Colony

by Leigh Matthews

  "I'm on the first set of blades," Jaz called up. "Give me a little more. I'm gonna look over with the scope."

  Silver yelled down to tell Jaz to activate her headset then gave her some more slack. When the rope was taut again, Silver held the winch secure with one hand and used the other to check the live feed from Jaz's scope as it showed up on the work platform control panel. Jaz activated her headset and Silver heard her mumbling about needing more hands.

  "Are you getting the Lidar feed?" Jaz asked, and Silver confirmed, as did Aliyaah, who was on the same channel.

  The scanner showed a diffuse heat signature in the space around Jaz, but nothing indicating a body, alive or recently dead. The heat was likely residual from the working of the refiner. The dense metal of the grinding blades retained heat well, and they also blocked the scanner, meaning that Silver wouldn't be able to pick up anything below or above whichever level Jaz was at. Jaz would have to move carefully around the metal, dropping the scope in ahead of her each time.

  Aliyaah let them know that the CP, Command Pilot Andrew Hadley, had arrived and wanted an update. Hadley was second in command of the mission and was watching Aliyaah and her team closely. "Switch to the secure line, Antara. You too, Specialist Viper."

  "Yes, Sir," Silver said.

  Once their line was secure, Hadley asked if they had found anything.

  "Nothing yet, Sir," Silver said.

  Jaz's voice cut through the static. "Just a whole heck of darkness and dust. Not even any blood."

  "I guess that's a good sign," Aliyaah said, but Silver wondered how the miner could have survived a fall into the machine, even without it being active. If the machine had jumped to life with him inside, there should be some evidence of that, however grisly.

  The line was silent for thirty seconds or so, aside from the static, and there was still no sign of the missing man on the scope. After a few more seconds, Silver noticed something odd in the diagnostic array.

  "CP Hadley, Chief, is everyone seeing this?"

  "What is that, Specialist Viper?" Aliyaah asked.

  "Viper?" Silver said. "You there?" There was no reply, just static. "Jaz, come in, or I'm going to winch you up." Silver had never seen the array lit up like this, and she didn't like not knowing what she was seeing.

  She studied the scope's feed closely, and watched as a bright cluster slowly coalesced at the edge of the image. It was almost as if whatever was down there was gathering together to form some kind of organic mass.

  "Antara, is that thing moving?" Aliyaah asked, incredulous.

  "I… " Silver knew it must be, but wanted to believe it was a malfunction with the Lidar.

  "Winch her up now," Aliyaah said, her voice shaking. "Viper, get out of there. That's an order."

  Silver cranked the handle to reel Jaz back in. When Jaz still didn't answer, Silver turned the crank faster still, not wanting to injure her by banging her against the blades as she hauled her up, but wary of how quickly the image from the Lidar was changing. The tether was still taut, but something was in the machine with Jaz, and she hadn't responded for at least a minute.

  Aliyaah and Hadley yelled for Silver to get Jaz out, then they all fell silent at the sound of the radiological alarm, accompanied by a sudden flash on the Lidar feed, showing a huge organic signature. The screen went blank. No static, no voices, no more light, just the sound of the alarm for a couple more seconds, and then silence.

  "Jaz?" Silver said softly, "You there?" There was no longer any resistance as Silver turned the crank. The tether twisted itself up towards her, and Silver saw the carabiners dancing free on the ends.

  "What just happened?" Aliyaah's voice cut back in. "What was that? Do you have her, Antara?"

  "No, Chief. She's gone. The tether… came free somehow." Silver wondered for a moment if Jaz had unhooked it herself, and then her thoughts were interrupted as the refiner groaned, as if the blades were about to start turning. "Cut the power!" Silver shouted, "Turn it off!"

  "It is off!" Aliyaah yelled back.

  Silver grabbed at the carabiners, thinking for a second that she should go in after Jaz. Her palms blistered, and she dropped the carabiners. The metal was scorching hot.

  The metallic groaning stopped abruptly and a fresh plume of hot red dust soared up from the chasm of the refiner. Silver stepped back and covered her eyes until it dispersed. She turned to look at the scope's feed. The screen was blank. There was no signal, and no sign of Jaz or the miner. The machine was silent, dead silent. Jaz had vanished into the darkness.

  Four

  "Come on, people. I want this thing stripped down, now!" Aliyaah clapped her hands and watched the crew surround the refiner and begin dismantling the machine. She turned to Silver; "This is so bizarre."

  Silver nodded. After she had descended the platform to rejoin the rest of the crew, the station's Commander had arrived. He pulled aside Hadley, the Chief, and Silver. When none of them could provide an explanation for Jaz's disappearance, the Commander had expressed his displeasure in no uncertain terms. He immediately ordered that the refiner be decommissioned and taken apart so they could ascertain why it had malfunctioned and what had happened to Jaz and the missing miner. "Something happened out at the quarry," he said, "and you're going to figure it out so it doesn't happen again."

  By mid-morning they had removed the exoskeleton of the refiner, exposing its bones and the inner wall of the processing chamber. The titanium plates were wrapped in carbon composite fibres and soldered together at such an extreme temperature that it would be an enormous feat to cut them apart. They were designed to withstand the pressure of the liquid helium that was used to power the rotating blades inside the propellant tanks.

  Aliyaah cleared all crew members from the hangar, except for Silver and the two engineers tasked with breaking the seals. The Commander had asked to be updated as soon as they found anything, but Aliyaah had nothing to report.

  While the men worked, Silver discussed her concerns about the helium with Aliyaah. If there had been a rupture in the helium tank, that could have caused a massive explosion inside the refiner as the pressurised liquid vaporised. Anyone caught in that cloud of helium gas would have frozen or suffocated rapidly. An explosion could explain the disappearance of Jaz and the miner, but it didn't explain the strange organic signature they had seen on the scope, or the heat and radiation they had detected. A rupture in the tank was the only hypothesis they had that made any kind of sense, though.

  Aliyaah had been thinking along the same lines, hence her clearing of the hangar. If another tank ruptured while the machinery was so exposed, it could easily cause an explosion and send shards of metal flying out at them at an incredibly high speed, not to mention the frostbite and other risks of exposure.

  Silver and Aliyaah looked over at the engineers, in full protective gear, working on the seals. Silver checked the visor on her helmet and took a step back, gently pulling Aliyaah with her.

  After several more hours, the younger engineer turned to face Silver and Aliyaah and said, "We're in, Chief."

  "OK. Let's ease this side off and see what we've got." Aliyaah directed Silver, who climbed into the cab of the floor operated crane. She moved the hoist chain over to the refiner and the engineers attached the hook to the inner wall. Silver waited for the men to stand aside and then began to retract the chain as smoothly as possible to detach the giant sheet of metal. The crane struggled against the weight, and Silver shot Aliyaah a look.

  "I'm going to have to give it everything, Chief."

  Aliyaah nodded, and moved even farther back from the refiner, taking the two engineers with her.

  Silver put the crane in reverse and quickly retracted the hoist chain. The metal wrenched away from the refiner, tipping toward the cab where she was seated. She gunned the crane and backed away. When the dust cleared, she jumped out of the cab and ran over to the refiner, to join the Chief and the two engineers.

  "I thought this thing had been cleared
out at the site?" Aliyaah said, and Silver saw that there was about two feet of red dust covering the bottom of the refiner.

  "It was, Chief," said the younger engineer. "We made sure to clear it straight away, so there was a way out through the chute."

  "So why is there all this material there now?" Aliyaah asked.

  "Maybe it got jammed?" Silver said. "That might explain the heat build-up too. If the machinery was trying to turn and there was something stuck, that's a lot of energy." She stepped forward and climbed onto the chassis of the refiner. Silver picked up a handful of the red dust and let it run through the fingers of her glove. Some larger particulate seemed to shimmer. Silver wondered at first if what she was seeing were ice crystals, caused by some escaped helium, but the ambient temperature wasn't cold enough for whatever this was to have stayed frozen. Silver held out her hand to Aliyaah. "Chief, what does this look like to you?"

  Aliyaah stepped up and then crouched down to examine the dust for herself. "What the -?"

  Silver used the microscope on her visor to look more closely at the dust. "It's filament-like. It must have been in the rock from the quarry."

  "Get a sample, and get it tested," Aliyaah said to the second engineer. "Make sure you use an RMC," she said, gesturing at the containers for radioactive material, and then tapping the blackened radiation detection strip on the outside of her suit. "And, Specialist, this is classified. Got it?"

  The engineer nodded and turned to retrieve an RMC.

  "I'll inform the Commander," Silver said, but Aliyaah put a hand on Silver's arm and shook her head.

  In a voice low enough that the men couldn't hear her, Aliyaah said, "Report your findings to CP Hadley."

  Silver nodded, curious as to what Aliyaah was thinking. She barely had any reason to interact with the Commander as the Chief was her direct supervisor. She saw the Commander on occasion in the mess hall and passed him in the corridors. He was every inch the typical gruff alpha male military type, and Silver remembered him being stern and distant, and not the best of lecturers, at the academy.

  Aliyaah pulled Silver aside as the younger engineer filled the RMC with a sample of the dust and the crystalline substance.

  "Between you and me, Antara, the Commander hasn't been feeling at his best since he went out to oversee the quarry expansion two sols ago. Maybe it's radiation sickness. Or the stress of the power outages over the last sevensol. All I know is that the CP is doing a double shift so the Commander can get some rest. Let's not disturb him until we have something concrete to report."

  "Yes, Chief," Silver said, giving Aliyaah a curious look. It wasn't like Aaliyah to mention a fellow officer's state of mind, and Silver could only imagine that she must be more concerned about the Commander than her carefully chosen words let on.

  Aliyaah gave Silver a grim smile, then walked over to check on the engineer collecting the sample.

  "Chief," he said quietly as he looked at the rock through the microscope on his visor, "I minored in geochemistry, and this is weird."

  Silver and Aliyaah looked at each other, and Aliyaah said slowly, "What are you thinking, Specialist?" She crouched down beside the engineer and looked at the rock in the RMC.

  "I think we should get the lab to test mineral composition, and… for any organic material. It's just that…" the engineer paused, then stood up and turned to face Aliyaah and Silver. "So, these look like selenite crystals, or aragonite, or tridymite, maybe, but there's something off about them. I just can't place it. And, anyway, you only get those in areas of extreme heat, like in a volcano. And there's no volcano out at the quarry site, not that we know of. The nearest one is Atlas mons."

  "Could the explosions from the quarry have caused this kind of crystal formation?" Aliyaah asked.

  "I can't say for sure, but it's pretty unlikely, Sir. They just don't form that quickly. Not usually."

  "So, these must be from the north end of the quarry."

  "Unless…" the engineer hesitated.

  "Spit it out, Specialist," Aliyaah said.

  "Well, we don't really know what happened in the refiner. Just now, I mean. Specialist Viper just vanished." The Specialist stared into the exposed interior of the machine.

  "And now we have this strange, potentially organic material," Aliyaah said, mostly to herself.

  "And there was that intense burst of heat," Silver said, and held out her hands, turning them over to show the carabiner-shaped burns on her palms.

  Five

  Silver, Aliyaah, and the remaining engineer worked for several hours, carefully sifting through the material at the bottom of the refiner. They quickly located what remained of the missing headset, which was bent and buckled as if subjected to intense heat.

  Silver kept expecting to come across bone remnants or a shred of Jaz's orange overalls hiding in the red dust. In many ways, she hoped that they wouldn't find anything, but they needed answers and Hadley was pressuring them to provide an explanation for what had happened on the hangar deck. During one of several check-ins, Silver overheard Hadley tell Aliyaah that the Commander was running a fever and seemed delusional. He remained in his quarters, and Silver got the impression that this wasn't entirely voluntary on the Commander's part.

  Silver and Aliyaah initially focused their search around the spot where they had found the headset, carefully filtering the dust for signs of ash, bone, or anything else organic. Aside from some additional crystals and pieces of misshapen metal that could have come from Jaz's suit, they had found nothing of note. They extended the search outward and were close to completing a first pass of all the dust in the refiner. The engineer ran everything through a secondary scanner, putting into a lead-lined box any material that showed signs of radiation. The crystals and metallic pieces were the only things they found that were larger than grains of sand and these were localised to a half metre zone around the misshapen headset.

  This kind of refiner was exquisitely designed to process the quarried rock into a fine particulate for mineral extraction. Silver thought about the two similar refiners still operating out at the quarry. The CP had decided to let them keep working. After all, the colony needed an almost constant supply of new material to function, and having idle miners wandering the station would probably create more problems than they were already facing.

  All the workers wore suits that protected them from the level of radiation they had detected in these small crystal samples, but Silver still worried that there may be larger sources of radiation on-site. If, indeed, the crystals had originated at the quarry. When Silver spoke to Hadley earlier, he agreed that the miners should exercise extreme caution as they continued their work, but Silver remained troubled by the idea that the crystals had somehow formed inside the refiner while Jaz was in there. The thought made Silver's stomach lurch, and she shivered.

  "You should take a break," Aliyaah said, surprising Silver by touching her lightly on the back. "Go get some coffee and something to eat. There's not much else we can do here."

  "That'd be good, thanks," Silver said, getting unsteadily to her feet and dusting off her suit. "My shift starts soon anyway." She smiled and sighed in rapid succession.

  Aliyaah waved her hand dismissively. "I'll get someone to cover your shift. Now that Rover Four is back up and running, we'll be OK without you for a while. You should get some rest."

  "It has been a hell of a morning, Chief," Silver said. "I'm not sure it's even really sunk in yet."

  "Viper?"

  "Yeah."

  Aliyaah put her hand on Silver's arm and opened her mouth to say something but couldn't find any words.

  "We weren't really friends. But in a place like this, well..." Silver looked up as she felt tears forming. She didn't want to cry in front of the Chief, but the weight of the situation was finally beginning to hit now that she wasn't focused on a specific task.

  "She was a fantastic engineer," Aliyaah said, "and I heard she could be a lot of fun, off-duty." Aliyaah smiled. "She'll certainl
y be missed out at the quarry."

  Silver managed a smile, and placed her hand over Aliyaah's for a moment.

  "Go get some rest. I'll let you know if we find anything else," Aliyaah said, then added, "Make sure you take your anti-radiation meds, Sil."

  Silver nodded and turned towards the airlock.

  Silver stepped into the airlock and began the decontamination procedure. She was glad of the chance to take off the EV suit and was looking forward to climbing into her bunk for an hour or two.

  Decontamination only took a few minutes, but the time quickly added up when switching between sensitive zones like the biodomes and refinery. It would be years before there was greater freedom of movement across the colony.

  Back on Earth, the Planetary Protection Agency had been established to oversee the use of vapor disinfectants, radiation, and intense heat to sterilise everything that would land on the planet, with the notable exception of the humans. The PPA had been an important part of ensuring that the equipment brought to the colony did not contaminate the planet. If they found signs of life, past or present, in the dust or water on the red planet, they wanted to be able to rule out contamination from Earth.

  On the planet itself, they employed technology like BILI - the Bio-Indicator Lidar Instrument - to almost continually search for life. BILI had been Cooper's main project when she worked at NASA, and although Silver had never fully grasped how the device worked, she had no doubt that if she spent enough time with BILI and the data she'd understand it. While Cooper had been working on BILI, Silver had known better than to become too involved. It was Cooper's project, and they each needed to have their passions and to feel like the expert on something.

  The way Cooper had explained it, BILI used pulses of ultraviolet light from two lasers to detect organic material in dust plumes. The glow from the particles and their response to the laser light provided information on the size of the particles, their age, and their makeup.