of the hangar.

  Silver felt Barclay's fear as if it were her own at first, then she drew back and considered it for a moment. She didn't want him to be afraid, but there was no way now to prevent what was happening to him.

  Silver began to sing one of the many lullabies she had sung to Cosima when she woke in the middle of the night. After a few lines, the voices of the other women joined hers, and, finally, Barclay hushed. Silver felt an infusion of warmth as what was left of his consciousness joined theirs, his body now part of the wider organism, an excrescence under the control of the collective mind as his higher order functions collapsed. The doctor smiled and Silver, having rediscovered her edges, her self, smiled with her, seeing now what she had to do.

  She rose from the floor of the inner dome and saw that the collective had managed to repair most of the damage caused by Hadley. The viable components had been resorbed and reformulated beneath the suffocating foam, growing around and through it, consuming useful chemicals and extruding the rest.

  Her own body had needed time to heal too, and Silver knew as she looked down at the strange mass that was once her legs that she was never going to make it back to Earth. She closed her eyes and shut herself off from the voices, allowing herself a single, mournful scream.

  Continuing to hold firm the edges of her self, Silver considered Hadley and the remaining resisters. The doctor had succeeded through duplicity and force. Silver's attempt to engage with Hadley had failed. He had been scared into violence, even as she tried to show him the means of their survival. Silver had absorbed enough of the experiences of the men by the doctor's side that she now knew how she must have looked to Hadley. She couldn't fault him for being afraid.

  The collective needed a different approach, something that didn't look so unfamiliar, so confrontational as its current excrescences. Silver knew that the wider consciousness saw the doctor's methods as viable, scalable. The collective was merely trying to survive, and had quickly learnt some very human lessons about coercion and colonisation.

  Silver held herself steady as she moved through the morass to the control panel in the outer dome, gradually wrenching her body free from the wider body covering the floor. She was not yet sure if it was wise or possible to add a dissenting voice to the greater consciousness, but she could at least help those who weren't beyond reach to get off the planet to relative safety. This would buy the crew some time until Silver could either reign in the doctor or they could use the information she had already given them to protect themselves against re-infection.

  From the control panel she accessed the live feed from the SEV's camera and saw that Hadley was travelling along the edge of the crater's rim, following the route back to the station. She closed her eyes and let the sounds of the planet wash over her. Then she focused on the idea of Hadley, the general shape of his being, his calm inner voice, until she saw the station from inside the SEV. Hadley looked briefly at Octavia and Silver felt his desire to save his crew, and his strength. As he surveyed the horizon, Silver became aware of an approaching dust storm. She intensified her focus and, after a few seconds, she could feel the heaviness of his limbs, and together they brought the SEV to a halt.

  Holding Hadley in stasis, Silver focused on one of the quietest voices in her mind. She drew herself into the body of the other, feeling what they were feeling. She could still see Octavia, but from a different perspective now. Silver let herself sink into the physical form of this excrescence, and after a few minutes she began to feel the cold, hard metal under Aliyaah's feet.

  Aliyaah's mind felt different, sharp and inhospitable. She couldn't relax into it like with the others, and after gently probing Aliyaah's mind, Silver felt a hardness there. It was as if a whole area was closed off, even to Aliyaah herself. Silver saw that this had slowed down the spread of the infection, but as she traced the folds of Aliyaah's mind it slowly dawned on her what the hardness meant. Silver was contemplating what she should do with this knowledge when she was suddenly jolted by a startlingly familiar sensation. A child had slipped their hand, her hand, into Aliyaah's, and as Aliyaah hoisted the child into her arms, Silver knew that she needed to get Octavia off the ground as soon as possible.

  FORTY-TWO

  The engineers loaded the last of the wagons with supplies and exited the hangar after Ansen. Aliyaah waited until they had gone, then looked down at the children beside her. The girl, Sofia, and the boy, Ari, had been bundled into space suits that Ansen had tracked down in a rapid reconnaissance through the civilian quarters. As Aliyaah checked the hangar one last time and looked out at Octavia in the distance, she felt Sofia take her hand. She bent down to pick up the little girl and held her for a moment, feeling a confusion of emotions that didn't seem entirely her own.

  Giving herself a mental shake, she settled Sofia into a wagon already loaded with supplies. The girl had dropped her glove, so Aliyaah retrieved it, crouching as best she could, given the pain in her ribs. She secured the glove so Sofia wouldn't be able to remove it on the way to the ship, and gave the little girl a smile she hoped was reassuring. After lifting Ari into the wagon beside Sofia, Aliyaah checked his suit. She had already explained that they were going to Octavia, where they could all get some sleep while they flew home. Sofia looked questioningly at her, but demurred, and Ari seemed to go along with whatever Sofia did. Aliyaah was thankful that neither child had asked about their parents. She wondered if they had witnessed their deaths, but didn't feel at all qualified to being such a line of questioning. She also wondered at the peculiarities of their childhoods and at what kind of friendship they had struck up while on this mission.

  Before they were cleared
to leave Earth, the civilians had undergone hours of training to ensure they could suit up quickly, open airlocks, and walk in a reduced gravity environment. Sofia would have been just two or so when she set off on the journey to Mars. There was no question that she would have been placed in stasis for the takeoff and landing, and Aliyaah worried that they wouldn't have enough time to repeat this process properly. Still, getting them to Octavia and off the planet was the priority. As with so much in space, comfort would have to take a back seat.

  The children's helmets had visors that could only be opened by an adult. Aliyaah told them once more, in fractured Russian, how they could activate their headsets to talk to her, then she closed their visors. If they had been adults, she would have reminded them not to give into the temptation to open their visors, even to try to wipe away sweat and get out of the stifling suit. She would have let them know what to do if they felt like they were going to be sick, to hunker down into their suits and release just a little bit of vomit at a time if they could, so it would stick to the skin for easier clean-up. It frightened Aliyaah that she couldn't think of how to explain such things to Ari and Sofia without scaring them. They were too young for this.

  Long before they had left Earth, the adult civilians had been told what would happen if they removed their helmets, the pain they would feel and how they would wish for death even in the few seconds it would take before their lungs boiled inside them. Aliyaah looked down at Sofia and Ari as she pushed the wagon towards the outer airlock and wondered if they had any concept of the danger they were in.

  When they exited the airlock on the other side, she could see that Ansen had hurried the engineers along and was making good progress towards the ship. Almost all the remaining crew were pushing wagons loaded with supplies.

  The ship loomed over them as they made their way along the walkway. Octavia's shadow stretched out all the way back to the station and in the rapidly failing light Ansen turned to see Aliyaah at the rear of the group. Fifty yards ahead of him, the first of the crew were almost at the launch pad. They had all been assigned tasks before they left the hangar, and he was hopeful they would be able to prepare for launch calmly and efficiently. What took months, if not years, on Earth had to be done as quickly as possible. They had no margin for error.

  When Aliyaah reached Octavia, she helped lift the children up to waiting arms above and then checked in with the crew working on the launch pad. She gave herself a moment to look back at the station and sighed. What had possessed them to try to make this planet home? A quiet fury began to grow inside her as she turned to climb up into Octavia. Then, seemingly without reason, Aliyaah's anger subsided and she felt serene. She could swear that someone was singing to her, but her headset wasn't active. She knew this was unusual, but she didn't feel alarmed.

  Aliyaah had an urge to look one last time out across the Martian landscape, in the direction of the crater's ridge this time. She spotted the SEV, just a speck on the horizon, backlit by the last of the sun and seemingly stationary. She climbed the ladder into Octavia and felt sure she could hear her mother's voice, singing her a lullaby in Yoruba. The sound soothed her as she calmly climbed through the ship and passed into the sleeping quarters. Knowing exactly where to find them, she retrieved an RMC from each berth, closed the hatches, decontaminated the units, and opened them up again to allow the crew to settle the children and ready them for launch.

  As she passed back through the medical bay, Aliyaah picked up four vials of anti-rads. Then she carried the RMCs back out of Octavia and joined Ansen on the launch pad. He looked at her strangely, but said nothing as she handed him the containers.

  "These shouldn't be on the ship," Aliyaah said calmly, "We should leave them here". She looked up in the direction of the ridge as a light flashed intermittently.

  "Hadley?" Ansen said, and she nodded.

  "How long until the ship is ready for launch?" she asked, and this time Ansen was wary.

  "Chief, it will take at least another hour, if not three."

  "Oh good. Long enough for me to go and get Hadley."

  "Chief?"

  She turned to look at him, her expression flat, her face pale and ghostly in the light from the ship. "He's running out of time, Specialist. He will be out of oxygen in less than an hour and won't make it down here before he asphyxiates. Not without help at least."

  "How do you know?"

  "I just do."

  He frowned, but didn't press her. "Does Hadley know?" he asked, his attention flitting between Aliyaah and the SEV's futile journey over the red planet.

  "Not yet," Aliyaah said as she dug around in the last of the supplies yet to be loaded onto the ship. She stood up and swung something onto her back. "If I'm not back in two hours, take our people home, Ansen."

  He watched, open mouthed, as she stepped down from the launch pad carrying the oxygen canister. "Sir?"

  "It's an order, Ansen. Get them back to Earth, with or without me and Hadley."

  With that, Aliyaah set off in the direction of the ridge.

  FORTY-THREE

  The SEV stopped abruptly, jolting Hadley back into consciousness. He had been in a stupor and chastised himself for having let his exhaustion get the better of him. In what felt like a waking dream, he had heard Silver's voice, Aliyaah's too, and he could have sworn he was inside the biodome.

  For a moment or two he allowed himself to believe that this was merely a manifestation of extreme exhaustion, but the relief didn't last. This was no hallucination. He wasn't sure he could entirely trust his own mind, but he had no choice but to try and keep going.

  The SEV sat high on the ridge of the crater, and Hadley could see Octavia ahead of him and Biodomes One and Two just off to the east. Biodome Three lay behind him, but he couldn't quite remember how he had reached the top of the crater so quickly. He tried to start the SEV, but it refused to move. He checked the vehicle's oxygen capacity, and saw that he needed to get moving soon or he would suffocate and asphyxiate. He willed himself to remain calm. It was no use cursing himself for having lost focus.

  It was possible that he could walk to Octavia on foot, but he had no extra antirads and would be exposing himself to deadly amounts of radiation. He was also wary of having been followed. Given the conditions in the biodome, he suspected that if Silver was ambulatory again she might be able to survive the planet's atmosphere and could be tracking him. Unlike Silver, Hadley was still reliant on his space suit to keep him alive, and there was no back-up tank or spare suit in the SEV. If he couldn't get the SEV working in the next few minutes, he would have to siphon the oxygen from the vehicle and head out on foot.

  Hoping this wouldn't be necessary, Hadley checked each of the SEV's cameras. A huge dust storm had gathered just above him, and he realised that had he carried on driving, he may have steered the SEV in the wrong direction and lost traction, causing the vehicle to tip and roll down the crater. He had been fortuitous in stopping when he did, even if he didn't know why the SEV had ground to a halt.

  He took a few deep breaths to clear his thoughts so he could work the problem in front of him. It was possible that one of the wheels was caught in a fissure in the ridge of the crater, but when he adjusted the cameras to check the ground around the SEV it looked fine. His path to Octavia was mostly clear now that the storm had passed, with just a few large boulders to traverse. He wondered if he had driven over a larger ventifact and caused some damage to the SEV. It might not be visible on the cameras, but it was odd that the control panel wasn't showing any malfunctions.

  Before getting out to look, Hadley methodically ran through the other possible causes of the SEV's immobility. Beginning with the most likely problems that could be solved from within the SEV itself, Hadley dismissed each one in turn. Even in the spacesuit, he didn't want to spend any significant time outside of the SEV when there was such intense radiation all around.

  With no good options presenting themselves, he assessed the control panel one more time. Although h
is eyes flickered over it again, he didn't register that the switch for the emergency brake lock was illuminated. A radiologic alert light flickered on, then off again, giving him pause. It was a bad idea to leave the relative safety of the SEV, especially if he was infected and the organism fed on radioactivity. He didn't see any other choice, though.

  He checked the forward scanner, but saw nothing untoward. He checked his suit, and saw that his radiation patch had turned black, probably long ago.

  His suit had just under thirty minutes of breathable air left, assuming minimal physical exertion and stress. It was unlikely to be enough to get him to Octavia by itself, so his best option remained fixing the SEV. Hadley tried to slow his breathing and calm his heart rate, then stepped out of the vehicle.

  The red dust swirled slowly around Hadley as he lowered himself to the ground and took stock of his surroundings. He could see Octavia now, upright on her launch pad, but he was still too far away to make out the walkway that connected the ship with the station. He hoped that Aliyaah and Ansen were making good progress getting what remained of the crew to the ship. From his vantage point on the lip of the crater, he appreciated that the SEV could be seen from Octavia. He would be easy to locate if he called for assistance, but he didn't plan to do any such thing. They were busy preparing to launch, and if he didn't make it, well, then he was just one more casualty of the mission.

  He turned around to face the SEV and lowered himself to the ground to look under the vehicle. There was no obvious obstacle, so he activated the flashlight on his scanner and crawled between the wheels. The dim sunlight was beginning to fade and the shadow of the SEV stretched out far across the Martian surface.

  The underside of the SEV was covered with a tough metal plate to protect the complex mass of wiring and hydraulics that powered the vehicle. The metal was scratched and dented, but he couldn't see any major damage. He dragged himself further underneath, towards the back of the SEV and the light from his scanner bounced off something above the rear wheel arch. For a moment, he was hopeful that he could simply remove whatever was lodged there, and that there would be no permanent damage to the SEV. As he crawled closer, however, he saw a container strapped to the SEV's chassis.