Samuel slept like garbage, tossing and turning with little genuine rest, having woken up sometime around midnight to the slamming and roaring of some beast outside; luckily, the building should be safe and would not buckle too easily. That and whatever animal it likely just came to investigate the smell of the food he made; it was probably the only food in several kilometers.
He got out of bed and stumbled over to the light switch. The chill sent a shiver down his spine, making him wonder if something happened to the heating system. He flicked on the lights, and the blood-red emergency overhead lights activated instead of the typical white overheads.
“Fuck,” Samuel grumbled, realizing the storm must have knocked out the power, shutting off the heating and causing his systems to start running on their backup power banks.
“At least I have something to do,” Samuel sighed before putting on his headlamp and dressing in light skivvies.
The bright white of his headlamp beam made it far easier to navigate through the dark rooms of the station, making it a simple task not to knock his shin into any of the furniture. The iced-over windows offered him little light from the sun; it might as well still be midnight.
Once Samuel made it to the workstation in the maintenance room, he started to review the deep lexicons of instructions and maintenance manuals for the station's innumerable systems and subsystems. He was glad the files were well-organized and easy to read through. Far too many times in the past, instructions or manuals might as well not be written in standard.
Whoever was here years ago was also a wise individual. They had left him handwritten instructions on troubleshooting the systems based on their experience manning the station. According to his predecessor, someone named Vasco, the power goes out at least once a week, with the main issue usually coming down to the solar panels being covered in snow. That made sense; if the solar panels could not catch the sun, the computer would say they must be broken.
Samuel made a mental note to read over more of Vasco’s words of wisdom when he had free time. Any amount of understanding of the outpost's personality he could get would be helpful. For now getting the power back online was more important than reading notes left for Samuel's ease of mind. Vasco mentioned the emergency power does not power the roof's de-icers, and Samuel ran the risk of the roof caving in from the snowpack's weight.
Samuel tossed on his parka and heavy thermal clothes. The gear was essential to survive any significant length of time on the moon's surface; otherwise, it was far too cold for Humans to perform any essential maintenance in the frigid tundra.
He tapped the control panel built into his parka sleeve and set the temperature to hold the suit at a comfortable 24 degrees Celsius.
The tubes running inside his clothes twitched when the pumps attached to his belt activated and forced warm antifreeze around him, offering him steady warmth. The system did little to keep his face warm, but his thick beard and the faux fur-lined hood would handle that.
Entering the winter room and groaning, he lowered himself onto the creaking bench, his tired muscles and sore knees screaming at him each millimeter. They always did when he woke up, so he had just come to think of it as his body's warm-up cycles. After all, any well-used machine needed a little warm-up to work correctly, and his old body was just another well-worn machine.
Slipping his boots on and quickly lacing them, he glanced around the room that kept the cold out of the main living area and let them store wet and drying clothes. It worked well for all of that, especially staging needed tools and the weapons the GU had given him, all of which were in packs and lockers across from him.
Pulling out one of his cigars and antique flip lighter, he chuckled while struggling to flip the lighter open in his thick winter gloves. The lighter had been in his family since World War Two when his ancestor made it out of an old bullet casing. The age proved that if you cared for something, it would last forever; the lighter was well over five hundred years old, give or take a few decades.
Samuel lit his cigar after pressing the button to actuate the doors, cringing as they scraped loudly against the door frame. That was odd since they worked fine the previous day.
After stepping outside, he realized why the doors were malfunctioning. When the beast slammed against the doors, they had buckled inward and cut deep gashes into the surface, exposing dozens of wires inside holes large enough to slip his gloved hand inside.
A growing sense of unease built in his chest while searching for any other damage the creature might have caused. To his horror, claw marks were on every window, including the one his head was next to when he slept. If that creature could carve into the aluminum siding, no doubt it could have smashed the glass and killed him.
He tried to spot tracks, but the fresh powder covered up any prints the creature had made. Not that seeing the tracks would have been much help; Samuel was not familiar enough with local fauna to identify animals by tracks alone.
“I guess I will need to inventory those guns and check the cameras from last night. Maybe they caught a good view of whatever this thing was,” Samuel muttered after taking a deep drag of his cigar, “Hopefully, this thing doesn’t come back.”
After Samuel was confident all of the damage to the building exterior was inventoried, he worked his way onto the outpost's roof. A few near slips on the ladder almost had him falling into the snow below; at least the distance was short, and fresh powder would keep him from breaking anything.
Once on the roof, Samuel looked at the vast ocean of trees and the deep valley the outpost called home. Yesterday, it was snowing so heavily that he could not see further than a few hundred meters. Now, with the sun high in the sky, the full grandeur of his new home was at his fingertips.
The valley was part of a large canyon; two towering mountains covered in green coniferous trees stood high on each side of the outpost. They looked similar to pine trees, but Samuel knew they were not pines but a chance of evolution.
The massive deep space satellite dish stood proud on the western ridge, the bright morning sun bouncing off its iced surface. It was the main reason he was out here. While it essentially ran itself and needed no maintenance, he could use the smaller satellite dishes nearby to communicate with it for any non-mechanical issues. He knew one day he would have to go up to the colossal structure itself; everything left alone long enough would eventually break; Samuel knew that all too well.
For now, he had to clean off the solar panels and try to repair any damage done to the outside of the facility. So much for this being a do-nothing assignment; his first day already had him struggling to create solutions for problems he frankly should not have.
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Cleaning off the solar panels was easy enough; the region was so cold that the snow had not congealed into a massive sheet of ice, so Samuel could wipe them off with his hands. The whole process only took him a little under an hour.
He glanced down at his sleeve-mounted control panel and ran a quick diagnostic.
“Thank you, Vasco, whoever you are. That would have taken me a while,” Samuel praised as the diagnostic spit out that the main power systems were green. The only error codes he received were from the creature’s damage.
Samuel struggled to remove all the damaged aluminum panels. Whoever designed these generic prefabs did not consider the panels would ever be covered in thick ice. The entire surface was tightly sealed by almost four millimeters of sleet, including the flush screws holding the damaged parts in place.
“Mother fucking stupid engineers, not purpose-building your creations,” Samuel grunted while chipping at the ice.
Situations like this were all too often a problem with prefab anything. They all followed the idea of being good enough to work because it was cheaper. Samuel preferred doing things differently than most other engineers; anything he built was for a purpose and designed from the ground up to accomplish a goal. It was, in a way, his raison d'etre.
Between Samuel's old man strength and his sharp screwdriver, he made quick work of the ice and could use the tool for its actual purpose, not as a makeshift chisel.
Twelve panels in total were halfway destroyed. Samuel piled each twenty-kilogram panel in the garage nearby because the shop was both heated and had a welding unit. Samuel was glad he could at least take his coat off while repairing these things; being out in the cold would not make the difficult task of welding aluminum any easier.
He felt right at home inside the garage. The entire shop oozed dirty worker vibes. Oil stained the floor, and the walls had racks of components for the facility. Several battered shelves were overflowing with tools he could easily use to maintain any vehicle he could want to repair, from a motorcycle to a landing craft. Samuel only had one vehicle on his roster for now, and it was the shop's centerpiece—the glorious engineering marvel known as the Varintluk.
The massive vehicle sported an environmentally sealed cab fit for up to a dozen people. It had been built with four large screw tracks, allowing it to glide over snow easily and traverse calm water. Both features would undoubtedly serve him well in the tundra.
The Varintluk had everything needed to survive for multiple weeks: food, filters, heat, solar power, and communication systems. The thing even had an auto surgeon inside; they were not perfect, but they worked fine for minor stabilization and treatment.
Samuel would have to take it out for a spin later. He had never been able to drive anything that large, and the bright orange vehicle looked oh-so-tempting.
“I will name you later on, beautiful,” Samuel growled, running his fingers along the front screw tracks.
After returning to fixing the damage, Samuel spent most of the day relatively in the zone, mindlessly going back and forth between the shop and the broken wall sections. He welded the patches over the aluminum using some of the extra raw paneling. There was little point in using the CNC machine to make new ones when the old panels could be repaired. Even though Samuel was not an expert welder, the patches he placed over the aluminum were at least airtight, something he was proud of.
Samuel also made quick splices on the wiring beneath the panels, which was good enough to eliminate the errors in his systems. Luckily, the shop had plenty of melting bridge connectors, making the job short and simple. The less splicing he had to do, the better. Especially since wearing his thick winter gloves gave Samuel the dexterity of a drunken hippo.
By the time Samuel was back inside the main building, he was exhausted, having not eaten all day, surviving only on his cigars and water.
Samuel inventoried all the supplies the GU had dropped off weeks ago. He had plenty of beer, freeze-dried food, and cigars. They also added many of the other small creature comforts he requested, which was surprising. Samuel expected the GU penny pinchers to shove a note in the shipping crates telling him to pound sand, but they seemed to have followed his request list to the letter.
He had to be somewhat careful with how quickly he used supplies since they only gave him enough for one local month. The conversion for time meant he had slightly over two Standard months of food. That was not a big deal since the GU would send a shuttle down with the same items regularly unless he requested something else.
At least he would be comfortable as he slowly froze to death out here.
Samuel sat to review the footage from last night last while shoveling rehydrated beef into his mouth. After not eating all day, the warm juices and salty flavor were a true boon. Had he not just poured the hot water into the mylar bag, he could easily have been tricked into thinking that a chef had freshly made the food. The food was another tick in his mental list of things the GU does very well. However, making survival food was not that difficult.
Pulling up the previous night's videos was an absolute waste of time. The snow was so thick that all Samuel managed to see was the slightest glimpses of the beast. The best picture he got of the animal told him two things: the monster was bipedal and stood as tall as the roof of the single-story building.
“Great, all the more reason to get the guns ready,” Samuel grumbled.
After eating, Samuel returned to the entry room and opened the weapon cages. He paused in shock upon seeing the contents. The GU did a marvelous job supplying him with tools to keep the local flora and fauna a safe distance away.
There was an old pump-action shotgun with a red dot sight. It was chambered in 12 gauge and had plenty of ammunition stacked below it. He looked at the plastic boxes of ammo; there was a healthy mixture of slugs, buckshot, and birdshot.
Samuel could hunt some local animals with it if push came to shove. He had already seen several smaller birds and other creatures resembling foxes skittering amidst the trees. But for now, he was in no rush to start shooting everything around his new home, so long as they gave him a safe distance.
The rifle just next to the shotgun was the current military-issued sniper rifle. The WLR-1(Winter Long-Range Model One) was a semi-automatic magazine-fed weapon— that sported ten rounds of 12.7mm caseless love ready and at your fingertips.
Samuel hefted the black rifle and cycled the buttery smooth action. The metal clinking of the perfectly designed rotating bolt operating was better than sex to an engineer. He wondered how precise the design tolerances were but knew he would likely never have those answers.
He flipped up the iron sights and looked down them; seeing them glowing brightly made him smile. Samuel was excited about the weapon and its capabilities until he spotted the ballistically calibrated scope— that the GU failed to mount on the top rails.
“Well shit, I guess I will have to do that later,” Samuel sighed.
He knew the iron sights could shoot minute-of-man or at least minute of whatever lurked around his outpost. He just won't be able to let the 12.7mm caseless ammo stretch its legs until he calibrates the optic. According to the weapon’s manual, the round, rifle, and scope together in the right hands should be capable of drilling a man-sized target at two kilometers. Too bad Samuel was not the right hands. So, he only expected to be able to shoot 500 meters accurately.
Samuel would zero the rifle tomorrow. Plus, needing to head out to find somewhere to shoot would be an excellent excuse to take the Varintluk out and put it through its paces.
The last item in the weapon locker had Samuel acting like a kid with a new toy if that new toy shot flaming hatred out of its front end with a fifty-meter range. What red-blooded man did not want a flamethrower after all? A massive bonus for the flamethrower was that it was not a backpack style, so he could easily set it down and work with his hands.
Samuel just had to keep some of the biodiesel tanks nearby and fill them up using the biodiesel synthesizer at the far end of the compound every few days. Now that Samuel knew a flamethrower was available, he would never shovel snow again. Work smarter, not harder, and whatnot.
This tool would also be perfect at scaring off whatever was lingering around his outpost. Be it here or on earth, Samuel could not think of any creature unafraid of fire. He certainly could not think of anything more horrifying than burning alive.
Before sleeping, the last thing he did was stage the loaded shotgun near his bed. Hopefully, he could get a hold of it and shoot back at whatever lurked outside before it caused him more work.