Her voice was modulated, taking out any of its life. In truth, she sounded like a bad text-to-voice program. “I saw the report.”
“To Beijing?” he asked, surprised she had access to the document.
“Of course. What is the current status of the man who made it to the tent?”
“Unconscious.”
“And life support?”
“About twenty hours left. The reactor cable looks to have been cut and the solar array smashed. Unless he wakes up and can go out there and jerry rig something, if he’s not already dead, he will be by this time tomorrow.”
“Hmmm…” she said.
“Yes.”
“And the rest of the squad?”
“Nothing yet, but our video feed is limited by bad lighting and damaged gear. A third impact occurred out of camera shot, although Base Five One picked it up on an external feed.”
“Well, you said things were boring. A little too routine.”
He almost laughed, but he was too drained. “I did, didn’t I?”
“You sound tired.”
“I will be okay. I will finish my shift soon if there are no developments, but be on call.”
“Can you do anything to help him?”
“Not really. We have our protocols to follow, and losing one base is only a short-term setback. If the survivor does not recover consciousness, we will deliver a new robot crew and power plant to salvage the site. Once that’s done, we can then look at allocating a new crew.”
“The lava tube failed, structurally?”
“We don’t know for certain, but it seems to have. It is possible the tube has just been punctured by debris or the seal around the airlock failed. If the tube itself is still intact, then it can be repaired. Probably.”
“Hmmm…”
He sighed, thinking of her, thinking of the comfort she could give.
PING!
An alert came through; it was Yong.
To his existing channel, he said, “Hang on, Yong must have something.”
“Sure.”
He opened the latest comms. “Yong, what’s happening?”
“Commander Tung, the survivor has regained consciousness.”
“I will be there in a minute.” He cut the comms.
Calling up the other channel, he said, “I wish I could talk some more, but I’m needed out there.”
“I heard. Get to it. I will talk to you later. Let me know if I can do anything from here. I can help.”
“Thank you.” He cut the comms and headed back to the Command Room.
Commander Tung went straight to Yong’s workstation, looking at the playing video feed. “What is he doing?”
“He just sat up. He’s a bit groggy, so he half fell into his current sitting position after trying to get up.”
“Have we been able to get any video from surface assets to work out if either of the landers are an option for him?”
Yong nodded, calling up some images. “I’ll have them in a second. Have you heard anything from Beijing?”
“No, nothing yet.”
Yong raised an eyebrow at that.
Tung nodded. “Yes, it seems slow. Let’s hope that’s because they are working out a way to help him.”
Yong remarked, “I checked the ID shots of the squad to work out who this guy is. I’m pretty sure it’s Li Wei.”
“Well done,” said Tung.
The images started coming up as Yong said, “My second data pack to home tried to paint Wei as an asset we need.” The first image, a still from a video feed onsite, showed a view obscured by wreckage. Great panels of twisted metal blocked half the shot. In the foreground, of what was visible of the gully, piles of ruin from at least one of the landers were strewn across the landscape. The material, most of it white, metal grey, blue, or black, sat out there in stark contrast to the bleak landscape.
Tung cursed and called over to another Command Room crewman, “Check when the next NASA orbital flyby is.”
Yong tapped the screen, and then magnified the image, drawing his commander’s gaze to the half-obscured impact site.
A new crater reared up; the edge of the rugged rim looked to only be a kilometer or so away from the base. The ridge towered up, and everywhere around it lay scattered debris, smoking rock—some of it still glowing—and scorched areas that had been blackened.
The view was nothing like what it had been.
Commander Tung cursed.
Yong said, “The impact looks close, but it’s actually eight kilometers away. It’s just the camera angle and because it is so huge.”
“And that metal, that’s from a lander?”
Yong hit another button and brought up an image from a Chinese orbiter, as he said, “It’s from both of them.”
Tung looked at the display. The image showed a section of the ancient crater, with a new impact close to the rim. Rays of rubble and debris were clear where they had been cast out by the impact, as was the new, smaller crater. Great cracks showed in the ancient basin, as well as sections of uplifted bedrock.
Closer to Base Five Two, the camo tenting was no longer there. Instead, there were two clear landers. One was completely holed, with a huge chunk of Martian rock slammed into its guts, hollowing it out. The other lay on its side, either collapsed after the neighboring impact or perhaps one of its landing legs had been taken out by other debris or the shockwave.
The crewman from the other workstation said, “Commander, we’ll have the NASA orbiter with compromised optics pass over in five days. With so much debris on the surface, and of such size, the orbiter will collect enough damaging images.”
Tung nodded and then turned back to the display.
Yong said, “Wei might be able to salvage some equipment from the wrecked landers and then fix the breach in the lava tube. If he can restart his life support units, he might be able to survive short term.”
Tung shook his head. “No, he can’t.”
“Why?”
“He does not have enough power. The reactor cables were cut, his solar is smashed, and now we know the landers have been taken out by the last meteor.”
Yong frowned as he went back to the live video feed, which showed Wei getting ready to stand up in the emergency tent. “The batteries will only last a day at most.”
“We’re down to eighteen hours, and no word yet from Beijing.”
“He’s going to die.”
“And, once that NASA orbiter passes overhead, they will get enough video, regardless of how bad the resolution, to at least work out what’s going on. We can’t hide that.”
On screen, Wei left the airlock module and walked to the back of the tent and began going through the crates of supplies. He put a helmet aside first, and then grabbed a bottle of water to drink from before opening an energy bar.
Yong asked, “What’s he doing?”
“Getting ready to leave the shelter. Let’s see what he does. If he’s smart, he’ll check on his comrades first and also cut anything drawing unnecessary power.”
“And then what?”
“He’ll go check on the landers. Once he discovers they’re gone, I guess that’s when we’ll get to see how tough a man he is.”
As Commander Tung spoke, Wei went to a control panel wired in at the back of the survival tent. He ran his finger along a line of switches, checking the labels, before he then flicked most of them off.
A second later, the video feed went blank.
Chapter 11
Yanjiang Er (Base Five Two), Mars
Wei was ready, standing in his old suit with a fresh helmet on.
He was in the tent’s airlock module, where he had nearly died.
But he didn’t want to focus on death; instead, he needed to focus on survival.
I want to live!
His head throbbed from where he’d taken a hit, and there was plenty of dried blood left on the wound, but none of that mattered now. Right now, if he was going to survive all this, he knew he needed to go back out into the lava tube.