The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN

by Michael Rizzo

Day 4:

  “Okay—Colonels, Doctor—this is what I’ve managed to find out so far…”

  Staley seems reasonably bright despite starting his rehab PT this morning. He should be in agony like the rest of us. (He very well may be—the chipper mood may just be his pain meds.) We older folks almost needed wheelchairs just to get here: The Officer’s Mess, just around the corner from our block of quarters, re-tasked for now into a Command Briefing Room. (Our actual dedicated Command Briefing Room is almost straight above us in the Command Tower, but none of us are looking forward to stairs just yet).

  Allison Ryder had the longest trip since she was just at work in B-Deck Medical, doing her part to monitor the recovery of 1197 people (including herself). She must have drawn the short straw among her fellow physicians Halley and Shenkar, or maybe their patient load was heavier, because she got sent up to represent them at this quick intimate briefing. She’s looking as old as I feel (possibly as old as Matthew feels) and she’s only 55. But she has more than just fatigue to account for it.

  “Bad news first,” Staley gets right to it, bringing his figures up on the wall screens that are usually used for Link or—more routinely—entertainment feed. “Something’s wrong with the nuclear batteries. They’re running below 40%, which makes no sense since they were supposed to last a hundred years. That’s impacting everything, including the atmosphere scrubbers.

  “The scrubbers themselves are straining above normal, which makes sense with all the grunting and huffing trying to get almost twelve-hundred people up after what’s likely been several months of hibernation. But I asked Lieutenant Rios to have his more mobile bodies pull a sampling of the filters, and they’re unusually cruddy and breaking down, which is odd since they should have been barely working while we were asleep. It looks like they’re all long past due for replacement. We’ve started swapping out from our stores, and cleaning the ones that can be recycled, but it will take awhile. The good news is we seem to be breathing pretty well.”

  I watch Matthew take an extra-deep breath, like he doesn’t trust Staley’s assessment of the air systems.

  “Any idea what could account for all the grit in the filters?” Ryder asks. “Could we have a leak? Sand getting into the system?”

  “Preliminary indicators say we’re intact,” he tells her. “And the crud isn’t sand. It’s just dust. I asked for samples to be sent to the labs, but it looks like what we’d normally shed into the air. There’s just a lot of it.”

  “It may be the effect of running on limited power for so long,” I wonder.

  “Colonel Copeland would have left the air systems running for himself,” Ryder considers.

  “He would have shut down all sections he didn’t need,” Matthew assumes.

  “But it’s dusty in Ops,” I say what’s bothering me. “And in his quarters.”

  “And we still have no idea what happened to him?” Ryder pushes, sounding anxious.

  “Records are dumped,” Anton reports heavily. “It’s like MAI just didn’t bother to record anything while we were sleeping.”

  “Was MAI offline?” Ryder is starting to get a sense of the weirdness we’ve been dealing with. I expect she—and the other department heads—have only just recently reviewed the recording of my wake-up “interview” that I selectively released.

  “MAI has a ‘Sleep’ protocol for emergency conservation, but it stays on stand-by,” Anton explains. “It would have woken up and monitored any activity. And it wouldn’t have gone to sleep to begin with if Colonel Copeland was awake and working.”

  “Unless he ordered it to,” Matthew lets us know what he’s been thinking.

  “Why?” Ryder presses.

  “Maybe he thought we’d be down awhile,” Anton offers, though doesn’t sound like he believes the possibility. “Maybe he thought he needed to conserve resources.”

  “Or MAI did,” Matthew throws out another worrisome possibility.

  “How are the post-sleep evals coming?” I ask Ryder, partially changing the subject.

  “Everyone reports the same. We made it through the worst. Eleven-hundred and ninety-seven souls, all alive and breathing…” But I watch her lips purse, her eyes get moist. She’s thinking about her husband. General Ryder was on Phobos.

  “Despite the power issue, it looks like MAI put priority on keeping us healthy,” she continues after taking a moment to compose herself. “No sign of significant tissue damage in any of the personnel I’ve examined. Everybody is stable. We’ll need time to do more detailed workups to be sure.”

  “But no idea how long we’ve been out?” Matthew asks one of the big questions, one we’ve all been asking for days.

  “I know it feels worse than the average shuttle sleep,” she admits the obvious. “And it looks worse, too. The problem is I don’t have access to the research they were doing for flights to the outer planets—that was still going on when we got cut off. We don’t know what more than a year deep-under looks like.”

  “You think we could have been out more than a year?” I ask before anyone else can.

  “It…” She looks like she isn’t sure what to say, like she’s reluctant to tell a patient that he’s terminal. “It looks like MAI adjusted the chemical dosing somewhere along the line. But MAI also lost—or erased—the system logs along with every other record of what happened since we went under. I haven’t had the energy yet to get a team into the system and take a look at the drug and nutrient tanks—that would tell us how much juice we used, which could tell us approximately how long we’ve been out.”

  “What about physical exams you’ve done? Can they give us any indication of time down?”

  She looks tired. “The tissue scans are automatic—protocol as soon as the system brings you out. Beyond that, I’ve only been able to do some basic workups—I’ve never had to do a post-sleep exam on myself, much less on several hundred others while I’m still in Stage Two rehab. Like I said: we need time to look at everybody thoroughly. But there is unusually high demineralization in the bones I’ve been scanning, even though Hiber-Sleep is supposed to slow that way down.”

  Nobody says anything for awhile. I watch bodies move in their seats, shifting, stretching—carefully, like they’re not sure if they can trust their bones not to spontaneously break. Matthew looks like he’s going to make another joke about how old he feels, but keeps it to himself.

  “Back to the good news,” Staley tries. “Internal pressure is good. No apparent atmosphere leaks in any of the sections I’ve managed to scan, but we do need to start doing a room-by-room survey because some of the individual section sensors are down. It’s warm, so environment controls are working. And we’ve got food—rations and supplements—to last us at least a year, more if we want to try using those nano-recyclers the Tranquility Group gave us. It won’t be tasty, and we won’t get fat, but we’ll have basic nutrients to get through as long as we can stand eating the stuff. Water recycling is impacted by the power issue just like the air systems, but we should be okay if we’re reasonably careful. ”

  “Too bad,” Matthew grumbles. “Barring the appearance of a good steak, the thought of a good hot soak was the only thing I was looking forward to.”

  “We could go Japanese-style,” Ryder encourages. “Set up a communal tub.”

  Matthew smiles at her, but it only shows how much he’s hurting.

  “How long until we can actually move around enough to do any of the hands-on work?” I push it. “I want that section-by-section survey done. I need to know just how bad we were hit. And I’d like to know how deep we’re buried.”

  “Plus we should run full maintenance on the air and water systems,” Staley lists, finally sounding weary. “And get the reactors back online—that should solve the power problem—but that probably means going outside. And I need to properly pick apart MAI, see if I can get to whatever’s wrong with it, get us some answers.”

  “A few more days,” Ryder allows cautiously. “We need to
try to keep to the rehab protocols. I respect your priorities, Colonel, but we are in rough shape. Still, I agree: We’d all feel better if we had some answers and could do more than basic rehab. The not knowing is unbearable for all of us.”

  “All right,” I decide. “Can we coordinate with the other chambers and put together some initial work and survey teams out of whoever’s recovering best?”

  “I’ll talk to Halley and Shenkar, have them put together lists of who’s good to go soonest,” Ryder seems to brighten.

  “Let’s give ourselves one more day,” I allow, “then at least get all the seniors together—officers, NCO’s, techs and supports. We need to wake this place up, make sure it’s running enough to keep us alive and comfortable, then see what it will take to get up on the surface and set up a new uplink.”

  “You’re the boss, Mikey,” Matthew agrees with lazy enthusiasm. But then he stays put when Staley and Ryder drag out to get back to business. “You thinking about Lisa?”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Ava and I haven’t had that kind of relationship for a long long time, Matthew,” I answer him coolly, not that he isn’t well aware of our history (both the good and the not so good). “But, yes, I’d like to know she’s in one piece, and not just because she’s now technically third in command. I’d like to know Rick’s okay too. He’s actually older than you are.”

  “But I’m more fun.”

  True.