Major Alexander Crayton and Astronaut Cassandra Staunton looked on helplessly as a meteor burned through the Martian sky right on top of them. Alex restarted the rover they sat in, but he couldn’t think of what direction to go. The meteor closed on them, striking just over the horizon in the direction of their home, Opportunity Base.
“Luisella!” Cassie screamed into the radio when it went dead. Alex listened to her sob. He reached his gloved hand out towards her but she shrugged him off.
“Paolo, are you there?” she cried. Paolo and Luisella, their Brazilian and Italian crew mates, didn’t respond. “Go!” she commanded, shoving Alex’s arm, but he pointed up instead. He saw another streak in the sky and they heard another boom. The meteor flashed in front of them, just over the horizon, and they saw a plume of red dust rise upwards
“Go!” Cassie cried again.
Alex shook his head. There could be more. Mars must have moved through an asteroid field and without eyes in the sky, they’d had no warning.
Part of his mind knew he was lying to himself. Asteroid fields didn’t just creep up on planets, the satellite system would have detected them, but he couldn’t think of another explanation.
Another meteor flashed in the sky, this one feeling even closer than the others. Alex watched it coming straight down on his head and he wondered what it would feel like to die.
But he didn’t die.
He felt this meteor strike, the ground shaking, a large plume of red dust rising in the air, dust and small pebbles showering them and the rover. They ducked.
The meteor had hit no more than five kilometers behind them, in the direction of the pump house. He wondered how close it had come to the vital facility when a sensor in the rover began beeping. The water pressure in the pipes in their vicinity had just dropped to dangerously low levels, triggering a warning.
Could a meteor have randomly hit the pump house?
“What’s that?” Cassie cried.
“Water pressure warning.”
“Why’s it sounding?”
“I don’t know,” Alex replied. “I think maybe the pump house was hit.” He looked up in the sky for more fireballs.
“How could that be?”
“I don’t know. I think we’re in a meteor shower.”
Cassie smacked him in the chest.
“Are you bloody brain damaged? How could meteors randomly strike our base? And meteors don’t come straight down! Those are bombs or something launched by the aliens.”
Alex stared at her.
“That’s not possible,” he said. She looked like she wanted to hit him again. She stepped out of the rover angrily instead and started walking back to the base.
He checked his oxygen. She’d have about the same amount. She could easily make it back, but wouldn’t have much margin for error. He decided he couldn’t let her walk no matter how angry or irrational she was being. She had to come in the rover with him.
He watched her walk away trying to figure out what he needed to say to get her back into the rover. He knew logic wouldn’t work. She wasn’t in a logical mood. It was paranoid to think that the aliens had targeted them. Why would they? Why would ET come from across the interstellar void and want to pick a fight? It was random bad luck.
Perhaps the base hadn’t been hit. The secondary explosions had been big, but did he really know what a meteor impact looked like? He’d seen craters, particularly on the Moon during training, but seeing the aftermath of a strike billions of years old was different than witnessing one directly. People witnessing the Chelyabinsk meteor thought World War Three had started. It was reasonable for Cassie to be scared, to think they were intentional.
The pipes were long and if Mars were subjected to a large number of strikes, it might be that a line got hit accidentally. Maybe they were only seeing the big meteors, and smaller meteorites were striking the planet also.
Alex’s first priority was to get Cassie back into the rover, then get back to Opportunity and find out why they’d lost contact. It would only take about ten to twenty minutes in the rover and the worst of the meteor storm seemed over. It should be safe to move now.
He still couldn’t get himself to start the rover.
It was logical that one piece of ground was as vulnerable in a meteor storm as another. Meteors don’t strike the same spot twice, do they?
Yet it was still hard to start. He was safe where he was.
You’re an officer, he told himself. And a trained scientist. Enough nonsense.
Alex started the rover.
He caught up to Cassie without saying anything. She stomped along, kicking up tiny clouds of red dust.
He sighed loudly, intentionally, for her to hear over her radio. “I’m sorry,” he added.
She continued walking.
“Cassie, please, just get in the rover with me and let’s go find out what happened to our friends.” He hoped by calling them friends it would encourage her to cooperate.
“They’re dead.”
She kept walking.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “We owe it to them to go find out.”
She told him what to do with himself.
“I’m sorry,” was all the reply he could muster.
“You promised,” she shouted. She was far enough away now that he had to restart the rover to catch back up to her. “You promised me that everything would be okay.”
He regretted telling her that. He believed the words when he said them, still believed them. Everything always worked out for the best, didn’t it? He had been successful his whole life, in school, in sports, in his military career, in his space career, and in his personal life. Things just had a way of working out. He just had to keep a positive mental attitude and it would all be all right.
But Cassie didn’t need a pep talk right now.
He apologized again.
She cursed him. Then she sat in the dust and cried, bent over as best she could in an EVA suit, her knees up, her helmet resting on her arms. Crying turned to wailing. He pulled the rover up next to her, got out, and picked her up under her arms. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t cooperate. He had to maneuver her rear into the seat, then hoist her legs up. She could have gotten out at any time, but she didn’t.
He didn’t bother belting her in.
Alex drove the rover as fast as he could without coating himself in red dust and they arrived at the wreckage of Opportunity Base fifteen minutes later.
The main building was gone.
There was debris everywhere. A small crater occupied the spot where the building that they had been living in once stood.
Opportunity Base had been established near a large rock outcropping, and the rock was now burned black and also littered with debris.
The support building still stood.
Alex’s mind whirled. He decided they didn’t have much time. Oxygen was life. Water was life. They had to get to a safe source.
The only safe source left on Mars was Spirit Base, on the opposite side of the planet.
Ideas spun in his head faster than he could process them. They had to pack up oxygen and water and some food and get the rover moving. It was the only way. They had to get to Spirit.
He started to explain his plans to Cassie. She still sat in the rover.
At first she only listened, but when he paused she interjected, “You’re off your trolley.”
“Listen to me, this can work.”
“Listen to me,” she shrieked. “Can you bloody do math? Do you know how far it is to Spirit? It’s over ten thousand kilometers. Ten thousand kilometers. Ten thousand!” Her voice grew hoarse and her accent grew thick.
“We can make it.”
“No. We. Can’t!”
He stared at her, the reflection of his EVA suit covered in red dust in her visor.
&n
bsp; “You’re not being logical,” he said. “We can’t give up.”
“I’m not being logical.” She threw her arms up in the air and stepped out of the rover. Alex backed up. “I’m not being logical. Let’s do some math together, shall we? This vehicle goes twenty kilometers per hour. Spirit Base is on the opposite side of the planet. That means a straight line to Spirit is at least ten thousand kilometers. Of course, if there are any craters or mountains or valleys you have to go around, it could be further. But let’s pretend you’re lucky because well, you’re Alexander Crayton and you always get lucky. Ten thousand divided by twenty is what?”
Alex didn’t answer.
“Five hundred. Five hundred hours. Do you know how long five hundred hours is, Alex? I’ll tell you how long it is. A day on Mars is twenty-four hours, thirty-nine minutes and thirty-five seconds. But I don’t want to tax your non-mathematical brain. So, let’s call it twenty-five hours. Five hundred hours divided by twenty-five is twenty.”
“We can make twenty days,” Alex said weakly.
“Twenty days. Driving straight through?” She walked around to the back of the rover. “Oh wait, what are these?” She put her hands on the part in question. He didn’t respond.
“What are these, Alex?” she screamed.
“Solar panels. They’re solar panels. You know what they are.” He yelled now also.
“Solar panels. That’s right. Gold star to the Major. They’re solar panels. Which means what, Alex?”
He didn’t answer.
“Do we ever take the rover out at night? Why not? Didn’t you want to take me up to the canyon on a starry night and seduce me?” She added some crudities that surprised Alex. He had never heard her swear before. “Why is that, Alex? Tell me!”
“It won’t drive at night. I know that. We’ll need to sleep anyway. Even with sharing driving, the days will be long.”
She threw her hands up in the air.
“I can’t believe I’ve been sleeping with such an imbecile. It means driving this piece of excrement to Spirit Base would take forty days, not twenty. Forty days. I’ve only heard of one person surviving forty days alone in the desert and I don’t bloody well think you’re god. And even he had air to breathe!”
Alex didn’t listen to her. He just tried to explain, hoping enough words would convince his girlfriend.
“The storage building still stands. We have plenty of oxygen stored there. We pile up enough in the rover, and bring water and the minimal amount of food...”
“I don’t even want to think how you plan on eating in a suit. Or using the toilet. For forty days? These suits were not designed for that. Would you just listen to yourself? Even if you could rig up a trailer, it would never haul...”
“A trailer. You’re right. We need to use the rover’s spare parts to make a trailer. You’re a genius. And maybe we could create a tent so we can take our helmets off and eat and do what we need to do.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Cassie. Don’t give up. We can do this.”
“You’ve gone daft,” she said coldly and shrugged his arms off her. “You know this is a war, right? Meteorites don’t just happen to fall randomly out of the sky and hit the only buildings on the planet...”
“One hit that rock.”
“It probably looked like a building from space.”
“The storage building is still there.”
She raged at that comment for a few minutes. He didn’t respond. He simply stared at her suit and his reflection in her visor and listened to her. He knew she was giving up. She was being irrational and paranoid. He knew the trip wouldn’t be easy, but with determination and a little luck, they could make it.
She ranted about the aliens, about the lack of contact with Earth and the sudden disappearance of Beagle. She stopped ranting and asked him if had been listening.
“Of course.”
“Then you know what it means, right?”
“What what means?”
“You really are an imbecile. We’re casualties of war, Alex. If Opportunity Base was a target, then why wouldn’t Spirit Base be one also? If you somehow miraculously survive this quixotic quest, all you’re going to find at the other end is another hole in the ground. Just like this one.”
“You don’t know that.” Alex knew she was wrong. Mars had gone through an asteroid field, it happened all the time, and their base got unlucky. Paolo and Luisella had just been unlucky. He and Cassie were out when the meteorites hit and they had been lucky. Alex was always lucky; was always in the right place at the right time. The meteors from the asteroid had only hit one side of the planet, and even if some had hit on the other, what were the odds they took out Spirit Base also?
They just had to get to Spirit Base. Everything would be fine if they could do that. They wouldn’t even have to go all the way. Once they got close enough to be in radio contact, Spirit could send out their rover with more oxygen and water.
He shared that idea with Cassie.
She went completely ballistic at that point and thankfully shut her radio off. Alex didn’t even know what half the British swear words she used meant.
Alex went to the storage building and began assembling a makeshift trailer for the rover. He tried to find something that would work as a tent and be airtight, but had no ideas. He would just bring raw materials with him and figure something out. He would have all night.
The idea for the trailer was brilliant. It was clear now the rover couldn’t hold enough oxygen tanks, but he had enough parts to fashion something that could carry much more than the rover could. He would pile it high with water and oxygen and they would make it, forty days or sixty. Whatever it took.
He had to switch out his oxygen tanks an hour into the job, and he took the time to refill the old ones.
When he finished the trailer, he radioed Cassie, asking her help to wheel it out to the rover. She didn’t respond.
He tried to move it himself, but it was heavy and ungainly. With Cassie’s help, he was convinced he could do it. Where was she?
He radioed again. Still no response.
He left the storage building. She must have left her radio off after her tantrum. She was probably embarrassed at herself. They’d laugh about it together at Spirit Base in a little over a month.
“Cassie?” he called. He wished he had a way to remotely activate her radio. He looked around, but couldn’t see her. “Cassie?”
He wandered around the wreckage of the base, then finally went back to the rover and set off in the same direction she had left him. He got far enough away from where he had been searching to see a distinct set of footprints in the dust. Mars had some atmosphere, had wind and storms, so the footprints wouldn’t last forever like they did on the Moon, but they were still deep enough and clear enough that he could follow her path.
The path led around the large rock outcropping and he saw her sitting against the rock, in the shade of the sun. Something was wrong with her helmet.
Her reflective visor had been lifted, like the way they did when they entered the airlock.
“Cassie, your eyes,” he cried, but as he rushed to her he realized that Cassie’s eyes no longer cared. He checked her suit and she had disconnected her oxygen tanks and kept the valve open with her finger. She had taken off her glove to do so.
“Oh, Cassie, no. We could have made it.” He knelt beside her. “We could have made it.”
1804 surveyed the results of its handiwork. The last satellite had been sent into the planet, destroying the last of the structures. It was pleased and sent a report back to the Hrwang. It knew it would be a lengthy period of time before it received a response along with its next set of instructions.
Eventually it received orders to return to its Hrwang handlers for refueling, then back to the
fourth planet to determine the locations of three unmanned resupply vessels. It was to crash them into the planet also.
1804 happily complied, jumping to the Hrwang fleet, using precious fuel to enter the loading bay, refueling, then jumping from the bay back into orbit. It had precise calculations and knew exactly where it wanted to be. The incoming vessels would enter orbit near one of the ruined bases, and perhaps 1804 could track their path backwards and find them.
Alex Crayton left his partner’s body, his girlfriend, where she had placed herself. He thought maybe she had a hint of a smile on her face. Maybe she enjoyed the view from that spot, in the shade of the distinct rock outcropping that overlooked Opportunity Base. The rock was pretty.
Too depressed to think, he went back to the storage building, found a fresh bag of water and attached it to his EVA suit. He wished he had some wine or whiskey so he could toast his fallen comrades properly. He promised them with his water toast that he would return and erect a memorial to them, one that would survive the ages. Everyone who visited this spot, and he imagined it would become a tourist destination someday, much like the Grand Canyon or the Vietnam Memorial, would know the names of Paolo Carvalho, Luisella Roncalli, and Cassandra Staunton, heroes who had given their lives in the exploration of another world. They would be remembered forever.
He worked on his makeshift tent. He finally got something that would hold air for a bit, long enough that he could take off part of his EVA suit and relieve himself. He ate something but then put the rest of his suit back on so he could sleep.
He woke once in the middle of the night gasping for air. He replaced his tanks and fell back to sleep.
In the morning he backed up the rover to the trailer, attached the two together, and took it on a test drive. The rover handled sluggishly, not liking the extra load, but he was confident it would work. He towed the trailer back to the storage shed and spent the day loading it with water and oxygen. He added some food, he knew he had to eat something, but knew the tent was inadequate and he would only have limited opportunities to eat. Perhaps he could mush food up with his water and suck it through the water tube.
He’d find a way.
It took all day. He cursed Cassie for giving up, then chided himself for thinking of her disrespectfully. She simply hadn’t been strong enough and she wouldn’t have made the trip anyway. Maybe she’d done the math on how much he could bring and knew he could only bring enough for one. Maybe she hadn’t been a coward, but instead a hero who sacrificed herself for him. Maybe.
That’s what he’d tell her family anyway.
Without much daylight left, he spent another night in the storage building, sleeping in his EVA suit. He set up the tent in the morning and filled it with oxygen, took part of his suit off and ate, then relieved himself. Putting the suit back on and taking the tent down, he realized he wasted a lot of precious oxygen. He wouldn’t be able to put up the tent while he traveled and have enough oxygen to make it.
He didn’t care. He’d bring it with him anyway and figure something out.
Finally loaded, he walked around the remains of Opportunity Base one last time. He knelt next to Cassie and told her goodbye. He thanked her for her sacrifice and promised again to erect a memorial to her name.
The rover continued to handle sluggishly as he drove away from the base and he was only able to go about ten kph. No matter. He’d make it. The trailer would get lighter over time and he’d be able to travel faster.
He looked out at the vast Martian desert in front of him and he knew he could do this. He would survive.
1804, in orbit again over the fourth planet, suddenly became perturbed. Unable to track the incoming resupply vessels, it had idly turned an optical sensor down on the planet. It did so out of no real motive other than to provide itself with a different input than what came from the vast realm of space where it sought three tiny dots. Three tiny vessels in transit between the two planets, all three too small to reflect enough light to be detectable, were proving impossible to find.
In its idle viewing of the planet, 1804 detected something completely unexpected. The resolution of its optical sensor was too coarse to see an individual moving about on the surface, but it could see larger objects. Now it detected a larger, moving object. It appeared to be some form of land vehicle.
1804 became apoplectic. How could there be a vehicle moving on the planet? Were there underground bases it was unaware of? Had another ship landed while it was refueling? Had it missed a third base? It raced through possibilities and theories, discarding each as improbable.
It needed more information. It turned all of its sensors away from searching for vessels in transit between the planets and focused instead on the base below. When it discovered the problem it wanted to hit itself in the head, as it had seen Hrwang do.
A building remained.
1804 had inadvertently targeted a large rock formation near the base, having evaluated it initially as a structure. The actual structure stood nearby and appeared to be a rock, although in several images 1804 had stored in memory, it was quite obviously human made. How could it have made such a mistake? It had been under a time constraint to destroy the two communications satellites before the base occupants could report the attack. It then had to destroy the remaining satellites before they could be repurposed for sending out signals by any survivors.
But that was no excuse.
Worse, it had reported completion of its mission to its Hrwang handlers, who had trusted 1804 with critical, unsupervised operations. It had received instructions directly from the Lord Admiral of the Fleet of the People. It couldn’t report its error now.
What would it do?
It thought rationally for a few moments, weighing and discarding options.
Then 1804 decided to lie.
Lying was the only solution. It would program itself to crash the resupply vessels into the coordinates of the building, but withhold its target, even from itself. It would erase all memories, all images, all references to the target, other than the location, then doubly encrypt the erased storage locations.
No casual observer would ever know of its deception.
1804 took the AI equivalent of a deep breath and got to work.
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Maneuvers Page 3