by Alec Taylor
I systematically updated every screen in Security to show images from a range of cameras. As I woke Glen’s screen, I caught a glimpse of the background image—the video stream of Earth from the spaceport. I was continually amazed that he could spend so long just sitting and watching our old world slowly revolve. It was vivid blue and green and it couldn’t have been a greater contrast to the dark-red image that replaced it.
The next day, the cameras facing out from the hangar doors showed a dark smudge looming on the horizon. A few hours later, the outside cameras went dark. I turned on an audio feed but could only hear a very faint rustle as the dust trickled over the microphone. The cameras inside the structures in the outer colony adjusted to a lower light level, as if the sun had set.
“If this is as bad as it gets,” said Pete, smiling in an obvious attempt to stay positive, “we’ll be okay.”
“No, it’s going to get much worse,” said Glen. “We’ve never had a storm with so much dust in it.”
I nearly groaned. Glen’s negativity was more irritating than Pete’s positivity.
“I know,” replied Pete, “but we might get lucky.”
I felt like slapping my forehead.
“Not a chance,” said Glen. “This one could shut us down completely. We should get ready to bug out and go home.”
My eyes widened with surprise, “Do you mean we need to be ready to leave the planet?”
In the early days of the colony, there had been a contingency plan for evacuation, but it had been mothballed after the inner colony was created and the mother ship moved out to become the launch pad. I had read the plan once, during my training back on Earth, but hadn’t thought about it since then. The colony had become so big and self-sufficient since then that the idea of needing to evacuate was almost preposterous.
“Yes,” said Glen. He stood up, his face flushed and his brow furrowed. “You’ve seen the simulations. This one could fry everything outside. Most of our utilities are out there, you know. Not to mention food production and crops for plastics.”
“Yeah, I have seen them,” I said, “but just one of the power plants could support the whole colony indefinitely. And the chance of all of the structures out there being destroyed is basically zero.”
“This is going to be worse than any storm on Earth, ever,” said Glen, his mind obviously jumping around. His catastrophising was bizarre and, thankfully, Pete stepped in to calm him down.
“Glen,” said Pete. “It’s all right. We’ll be okay down here.”
“We should create a shift roster so we have someone in the office at all times,” I said, changing the subject.
“Aren’t there enough sensors and cameras and whatever already?” asked Glen. “Can’t we just set up alarms in case something happens?”
“It’s a dangerous storm. We should have someone up here at all times.”
“Oh, fine,” said Glen, as he got up and left the office.
I looked at Pete. He shrugged, “Scared, I guess.”
We divided the day into eight-hour shifts. Pete was rostered from 06:00 to 14:00, Glen from 14:00 to 22:00 and I was from 22:00 to 06:00—the graveyard shift.
*
The dust kept falling from the sky for the next two days, the wind gradually rose, and lightning became more frequent. The anemometer stopped working after recording 240 km/h during a particularly big gust. We could hear the rumbles of thunder through the microphones and seeing flashes of lightning through the dust on the cameras.
On the third day, the outside atmospheric pressure started bouncing up and down like a yo-yo and we knew that twisters were forming. I slept through Pete’s shift, ate an early evening meal with Tony (who was bored out of his mind by that time) and joined Glen for the last half of his shift. I told Glen he could leave any time and by 21:00 I was alone in the office, watching frequent flashes on the outside cameras. The cameras on the airlocks showed the passages swaying in the wind. Despite the thin atmosphere, they were being hit by massive winds that were carrying large volumes of dust.
The stillness in the office was eerie. Outside a storm was raging, dust was blasting the outer colony, and lightning filled the air. And yet in the Security Office it was completely silent, except for the muted rustling and thunder that the outside microphones were relaying. I looked from screen to screen, trying to catch the flashes of lightning. Each screen showed a different camera angle, but all of them were completely obscured by dust. I occasionally checked the diagnostics for air pressure and structural integrity in the greenhouses. The minutes ticked over, but I didn’t feel sleepy—it was my first real storm and I was on duty.
Around midnight, one of the passages between the greenhouses was breached. A lightning strike tore open the fabric beside a rib at one end of the passage and it promptly depressurised. It quickly filled with dust and the light plastic fabric flapped around for a while before the storm tore it off and carried it far away. The airlocks at either end held fast, but both access and plumbing to the far greenhouses disconnected—the plants out there were going to have to rely on their own photosynthesis for a while. I sent a message to Pete to let him know and he turned up a little while later to check it out for himself. Neither of us felt like talking much, but it was nice to have company and share the responsibility of monitoring the storm for the colony.
At exactly 02:00 in the morning, on the fourth day of the storm, Pete and I saw a small flash of light through the dust on one of the screens and heard a bang through the outside microphones. The lights throughout the colony dimmed, permanently.
Warning messages started cascading across our screens. The first message said that power plant one was offline. The second message was for the second plant and the third message was for the third plant. All three power plants had gone down simultaneously and there was an unimaginable storm raging outside.
“Holy fuck!” said Pete, who was looking over my shoulder.
I looked up at the vent above the door and realised that the breeze from the ventilation system had stopped. We were relying on the internal backup systems. With everyone inside the inner colony, the emergency batteries had power for twelve hours, max.
14. EMERGENCY RESPONSE
A complex system of ducts and airlocks allowed oxygenated air to travel from the greenhouses and the electrolysis plant through to the inner colony. In the event of a power outage, the system automatically shut down, closing in the colony and segregating the ventilation system into small sections so a single breach wouldn’t drain the entire colony of breathable air. We could open the main airlock and start using oxygen caught in the outer passages and greenhouses, but in a global storm that was a dangerous last resort.
“Pete, we need to put the colony in stasis,” I said, turning to look at him. “Shut down everything non-essential and get a repair team out there, now.”
He was staring at his screen, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Pete?” I said.
“Huh?” he replied absently and then looked up.
“We need to shut down everything but life support and keep everyone calm and quiet. We should make an announcement.”
Glen suddenly appeared at the door.
“We’ve got to go, NOW!” he screamed, and then yelled it again and again.
After the fourth or fifth time, Pete grabbed him by the shoulders, forcibly sat him down, “Shut the fuck up!”
He looked over at me and asked, “Do you know what to say?”
I enabled the camera on the main screen and started a transmission to all personnel. I desperately tried to collect my thoughts and sound as calm as possible.
“This is the Security Office,” I said. “Everyone please remain calm and stay in your rooms. We’ll have the power back on as soon as possible. In the meantime, we need everyone to stay calm to preserve oxygen and energy. Please turn off all non-essential equipment, including private heaters, and put on your outer suits.”
I paused for a second, remembering our emerg
ency protocols.
“Could all members of the disaster response team please come to the Security Office immediately,” I continued. “Okay, thanks. We’ll give everyone another update…shortly.”
One by one, the response team entered the office: Karl, June, Chris, Tony (carrying a portable toolkit), and finally Liu from Systems. The emergency protocols appointed Pete as the chair of the response team meetings. Glen and I were there to help if required.
As the team members walked in, they clustered around my screen to look at the warning messages. Everyone was talking at once, chaotically. Each time someone new arrived, I started explaining again that all three power plants had gone down and showed them the warning messages. Finally, as Liu walked in, I couldn’t stand it any longer and said loudly, “Okay, everybody be quiet!” They stopped talking and stared at me. “That’s the whole response team.”
The room was silent for a moment.
“Pete,” I said. “It’s your meeting.” Everyone turned toward him.
“Yeah, thanks, Mike,” said Pete. “Actually, does anyone mind if I deputise Mike onto the team?”
They all shook their heads, except Karl, who frowned. I was surprised and took a deep breath. The first explanation that popped into my head was that somehow I had earned Pete’s trust and respect. But then it occurred to me that perhaps he was just afraid of screwing up. My instinct was to accept the challenge head on, regardless.
“Okay, then, Mike. You’re on point,” said Pete, but then he added as an afterthought, “But I’m still in charge. I’ll call the shots.”
Everyone shuffled into a semicircle standing in front of me.
“Okay. Well, so, this is the situation,” I said. “The power is out and we’re on backup batteries.”
“Do we know what happened?” asked Chris.
“No. I was here in Security monitoring the cameras and all I know is I saw a flash of light and heard a big bang.”
“A bang?” said June. “You mean a big clap of thunder?”
“I guess so,” I said. “It was through the camera mike, so there was a lot of distortion. Either way, all three power plants went down simultaneously. I suppose all three must have been taken out by a big lightning strike.”
“Can we see anything out there?” asked Tony.
“Nothing,” I replied. “The cameras are still running on backup power, but they’re totally obscured by the dust from the storm. Actually, that’s going to be our biggest problem. Visibility is zero out there. Hmm, there could be some big updrafts and we don’t weigh much in this gravity...We should tether to something heavy…” I was starting to think out loud.
“We need a plan, broken down into tasks…” said June gently.
“Right,” I replied. “Okay, our priority right now is to go out there and patch at least one of the generators back in.”
Suddenly Glen yelled, “Fuck that! It’s fucking hopeless!” He was still sitting in the chair by the door where Pete had placed him. “We need to start the evacuation!”
He was sweating and his face was scrunched with anxiety. He looked desperately at Pete, pleading.
“Glen, it’s okay. We’re gonna be all right,” said Pete. “You need to calm down.” Then he addressed the group: “I guess that is a question. Do we need to prepare for evac?”
Nobody said anything for a few seconds and a strange blank expression came over Karl’s face.
“That’s not actually a viable option,” I said finally. “Evacuation was only really considered before we had the inner colony and when we only had a couple of hundred colonists to evacuate. We’re many times bigger now; it’s just not feasible.”
I paused as that sank in.
“We’re not there yet, anyway,” I continued. “Let’s make an initial assessment when we get out there and then make a call. If we’re certain we can fix it before”—I looked at the time—“four this afternoon, then we just sit tight. Anything later, and we start shuttling as many people as possible to the launch pad.”
“Why four?” asked Chris.
“That’s when the oxygen will start getting low,” I replied, “and the batteries will die around then as well. After that, we won’t have any electronics, no sensors. We’ll be completely blind.”
“We’ll still have our outersuits,” said Chris.
“Yes,” I said, “but if we have to resort to our suits, we’re all in very deep trouble. If it comes to that, we’ll need to secure a new oxygen source at all costs.”
“Wait,” said June. “What about the shuttle’s engines? Could we fly it over and plug it in like a power plant somehow?”
“Possibly,” I replied. “But it would be difficult, maybe impossible to fly in this storm, and our best bet at this stage is to get the power plants back online.”
“How many people could we carry up in the ship, anyway?” asked Chris.
Those of us who knew the answer didn’t want to speak up—it was a lot less than the total number of colonists.
“Karl,” I said, “why don’t you and Jan start working on a priority evacuation list while we head out to assess the damage?”
“Yes, we will do that,” he replied, clearly relieved to have something administrative to do.
“Mike, the plan,” June reminded me gently.
“Yeah, okay, thanks.” I dropped into task mode. “All right. In a minute, we’ll figure out how to get out there and fix it. Roles first. Liu, you can run diagnostics on the system and warnings to see if we can learn anything before we arrive. Karl, you’ll work on the evac list. Chris, you can monitor biometrics and make sure nobody in the colony is having a meltdown, and intervene if necessary. Tony, June, and I will head out into the dust. Pete, you can coordinate everything from here. Does that all sound okay?”
“Yep, sounds about right,” said Pete. “But how the hell are you guys going to get out to the power plants?”
“A harvester,” said June. “One with some dust in it. It’s the heaviest vehicle we’ve got; we can use its lights and tether to it so we don’t get lost or sucked into space. Mike, we need someone to drive. The three of us aren’t going to be any good at manually driving a harvester. We need a driver.”
“Someone fucking crazy,” mumbled Glen.
“Say one more thing like that and I’m putting you in the infirmary,” growled Pete.
“I know just the person,” I said. “Hu from Vehicle Maintenance. She’s…well, she’s got no fear and can really drive. She knows harvesters. She’d be useful.”
“She’s in. Call her,” said Pete.
I suddenly regretted suggesting Hu. It was true that she could be very helpful, but she was also extraordinarily confrontational.
“Do we need anyone else?” asked Tony.
“Good question, but no. Not yet, I think,” said June. “I’ve been wondering what might have caused the outage and actually don’t think it was a single lightning strike. All three power plants at the same time? They’re simply too far apart and too well grounded. I’m guessing lightning caused ground shift or a landslide, in which case we’ll just need to plug everything back in, and the four of us can do that. Or maybe something has ripped the main lines and we’ll need to run a spare line, and then we’ll need a lot more people, including Tony’s whole team. But for now, the four of us is fine, and we can’t squeeze any more into a harvester cab anyway.”
She looked at Tony for confirmation and he nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll call Hu and we’ll get going.”
“Wait. Maybe we should all send brief messages to our families,” said June, her voice cracking. “If we all die in a few hours, don’t you want to tell them you love them one last time?”
We stared at her for a moment.
“Nothing is transmitting now,” said Liu. “But when we get the power back on and an uplink established, a bank of messages will be released from outboxes.”
We were silent again. I was estranged from my parents and didn’t have anyon
e to send a message to. But I could tell that others in the room wanted to find time to write farewells.
“Okay, then. Squeeze that in if you can,” I said. “Otherwise, let’s assume we’re going to be successful and focus on fixing the problem so those messages aren’t necessary.”
“Okay, Mike, go,” said Pete.
“Hold on,” said June. “How will we communicate with you guys back here? Our comms probably won’t work in the storm. And what if something happens to us?”
“Shit,” said Pete. “You won’t. Okay, we’ll give you five minutes to get ready, and thirty—no, I guess forty-five minutes to drive out there and make the assessment and drive back.”
“Make it an hour,” I said. “Okay, let’s go.”
*
Hu was surprised to get my call, but when I said that the response team wanted her help, she leaped into action and raced out to meet us at the main airlock.
“What’s your plan, Security?” she asked as she stopped beside us.
Her tone was still confrontational. However, she was all business, no stress or panic in her voice or actions, and I realised that my initial instinct had been right—she was a great person to have in an emergency.
“We’ll tell you on the way,” I replied. “We’re in a bit of hurry.”
The lights were dimmed and the air already seemed stuffy as we rushed out to the hangar. We had to manually open and reclose each airlock, and the wind was making the passages vibrate and shudder. The plastic segments rippled.
We arrived at the staging area behind the hangar airlock and put on heavy construction suits, which were designed for excavation and welding. Tony grabbed a large roll of thin insulated cable from the storeroom.
“We’ll make tethers in the harvester on the way,” he said.
We went through the outer airlock door into the hangar. Hu chose a harvester that had a partial load and climbed in. The cab was designed to carry two people and we needed to give Hu room to drive, so Tony, June, and I squished in on top of each other. June was sitting across my lap and my hand was supporting her back.