by Megan Alban
Inside Alpha Station, the airtight personnel door sealed shut behind the last of the space marines.
Through his speakers, Darner heard his men celebrating around him.
The sterile pressure lock hissed into place, and the gravity simulator kicked back in. Darner’s body sank heavier onto the soles of his feet.
It’d been four great years without a single casualty.
He grinned to himself and let his hands whisk off the stuffy helmet. “That was a successful run, boys. Good job! Grab yourselves a round of drinks.” Captain Darner roused his men up. He felt pats on his back and gave them out generously. After four demoralizing years of finding nothing, he was aware they were at the end of their patience. A job defending a station that produced nothing of alien broadcast importance… until now.
After icy mist in the room vanished, the inner door leading back into Alpha Station opened. The men spread themselves out back inside while they high-fived and patted each other on the backs and bums.
Captain Darner put his things away in his locker and returned to his office in the corner near the observation deck.
His executive home. A techno-chair with more angles, knobs and functions than he knew how to use sat behind a wide, wooden desk. Beyond that lay a view out to the planet’s surface.
But executive wasn’t quite the 32 year- old’s thing. On moving to the base, he insisted that he didn’t want to be separated from the rest of the men. It was a team mission, after all. But the Human Operations Guidelines mandated that the Captain be given a separate room fit for the three-star ranking he held. In response, he made a point of spending most of his free time with the men, walking the floor or joining them at their circular poker games in the cafeteria. Sometimes, when going for a coffee, he’d even run into the starring lady in the office, Alyse Pepperfield.
Knocks came at the door. A young marine stood there waiting for him before he could finish his water. Darner faced him. He was one of the laser artillerymen who’d helped take out several close calls.
“Sir, I’m sorry this came so late, but we just checked the message backlogs since the meteorite shower, and we’ve received something from the lady,” his boyish voice said.
Darner kept a straight face. In reality, every time he heard her name he felt his throat twitch, as if he needed to take more water into it. But he ignored it in the face of his underling. “Come to think of it, please tell Miss Pepperfield it is safe to launch her resupply mission now that the meteorites are gone,” he said.
“Sir, actually she’s… she’s nowhere to be found,” the marine stammered.
“What?” Darner’s eyes went wide. He set his mug down. It wasn’t at all like Pepperfield to break the rules., “I assigned two Marines with her, too. They should’ve waited with her until protocol finished.”
The marine shook his head. “It appears Simmons and Arthur joined us on the meteorite shower operation. They made a judgment call on the safety of the station.” The marine glanced down at the white glow from his PDA.
“Then that can’t be right. Pepperfield would not go out without a good reason,” Darner said firmly. He believed what he said, because despite never really speaking to her one on one, he’d watched her work long nights by her desk, conscientiously doing the right thing for the human cause. She wouldn’t break the rules for no reason. Although he’d never really spoken to her. He felt he still knew her enough.
The marine continued with high-pitched urgency in his voice, “Actually, our radio transmitters recorded a message. It’s best if you go to the radio tower and listen to it yourself, sir.”
“Thank you Marine, please search the premises for clues to her whereabouts, and let me know if you find anything,” Darner strode out his office and toward the radio ladder in the corner.
Twenty rungs later, he was in the tiny radio room where another nervous-looking marine stood.
“You after the message sir?”
Darner nodded.
The marine hit play, and they both listened. A silky female’s voice relayed the information about the disturbing hologram from the mines and her call to provide backup while she went to attend to Carrera.
Darner wiped the back of his hand over the sweat beads on his forehead. A collapsed mine? A problem with Carrera and the other miners? His broad shoulders relaxed downward. Alyse Pepperfield wasn’t acting rogue, at least. But he knew where she would’ve gone.
Suddenly a crack appeared in the air. “What is that?” Darner leaned forward.
The radio specialist turned the dials. “It’s a transmission. Very faint. It must be distant. We have no satellites around here, only cables, so it must be from around the curve of the surface.”
Darner listened carefully and heard yet again Miss Pepperfield’s voice in cracks. She mentioned Rover Four, a rescue mission, a meteorite strike and something that sent chills up and down his spine. A cry for help.
Darner patted the radio man on the back. Then he fireman-slid down the ladder and called out, “Men on emergency watch, I’m sorry, but that drink will have to wait. I need two of our ready teams to go. We’re going on a rescue mission for some of our own.”
Darner led the group of assembling men back into the change rooms and fit his bulky physique back into the heavy suit.
Damn it, he thought. The resupply mission was meant to be a reward for her hard work. Should he have ignored her impending resignation yet another time to keep her on? It wasn’t that she was no good; he just was far too pained to see her in danger. And because he’d kept her bloom under cover too long, it was a fact that she was in real danger now.
Chapter 8
I wondered how long I had on life support systems. I glanced across the crystalline purple planetary surface to the curve of the black horizon just in the distance. The lack of geological landmarks or buildings reminded me how alone I was, regardless of the daily interaction with marines and Fuzzario.
I saw the stars. The promise to my dad all those years ago returned to me. Back then, I told my ailing father what was on my mind. I was to make it to the outer reaches of space. Advance the human frontier and cause. But that old geezer on his rocking chair didn’t want to hear it. How could his little princess end up being a scientist exploring the dangers of space?
That was kind of why he hated technology. He thought I was always obsessed with it, even in my playpen in day care. But that taboo about it made me more curious about the holograms and floating transport machines. Ironic, really.
“It shouldn’t be easier to fly outta the god-damn Milky Way than it is to find my princess a decent man!” Dad always raged, in an endearing way.
In some ways I was glad it was true. I had graduated space academy having a grand total of zero dates after all. To find a good man, an honest and thoughtful man who would treat me well. Then marry and have children together. If I were lucky, he would be a space pilot or hold high office in the military corps. That was the dream of every outpost lady, wasn’t it?
Maybe I wasn’t the typical lady. I wanted to explore space. Daddy’s girl was an astronaut in disguise, and that was a cause of worry for him.
Toward the end, when he wasn’t feeling so well, I remembered telling him again and again. I was still single after all those years. He just didn’t want to listen to me from his wheelchair or bed, and he always had the windows dimmed so I couldn’t see those stars from room 877. The alcohol-smelling room, beside the water fountain.
Then he left.
And soon after, I did too.
I let out a sigh and willed myself to move. Was I father’s Princess, or the space-marauding, kick-ass explorer I always wanted to be?
The crystal ground crunched under my space boots until I was beside the tipped-over Rover Four. A fitting symbol for neither of my life goals. But just like in real life, I didn’t have time to stand and think. I just had to move.
I felt Aippaq bounce near my foot. “If our mission is still to save Carrera, then we must hurry.”<
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“I know,” I said. He was always the logical one. I clicked on my torch on the sides of my fish bowl helmet, then brushed the space dust off the indicator screens. The hissing from earlier was still in my ears. “My life support is getting low. On my suit it’s twenty percent, and on the Rover, thirty and fast going down. The meteorites must have hit the reserve tanks and damaged my suit.”
Aippaq made a squeaking, sad noise that sounded in my head like a puppy’s whine. “Oh no, that is a worry,” he said.
I smiled to Aippaq. “Not for you to worry. It’s us humans who evolved to use oxygen.”
“With only twenty percent oxygen reserves, and in this gravity with a walking speed of two miles per hour, we would only cover a distance of eight miles before running out. So you can either go farther to find the mines, or try to go back to Alpha Station.” he said.
“Not much of a choice, seeing as I have no idea where either one is…” I retrieved the retractable refiller from my suit’s front and clipped it into the side of the rover. A whooshing sound squeaked from my hand.
Maybe I was no Princess, but I was no coward, either. I had to find the boys, and at worst, give them a chance for a proper burial. “I have to try and rescue them, and if I can’t, then I’ll at least be out on the field where I wanted to be. What about you?” I asked.
Aippaq looked horrified. “You are asking me as if I have a choice.”
I laughed. “But you do. You are not a slave or anything.”
His eyes twinkled. “Even so, I am a failure. I failed to compute the location of the meteorites.”
I jumped at hearing his words. Then I realized the guilt Aippaq was holding. I hadn’t even considered it. I shook my head violently. “Absolutely not. That was not your fault. It was a crazy situation and your first time on the field. I shouldn’t have asked you to do anything under pressure.”
“But it was a fault in my biological computing power. I am sorry,” he said.
I sighed. Slowly, I put a hand over his head to comfort him. “Aippaq, we have something in human culture called ‘doing our darned best.’ And you know what? You did it today. Please don’t beat yourself up about it.”
He nuzzled up against my hand. “Then I still want to be here to help, Miss Pepperfield. If you will have me. I too will adopt a human way. I will not abandon the mission or my colleague. That is the human way, too, is it not?” he asked.
The determination in his little black eyes shifted something inside me. An alien fuzz ball was a more loyal companion than any I’d met before. I glanced down at my refilled oxygen tank. Sixty percent. If it was to be my last four hours living, I was more than happy to spend it beside him. “Thank you, Aippaq. You are a good friend.”
“Friend…” he muttered, and bounced about.
I stood up once the gas from the Rover was extracted into my engineer’s suit, and once more I surveyed the planet’s surface out to the black horizon. To get my bearings, I rotated and found the direction that seemed to be littered with meteorite holes. From there, I turned 180 degrees and pointed.
“This way.”
***
I didn’t know how long we travelled. My eyes periodically flicked down to the life support indicator, which went from fifty down to forty, but before long we found the next red flag. I picked up the pace, leaping forward with each step to maximize space-borne time. We travelled across a flat plain and followed the scattered, crushed-soil tracks back up to another high point. There I saw the fourth Mine Site flag.
“We found it!” I cried and scrambled toward the dipping entrance beside the flag.
Chapter 9
“Aippaq, could you please double check? Are you sure these are the last coordinates from the transmission? There doesn’t seem to be anything around here.”
“Yes, I am afraid it is not as simple as we thought. We on the surface are working with satellite coordinates, while the miners underneath are working on surface-relative coordinates.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that since they do not match, either the satellite coordinates have moved, or the relative under-surface coordinates have moved since! That means that the planet’s different layers are moving more rapidly than anticipated.”
Aippaq explained, “If I could use your human’s delicious chocolate treats as analogy…The surface of SH-17 is like the crust of a delicious chocolate truffle. It is all made of the same chocolate, so it can rotate, expand and shrink on the outside all the same. But the gooey centre is different. It is much slower, and so it rotates at a lower speed. It will stay where it is for longer than the crust. And so the layout of the planet changes.”
I cursed to myself. A moving surface or planetary crust? That explained the sudden change in topology that caused Aippaq’s pre-meteorite strike optimization to falter. I put a finger onto my chin and quieted my throbbing head.
It was much like the operation of Earth’s many tectonic plates, I thought. Just much less visible and at the forefront of our ancestors’ minds as the crystalline surface here moved.
Aippaq closed his eyes. “I will see if I can detect them nonetheless.”
After a moment, he faced one direction. “There.”
I let my feet take me in the direction my friend told me to go until ten minutes later I saw something in the distance. A red flag. “Oh my… Aippaq, it’s the excavation entry point! We’ve found it.”
I crouched beside the flag and looked into the ground where the rover-sized hole should have been. A growl came from my mouth; from the movement of the planet’s crust, it had caved in a little. The hole was no longer wide enough for a rover-sized excavator or transport drone to move freely in and out. It was big enough for someone half the size of me. A child. Or something the size of Aippaq.
Below my feet and all around I saw once again the red pulsing of light. If I was going all in on this, I had to get inside.
I lifted a foot in front of me and let my weight onto it until I floated off the top of the cave onto the shallow, caved-in pit below. Once there I grabbed hold of the jutting pieces preventing me from crawling into the place. A little dust cracked and sprayed from the crack I made. I hoped that I could still get in. I leaned back, using the gravity of my lower body to pull on the amethyst chunk until my face strained hot, but the grip in the clumsy gloves wasn’t enough. I fell back, landing on my butt and bouncing back off the rocks like a floaty balloon. “Damn it. Aippaq, when you get here, I may need your help to get inside this mine,” I said.
The blue and black Fuzzario floated a little behind me but moved with the bouncing telekinesis that boosted him forward once he reached the apex of his jumps. A much more space friendly biology and evolutionary path, I thought.
“Oh my, it looks like the movement of the crust has closed off the mine. Whatever should we do?” Aippaq asked as he too hopped down to my level.
“If you can crawl into this hole here and use your telepathic powers to push, I will pull at the same time. I know it doesn’t sound elegant, but between us, it might work.”
Aippaq shook his head. “You still trust me to help?”
“Of course,” I said softly.
After a short pause, Aippaq hopped up the steps of the amethyst structure and peered inside. He hopped into the almond-shaped hole. Moments later, he called out, “Ready?”
“Okay, on three. One, two…” I grabbed pieces of the amethyst boulder. Together with my physical pulling and his telepathic pushing, the crack beside my wrist blasted downward till it was near my feet. Then with a final heave, more chunks of dust and rock flew outward from my hands, and as it broke away, the blockage crumbled. In its place stood a hole large enough for me to crawl through.
“I told you. We did it,” I smiled.
Aippaq squeaked victoriously in the new doorway. “Come on then, let’s rescue the humans.”
Chapter 10
Seeing the front blockage, I imagined the interior would have collapsed a little. I gaze
d about cautiously. All throughout the tunnels there seemed to be little disturbance to the smooth-cut walls at all.
Like two candies rolling from a vending machine, we pushed through the downward spiral. When my oxygen levels were at twenty five percent, we paused. Ahead lay a fork in the road.
“Looks like we have to choose a path.” I gazed about trying to find signs or markings from the miners.
Aippaq responded, “It looks like there’s crumbled wall all over. Any signs here could have been destroyed. Perhaps by the violent shifts from the meteorites?”
As much as I didn’t want to hear those words, he was right. “Can you sense anything down here?” I asked.
“I’m afraid my active telepathic energy is proportional to the amount of UV light I receive on my fur. Down here,” he looked at the crystalline walls and roof, “there is hardly any natural light. I have been listening passively for signatures, but they rely on the biological signal of the source. Not me.”
I nodded. “Let me try this then.” My finger pressed the torchlight on my suit’s chest, turning it off. Then I waited for my eyes to adjust.
My heart beat hard. I already had an intuition telling me the cool draft from the left-hand tunnel meant no good. Just like I used to flip coins as a child, I knew even if I saw something in the left-hand tunnel, the hairs all along my arm did not want to take me there. “Is that… There, there’s a light in the distance.” I breathed in relief and pointed to the right-hand tunnel.
“Ah, Miss Pepperfield, I think you are right,” he said.
I swore I heard a faint whistle from the left tunnel. I promised myself if I had time, I’d go there next. It was inevitable, but not right now. My guts told me no.
“It’s settled. If there is light, then that means a miner or his equipment is still close by, so let’s go.” I scooped Aippaq up, clicked on my torch and let my feet race us both through the right-hand tunnel.
The temperature dropped drastically the deeper the tunnel took us down. I let the small front-facing white light torch on my torso guide my feet.
