Mercury Going Down

by Brambach, C. S.

  “Hmm, that’s funny.” Said Dave, a small amount of concern creeping into his voice.

  “What’s funny?” I asked, wondering if some worker on the moon had a hangover or a fight with his spouse and in a pissy mood had pushed the wrong button at the wrong time putting the wonk into the chip that was responsible for the glitch that was honking up this drone.

  “This baby was just in for maintenance about a week and a half ago, and the chip, the chip is almost brand new.”

  “Well, let’s see if we can boot this puppy up and get a look see. Inna butt.” Dave cracked up again and went to set the leg’s up on the tool box to spool out the wire connectors to the diagnostics computer inside. I took the end of the cable from him and turned to reach in and undo the cap for the connector port inside the drone, Dave had already removed the protector from the end of the cable, but before hooking up the diagnostic I carefully blew out any dust with a small blast of compressed air from a small can I pulled from my suit belt. As soon as the connector was seated properly I told Dave,

  “OK, boot her up, let’s see what’s frazzlin’ this baby.”

  “View’s up on the suit monitor’s now.” I hit the chin switch in my helmet and the display popped up in front of my eye’s. The data flow seemed fine, but what was that?

  “Hey, do you see what I see Dave?” It looked like a shunt was blocking the flow of data from the central cortex chip to the processor’s that would then stimulate the function center’s...

  “Yup, want me to pop in a replacement?” Dave was already unwrapping a new central cortex chip.

  “Sure, let me pop out the old one.” I slid it out of its slot and put it in my belt pouch and stepped aside so Dave could take care of it. We then ran another diagnostic and once we knew the new chip checked out fine, we packed up the tool chest, replaced the hood, stowed the light array and the tool box and just before we jumped back in the skimmer I flicked the switch on the foremast. It powered up instantly and immediately went back to doing its job, prospecting for the next most likely spot to start a new mine, and possibly, a new settlement. I settled into my seat and Dave shut and sealed the skimmer. As soon as the indicator inside my suit gave me the thumbs up, that atmosphere was re-established inside the skimmer, I unclipped my helmet. The drone was already half way over the horizon as reported by the skimmer’s radar. I switched off the infrared detector and watched it on the radar while Dave powered up the skimmer. I was receiving a call on my implant from my wife. We were out of normal range for implant communication, but the skimmer had a more powerful receiver and transmitter and boosted any signals sent its way to our implants.

  “Yeah babe, how’s work?” I asked with a slight smile.

  “It’s work. What time are you gonna be home tonight, honey?” She asked.

  “Well, let’s see, about two hours back to base, an hour to debrief and process data, stop off for a cold one, right Dave?” I looked over at Dave who was busy programming in our destination into the flight computer’s auto pilot. He looked over at me and grinned. Gave me a thumbs up.

  “About four hours from now baby. Why, what’s up?”

  “Going to cook you a home cooked meal tonight, have some fresh asparagus from the farm, and some chicken breasts in the fridge we need to cook up.” When it came to veggies, that woman could cook like a top chef. I looked askance at Dave. He shrugged.

  “Hey, why not invite Dave and Susan over?” Dave rolled his eyes.

  “Okay, I’ll call Susan up.” She sounded pleased. Score one for the kid.

  “Want me to call you when we get back to base?” She laughed.

  “No, just try not to be too late, OK? Boys?” I had always liked the sound of laughter in her voice. Things had been good the last month, month and a half. Very good. She was painting more, which made her happy, and when she was happy, I got more. Maybe not once a night more, more like twice every other night more. Which made me happy.

  “No problema baby, see you soon.” Cut the connection and pointed out the view shield, straight ahead.

  “You heard the boss Dave, full speed ahead. Inna butt.” Dave giggled almost girlishly.

  “Aye, aye, Captain, full speed ahead.” He almost snapped my neck with his attempt to accelerate to maximum speed in as short a span of time as possible.

  “Hey, I know a short cut, inna butt.” I chuckled and glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.

  “Make all speed, make haste and the shortest time back to port. Make it so Ensign.”

  Wondering, short cut? What fucking short cut? Set controls for the heart of the sun...

  “Going full speed... now Captain. Inna butt.” I chuckled. I pulled up the stats on the drone’s chip in my heads up display. Started back tracking the shunt, or, it actually looked more like a blockage of the data flow. Was it a material defect, or a programming glitch? From the record of the diagnostic tests I ran the chip through various simulations to try and get a handle on the origin of the problem. If we could fix this chip, well and good, but if we couldn’t maybe we could find a way to prevent the same problem from cropping up again. And again. And again.

  “Running the sim’s?” Asked Dave after about twenty-five minutes. He kept glancing at the GPS track on one of his radar screens. By then I had run about a half dozen or so sim’s.

  “Yup. What are you up to over there?” I dimmed my display and took a full on look at him.

  “Just tracking a short straight course as per orders Captain. We had to jink a little, zig and zag a bit to find the bot, it’s locator beacon was giving out erratic signals the last hour we were headed towards it. In fact it was 75 klicks west of where it was supposed to be.” I raised my eyebrows.

  “No indications of it during the diagnostic, was there?” He shook his head.

  “No, it could have been radiation variations that interfered with the signal.”

  “Yeah, it’s a little late to go back and switch it out now.” I looked back over my shoulder, and drew a sharp breath. Light phase. The gravity tide was rippling up behind us.

  “Chased by the dawn.” Said Dave in a hushed voice.

  “Inna butt.” I chimed in. Dave grinned and said,

  “Maybe I can coax another ten k’s an hour out of her.” We accelerated a bit more. I turned around just as the alert sounded.

  “Repulser plate failure in ten seconds.” I was instantly alarmed. The repulser plate was what kept the skimmer floating a safe distance above the surface of the planet, which allowed the propulsion system to move the skimmer along.

  “DAVE, SLOW DOWN!” I shouted before the warning voice said,

  “Repulsor plate failure imminent.” Dave had cut off power to the drive system said,

  “Shit!” As the little voice said,

  “Repulsor plate failure.”

  The world went black.

  I came to in pitch blackness to a head busting headache and an insistent voice warning me...

  “Cabin pressure failure imminent. Cabin pressure failure imminent.” I shook my head a couple times to see if I could dislodge the pain and failing that said,

  “Cab light ON!” The light flickered briefly before coming up at half power. The sight that reached my muddled head confused me. I couldn’t see out the view shield. It appeared we were buried a meter, a meter and a half beneath the surface of the planet. Now my shoulder was giving me grief from where the seat belt had restrained me, and the air bag had obviously deployed, which would account for the headache. The insistent voice.

  “Cabin pressure failure imminent. Cabin pressure failure imminent.” I reached around and found my helmet, found it was undamaged, and clipped it on, then reached behind Dave, found his helmet and determining that it too was undamaged, after pulling him back from the deflated airbag, stuck it on him and secured it. Looked out the view shield at the dirt. The force from our momentum had plowed us almost two meters under the surface. I released my seat belt. Heard the voice again.

  “Cabin pressure f
ailure.” I heard a loud hissing for the briefest of moments. I jacked into the skimmer. Main power was out, but secondary power was still running. Not enough juice to run a full diagnostic, but at least enough to find out what was wrong and what alternatives were available to us. Communication was down. Emergency beacon was out. Environmental integrity was compromised. I looked over my painful shoulder.

  The daylight was coming. If we didn’t get up and out of here soon, we were cooked. Literally.

  I started to shout over the comm link for Dave to wake up. I ordered up a diagnostic of Dave inside his suit and was told he didn’t have a broken neck, but his left clavicle was broken. I started to rap lightly on his helmet.

  “Dave, yoo hoo, Davey boy, wake up. We’re in deep shit here. Wake up. WAKE UP!” I considered reaching over him and shaking him by the left arm, thinking the pain would bring him out of it, but my mean streak isn’t that wide. I took a drink from my suit and took a low grade pain killer for the irritating headache that was really starting to annoy me. I undid his seatbelt and was about to rap on his helmet again when he came to. About an hour had passed...

  “FUCK!” Rang in my ears as he snapped to.

  “Take it easy there big fella. Take some mid grade pain killer, sip a little water and get a grip. I need you clear, cause we’re in it and in it deep.” I said as soothingly as possible.

  “What the fuck happened?” He gasped after following my instructions.

  “The repulser plates failed. You had just cut power to the drive, so we slowed down from like 300, 325 klicks an hour down to like 250, 225 klicks an hour, which may have saved our bacon. I think we plowed under the surface by a couple meters, but there’s daylight out the back window, so now it’s just a question of how do we get out of the skimmer with out doing damage to ourselves. Well more than has been done already.

  Me, I’m just bruised up, but you have a broken collar bone. The suit will help keep it in place. Neither one of us has any major internal injuries to speak of, at least none that the suits can pick up on. We need to get out of here though, cause we’ll be burning daylight and it’ll be burning us too, soon. We can’t stay here, the skimmer cracked and we’ve lost environmental integrity.” The danger we were in hit home instantly.

  “Fuck, we are fucked!” He groaned.

  “Not necessarily.” He reached up a suited hand and touched the view shield above his head, which told me the painkiller was working. He turned toward me awkwardly.

  “You don’t seriously mean...” I shook my head inside the suit.

  “Yup. We can’t hit the ejector button for fear the explosive bolts might ricochet back on us, but if we wait a few minutes, the gravity wave might shake enough of this dirt off that we can open the skimmer and hike back.” I knew inside the suit he was looking at me like I was crazy.

  “Yer outta yer mind bro.”

  “Look, just take it easy, see if you can boot up the comm system, if you can’t, as soon as the gravity tide shakes some of the dirt off of us, we’ll pop this baby open and get a look at the lay of the land.” Giving him something to do, a problem to work, would hopefully keep him from freaking out. I checked out how much time we had left on the suits and grew even more alarmed. We had maybe nine to ten hours of oxygen and power left in each suit. After another half hour the gravity tide waved over us and popped the skimmer out of the surface material that was covering us. The gravity tide ran ahead of the sunrise by only a few kilometers. I hit the ejector switch and the view shield blew up and away from us. A fine shimmer of dust rained down on us slowly in the low gravity.

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” Asked Dave incredulously.

  “Look kid, there’s no atmosphere in the skimmer, and we’ve only about eight to nine hours of oxy left in the suits. The comm boost is down so we’ve no way of contacting the base, and the emergency beacon locator is out as well, so there’s no way they can find us, even if they are out lookin’ for us. Plus, you took a different way back, and we made what, one fifty, almost two hundred klicks back, so we are no where near where we fixed the drone, and with daylight coming there’s no way they’ll be able to find us with infrared. So if we stay here, and they don’t come we’re...”

  “Super fucked.” A dazed tone coming into his voice.

  “Clear, concise, succinct, to the point. Brevity being the soul of wit.” I said.

  We clambered out of the wrecked skimmer and stood for a moment surveying the damaged vehicle. Our shadows raced off to infinity as the sun rose behind us and to our left. I looked over at Dave.

  “Dave, were we pointed directly at the station?” Keeping my mental fingers crossed.

  “Yeah, yup.” I looked down at the now only quarter buried crumpled skimmer. It looked like it had dove straight into the ground. And stuck like a giant lawn dart. I accessed my suit compass and took a fix dead ahead and locked that reading into my suit’s guidance computer memory. We needed to move, the gravity wave preceded the heat wave by just a few minutes and it was already getting really bright.

  “Let’s hit it kid.” It was already getting warm in the suit. I had my suit give me a dose of canabinol.

  “Dave, take a dose of canabinol, it’ll lower your body temp by a degree or two.” My dose hit me like a sledge hammer. Being stoned in a suit can be both wonderful and terrifying at the same time. On one hand you feel all cozy and protected, like you’re still in the womb and on the other hand, you get paranoid and you feel like toothpaste in a tube, wondering when the giant hand of god is gonna squish you out.

  I knew Dave was getting off cause he started to giggle uncontrollably.

  “Take it easy there big fella, try to conserve your oxy for the trip. Forward ho.” I took my first hop of 30 meters. I could have made 50 but I didn’t want to wear myself out too fast. By dead reckoning I figured we had just under 450 kilometers to go.

  Dave overshot me by 25 meters. We started to really roll.

  “DAVE! Don’t get so far ahead, I don’t want to lose contact with you man.” He had started to breath heavy. He stopped and waited for me to catch up.

  “Slow down man, don’t burn it out, we have a ways to go still.”

  “OK boss.” I listened to his slightly labored breathing.

  “We’ll take five here and then start out at a slower pace.” We had outpaced the light and the heat wave as well, but it was advancing on us inexorably. I checked my oxy levels, we had hopped for about an hour, and I was feeling OK, the cannabinol had helped, it always did when it came to boring repetitive tasks. Made them more fun somehow. How smooth could you make your launch. Could you cut any time off your landing and relaunch with out tweaking your legs... Could you get any more distance on your hop with out draining too much energy... My suit told me I had maybe eight hours of oxy left. Gee and we only had another 400 kilometers to go... The heat wave caught us and the temp inside of my suit jumped from a comfortable 70 degree’s F up to at least 90 in a matter of seconds.

  “Let’s get a move on, you OK?” I asked, concerned.

  “Yup. Forward ho.” After another hour we had covered about 60 kilometers which was good. I calculated we needed to cover 52.5 kilometers an hour to reach base just as our oxy ran out. I felt good. I took another dose of cannabinol and felt a bit sleepy, but shook it off. Dave was quiet. I thought well and good, he can take orders, which just might make the difference between life and death. His breathing wasn’t so labored for this break.

  “Hangin’ in OK buddy?” The suit nodded it’s head.

  “So far so good boss.” I checked his stat’s, he was running a little low on oxy for the amount of time we still needed to make it. If we slowed down to conserve oxy, we risked spending too much time in the heat wave, with disastrous results. I decided to take another five minutes.

  “Ready to hit it?” I asked Dave.

  “Ready boss.”

  “Forward ho.”

  “Forward ho.” We leapt back to the race. The heat wave had caught up wit
h us again.

  The trick was to launch and then aim your headlight down so you could see your landing spot, land and launch in the same step. Alternating steps made the flow go easier, but you had to remember to check your heads up display to stay on course, because one leg being stronger than the other you tended to veer to one side if you didn’t compensate properly.

  We slogged on for another hour. I had long since lost sight of the gravity tide ahead of us. Our head lights wouldn’t be needed by the end of the next hour, the dawn was catching up. As was the heat. It felt like about 110, but the suit said it was only 89 degrees F. We were still making good progress though, we had clocked another 50 Kilometers.

  “How you holding up champ?” I checked Dave’s stat’s, his oxy consumption was down a little, but I was still concerned.

  “OK, but it’s getting kinda warm, huh?” I looked him over, the suit seemed fine.

  “How are your ankles and knee’s doing?” He flexed at the knees for me.

  “All right, so far.” I flexed my own knees and they felt fine, no twinges in the ankles either. So far, so good. I took a few mouthfuls of water. Drained my bladder into the suit for recycling. Took a look around. It was getting too bright. Time to go.

  “Time to go.” I said and leapt in the correct direction per my suit compass.

  “Forward ho.” Replied Dave and followed suit. More monotonous kilometers followed. Leap, glide, land, leap, glide, land, leap, glide, check heading, land, leap, glide, land, leap, glide, land....and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. The cannabinol keeping those stray thoughts like, wow, this is getting old, off to the side, the periphery of my mind.