The warning light in his helmet faded.
He repeated his conclusion to himself, mouthing it quietly, “Dog is dead, Dog is dead, Dog is dead.”
With a nod to convince himself, he got ready to tackle the control pad.
He took a step back along the side of the wall, away from the airlock door, to where he could stand without looking inside—or be visible from the lava tube.
The keypad was there in front of him, on the door frame.
Focusing, he went through the options on the keypad and locked it down.
Now, to open it up, someone would have to use their ID number. And that was something he wasn’t bothered about. Either Dog was alive and would be able to input that, or he was dead and wouldn’t. Either way, that left Wei feeling better about things.
Pleased with himself, he stood there, his gaze drifting to the nearby airlock window.
He wondered if he should have a look, just a peek, to see what he could.
Dog couldn’t really be standing there in the corn crop, could he?
Wei knew he had to have imagined it.
It wasn’t possible. He knew the breach was complete; he’d nearly died himself as the breathable atmosphere had escaped, lowering the pressure.
Dog couldn’t be alive in there.
Surely.
Standing there, Wei resolved to sneak a look.
If somehow Dog was there, then the airlock door was secured, so he would be safe. And if Dog wasn’t, then Wei would feel better about all this and have a laugh.
Although, he knew he might not feel so good about it all later if he had to go back in there for supplies.
If he could not find a shelter down in the landers’ ruins.
Wei steeled himself, taking another deep breath, and then, slowly, he took a step along the wall until he was standing outside the airlock and peering in through the window.
The airlock was empty, as it should be, and the window on the other side was mostly dark. The only light source in the lave tube were three remaining grow lights, one of which flickered.
Wei couldn’t see anything.
He sighed with relief.
Chapter 14
Houxing MingLing Yi (Mars Command One), Mars
Commander Tung sat at his workstation in the Command Room watching the progress of the airborne hub of drones on a display.
They were halfway there.
He had thought long and hard about what he had done, but it seemed the only wise course of action to take. Certainly, it was better than just sitting and waiting for Beijing Command to make a decision. At the very least, Mars Command One would get more detail on the compromised situation around the impact site where it overlaid Base Five Two. And they needed to know, and now, instead of the alternative, which would be waiting for the next Chinese orbiter pass in another eighteen hours. By then, the NASA orbiter would only be four days away.
And that NASA orbiter, while it still had compromised data feeds due to the work of the Shanghai hacker teams, could still get an image that would be clear enough due to the sheer scope of the ruins at Base Five Two. All other rival orbiters had been taken down by kinetic weapons or had been so heavily hacked that their feeds were garbled junk.
But Beijing didn’t want the last orbiter terminated. When they eventually chose to announce their claim on the red planet, and then unveiled the extent of their colonization, they would want NASA to have their own eyes in orbit so the Americans could both verify and feed their outrage.
But all that presented a big problem for now.
Tung knew from within their normal scope of operations that their only hope to salvage the situation and retain the secret of the Chinese presence would be if a dust storm rolled in to ruin the Americans’ view. But that was unlikely. Otherwise, the spread of debris from the landers meant the Americans would have a clear opportunity to discover what the Chinese had been up to.
And clear images, even of a failed mission, would give NASA enough data to alert Washington and stir tensions back on Earth.
No one would accept that landers of the size deployed could only be for robot missions. That two landers were there—even before the contents of the ships, strewn across the gully and edge of the basin, were examined—would confirm the Chinese had managed to deliver a crew to the surface of the red planet.
Although, with all the wreckage scattered around, international discussion would also center on whether the crew had been victims of a meteor strike or failed landing.
And then the Americans would joke about cheap components and a space program that couldn’t possibly achieve what NASA was yet to do.
In the end, faced with humiliation, Beijing would be forced to unveil the full scale of what they had achieved. And while that would repair the damage done to their reputation, it would happen before they were ready.
And Beijing wanted to be ready, because this more than anything else was going to mark the beginning of a Chinese Age. And he knew himself that the announcement, when it was made, would include news of the first babies born on Mars and a colonial population of thousands scattered across multiple centers.
Chinese Mars would not just be a press conference—it would already exist.
Yong said, “Commander, the drone hub is proceeding with fair weather and is on schedule.”
“Yes, thank you.
“Has Beijing responded to the dispatch?”
“Of the hub, no, other than an acknowledgement they have received my message. It will come soon, though.”
Yong nodded and went back to work.
Once the cameras had gone dark at Base Five Two, Tung had ordered the dispatch of a fully loaded drone hub. Six machines were hooked up to a bigger drone frame, all made lighter and more energy efficient by hydrogen bladders, and then sent on their way.
The units would arrive not long after sunrise, as Phobos rose again in the west.
Tung had no idea what new information the cameras on the drones might uncover, but it couldn’t hurt.
Could it?
Tung had sent a summary of his action in response to the camera feeds being cut at Base Five Two to Beijing. That included his dispatch of the drone hub. He had decided he could at least get away with that much autonomy in sending the drones and relays. First of all, it was the only way he could get live video, but they also really needed to assess how bad the debris field issue was—although from the earlier shots from the orbiter, he could only call it disastrous.
He hoped to also be able to spot the survivor, Wei.
For Wei to cut the cameras had been an unpleasant surprise.
Yong had suggested that Wei might not even have realized he was doing it. It was possible another system had gone down that took Command’s access to the feeds with it. In any case, as much as everyone in the Command Room wanted to know what was happening over in that lava tube, they couldn’t begrudge that killing nine cameras and a life support system no longer able to manage a breached habitat might help Wei. For a start, it would mean the power would last longer if he was being so brutal in cutting unnecessary functions. And if Wei was going to survive, then he would need to be brutal.
Commander Tung sat staring at the instructions on the screen in front of him. They were straight from Beijing, encrypted, and starkly clear. They told him what was in motion, unbelievably so, and offered neither a chance of escape nor any other kind of solace for the survivor, Li Wei.
Initially, the lack of response from home had given Tung hope Beijing Command was looking at options, but now he realized they had just been getting the clearances necessary.
The result—the order to clean the site—left him feeling empty.
“Yanjiang Er (Base Five Two) will be cleaned by orbital assets currently moving into position. All Houxing MingLing Yi (Mars Command One) ground assets should be withdrawn to a safe distance.”