12d (edited) • Mostly Harmless
Signal Event (1): 'In the Shadows' - Mostly Harmless. Mostly...
Rodger bounced in his leather seat as the rover bucked across the harsh lunar terrain. Beneath a dark red glow, his cab stank of hydraulic fluid and rattled like a maraca. He sawed at the steering wheel, sending the rover sideways. It skipped across the moon’s surface with chunks of lunar rock thuding against its titanium hull. It was dark. Only a narrow corona of headlights illuminated the lunar surface in front of him. He glanced down at the instrument panel which blinked in a rainbow of switches, toggles, and buttons controlling the eight-ton beast. The navigation HUD to his left showed IPM045—the inhospitable, atmosphere-less speck of rock he was rattling over. His eyes drifted up to the massive planet he was orbiting—Ithaca Prime. A cauldron of red-orange radioactive storms churned across its barren surface.
“One more month, then its—”
Wham. The Rover slammed to one side, bucking Rodger, and knocking a tool bag from the storage rack behind him, sending wrenches clattering across the confined cab.
“Fucking hell.” His grip tightened over the worn steering wheel as a klaxon wailed and a Christmas tree of lights blinked above. Damn rock. Rodger flicked toggles one by one, silencing the Rover’s telemetry warning.
“End of season can’t get here soon enough.”
“What was that, Rodger?” The silky yet spunky voice of his Mine Boss echoed through the confined cab.
“Nothing. All good.” Rodger fiddled with the comms switch, turning the volume lower.
“Didn’t seem like nothing. Did you wreck my rover already?”
“Don’t worry about it, Daph. I’m almost to the dig site.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Just don’t bring it back like last time or you’ll owe me another pint of Greymurk.”
“Maybe I’d like that.”
“And maybe you’d learn a better way to fancy a woman than breaking her toys, huh?”
“Well—”
“Keep me posted. Kilo 2-1 out.”
Rodger kicked the hi-beams, sending another warning light across his face. The Rover’s headlights cast a dull glow through a cloud of silt like ghostly fingers. He tucked his chin and laid into the accelerator, sending an electronic groan across the cab like a wounded animal. Three and a half weeks, then planet—
Whomp.
“Fuck!”
Overhead the klaxon blared through the cab.
“Really, Rodger?”
“All good. I’m Good… Digger 1 out.”
Sloshing from side to side, Rodger worked the controls, sending the six-wheel behemoth through a wash of fine silica. Just one more month he thought.
The lunar surface was hostile. Rocks the size of a Drop-rigs checkered the landscape with teeth that’d spear a man clean through. Rodger narrowed his eyes. A bead of sweat broke his brow, and he wiped it away with the back of his wrist as the Rover skirted a mile wide canyon.
While the cab rocked, Rodger leaned into the wheel, sending the Rover carving into a narrow canyon. Darkness overwhelmed him. Once dim shapes were now devoid of character. He lifted his boot off the accelerator. The electronic hum slowed. Later, the narrow corridor widened, and he kicked the beast into a gear higher.
Ahead, the mining site’s portable lights threw a soft white glow across the harsh landscape. Twelve equally tall, equally spaced cylinders stood like metallic oaks in the canyon opening. Each used to extract the precious minerals for the Federation—Iridium Graphite.
Rodger pulled the rover to the center of the excavation site and killed the ignition, sending the hum of the engines tapering to nothing. He unbuckled his harness, twisted to the back, stepped over the mess of wrenches and grabbed his helmet and his clipboard and headed out the air lock.
A dry hiss then nothing. The door swung wide and the dark excavation site appeared before him. He clutched the railing and waded down from the back of the rover under a pleasant 0.7G.
“Kilo 2-1, this is Digger 1, how copy?”
“Five by five, Rodg. How’s it lookin’ out there?”
Intently, he scanned the site with his helmet spraying cold white light across various workstations and storage containers, then running up the nearest drill cylinder. Thirty feet high and as wide as a grain silo with thick metal suspension cords, stabilizing each of the gigantic machines in four opposing directions.
“Looks good.” He said dropping his gaze. “I’m going to initiate start up procedures.”
“Copy that. And Rodg?”
“Yeah?”
“If you bring my rover back in once piece before third shift—I might just let you buy me that drink.”
In his helmet, Rodger’s mouth pulled to one side. “Copy, Kilo 2-1, I’m Oscar Mike.”
He skipped softly over the jagged landscape and toward the command shed. Dim light radiated in different directions from portable construction lamps. The previous crew should’ve turned them off, he thought. Glancing to his right, he spotted the site’s interior excavation. A fifty-yard square recess dug into the gnarled obsidian colored rock.
A glimmer. Something metallic caught his helmet mounted light. Rodger stopped and pivoted, setting his eyes on a metal plate peeking through the hard lunar surface. What the hell is that he thought.
“Hey Daph, I got something—”
Radio static filled his helmet. He twisted the comms link which only generated more intermittent static, scratching his eardrums.
Rodger swung back and looked up from the narrow canyon and gazed into the teal and violet sky expecting a reply. “Kilo 2-1, how copy?”
He pivoted back and froze as he noticed a large storage container tipping from its base at a third of the speed he’d expect until it came to a rest near the metal object. His eyes narrowed to a thin slit. A sharp ping sounded in his helmet. His heart rate, elevating past its designated threshold.
“Anybody here…do you read me?!”
Rodger staggered forward in a crouched posture. The lights were dimmer than he previously realized. Glancing to either side of the dig site, he checked his flanks like he was trained. He reached instinctively to his hip. Nothing there. Fuck.
“Anybody read!” Rodger traipsed closer to the object without a reply. “Goddamn comms.”
His gait produced a rhythm of reflections against the unknown object. Like a diamond waiting to be harvested. His heart skipped. He gave one long, deliberate exhale. Then another step as the suits monitoring system began to ring louder, alerting him to his vitals. Another long exhale. He continued to close the distance.
Lettering? He could make out lettering. Something written in galactic basic. The helmet’s light slowly panned over the words: SITE ECHO ‘To all that came and to all that will ever come.’
His stomach flipped with a sickening force. “What the—”
In front of him, underneath a heavy layer of fine dust was an air lock, set at a forty-five-degree angle into the jagged lunar surface. The edges carved cleanly. Too clean. Like a laser drill hollowed out the ground specifically to reveal what laid beneath. Rodger took one final check of his six before taking his final steps toward the door. He rested his hand on the foreign surface. A vibration. His hand shot back. What is this? He thought. Again, he placed his hand upon the airlock and bushed away the mess of graphite dust. More lettering was revealed the more he swiped. His pace quickened. Until finally, the gun-metal grey air lock sat uncovered, reflecting his helmet’s light back up into the glimmering night sky. Near the bottom was a transcription.
Star date: 11/11/3040. Exactly forty years to the day.
Rodger recoiled. Staggering backwards, his eyes remained fixated on the star date. This has to be some kind of joke he thought as he swiveled from side to side. His helmet mounted light moved erratically across the dig site, landing on every object, then springing to the next. Another storage crate teetered in the distance.
“Who’s there! Identify yourself!” his voice echoed inside his helmet.
His hand ghosted his hip. Turning towards the rover, he noticed it was almost a hundred yards away. The rover—comms rig in the rover would reach Daphne he thought. He bounded forward only to halt a few feet ahead. Dim, ghostly shadows darted between the wheels behind the rover, stopping Rodger cold. While his eyes remained forward, he took three deliberate steps back toward the airlock.
Rodger turned to face the door and placed his hand across the smooth surface, feeling the vibration rumble through his suit’s glove like the door held its own energy. From the corner of his face plate, Roger’s eyes locked onto the Rover. Another ghostly shadow. The back of his neck prickled like it was a winter’s night back on Gemini-II.
Slowly, he moved his hand across the door and grabbed the release lever and yanked it down. A single light spun up then blinked near the air lock’s exterior control panel. Yellow. Then Green. The door separated, sending a wash of air blowing by him. Enough to kick up the fine iridium graphite into a whirlwind around him. His glove covered his face plate until the dust settled enough to see the interior. A Stairwell down to an antechamber. Space suits lined either side underneath a dull green glow. Benches, tools, space packs. Rodger took one quick glance back at the Rover then stepped inside. The airlock’s light flashed red and doors slammed shut.
***
The TerraNova Mining operations room was silent despite holding twenty technicians, each sitting at their own station, monitoring Rodger’s situation, and no one had a clue what happened.
Daphne’s fingers whitened as she pressed into her headset. “Digger 1, do you read me? Digger 1, do you copy!”
Coarse static rolled into her ear as she continued to hold it up to one side of her head. She glanced around the control room—confused faces. She turned, behind her on an elevated viewing catwalk stood Malcom Redman, the Head of Mining Operations for TerraNova Minerals. His thick mustache barely covered his grimace. His eyes slowly drifted down to meet hers.
“What the fuck is this, Daphne?”
“I, I don’t know, sir. We were in contact with Rodger then—”
“Yes, Yes.” Malcom waved his hand. “I was standing right here when we lost contact. Why have we lost contact?”
“Well, sir. I’m not sure.” Daphne turned and snapped her fingers at the comms operator. “Johns, can we bring up satellite telemetry of grid 110, dig site Alpha?”
“On it.” He replied as he began furiously typing at this terminal.
The viewscreen which hung above the operations room flickered then burst with a monochromatic image of the dig site from 10 miles above the surface.
Daphne stepped forward, working her foam stress ball in her left hand like she was trying to squeeze water from it. “Enhance the image, Johns.”
“Yes, Boss.”
The image clipped three times until the dig site came into focus. Twelve mining towers. The command shed. And Rodger’s rover parked in the middle of the dig site. No movement.
The metal staircase creaked as Malcom stepped down into the quiet operations center, until finally stopping next to Daphne. “I don’t see Digger 1.”
Daphne glanced at Malcom through the corner of her eye. He stood a foot taller and noticeably wider than her, but she’d dealt with his kind before. Corpo. All about the dollars.
“Start up procedures take a few—”
“He’s probably just in the command shed. Let’s give him the standard amount of time. I’ll be in my office, let me know if anything comes up.” Malcom clucked his tongue and turned to face Daphne. She gave a toothless smile and nodded as he twisted by her. The door to the operations room hissed and sealed shut behind him. The hum of computers interjected the silence.
Johns stood up from his terminal. “Are we just going to sit here and do nothing?”
Daphne continued to squeeze her stress ball until finally the soft rubber foam ripped, unfolding lifelessly in her hand. She glanced down at the TerraNova rover replica torn in her hand.
“Daphne, you know he’s not just hanging out in the command shed.”
Her face contorted as she dropped it into her waste bin. She glanced up, ignoring Johns, and stared at the image of dig site 110A. Nothing moved. Just dull grey objects frozen in time on the shimmering command screen. Her stomach turned. This wasn’t like Rodger. He wouldn’t go radio silent. He knows better.
“Daph—”
“Yes!—Johns” Daphne said. “I heard you.”
Johns eyes widened and he slowly sank back down into his seat as the other technicians face forward.
“You heard Malcom. Company protocol says 24 hours before we can send a search team.”
Johns scoffed under his breath. “24 hours. Yeah right.”
Daphne eyes locked to the back of his head. “You have something to add?”
“No, nothing to add, Boss.”
“Prime. Keep the satellites covering grid 110. Let’s do what we can from the barn. But Rodger is on his own right now and we’re all going to have to suck it up.”
Technicians nodded in agreement without a word. Daphne glanced out the operations windows ahead and watched the solar wind manifest a graphite dust devil that swirled across the lunar surface. Her jaw tightened once, then she turned and headed out the operations entrance.
Beneath her Mine Boss persona, her stomach twisted sideways. Why wouldn’t he use the rover’s enhanced comms link to do his hourly check. The command door hissed and whined open. As she stepped through, she looked back at the command screen. It just didn’t make sense. The door whined again, then clicked shut, leaving her standing in the narrow corridor alone.
She stood motionless for several seconds. Staring blankly at the bulkhead before she shook her head once and tisked. Dammit Rodger. She turned on her heel and took off sprinting down the corridor.
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Signal Event (1): 'In the Shadows' - Mostly Harmless. Mostly...
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