Mark Anson - Below Mercury

One circuit breaker caused red emergency lights to come on, bathing the control centre in an angry red glare. Matt hesitated, and then continued to the end of the panel.

‘That’s it,’ he said, ‘no more breakers.’

For several moments, there was no sound in the control centre.

‘Looks like it’s dead,’ Bergman said.

Matt help up his hand for silence.

In the red-lit scene, a fan whirred. Then, lights started to wink on control panels, and more fans spun up as the control centre systems restarted after their long shutdown.

There was a sharp crack from one of the wrecked cabinets, and they all jumped.

‘Easy,’ Matt said, ‘we might get some more of that. Keep an eye out for anything that looks like it’s burning.’

As he said these words, some of the display panels started to come back to life. Most showed either a blank screen, or a jagged riot of dancing colour, but one or two seemed to be coming up with a status display.

Clare and the others climbed up to take a look, and they gathered round one display, which was generating a list of items.

‘Main mine status display.’ Bergman said. ‘Seems the management systems computer is still working.’

‘Yeah, but look at what’s not working,’ Matt said, as the display reported item after item as NON-OPERATIONAL or OFFLINE.

‘Main reactor offline, solar power only thirty-five percent, refinery offline, navigation aids non-operational, primary ventilation offline – hey, how come we’ve got fresh air in here if there’s no ventilation?’ Clare asked, as the list scrolled up the screen.

‘Natural ventilation,’ Matt answered. ‘There’s enough difference in temperature between the deep workings and the surface to drive a slow convection current round the mine. It’s not much, but it’ll keep us alive.’

‘What’s on this second console?’ Clare bent over the other screen.

‘Uh, internal communications system,’ Matt said, moving to examine the display. ‘Might be useful. It controls the comlink network in the mine. If we can find some handsets, we might be able to use them to stay in touch.’

Clare nodded.

Matt bent closer to the screen. ‘The network’s out in several places – looks like coverage will be pretty patchy. Hey, what’s this?’ A location map of the mine had sprung up, and on one of the levels, there was a cluster of red dots.

‘Are they handsets?’ Clare asked.

‘Yeah. And they’re close together. Twenty-five hundred level. Right at the bottom of the mine.’

‘Are they working?’

‘No, it’s just showing the last location of the handsets, before the batteries expired.’ Matt looked up at Clare.

‘What do you think?’

Matt’s mind raced. The comlink handsets were carried by everyone working in the mine, and doubled as communications handset and location monitor. He couldn’t think of any reason why the mine personnel would retreat to the deepest parts of the mine, but it would certainly explain why the upper levels were deserted.

‘Well, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. But it’s worth some of use going down to take a look.’

‘Captain, would you come here.’ Wilson’s voice was urgent.

Clare moved across to where Wilson and Bergman stood, hunched over the mine management system. Wilson stabbed a finger at the display:

CREW SHUTTLE 5, SILO 2

CONDITION: PRELAUNCH CHECKOUT

‘Holy shit,’ Clare breathed, ‘can we find out more?’

‘That’s all we can see from here,’ Wilson said, ‘it’s probably the last reported condition of the crew shuttle, but we’ve got to check it out. And it means there’s power to the silos, or we wouldn’t be getting a status indication.’

‘How many people can they carry?’ Bergman asked.

‘Twelve passengers, plus two crew. If it’s still fuelled after all this time, it’s got more than enough delta-vee to get us up to orbit and dock with the tug.’ Wilson looked round, and found himself facing the whole group; they were all standing behind him, staring at the screen.

They spent over an hour in the control centre, trying to figure out what was still working in the mine. The management computer was working well enough for them to query the status of most of the mine’s systems, but very little else.

With their immediate priorities – air, water and food – met for the moment, they turned their attention to how to get a message back to Earth. Clare hardly dared hope that the shuttlecraft in the silo could be used to make their escape, and played down the possibility, at least until she and Wilson had checked it out. Until then, they had to keep focused on getting a message out.

None of the communications systems worked; from what they had seen of the damage to the racks in the comms room, they had been deliberately sabotaged. One better piece of news was that there was still power to the transmitter units, on top of the mountain. Wilson thought that it might be possible to cannibalise parts from one of the field radios, hook it up to one of the transmitters, and use it to get a message to Earth, but it would need a trip up to the main antenna arrays to try it out.

With this in mind, they switched on the transmitter units. They couldn’t send or receive anything until they tried Wilson’s plan, but the beacon signal might be picked up from Earth.

Power was a different matter. The main reactor had shut down when the explosion occurred, and they couldn’t restart it; the computer wouldn’t let them anywhere near the startup sequence without the right access codes. All they had was the power provided by the solar power array, up in the permanent sunlight on the mountain peak.

The power levels were way down, however, and it didn’t take long to find out why; the array had jammed somehow and wasn’t following the Sun in its slow journey around the pole. The array would have to be freed somehow and repointed at the Sun, and that would mean a trip up the mountain.

In the meantime, the solar arrays were providing enough power for essential systems, including the hoist motors, but Matt and Bergman couldn’t get any of the main lighting working, as hard as they tried. The emergency lighting circuits seemed to be working, however, and their world shifted into monochrome as the lights came on, bathing the control centre with a nightmarish red glare and stark, black shadows.

Gradually, a plan emerged by consensus, to make best use of their skills, and the assets that they had.

Clare and Wilson were to investigate the shuttlecraft, and see if it could be made flightworthy. This involved a trip out under the crater floor, to the crew shuttle silos.

Elliott and Abrams would go up to the mountain peak and attempt to make contact with Earth using a modified radio. Matt and Bergman would go with them part of the way, to guide them to a service raise that would bring them out high on the mountainside. From there, a winding path led up to the peak. Clare drafted the text of the message to send back to Earth, which would get the attention they needed. After some debate, they decided to avoid mention of any mutiny, and stuck to a more basic distress call.

That left Matt and Bergman, and the task that nobody wanted: to investigate the last known location of the mine personnel, deep down in the mine. With the hoist motors operational, Matt was confident that they should be able to get down and back again. Nobody knew what to hope for, or to expect, but any chance of finding survivors, however remote, had to be investigated.

The possibility of a mutiny had grown more compelling with every step they had taken into the mine, but it was puzzling that they had not encountered any survivors, if this was the case. The accommodation levels were the logical place to set up a base after a mutiny, but the place was deserted.