John Karr - Detonation Event

Trent and Alicia Hamilton were together at the rim of the tunnel. Gwen could discern them through their helmets. There was some activity and back-and-forth. Trent jetted for the supply shed.

Gwen sat up, frowning. “What’s the hurry?”

Trent paused long enough to pull the heavy bar latch of the supply shed and then ducked inside. Moments later he flew out with a drone board keeping pace with him in the air. At the tunnel edge, there was more apparent back-and-forth between him and Alicia Hamilton. There were several looks down into the abyss and emphatic gestures. Hamilton’s arms fell to her sides. Trent leaped onto the hovering board. The ion jets glowed blue.

Gwen leapt to her feet, shouted at the figure of her brother. “Don’t you do it, fool!”

But he was going to do it.

She wished she were linked to their transmission. She tried to link to MOS-1 Operations Center for information, but they blocked her hailing signature.

Trent dove into the tunnel—ion jets from his jet pack and the drone board glowing quasar blue—like he was surfing down the side of a sub-Martian wave.

Gwen’s heart pounded.

“Not worth it,” she murmured. “Oh my god, it’s not worth it, you idiot!”

She rose and tried to peer down the tunnel as if she were physically standing upon the satellite over Mars. She caught the fading blue from his jets as he swirled deeper and deeper. Then darkness filled in after him, and the satellite image focused on the surface area.

“What the damn hell is going on!”

Gwen jabbed at the communication link switches. “MOS-1, this is Captain Gwen Wagner of PS-30 . We are four hours and twenty-two minutes since departure from MOS-1 en route to MOS-2. Are you linked?”

Nothing.

More hails failed.

Gwen watched at the edge of her seat as two more figures emerged from PS-9 to join Hamilton at the tunnel. Another drone board followed them. And then the surface mission, this final manual check before Detonation Event, went from dangerous to disaster.

With walking ramp still extended, PS-9 rose from the landing zone, spun in a circle, and descended once more. It was almost an artful move, until it suddenly lurched on its side and crushed the walking ramp.

Gwen uttered a cry.

Once crewmembers were outside the hull, it was against standard operating procedure for a ship to move without them unless in peril, which it was now, in spades. As she watched, PS-9 withdrew from the tunnel as it elevated, paused, and approached again as a spinning pendulum.

And Trent is down the damned tunnel!

What could she do, thousands of miles away now and headed in the wrong direction from both MOS-1 and Mars itself? And if he doesn’t make it, what then? Keep flying away like it happened to some overzealous tourist?

No way.

Gwen hesitated, then placed her finger inside the sensor field for the shuttle’s intercom. The computers would log it.

“Crew, this is Captain Gwyneth Wagner. Verbally identify yourselves over ship’s comm for formal correspondence.”

“Janai Cricks, astrobiologist and communications analyst. Why the formality, Captain?”

“Will Norquist, engineer and copilot. What’s doin’, Wags?”

“Possible navigation update. Emergency one-eighty back to MOS-1. Given the orbiter has been also flying our general direction, we could expect to rendezvous in just a few hours.”

“What the hell? I don’t see any alerts from air systems, engine, or ship structure,” Norquist said.

“Not us. PS-9 .”

“They’re still down with the tunnels?”

Cricks stepped on his last word. “Not picking anything up from the operational freqs. Are you sure you heard something?”

“Emergency warnings went out, but now SCONA has blocked the comm operational links and isn’t providing explanation,” Gwen said. “We still have satellite feeds to the Martian surface. Something’s wrong at the tunnel, and PS-9 is having an emergency. Two PS-9 crewmembers went to correct what I’m guessing is a relay problem. Two more joined the third, and they’re all looking down the tunnel for the idiot who flew in.”

“Well, that’s not good. But they should be able to handle—”

“Trent was the fool who dove in. And the shuttle has gone erratic. Rising, falling, slow spin, swinging back and forth from the tunnel landing zone. Cracks—god!—are forming in her hull.”

“We’ve got the sat feed in the galley now,” Cricks said through the link. “Not good, not good.”

“Shuttle’s got heaps of trouble all right,” Norquist said.

“At the tunnel lip are Devans and Hamilton and Burroughs. They just sent that other drone board down the tunnel.”

Gwen gripped the arms of the chair tightly, hardly feeling the pain of one of her rings pressing against her flesh to the bone. “Trent, get your ass out of there!”

“We’re coming up to the bridge,” Norquist said.

Moments later her crew burst into the bridge in a heated exchange. Both directed their energy at their captain and pilot, hands raised until they looked at the holo. There, PS-9 seesawed over the surface, spewing propellant from its engine funnel. And the cracks in its hull split longer and wider now.

“Devans and Hamilton just dove in!” Cricks said.

“Christ,” Norquist said.

Moments passed. PS-9 grew brighter and brighter.

Cricks stared and pointed. “Three are out of the tunnel!”

“Right, look at ’em!” Norquist said. “Trent too, Gwen.”

Gwen stared as her brother emerged on the second drone board, flanked by Devans and Hamilton. They joined Burroughs standing with a piece of equipment several yards away from the tunnel. The pilot of PS-30 closed and opened her eyes, took a deep breath.

“MOS-1 has got to be monitoring this,” Norquist said. “There should already be another shuttle on its way for them.”

“That’s true,” Cricks said, sitting at the navigation station and waking the monitors and keyboard.

“Janai, see if you can get us some better comm links on this,” Gwen said. “I’m not getting results.”

“On it… getting something… linking it through the bridge speakers.”

There was a lot of cross chatter, then distorted radio waves.

“Wait, found a better link that’s still live,” Cricks said.

Over the speakers came an unknown voice. “T2 at risk! Repeat, T2 at risk!”

“What the hell?” Wagner said.

“SCONA transmission,” Cricks replied.

“From the orbiters?”

“From the command center on Lunar One.”

“Screw the tunnel,” Norquist said. “We can dig it out again later. We’ve got people there.”

“Can you get SCONA operations to—” Gwen Wagner began.

“Crap! They just dropped the links,” Cricks said.

Three of the four crewmembers on Mars flew away, into the darkness, west toward a mountain ridge. Their personal identification balloons floated in small print above them on the holo. Gwen’s eyes kept finding the one for Trent.

“Log all this, Cricks,” she said. “The satellites are still tracking the surface team of PS-9 via ID chip. They are heading toward the ridge… Map the coordinates, Will?”

“Mapping.”
“Can we get another satellite link to track them by infrared?”

Cricks tried linking several standard sites of MOS-1 and SCONA. She shook her head. “They’re not allowing it.”

Gwen felt Norquist’s stare.

“Trent’s down there!” Gwen said. “And the other crewmembers.”

“He’ll pull through. Reckon I can map icons for them superimposed over the Martian landscape for that sector.” His fingers worked the keyboard at the copilot’s workstation.