There were a few data cubes that she would need to install, but, as Crysta had let her know, it was going to take a while. There was only one place to upload data cubes, back in the central dome. From there the data could be uploaded to her tablet. She grabbed the cubes and headed towards Crysta, whose face was still glued to the chick-viewing dome.
As she walked by, Ben reached out and grabbed her by the arm. Susan was shocked, as she had never seen him grab anyone. Ben noticed right away what he had done, and let go.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. It’s just… a bit loud in here. Didn’t want to shout.”
“It’s OK, boss.”
Ben stopped and looked back at the commotion.
“So this is good, right?”
“Yeah, really good,” Susan responded, beaming with pride.
“Follow me, will you?” Ben asked, walking off away from the group of people.
Susan followed the base commander back behind a pile of crates. The cries and shouts were blocked a bit better there, and the botanist could see why he wanted to get away.
“I went over your data this morning. It took me a while. You have some really detailed information there that, honestly, took me some time to understand. But, those numbers, how confident are you in them?”
Susan stood there for a moment. So much had happened in the past few days and she had been so busy, she didn’t remember which data he was talking about. Then it hit her.
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely one hundred percent confident.”
“So, six years?” Ben asked. “Really?”
“Absolutely. That’s just the initial growth burst. I’m fairly confident that I could produce enough food for a lifetime here. Our only limitation is light. We would have to dig up any and all light sources buried in the quake. Also, if we had another quake, well, that would be rough. But, we could build redundancies. Of course, if we lost power, then all bets are off.”
“Couldn’t Jupiter give us enough light?” Ben asked, truly not knowing.
“I could probably manage it, but then I’d have to grow right on the surface, with just barely a dome to protect it. I have no idea what kind of damage the radiation would do to the plants.”
“Well, that is certainly really good to hear,” Ben said, trailing off at the end.
“Yes, of course,” Susan added, a little concerned. “Why do you ask? Is there anything wrong? Are we stuck here? Did I miss something?”
Ben quickly shook his head.
“No. No. Nothing wrong. We don’t know anything about the ship yet. I just…” Ben stopped and looked around the crates at the group. From the shouts and cheers, it appeared that another chick was hatching. He heard shouts of ‘this one is black’.
“It’s that. The excitement and happiness this little thing just brought us. We really needed that,” Ben stopped and reached out to hold her hands. “And I needed just a little bit more of good news. That was it. Thanks again.”
He let her hands go and walked away.
Susan stood there for a moment, shocked. Her eyes began to fill with tears and she realized what she had done. On the bleakness of space, within the frigidity of the ice moon and the darkness of all the hopelessness they had found themselves mired in, she had created a spark of life. Well, she hadn’t, but they didn’t need to know that. Their cheers and smiles were enough.
Susan came around the corner just in time to see both Gary and Cary turn to look at her. Their looks filled her with warmth.
Oddly enough, despite it all, she felt completely at home in her dome, with her plants and the two people she loved the most.
- Charles –
It had been a busy day, but unlike some of the past days, small moments of happiness and relief were interjected in it. It had begun with the spectacle, simple as it was, of the hatching chicks. Of the twenty four eggs brought out of stasis, twenty three had hatched. According to Susan, that was a superb result. Charles didn’t know any better. He was as far from being a country boy as any. He had a dog once as a child, and that was it. Still, he had to admit, it had been a fun moment.
The evening had brought everyone together for a large meal in the green dome, which had become the unofficial living quarters. Many of the underground rooms had been dug out, even if rudimentarily. Despite that, few of the crew ever slept in those rooms. Charles understood. He could sleep anywhere, but to most, those rooms had become their own personal quarters, and the new rooms simply weren’t that. There was also the thought that they could be buried again under an ice quake. Bobby’s body still hadn’t been found, despite all of the digging.
Instead, everyone had found comfort in the new communal sleeping area. Most of the crew still had their own private niche where they slept at, and certainly the couples, or triples, had a little more privacy than others. Walls had been laid down from the excess water that was melted out of the underground rooms and everyone had their own space. Still, as the lights on the plants ran on a fourteen hour cycle, the walls were nice that way.
Charles had spent the last hour walking the base. He wasn’t sure why he did it anymore. When they had first arrived, and the base had been completed, it was part of his duty to walk the entirety of the base once daily. He had quickly thrown that practice aside within a few weeks. There really wasn’t any reason to perform such security measures. But after the ice quake, and especially the events in the alien vessel, something in Charles had made him start that chore again.
Ben was working in the central command still, running through pages and pages of data of energy readings. At least that is what he had explained to Charles. The captain didn’t even try to understand. He had always understood that his position on the mission was mostly useless, but now, more than ever, he felt completely unused. Sure, he could do some manual labor, but even some of the simplest jobs required skills and experience he simply didn’t have. Maybe that’s why he walked at night. Made him feel like he was doing something. Maybe he would keep them safe from the aliens.
He still wasn’t sure what to think about the alien vessel. To start, it hadn’t felt alien, not inside. Sure, the gel hull was odd, the green beams more so, and the time dilation far beyond bizarre. But the inside of the ship had been far too familiar, and he just wasn’t sure why. There were no remnants of the crew, but whomever they had been, must have had similar needs and designs as a human being. And the order of the layout, the design, it just made him feel like it was a military ship. Years and years of work onboard carriers and other Navy ships told him that. So if this was a military ship, why was it headed towards Earth, and better yet, why did it veer off towards Jupiter?
Those were just one of the many things that had been running through his mind. Of course there was the uncertainty of the return ship even arriving and the impending doom if it didn’t. And if they made it back to Earth, then what? What was left of it? Charles understood America’s capacity for automated warfare, as they had called it a decade ago, and certainly, many of the other nations of his planet had similar capabilities, so just how long could that war between dumb machines last?
He stepped out into the last passage way into the green dome. A metal door sat just slightly crooked in the ice frame that held it. He pushed it open with a bit of force and walked into the lit dome. The light made him blink and it took him a moment to adjust, although he continued walking. The entire dome was quiet, with just a slight hum of some of the machinery and electricity taking the edge off of the complete silence. As his eyes adjusted, he looked past a rather large wall of tomato plants that stretched upwards of thirty feet. Susan had told him the low gravity of the moon had lent to the huge plant growth. It certainly looked and felt alien, but there, among all the crazy growth, were hundreds of large red tomatoes, easily recognizable, even in their inflated state.
He walked towards the plants when he heard something, a scratching sound. He turned quickly and there, back by the chick brooder was, sat Emir, on an ice bench directly in front of it.
He was stooped over, legs over either side of the bench, with his back towards Charles. He appeared to be doing something in front of him. Charles walked slowly over. He hadn’t expected anyone to still be awake. Emir himself had been doing a lot of the ice digging today, had put in nearly sixteen hours of very labor intensive work.
Charles began to approach quietly as it looked as if Emir hadn’t noticed him. Then, because the captain found it rather odd to sneak up on him, he started stepping heavily to purposely make noise. Emir sat up straight, and turned to look back.
“Oh, hey, cap,” he said, spinning around on the bench to face Charles.
“Mr. Tagula. Up rather late?”
“Just sitting here, watching the chicks. Cute little guys,” Emir said, leaning towards the clear dome above the brooder.
“You really should get some rest.”
“Honestly though, it’s been hard to sleep lately,” Emir said, looking back behind him. Charles noticed that.
“Are you OK? Doctor Tarner probably has something that could help you sleep.”
“I can’t do that. Last time I took sleeping pills I slept for almost twelve hours. We don’t, I mean, I don’t, have time to sleep that much. Too much to do.”
Charles came closer and stood next to the brooder. Inside, nearly two dozen little chicks of various shades and colors of white, black and brown fed off of a small tray. From time to time, one would run off and go flying off into the padded walls of the brooder. It was going to be important that the birds adapted quickly to the low gravity.
“Are you sure you are OK? Is there anything else going on?” Charles asked. He noticed sweat beading off of Emir’s forehead. That might have been understandable when he was working, but in the dome it was currently a cool sixty two degrees and he hadn’t been working for nearly an hour.
“Same ole, cap. Just so tired I can’t sleep. Like everyone, just wondering what’s going to happen,” Emir said, not making eye contact.
Emir had a really bad rap on board the base. Charles actually felt bad for him, most of the time. He was different, and not just racially and culturally, but just…an oddball, as Charles put it. While most of the others on board were content with their solitude, or had found partners, Emir had not. The incident with the shower had cast him as a pervert and creep, when, to Charles’ eyes, the black doctor and his two white concubines presented far more of an abomination than a guy simply wanting to get off a bit while stranded on a frozen moon. Charles, more than anyone here, understood the need to tolerate most choices in life, and so he didn’t look down on Emir.
“There’s nothing we can do about it until we have the news,” Charles tried to console.
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re a military guy, you’re used to being in crappy situations.”
“Maybe I’m used to it, but it doesn’t mean I like it.”
Emir turned away and looked at the chicks jump around, seemingly out of control.
“I don’t think that ship out there was here to help us, cap,” Emir said, completely changing the subject.
“Why do you think that?” Charles asked.
“I don’t know. Something deep down. I think it’s better off staying frozen here.”
“Maybe.”
Charles lost himself in thought for a moment and didn’t notice Emir standing up and walking off. By the he realized the Middle Eastern man had left, he was already twenty feet away, and walking towards his little frozen cubicle room on the far side of the dome. His was set apart from everyone else’s. Charles raised his hand, but then held his breath. He would talk to Horace in the morning, but for now, it was better to just let the man get some sleep, if he could.
Sitting down on the bench, the captain felt the exhaustion in his own muscles and bones. He knew he needed to get sleep as well and wondered why he had even sat down. He reached out with his hands to push himself up off the bench when he felt some grit on the bench. He looked down and saw that something had been carved out of the ice. It was a 3d representation of a pyramid, just the lines, and arrows coming out of each corner of the pyramid. It was different and Charles wondered if it had been Emir who had carved it out.
Maybe it was his way of coping, ice carving, drawing, art. Charles shrugged it off, got up, and walked towards his own small room. If he remembered it, he would ask Emir about it the next time he saw him.
Day 25 AE
- Crysta –
“Ok, run it again,” Crysta said out loud.
She was alone in the server room, and her voice was drowned out by the hums of the fans working to cool off the computers. For the past week she had worked tirelessly to get together as many of the working computers as she could, and networked them all together in this new melted out room for one single purpose: Hammy.
The AI had survived along with most of the central command computers, but it had been severely limited due to the loss of the network and a good portion of its computing power. Now, after all this work, she had finally managed to get the AI fully loaded, and after running the compiling program three times to ensure the quality of the AI build, she had brought it back online. For several hours now, she had been running diagnostic programs to evaluate just how much of the internal memory programming the AI had lost with the ice quake. She was supremely happy to know that very little of her work had been lost. The AI had created so many backup redundancies all throughout the base, as she had taught it to, that once she had reconnected those missing computers up, Hammy had put it all back together again.
“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, my ass,” Crysta had shouted. “This bitch did it all by herself!”
But now, the serious work had started. Ben sat down with her a few days ago and stressed the importance of having the AI up and running. Crysta had at first been confused. Hammy was certainly very useful to automate nearly all elements of the base, but in the condition everything was, automation was virtually impossible. Ben didn’t care about that. Instead, he needed a flight path home.
The news had stunned Crysta. They hadn’t heard if the return supply ship was in orbit or not. Ben, though, wasn’t leaving anything to the chance. He wanted the AI to start calculating a flight path back to Earth using all sorts of weight/mass varieties, including the standard return vessel and any other possibilities. This was the first time that she had heard anyone talk about returning to Earth in anything but the return ship. It had been widely assumed that if the return ship did not arrive, they would just consider Europa their permanent home. This new alternative had intrigued her, and so she had set Hammy on the job. The AI had all the astrophysics programmed in, so it was just a matter of making it understand what they needed.
Hammy had run several short simulations just to make sure all of its equations were concurrent with its programing. Now, it had to take in the actual condition of the solar system, the location of the planets and actual distances to start making real headway into the problem of returning home.
The timer read five hours and twenty three minutes estimated for the simulation. Crysta yawned. It was almost time to get some sleep, but she wasn’t feeling that tired. Everyone had been pushing themselves, and the computer expert had been averaging just five hours of sleep each day. To her surprise, she had gotten used to it. That didn’t mean she didn’t get tired. Everyone was tired.
The door hissed open as she walked out of the room and into the roughly cut hallway. The base had gone from a streamlined elegance to a chaotic set of ice caves. The floor under her feet was uneven and she had to move herself along by the rails on the wall. There just wasn’t any urgency in putting down the magnetic strips under the ice. Eventually, they would have to. Even the smallest bit of resistance helped their legs. Already, Gary was making sure they were getting plenty of resistance exercise. She hated exercise.
Two quick stops and she would head to bed.
Thomas, Emir and Jenna had been working tirelessly to dig out the caved-in sections of the base. There was e
xtremely valuable equipment down there that could, if needed, be used. More importantly, as they dug, they found out that most of the rooms had simply shifted, and had not been crushed under ice. That gave hope that somewhere, somehow, although highly unlikely, Bobby may still be alive. The side benefit was that many of the base’s computers and servers were being unearthed, and Crysta was gathering them all up in one central location. Ben hated the idea, but Crysta had countered, as many others had, that if another quake hit, they’d probably all be dead anyways.
Several layers down through very unevenly cut ice, Crysta reached the first room. It was one of the several dozen rooms that housed all the experiments that had come from Earth on the supply ships. Some of the experiments were somewhat pointless. Most of them, Crysta thought, were completely pointless. There were experiments down here for cooking food in low gravity, low gravity toilets, and other odds and ends. Susan had run an experiment that raised slugs in low gravity to study the effects on them. They were silly and useless, most of them, but they helped pay for the mission. Every experiment run to its conclusion got the mission more money back on Earth, and more money meant more supplies.
Too bad more money didn’t mean no nuclear war.
She walked into the room where a crate Jenna had found earlier that day sat. She unhitched the side and flipped open the top. It was a series of video game consoles. She pulled out the series of data chips that would hold all the experiment instructions and tossed them aside. She loved video games as much as the next nerd.
“Seriously, a video game experiment in space?”
What she really found useful was all the data space on those consoles. She reached in and took one of them out. Back up in the server room, she’d take it apart and see just what kind of specs the console had, and if needed, she’d come back and haul more up. The small sleek black console fit just fine under her arm.
She headed back out into the hallway and turned left, heading down to where the large plasma drill sat silent and cold. The only light was the dim blue hue coming off of her tablet, which she used to navigate down an especially rough section of the hallway. She could make out the small doorway that sat nearly sideways. The ice had shifted completely upside down here, cracking and spinning within itself, Jenna had explained. Crysta didn’t even know that was possible. She was looking forward to seeing an upside down room, though. Jenna had told her that the room was a mess, but that she thought she had seen a crate with what looked like small personal computers in them. Crysta just hoped they weren’t too damaged.
Europa (Deadverse Book 1) Page 15