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  COLONY

  Leigh Matthews

  Copyright © 2017 Leigh Matthews

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Illustration Copyright © 2016 Aimée Henny Brown

  Cover design by Michelle Lee, Broadview Designs.

  ISBN: 0992022460

  ISBN-13: 978-0992022464

  To Claire and Caden, for adventures past and those yet to come. And for my dad, whose impression of an atom is still the best I've ever seen.

  One

  They would face at least two winters here. The howling swirl of dust wrapping them in an ever tighter cocoon. It hadn't been like this at first. No windstorms or unexplained power outages. No sense that the planet itself had begun to speak.

  Silver drank the last of the water from her canteen and traced her fingers over the well-worn engraving, "Mais tu ne peux pas cueillir les étoiles." She had come here voluntarily. With enthusiasm, even. But, in the last few sols, the solitude and silence she had enjoyed after her arrival had begun to slip away, seemingly lost to the wind. They had been on Mars for less than six months, and Silver was tired. If she was to survive the next two hundred or so sols, she would have to learn to bear the whispering, the incessant, anguished, quiet roar of this place.

  Silver slid the canteen back into the large front pocket of her navy overalls and savoured the cool, comforting weight of it against her thigh. She picked up the grey utility belt on the bench beside her and strapped it on, then swivelled it around until it sat firmly on her hips. Checking that she hadn't left anything behind, Silver walked out of the cafeteria and back to the hangar to find the Chief.

  At six feet tall, and with a mass of tight brown curls, Aliyaah Diambu cut a striking figure. It wasn't simply her stature that made people pay attention to her, though. Aliyaah was the Chief Flight Engineer on Octavia, and Chief Engineer for Project Arche as a whole. When Silver entered the hangar and spotted a pair of long navy-clad legs poking out from underneath Rover Four, she knew the Chief was exactly where Silver had left her half an hour before, working away on the hulking grey machine. They had been trying to get the rover back in service for almost seven sols, and while Silver had enjoyed the chance to work more closely with the Chief, she was itching to get on with the more creative, less rudimentary parts of the mission.

  "Chief?" Silver said, and tapped her boot lightly against the creeper under Aliyaah's legs. "Are we ready to fire her up?"

  Aliyaah pushed herself out from under the rover and blinked as her lenses took a second to adjust to the hangar lights. The green of her irises flickered to yellow and narrowed to a cats-eye slit. She smiled up at Silver, who propped her foot against the creeper to stop it sliding, then extended her hand to haul the Chief to her feet.

  "As long as she powers up, she should be ready to go," Aliyaah said as she clambered up the side of the rover. "Can you release the clamps, Antara?"

  Silver walked over to the control panel by the hangar door and flicked four switches to release the rover from the hangar's grip. She heard Aliyaah manually powering up the rover, so she began climbing into one of the two white Extravehicular Mobility Suits hanging by the airlock. Once she was zipped up, Silver pulled out two tethers from beneath the panel, slung them over her shoulder and waited for Aliyaah.

  Aliyaah connected one of the tethers to a hook at the back of Silver's EMS and then climbed into the other suit. Silver buckled her in and then attached both tethers to the fixtures on the hangar wall. It wasn't really necessary to be tethered unless there was a major windstorm outside, but it was protocol, and protocol saved lives. The Chief nodded at Silver, who nodded back, and they both pulled on their helmets and gloves and clicked them into place.

  Silver pushed the blue intercom button on the front panel of her suit, and Aliyaah did the same. After they checked communications between themselves and the rover, Aliyaah flicked a series of switches on the control panel and said, "Commencing launch sequence."

  Silver monitored the panel for any signs of problems with the rover. It had been out of commission for the better part of ten sols, and this was the fourth time it had malfunctioned in the time they had been on the planet.

  "All systems look good," Silver said, and then laughed as Aliyaah tapped her gloved hand against the cold, grey metal of the control panel. She wasn't normally prone to overt displays of superstition, but Silver tried to cross her fingers, and Aliyaah smiled. Despite the impressive mobility of the skin-tight pressurised Environmental Suits they wore most of the time they were outside the station, the gas-pressurised EMS were still cumbersome and inflexible.

  "Ten, nine, eight..." Aliyaah counted down to launch as the hangar doors opened and they braced themselves for the onslaught of dust. "Zero."

  The rover jolted forward and headed out into the swirl of dust and dim red light. Silver followed it with her eyes for as long as she could, then turned back to the panel to look for any signs of trouble.

  "She's out and all systems look good," Silver said as Aliyaah closed the hangar doors, leaving the rover alone outside the station.

  They restored pressure in the hangar and Silver watched as the dust settled. Aliyaah pulled off her gloves and unbuckled Silver's tether. Silver did the same for her. They both removed their suits, and Silver hung them back up by the airlock, then pulled the canteen from her pocket and took a drink. The sight of so much dust always made her thirsty.

  Silver offered the canteen to Aliyaah, who shook her head and said, "I'll go and let the Commander know our girl's launched. Keep monitoring and let me know if anything comes up." She turned to walk towards the airlock, then paused and turned back, putting a hand on Silver's shoulder. "And..."

  "I know," Silver smiled up at the Chief. "I'll pay special attention to the navigation array."

  Aliyaah laughed, covering her mouth. "I was going to say good work Antara. But, yeah, you make sure our baby doesn't get lost out there."

  Silver watched Aliyaah head out through the airlock, and smiled at the Chief's futile attempt to brush the layer of dust from her overalls, and to shake it from her hair. The red particulate got everywhere, despite the station's air filters. Silver felt like it was part of her now, having breathed it in for sols on end. She would run her hands through her hair and feel the scratch of the planet on her scalp. She felt it in her lungs, her eyes. A thin red film over everything she touched.

  A light on the control panel flickered for an instant, drawing Silver's attention. Nothing was lit up that shouldn't be active. Silver held her gaze steady at the panel, unblinking, but nothing else happened. Rover Four was doing just fine, on its way to the quarry fifty kilometres away; from there it would continue to explore beyond their current perimeter. Rover Four carried RIMSE, the Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Experiment; Equipment that sent radar waves into the ground to look for signs of water beneath the surface.

  Most of the red planet's water was concentrated at the north and south poles, but earlier rover models and a series of orbiters had found evidence of deep ice closer to the equator where the colony was situated. Until the planet warmed, the equatorial zone was the only area reasonably habitable by humans, given the sub-zero temperatures throughout most of the year. The only water they had found close by was frozen deep underground, but there were signs that water had flowed on the planet's surface in this region at some point in the past.

  Watching the panel, Silver waited another ten seconds before blinking. As the dust cleared from her eyes, she wondered, not for the first time, if she should start using the cat
s-eye implants like Aliyaah and most of the crew. The lenses had been rolled out to help counteract Astronaut Ophthalmic Syndrome while they were in zero gravity, but had the bonus of being self-cleaning and helping with focus through the ever-changing light of the dust storms. Some models had been fitted with automated blue light filters, programmable to an individual's shift pattern to aid melatonin regulation. Silver found it unsettling how quickly biohacking had taken hold. Almost all the crew had elected to have melatonin pumps fitted back on Earth, to help regulate their sleep and blood sugar, but Silver had held back, opting for just the regular med-pump on her thigh.

  She had always had twenty-twenty vision and impeccable physical health. This feeling of infallibility was a source of pride for her, and her good genetic luck and careful stewardship of her health had played no small part in helping her qualify for multiple missions before Project Arche even got off the ground.

  While she could appreciate, intellectually at least, the potential advantages of implants like the cats-eyes, she found it distasteful and unnerving to think about exploring a planet through eyes that weren't entirely her own. She had removed the lenses shortly after landing on the planet, and hadn't planned on wearing them again until the return trip to Earth. Cooper would have laughed at such reluctance, pointing out how much technology already mediated Silver's interaction with the red planet. Cooper, who, for years, had wanted every new device and gadget the instant it was released. Cooper, who had turned her back on that childlike wonder and stopped working at the leading edge of technology.

  A light flickered on the panel, showing a sudden, brief flare of radiologic activity around the rover. Silver waited for thirty seconds but nothing else happened. She began a full diagnostic sweep. She did not want to lose the rover and have to take the Space Exploration Vehicle out thirty or forty clicks to tow it home manually.

  She checked the navigation array and then the comms array on the rover, listening for any odd noises in the craft itself. All she could hear was the low fuzz of static courtesy of the howling dust. She left the line open and checked all the other systems, finding nothing of concern.

  As Silver moved her hand to deactivate comms, she heard something that made her pause. She realised that she had been hearing it for the past few minutes, it just hadn't registered as unusual. Faintly audible among the static and dull roar was what sounded like a voice, speaking a language she didn't understand. It had to be a crossed line with the workers at the quarry, Silver thought. But, for a second, the quality of the voice changed and Silver could have sworn it sounded like her daughter, speaking clumsy toddler French.

  Silver gave herself a shake. She was tired, that was all. They had been working hard to get the rover back out into the field and she hadn't been sleeping well, waking in a cold sweat most nights with her head full of thoughts about home. She wondered if she should reconsider the melatonin pump, if it would help her sleep better. She should at least make an appointment to see the station's primary physician, Doctor Claire Schiff, and see if her restless nights were a sign of some fault in her biochemistry.

  Silver continued to scan the rover's feedback, then laughed at herself. No, what she really needed was to talk to her kid and take a hot shower to wash off some of this infernal dust.

  Two

  After the first humans had landed on Mars in 2025, the planet had slowly begun to be populated by astronauts and scientists from a variety of nations. Project Arche marked a turning point, as an international effort to establish a long-term colony on the red planet. Octavia was the first rocket designed to bring civilians to the planet, to make it a home and not just an exploratory outpost.

  Everyone who had signed up for Project Arche and the Octavia mission, including Silver, knew that they would most likely be away for at least twenty-six months, if not fifty-two. There were only ever small windows for timely travel between Earth and Mars, when the planets' orbits brought them closest together. Outside of those windows, flights were too long and too costly, and so would only be undertaken in an absolute emergency.

  Silver had been studying Mars for years before Project Arche was announced. Her time at NASA, the European Space Agency, and on board SkyBase, the successor to the International Space Station, made her the ideal candidate for the crew of Octavia. Silver had also flown on several civilian space flights in collaboration with the private enterprise SolarEx, so she was uniquely placed to bridge the public and private spheres of space travel.

  As a private company, SolarEx had different goals and ideals from the governmental agencies. They also had alternative criteria for candidacy, and it was SolarEx that had insisted on bringing civilians along for this trip. Some critics had said it was too soon to send untrained astronauts, but it made a certain kind of sense to Silver. Aside from bringing in much-needed financial investment from private citizens, opening the flight up to civilians also meant that the crew could bring family along.

  One of the hardest things about being in space was being away from family and friends, from people who didn't just talk about navigation arrays and coupling malfunctions even when off duty. Silver and her wife had tried to stick to a rule of not talking shop at home, but their passion for their work had made that hard at times.

  When SolarEx made the announcement to her team, Silver had assumed that Cooper would greet the news enthusiastically and sign up right away. Instead, Cooper had stayed silent, then looked over at their daughter, Cosima, who was playing with her trains on the living room floor. Cooper looked back at Silver as if to ask if she had forgotten they had a daughter.

  Cosima had been two and a half then, and she sensed the shift in energy as her parents watched her without saying a word.

  "You be enjunneer," Cosima said, breaking the silence and holding out a green train. "Oh no! I'm broken!" she cried, waving the train at Silver. "You be enjunneer."

  Silver walked over to sit beside Cosima, taking the green train and making a show of scrutinising the toy for malfunctions. "Ah," Silver said, her tone serious. "You have a fuel leak and a dangerous loss of pressure."

  "Fix it! Fix it!" Cosima screamed happily, jumping up and down before running over to Cooper with another toy.

  Cooper held out her hand and sighed as Cosima placed a tiny rocket in her palm.

  "You be the rocket, Mama."

  Cooper closed her hand around the toy, feeling the sharp plastic wings dig into her skin.

  "Not this time, sweetheart." She looked down at her daughter and then over at Silver, cross legged on the floor. "Mama's going to sit this one out."

  Silver took a slow breath, then scrambled over to Cosima and scooped her up, spinning her upside down. "Woah! You're in a space tumble!" Silver said as Cosima giggled and begged to be tumbled again.

  "I'm gonna crash, Mima!"

  "I've got you, space cadet," Silver said, looking over the top of Cosima's feet at her wife. Cooper shook her head and walked away. From the sound of crashing pans in the kitchen, Silver knew there would be a fight after they put Cosima to bed. She had fooled herself into thinking that Cooper's previous work on Project Arche meant that she would jump at a second chance to go to Mars. Silver could present all the logical arguments she wanted, that they could afford it, and Cosima would be back just in time to start kindergarten, but if Cooper didn't want to go, there'd be no persuading her. Silver watched Cosima playing with her toys and shook her head. Who wouldn't want to be the kid in class who had already been to Mars?

  Silver wondered if it would make a difference if Cooper and Cosima saw the transport ship. Cooper was probably imagining a cramped shuttle like the one she had flown in to dock at SkyBase before Cosima was born. Cooper had spent a couple of days at SkyBase, which, while more luxurious than the ISS, was still far from child-friendly.

  The trip to Mars was different though. The civilians would spend most of their time in the cryochambers in a carefully controlled sleep programme, and for the time that they did spend awake, Octavia had dedicated civil
ian quarters with a games room, plush berths, and all manner of creature comforts. The launch and landing would be hard on Cosima's body, but not unreasonable, and once they were in space they would have artificial gravity most of the time. They would also have a lot of anti-nausea meds, just in case, and Cosima was young and adaptable and adventurous. If Silver had been given the chance to go to Mars when she was a kid, she'd have had no hesitation, and she reasoned that if SolarEx had any doubts about having children on board, they wouldn't have given her the green light to invite Cooper and Cosima.

  Silver didn't know if the rest of the crew had signed up their families, or which civilians had paid to be on the trip. It was possible, Silver thought, that Cosima would be the first child in space, and she felt a swell of pride at that idea. As much as Silver disliked having to perform for the media, she knew how powerful a message that could be for the world at large.

  "We're not puppets, Silver. You can't just pick us up and make us dance to make some grand political statement about diversity." Cooper was changing the sheets on their bed, and Silver worried for the future of a pillow as Cooper shoved it violently into a fresh mauve case.

  "Oh, come on, Coops. You've got to admit that we're a pretty photogenic family. Imagine the headlines: 'Gays for Space'," Silver couldn't help but laugh.

  Cooper glared at her, and Silver realised that humour wasn't going to help her during this particular conversation. She picked up the other pillow case and said, "It's just, it's an amazing opportunity, Coops. Not just for us as a family, but to inspire everyone back on Earth."

  "Do you even hear yourself?" Cooper asked, throwing a naked pillow to Silver. "'Back on Earth.' Goddamnit, Sil. You are on Earth right now, remember? With us. Or have you mentally checked out of this planet already?"