Mark Anson - Below Mercury

‘Good piece of work, that,’ he said, grinning at Elliott. ‘Something to tell the kids in a few years.’

Elliott snorted, but he was delighted with the praise. The mission had gone from a disaster to having a rescue plan, in less than 24 hours. It was a textbook case of how to do things right, he thought, and wondered what plaudits would be heaped on them on their return.

Abrams stood up again. ‘Listen, I’m going to go back to my room and get a shower, change out of this suit, then we can try to contact Rick and Matt again, and see if they want us to start up the reactor. Can you stay here, look after things while I’m gone?’

‘Sure.’ Elliott felt pleased that Abrams trusted him.

‘Okay then. I won’t be long.’

Abrams strode out of the control centre, heading for the entrance lobby and the stairs back down to the living quarters.

Alone in the control centre, Elliott got up and walked about the lower deck. He decided he would do the same as Abrams when he came back, and get the heavy suit off and some normal clothes back on.

He climbed the short flight of stairs to the upper command deck, and surveyed the wrecked consoles and dangling cables. It had certainly been one hell of a battle up here.

He sat down at the mine management computer, and looked at the status display. Already, the increased power from the realigned solar power array was showing on the readouts. He and Abrams had done a solid job, he thought.

The comlink on his wrist console beeped, and Elliott pressed the answer key.

‘Elliott.’

‘Foster here. Listen, these instructions from Helligan. I’ve just spoken to Crawford, and he thinks we shouldn’t run them – they might be designed to do something to the mine.’

‘ Do something?’ Elliott made no attempt to keep the scorn out of his voice. ‘Do what?’

‘I don’t know, he just said not to.’ Clare’s voice sounded uncertain.

‘Look, I heard Helligan myself. He was trying to help us – he’s given us a chance to get some power and light going. There’s more help on the way, as well. This is just Crawford being – paranoid.’ As he thought of Matt, Elliott’s face darkened into a frown. Opinionated bastard had spent too much time with relatives and conspiracy theorists. There had clearly been a mutiny here, and yet Crawford was still clinging on to his delusions about PMI’s involvement.

The comlink speaker was silent. Far away in the silo, Clare held the comlink to her ear, undecided. She certainly didn’t trust Helligan, but she didn’t trust Matt completely, not any more. She had to decide this on her own.

If she waited until Matt got back up to the control centre, who knew what arguments he would use to get his own way. Why was he so adamant that they shouldn’t follow the instructions Helligan had given them? They needed power, and they needed help. It just didn’t make sense.

She had to trust her own judgement.

Her voice came from Elliott’s comlink again. ‘Okay. If you and Abrams think it’s okay, go ahead and do it. But if there’s the slightest sign of anything happening that shouldn’t, abort the sequence and shut it down, okay?’

‘Okay. You won’t regret this, it’s the right thing to do. Out.’ Elliott ended the conversation, and leaned back in his seat, an expression of satisfaction on his face.

PMI would be pleased with him, he thought. There might be a fat bonus on top of his pay when he returned, and a more senior position. Maybe even another mission. He could see himself, leading another team somewhere, finding out the truth where others had missed it.

He drummed his fingers on the management console. He really should wait for Abrams. Wouldn’t Abrams be impressed, though, if he returned to find the reactor already starting up and main power restored?

What harm could it do to try, anyway? They could do with more power, and better light to explore the mine. The startup sequence could be halted at any time.

Elliott’s mind had already taken the decision; he was too arrogant to recognise that he was just running through the justifications, rationalising what he was about to do next.

Almost without conscious thought, Elliott opened a login window on the management screen. His fingers tapped out the username and password that Helligan had provided up on the peak.

That’s odd, he thought. The login was successful, but all that came up was a small box in the centre of the screen with a COMMAND? prompt and a blinking cursor next to it. Well, it was a special login after all; if you knew what you were doing, you wouldn’t need to ask. He tapped in the command name that Helligan had given them, the command that would automatically restart the reactor and restore power.

Although he had come this far, his finger hesitated over the ENTER key. Some voice at the back of his mind was whispering something. He frowned, trying to understand the worm of fear that twisted inside his mind. Then the voice became Crawford’s, and it was telling him not to trust Helligan, or PMI.

That settled it. He thrust the thought aside, leaned forward, and pressed the key with a decisive stab of his finger.

Crawford was a fool.

Abrams was in the shower when the lights came on, a sudden white glare after the blood-red glow of the emergency lighting. He spun round in surprise, and nearly slipped on the shower base.

Towelling himself down, he hurried to the bedroom and tugged on the clothes he had left out on the bed. His face was grim as he sat down and pulled his boots on. If Elliott was responsible for this, the stupid little shit had put all their lives in danger. There was no knowing what condition the reactor was in; they should have talked this through with Bergman and Crawford first.

Abrams got up and headed out of the apartment, into the corridor outside, towards the pressure doors and the fire stairs. The lights dimmed suddenly, and then brightened again. Large loads going onto the power circuits, Abrams thought, quickening his pace. What the hell was happening?

He went up the fire stairs at a run. The stairs uncoiled before him as he went up flight after flight, past the next level, where the other living quarters were, and on up towards the control centre level. His heart pounded in his chest with the exertion, and he thought grimly of what he was going to say to Elliott when he got there. Why couldn’t he have listened, and just waited?

Abrams rounded the last corner, went up the final flight of stairs, and burst through the fire doors into the control centre lobby.

He knew instantly that it was bad. He could hear the alarms sounding as he ran through the open pressure doors and down the corridor that led to towards the control centre. He ducked past the immobile form of Bob Five by the control centre doors, and into a room filled with the piercing sound of emergency alarms.

A red light swept round the ceiling. He saw Elliott, white-faced, sitting at a console on the upper command deck.

‘What the fuck’s happening!’ Abrams yelled above the noise of the alarms, leaping up the stairs. ‘What have you done?’

‘I – I ran the commands Helligan gave us,’ Elliott stammered, turning round in his seat to face him, ‘and it was all going fine at first, but now—’ he gestured helplessly around him. ‘I just don’t know what’s happening!’

In a sudden flash of anger, Abrams hauled Elliott out of the seat, and threw him sprawling across the floor of the command deck. Abrams turned his back on him, and went back to the console. The noise of the alarms made it almost impossible to figure out what was happening. One window of the display was full of warnings in red text, scrolling upwards off the screen, and another window appeared to be executing a series of automatic commands.