EVAC: IGNITION

by A J Britnell

  It was breathtaking, Marcus thought, more than he ever imagined but he was not interested in the blue planet. When he pressed his nose against the glass, a mist patch appeared in front of him which he wiped with his sleeve. A few meters away the Lander unit for the Eagle glinted in the artificial spotlights trained on the motionless scene. Marcus appraised every detail: the landing legs, bedded into the soft ground, the thin orange Kapton blankets that had protected the occupants, and the footprints they left behind. There were some clear footprints but most of the area had been trampled over numerous times as the astronauts carried out their experiments. A new Stars and Stripes had been erected (the only alteration, insisted by the US government) the original had been faded to white years before from the penetrating rays of the sun.

  John came up behind Marcus, “Beautiful isn’t she.”

  “Yeah- can you believe it’s nearly a hundred years ago,” Marcus said with disbelief.

  “I know; they must have been mad - I’ve seen sturdier box-carts.”

  Together, they marveled at the determination and good fortune that transported three incredibly brave men to the Moon and back. They stood in silence for a few moments until Haruka grew impatient and called them on.

  It took them a couple of hours to collect the data they needed. They removed panels in the ceiling to check the electrics and air ducting, put sensors on the glass to check its integrity and tested the security door mechanisms. It was also a good vantage point of the perimeter and they could measure the distances between the pylons and analyse the accessibility of the terrain.

  Marcus was screwing a panel back above him when he noticed movement in the distance; it was a buggy, a maintenance buggy he assumed and its occupant got out and bobbed over to a pylon. Marcus shrugged and packed his equipment away into a silver box.

  “Shall we check out the service area next,” John asked Haruka.

  “Yes, I think the life-support is on the first sub-level.” She leafed through pages on her electronic notepad for a schematic of the building.

  They both turned to Marcus who was standing motionless in front of the glass as if scanning for something in the distance.

  John walked over, “What is it pal?”

  Marcus kept his eyes on the middle distance as he replied in a low whisper, “I could have sworn I saw something out by that pylon.” He pointed at a structure around five- hundred metres away, between some boulders.

  “Like what?”

  “I think it was a flash or something.”

  John considered this for a moment, “It was probably just a reflection of the glass- someone taking a photo I bet.”

  Marcus scratched his head, “Yeah, you’re probably right. Let’s go then.”

  Picking up the heavy box effortlessly, he caught up with the others as they retraced their steps back to the tunnel entrance.

  The final job in the tunnel was to check the security programs and Marcus plugged his terminal into the central computer at the entrance. “That’s funny,” he said.

  “What’s funny,” John asked.

  “A pylon’s down.”

  A red light flashed on a schematic of the perimeter and Marcus pulled up a window showing the security systems.

  “The electrics are fried. I wonder what caused that.”

  “That’s probably why that guy’s out there - maintenance.”

  Marcus puzzled, “Better look into it. Hey what’s the time, John?”

  “11.08”

  Marcus continued searching the computer for an explanation but he couldn’t get any further; he was locked out.

  A soft alarm rang out and notice boards around the hotel lit up with the words: ‘LOCK DOWN IN PROGRESS’. People calmly exited the tunnel the way they had come in, past the EVAC team and headed down to the sub-levels; something they had done many times during their stay with little consequence. Only Haruka and her team seemed concerned. “What’s going on,” Haruka said, “the lockdown’s not due ‘till fourteen-hundred.”

  The tunnel was nearly empty; an elderly couple could be seen rounding the bend. A steward appeared looking a little ruffled and called out for the couple to hurry up. The gentleman walked with a cane and his doting wife urged him on, pulling his free arm.

  It was at this point that the bulk head doors came crashing down.

  Haruka pressed the intercom button for the control room and yelled down the line at an already stressed technician.

  “You’ve got to take the doors up – we’ve got people trapped in the tunnel!”

  “I’m sorry but we seem to be having a systems error!” The operator fed her the standard response but Haruka could hear a commotion in the background that did not fill her with confidence.

  She hung up and turned to her crew, “Something weird is going on here.”

  A crowd grew in the reception area ahead of them; waiting their turn to filter down to the safer lower levels. The steward shepherded the people with calming words he obviously didn’t believe. Haruka yanked the flustered steward’s sleeve, drawing him close, “Has this happened before - the doors malfunctioning?”

  He followed her back into the control niche, out of earshot, “No of course not- we have safeguards for this kind of thing.” Pushing her aside to access the terminal he multitasked, “The system is programmed to close the doors only when everyone is evacuated; there are sensors everywhere. It shouldn’t be able to do this.” He touched his earpiece, “This is the Apollo Tunnel, we have a malfunction, I can’t access any programs from this terminal.”

  Haruka held his gaze as he absorbed the information.

  “They're telling me the external shutters haven’t come down…. Hang on, there’s just static; they’ve gone!”

  In three hours, a meteor shower was due. Without the shutters, the tunnel became vulnerable to impact and the trapped couple was now in grave danger.

  Meteor strikes weren’t that common, a notable shower only impacted the area every few months; the main reason for a lock down was for solar flares and the potential radiation damage they caused. It seemed quite ironic to Haruka that this situation presented itself while they were on a visit.

  “I’ve had enough of this. I’m calling Stefan.”

  Stefan had his own problems. About two hours after Haruka and her team left for the hotel an emergency call came in from the mining site.

  South Pacific Mining group were operating in the Aitken Basin at the South Pole, an immense crater, 2240 kilometers across and in parts, 13 kilometers deep. It processed Helium3 along with every other mining facility but its main objective was collecting water ice imbedded in the rock below. They based their operations at the eastern edge where the crater was shallower and irregular in shape, forming a group of canyons.

  A command centre perched on the rim, oversaw a mainly automated process that used remotely controlled digging equipment. A road had been carved into the walls of the crater, spiraling down level by level into the sheltered darkness. Over the past ten years the shallowest part of the crater had been successfully mined, they now had to go deeper.

  Extraction point B was five kilometers deep. Drilling had only just started again after an eight-month excavation to build the ramps to the crater floor. It seemed a laborious task but the harvester was huge and they didn’t have a ship big enough to carry the vehicle to the bottom of the crater. The harvester had to drive down.

  Finally, excavation could begin again and the metallic monster started to trawl the flat surface, grazing on the baron soil. It churned up the upper layer of soil to reveal the ice crystals beneath; this mixture was then scooped up and transported into the processing unit within its body, where it was heated until the water vapour could be extracted. An automated process transferred the gas into pressurised containers that stacked up at the rear of the harvester ready for collection. When twenty canisters were filled, a signal was sent to a collection robot; basically, a robotic forklift truck. This was the only time that the harvester stopped, and then
only momentarily before resuming its solitary work.

  The reason water ice remained in these craters was because the sun never reached the deepest points, which created a problem for the engineers whose power source of choice was solar. The machines could receive their energy from fuel cells but they had to be regularly recharged which meant sending supplies up and down the five kilometre cliff face. Another option was an electrical cable running like an umbilical to the harvester, its source, a satellite in space with a huge solar array. This satellite converted the energy and beamed it down in the form of a microwave to a receiver station that supplied the whole area.

  Twelve hours in to the first shift a malfunction occurred with the power supply and everything came grinding to a halt, yet again. Something as simple as a land slide caused a tractor unit to overturn on an access ramp, crushing the power line that ran alongside the rough road.

  In the past, the mining company struggled to cope with this type of incident due to its minimal workforce. They decided to use their new contract with EVAC Rapid Response and hoped that they would find a swift solution.

  When Stefan received Haruka’s call, they were hovering over the crater assessing the situation. “What did you say Haruka?”

  “There’s something suspicious about the situation – it smells of sabotage.”

  “Hey, calm down. It’s probably a computer glitch. Get down to that control room and speak to someone in charge. I’ll call when we get this mining thing sorted.” Stefan muttered something under his breath.

  The Bug was full; Claus was piloting as usual, Stefan sat in the co-pilot seat and Herman sat uncomfortably between two heavy set engineers on loan from South Pacific Mining.

  Herman wasn’t really suited to spaceflight and nobody really understood what he was doing onboard the Caspian in the first place. His knees bobbed up and down nervously as he wiggled in his seat to avoid his shoulders touching the men on either side.

  “How are you doing there Herman?” Stefan asked, sensing the boy’s apprehension.

  “Oh, I’m just fine,” he uttered in a voice that was barely audible. The engineers both turned to look at Herman who eventually found his voice under their critical gaze, “Are my co-ordinates correct Captain?”

  “Yep they’re perfect as usual. I can see the site in the distance, I think; they must have some emergency lighting or something.”

  Blue tinted lights came from two fork-lift truck robots that had been positioned to illuminate the scene. Stefan pointed to an area to put down. He chose to land at the base of the crater, near the incident on the ramp but far enough away to avoid any further landslips. Already suited up, they tugged on their helmets and took turns exiting the Bug.

  The temperature was minus 238 degrees and the blackness oppressive. They stood in silence for a moment, looking in the direction of the beams as they tried to make out the shapes in the shadows. About four tons of rubble covered the overturned tractor and the power cable was nowhere to be seen. Stefan squinted as a chink of light flashed off Claus’s visor.

  Stefan turned back to the Bug, “Well it looks like good, old fashioned manual labour gentlemen.”

  The team groaned in response but Herman skipped up to Stefan to suggest an alternative. “We could use the fork-lift trucks, Captain.”

  Stefan shook his head, “They’re only programmed to collect from the harvester; this work’s far too precise.” He continued walking away but Herman persisted.

  “I can operate them remotely; it’s just a simple re-programme back to their factory settings.”

  Stefan peered through Herman’s visor; gauging his confidence. “Okay, get on with it, Herman,” he granted with positivity.

  Herman bobbed over to the vehicles and unscrewed a panel on the rear to expose the programming components. He connected a portable key pad and scrolled down to find the right system; the hard part would be to link the controls to the computer in the Bug, so they could be operated by a joy-stick. Herman decided to redirect it through the programme that managed the Bug’s robotic arms since the control stick had a full range of motion that matched the fork-lift trucks.

  It was frustrating work; his gloved hands were useless. “Hey, Claus!” Herman’s voice distorted over the intercom, making his colleague squirm.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Can you get EMO for me?”

  Claus cursed and jumped over to the Bug. He’d forgotten to release EMO from his compartment and was imagining what kind of mood it would be in. Running his hand over the shell of the craft, his fingers found the grooved panel and flipped out the tiny door. Then he reached in and twisted a release handle. A larger panel slid open to reveal EMO’s ‘feet’. The robot slipped inelegantly from the compartment. “There you go boy,” Clause said as he caught the robot and spun it round until it met the surface. EMO was clicking to itself and Claus worried that he’d interrupted an important download or something.

  Marcus beckoned EMO and the robot dutifully trundled over, its front ‘arms’ bent forward to roll along on all fours. “Do you think you can bypass these circuits EMO?” Marcus continued to explain the process and the robot set to work.

  “It will take approximately twelve minutes,” EMO responded.

  “Take your time, mate.” Marcus strolled off to the Bug and got intercepted by Stefan, eager for a progress report.

  “Shouldn’t be long, I’m just going to get a remote box for the fork lift and we’re away.”

  He rummaged around in an overhead, tossing various components in a pile, but then a blinking light caught his eye.... it was a video message. He launched the window and he was greeted by Haruka’s fluttering image, devoid of sound.

  “Haruka I can’t understand you. You’re breaking up,” Marcus yelled at the screen and instinctively slapped the monitor a couple of times. He decided to type a message since audio was interrupted. EXPLAIN, he wrote.

  A String of worrying sentence fragments crossed the screen; POWER LIMITED. BOMB OR BOMBS. LASER DEFENCE DOWN. NEED HELP!

  “What on earth’s been going on,” Marcus whispered to himself. He scrambled out of the cabin, grabbing a selection of circuits on the way.

  Chapter Ten

  From the moment Haruka made the first call to her colleagues, the situation deteriorated.

  They took Stefan’s advice and returned to the reception area to get their bearings. The place was deserted. There were several doors around the circular lobby but the first two were locked, the third had a sign reading: SERVICE ACCESS ONLY and so the trio bundled past the heavy door to find a dimly lit corridor wide enough to drive a car along. A bank of signs met them; an arrow pointed left to SERVICE EXIT – MAINTENANCE AIRLOCK, the other way read: ALL OTHER AREAS. They turned right, increasing their pace.

  Heavy footsteps echoed ahead, disorienting the group. They pushed on eager to catch up with the makers but as they turned the corner a man stumbled right into them. “Jesus!” Haruka cursed. The man roughly pushed Haruka to the side, hastily apologising without eye contact, before dashing on the way they had come. Haruka had not failed to notice that he was dressed in the grey overalls of Schaefer Space Logistics. “Hey!” she shouted after him, “Are you going to the command centre?”

  There was no reply. He was long gone.

  “Well that was rude!” John snorted, “Doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence when the professionals run in the opposite direction.”

  Carrying on regardless, they eventually came upon a door that looked promising: OPERATIONS. “This must be the way,” Marcus said and leant against it, “It’s bloody locked!” He rubbed his temples, looking at his friends for direction. John walked ahead to the next exit. “It say’s PLANT ROOM but it is unlocked. I think we need to make a right turn, if we carry on in this direction we’ll come out the back of the ridge. I’m guessing the command centre has to be in the middle of this complex and this might lead that way”

  “Sure, go for it,” Haruka conceded, frustrated at their lack o
f progress. They entered to find themselves in another deserted, dim corridor that led left and right. “For god’s sake, this place is a maze!”

  Following John’s logic, they took the right. After a few minutes of wandering in the darkness they followed the passage around a sharp left bend and came face to face with another uniformed man. He was obviously surprised, “What are you people doing down here, you need to be in the bunker with the others!”

  “Thank god; a human being!” Haruka gushed with visible relief. She thrust her sweaty hand forward and pointed to the insignia on her chest, “We’re not tourists, we’re EVAC Rapid Response. We’re here to do a safety inspection.”

  He shook her hand limply, “Well you picked a great day, for sure.”

  Haruka didn’t feel like laughing. “Look, we’re completely lost; we need to get to the Command Centre - I can’t get a link to them and all the security doors are down!”

  The steward appeared unperturbed by the situation, “Hey there’s no need to panic it’s just a computer glitch or something. Anyway, I know an emergency tunnel that goes to the Command Centre – I could take you there.”

  John patted the lad on the shoulder, “Have you been down here long?”

  “A few hours, just about to take my lunch break.” The lad was surprisingly casual, “We often have communication problems down here but you say the bulk heads have deployed – that’s strange.”

  “Like you say, it’s probably just a computer thing but if you could show us the way it would put our minds to rest.”

  The group trudged through endlessly dark corridors and down ladder shafts, deeper into the complex. It definitely felt colder and the metal rungs on the ladders, burnt into their skin as they climbed.

  About ten minutes later they reached a junction and the steward seemed lost; John and Marcus took the opportunity to rest and slid to the ground with their backs against the tunnel wall. Haruka felt awkward in the silence and so decided to make polite conversation with the steward by first asking his name.