“Okay.” She wiped the tears from her eyes, took one last look at Paolio and headed for the airlock. She felt the pain in her shoulder as she donned the EVA suit. It was bad, probably broken. Jann was just about to flip closed the visor when Nills came over. He was holding his arm tight against his body as Gizmo raced behind him with what looked like a syringe. “Nills, be still. I need to give you this for the pain.”
“Listen Jann. You understand what’s at stake here. Our lives don’t matter. You need to do whatever it is to stop her taking off.”
“I know Nills. I know what I have to do now.” She reached out and touched his face. “Hey… if… if I don’t see you again, it was nice meeting you.”
He smiled, “Likewise, it was a pleasure.”
The Research Lab exploded.
Smoke and flames burst out from the lab and the force of the blast threw them both across the common room floor. It engulfed them and Jann began to cough and splutter as she tried to re-orientate herself. She looked over at the lab door as a new force hit her. The smoke was being whisked back out into the lab. When it cleared she could see why. There was a black hole where the lab used to be — it was the Martian night. Air was being sucked out of the colony at an alarming rate and they were being dragged along with it. Jann slid along the floor with the force of the escaping atmosphere. She grabbed at a table leg and hung on. She could see Gizmo spinning wildly on his back with no apparent control. “Nills, where’s Nills?” She saw him sliding past her as he made frantic efforts to grab on to something before he got ejected into the void. She reached out and grabbed him, pulled him in.
Then Jann’s EVA suit detected the drop in pressure and automatically closed her visor. ”No, no, Nills, no.” She looked into his eyes as he struggled to breathe. He clawed at his throat as the oxygen was sucked out of the colony. “No, Nills, goddammit.” The force was too strong, she couldn’t hold him. He slipped from her grip — and he was gone. Sucked across the floor, through the doorway and out into space. Jann screamed. She tried to look out through the hole at the far end of the Research Lab where Nills had been ejected. But the force of the escaping colony atmosphere was such that she was being lifted horizontally off the floor. She clung to the table leg with all her strength to keep from being sucked out.
Nills was gone, Paolio was dead… Decker, Kevin… Lu — all gone. She tried again to look back out through the gap as the facility was being vacuumed cleaned. She saw Gizmo wedged in an alcove, he didn’t seemed to be moving. “Even Gizmo is gone,” she thought. It was just her now. And Annis, who was now trying to return to Earth, carrying with her the potential destruction of humanity.
Her hand slipped off the table upright, she scrambled to catch it again but the force was too much — she was torn away. Jann rolled and banged her way across the floor, her arms flailing about trying to grab on to anything still screwed down. She bounced off something hard, cartwheeled through the air and slammed into the wall beside the open door to the Research Lab. The air was still rushing through, bringing with it the inner contents of Colony One. Objects hit off the walls and banged around her head. Jann felt for something to grab onto and found she was pinned against the door of the Research Lab. It was fully open and flat against the wall, held there by the force of the evacuating atmosphere. She inched her way to the outer edge of it, grabbed the inner handle and planted her feet against the wall. She pulled on the handle with all her strength to try and get the door moving. She had it off the wall about two feet when it was hit hard on the side by some heavy flying debris, this added to its momentum, enough for the rush of the air to catch in behind it. She had no time to react. The door swung over with a sudden violence and crashed closed. The shock wave reverberated through the colony super structure and Jann lost her grip as she was flung across the Research Lab floor. She spun and slid — then stopped.
She lay there stunned for some time. All was still and eerily quiet. She was looking out through the gaping hole in the lab wall, straight at the night sky. A billion tiny suns twinkled, just like back home on Earth. She was taken by how similar it all looked, as if it should be any different.
She sat up and looked around. The lab door was closed and held shut by the inside atmosphere, or what remained of it. She was now effectively outside in the near vacuum of space. She did a quick check of her EVA suit for damage. All looked okay. No warnings, no alerts. She stood up and flipped on her heads-up display. Was she too late? Had Annis lifted off? A 3D map illuminated in her field of vision. The markers for the HAB, MAV and the fuel plant hovered over their respective locations. She rotated in their direction. Annis was still on the surface, moving towards the MAV.
She headed for the hole in the Research Lab wall and picked her way through the detritus of the cryo-rack module. It was little more than a shell, split open on all sides. She moved through it, careful not to damage her EVA suit on any of the sharp metal of the walls. At the edge she jumped down onto the surface and swivelled in the direction of the green marker that was First Officer Annis Romanov. She had made her choice, for better or worse she was going to try and save the human race. She ran.
CHAPTER 24: MAV
Jann crested the dune and looked out across the Jezero crater. Overhead the night time sky sparkled with the light from a universe of suns. Far off in the distant blackness she could just make out lights moving across the planet surface. It was either one of the rovers or possibly the lights from Annis’s EVA helmet. Her first thought when dropping down onto the surface, from the wreckage of the Research Lab, was to switch her own lights on. But she thought better of it as she would rather not announce her arrival. Progress was difficult in the darkness. She wasn’t sure of the terrain and had to take it slow so as to not lose her footing. She could tell from the heads-up display that Annis was refuelling the MVA. The rover lights correlating with the display markers. She didn’t have much time. She moved faster.
Jann hadn’t given much thought to how she was going to stop Annis. Perhaps she would just talk to her, try and reason with her. But then again, the first officer had just tried to kill them all and destroy Colony One. And she had achieved pretty much all of that. Only Jann was left. The others were all dead. As for the colony, the damage had to be extensive, possibly even beyond saving.
By now Jann could see the silhouetted figure of the first officer, walking along beside one of the rovers. Two large fuel canisters up on top. “How many more did she have to go?” thought Jann. Maybe these were the last. The MAV needed all six to take-off. But with only Annis on-board there was a huge weight saving so maybe just four would do. Jann cursed herself for not paying more heed to all the engineering training she had been given. As an astro-biologist she hadn’t deemed it necessary. Then again, she never thought she would be in this position. She thought about disabling the MVA in some way, remove some vital part or stick a proverbial spanner in the works. But again, her lack of engineering knowledge meant she couldn’t be sure if what she did would work. Also, it was now becoming clear that Annis would get to the MAV first. In the end the choice was made for her as her EVA suit comms burst into life.
“Jann, I know you’re out there. Sorry, but you can’t come with me. There’s only room for one on this trip.”
“Annis, what are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing, I’m getting off this contaminated planet.”
“Are you crazy, you can’t go back, not carrying that infection, it’s too dangerous.”
“Bullshit.”
“No Annis, you have to stop. Annis, for godsake, listen to me.”
“Go fuck yourself. You should never have been on this mission in the first place. You never had the smarts for it.”
Jann felt a slight tremor running underfoot and looked around. Too late. The seismic rover ploughed into her at full speed. And sent her flying through the air, she landed heavy on the ground and tumbled. That bitch Annis was setting her up all along. Maybe she was right; she didn’t have
the smarts for this. She rolled on the dirt just as the rover ploughed into her again and rolled over her already damaged left arm. She heard a crack and her body was convulsed by excruciating pain riffling up and across her chest. She screamed.
“Annis, Annis, for god sake stop.” There was no reply. Jann tried to move but the weight was too much. She banged at the rover’s panelling with her good arm, but it was pointless. She twisted and squirmed to try and get some movement, but the pain in her side made it impossible.
Suddenly, the robotic arms of the rover sprang to life. Jann tried to fend the grabber away with her right arm but it moved for her throat and pinned her down even more. She banged and pushed. The drill arm started up. “Oh fuck.” She could see the short drill bit spin furiously as it moved and pointed closer and closer to her helmet visor. She tried to move her head, but it just shifted inside her helmet, which was now firmly held down. The drill tip corkscrewed across her visor as it tried to gain some purchase. It skipped and skated as she frantically banged at it with her free arm. It was now stabbing down, bashing against her face place. It didn’t need to drill a hole, just a crack would do.
Then Jann saw it, the emergency shutoff panel right above her on the front base of the rover. She raised herself up to flip the cover but struggled to reach. If she could get to it then maybe she’d have a chance. The drill banged down hard and she heard a crack. “Oh shit.” Alert lights flashed inside her helmet, to warn her of deteriorating suit integrity. Jann forgot about the pain of her broken bones and frantically pushed with all her strength to flip open the shutoff panel. The rover shifted, slid a little to the left, like one of its wheels had been resting high on some rock, and with her frantic efforts it had slipped off. Her hand reached the panel, she flipped open the cover and punched down on the emergency shutoff. The rover stopped, its drill spun down, its arms lost power.
Jann stopped squirming and she could feel herself breathing heavy. She checked the alerts. “Shit.” Her faceplate was cracked and she was losing air. The suit tried hard to compensate for the loss in pressure and was using up excessive supplies of nitrogen to re-balance. “Thirty minutes.” She had thirty minutes of air left. Thirty minutes before she died. Thirty minutes to save the world. She laughed. It was an odd emotion. It was not that she was scoffing in the face of death. She was laughing at the absurdity of the situation. The awkward, geeky farm girl. The girl who shouldn’t even be here, look at her now. She rolled over and sat up, a stabbing pain shot up her side. “Dammit.” She couldn’t walk; she would just have to crawl then. Jann knew that as soon as Annis realised she had lost remote control of the seismic rover, she would be over to finish her off. So she scanned the ground around her, looking for something she could use as a weapon, a sharp rock maybe. But there was nothing obvious to hand. She looked back to the MAV, half expecting to see Annis approaching, but she didn’t. Instead she was heading back to the fuel plant with the other rover to get the last of the tanks, presumably having assessed that Jann was no longer a threat. And from where Jann was sitting, that would be an accurate assessment of the situation.
She slumped back onto the ground and looked up at the heavens. Above her the vast expanse of the universe was spread out in all its celestial glory, as if to mock the insignificance of her very existence. What could she do? Maybe it was better to let Annis go. Maybe the decimation of the human race would be the best thing for the planet. A cull of a species that was destroying their own home. Too many, too greedy, too stupid… or just simply too successful.
She could hop or maybe crawl back to the HAB in the time left to her. “Twenty three minutes.” She could save herself… maybe, if she went now. It would be cutting it fine, even with that. She sat up again and tried to stand. The pain in her leg was excruciating now that the initial rush of adrenalin had worn off. She reached over and pulled herself up using the deactivated seismic rover for help. She stood there for a minute, gathering the remains of her strength, trying not to breathe too much. She rested her head in her arms along the top of the rover and looked down along its side. The bright ISA logo seemed to fluoresce in the Martian night. She stopped, and looked again. Beside the logo, on a the door of a storage compartment, along the side of the rover were marked the words caution, seismic charges. Jann looked at it for a minute as an idea began to formulate in her mind. “Twenty one minutes.” Up ahead Annis was still en route to the fuel dump.
Jann sat back down again so she could get better access to the rover’s storage compartment. She flipped open the door, reached in and took out a charge. They could be detonated remotely; she just needed to tag the charge to her control. She held it in her hand for a moment and contemplated the consequences of what she was planning. Being able to detonate it meant nothing unless she could get the rover to the MAV, or the fuel dump — or should she just kill Annis. “Twenty minutes” It also meant she would not be able to reach the HAB before the oxygen in her suit dropped to a point where she would lose consciousness - and die. She looked over again at Annis. In the darkness she could see the beams of light from her helmet bob along the Martian surface towards the fuel dump. If she was going to do this she needed to do it now. It would mean her own death but, as Nills had said, what did that matter against the enormity of the devastation that would be wrought if this bacterium made it to Earth.
She flipped the cap on the charge and tagged it to her control. She set it back in its compartment, along will all the others and closed the door. She then crawled around to the back of the rover where the control panel was and switched it on. The screen illuminated, displaying options for rover operation. Jann deactivated all remote control functionality so that Annis could not hijack it again. She then tagged it to Annis’s suit. Now, as soon as she switched the power on again, the rover would dutifully roll off to rendezvous with the first officer. It was now or never. Jann hit the power button and moved back, the rover took a few seconds to orientate itself, read in its new instruction set, and then it moved off to find Annis. “Nineteen minutes.”
By now the First officer had reached the fuel plant and was loading up the last of the canisters. She stopped when she noticed the seismic rover moving in her direction.
“Jann, are you still alive out there?”
It was Jann’s turn not to reply.
“What are you trying to do, run me over? Well, that’s pathetic. But then again you always were a total waste of space.”
She could hear her laugh at her own joke.
“Too late anyway, it’s time to go.”
Annis hefted the last canister and started off. The seismic rover noticed the change in direction and turned to follow. “Twelve minutes.” The rover closed the gap, Jann flipped on her 3D control interface.
“I’m sorry Annis, but you leave me no choice.” She hit detonate.
An explosion in the thin atmosphere of Mars is a strange phenomenon. There’s virtually no sound. It was just a slight tremor that Jann felt as the night time sky illuminated in a fiery ball of methane/oxygen rocket fuel. The light was blinding and she covered her visor with her arm and looked away. There was a brief moment before the debris rained down, peppering the entire area with dust and rocks and shards of metal. It was some time before Jann ventured to look again after the last of the destruction had stopped falling. She couldn’t see much, just an enormous plume of dust. She switched on her helmet lights but even they could not penetrate the murky darkness. She switched them off and rolled onto her back. “Nine minutes, well this is it,” she thought. Now it was time to die. She had prevented the decimation of human civilisation - and no one would know, no one would care. It was her time now, her work was done.
The EVA suit blinked a new alert to warn its occupant of the impending low oxygen emergency. From her training, she knew it would now try to maximise the remaining reserves by substituting nitrogen. This way her body would still feel like it was breathing, even though there would be less and less oxygen in each breath. It was a calm way to die; she
would simply drift into unconsciousness — and never wake up.
“Five minutes.”
As her mind drifted, she had the feeling of being lifted up towards the canopy of twinkling stars. They began to move, or was it her that was moving, like she was being transported somewhere. She felt no fear, no pain and no care. Her eyes closed and she drifted off into the heavens.
CHAPTER 25: THE GARDEN
The sudden loss of atmosphere from Colony One could have been the end for the facility, save for the fact that Jann had managed to close the lab’s inner door while she was being ejected. By this action she had averted a potential catastrophe. As soon as the tsunami of evacuating air had ceased, Gizmo was able to right itself and could now move into action. Since there were no longer any earthlings in the colony it could get radical with the analysis of priorities. It shut down unnecessary sectors and killed power to all non-essential systems. It set about rerouting energy and reassigning all priority protocols to the bio-dome, trying to bring it back up to nominal levels and stabilise the fragile ecosystem. After monitoring the effects of its efforts it estimated it could save 67.3% of biomass and 71.2% of diversity. It meant that several plant species had now become extinct on Mars. However, this would still depend on it physically fixing the damaged infrastructure within the bio-dome. So it raced around righting hydroponics, untangling ducting and covering exposed root systems.
It was during these latter tasks that a new data stream entered its silicon consciousness. It was another life support system going critical. But this was not in Colony One, this was out on the planet surface. At some point Nills had interfaced Dr. Jann Malbec’s EVA suit with colony systems so that he, and Gizmo, would get feedback on her state. Gizmo considered its own internal instruction set for any pre-programmed routines that were to be executed for such an event — and found none. However, after it ascertained that it had no pre-programmed actions to take, it did the next thing on its list of priorities — Gizmo analysed the situation.
Colony One Mars: A SciFi Thriller (Colony Mars Book 1) Page 16
