As her thoughts looped around again, Silver rubbed her eyes and snapped herself out of the dangerous spiral. She would type up her report about the incident in the hangar. Then, she would shower and head to the mess hall for some hot food. As much as she hated the idea of having to make small talk with colleagues, the thought of eating another protein bar was too much to handle right now.
Nine
When Silver got to the mess hall she was surprised to find it empty. While it was almost three in the morning, there were usually a few people just coming off shift or who were having trouble sleeping. The cats-eyes and melatonin pumps helped with the adjustment to a Mars sol which was forty minutes longer than a day on Earth, but sleep still evaded Silver some nights and she knew she wasn't alone in that. In the early hours, she often encountered a few bleary-eyed crew members hunched over a cup of steaming tea, willing themselves back to sleep, or making the most of the extra awake time by writing reports.
The relative silence meant that Silver could hear the hum of the refrigeration units in the back. She listened for the sound of pots clanging in the kitchen, but heard nothing to suggest that there was anyone else in the mess hall. As she scanned the room, Silver noticed a chair lying on its side, and a couple of tables holding half a dozen trays, their food half eaten. She righted the chair and her stomach lurched at the sight of congealed porridge in one of the abandoned bowls. The crew was usually tidier than this.
Silver walked past the tables towards the large whiteboard by the serving station. She had hoped that the menu would already be up for breakfast, but the board still showed last night's offerings. The veggie chilli caught her eye and Silver's belly grumbled. The idea of a warm bowl of spicy chilli made her feel a little more awake, so she called out to the kitchen. There was no response, so she leaned further over the counter and called again.
When there was still no answer, Silver lifted the counter and walked into the kitchen. Unless his schedule had changed, Hardeep was supposed to be working the mess hall. He and Silver had recently become friends after discovering a shared love of obscure 2020's math rock. They traded recommendations whenever their shifts coincided, and Silver figured that Hardeep wouldn't mind if she served herself. He was probably on a quick vape break; something he'd do when there was no one waiting to be served.
The kitchen was empty and quiet, but for the remainders of a pot of chilli simmering on the stove top. Silver picked up a small grey bowl and started walking towards the pot. A flash of light made her stop and stand still for a moment. She turned to look toward the far wall, where the light seemed to have originated, but she couldn't see a likely source. Silver waited for a few seconds and then there it was again: The reflection of something flickering intermittently in the aluminium door of the storage unit at the end of the central island.
"Hello?" Silver said. "Is someone there?" She took a couple of steps forward and said softly, "Hardeep, is that you?"
"Shhh, he'll hear you." The voice was quiet, insistent, but with a tremolo of fear.
"Hardeep?" Silver whispered, moving closer.
"Get over here and get down," Hardeep said and reached up to grab Silver's hand, pulling her to the floor.
He was sitting with his back against the end of the centre island, a huge kitchen knife trembling in his hand.
"What the -" Silver began, but Hardeep shushed her, wide-eyed.
"Did you see him?" Hardeep whispered, peering into the hazy reflection in the metal cabinet opposite.
"Who?"
"The Commander."
"Why? What's going on?" Silver asked, more confused than ever.
"He's unhinged," Hardeep said, nodding furiously at Silver. "He's lost it. I'm serious."
"I don't understand. Did the Commander do something?"
Hardeep snorted. Then, slowly, he pointed a shaky finger at the door to the freezer, which Silver hadn't noticed was ajar. Cold air was pouring out and condensing into clouds in the warmth of the kitchen. The cloud blocked her view of the freezer's interior for a second or two, but then it cleared for a moment and Silver gasped as she saw an outstretched hand, still and bloodied, lying on the white tile.
She started to stand up but Hardeep pulled her back down and Silver turned to look at him. "Who is that?" she asked. "Are they -"
"Dead? Yeah."
Silver sat back down and slumped against the cabinet.
"That's Anderson," Hardeep said. "He tried to tackle the Commander but he just wouldn't stop."
"I don't understand," Silver said, unable to stop looking at her colleague's cold, dead hand. It seemed to be reaching out to her, but there was clearly nothing she could do to help him now. She closed her eyes and then turned to Hardeep and said, "Tell me exactly what happened."
"The Commander lost it. That's what happened."
"From the beginning, Hardeep. I need you to start at the beginning."
"OK. OK. So, everyone was just eating, right? It was a totally normal night. Pretty quiet, but normal. Then the Commander came in, and he was sort of mumbling to himself. Like, he didn't really seem to know where he was or even who he was. He started screaming all kinds of things. About being back at the academy, like, thirty years ago, and how it was too hot in here and he was burning up. Then the radiologic alarm went off and he just, he just went ballistic. He pushed right past me and Andersen, yelling about how he couldn't breathe. He wanted to get into the freezer. Like, maybe he thought it was the storm shelter or something. Anyway, Anderson followed him and tried to calm him down, but the Commander... well." Hardeep covered his mouth and shuddered, then gestured with the knife. "There are lots of weapons in a kitchen, Antara. Like, a lot of bad shit can go down real fast."
"Where's everyone else?" Silver asked. "Didn't anyone help Anderson?"
Hardeep shook his head. "There wasn't time. And we were all terrified that the Commander would open one of the ports. He was shouting about how we were all going to die because the air was too thick. I saw what he did to Anderson and I, I.... It was too late to stop him, so I just hid. Everyone else just took off, I think. I heard one of the officers say they were going to alert Hadley and the others wanted to get suited up."
Silver was surprised that no alarms were sounding and there was no sign of Hadley. She risked peering around the island to see if the Commander had returned, but she and Hardeep were alone. "When did this happen?" she asked.
Hardeep tapped a spot on his wrist and Silver saw the glow of the time readout below his skin. "About twenty minutes ago, maybe," he said. "I've just been sitting here. I don't think I can move." He clutched at Silver's hand and blinked at her. "I mean, what do we even do? He has the codes to everything. Even if we seal ourselves off in a shelter, he can still disable life support, right? And if what he said was true, that we're all going to die -"
Silver cut him off. "We're not all going to die, Hardeep. The Commander is sick. He's running a fever and is delusional is all. We'll find him and figure out what's going on. Restrain or sedate him if necessary. If his delusions lead him to try to disable life support, don't worry, there are numerous obstacles in his way. He needs Hadley's codes for a start."
Hardeep exhaled deeply and his shoulders slumped as Silver took another look around the kitchen and stood up slowly. There was still no one else there, so she pulled Hardeep to his feet and took the knife from his hand, placing it on the island. "You'll only hurt yourself, or me, with that," she said. She gave him a thin smile and added, "Save it for the carrots."
Silver walked to the door of the kitchen and looked into the mess hall. It was also empty, but she heard a shout in the corridor outside. She gestured to Hardeep to join her but he wouldn't move, so she made her way to the door by herself and pressed the button to slide it open. She quickly moved to the side of the door, her back against the wall, and listened. There were several sets of footsteps running in the direction of the laboratory and someone shouted, "What the hell is going on?"
Silver checked the corridor
in both directions and then ran as quietly as she could towards the laboratory. On her way, someone tripped the station-wide alarm, which would cause all crew members and civilians to suit up or get into a shelter. In almost one hundred and eighty sols they had only ever used the system a half dozen times, to run drills to make sure everyone knew what to do in the event of a massive solar storm or some kind of disaster where the levels of radiation would be too much for the magnetic shield that surrounded the station.
Silver knew that she should head back to her quarters, or to the hangar airlock, which was closer, but she felt compelled to keep running towards the lab. As she rounded the next corner, something hit her square in the chest and she fell to the floor, winded.
"Oh god, oh god. Sil?"
Silver came to and looked up to see the Chief leaning over her. Aliyaah was biting her lip, her nostrils flared and her eyes wide.
Silver tried to speak, but she was having trouble breathing. Holding her hand to her chest, she gulped in some air, then coughed as Aliyaah pulled her upright and looked nervously over her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Sil. But we've got to get to the SEV, right now."
"Did the Commander do something?" Silver managed to sputter as Aliyaah helped her to her feet. "I think he killed Anderson."
Aliyaah closed her eyes for half a second and nodded. "Coulter too. He's lost his mind. It's not just a fever, Sil."
"Where is he now?" Silver asked as the two of them began to move towards the airlock and the Space Exploration Vehicle.
The SEV was closer to the mess hall than anything else that could shield them from the galactic cosmic rays and the effects of a solar storm. Silver wondered for a moment how she had forgotten that the SEV was there. She used to know the station's schematics down to the number of panels in a hallway. She silently reprimanded herself for getting complacent. It was vital to remember that she was essentially in a glorified balloon on an inhospitable planet that could kill her in a second, especially if someone popped that balloon in a moment of insanity.
Aliyaah hadn't answered her question about the Commander's whereabouts, so Silver asked again as they reached the pod.
"He was in the east wing," Aliyaah said. "Now he seems to be headed to the civilian wing," Aliyaah added quietly. "Hadley has a team there ready to meet him."
Aliyaah entered the code to access the SEV and they waited what seemed like an eternity before the airlock began to open.
Ten
As soon as Silver and Aliyaah were in the SEV they grabbed headsets and started scanning for communications from anyone else at the station. They were preparing to detach the vehicle from the airlock when they felt a rumble and heard what sounded like a massive explosion.
"Holy shit," Aliyaah said, scrambling to get the clamps loose.
Another explosion rocked the station and Silver's hand shook as she pressed one last button to confirm their release from the dock. The SEV lurched forward and Silver stared out across the Martian landscape. They needed to put some distance between themselves and the station in case the whole thing blew.
"You got this?" Aliyaah asked Silver, who nodded and steered the SEV as quickly and carefully as she could over the rough terrain towards a slight incline to the west. From that vantage point they would be able to see the station, the quarry, and a couple of the biodomes.
Aliyaah switched between communication channels, trying to access the station's internal network to figure out if there was a breach. The intercom crackled and a voice made them both jump.
"This is CP Hadley in the Civilian Wing. Does anyone have eyes on the Commander? Over."
Aliyaah waited, but no one replied. Hadley put out another call, asking for all crew members to respond, stating rank and location. Aliyaah responded right away, identifying herself and asking for a situation report.
Aliyaah asked Hadley to switch to an emergency frequency reserved for commanding officers. While Aliyaah talked to Hadley, Silver monitored their current frequency for any other contacts. Other crew identified themselves and their locations. Everyone was in the west wing, the civilian wing, or in the hangar. No one reported in from the three biodomes, but at this time of night there wouldn't typically be workers at those sites anyway. It was strange that there was no word from anyone at the quarry. The night crew should have been at work and the sol shift refiners often stayed on site between shifts. Silver wondered if there were problems with communication across the colony. She also wondered why no one had reported in from the east wing of the station. When Hadley next spoke, she found out why.
"There was an explosion in the east wing. The east wing is destroyed. I repeat, the east wing is destroyed. All personnel to head to the civilian wing or the hangar. Suit up and stay on this channel."
Another man, a Corporal, reported that they had apprehended the Commander heading towards the civilian wing. He was carrying explosives.
Silver glanced over at Aliyaah, both of them acknowledging that the Commander must have destroyed the east wing.
"Why the hell would he do that?" Silver asked Aliyaah, realising that if she hadn't run into Aliyaah and gone to the SEV she would have continued on to the laboratory, which the Commander seemed to have just blown up.
Hadley contacted Aliyaah again a few minutes later. He used a secure channel and told her to get Silver on the line. The lack of communication with the quarry, and Chief Frederickson, who was in charge of the quarry crew, meant that Silver was now acting third in command.
Hadley informed them that the Commander had been brought to the civilian wing and sedated. "All we can get out of him is that he was trying to destroy something in the lab. Maybe whatever you took from the refiner. He wasn't making a lot of sense even before we sedated him; he was talking about how 'they' got to him first. He's having trouble breathing and his fever has spiked. If we can, we'll put him in cryo to try to get his temperature down. He won't survive long if he stays like this, at least not without serious brain damage."
"Do you think he intended to blow the civilian wing?" Aliyaah asked.
"I believe so. He was carrying enough explosives to compromise the whole station," Hadley said.
Silver brought the SEV almost to the top of the hill, to a place where they would be able to see the quarry. Before they summited, she asked Hadley if he had heard from those crew still out there. He hadn't.
Silver turned the SEV slightly as they crested the hill, and gasped. The quarry was covered by a giant cloud of red dust, but this wasn't a typical dust storm. It looked like the whole area was on fire, but that was impossible given the lack of oxygen. Some sort of massive explosion must have just occurred, as when the dust cloud began to settle there was little remaining of the gargantuan refiners that should have been sitting in the centre of the quarry. The small outpost where the workers took shelter from solar storms was completely destroyed. All the crew who the Commander had selected to keep working would have been killed by such an explosion.
"He might have blown it remotely," Aliyaah said.
"How is that possible?"
"Ordinarily, it wouldn't be. He would've needed codes from Hadley, myself, or Chief Frederickson." Aliyaah paused, then said, "Unless it wasn't the Commander at all. It could have been Frederickson."
"A co-ordinated attack?" Silver said, then shuddered, wondering what would have happened if the Commander had reached the civilian wing without being detained. "He was going to blow it all," she said, mostly to herself.
Aliyaah shook her head. "Maybe. But why? If he wasn't suicidal and actually wanted to get off the planet, he must've known there's no way he could pilot Octavia by himself, even if she's fully fuelled and has enough oxygen for launch. And why would Frederickson sacrifice himself to blow the quarry?"
Aliyaah asked Hadley if the Commander had said anything else about the lab.
"It doesn't make a lot of sense. He's saying that Specialist Viper told him to destroy everything. That the station is infected."
"Jaz?" Silver said, conf
used. "He saw Jaz?"
"This is insane," Aliyaah said, but Silver thought back to the figure standing in the corner of her room when she had woken up earlier. The figure had been wearing a uniform like hers, like the one Jaz had been wearing when she vanished.
Silver knew she should tell Aliyaah what she had seen, and heard, over the past few sols, but something stopped her. Everything in her training told her to confess to Aliyaah, and to Hadley. If she was infected, she had a responsibility to quarantine herself, to try to keep the infection from spreading. But the Chief would think she was losing her mind like the Commander, and if he was right, and the station was infected, Silver couldn't afford to be sedated and restrained. Her thoughts were jumbled, but from the tangle of thoughts emerged a clear inner voice telling her to stay quiet. If she could just stay safe she could work the problem: the mantra the academy aimed to instil in everyone.
"Antara," Aliyaah said, staring out of the back of the SEV. She reached behind her to grab Silver's arm. "Sil, just look at this."
Silver turned around and choked back a cry. The east wing of the station had been ripped apart. There were pieces of metal and plastic strewn across the planet's surface. Some of the debris was twisting in the dust plumes, catching the light, not dense enough to fall, too heavy to float higher, trapped in a desperately slow swirl of purgatory.
The loss of the laboratory meant that a major part of the mission was all but redundant. They had transmitted data to Earth daily since their arrival, but now they had no way to carry out most of the tests they had been sent to perform. The SEV and the rovers could carry out rudimentary tests, but nothing like the lab was capable of.
Aliyaah was asking Hadley for a headcount. The east wing not only housed the laboratory, a dozen or so crew had been assigned quarters there. Given that it was now the early hours of the morning, most of the crew would have been in their bunks when the charges blew.
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