Yves Giraud - Kahnu

“Najib? Najib?” No response. His first thought was a possible problem with Najib’s radio.

“What’s going on, Dedrick? Everything OK?” came Ladli’s voice in his helmet.

“Najib? Hey buddy, are you OK?” simply continued Dedrick without responding to her.

Liu’s voice came in next. She was rushing back inside the passage. “Najib? Najib! Dedrick, what’s wrong? Did you find him? Why isn’t he answering?”

A knot formed in Dedrick’s throat. Something was definitely wrong. He was now only a few meters from the light, but he still couldn’t see him or notice any movement. “ What is he doing ?” Rushing to the area, his fears materialized when he spotted Najib’s body lying still on the ground.

“Najib! Shit!” Now he could see the crushed helmet and a huge crack in his facial glass visor. Najib’s face, blotted and still, his eyes wide open and full of blood, betrayed his painful last moments as his mouth, partially agape, and his purple skin left no doubt he was already gone.

“Oh God,” said Dedrick as he kneeled down by the body. Najib had fallen from a small niche a few meters above. Scraping traces along the ledge where Najib had slipped, and the small pile of rocks around the body, told the obvious.

“No, no, NO!” screamed Liu who had finally rejoined the team leader.

“Najib! Oh, my God, Najib! We have to take him back to the infirmary. Come on, Dedrick, help me!” she screamed frantically, as she rushed to Najib’s inert body and began lifting his torso.

“Liu… Liu,” said Dedrick as he gently grabbed her arm. “It’s too late. He’s gone.”

“No! You don’t know that. We must take him back to the station. Vera will know what to do,” she replied harshly, as she pushed Dedrick’s hand away and kept tugging at the dead body.

“Liu… I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do… It’s too late… Liu?”

Finally realizing the reality of Najib’s condition, she began to cry and fell back on herself, still holding Najib in her trembling arms.

“No, please God, no, not like that.” And the tears kept flowing. Her world had just been shattered.

“ Najib is gone. My Najib. Please God, no ,” she thought. “ Don’t leave me. Najib… Please, not now …”

She felt like a thousand daggers had stabbed her heart. All of her being was crying out in pain. The feeling was excruciating. Her entire world had just collapsed, and suddenly, so did she.

A few hours later, Liu woke up in her bed in pod four. At first disoriented, the images of the earlier events came rushing back at her, as she jumped up and screamed. Vera and Sabrina tried to calm her down the best they could.

Two pods over, the three men were talking about Najib’s accident.

“From what I saw when I got there, I think he tripped and fell face first onto a sharp rock. The oxygen escaped instantly. The Martian air did the rest. He died in seconds,” said Dedrick.

“What I don’t understand is why you didn’t hear anything. He must have screamed or something…” puzzled François.

“I just checked his helmet. His radio was broken; probably from the impact when he fell. We had no way of knowing… Crap. I should’ve stayed with him,” finally added Dedrick, feeling guilty.

“It’s not your fault, buddy. It was an accident. There was nothing you could have done. He knew the risks; we all do,” François replied, trying to make his friend feel better.

Dedrick stared at the unforgiving landscape outside the porthole window, lost in thoughts. “By the way, I guess you realize we’re gonna need to talk to headquarters tonight about how to handle this. I was hoping we would never have to, but we all know the protocol in such a situation. We have to close the EPM.” François reached over and entered a command on the touch screen next to him.

“We are now restricted to the private Mars First channel for all communications with Earth. No talking to anyone about this until we are advised further. We need to tell the girls.”

“What about the cameras? They’ve been filming us the whole time. No?” asked Tendai.

“Mars First headquarters purposely has a half hour delay on the re-transmission of the main feed they receive from us before the images go live. I’m sure they’ve already pulled the plug before anyone could see what had happened. They probably blamed it on the storm to avoid questions from the media,” replied François.

Outside the complex, fast winds were lifting sand around the small outpost. The dusty brown fog was now covering several kilometers. The storm had been raging for hours and was showing no sign of letting up anytime soon.

That night, they all gathered around in greenhouse II and observed a long moment of silence. Liu did not attend. Vera had given her a sedative to help her sleep.

Back in pod four, Vera and Ladli were sitting around Liu the next morning. Like everyone else on the station, the two women were devastated by what had just happened the prior day, but Liu was obviously the most affected. Her relationship with Najib had begun years ago back on Earth but had grown even stronger since their arrival on Mars. At the moment, she was a mess, and her two teammates were seriously concerned. She had stopped crying, but now her silence was even more worrisome. Staring straight in front of her at nothing, she was unresponsive to both Ladli and Vera who kept asking her if she was OK.

“Liu?” asked Vera again as she put a hand on her arm. “Liu, please, say something.”

Ladli was beginning to worry seriously about her friend as well. She knew how much Liu loved her husband. She still remembered, as if it was yesterday, how happy she was when he had asked her to marry him. Only a few days ago, Liu was still gleaming from the talk both had just had about having a child. Now, Liu looked as if she had aged twenty years. She was silent. Her eyes, glossy and foggy, were still puffed up from all the tears, and she looked white as a ghost. She didn’t flinch when Vera inserted a thin needle in her arm and injected her with “Corxa”, a relaxant, to help her sleep. She normally had a serious aversion to needles of any kind and was always a difficult patient. Now, she didn’t even seem to notice.

A few minutes later, Liu was sleeping again peacefully in her bed when Ladli and Vera left the room.

Dedrick was lying on his when the two women entered the pod.

“How is she?”

“She is sleeping, for now,” replied Vera.

“I think I’m gonna go back to my room. I’m exhausted. I’ll see you guys later.” said Ladli as she turned and proceeded to climb through the next passage, leaving the two to themselves. Continuing to the next pod, she lowered herself down into pod two, where Tendai and she spent most of their nights. He was seated in front of the computer.

“I just remembered why I can’t check my emails. François said we’re locked out of the system for now. Security reasons,” he offered without her asking.

“I know. I just left Liu. She’s OK for now, but Vera had to give her something else to help her sleep. Oh, Tendai, it’s so awful what happened to Najib,” she said as she sat on his lap, wrapped her arms around his waist, and leaned her head against his chest.

“I know, baby. I know…” he replied, holding her in his arms.

Outside their small window, far in the distance, the winds were picking up again beyond the plateau. Deep into the cliffs of the canyon, a small purple light was glowing inside a dark cave.

François’ hand was wrapped around Sabrina’s left breast. The two were lying in a spooning position, when the alarm suddenly resounded, breaking the silence in their pod. Surprised by the loud noise, he jumped out of bed and rushed to the controls. Searching for the cause of the mayhem, he quickly located the red beacon on the panel. Someone had just opened the outside door of pod four.