It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. He turned, wincing in pain, to look at the lockers. Deeks and Evers were still there, still dead, and now the Cryo Deck was screaming that something was wrong. He couldn’t see to the hallway outside –– were the blast doors closed?
His mind reeled. How had this happened? Why?
Zradce, the man had attacked him. And, Daniel’s head ached as he tried to catch up with this lightning quick turn of events. Nathan must have killed Deeks and Evers too. But why?
And what was the man doing now? Had he been the one to close the blast doors? To set off the alarms in Cryo? Why would he do that? His own wife was in Cryo!
None of it made sense. But as Daniel grasped the situation in front of him, he knew he had to do something. He looked for a weapon, any weapon, but found nothing except the broken tablet on the floor. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but he had to try. He eased out of the room, doubled over and nearly passed out when he bent low to move past the tinted glass half wall of the control room.
Doing so was painful, but he had the element of surprise as he entered the room. Nathan Zradce’s back was towards him. He was slamming a heat wand from Engineering down on the controls, the smell of sizzling plastic and electrical conduit filled the air. Daniel gathered up all of his strength and slammed the broken tablet into the back of Zradce’s head.
Nathan screamed in pain, dropping the heat wand and stabbing with his other hand as he turned towards his attacker. The knife missed with the first slash and came down with such ferocity the second time that his left shoulder shuddered in response, the knife digging into meat and muscle, burying itself to the hilt. Blood sprang around the knife, soaking Daniel’s shirt and Nathan’s hands until his fingers slipped from the blade.
Daniel, fighting for his life, kicked Nathan’s legs out from under him and slammed him hard in the face with the tablet. He heard Nathan’s jaw crack as he hit the floor and was knocked unconscious.
He ran to the half-melted control panel as NARAs voice issued over the speakers:
EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN OF ALL CRYO PODS INITIATED
SYSTEM RESET ON ALL CRYO PODS IN 14:47 MINUTES
If Daniel didn’t do something soon, everyone in Cryo was going to die.
Mars Needs Moms
“Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s cold as hell. And there’s no one there to raise them if you did.” – Elton John
Date: 10.02.2099
Mars – Huygens Outpost
Outside of the Habs the atmospheric generators hummed constantly, working their slow, methodical process that meant, that in a handful of centuries, humans might actually be able to step outside with only a re-breather unit on. It was something for future generations to look forward to, but even then the air would be far too thin for anyone to survive it without some kind of oxygen booster. The hum pervaded the Hab, a constant noise source that the inhabitants, such as they were, had long since ceased to notice.
Toya didn’t think on this too long, she was simply incapable of it.
An accident in the Philadelphia Hab six months after she had arrived had seen to that. An accidental equipment failure had led to the deaths of two families as well as Toya’s dad, who had been sleeping off-shift, and Toya who they had managed to revive.
The then six-year-old Toya survived, but not before sustaining significant damage due to oxygen deprivation which robbed her of her native brilliance. Before the accident, Toya had been a favorite in the Philadelphia Hab, capable of speaking three languages and showing a knack for computer programming. After she had recovered physically from the experience it was clear that she would be the mental age of a five-year-old for the rest of her life.
Toya’s mother Selena had avoided being sent back to Earth due to Toya’s condition by marrying John Snelling, a newly arrived meteorologist who was single and had already been sleeping with her since the voyage from Mars. A few years later, Lenny was born, and Toya had become a fixture in the Hab, racing about with the other children and, in later years, on her own as her companions had grown up without her and found their place in the colony’s infrastructure.
But now John and Selena were dead, as were most of everyone else. Toya and Lenny were the only ones left in the Philadelphia Hab. Toya wasn’t interested in the communications room, growing bored easily, she would rather play hide and seek or racing games with Lenny. Now that everyone was gone, there was no one to tell them to not run in the hallways. No one to punish or yell. Toya liked that. As the days went by she found herself missing the other colonists less and less.
Toya waited for Lenny to get close, then stuck out her foot, tripping him as he raced down the hallway. Mom wasn’t around to give her the sharp rap on the head she was used to receiving when she messed with her baby half-brother. He was a spoiled brat anyway and deserved a thumping or two. Toya, at nearly twenty years old, was built like a tank, whereas her eleven year old brother was a slip of a thing. Lenny weighed just over ten kilos, compared to Toya who was pushing thirty-eight. If they had been on Earth, with full gravity, she would have tipped the scales at over eighty-six, and Lenny at a mere twenty-seven, but Mars gravity kept them both light with a gravity of around 38% of normal.
Lenny, who had been running at full-speed, tripped on Toya’s outstretched foot and left the ground for a full two seconds, twisting in space before slamming, with a scream into the far door. Blood jetted from his nose and he wailed in agony. Toya felt a twinge of fear, and found herself glancing about to make sure no one had seen. She kept forgetting they were all alone, and that the Hab was empty except for her and her now bloody and crying brother.
“Sorry Lenny,” Toya said, picking him up roughly. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Yes, you did! You did mean it!” He held his nose, trying in vain to stop the gush of blood and failing brilliantly.
“Didn’t.”
“You did, Toya!” His tears mixed with the blood and snot. He was intelligent, Mom had mentioned that regularly, which had the nasty side effect of reminding Toya of how she used to be smart, but now was stupid, stupid, stupid. Toya couldn’t help wondering if she could keep hitting him now, and make him stupid too. No one was there to tell her “no” except Lenny, and he didn’t count, because he was just a big, big baby covered in blood and snot. She dropped him down on the floor, eliciting another scream as his shin cracked against the concrete walkway.
This downward spiral may have continued, if not for the alarm that sounded at that moment, a single klaxon blast accompanied by NARAs calm voice.
PERIMETER ALARM
ATTEMPTED UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS OF AIRLOCK B
NARA served as the communications unit between the separate Habs throughout the colony. The Habs, five in all, had been designed to function independently and the residents of the separate units were only supplied with their own password. This gave them access to their Hab alone. Travel between the separate units was allowed, and encouraged, but it was like knocking on the door of a neighbor’s house, a visitor couldn’t just go barging in.
Lenny’s eyes grew wide and the bloody mess and pain appeared temporarily forgotten.
“Toya! Someone else is alive!”
They ran to Airlock B, which was used for supply deliveries. Toya could see a suited figure standing outside of the grimy, dust-covered window of the outer airlock. Lenny hopped up and down, boosted by Mars gravity he managed short glimpses of what stood outside.
Standing outside, surrounded by corpses, stood a tall figure.
Toya frowned, “I dunno, he’s a stranger.”
Lenny sighed, “Toya, he’s from one of the other Habs.”
Shortly after the Juniper Supply Ship had landed, the auto-pilot settling the ship without incident, the colonists had gone on board, fully suited up. Lenny’s dad had been one of them.
The crew were dead, this was expected, they had sent warning weeks before, but the colonists in the Cryo pods and the supplies on the floors
below the crew deck were untouched.
Everything should have been fine. Lenny didn’t understand what had gone wrong.
Dad had said that they were using the most stringent quarantine protocols possible. He had even described how they did it. First, they had opened the ship to the Mars atmosphere, then scrubbed the deck down, before activating the environmental controls and resuscitating each of the new arrivals.
“Maybe, or maybe he came on a spaceship and has the virus.” Toya insisted.
Lenny rolled his eyes, “Our Hab has the landing pad for ships, and we would have seen his ship land. And besides, we have the virus already. We just didn’t die.”
It had taken a few days to completely clear the hold of all the supplies and equipment, but then, in accordance with directions from Home Base, the colonists had set the spaceship on its final journey, powering it back out of the atmosphere before programming it into an impact trajectory with the far side of Mars, hundreds of klicks from any Habs or atmosphere generators. The resulting explosion was designed to ensure that no one on Mars would catch the terrifying and deadly ESH virus.
“We don’t have the virus.” Toya insisted, petulant. She pushed Lenny away from the airlock and the buzzer sounded.
“Hey, kid! Let me in!” The figure outside had seen them.
“Yes, we do, Toya. Mom and Dad got it, we got it, and everyone got it.” Lenny felt desperation creeping in. His sister was strong, and she wouldn’t let him near the keypad to override the lockout.
Despite all of the colonists’ precautions, the moment they woke up Ted Danziger, the last colonist to exit Cryo, the Huygens Colony had sealed their fate.
Dad had said that Danziger had the virus and just didn’t know it. It hadn’t spiked his temperature until he left the Philadelphia Hab for the Cairo one, stopping off at Hong Kong, London, and Sydney Habs first to inspect their atmosphere generators.
Toya had that look in her eyes, one that clearly told Lenny she was determined not to let him or anyone else have their way. Never mind the cluster of corpses outside, or the fact that the suited figure was now banging on the outside of their Hab and sounding more irritated by the minute.
“Hey, look kids. It’s safe to let me in. Open the airlock!”
Huygens Outpost, which boasted a population of 250 or more souls in five Habs scattered over several acres, was stripped down to a grand total of three survivors in just under four weeks. Lenny and Toya were two of them, and the third one was apparently knocking on their door now.
“NARA!” Lenny shouted at the artificial intelligence, “Let him in! Authorization B oh nine five!”
Toya looked furious.
NARA instantly complied, initiating the airlock protocols. The lights flashed a warning as the outside airlock opened, a rush of red, dusty air swirling in, the inside window frosting up from the cold Martian air. The figure strode inside, waving one hand at the children, and pressed the button to close the outside airlock. This initiated an entirely different set of flashing lights. The internal fans roared and the glass cleared of frost as the air was replaced with the oxygen-rich warm air from the Hab.
The second sets of lights stopped flashing after a long moment and the inner airlock door opened with the push of another button, the tall figure stepping through, his suit steaming a bit, the metal still ice-cold from the outside. It took several minutes for the man inside to emerge from the bright blue and white suit. Made for easy spotting on the Martian surface the garish bright blue was an affront to the eyes so close up. The material had an iridescent quality to it, and was guaranteed to glow for at least five hours in full darkness, also an added detection benefit. There were several layers, first the hard outer shell, then the stretchy black insulating layer, followed by the third layer, a standard issue jumpsuit. Each of the Habs wore different colors. Toya’s and Lenny’s were green, and the man’s was red, indicating he had come from the Hong Kong Hab.
He was tall, with a shock of blond hair that had grown out of a standard crew cut, jumping into a mess of waves and disorganized sweat-plastered curls.
The man stared at the odd scene before him. Lenny and Toya stared back.
Lenny wiped his nose with the back of his hand, suddenly embarrassed of what he must look like – blood and snot smeared on his face, his tears not fully dried. And it had been a while since he had changed his clothes or washed his face. He looked down at his jumpsuit, it was stained and the blood from his nose had dripped down and spattered the grimy fabric with drops of dark red blood.
He was used to Toya, but he could tell by the stranger’s reaction that her blank, slack-jawed stare and heavyset body had been noticed.
“Welcome to Philadelphia Hab, sir.” Lenny said, “I’m Leonard, but everyone calls me Lenny, and this is my sister, Toya.”
He held his right hand out.
The stranger stared at Lenny’s hand, startled by the kid’s civility, a direct contradiction to his ragged appearance. He reached out and grasped Lenny’s hand firmly, a smile flickering over his face.
“I’ll be damned. And here I was certain I was the only one. I was just about to try an override code when I saw you appear at the window.”
He nodded to Toya, “Good to see both of you, by God, damn good to see you. I’m Michael Nix, from the Hong Kong Hab.”
Toya rolled her eyes, “Duh, we know where you are from. Hong Kong wears red, everyone knows that, even dummies like me.”
Michael’s head cocked to one side and he regarded Toya, taking in her slack face.
“Right, well good to meet you both. Are you two the only ones left?”
“Yes sir,” Lenny answered.
Nix shook his head, “No need to ‘sir’ me, Lenny. I’m fine with you calling me Nix, or even Mike. Just don’t call me late for dinner!” He laughed alone at that.
Toya appeared to be growing bored with the discussion. She spun in circles and began to hum.
Nix stared at Toya for a moment before turning back to Lenny.
“You look like you have had a bad morning, kid, what say you get cleaned up and we scrounge up some lunch? You game?”
“Yes, sir, I mean, um, sure Mike.” Lenny brushed at the already drying blood on his face, smearing it worse. “But we can’t get into the Mess Hall food supply, so we don’t have much food left.”
Nix grinned, “Bet you’re glad I showed up then. I’ve got codes to all the Mess Hall storage rooms. Before everything went to hell I did the supply runs to each of the Habs in between growing the crops over in the Hong Kong Hab.”
They stopped outside of the nearest bathroom so Lenny could clean up, and Toya twirled in place as they waited.
“Are you a nice guy or a mean guy?” Toya asked Nix.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you gonna let me run and dance or yell at me to stop?”
Nix laughed, “I don’t much care either way to tell you the truth.”
Toya spun away from them both, humming to herself.
He cocked his head at Lenny, “So, has she always been this way?”
“She nearly died when she was six,” Lenny wiped the last of the blood from his nose with a wet towel, “Oxygen deprivation in one of the family Hab spokes.”
The Habs were laid out in rings, with the central ring the common areas and the outermost rings the individual living sections, each family had its own spoke and section of a rim exclusively for their own use.
“Yeah,” added Toya, “It made me stupid. I used to be smart.” She said it with an edge of self-satisfied importance.
“I see.”
Nix led the way down the corridor away from the airlock, turning right at an intersection of corridors and continuing down it before stopping at a locked door for Food Storage. He swiped his wrist over the code reader to the left of the door and the door lock disengaged.
“What did I tell you?” He said, winking at Toya. “Easy as pie. Now let’s see where we stand.”
He grabbed three bag
s of chips, tossed one to Lenny and another to Toya and lifted the supply tablet off of the wall. Each of the items on the shelves were tagged with RFID chips and the sensors recognized and removed the item from inventory when it was opened. The exception to this was anything grown on location.
The tablet screen sprang to life and Nix stared at the screen while Toya and Lenny ripped into their bags and devoured the chips with gleeful abandon.
“Lenny, help me run down this list, okay?”
They took the next half hour to review the lists of supplies still on hand in the Philadelphia Hab. Nix called off the tag numbers and Lenny counted them up and called the number back, darting through the labyrinth of tall shelving, climbing up into the racks like a monkey.
Nix nodded after a while, “Looks like we are in good shape here, far better than the Hong Kong Hab. I’m guessing that’s got a lot to do with the bodies outside.”
Lenny nodded solemnly. “They tossed out a bunch when the virus turned on. Others went out on purpose when they learned they had it.”
Nix shook his head. “Wow. Effective I guess, but, wow.”
There was an awkward silence and then the man clapped his hands together.
“Well, Lady and Gent, the good news is that we won’t starve. The bad news is I’ve got no idea when we will get another supply run from Earth, if ever, so we are going to ration all of the good stuff.”
He looked up to see Toya grabbing a handful of the small bags.
“Uh uh, Missie, we are going to ration that stuff.”
She glared at him, “You said you were nice.”
“Nope, I never said I was nice. I said I didn’t care about you running and dancing, and I don’t. But I’ll be damned if you are going to eat all our snack foods.”
“I don’t like him,” she said in a loud whisper to her brother, “He’s mean.”
Lenny just shrugged at his sister and kept eating the chips.
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