Colony

by Leigh Matthews

  He angled his light to get a clearer view and then recoiled, banging his helmet on the underside of the SEV. A glove was tangled around one of the hydraulic legs of the vehicle, and for a second it looked as if someone was hiding in the wheel arch, squeezing the cables. He sat up again and reached toward the glove, seeing that it had been used to hold something in place. He pried it loose and the object fell into his lap. It was an RMC, filled with what looked like a fibrous substrate coated with a film of the same material he had seen in the biodome.

  He was tempted to toss it aside, but was wary of breaking the RMC. It had already been jangled about in the wheel arch.

  The RMC couldn't have ended up there by accident, and it had been Aliyaah's team that had fixed the SEV after it got jammed on its return from Octavia. Perhaps he had been wrong to trust her.

  Giving himself a moment to think, he realised that anyone with access to the SEV could have planted the RMC, including the doctor and the missing engineers. He remembered what Aliyaah had said about the doctor's experiments and shuddered. This must be part of a deliberate attempt to spread the organism throughout the colony. If the SEV hadn't stopped, he would have driven the RMC right to Octavia. As he looked at the container, he saw that the seal was close to being compromised.

  Carefully, Hadley used his foot to push the RMC to the edge of the switchback before kicking it off the side of the crater, back towards the biodome. As it disappeared from his view, he looked down into the valley below. With his back to Octavia, Hadley didn't see the light slowly making its way towards him.

  FORTY-FOUR

  When Hadley got back into the SEV he did a quick system check, toggled the brake switch without thinking, and then cautiously started the vehicle. The SEV jumped forward and he figured that the RMC had been the cause of the vehicle's sudden stop.

  The radiological alarm sounded again and he scanned the landscape as he crept forward. There was nothing unusual in visual range and the alarm fell silent after a few seconds. He hoped it was just a residual radiation signature from the RMC, and not a sign that there was other undesirable cargo aboard the SEV. He had checked the other wheel arches as best he could before getting back into the vehicle, and had checked the interior, but found nothing else untoward.

  He steered the vehicle slowly and carefully along the edge of the ridge. The short-lived dust storm had moved enough sand around to obscure the tracks left by Aliyaah on her earlier journey to Octavia, so he aimed the SEV towards one of the flattest spots on the ridge, from where he could begin his descent down the crater wall.

  He focused on the screen that showed the ground immediately ahead of the SEV. His oxygen was running out, but he couldn't risk going any faster, nor could he ration his supply to stretch it out. Any cognitive impairment would increase the likelihood of him making a mistake and tipping the SEV down the side of the crater. His only option was to practice slow, regular breaths, keep physical exertion to a minimum, and go as fast as caution allowed.

  In the dim light, he neared the beginning of the route down off the ridge to Octavia. He was about to turn when an alarm sounded. The low oxygen alert had been sounding for several minutes and for a second he conflated the two. When he realised it was the radiological alarm again, and that it hadn't stopped, he slowed the SEV and scanned the landscape.

  The monitors in the SEV showed numerous hotspots amid a cloud of low level radiation just over the side of the crater. The edges of the radiation appeared to be growing closer and the hotspots kept vanishing and reappearing elsewhere. The effect was that of a high tide heading his way, with wave after wave rising and falling.

  He was at a loss. It didn't seem that he could outrun whatever was heading his way, but he had no choice. He had to try to get to Octavia. He glanced at the oxygen monitor and saw he had just a few minutes left. The journey to the ship would take too long. He couldn't make it, either in the SEV or on foot.

  He transferred the remainder of the SEV's oxygen supply to the tank on his suit and then climbed out of the SEV one last time. As he thought about the choices that had brought him to this point, he felt satisfied that there was little he would have done differently, if he had the chance. Despite its dusty, rust-red, inhospitable landscape, Mars had begun to feel like home in the last few months. Perhaps it was sheer arrogance to think humans could turn this place into a refuge from the changing climate on Earth. Perhaps his energies and talents would have been better employed back on that planet. Still, he had grown used to looking at the Earth from afar, and thinking of his life there as part of his history, not his future.

  Hadley sat down on the lip of the crater, facing north. Biodome Three rose out of the ground below him. He had never seen it at dusk, and this was no ordinary sunset.

  The surface of the dome was barely visible now. It was covered by a mass of shimmering filaments. The crystals caught the last of the sollight and channelled the light from the inner dome, creating a dazzling display. If this was where his life would end, he thought, at least he had a spectacular view.

  He realised he had been holding his breath. He exhaled and watched as the phosphorescence spread beyond the dome, creeping up the side of the crater towards him. He inhaled slowly, savouring the feel of the air before his oxygen ran out and he became frantic, hypoxic, and confused. He knew the feeling from decades of flying fighter jets, but that didn't mean he wasn't scared. He took another breath, shallower this time, then shallower again until he was still.

  When Aliyaah reached the SEV it was sitting atop the ridge with the hatch open and no sign of Hadley inside.

  She looked down at the ground and saw the imprints of his boots, slowly being covered over by dust. She followed the footprints to the edge of the crater and as the dust cleared for a moment she saw him sitting upright, his suit glowing orange in the last light of the sol. His eyes were closed, his body slumped forward, propped up only by the stiffness of the suit.

  Working quickly, she connected the oxygen tank to Hadley's Primary Life Support Subsystem and lay him down on his back. She flooded his EV suit with oxygen and accessed the interface for his med pump. When his heart stopped, the interface protections automatically fell away and Aliyaah used the system to give him a shot of adrenaline before sending a current of electricity through his system.

  Hadley's body jerked but his heart didn't start. Aliyaah tried again, sending a jolt via the circuitry surrounding his skin which reported his vital signs. This time, his body jerked and his eyes shot open. He took a breath, stared up at her, and began to gulp down air.

  She helped him sit up and took a few breaths with him to help him regulate his breathing. As she watched him, she saw a change in the light reflected in his visor and turned to look at the biodome. There was an explosion of blinding light. A sudden expansion of the phosphorescence that burst high above the dome, then began to fall silently, like radioactive snow.

  Aliyaah pulled Hadley to his feet and dragged him over the edge of the crater. The sky grew dark above them, filled with the material that had erupted from the giant cloud of light.

  Together, they scrambled down the side of the crater towards Octavia.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Ansen watched from the top of Octavia as the dusky sky filled with a sudden eerie light. He could only assume that there had been some sort of explosion at Biodome Three: an explosion that had released millions of spores into the atmosphere, reflecting the last of the sol's sunlight.

  It was just over an hour since Aliyaah had left the ship, and Ansen was leading the crew through one last round of checks. He felt confident that they were almost ready start the countdown to launch. Most of the crew had already settled into the sleeping units, with just five essential personnel remaining on duty. If Hadley, Aliyaah, and Silver returned, three of those men would likely spend most of the journey in the cryochambers with the others.

  When the biodome blew, he felt his body flood with adrenaline and his thoughts become startlingly clear. He began to see how
mechanical his actions had been since Aliyaah had left Octavia. As he looked around at the men nearest to him he recognised the same sudden realisation in their expressions. They had also paused for a moment, as if jolted awake by the explosion of light. He met the eye of a nearby engineer, and the man quickly looked away. Another engineer did the same, as if they had been caught sleepwalking on the job.

  He tried to regulate his breathing and regain the sense of calm he had felt just moments before, but it was gone. The men began to talk among themselves, and the chatter seemed deafening. He realised that they had all been working in silence for the better part of an hour. There had been no need to vocalise their thoughts. Every man seemed to have known exactly what the others were thinking, and what should have taken them hours had been done in less than half the time. He knew enough not to credit this efficiency to his leadership skills. Something, or someone, had been steering them all, as if they were mere rovers.

  While this apparent invasion of his mind made him furious, he couldn't help but appreciate that in just under an hour they would be ready to go. He had a sudden, startling recollection of having spoken to CapCom. Communications with Earth had been restored while he and the men were in their strange stupor, and he had been given the go ahead for launch, or had he?

  Not quite believing his memory, he checked the communications log and saw that there was a recording of the initial message from Mission Support. He replayed the transmission, with Mission Support urgently requesting updates. They ordered everyone remaining on the planet to board Octavia and recommended that non-essential crew and civilians be placed in cryo.

  As he listened to the outgoing message, Ansen shook his head. It was clearly his voice, updating CapCom on the situation on the planet. Another transmission was timestamped seventeen minutes later and gave him the all-clear for launch, with some alterations to Hadley's proposed telemetry. They were to launch on the understanding that once they neared Earth they would have to stay in orbit until the Planetary Protection Agency was confident that the infection had been eradicated and posed no threat to the billions of people below.

  It was still possible that they would all die in space, even if they got Octavia safely off the ground. There was no guarantee they would be cleared to land on Earth, or that NASA would send resupply ships to them in orbit. And that was assuming that they even made it back home. They had months of space travel ahead of them, limited supplies, and an aggressive organism on board, one that had already killed nearly everyone who had originally come to Mars on this mission.

  He replayed CapCom's last message, received just ten minutes earlier. He needed to reassure himself that they really had approved the launch. He looked across the array of green lights on the cockpit control panel and saw that almost all systems had been checked and triple checked. They would soon be good to go, and he dearly hoped they would be launching on Hadley's command, not his.

  As his thoughts returned to Hadley and the Chief, he remembered the RMC containers. The Chief had retrieved them from Octavia and handed them to him for disposal before she left. He hadn't questioned her at the time, but it dawned on him now that someone must have planted them on board. The containers had been stuffed with what he guessed was a substrate inoculated with the organism. The Chief had told him… no, a voice in his head had told him to put the RMCs in one of the wagons, and to move it back down the walkway before nicking the seal of each capsule, just enough that the elements would eventually break them open, exposing the organism to background radiation and fuelling its spread.

  From his seat in the cockpit, he could see the wagon on the walkway, with its dangerous contents. It made no sense, but he didn't have time now to contemplate his actions. He had to do one final check of the ship.

  As he climbed down through Octavia's belly he heard sounds coming from the medical unit. There was no reason for any of the men to be in there, so he moved as quietly as he could before turning the corner to look into the medical bay.

  One of the engineers who should have been in cryo was instead organising an array of medications. There was a vial of blood in a rack in front of him and a selection of plant matter, presumably left over samples preserved from the on-board kitchen garden they had maintained during the flight. There were also several samples that had already been processed. The man looked up as Ansen entered the unit. His expression was one of confusion, as if he, too, had the feeling that he hadn't quite been in control of his actions over the previous hour.

  "What is going on here?" Ansen asked.

  "I had an idea, Sir. Antimicrobials, a broad-spectrum cocktail, combined with an extract from the Butterfly Pea," the man said.

  "And the blood?"

  The man reached out slowly, as if seeing the samples for the first time. Then he blinked and touched his arm. His sleeve was rolled up to the black CMO armband that indicated he was a Crew Medical Officer, and there was a Band-Aid over what Ansen figured was a fresh mark from a blood draw.

  "I, I guess I ran some tests," the man said, looking at Ansen as if he had been caught poisoning their water supply. Ansen nodded. He had a pretty good idea of how the man felt, not quite being able to own these actions that seemed like they had stemmed from intuition.

  "Are both vials yours?" Ansen asked, spotting a second vial labelled differently.

  "It's the Chief's. She started genome sequencing before she left the ship."

  Ansen wondered why the Chief would have left a sample of her blood. Then he realised that it was a contingency; the Chief wasn't sure that she and Hadley would make it back.

  "The data is set up to go straight to Mission Support, Sir. They'll know what to do with it. At least, well, I think that's the idea," the CMO said, and Ansen nodded at him.

  "And the medications? Are those for all the men?"

  "Yes, Sir," he said, then added, after a brief pause, "But we might have to quarantine the Chief in cryo. She's the only woman left on the crew, and, I don't know why I know this, but there's something special about her, something that can help us figure out how to manage this thing."

  Ansen considered this, and wiped his hand over his eyes. He also had the sense that the Chief held the answers to controlling this organism: not necessarily killing it, but working with it somehow. This idea, while lodged in his mind, seemed alien to him, and as his thoughts grew clearer, he began to think that it was downright dangerous to even consider not simply eradicating the infection.

  "We can decide, with the Commander, what to do with the Chief when they get back," he said. "In the meantime, I'll override the ports on the cryochambers so you can distribute the meds to the men," he said, hoping that at least one of the drugs, or the combination, could keep the organism in check until they figured out how to kill the damn thing.

  "And the children, Sir," the CMO said.

  Ansen blinked, remembering Sofia and Ari. "Is it safe?" he asked.

  "I, I don't know, Sir. But, it's got to be better than the alternative, right?"

  He considered this, then shook his head. "Let's see how the others respond to treatment. If it looks good, we'll give the kids the drugs then. Their exposure has been limited, and they're not going to have high levels of testosterone in their systems. They might be fine for a while yet."

  The CMO nodded, and Ansen left him to work, taking the long way back to the cockpit, through each cryo room.

  When he reached the cockpit, Ansen took his seat and saw that all systems were now ready for launch. There was still no sign of the Chief or the Commander.

  A visual scan of the crater's ridge confirmed that the SEV hadn't moved in some time. With the light floating above and around Biodome Three it was hard now to make out anything smaller than the SEV, so he opened a line to the Chief and was about to ask for an update when he spotted a light moving rapidly in the direction of Octavia. Through the gloaming, he could just make out two figures, running, stumbling, and then rolling down the side of the crater, just ahead of a growing cloud of swirlin
g dust and spores.

  Ansen threw off his harness and clambered down through the ship to the lower airlock, knowing there was no one down there to open the hatch.

  Aliyaah and Hadley reached the ship just as Biodome Two exploded to the west. The spores dazzled with light as they shot into the sky, spreading out in the direction of the cloud already created by Biodome Three. The spores fell slowly, like snow catching the everchanging light of the aurora borealis. The top of the ridge was now covered in a fine layer of white filaments that clung to the planet's surface, taking root.

  When he reached the lower airlock, Ansen cranked the handle to release the interior door, ignoring the shouts of the crew in his headset. Closing the door behind him, he ran to the exterior hatch, flipped down his visor and began spinning the handle. He heard the seal release and pushed open the door to see Hadley standing on the other side. The Chief was hidden in shadow a few steps behind the Commander.

  "Sir," Ansen said, laughing with relief. He reached out his hand and the Commander took it, glad for the help. Ansen hauled him up into the airlock then reached out again to the Chief. His gloved hand hovered in the air and then he recoiled. Aliyaah had taken a step back and was suddenly illuminated from above by the cloud of phosphorescent spores.

  Her visor was open and her face shimmered with light. The Commander moved Ansen aside and put out his hand. He nodded at Aliyaah and said, "Come with us."