“Of course, Hun. Need any maple syrup?” he replied with a chuckle. “OK, guys, come on. Let’s go.”
Ladli and Liu were still standing at the mouth of the cave, waiting on Najib. The Bangalorean commander, a geologist by trade, never missed a chance to study any new mineral he came across, often bringing back small samples to the station’s lab.
“We’re waiting on Najib,” replied Liu. She was staring at the dark tunnel inside the cave, a fairly wide passage that led to a wide-open chamber, full of rocks and crevices, undoubtedly the work of some ancient seismic activity. She couldn’t see more than a few meters in. The rest was in complete darkness.
“What is he doing? He should be here by now…” she thought.
“Najib? Najib?” she called out through her headset.
“Where is he?” asked Dedrick walking back to them.
“I don’t know. He was just behind me,” replied Ladli with apprehension.
“Najib?” called out Dedrick.
“Najib!” called Liu even louder. Still no response.
“OK, you both stay here. I'll go see what's the hold up.” He walked right between the two women and started down the slope into the black tunnel. About thirty meters in, Dedrick noticed a light illuminating a spot on the ceiling of the chamber from the ground below. The light seemed fixed as if Najib was staring at something above him. Unable to see his colleague, he called out while still approaching.
"Najib? Najib?" No response. His first thought was a possible problem with Najib's radio.
"What's going on, Dedrick? Everything OK?" came Ladli's voice in his helmet.
"Najib? Hey buddy, are you OK?" simply continued Dedrick without responding to her.
Liu's voice came in next. She was rushing back inside the passage. "Najib? Najib! Dedrick, what's wrong? Did you find him? Why isn't he answering?"
A knot formed in Dedrick's throat. Something was definitely wrong. He was now only a few meters from the light, but he still couldn't see him or notice any movement. "What is he doing?" Rushing to the area, his fears materialized when he spotted Najib’s body lying still on the ground.
“Najib! Shit!” Now he could see the crushed helmet and a huge crack in his facial glass visor. Najib’s face, blotted and still, his eyes wide open and full of blood, betrayed his painful last moments as his mouth, partially agape, and his purple skin left no doubt he was already gone.
“Oh God,” said Dedrick as he kneeled down by the body. Najib had fallen from a small niche a few meters above. Scraping traces along the ledge where Najib had slipped, and the small pile of rocks around the body, told the obvious.
“No, no, NO!” screamed Liu who had finally rejoined the team leader.
“Najib! Oh, my God, Najib! We have to take him back to the infirmary. Come on, Dedrick, help me!” she screamed frantically, as she rushed to Najib’s inert body and began lifting his torso.
“Liu… Liu,” said Dedrick as he gently grabbed her arm. “It’s too late. He’s gone.”
“No! You don’t know that. We must take him back to the station. Vera will know what to do,” she replied harshly, as she pushed Dedrick’s hand away and kept tugging at the dead body.
“Liu… I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do… It’s too late… Liu?”
Finally realizing the reality of Najib’s condition, she began to cry and fell back on herself, still holding Najib in her trembling arms.
"No, please God, no, not like that." And the tears kept flowing. Her world had just been shattered.
“Najib is gone. My Najib. Please God, no,” she thought. “Don’t leave me. Najib… Please, not now…”
She felt like a thousand daggers had stabbed her heart. All of her being was crying out in pain. The feeling was excruciating. Her entire world had just collapsed, and suddenly, so did she.
#
A few hours later, Liu woke up in her bed in pod four. At first disoriented, the images of the earlier events came rushing back at her, as she jumped up and screamed. Vera and Sabrina tried to calm her down the best they could.
Two pods over, the three men were talking about Najib’s accident.
“From what I saw when I got there, I think he tripped and fell face first onto a sharp rock. The oxygen escaped instantly. The Martian air did the rest. He died in seconds,” said Dedrick.
“What I don’t understand is why you didn’t hear anything. He must have screamed or something…” puzzled François.
“I just checked his helmet. His radio was broken; probably from the impact when he fell. We had no way of knowing... Crap. I should’ve stayed with him,” finally added Dedrick, feeling guilty.
“It’s not your fault, buddy. It was an accident. There was nothing you could have done. He knew the risks; we all do,” François replied, trying to make his friend feel better.
Dedrick stared at the unforgiving landscape outside the porthole window, lost in thoughts. "By the way, I guess you realize we’re gonna need to talk to headquarters tonight about how to handle this. I was hoping we would never have to, but we all know the protocol in such a situation. We have to close the EPM.” François reached over and entered a command on the touch screen next to him.
“We are now restricted to the private Mars First channel for all communications with Earth. No talking to anyone about this until we are advised further. We need to tell the girls.”
“What about the cameras? They’ve been filming us the whole time. No?” asked Tendai.
“Mars First headquarters purposely has a half hour delay on the re-transmission of the main feed they receive from us before the images go live. I’m sure they’ve already pulled the plug before anyone could see what had happened. They probably blamed it on the storm to avoid questions from the media," replied François.
Outside the complex, fast winds were lifting sand around the small outpost. The dusty brown fog was now covering several kilometers. The storm had been raging for hours and was showing no sign of letting up anytime soon.
That night, they all gathered around in greenhouse II and observed a long moment of silence. Liu did not attend. Vera had given her a sedative to help her sleep.
#
Back in pod four, Vera and Ladli were sitting around Liu the next morning. Like everyone else on the station, the two women were devastated by what had just happened the prior day, but Liu was obviously the most affected. Her relationship with Najib had begun years ago back on Earth but had grown even stronger since their arrival on Mars. At the moment, she was a mess, and her two teammates were seriously concerned. She had stopped crying, but now her silence was even more worrisome. Staring straight in front of her at nothing, she was unresponsive to both Ladli and Vera who kept asking her if she was OK.
“Liu?” asked Vera again as she put a hand on her arm. “Liu, please, say something.”
Ladli was beginning to worry seriously about her friend as well. She knew how much Liu loved her husband. She still remembered, as if it was yesterday, how happy she was when he had asked her to marry him. Only a few days ago, Liu was still gleaming from the talk both had just had about having a child. Now, Liu looked as if she had aged twenty years. She was silent. Her eyes, glossy and foggy, were still puffed up from all the tears, and she looked white as a ghost. She didn’t flinch when Vera inserted a thin needle in her arm and injected her with “Corxa”, a relaxant, to help her sleep. She normally had a serious aversion to needles of any kind and was always a difficult patient. Now, she didn't even seem to notice.
A few minutes later, Liu was sleeping again peacefully in her bed when Ladli and Vera left the room.
Dedrick was lying on his when the two women entered the pod.
“How is she?”
“She is sleeping, for now,” replied Vera.
“I think I’m gonna go back to my room. I’m exhausted. I’ll see you guys later.” said Ladli as she turned and proceeded to climb through the next passage, leaving the two to themselves. Continuing to the next pod, she l
owered herself down into pod two, where Tendai and she spent most of their nights. He was seated in front of the computer.
“I just remembered why I can’t check my emails. François said we’re locked out of the system for now. Security reasons,” he offered without her asking.
“I know. I just left Liu. She’s OK for now, but Vera had to give her something else to help her sleep. Oh, Tendai, it’s so awful what happened to Najib,” she said as she sat on his lap, wrapped her arms around his waist, and leaned her head against his chest.
“I know, baby. I know…” he replied, holding her in his arms.
Outside their small window, far in the distance, the winds were picking up again beyond the plateau. Deep into the cliffs of the canyon, a small purple light was glowing inside a dark cave.
A needle in a haystack
François’ hand was wrapped around Sabrina’s left breast. The two were lying in a spooning position, when the alarm suddenly resounded, breaking the silence in their pod. Surprised by the loud noise, he jumped out of bed and rushed to the controls. Searching for the cause of the mayhem, he quickly located the red beacon on the panel. Someone had just opened the outside door of pod four.
“Merde! Liu!”
Rising slowly from under the covers, Sabrina, still half asleep, asked, “Hu... What is it, baby?”
François did not answer. Rushing out of the pod in his underwear, he rushed past Ladli and Tendai, and threw himself into the next tunnel.
“Dedrick! Dedrick! It’s Liu! She’s out!”
“Who? Wh…what?” mumbled the Russian, awakened by the sudden intrusion.
“Liu! She’s gone! She left the station.”
“What? How? What time is it?”
“Almost two in the morning. I just heard the alarm. She got out through her hatch. I've tried to find her with the outside cameras, but you can’t see shit out there! It’s still a mess with that storm.”
“Fuck! We got to go after her,” replied Dedrick, rushing out of bed.
“Oh my God! No. What is she doing?” Vera had just woken up. “Wait, I’m coming with you!”
“No. You stay here. It’s too dangerous. François and I will go.”
Dedrick grabbed his boots and, putting a hand on François's shoulder, added, “Come on, let’s go!”
Within minutes, the entire base was on alert. Vera was trying to stay in contact with Derick’s rover. But the storm was messing up the signal.
“I had her a second ago. She was moving north-east towards Mount Shamsi. I think she’s heading for Najib’s block.”
“Ok, thanks. Don’t worry, we’ll find her.”
Vera wasn’t so confident. They all knew it, in that storm, it would be hard to see anything past a few meters, and she already had several minutes on them. They also knew she had only a few hours of breathable air in her suit, if the tanks were full.
#
The visibility was almost zero. The rover and its two passengers had been driving for over two hours now, forming wider and wider circles around the station, but with the storm still raging, finding Liu was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
“Fuck! I can’t see shit in this crap. What was she thinking? And the batteries are getting low, we’re gonna have to turn back soon. Still nothing?” asked François, trying to look at the radar screen in front of Dedrick.
“No. I got nothing. But the instruments are having a hard time with all this stuff flying around. How long do we have left?”
“We’re down to thirty-eight percent power and forty-one percent oxygen. We can’t stay out much longer.”
“Damn it! We must find her. We HAVE to!”
Dedrick didn't need to spell out why. Both men knew her suit had enough oxygen for three hours at best.”
“Maybe we should… Wait! I’ve got something! Turn left!”
The suit Liu Xing was wearing was equipped, as were all their suits, with a transmitter that the rover's radar system could detect, that is, up to a certain distance and weather permitting. Usually capable of detecting a signal over several hundred meters, the current weather conditions had drastically reduced that to a mere few dozen.
A weak beep suddenly appeared again on Dedrick screen as François veered left. Pushing on forward through the thick wall of dust, the two men were frantically looking in all directions around them, hoping to spot Liu in this foggy mess. Dedrick was also keeping an eye on the unreliable but helpful infrared camera.
“We’re close! She should be right in front of us.”
“I don’t see anything,” replied François.
“It’s this damn storm. It’s messing with the instruments. She can’t be far. I have a strong signal now.”
Slowing down to a crawl, François was moving in short zigzags, trying to cover as much ground as possible.
Suddenly...
“There! There she is! I see her!” screamed François, pointing slightly to their right with one hand, while turning the wheel with the other.
“Liu! LIU!” screamed Dedrick in his suit radio. After checking that François had his helmet on, he jumped out of the rover still moving.
She was walking in a straight line, her back turned to them, apparently unaware of the edge of the cliff ahead. Her slow but steady walk gave her a robotic stance, dragging her feet, as if on auto-pilot. Dedrick reached her within only a few steps of the precipice and grabbed her arm.
“Liu! Stop! LIU!”
Barely fazed by Dedrick’s hold, she turned around and looked at him through her helmet with a dazed look that sent chills down his spine.
“Liu, where are you going? You can’t be out here. It’s not safe.”
But the South-Korean woman was not responding. He could clearly see she was not herself. She did not even seem to “see” him. “Probably the sedative Vera gave her,” thought Dedrick. “Come on, Liu, let’s go home.”
“Home?” she repeated in a weak voice.
“Yes, come on, let’s go home.”
“Home,” she whispered again, so low, Dedrick barely heard her.
Turning around in the thick haze, Dedrick radioed François.
“Ok, I have her. We're walking back to you. Can you flash the headlights or something, I can't see a thing?”
“François, did you hear me? François?”
No answer. Dedrick's grip on Liu Xing's wrist tightened a bit. Looking frantically around, trying to spot the rover's dark shape through the impenetrable fog, Dedrick called out again.
“François! FRANÇOIS!?... Fuck!”
Having released his hold on her, Liu began walking away again, in the wrong direction. Dedrick turned around just in time to see the frozen edge of the plateau a few feet away from her. He threw himself forward and forced her to the ground, only centimeters from the sheer drop. The cold ground cracked slightly in a few places around them, and the Russian had just enough time to roll the two of them off the collapsing corniche. A large chunk of rock gave out and fell down the abyss. His heart beating furiously in his chest, he rested there a moment before getting back up on his feet. Pulling Liu Xing to his side, he began walking slowly back against the wind, in the general direction, he was fairly certain that he had come from, looking for the rover.
“I don't understand, he was right here. What happened?” wondered Dedrick.
A mere hundred meters away, François was driving in circles.
“Crap, where are they? I can't believe this.”
“Dedrick? Liu? Merde!”
“Fran...ctttcrk...”
“Dedrick? Dedrick, where are you?”
“Crrrckkk...sssssshhhhhh...”
“Damn it! Lost them again.”
Driving blindly through the dense dust cloud, one eye on the occasional beacon light appearing on and off on the dashboard screen, François suddenly heard something hit the side of the rover. He stopped the vehicle immediately.
A hand appeared on the passenger side window.
“Dedrick! Thank God!�
��
“I know, I thought you'd turned back without us!”
“Don't be stupid. How could you even think-?”
“Open the hatch!”
Liu Xing was of no help. Dedrick had to lift her carefully into the cabin of the vehicle and remove her helmet for her once the pressure had stabilized.
“So, what happened to you? Where did you go? You had me scare there, for a moment.”
“Yeah, sorry. Right after you stepped out to grab Liu, I almost drove off the edge of the plateau. I had to roll back. I started looking for you, and... But that doesn’t matter now. Listen, we better hurry up. We only have 21% oxygen left.”
After seeing how sad and depressed Liu looked, neither men had the heart to reprimand her for her actions, even if she had put more than her own life in jeopardy. Dedrick tried to say a few comforting words, but none seemed to even reach her. She spoke none to him.
The morning after
The morning sun was slowly making its way along the ridge the Mars First station rested on. There was a good 200 meters or so of plateau between the Martian colony and the edge of the cliff. Close to the precipice, Vera was contemplating the beautiful landscape of the giant canyon in all its rust-orange splendor, a site she could never get tired of. François approached her and sat to her left on a flat rock.
Far in the distance, the immensity of Valle Marineris appeared without end. As far as the eye could see, the great cliffs bordering the giant canyon kept on, fading eventually in a foggy haze beyond the horizon. The magnificent geological feature was several thousand kilometers long. If nature had carved it across the United States, the canyon would have reached from one coast of the country to the other.
“She’s OK, by the way; exhausted but OK. I gave her a stronger dose and we’re not leaving her side this time. She’s not going anywhere,” affirmed Vera. “Ladli has taken the first shift.”
“I hope not. That was a close one. We were lucky to find her in that mess out there.”
Kahnu (The Guardians of Tomorrow Book 1) Page 10