The Dark Colony

by Richard Penn

  ‘Thank you, medic.’ she said, trying to sound business-like. ‘Please return your patient to sick bay but do not allow anyone through to her except Ms Xu and any essential medical staff. I have reason to believe that her life is in danger from someone in the colony, but I do not know who. Explicit authority from Captain Krawczyk for every single person you let near her, understood?’

  ‘“Captain?” he’s not a captain, he’s a judge. He hasn’t been Captain since the end of the transit colony.’ replied Knezhevitch.

  ‘He’s back in command, the harbour controllers have resumed their ranks, too. Also, do a DNA test on the girl and forward the results to Phobos. Trust nobody. Understood?’

  He looked for a moment as if he was going to try to call on their past, to persuade her to relax, but he could see from her stance that it was not going to happen. A lot of time had passed, and the safety of the patient came first. ‘OK. Your call,’ he said, a little sadly.

  As he moved through the hatch, Lisa felt as if the medic had his own gravisphere, but that decision had been made two years ago, and now was not the time. Perhaps there would never be a time. Being several hours past her normal bedtime also tried to pull her away, before duty and the thought of those watching teams of feds brought her back to reality. She looked around, and again her three friends were looking for her leadership.

  ‘The forward void, then.’ she said, and they began to move off in that direction, slower than last time. Reaching the lock, Tommy opened the air vent in the same way as Lisa had, but there was no sign here of an intersecting tunnel. The walls of the lock were similarly smooth and unbroken. They floated in the middle of the lock, at a loss.

  She activated the playback on her phone, wondering if there had been any progress in Phobos.

  Inspector Njenga’s table filled the screen, coming up life-size on the smooth walls of the airlock. ‘We have programmed your phone to save our input until you request it, as we do not want to interrupt your work with information which is likely to be out of date. On our timeline, deputy Gabai found the inflatable cat about five minutes ago. CrowdLabs were asked for a quick opinion on that and found it correlated with something they already discovered.

  ‘CrowdLabs supplementary, Terps file,’ came back the scientist. ‘Our video analysis team have identified an anomaly in relation to the flying cat on the video feeds from the hold. Vet school confirms that isolating itself in the air in a weightless condition is very unnatural for a cat, and that intensive training would be needed to induce this behaviour. However, there are hundreds of instances of the cat Henry doing so, particularly hovering over the warm air vents where it would block the view of several cameras. In isolation we would conclude that some unidentified person in the hold crew undertook this training specifically to cause annoyance in the Camera Club, known throughout the colony as the snoop club. The existence of the inflatable cat however places this in a different light, suggesting that the training of the cat was intended to provide cover to the deliberate blocking of those cameras using the inflatable cat, which could be more accurately controlled. Again in the absence of additional context this would be most likely done to protect secrets of a sexual nature or illicit gambling, but the presence of unidentified strangers again suggests a more sinister motive.’

  ‘I wish the professor would be a little more succinct,’ said the Inspector, ‘but it makes sense. It solves one of our toughest problems: how did people get in and out of the hold without being recorded. On the other hand it gives us a series of time windows that—

  ‘Oh my god, we’re just seeing you find the child. Hold on.’ There was a jerky pause in the video, with an almost comical range of expressions speeded up.

  Audio resumed but the Inspector was speaking to someone off screen, while the child’s shouting played in the background. ‘Singaporean? That means we have to bring in the Fred Soon team!’

  Lisa was only familiar with the name from adventure stories about evil empires and lost colonies. She felt she’d strayed through the looking glass, hearing the serious inspector use the name.

  ‘Sorry, Corporal. Let me try and get back to your situation. We are now at the point you sent the child away, and I’m afraid I am watching you follow a lead we already know is dead. There is no connection from the inside of the hold to the forward void. Here is another report. Return to the scooter dock as you review it.

  ‘CrowdLabs supplementary 2, Terpsichore file. Analysis of the infra-red signature of the exterior of the hold indicates an anomaly on the warm “starboard” side near the bottom, where the surface is cooler and redder than the construction suggests. Primary hypothesis is an external hatch connecting with the interior void, obscured by a layer of some mineral, probably “miner’s mud”. Suggest number one priority investigate this anomaly from exterior of hold. Report ends.’

  ‘That’s it. Take your team outside and take a look. Njenga Out.’

  6 Lockhandling Crew

  As they arrived back at the scooter dock, Lisa suddenly knew what to do. As leader of a crime team, she was making it up as she went along, but she had years of experience leading a lockhand team. In fact, she had led Tommy and Sou a dozen times. A typical mission was to collect a barge, a huge inflated carrier with no engine or crew. It would be in a years-long economy orbit from another asteroid or from Mars, and would fly by at thousands of metres per second if not caught. The lockhand crew would take a large tug and a couple of scooters out to intercept the barge, lock on and decelerate it, then nudge it in to the airlock in the hold. This took several days and total collaboration, so they got to know each other well.

  ‘Sou, take the big tug.’ She hesitated, as Minah was just a passenger in this. ‘Take Minah with you. Tommy, you take scooter two, it has arms. I’m in number three.’ The lockhandling scooters had small manipulator arms and a rack of useful tools, all controlled from inside the cabin. The tug had huge fuel tanks, not needed for this mission, but it also had powerful arms for tossing barges about, which might come in handy.

  ‘Harbour control from constable Johansen. Request clearance for unlimited operations in vicinity of hold, scooters two and three and tug one eight. Over.’ This was an unusual request, normally you had to tell them what you planned to do.

  ‘Scooter one from Harbour Control.’ It was Angèle again. ‘Confirm clearance for unlimited operation. No other traffic permitted. Ambulance is docked. Out.’

  Lisa wondered if she should rescind the order to stay on duty, Angèle must be as worn out as she was. No. Keep the variables down to minimum. The team knew their order of going and how to keep clear of each other, without her having to say a thing. It was great to be back in her comfort zone. They came to a stop in space ten metres from the place the lab had spotted, and frankly could not see a thing.

  ‘OK, we have to go careful here. If there’s mining mud covering a hatch, we have to get it off without endangering the mechanism. Heat is out, we don’t want to fry anyone who’s in there. Tommy, you have a wire brush, try that.’

  Tommy moved forward, positioning his scooter to the left of the spot, spinning the circular wire brush, skilfully dancing on the roll motors to keep steady as it contacted the surface. At the same time he applied push jets to counteract the spring force of the brush. It worked for a few seconds, and then he was bounced away.

  ‘Sou, grab his rear end and give him some support.’ A giggle from Minah reminded them all that Tommy’s rear end was well outside Sou’s range of interests. The two boats lined themselves up, and Tommy was able to apply much more pressure with the massive tug as ballast. The wire brush made a shiny path in the rusty steel of the hull, and as the path continued they could see that silver was replaced with the white of fresh chalky material. Suddenly, they were all engulfed in an orange flash, and Tommy’s scooter was thrown backwards, still attached to the tug. Lisa heard a whoomph over the radios as the fireball hit the other vessels. They were tumbling in both pitch and yaw, and the tug’s grip on the sc
ooter seemed to be loose. The wire brush was sailing away.

  Lisa could immediately see attitude jets fire on the tug, correcting the tumble, so she jetted off after the wire brush. Loose tools kill stations. She called Tommy. ‘Scooter two, sitrep now! Over.’

  ‘Scooter two. Air integrity good, no major injury. Warning, tool is lost in space. Manipulator inoperative. Unable to assess motion control due to grip from tug. Over,’ said Tommy.

  ‘Tug one eight. Air integrity good, no injuries. Distortion of manipulator arm, but grip is maintained. Stabilising tumble now. Over,’ said Sou.

  ‘Scooter three, all systems nominal,’ said Lisa, to complete the picture as she chased the wire brush. ‘Tommy, are you hurt? Over.

  ‘I bruised my arm and thigh in the blast, and I have belt-burn on my shoulder. I’ve picked up a little flash-burn to the face, but it is tolerable. Vision is unaffected. No head injury.’

  Lisa caught the loose tool in her manipulator, and returned to position facing the hatch, alongside Sou’s tug.

  ‘Lisa, Tommy here. Permission to try independent motion? Over.’ Nobody liked to be in a space vehicle held by another, it felt unsafe.

  ‘Sou, let him go and back off twenty metres. Be ready to catch him if he goes off randomly. Over.’

  ‘Just like at home, eh? Will do. Out.’ She complied, and the scooter started a systematic series of moves to check out each jet in turn with no net motion. Tommy returned to the line, and signalled all was nominal.

  ‘Fine. What the fuck happened there, though?’ said Lisa.

  There was a pause, until Minah came up with an idea. ‘Suppose there is someone in there. They would have a remote control scooter off in space somewhere, but they would need some way to clear the gunk from the hatch, so it could dock. Perhaps that charge was left there for that?’

  ‘But that’s insane!’ replied Lisa. ‘An explosive charge on a hatch? It could jam the mechanism, or make a hole and suck them to death.’

  ‘These are criminals, Lisa, desperate people. Perhaps a trick like this is normal to them? Anyway, what has it done to the hatch?’

  Lisa hated bad engineering, but she had to concede that actual crime was serious too. ‘It looks fine, actually. Perhaps unnaturally clean, as it happens. If you’re right, which I hate to admit, that means someone is in there, you wouldn’t do it otherwise. I’m going to have to go in.’

  Docking to a hatch with an unknown hazard on the other side was high on the list of a lockhand’s things to avoid, but there was a procedure for it. You never knew what state an incoming barge would be in. She moved her scooter in sideways to line up the hatches, and docked as gently as she could. She needed to get a sample of the air on the other side without popping the illegal hatch. She started describing her thoughts and actions, for the benefit of her team and the feds. Or for the survivors, she thought darkly.

  ‘So far I have no idea what is behind that hatch: vacuum, poison gas, or breathable air. If it is breathable air, it could contain hazardous humans. Even if vacuum or poison, there could be hostiles in pressure suits. I am disabling the automatic docking machine because it is not aware of my priorities... I am applying enough starboard force to latch the docking mechanism... I am adjusting the life support machine to lower the pressure in my cabin, so that the hostile hatch does not open automatically. I am manually removing my own hatch to get access to the hostile hatch door, with no air pressure.’ Unless the other hatch was tricked out, it would be held shut by the pressure in the void.

  As stowed her own hatch, she reached into the interior tool rack, and turned right to face the door. ‘I am selecting a 15cm leak patch from the rack and applying the sticky side of it to the centre of the hostile door. I am mooring this firmly to the opposite side of my cabin, to a seat belt. I tighten this, to prevent the hostile door opening, whether automatically or deliberately... I am selecting a pressure-resistant drill from the tool rack and securing this to the door. It has a 5mm carbide bit in place.’

  The drill had a collar of sticky material around the chuck, and was designed to drill through a surface without letting air in or out of the hole. ‘I am activating the drill. It is moving inward approximately a millimetre every ten seconds. It has now moved five millimetres, eight, ten. Drill is speeding up… there is no resistance, indicating the hole is through. I am now restoring my own cabin pressure. Cabin pressure is continuing to rise... I am allowing it to exceed the nominal pressure by ten percent, to prevent gas from the hostile void entering my cabin. I am briefly opening the screw cap on the back of the secure drill, listening for air movement. There is a slight hiss, but not enough to indicate vacuum on the other side. I am applying saliva to the thread of the cap (quiet Tommy), and can verify that air is moving into the hostile space, but not at an extreme rate.’

  This meant that there was air in the void. It did not eliminate the chance of poison, however. Lisa wondered if it would have been a good time for a pressure suit, but that would put her at the mercy of any hostile person in there. No, stick to plan A.

  ‘I am removing the cap and fishing out the drill from inside.’ There was a whistling of air from the cabin entering the hole. ‘Replacing the cap briefly, I am attaching the air tester in its place.’

  Her phone relayed the results from the testing machine. ‘Air pressure nominal, temperature minus zero point five Celsius. Cee oh two concentration four times nominal, oxygen one six percent, less than nominal but breathable. No detectable traces of non-biological toxins in the air. Biological gasses suggest a combination of excrement, not fresh, and putrefaction of animal or human remains. Entry to subject void not recommended but survivable for one zero minutes if urgently needed. Filter mask essential.’

  ‘I am removing the probe and restoring the cap on the drill.’ Lisa changed to a more normal tone. ‘Whoof. Guys, what do you think? It sounds like somebody or some animal has died in there. It doesn’t rule out bad guys in pressure suits, but it seems unlikely.’

  ‘I’d leave it alone,’ said Sou. ‘Whatever happened in there was ages ago. It sounds ghastly.’

  ‘I can’t just leave it. There might be evidence, there might still be a real threat. Tommy?’

  ‘Let me go, I’ll do it,’ he said.

  ‘On the basis of what? You’re a guy, you’re more expendable? On what planet do guys get a job like this ahead of girls? I’m the senior person here, if anyone’s going in, it has to be me.’ Lisa realized that she was just using consultation to put off the evil day, that she already knew what to do. Playing her inner feminist to Tommy’s caveman had focussed her mind.

  There was no hurry though. She resumed her narrative. ‘I am selecting a twelve millimetre bit and inserting that into the secure drill to enlarge the hole... I am unfurling the binary umbilical hose from the backup air unit, keeping all plumbing separate from the unit supplying this cabin.... The wider hole is complete, and I am activating the air unit, attaching the binary hose to the hole. I will wait ten minutes to allow that unit to improve the air in the target void.’

  Meanwhile, she called the harbour controller for an update. Angèle reported on their monitoring of the situation in the hall. Krawczyk had managed to convince the mayor to legitimize his assumption of martial law, and that had been endorsed by a proper democratic vote. Now they were an elected dictatorship, many of the louder debates had died down. Everyone understood that all their leaders were under suspicion, and that nothing could be done until that was resolved. A small number suspected Krawczyk himself; their opinions were heard, but they failed to get support to replace him. People had drifted away, back to their jobs. The blue-suits were impatient to return to their proper jobs in the hold.

  ‘Five minutes. Air monitor reports improvement in both temperature and CO2 content. Continuing wait,’ Lisa read into the record, going on to call the hospital for an update from there.

  ‘Phone medical centre from constable Johansen. What is the situation with our girl? Over’

  Stj
epan replied, as she should have expected, ‘The girl is talking calmly to Ms Xu and seems to have accepted the death of her brother. We showed her a cleaned-up picture and she confirmed his identity as that suspected by the team on Mars. From the DNA she is his biological half sister, she has the same mother as the boy but her father is the mythical Fred Soon! Apparently he is a real person —’

  ‘Sorry, Chep,’ Lisa interrupted, ‘I don’t need to deal with that part of the story now, I need to focus on local issues. Has the girl told us anything which would tell us what’s hidden in the hold, or how she came to be there? We suspect there may be a dark scooter out in near space, and we need to know what to expect in the hold. Over.’

  ‘Right Lise, yes. She’s very vague on everything. She’s only eight years old and she’s seeing everything through a child’s eyes. She talks about “the colony” but she knows no other name for it. It may be a surface colony on a small rock, she’s not used to gravity. She says it was a terrible place, noisy and damp, and people did “bad things” to her and her brother. We haven’t probed that because it would increase the trauma. Her brother told her that it was his turn to “take in the stuff” and that he would smuggle her along, that they would join “the real people.” She’s grown up somewhere isolated. I thought dark colonies were a story for kids, but this looks like the real thing. She says she came in “with the breakfast,” we don’t know what that means. She never saw any of this station until her brother bundled her out of the boat in the lock and told her to hide in that space you found.

  ‘Lisa are you OK? I wish —’

  ‘Chep, I...’ she searched for something she could say with a hundred people listening in. ‘Medic, I am uninjured, One of my colleagues... Tommy, has sustained minor injuries but does not need medical assistance. Request ambulance on standby vicinity of forward boat lock in case there are live personnel in this void. Over.’