The hub and its drones were almost at the impact zone, so soon Mars Command One would be flooded with new data, but to have an incoming comms from Wei helped put a human face on things.
Yong had wondered if his commander might have hoped to snatch an hour’s sleep, but he could see the office workstation was logged on and active.
All of them were exhausted.
Commander Tung hurried through the door, rushing back into the command room, as if he had been waiting for such an alert all along. “Where’s the message coming from?”
“The base rover.”
“And it’s Wei, our survivor?”
“Yes.”
“How long have you been talking to him?”
“Just a minute. He’s exhausted and will need to rest, but he’s on now if we want to tell him anything.”
Commander Tung nodded, also drained by events. “Tell him we are worried about the debris field and are currently talking to Beijing and awaiting their instructions. Tell him we understand his plight.”
Yong did.
After a moment of silence, Yong turned to his commander and said, “He’s tired. He’s emotional. He’s talking about his squad all being dead.”
Tung nodded. He realized Wei would be in a terrible state. Not just tired, but concussed and stressed. Yet this was no time for him to rest.
No time at all.
If Wei fell asleep, he would never wake again. The nuke would go off over the base and never give him the chance. He wouldn’t even see the light of the flash or feel the blast’s heat. He’d just be vaporized. He needed to stay awake and be on the lookout for whatever help was coming.
Yong waited.
After licking his lips, not sure exactly what he was promising, Tung said, “Tell him we will do what we can. Tell him we will send someone for him and that he must not sleep.”
Yong raised an eyebrow.
Tung insisted, “Do it. He needs something to believe in.”
Yong paused, before quietly asking, “Who is going to get him?”
Tung gave an obvious look to the Command Room’s cameras and said, “Just give him something to believe in.”
With a reluctant nod, Yong repeated the message, trying to muster a reassuring tone.
Yong read his commander’s manner, thinking the message was meant more for Beijing, but still, he wondered what was going to happen. Was someone really going to go out and collect Wei?
Was that what the delay was about?
Commander Tung waited for Yong to finish, but his officer was obviously getting a response from Wei.
Yong finally turned to his commander. “He says the rover is his only sealed habitat space for now. He says there is a steady stream of gravel falling from the crater rim behind the landers. He is worried the cliff is going to collapse.”
Tung frowned. “It’s a vehicle; can he not drive it out?”
Yong asked, coming back with a quick answer. “He says the debris around him is too deep. He can try and clear a path, but there is no clear way.”
Something loud sounded in Yong’s ears, where his headset carried Wei’s comms. He enquired to the lone survivor, “What was that?”
Tung frowned, waiting to hear what was happening out on Base Five Two.
Yong turned back to him and said, “I can hear rocks bouncing off the cab, and there’s a steady stream of gravel sounding out like hail.”
Tung snapped, “Tell him to get out of there!”
Yong repeated the order.
Tung waited again, his worry building.
Yong narrowed his eyes as he listened in. He then checked something on his display. After a moment, he shook his head and pulled away his headset.
Commander Tung asked, “What?”
“He acknowledged the order, and then I think I heard him move, as if he was putting his helmet back on. Then I heard the beginning of the airlock cycle.”
“And?”
“And then the channel went dead. It was cut off.”
Tung cursed.
Yong said, “The hub will be there soon. We’ll know more then.”
Chapter 17
Yanjiang Er (Base Five Two), Mars
Wei had grabbed his helmet and rushed for the rover’s airlock, hoping it would quickly cycle through. His helmet sealed as the air was sucked out of the small chamber, while at the same time he could hear the growing hail of dust, pebbles, and rocks from the crater rim as they fell to drum on the roof and side of the vehicle.
His last shelter.
The noise only got louder as the cycle finished, and was joined by a series of bangs and sharp cracks.
Once Wei got the green light, he ran outside into the Martian gloom, dawn not far away. He didn’t even know where he was going, but it didn’t matter as long as it was away from the unstable rock wall.
Cursing, he tried to focus on just getting a safe distance away, but at the back of his mind, now that he was out in the open, were the words Mars Command One had spoken.
They would come for him.
Behind him, as he stumbled along trying to dodge boulders and piles of rubble from the landers, he could hear the groan of the crater rim as it collapsed.
And then a thunderous crash rolled out as the rock wall came down on top of the rover.
Wei cried out as he ran. The rover wasn’t just a pressurized shelter, but had also held his only working comms unit that could reach Command.
Finally, having cleared around fifty meters, he slowed and dared to turn around.
Behind him, a huge cloud of dust billowed out along the ground, like an ethereal creature of misery lunging for him. The dust caught him, blowing past, but he could see enough through its dark veil to know the collapsing rock wasn’t following.
He was safe.
Loose rocks and bits of gravel rolled slowly toward him, but were no threat. Beyond them, he could see the rover, now half buried in a great spill of dirt, rock, and rubble.
He cursed.
The lights were still on inside the rover at first, but the vehicle bounced and rocked with each heavy blow as boulders rained down upon the cab. He could hear the high-pitched scream of escaping atmosphere. A sound he knew all too well.
The rover had also been breached.
He cried out.
The comms array on the roof shattered as a boulder smashed it to pieces.
Wei stumbled back in disbelief.
He was alone again.
Behind him, the horizon began to lighten with the coming day.
Without a shelter, he’d soon be dead.
But there was always the survival tent back in the lava tube.
Although he still hadn’t had the chance to check what power was left, he had a decade’s worth of rations scattered around him in the dirt.
He might see the coming dawn, but he’d not last to sunset.
Heavily, he sat down in the dirt, staring at the disaster around him. Not just the rover, but the ruined landers.
Wei had been selected and trained for life here, to claim Mars for China so he could build a new world. His reward was to be a bride and a prosperous future, a future with not just the rewards of service, and the knowledge that everything he did would be building humanity’s second great age of exploration, a Chinese Age, but that he would be doing it to profit his future wife and children.
But there will be no reward now.
No satisfaction.
No future.
No children.
A light went on in his helmet.
A comms channel had opened up and was trying to get through to him, but it was encrypted on a local network.
He opened it up.