T-Minus 8

The elevator shot upwards, lugging along with it several sleepy specialists and a few hundred tons of supplies. It was early in the morning, too early for the men who were returning from their week-long vacation. The thin atmosphere emanated a light, transparent blue as they broke one hundred kilometers. The sun peeked over the horizon and illuminated a rugged and cratered surface. In the distance, Neptune glowed a deep blue. It didn’t take long for the city at the base to become a dot on the moon’s gray surface. The altimeter rolled as they climbed towards the heavens. Ten thousand, fifteen thousand, twenty thousand...

Eventually their ascension slowed to a stop, their arrival marked with a chime and accompanying pre-recorded voice.

“Welcome to Nereid Station, please exit to your left. Current climate temperature is a lovely seventy degrees. The time is oh-five-thirty-six universal time coordinated. Thank you for riding with ISEC.”

The hydraulics hissed and began to pressurize the airlock on the other side. One after another, the groggy technicians disembarked the space elevator, tapping their IDs on the wall scanner as they floated into the airlock. A gruff and equally groggy voice spoke from the intercom.

“Station security. Please place your belongings in the tray and prepare for spin gravity insertion.”

The technicians secured themselves to the wall and lowered their suitcases into the scanner. The room began to pressurize, and with a jolt, began a long trek to the massive habitation ring. After a few short minutes, the airlock module reached the ring, now spinning quite quickly, and finished pressurization. The men, now firmly plastered to the wall by centrifugal force, unstrapped themselves and retrieved their items. The intercom came to life once again.

“Alright, thanks. Grab your stuff and exit the airlock. Welcome back to Nereid Station, guys.”

The lead engineer gave the security camera a short salute and filed out with the others in tow. After agreeing on when and where to meet back up, they dispersed to find their quarters.

“I’ll see you at the Bay later, Oliver.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Oliver yawned, and dismissed his friend with a wave as he plodded away to his quarters. He knew the habitation ring layout like the back of his hand. After all, he did spend almost a decade assisting with the construction. Navigating through the curved corridor, slipping down a few smaller, detached hallways, he found himself in front of a familiar door. Residential Area 1A, Room 244. He slapped his ID on the scanner and stumbled inside.

Home sweet home, he thought.

The room lit itself, a soft white glow coming from a lamp in the far corner. Oliver heaved his suitcase onto his bed, unlatching it. Out splayed his attempts at repacking: an explosion of clothes, essentials, and souvenirs. He sighed, rescuing the more delicate items and placing them in proper locations in his room. His clothes went into their cabinet, the essentials into the small wash closet, ISEC 3D model collectables from the city on his shelf, and the all important surface food into the other cabinet.

He especially couldn’t wait to try out the new chip flavors from the surface: spicy seaweed. Oliver didn’t even know how seaweed tasted, but it sounded interesting. Regardless of the taste, at least it would spice up his meals, right? Station food was bad for the mind and soul.

The display case beside his bed glowed with the numbers 05:48. Oliver donned his uniform, a blue jacket with white wavy stripes and matching pants along with an orange armband pinned to his left arm. Written on the armband were the words "Senior Technician." He splashed some water onto his face to wash away the remaining clutches of sleep, pointedly ignoring the dark circles beneath his eyes. Reaching for his razor, he shaved the stubble that had begun to grow during his week-long escapade. He turned the water to hot and poured it along with instant coffee mix into his mug. With a quick chug, the coffee went down smoothly, albeit a bit scaldingly hot. His clock chimed: 06:00. Time to go to work, he thought with a sigh.

Oliver joined the line of workers heading toward the lift. Most of them were wearing the same uniform as him. The narrow hallway echoed with tired greetings, reverberating between the standard "Good morning!" and "How've you been?" The hallway opened out into the larger main corridor, the intermixed chorus of greetings becoming louder. There was a crowd forming, a congregation of three small hallways waiting for the same thing. The blue and white patterns surged out, giving wide berths to those who weren’t wearing the same colors. They didn't have to wait for long. From around the bend, the lift that would take them to their various destinations arrived. Oliver snagged a seat in the middle car, shifting as close to the edge as possible for others. All around him the chatter continued, the voices sounding more awake now.

Once the passengers were all settled, the lift began to move. It powered through the curved corridor, stopping in each residential sector, six stops in total including Oliver's own stop, before sliding into the lifts' personal elevator. The cars locked into place as the elevator brought them up to the second floor. The elevator doors opened, and they sat through another round trip through the corridor, each stop brought another exchange of passengers.

The sight of a different color-- purple-- caught his attention. Oliver turned to see two Navigators taking their seats directly behind him. With the two of them there, no one dared to take any other seats from their row. They returned the curious glances they attracted with glares of their own. Pretentious pricks. Oliver turned back around, leaning against the back of his seat and waited for the lift to start. Behind him, he could hear them conversing with one another.

“You actually got assigned to the expedition? Congrats! When do you ship out?”

“I’m leaving next Friday, first thing in the morning!”

“Ahhh, what am I supposed to do when you're gone?”

“It’s only a thirty year-round trip to Proxima Centauri. Besides, we can still send each other messages monthly. It's not like I'm your only friend in Astro Nav.”

“You have to remember to contact me often, okay? And bring me something from Station 13.”

Oliver glanced back at the fledgling Navigators. The badges on their uniform signaled that one was a Rank Three and the other Rank Five. Given their ranks, the expedition they were talking about was a simple one, not too difficult. Both of them were female, and looked like they were in their twenties. Of course, he knew from experience that they were probably fifty, maybe even a hundred years older than him.

Navigators live in their own little world. They’re not bad people, but I shouldn't get involved.

Nereid Station was an anomaly in the solar system. The average human would be lucky if they met even one Navigator in their lifetime. Oliver had already seen at least twenty on Nereid. A new Navigator would fly in from Earth or Mars every few months, and one or two would leave the station on expeditions, ensuring a constant flow of new faces. They all bore the insignia ARCNAV on their shoulders. He recognized the name from the station schematics and many of the station employees who displayed the ARCNAV badge on their ID, but he knew little to nothing about what it actually was. He mentally shrugged. It was on a need-to-know basis, and as much as he wanted to know, he didn’t really need to know.

The lift slowed to a halt on the third floor as the destination marker text blinked and switched to say “Engineering Bay." This was his third home. The 22nd Engineering Division disembarked the lift in a less than orderly fashion, making their way towards the equipment room. Connected by a long passageway were the various divisions of Engineering, ranging from the pilots, computer specialists, maintenance, and command. At the very end of the hallway, the last two rooms, were the locker rooms. Straight past that was Engineering’s hangar.

In the equipment room, drone pilots donned their control helmets, computer specialist retrieved their tablets, and maintenance equipped their wrenches and blowtorches. As for Oliver, he grabbed his toolbox from his locker, equipped his own wrench and blowtorch to his belt, and quickly made his way to the drone control center. Senior Maintenance Aerospace Technician was his official title. It didn’t pay as much as the title would suggest, but it was more than enough to live on.

“There you are, Hensley,” the chief engineer growled as Oliver shuffled in. “The drones assigned to Lab 5C aren't responding again. I’ll need you to diagnose the problem.”

He sighed. The work day had only just started and he was already pitted with a problem.

“I'll get on it, Chief.”

Oliver nodded a greeting to a friend as he hefted his toolbox with him out the door. What happened to the drones in Lab 5C this time? Last time they were acting up, apparently the researchers had, as a joke, messed with their programming and started drag racing with them. The time before that some new researcher had accidentally sent them out for trash, and they almost got demolished. Didn't think he'd get to play a giant version of the crane game until then. And the time before that... well, the list went on endlessly.

Lab 5C was in the Development Area right beside where the Engineering Bay was located. It was a bit of a walk, each lab being large enough to hold several space worthy drones in their hangars. Oliver didn’t know which smart guy decided it, but they shoved all the troublesome ones in this research lab where someone who could clean up their messes was close at hand. And unfortunately for him, the chief usually slotted him for babysitting duty.

With a sigh, he pressed the intercom at the door. The researchers noticed him immediately. Usually they'd take their time, pretending that their guilty asses hadn't destroyed some expensive piece of equipment, but they came bounding for the door this time, their eyes sparkling with different forms of twisted excitement.

“It’s Mr. Hensley!”

“Finally! We reported that last week! Guys, guys, open the door!”

"Did I hear souvenirs? Great! I hope he brought with him my Martian coffee."

The doors slid open with a whoosh, and three scientists immediately corralled him inside, the usual culprits. At the forefront, with a Head Researcher's red armband taped to his right sleeve and a head of blonde, was Toast. He had a PhD in nuclear engineering and a number of achievements to his name, but his... hard to get along with personality meant he wound up as the leader of the "needed babysitting" group. His arms were out, asking where the hell his coffee was. Oliver pushed him aside, making vague promises of getting the coffee to him tomorrow. The Russian by his side was his aide and went by Soup. His field was mechanical engineering, and he was sent here as Toast’s leash. Little good that leash did, seeing how this lab went into the red on a weekly basis. The last one was a newcomer, a girl by the name of Bacon. She was a fresh graduate from the Olympus Mons Institute of Technology with a degree in applied mathematics sent here as an assistant. Oliver couldn’t help but feel pity for her. She was a good kid, just gullible and often led into helping Toast in his shenanigans. The three dragged him by his elbows to where they usually kept their drones.

“I’m considering bashing your heads in with a wrench,” Oliver sighed upon seeing the drones. "What did you guys do this time?"

The drones' hulls were battered, even dented in some places. He squatted down beside them, tapping their control helms. Those booted on just fine, although when he tried manipulating them the connection cut.

“We didn’t do anything!” Toast protested, a coffee mug in his hands. “We sent them out like we were supposed to, but we ran into some freaky gravitational anomalies right around the range limit. We lost all the drones during that mess. That was a few days ago. We haven’t been able to complete any of our experiments because they said all the techs were out.”

“Can you fix it?” Bacon asked inquisitively, squatting down beside him.

He gave the hull of the drone a tap. “Not immediately. It’ll take a few days depending on how well some of the internal hardware fared against the gravity,” he answered. “Don’t you guys have some spares?”

“Uhhhhhm...”

“Toast crashed those the week before and he was too much of a chicken to report it,” Soup said, shamelessly selling his boss out.

“Wait! Soup! You traitor!”

As Toast flailed angrily at Soup, Bacon went to mediate the two of them, leaving Oliver to take a closer look at the drones’ damage. The worst ones looked like someone had crushed them like a soda can. A few lucky ones made it out with just dents and a few twists in some weird places. Fortunately, the engines and powerplant were in working order, even on the most crushed one. Those wouldn’t take too long to repair, just a matter of touching them up. The antennae on the other hand was another matter. He didn’t think they had enough spares on hand to replace all of them. They’d have to request a batch from Triton, or pay a visit to the Manufacturing Division. Either option would take around a week to process. He’d probably have better luck repairing their spares so they could get back to work.

Speaking of the spares, Oliver went to the lab’s storage to inspect those. They hid these pretty well. The storage area of the hangar was generally in a dark corner, and if none of them reported it, no one would find this mess without purposely walking over. He saw a better sight in here than the drones out in the main hangar space. The spare drones didn’t look like they should be taken out for recycling, but they definitely needed some touch ups. Did they take these ones out for some racing again? Oliver was going to give them a lecture later, or, even worse, hand them over to the Chief and see how they liked that. He inspected the closest one, D-4076. There was a faint hissing noise coming from it, which became more noticeable as he approached. He paused for a second.

“Oh come on-”

The storage room exploded.

***