By T M Romanelli
In space, there is no up or down.
This aspect of applied physics was the earliest and most practical lesson taught to Haru and all of
her classmates who were raised in the simulated gravity environment of an otherwise
unremarkable Tsiolkovsky-class habitat. The space colony served as the primary residence of the
laborers that piloted the shuttles, sorted cargo and mined the asteroids that provided water, rare
metals and key fertilizer substrates to the Martian settlements. Personal orientation and standard
directions were all relative to the most prominent gravity well, so that “down” was created by the
centripetal forces that kept someone firmly footed on various levels of the station’s curving
interior and from where they would often look “up” at the habitat’s central axis and the mounted
diffusion lenses that illuminated the interior.
The colony residents all shared a common frame of reference.
When Haru later earned her certification as a Commercial Prospector and fulfilled contracts for
some of the independent mining companies, “down” was the regolith-covered surface of
whatever asteroid she was tethered to, maintaining the drilling rigs, automated refineries and the
drone networks that supported them on her employer’s claim. “Up” was the vacuum of the Inner
Belt, and a dazzling star field that was constantly changing due to the planetoid’s unique spin,
which also cast the cratered surface in alternating periods of weak sunlight and shadow. She
could switch between these orientations instinctively, an attribute that was an essential skill for a
ComPro on extended rotations far from a replenishment base, but the periods of isolation only
reinforced the complex milieu of characteristics that defined her personality. Haru was fiercely
self-reliant, intolerant of mistakes (including her own) and considered gravity as a convenience
instead of a necessity.
She was also far more comfortable dealing with rocks and drones rather than people.
The descent to the bottom of the crevasse was uneventful, and after setting her boots on the ice
shelf she fired another piton into the wall at shoulder height to secure her harness line, attaching
a small chemlight to it in case she needed help finding her waypoint as the sun skirted the
horizon. The terrain she walked upon looked solid enough, but experience had her repeat this
procedure at regular intervals so she wouldn’t fall too far if the floor gave way suddenly. The
crevasse offered no unusual dangers for someone who had worked alone on the surface of
unstable asteroids, extracting ore and precious metals prior to onsite refinement, delivering
profits to the frugal employers who rarely invested in the most basic of safety equipment.
After notifying base camp of her current position, she followed the hovering drone a modest
distance from where she had descended before it slowed and then came to a stop. The drone’s
laser illuminator identified another set of small holes that emerged near the bottom of the wall.
She squatted carefully to hold the probe close to one of the openings, where the presence of a
prominent methane spike suggested an occupied warren and an opportunity for Haru to fulfill the
wishes of their resident xenobiologist. She contacted Cosmo to ask how much longer before the
biocontainers were ready and the scrolling answer that appeared on her HUD a few seconds later
informed her that the rover had not been able to locate them in the dropship.
“Tsk, tsk. All those fancy optical arrays and you can’t find a simple box. Maybe it heard you
coming and it scampered under the jumpseats?” Haru playfully scolded her companion, as she
chuckled at the situation. Cosmo shared an observation about the lack of adequate organization
in the cargo hold, but she continued her gentle teasing. “Don’t make me come up there!”
Haru checked the methane readings again, and contemplated the next steps to obtain Michel’s
specimen. It was only now on the crevasse floor that the generic ‘just get a specimen’ concept
revealed a number of flaws when it was not supported by a focused plan or detailed procedure. If
she was rock-hopping a claim, this would be a relatively simple process: drill a pilot hole, plant a
shaped-charge and recover the fragments before feeding them to the geochemistry unit attached
to the automated refinery. Although she enjoyed incorporating explosives into her typical
workflows, she also determined that this approach would probably not be useful to secure a live
specimen, and even a small detonation near a potentially unstable ice shelf seemed unwise.
She considered the parameters of the problem, and after considering their relevant risks and
benefits, decided to reprogram the Caterpillar to wield its small probe and manipulator to deliver
a mild electrical shock to a random, unsuspecting critter and extricate the stunned animal from
the warren. As she started making the necessary field modifications to the smaller drone, she
considered the ethical implications of her actions and concluded that assault and kidnapping
paled in comparison to the xenobiologist’s planned vivisection.
Does that make me an accessory? she thought to herself. I’ll just claim plausible deniability.
“How’s it going, Cosmo? Any progress on that biocontainer?” she asked while using the suit’s
interface to embed the new algorithm into the drone’s auxiliary AI. Haru waited a few moments
before the rover’s answer appeared on her helmet’s HUD. “Oh my. Sassy today, aren’t we? Keep
looking, I’m pretty sure it’s there somewhere.”
Haru’s singular focus on the Caterpillar mod was interrupted by the drone network alarm, which
flashed prominently in the center of the helmet’s HUD while the automated voice repeatedly
announced ‘operational failure imminent’ in a disconcertingly calm tone. Caught off-guard, she
checked her arm-mounted display and confirmed that the batteries of the surface drones at Site
Four were almost depleted. A second alarm activated from the monitoring station positioned next
to the dropship, and Haru watched hypnotically as the windspeed indicator increased steadily and
crossed into the triple digits while the ambient temperature plummeted to – 95 ℃. She performed
a quick diagnostic, hoping this was some weird glitch, but she could already hear the rising
winds even from the bottom of the crevasse.
Why didn’t the weather station issue an alert when the temperature dropped below the
programmed value? Haru asked herself, and immediately realized her mistake. Because it
already did when Cosmo and I were crossing the surface and you forgot to reset the alarm
trigger, you stupid bitch.
“Cosmo! Prep the dropship for emergency lift-off!” she ordered over the suit comm. “We’re
evacuating Site Four immediately! I’m coming back to your position right now!”
Haru moved as quickly as she safely could in her environmental suit, retracing her steps on the
floor of the crevasse and pulling the quick-release tabs on the piton rings as she passed them
while using the winch remote to take up the accumulating slack. A shrill, triple-tone sounded in
her helmet as the surface drones expended their last reserves trying to maintain station in the
increasingly turbulent air currents, and dropped hard into the snow when the propellers lost
power. The HUD began flashing additional alerts, each one overlayed on the previous to create a
growing inventory of catastrophe that only served to distract Haru until she could clear them
with the master alarm reset.
Units offline. Units offline. Warning! Atmospheric conditions unstable. Take shelter. Take
shelter.
“Site Four to all stations! Abort! Abort! Abort!” Haru called out on the emergency channel
shared by all the surface teams. “Petra! Get everyone off the ground now!”
“Haru, what the fuck is happening?” Petra demanded, her voice garbled by heavy static. “The
monitoring station here just alarmed and Site Two is reporting-”
“It’s a flash freeze!” Haru responded, trying to keep her voice steady as she hurried to return to
the waypoint where the winch would bring her back up to the plateau. “The temperature drop is
sucking in air from other regions in a vicious cycle. As the windspeed increases the temperature
will keep falling! Whatever air moisture that gets sucked in will crystallize and take apart
anything left exposed in the open!”
“What? I don’t under-”
“A supercell ice cyclone, Petra!” Haru yelled into her mic. “I don’t know how far or fast it will
expand, but you need to get everyone aboard the dropships and burn for orbit immediately!”
Haru finally reached the base of the wall where the cable hung from the winch ten meters above
and prepared to ascend to the surface. The chemlight she had left there glowed brightly, and only
when her automatic suit lights turned on did she notice how dark the bottom of the crevasse had
become as the growing storm raged above. She checked her harness and made sure the carabiner
safety was locked before she planted her foot against the near vertical wall. Haru toggled the
remote control for the winch and began climbing as the cable went taught, pulling her up.
“Cosmo! Engage the AutoNAV!” Haru called out to the rover after switching channels. “Bring
the dropship to the edge of the crevasse field and pick me up there!”
“…ru, we’re evac… now!” Petra’s voice came through the helmet speaker, punctuated by jarring
static. “Report… status… do… need assistance?”
“Negative!” Haru answered, uncertain if Petra could hear her clearly as the comm system was
affected by the storm’s interference. In the threatening sky above Haru, the dry atmosphere and
accelerating winds created electrostatic discharges, the strobe-like flashes illuminating millions
of icy particulates carried aloft in the swirling tempest. “I’m exiting the crevasse now and
proceeding to the dropship. Don’t wait for me!”
Holding the winch remote in a vice grip, her thumb pressed down hard on the RETRACT
button, Haru planted her boots and climbed as the cable pulled her up the wall. Anxious to clear
the crevasse, the line reeled in until it suddenly stopped when she was still two meters below the
ledge. Haru checked the controller and repeatedly pressed the button with no effect. She toggled
the power switch and pressed the button again. Nothing.
Haru tried to pull herself up the remaining distance but her gloves offered no purchase against
the cable’s frozen exterior. The ledge was only two meters away, but remained frustratingly out
of reach. Her arm-mounted display showed a windspeed of 285 KPH and an ambient
temperature of – 115 ℃ when the numbers were replaced with an ominous message.
Data connection lost…
The rover busied itself scanning the rear compartment of the dropship for the biocontainers, and
in the confines of the cargo hold it had limited situational awareness of the deteriorating weather.
As heavy as the armored craft was, the ground windspeed had increased sufficiently to begin
buffeting the airframe, which activated Cosmo’s accelerometers and drew its attention to the
increasing hazard. Panels throughout the cockpit began alarming, identifying damage to the
ailerons and other control surfaces that were being struck by ice shards and heavier pieces being
sucked up into the expanding vortex. Cosmo received a garbled transmission over the secure
channel it used to communicate with Haru, but the message content was unintelligible. The
loading ramp remained locked in the down position, revealing whiteout conditions as ice and
other ground debris began to puncture the stowed jumpseats, launching fragments of upholstery
and insulation material around the cabin. Cargo webbing was shredded and the mounted storage
units in the rear of the craft were rapidly stripped of their paint as the ice storm penetrated further
into the spacecraft.
There was a loud crash from the cockpit as the weather monitoring station was flung aloft and
smashed against the canopy, cracking the reinforced polymer in multiple places. The entire ship
then pivoted sideways in the snow, and as the landing struts screeched against the stress, there
was a rapid-fire succession of loud pops when the actuators and braces were pulled from the
main cylinder. The landing gear collapsed and the dropship leaned to the starboard side,
damaging the wing tip and directional lights. In the presence of lethal conditions and imminent
threats to itself, the rover’s emergency protocols took over, rescinding all other mission priorities
as it made to escape the cargo hold before the ship was tossed like a toy and destroyed.
<Activating self-protection procedures>
<Evacuate area>
<Evacuate area>
The rover had reached the end of the loading ramp when the dropship suddenly began to rise and
was then hurled several meters into the air. Cosmo never saw where the craft landed, or if it
landed at all, because the ramp snagged its frame and capsized the rover. It came to rest on its
back, canted to one side with the articulated legs sticking up uselessly in the air and the turreted
optical array buried in the snow.
The 1000 kilogram hexapod of tempered alloy designed to survive the corrosive atmosphere of
Venus had been effectively incapacitated. A giant insect pinned to the glacial plateau.
“Cosmo, are you receiving?” Haru transmitted over their secure channel. There was no response
from the rover or scrolling dialogue on her HUD. “What’s happening up there?”
Haru was stuck beneath the ledge, unable to ascend further and realizing her chances of a safe
return were dwindling. She ordered the drone that had been hovering on the crevasse floor to
reposition itself and inspect the winch, hoping she might fix the problem remotely. The drone
rose quickly, kicking up a dusting of snow as the propellers sped up, and passed her as it
continued its vertical assent. As soon as it had risen above the ledge, the drone was enveloped by
the storm. The propeller housings disintegrated and the drone pinwheeled violently, narrowing
missing Haru as it crashed into the wall above the stranded astrogeologist. Running out of
options, she tried to access the dropship through the arm-mounted interface, and realized how
bad her situation had become when she read the status indicators.
Hull integrity failure. Flight systems disabled. AutoNAV disabled. Data connection lost…
Haru was terrified for Cosmo, not knowing if her companion was safe, but right now she needed
a plan that would get her out of immediate danger. The cable started to vibrate, and looking up
where the line disappeared over the ledge, she imagined the storm had started to knock the winch
moorings loose. She grabbed the pneumatic gun from the suit belt and fired a piton into the wall.
Haru clipped a tether to the suit harness and reached out to attach it to the new anchor when the
mounting plate was yanked free, and her body was dragged horizontally along the wall before
the cable snapped.
Haru fell to the bottom.
Accustomed to long-duration assignments in microgravity and rapid shifts in orientation, she
engaged her core instinctively to right herself just before she hit the floor of the crevasse. The
two bones in her lower leg fractured and she suffered a concussion when her head slammed
against the interior surface of her helmet. Haru screamed, but soon found herself breathing hard
and fast and felt like she was unable to get enough air as she laid sprawled out on the ice shelf
from which she had recently tried to escape. There was a loud, hissing sound and the helmet fans
whined at maximum speed as another alert appeared in the center of her HUD.
Pressurization failure. Activate emergency procedures.
The suit schematic showed a tear along her right flank, probably where the ice wall’s sharp
features had torn the material as she was dragged before falling. She could tolerate the lower
oxygen content because the sea level concentration on this planet was 18%, at least for awhile,
but heat loss was an immediate threat. Hypothermia would quickly disable her ability to move
and think, and she would die of exposure soon after.
“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” Haru reported on the emergency comm channel. “Site Four is
down. Conditions unstable. Is anyone receiving?”
There was no response, not even static, and when Haru checked the diagnostic again she saw the
antenna had been damaged in the fall. She was shivering uncontrollably as the sub-zero air
infiltrated her suit, overwhelming its ability to compensate for the sudden temperature change.
She started to get light-headed and felt herself drifting into shock.
Aboard the Pathfinder, the first indication that something was wrong was the ship-wide
announcement for all command crew to immediately report to the flight deck. Vahn was looking
over the shoulder of the junior flight officer at various displays as information about the disaster
was being communicated from the surface teams. Petra described the sudden change in weather
patterns and that she had lost contact with Haru shortly after the astrogeologist urged everyone to
evacuate. FlightCOM suddenly stopped receiving telemetry from her dropship.
Pathfinder’s high-resolution optics module and synthetic aperture array were focused on Site
Four, trying to locate Haru and the dropship. The JFO had projected the incoming data onto one
of the larger screens, which showed several swirling masses coded in yellow, orange and red, the
colors merging and separating chaotically across hundreds of kilometers on the glacial plateau.
The supercell storm was growing and splitting into other fronts that were advancing with
frightening speed towards Site Three. Petra kept requesting clearance to go back and locate Haru.
Vahn instructed her to hold position and asked the JFO for an update on local conditions at Site
Four, after which she knew that no rescue attempt was possible.
“Petra, that storm is moving fast and it will be on top of you in less than two minutes,” Vahn
spoke clearly into her headset. “I’m ordering you abandon Site Three and RTB with your team.”
“What? No! Captain, there’s still time to go and get her,” Petra responded. “I’ll skirt the storm’s
leading edge to avoid most of the turbulence. Requesting permission to-”
“This is Pathfinder actual to Lieutenant Korolev,” Vahn spoke in a voice that was as cold as the
evolving cyclone below. “I need you to acknowledge my evac order. Right. Fucking. Now.”
“Korolev here,” Petra said after a few moments, her transmission muddied with the sharp hisses
and crackling of increasing static. “Order acknowledged. Burning for orbit and rendezvous now.”
Haru continued to shiver uncontrollably, each breath emitting a dense fog inside of her helmet as
a thin sheen of ice spread its fractal tendrils across the edges of the faceplate. She had already
lost sensation around her lips, nose and cheeks, and when she inhaled it burned with the intense
cold. Haru had long ago accepted that the hazards of deep space might one day kill her, but if it
happened there at least she would pass out first in the hypoxic vacuum before more disturbing
and painful bodily changes occurred. The current circumstances were different- this was an
unrelenting slow cold, invading her bones with her awareness largely intact, and she would be
forced to suffer tremendous pain before she finally succumbed.
The only fleeting warmth she felt was a thin trickle of wetness on her side that seemed to pool
around her buttock. Haru clumsily explored the suit tear with the back of her glove, and when
she brought it to the faceplate her knuckles were coated in blood that quickly froze and cracked
when she tried to make a fist. There was an irrational desire to get out of her suit, which she
vaguely knew was a bad sign with hypothermia but couldn’t remember why. She was already
struggling to think clearly. Her cognition was increasingly compromised, so even though she
knew how to treat the injuries, her ability to focus on the actual task was challenged by unwanted
mental tangents that previewed the inevitable outcome of Haru’s terrible, horrible, no good, very
bad day. If she could not think, then she could not constructively plan to survive and her fate was
sealed.
Sealed. Sealer. Use the sealer. Stupid bitch.
Haru reached for her suit’s front pocket, flipping the catch and pulling out the emergency repair
kit with some effort. Most of her fine motor skills were shot at this point, but she talked herself
through the procedure of using the expanding foam applicator, depressing the activator that
mixed the two chemicals, pulling the safety pin and gripping the trigger. Haru couldn’t clearly
see the part of her suit that was damaged, so she did her best and awkwardly aimed the nozzle
before squeezing the trigger with difficulty. The prickly substance hit the material and her
exposed skin, and the biopolymer quickly cured to seal the tear. Some of it worked itself into the
deep laceration below her right rib cage and unintentionally but effectively slowed the bleeding,
although removing the adhesive material from her wound would be problematic.
It’s fine. That’s tomorrow’s problem. Tomorrow. Ha. Ha. You’re funny.
The fans mounted on her helmet and the inside of her thoracic plate whirred reassuringly as the
suit pressurize normalized, although she doubted that the interior temperature could be fully
corrected. She continued trying to reach Cosmo or Petra, but it was obvious she could no longer
transmit or receive. Hypothermia remained a lethal threat, but she had a given herself a little
more time. Her thinking cleared a little, and she checked the suit’s battery level.
Shouldn’t have done that, asshat. Now you know your time’s running out.
She closed her eyes and tried to perform some breathing exercises to calm herself. It worked. A
little. Haru considered the recent events and assessed her situation: she was non-mobile, stuck at
the bottom of the crevasse with a damaged environmental suit, in shock and becoming
hypothermic with no comms to relay her position or status. After a moment, she turned off the
lighting system and stared up at the storm. Even in the dark, she could see and hear it advancing
into the fissure, stalking her like an apex predator.
Well, no need for a coffin. I’m already wearing it.
Before the sale could be finalized, Haru had to compete the mandatory technology transfer
certificate so the vendor could release the surplus rover and provide her with a valid registration
from the Commerce Ministry. Money had not been an issue, and she didn’t bother haggling with
the seller. She had insisted on conducting her own inspection of the semi-autonomous platform,
and during the process she asked about the two perforated anti-slip panels that crossed the top of
the rover’s frame. The vendor explained that the designers of the E6 series had included an
electrically driven self-righting mechanism so the platform could extricate itself if it ever flipped
over in unstable terrain. It was one of those details that made the model robust and commercially
successful, allowing it to look after itself to a certain degree.
Cosmo had come to rest on its back after the dropship accident, but its internal gyroscope
remained active. The SRiMech capacitor energized and discharged, powering the anti-slip panel
as it extended from the rover’s frame to plant itself firmly in the icy terrain beneath and roll
Cosmo’s body right side up. The internal gyroscope confirmed the recovery procedure and the
dorsal turret did a 360° rotation, scanning the immediate environment of the storm and
performing a global threat assessment.
<Abort primary mission>
<Retreat to safe conditions>
<Return to staging area>
<Repair superficial hull damage>
The emergency protocols served the same purpose as the human hindbrain, modulating the
rover’s version of the fight-or-flight response. The protocols automatically superseded the
algorithms of the primary AI core in order to preserve the platform’s viability until the survey
mission could resume under more favorable conditions. Despite the repetition of the self-
preservation directives, the rover remained still, its low center of gravity and claw-like
appendages at the end of each leg securing it firmly to the ground and preventing it from being
sucked up into the storm.
It was at this time that another emergent behavior appeared.
The unique and complex feedback loops that formed Cosmo’s self-regulation system began
countermanding the emergency protocols. Unexpected inputs from the core redirected ascending
tiers of the control, logic and memory architecture. The flashing lights of the turret array
suddenly winked out, replaced by a slowly pulsing green glow as a novel algorithm was
uploaded into the primary AI core. Cosmo cycled its main power unit and rebooted.
<Initializing new protocol ▹ Designation ’00’…>
<Integrating new protocol into active matrix>
<Self-preservation measures conditionally functional>
<Activate Protocol 03>
The vanes fanned from Cosmo’s armored chassis and locked into place. Designed for the
efficient transfer of excess heat into the hostile thermobaric environment of Venus, the IR
spectrum emitters energized to full capacity, creating a protective bubble of intense heat that
sublimated the ice particles swirling around the rover before they could cause significant
damage. Some of the larger ice debris was able to penetrate this barrier, but could do little more
than put dents into Cosmo’s sturdy frame. The dorsal turret did another 360° rotation, scanning
the immediate environment.
<Preparing ground search pattern>
<Activate Protocol 00>
<Find and protect Haru>