A Wave from Space

Twisted home

The sun has disappeared and the atmosphere scatters too little light, but I can see movement. A person running, awkward as it is to run with our suits, towards the Fusion reactor complex. Far behind him a Rover speeds towards him.

I really shouldn't stop to investigate what I am seeing. I don't know how much oxygen I have left. I just hope that this is not my dying dream, while my brain starves for oxygen. Hallucinations are a symptom of hypoxia after all.

I feel like I've been mistreated. If they had a Rover going, why didn't they send it to pick me up? Wasn't I important enough? The other Rovers are parked close to the airlock. It could be that they fixed the one I saw running just now, but I need to know for myself. The test lights on all the parked Rovers are on the "Green-Go" state. They left me stranded on purpose.

I enter the airlock and press the button to close the outside door. The air fills in slowly, so it doesn't pick up the dust from my suit. The airlock is completely isolated from all circuits and can survive even the worst possible storm. I remove my helmet and take a deep breath of that fresh oxygen. I survived the journey. I wouldn't call this place home, but I'm safe. I take out my pressure suit and throw it down the chute to the dedust room. The door opens and the light from base, lowered to night levels, greets me.

There is a stench in the air and it doesn't take too much time to find the source. Blood. Blood, dried on the walls and floor, as far as I can see. Too much to be from an accident and radiation storms don't physically hurt people. Didn't Doc say that there were no injuries?

Did someone do this? A chill runs down my spine. The two people I saw outside are the other thing that don't match what I expected to find here. I don't know if they are related with the situation here, but I don't want to find out the hard way.

The airlock can give me away. The outside door closed when I came in. I must to cover my tracks. I press the exit button so that the airlock will return to being open from the outside and run inside the base. If I was trapped in there, while the air drains away.

I try to move quietly. Things don't get much better deeper into the Hub. More blood everywhere. Not a sound to be heard, other than my breathing and my footsteps. No bodies either. Some walls are torn open to reveal the wires that run through them. Circular doors that lead to offices and other rooms, are stuck half open, because someone tried to force them.

I expect someone to jump from every open door I encounter and turn me into one more blood stain. So I take a good look at every one of those doors and see places I used to visit. The recreation room is mostly intact with a few bloodied spots here and there. In the gym below a 50 kilo weight there are some pieces of broken bone and hair. The rest looks like a battlefield.

I'm numb. I wanna say that this isn't happening, but the smell makes it all too real for me. These were my co workers. People I saw every day. Friends.

Some lights are broken, creating dark areas. It is there where I fear that I will be ambushed the most. The cafeteria door is half open as well. More chaos. More blood. The table I spend so much time on, palling around with Doc and the others, overturned. Here I had my first positive experience on this planet.

It was when I first moved here. We had split with Doc, because he had to report at the Northern Complex. Everyone looked like they had something better to do. I was feeling alone and intimidated. Commander Lovell gave me a cold welcome, explained the various rules of living here and she suggested that I should go to the cafeteria. It had sounded like an order.

That's when I met Maria. She rushed to me to greet me to the station. I remember her smile, her eyes filled with excitement, her energy, her tomboyish attitude. Then I started noticing her beautiful blond hair and her almost flat stomach. I had a crush on her for about a week, after which I got over it and we became good friends instead.

And now she is dead. They are all dead and the Hub is a tomb. Doc didn't say anything about any of that and his messages looked real. Who could do that? We are the only nation with people on Mars and we track everything that is launched from Earth. We would know if someone send an attack force for about a year in advance. Unless of course someone from here sabotaged our systems, feeding them false information.

Watching out for ambushes as I walk, takes my mind off my losses for just a few moments. We are just a research facility. Why would they attack us? Is this an act of war? Did they think we had space weapons or something? Is it a terrorist attack? Some other thing that isn't important? Did my friends die for nothing? Can't we stop destroying each other, even when we are on another planet?

Fermi's Paradox comes to mind again. Some suggested that there is a kind of impossible step in the evolution of life that prevents it from becoming interstellar, like catastrophic natural phenomena. But it can also be that the technology that would allow civilisations to colonise the universe, is first used to destroy the civilisation. We have come close to self extinction too many times in our history already.

At the end of the main is the Medlab. Doc belongs there. The attackers have probably thrown the corpses out in the harsh environment of Mars, like trash.

I can't go in. I don't want to know that Doc is not there. A sharp pain pierces my heart. I should have been here. I should have died by his side, because I find it hard to care about living without him anyway. What was he thinking when he was drawing his last breath?

There is only one thing I can do. I'll go through my secret stash of narcotics in my room and take as many as necessary to dull the pain in my heart. It is a bad idea to get loaded while there might be people trying to kill me, but I won't be able to fight them anyway.

I reach the crossroad before the Medlab and turn right to Section 3. A long corridor that houses our accommodations. Doors to our rooms on both sides. Rooms so tiny that we have to clatter the floor with our stuff.

This corridor is even darker than the rest of the base. At one place on the ceiling I see black smoke stains. Did the enemy light the fire to kill my co workers, or did my people do it. I can imagine them, seeing an enemy advancing without any weapons to stop them. Someone started a fire to slow them down out of desperation.

I'm close to my room now. The way is blocked by a barricade made of everything they could find. It's not good enough. I jump through it with relative ease. The enemy must have had an easy time taking them down.

I notice something i missing. I push myself harder to really think what is troubling me. There are no bullet holes. If the enemy had firearms, my friends wouldn't even try to make a barricade. Why aren't there any signs of firearm use?

The sudden realisation makes my mind go blank and my blood to chill. Nobody would send soldiers to attack us without firearms. Unless if nobody send soldiers.

Could it be that some of my coworkers are responsible for this? What am I supposed to do now if i see someone alive? Trust them? Why did this happen? I need to understand. I want to not need my opiates, so I can think clearly. But I can't cope with this harsh reality in any other way.

Room 451. That's my room. But I am no longer interested in going inside. Room 450. Doc's room. The door is broken. Blood is coming from inside.