She switched to the top cam facing the planet, and settled in to wait.
◆◆◆
“I’m just saying, it would have been safer to separate the landings by at least a week. That would give the first team the opportunity to create emergency shelters if the second crew needed any assistance.” Anna was frustrated. None of her arguments had won through, and they were now scheduled to land almost on top of each other. True, all the calculations showed that it would present no problems, but she was by nature a very thorough and careful woman. It was recently accentuated by her surging OCD, and she had been fighting the drop-and-pray landing, as she secretly had dubbed it, from the moment of its conception. She glanced over at Robbie in the coach next to her. He had supported her view, although she suspected he really couldn’t care less either way.
“I couldn’t care less either way, and you know it.” The big man tapped his fingers rapidly, switching cams at a dizzying speed. “Now, or in a week, the same job needs to be done by each team. Shelter, retrieval, and digging. If some of us need assistance after the landing, there’s damn little anybody can do that we can’t do ourselves. Bruises and concussions, we can handle. If we need any more assistance than that, then we’re fucked anyways.”
“We can’t handle straight-up medical emergencies, true, but if we can establish a base of operations before we all go barging in there, it could work as a lifeline if needed. In short, there are no good arguments to ship us down on top of each other. It’s almost like everybody’s just forgotten all the “Safety First” lessons, and just wants to be dropped as soon as possible.”
“Well, can you blame them? Not one word from Mother Earth since the flare hit, and us up here with a busted-ass spaceship. Can’t blame them for wanting to hit dirtside as soon as possible. Now don’t you give me that look, girl, I supported you, if nothing else but for that I know you to be one thorough lady, and I figure supporting you would increase my overall chance at survival.”
“So it was purely a survivalist-support vote you gave me? I don’t know if I’m supposed to be flattered or annoyed.”
“Be happy. That is, and always will be, my recommendation given any situation that requires a modicum of ethical consideration.”
“Happy, eh? Can’t say my priorities have tipped in that direction for quite some time.”
“We’re about to crash-land onto a foreign planet with less than half of the support equipment we planned for. We have a spaceship that has been burned, broken, and patched together again, and statistically we have an eight-in-ten chance of making it down to the surface with our asses where they’re supposed to be. I’d say optimism and happiness are the only states of mind worth having right about now.”
Anna smiled and leaned back, letting the straps tighten around her forehead, wrists and lower arms. “You might be right about that, big guy. You might be right.”
◆◆◆
Rebekka knew something was wrong about halfway down to the surface. She was monitoring the acceleration versus the drag on the lander, and had the countdown for the balloons running in the upper right corner of her screen. Everything seemed to be in order. Trajectory, drag from the atmosphere, speed and acceleration were all within mission parameters. When the counter hit zero, she expected to see a small gas explosion as the balloons flared up, obscuring the view of the cameras. The gas explosion came and went, but the camera feed still showed the approaching surface in all its terrific detail. The forward balloons had not deployed. She could feel her heartrate increasing as she quickly switched between cameras, trying to get a feel for the status of the entire hull. She got no visual feedback from the right side of the lander, which was a good thing. The balloons were deployed, obscuring all camera feeds. But the left side still showed an approaching planet, and that was a very bad thing.
She had to get confirmation. “This is Lander One. Lander Two, do you copy, over?”
The captain came through almost immediately. “Lander One, this is Lander Two. What’s your status, over?”
“I need you to scan our lander for me. There seems to be a problem with the forward left balloons. Please advise, over” Her heart was thundering in her chest, her breathing coming faster and faster with each passing second. There was an ominous silence over the radio that lasted an eternity of ten seconds. She fought the urge to unstrap and take a walk outside to check it out for herself. It was too late for heroics such as that.
The moment the captain called her up again, she knew she only had minutes to live. “Lander One. We can confirm that balloons four through nineteen on your forward left side are not deployed. Balloons nine through twenty-five on your bottom right have also failed to deploy.” Silence filled the waves as the implications sunk into her soul. “Lander One. There’s nothing we can do. We’re five minutes behind you with no means of acceleration. You’re on your own on this one. I’m. . . sorry. We will wrack our brains and try to come up with something, will advise further if we find a solution. Good luck Becky, Lander Two, out.” She could hear the resignation in the man’s voice, and she could hardly believe what was happening.
More information. She needed more information. She overrode the fail-safes on one of the forward cameras and released it from its anchor point on the hull. She carefully maneuvered it with small bursts of gas as it slid along the hull of the lander, getting a slightly better view of the sites of the undeployed balloons as she went. She repeated the process using all of the cameras available to her, then settled back to watch the video to see if there was anything she could do. Anything to prevent them all from crashing into the surface, killing them all.
◆◆◆
There was nothing they could do, nothing anybody could do. I had sabotaged the balloons too carefully, making sure to follow the power grid vectors as I shot nails into the innards of a total of twenty-nine buffer balloons. Enough to ensure a catastrophic failure on first impact, but not enough to elicit immediate suspicion of foul play. Of course, somebody might suspect that the failures were induced rather than happenstance, but those were bridges to be burned when reached.
I sat with my eyes closed, listening to the exchange between Red Becky and the captain. I knew he would be scouring through every bit of landing procedure he could possible work through in the next five minutes, and Rebekka would be ordering the system to open her harness and allow her access to the hull. I wished her good luck with that, and with a flick of my index finger engaged the second part of my sabotage.
◆◆◆
Rebekka sighed in frustration as she scanned the compiled video for the third time in as many minutes. Nothing. As far as she could see there was nothing hindering the balloons from deploying. All systems were green, the computer reported no problems with the release mechanism, and she could find no visible clues from the videos as to the nature of the problem. The time had come take matters into her own hands. She unclasped the harness holding her upper arms to the seat and quickly undid the remaining straps. She could feel the drag of gravity now that they were moving into the upper layers of the atmosphere, and she felt unsettled for a moment as her body adjusted after eight months in free fall. No time. There was no time for adjustments, no time for hesitations. She ignored the shouts and calls from the rest of the crew as she made her way over to one of the hatches and attached the hard connection to the wall screen. This would allow her to use her master codes to override all the fail-safes and let her access the hull even during a lockdown.
Nothing. The screen remained blank.
She frowned and tried her password anyway.
Nothing.
Pulse rising, she unplugged and jammed the plug in again, with the same negative result. There was no response from the system, and she flung the offending cord away in disgust. Without a word she turned to the nearest member of the crew and ripped the wrist-pad from his arm, the Velcro screaming in protest. She pushed off violently toward the hatch directly opposite from her and misjudged badly, crashing into the wal
l a good three feet from where she intended, head hitting the wall first. She spun away, dazed, but managed to grab hold of the bar on top of the hatch, halting her rebound. She fumbled with the cord on the wall for a few precious seconds before she managed to pull it out and insert it in her borrowed wrist pad.
Nothing. No reaction. No little beep, lighting of the screen, password prompt, or any of the little things that might indicate a successful connection. There was no response from the main computer of the globe, and there was no way to open the hatches by remote. It had to be done by a hard connection, and that connection was dead. With a scream of fury, she flung the pad across the room, breathing hard and feeling the panic gripping her chest as she surveyed the frightened faces of the men and women trapped in the falling globe with her.
They were dead.
◆◆◆
“Lander One, this is Lander Two, do you read me?”
Silence.
“Lander One, this is Captain Reinholts, you are approaching the point of no return for any extravehicular activities, you need to get out there and manually release those balloons!”
No reply.
“Becky! Get your ass out there and fix those goddamn balloons before it’s too late!”
The captain was visibly shaking at this point, and his knuckles were white on the com set. Silence filled the cramped compartment, and worried glances were exchanged between the occupants. Fear and relief filled the lander. Fear for the crew of the other ship, relief that it was not them plunging towards the surface with nothing to shield them from a crushing impact. The tension was palpable as they watched the fuzzy image of the other lander on their screens. A sudden change was accompanied by an intake of breath, almost in unison, as the remaining balloons covering one half of Lander One were released with a puff of gas, leaving the small ship completely unprotected.
“Rebekka! What did you do? Answer me!”
“Lander Two, this is Lander One. Reading you loud and clear, just couldn’t find the time to answer.” The voice was tired, resigned, defeated.
“All the balloons were ejected, and you are the only one with the authorization to do that. Why did you do it?”
“Why? To guarantee the safety of my crew, of course.” The small smile was hidden in the tone of the reply.
“The safety of your crew? You sentenced your crew to die when you ejected those balloons! What happened?”
“I couldn’t get outside, Reinholts. No response from any of the relevant hard lines. We managed to pry a few of the covers off, and the wires were fried. My guess is that the hatches were working as they should have as long as we were coupled up with the Wayfinder and the main system, but we were screwed the moment we detached and became completely reliant on the onboard systems. The system showed green since the hatch was speaking to the board, but nothing we could do in the time we had would have allowed us access.”
“So you decided to rid yourself of all hope and ditch the remaining half of the balloons?” The bitterness in the captain’s voice was as audible as the amusement in Rebekka’s.
“We had no hope, and you know it. Without the buffering from at least ninety percent of the balloons we would be ripped apart on first impact. Besides, it was too late to go outside the ship. So, we voted. The majority was for ditching the remaining balloons. The tiny nudge we received as they blew off was enough to push us at least fifty miles off course from the landing site, so that no debris from our crash could cause any problems for your landing. Thus ensuring the safety of my crew.”
The captain slumped back in his seat, the straps following suit and tightening across his chest. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Thank you, perhaps? I know what I’m going to say, and that’s good luck. Now, if you don’t mind, a lot of people in here suddenly found religion, myself included. Funny how that works. When you’re knee deep in worry and frustration in your day-to-day life you can’t be arsed if there’s a god or not, but find yourself facing certain death in a shuttle hurtling toward the surface of Mars and suddenly the big grandfather in the sky seems a lot more appealing. We’re going to open the shutters so we can see the planet, and we’re going to say a little prayer. We might even include you lot in it.” This time the laughter that escaped was unmistakable, the worries and frustrations she had been carrying fleeing with it.
The captain smiled a sad smile, took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. “If I ever find myself praying, I will include you in mine. Take care Rebekka, and thank you. For everything.”
“You too, Captain, you too. Lander One, signing out.”
◆◆◆
Rebekka put down the com set, and turned as the sound of the shutters being pulled up again reverberated through the cabin. Nearly all of the crew had taken off their helmets, and they watched as the planet beneath them filled their entire world. What a sight! Blood red, huge, with streaks of ochre, orange, and a hint of white that might have been the poles. She didn’t really care which pole, but she guessed it had to be the south.
She folded her hands, closed her eyes for a few seconds, opened them to the sight of the Red Planet and laughed out loud.
“Hey guys, we’re going to be the first humans to touch Martian soil after all!”
The laughter rippled through the lander, and then they started their prayers.
◆◆◆
I still sat with my eyes closed, my finger resting on the wrist pad where last it had executed the command to sabotage the hatches on Lander One. I did not think. I could not think. To think was to acknowledge. To think was to reason. To think was treason. I squeezed my eyes shut so hard it pained me, but I could not shut out the sound of Red Becky’s final words. They would stay with me to my dying day, I knew that. But I also knew that that day would have come much sooner had I not done what I did.
Step four: Establish sustainable system for oxygenating and feeding a stable base population. Population reduced by fifty-five percent. Now possible.
I found that my finger had slipped from the pad and had now dug itself so hard into the fabric of my glove that my nail had broken. I could feel the blood trickling down inside my suit and forced myself to relax.
I calmed my breathing, focused my mind and opened my eyes. There was work to be done.
◆◆◆
In silence, Lander One struck the Martian soil with enough force to shatter the brittle globe into pieces no bigger than the palm of a hand. A small crater formed, and dust was flung out in a wave of pressure, flinging it high into the thin air to eventually settle in a cloud dispersed all over the planet. A funeral pyre worthy of the first humans on Mars.
The second lander struck home mere minutes after, the oblong mushroom of dust much less impressive since the balloons did the job they were designed to do. They cushioned the fall, allowing the tender ballast of human occupants to survive the otherwise forceful impact. The sphere bounced away along the pre-calculated course, hitting no major obstacles and executing a picture-perfect landing, coming to rest a mere half mile from the nearest supply globe dumped during the previous week. With the sound of a virgin’s sigh that died out before it had travelled more than a few feet, the balloons were jettisoned. What remained was a scarred globe, dull grey and utterly alien in the rocky landscape.
Two hatches opened, one on either side directly opposite from each other. The sphere was tilted on its side, one hatch pointing towards the sky and the other down towards the surface at an angle. A small vehicle shaped like a drill emerged from the lowest opening, making its way slowly out of the interior. It dropped unceremoniously the fifteen feet to the surface, hitting with its nose first. It worked its way free immediately, using sets of belted tracks on all sides of its oblong body. A set of thin nylon ropes attached to its rear end were slowly pulled tight as the machine crawled away from its mother vehicle. When it started to strain against its chains, it stopped, reversed, and angled its nose down. The entire front section started to spin, and before long it had bu
rrowed into the ground, pulling the ropes tight once more. Down it went, into the Martian soil, and when the strain overcame it, when it could go no further, it folded into itself, back to front. Sections of the body were rotated down and out, in effect creating an underground anchor.
The ropes slowly wound up inside the anchor, pulling the globe with it over the ground, inch by inch. Two hours after the lander came to rest, it was firmly anchored to the ground. A perfect sphere, balanced on a perfect world.
A hairline crack worked its way from the ground and to the top of the ship, widening at a speed in stark contrast to the pace of the operation so far. The globe split as the anchor increased its pull, creating two equal halves that each rolled away from each other on huge rubber wheels along the edges, the top being pulled down in the middle by the winding anchor directly beneath. At last it came to rest. Two hemispheres, anchored to the ground. The home of forty-six survivors.
The opening hatch on one of the four access tubes slid open, and a figure in a grey suit with neon blue and yellow stripes along the torso pulled itself shakily to its feet. The captain of the ship, the very first living human on the surface of another planet, stood outside the lander, at a loss for words. The immensity of the situation and the fate of over half of his crew a few hours earlier made his carefully prepared words seem insignificant and false. He had prepared for history, but found that he had no words for tragedy. He stood in silence with his head down for a full minute before another suited member of the crew pulled himself from the interior and joined him on the surface.
The Billionaire took in the surroundings with a sweep of his head and turned to the captain.
“That went well, didn’t it?”
The Billionaire turned back towards the hatch and went to work.
16. Before Death
Martian Dictator Page 13