“Marti used the main navscan dish to boost the sensors, and as far as we can tell, everything else on Starlight is offline too,” she said.
“The colony is offline?” Elias asked.
Walker had reached the railing on the lift cage and was hoping that if he stopped there and waited, they wouldn’t follow him to the ConDeck. “What does that mean?”
“There are no RF signals anywhere on the surface,” Marti said. “There are also no automated comm signals between the orbitals and the ground.”
“We can’t even detect EM from the power grid,” Nuko added.
“Can you tell if something’s happened to the colony?” the captain asked.
“Not from this range,” she said.
“I’m on my way,” he said.
Chapter Two:
The captain stood behind the empty pilot’s seat staring at the screen as they eased into position at the barycenter between the two worlds. Marti and Nuko were flying the ship, so he just watched. Normally seeing two Earth sized planets this close together would be a sight he’d want to enjoy, but the strangeness of the silence stole the pleasure from the moment.
To port, Shadetree was three-quarters illuminated, a blistered red wasteland of scorched barren rock, and to starboard, Starlight was a mottled brown and gray desert with nearly iridescent thin clouds along the poles. Most of its surface was dark and only visible in the reflected light of its companion world.
“We should be able to see the lights of the colony from here,” Kaycee said. She sat beside Elias in one of the observation jump seats along the back wall of the ConDeck.
Walker had allowed both of his passengers to stay on the ConDeck as they made their approach, and for the most part, she had spent the time whispering with Pruitt. When Ethan glanced over his shoulder, he could see she was chewing on a big ball of acid. “It could be clouds obscuring the light,” he offered.
She shook her head. “It’s an ultra-arid desert. Way too hot for heavy clouds.”
“The power has to be off,” Elias added.
“I would concur with his assessment, Captain,” Marti said.
“And I’m sure they’d have backup systems,” Nuko said. “There’d be medical centers with emergency generators and who knows what else. There should be some light somewhere down there.”
“What could take out the entire power-grid?” Walker asked, swiveling his seat and sitting down. He scratched at his chin while he thought.
“I’m not a power systems engineer, but nothing I know of would do it,” Pruitt said.
“Kepler 186 is a red dwarf. They tend to burn their fuel slowly, but sometimes they burp hard.” Renford Pascalle was the ship systems engineer, but he was also an armchair astronomer so that made him the closest thing they had to a science officer. “As tight in as these planets orbit, it might not take much of a solar flare to blast the surface in a big way.”
“Rene’s got a point. That would also take out the beacon,” Nuko said, nodding.
He shook his head. “Someone might have shut it down on purpose, but not because of a flare. All space-based systems use broadcast power distribution and have for the last seventy years. Those beacons use narrow-bandwidth filtering that makes them impervious to surge.”
“A stellar eruption of that magnitude would also leave detectable background radiation across wide areas of the star system for weeks,” Marti said. “We would have picked it up when we made our approach.”
“I assume that means you didn’t observe any?” the captain asked.
“Correct,” the AA said. “The background stellar winds are normal. There is no detectable evidence of a recent coronal mass ejection.”
“That’s probably a good thing, since an incident that powerful would have affected people on the surface,” Rene said.
“Are there any life signs?” Kaycee asked.
“We’re not a science vessel,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “Our sensor kit isn’t tooled to scan for biosigns. We can pick out the electromagnetic signature of a ship at a distance of better than a light year, and we’ve got high-end optics to go with that, but otherwise we can’t do much beyond sniffing out a base level atmospheric analysis. Spiffs like fancy sensors are a pointless upgrade on a cargo hauler.”
Her eyes flashed for an instant before she visibly bit down on whatever had sparked her. Instead she just nodded.
“If it was a flare, they’d all be in the shelters anyway,” Elias said. He reached out and squeezed her hand. She jerked her arm free and glared. She didn’t appear to be in the mood for his reassurance.
“Shelters?” Nuko asked, making sure that Ethan registered that she’d noticed the strange interaction too.
“There are shelters under the community center buildings and all the major outlying facilities,” Kaycee said. “When they planned out the colony, the designers accounted for space weather possibilities.”
“Would these shelters be shielded?” Marti asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, glancing at Elias.
“I am sure they would be,” Rene confirmed, although his voice sounded less than confident. “A few meters of soil would be enough for all but the most intense issues.” He drummed his fingers on the edge of his control station for several seconds while he chewed over the possibilities. “If the shelters did have any extra heavy shielding, that could explain the lack of RF and EM.”
“So, they might just be hiding out.” Kaycee nodded.
“Don’t you think they’d have stuck their heads up to look around and turn the lights back on by now?” the captain said. “If this happened long enough ago that the stellar background levels have returned to normal, they’ve been holed-up for a while.”
“How long could it have been?” Nuko asked.
“When was the last time either of you had any comm with the colony?” Ethan asked.
“I received a message from my family the day before I boarded,” Elias said.
“And I sent one from Armstrong Station, the day we got the cargo loaded,” the doctor said.
“I don’t remember linking one back to you after we made way,” Nuko said.
Kaycee shook her head.
“It’s more than a six-day transmission delay from Zone One to here,” Ethan said. “If we assume the reason you never got a reply was because they were already hiding in the shelters, then the window of this happening is no less than seventeen days ago.”
“And based on my message it can’t be more than thirty days ago,” Elias said. He unfolded from his chair and paced along the upper platform of the ConDeck.
“I don’t know how long they’d have supplies in the shelters,” Kaycee said. “Probably not much longer than a month, best case.”
“That would be my thinking too,” Elias said, nodding.
“We need to get down there,” she said.
“Before I can possibly say yes to that, we need to know what’s going on,” the captain said, shaking his head. “What other explanations could knock the entire colony offline?”
“And the beacon,” Nuko added.
He nodded. “And the beacon.”
“Wager would be it has to be massive hardware failure, and not something biological,” Rene said. “Equipment keeps working even without people to notice.”
“If a robot works in a forest and there’s no one around to hear it …” Ethan said.
“It still keeps making noise,” the engineer finished. “That leans me into the idea that somebody shut it all down.”
“But why?” Elias asked, stopping at the end of one of his orbits and glaring at the room in general.
“That brings us back to going down there,” Kaycee said, standing up like she meant to leave immediately. “How soon can we—”
“We can’t,” the captain said. “I would be willing to go down and take a look around, but you are paying passengers and that means I’m responsible to keep you safe until we officially arrive at our destination.”
&nbs
p; “You are fragging joking, aren’t you?” she asked, glancing at Nuko and Rene as if to make sure he wasn’t serious. “We’re here. This is the destination we contracted.”
“No,” he said, watching Elias focus his glare in his direction. “Until my Triple-C declares the contract complete, I can’t let you go down there even if I wanted to.”
“That’s absurd,” she said.
“I’m sure it feels that way to you,” he said, shrugging. “Leigh has to make the call and I’m certain she will not waive the liability clause in your transport contracts until we’re sure there’s nothing dangerous happening on the surface.”
“Captain Walker, you cannot be saying you will hold us here against our will,” Elias said, enunciating every word making him sound more menacing than he already was. “This is our home. We have rights under Coalition law and you really don’t want to be crossing that line, considering how that would go for you.”
“If you want to take this up with Leigh Salazar, I am sure she’ll explain the legality, and my rights to make this call,” he said.
“I will do that,” he said, his voice descending toward a growl. Pivoting, he disappeared through the door.
“Ethan, please,” Kaycee said. “He’s right, this is our home. We’ve both got family in the colony.”
“I understand that, but I just can’t,” he said. “I know that’s frakked, but I have to put your safety first.”
She shook her head. “My whole life is down there. It’s everything I’ve spent my life working on. You can’t seriously expect me to sit here and wait.”
“I’m sorry Doctor, but that is exactly what I expect you to do,” he said, trying to sound firm. “You’re welcome to stay here on the ConDeck and monitor the situation as long as you don’t do anything to countermand my instructions to Nuko.”
“But—”
“Or you can go talk to my Triple-C and see how truly inflexible she can be,” he said. “The choice is yours.”
Turning his back on her he stepped over to Nuko. “Let Leigh know Pruitt’s on his way to twist her arm, and that I already explained the answer to him.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “The ship is yours. Under no circumstances are you to let either of them push you into anything, nor are you to let them distract you. I don’t know what we’re going to find down there but it stinks hard. I want the best possible assessment of what I’m up against once we land.”
“Yah, boss. Cando,” she said. “Then you are going down?”
He nodded.
“Leigh’s not going to like that, either,” she said.
“It’s a no risk excursion,” he said. “Not likely to be a biohazard, so she can’t get too bent.”
“Hopefully.” She shrugged. “It’s your skin, but she is a Triple-C so it’s a fair odds guess how her brain works.”
Squeezing her shoulder, he winked. “Marti, saddle up one of your walkabouts with good eyes and load it into shuttle-one,” he said. “Rene, you’re with me.”
“We ought to take Preston too,” the engineer suggested, getting up and heading toward the door. He paused to wait for an answer before leaving.
“Your med-tech?” Kaycee said. “Take me. I’m a lot better qualified than Reed is, and I know the layout of the colony.”
“That may be true on both counts, but we’ve already covered this and I won’t risk letting you go down there until we know what’s going on,” he said, turning toward her and crossing his arms as he studied her face. “You want to do something? Sit down at one of the consoles and help Nuko and Marti figure out what we might be looking at. It’s probably nothing, but I don’t want to have my eggs hanging in the wind.”
“I’d be better with eyes on the ground beside you,” she said.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. She just wasn’t going to give it up. “We’ll maintain a constant optic channel on the comm, and you’ll be able to watch every move we make. It’ll almost be as good as being there with us.”
She sighed but nodded and took the engineer’s vacant seat. “You’ll need to move fast once you get on the surface,” she said. “I’m not used to the view from orbit, but the sun looks to be close to coming up.”
“Local sunrise is in thirteen minutes,” Marti confirmed. “Transit time to the landing center is fifty-seven minutes.”
“It’s important for you to remember Starlight’s an extreme desert,” she explained. “It will be twenty to thirty centigrade as the sun comes up, but because the air is so dry, it heats fast. Within an hour of sunrise, it will be forty-five. By morning dark, it will be over fifty. It’s a pity that you can’t make it down there before sunrise.”
He whistled. “Morning dark?”
“There’s almost an hour of eclipse every day-cycle as the colony passes through the shadow of Shadetree. It cools things off a little and you get some amazing views of the inner planets and the stars, but when the sun comes out from behind the other planet it gets hotter than frak before nightfall.”
“‘Hotter than frak’ means what?” he asked.
“Over sixty centigrade,” she said. “You can survive that outside for a short time, if you’re used to it. But you aren’t and won’t. So honestly, don’t even plan to try. If the power really is down, there will be no climate control in any of the buildings, so you’re better off staying in the shade outside where the breeze will help. But you really need to be back aboard your shuttle before the eclipse ends if you can.”
“Will the environmental controls in an EVA suit keep us from baking?” he asked, turning to Rene who was still standing by the door and looked like he’d already started sweating. For practice.
He shook his head. “It might for a little while, but I don’t think so. The cooling in a standard suit isn’t designed to unload heat into an environment that hot.”
“That means no on the EVA suits,” Walker said, frowning.
“The air is ultra-dry, so evaporation is your friend,” Kaycee said. “If you get into a crisis, you can soak your clothes with water and that will cool you off some. It won’t be comfortable, but it will buy you some extra time if you need it.”
“Is there anything else we need to worry about?” the captain asked. “Maybe giant worms that poop purple poison or something?”
“You have to watch out for your eyes,” she said. “The light is only about ninety percent as bright as Earth’s sun, but it’s heavy on the low red end of the visible spectrum. It carries a lot more energy than it looks like it does, but what you have to realize is that when your eyes start hurting, you need to get into deep shade and give them a chance to rest. If you don’t, you will get what we call ocular migraines, and they can be crippling.”
“How long does it take to get to that point?” Rene asked.
“You’ll have at least a half day-cycle outside, give or take,” she said, shrugging. “Some people are more susceptible than others. A mild headache will be the first symptom that you’re getting into trouble. Your eyes aren’t designed to focus the red wavelength light so they have to strain to see clearly. You might not feel it coming on until you’ve reached the point of being in trouble, either. You’ll need to pay close attention.”
“Will EVA suit visors help?” Rene asked. “I could jiffy-rig something.”
“A bit,” she said. “They design most suit helmets to filter out the blue spectrum light since it damages the eyes faster, but it would be better than nothing. If you can get your hands on the local eyewear, it provides much better protection against chromatic aberration, and will keep you from going sky-blind right away.”
“Starlight sounds like such a wonderful place,” Walker said. “Why the hell would anyone build a colony here?”
Chapter Three:
Slicing down through the atmosphere, Captain Walker manually piloted the shuttle. If this had been a routine landing, he’d have let Marti drive them to the landing center, but he wanted to make a fast pass over the colony on the way down and if he sat i
n the nose chair, he’d get the best view. Preston and Rene sat in the seats behind him and stared out the side windows looking for any signs of life.
He made a low approach and banked hard around a small ridge that protected the landing pads from what looked like an endless sea of sand. Without approach control markers to help him navigate, he almost overshot the terminal before he snapped into a stern flip and dropped down hard toward the landing apron.
The sun was three hours above the horizon and shadows arced across the landscape. Even from a thousand meters, they could see heat waves shimmering off any surface exposed to the direct sunlight.
Angling the shuttle toward the shadow of the loop tube, he remembered Kaycee’s warning. If he wanted to be able to touch the door mechanism to get back in, he’d need to park out of the sunlight if possible. She said the locals called it the art of shade conservation.
“What do you notice?” Ethan asked as he extended the gear and made his final descent.
“That it already looks hot?” Preston said.
“Of course, it looks hot. You’re from Mars. Everything looks hot to you,” Rene said.
“No, look around,” the captain said. “What don’t you see that you should?”
“People? But Kaycee said it’s hot, so they’d all be inside,” the med-tech said.
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Where are the landers?”
“It’s hot,” he said again. “Maybe they keep them in hangars.
Ethan rolled his eyes and sighed. “That’s possible, but do you see any hangar buildings?”
“No, but it’s hot. Maybe they’re underground.”
Walker glared hard enough it bounced off the forward window and almost flattened Preston in his seat. He heard him flinch, or maybe it was Rene trying not to laugh.
“What about it Kaycee?” he asked as he cut power and let the shuttle settle on the tarmac. “Are there underground hangars?”
“I’ve been studying at Armstrong for a while,” she said, coming back over the comm. “When I left, I hadn’t heard anything about plans for underground hangers.”
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 2