Proxima b. Melody Liu. 

It astonished Melody Liu that her job had become mundane. On paper it sounded like the opportunity of a lifetime. Nobody on the outside looking in could possibly watch snippets of her day to day and think god that's gotta be boring. They'd see her donning her lead-lined suit, see her flying on a shuttle through swirls of deep red clouds, and they'd be jealous. 

Yet here she was, lightyears away from earth, bored out of her mind. It was the repetition of it, without a doubt. Taking cored samples from the ground. Punching her long metal extraction device into the rock, hitting a button, feeling the powerful thunk as it tore out a bite of the surface. The first month, there'd been something almost moving about the experience. She'd been especially careful with the device, as if something made of that much steel could be delicate. Every time there was an excited little beep in her helmet's speakers to tell her a sample was being processed, her heart gave a stutter. It was alarmingly close to euphoria. 

She used the extractor as a walking stick now. It wasn't entirely unnecessary or careless of her, not really. The gravity on Proxima b was heavier than she was used to, and even after having held the job for five years, she wasn't accustomed to the extra thirty-some pounds. So when she clicked and clanged that long, thin pole against the rocky crust of the planet, she felt pretty vindicated about it. Petty vengeance on Proxima for pushing down on her. Petty vengeance for the folks in the Pawar Bora station, hovering in orbit watching her vital signs, probably trying to figure out how being winded while out taking samples disqualified her for promotion. 

It wasn't all bad, though. Melody gave herself the right to pause after the tenth extraction of the day, sitting down with a thud on the ground. That she could hear the thud, even if it was muffled by her suit, felt like a blessing. She'd done work outside the station a few times, drifting in the void of space, and it was always eerie to be able to feel her tools slamming up against panels but never hear anything. At least there was an atmosphere here, even if it was dense and unbreathable. When she tipped her head back, she was rewarded with the view of an alien sun: an indomitable little red dwarf, tenacious and gobbling up a decent chunk of the sky. The cloud cover was surprisingly dense, which was something she often felt grateful for. This side of the planet never experienced darkness. There was an eeriness to it that she couldn't shake, some deep part of her lizard brain warning her that something was wrong even if she knew why the sun wasn't setting. 

"Doctor Liu," a voice cracked in her ear. She nearly jumped out of her skin, banging the extracting pole against her knee. She hissed, though it didn't really hurt: her suit was too dense to cause anything but a clang. 

"Yes?" She tried to keep irritation out of her voice and failed. 

"You've stopped moving. I simply wanted to ensure you were alright."

Sure you did, she thought. That would be Paul Kovalyov, freshly stationed in orbit around Proxima b. Right out of university, with middling scores and no real accolades. That he was already in a position above Melody certainly had nothing to do with the fact that his father was the chief science officer on the Pawar Bora. Certainly not. 

"I'm perfectly fine, thank you for your concern. No problem here."

"You should finish your rounds for the day and get back to your ship, Doctor Liu. There is a limited air supply." 

Melody clicked her teeth together, pressing her lips into a firm line. With a flick of her wrist an array of numbers flashed across the interior of her helmet, crisp and perfectly legible. She knew with his access to her suit's network he could see it too. 

"It would appear I still have twenty-three hours' worth of breathable air."

"Yes," he replied. "But it's still advisable that you finish your assignment promptly."

"You ever actually been down here, Paul?"

Silence followed. Melody weighed her options in her head only briefly, then laughed off the consequences. What would they do? Fire her? Put out a resume for the people back on earth? Hiring new space engineer. Must have experience in god only knows what. Commute time: four years and thirty days. 

No. Baby Kovalyov could handle some heat without her ass being on the line. 

"Because I'm pretty sure," she continued, "that you'd be huffing and puffing over the first hill you found."

"Doctor-"

"In fact, how much do you even weigh? I'd be shocked if you were one twenty soaking wet. Your calves would be screaming the moment you stepped out of the ship."

"Miss Liu-"

"No. We both know you aren't worried about my air. I'm an hour off from the shuttle even if I decided to take the scenic way back. I've only got a couple more miles to cover before I'm done. You're just bored because you've been stuck monitoring my vitals, and you've got nothing better to do." 

"That is completely out of line, Melody Liu." He sounded indignant now, and she found that absolutely delicious. "My priority is merely your safety. I've a mind to report you for insubordination."

"Do it then," she murmured back, crooning into the speaker in her helmet. "Go tell daddy the engineer was mean to you."

She heard a loud exhale, followed by more silence. Then:

"I'll leave you to your work, Doctor Liu." 

There was a satisfying beep as he shut off the connection, and Melody found herself grinning like an idiot. She'd pay for it later, but it would be a slap on the wrist she'd happily take. Paul had a tendency to feel his doctorate and his title meant he was in the big leagues, which in turn meant he could shit on anybody he deemed beneath him. She wondered if he had the self awareness to ponder why, if he was second in command, he was monitoring the vitals of the sampling crew. Anybody could do that job. You didn't need a deep grasp of mechanics or physics, you just needed to be able to hit a few buttons and say shit, HQ, looks like Jim-Bob is asphyxiating, better send someone down there before he dies. 

Bartholemew Kovalyov knew his son was actually an idiot with a god complex, but it looked good to be able to say he was also a scientist. Brilliance ran in the family, so it followed that was why money did too. 

With a grunt, Melody climbed to her feet. She drew a deep breath and kept moving. One yard. Another. A little counter ticked down her steps in the corner of her eye, the itty bitty white numbers easy enough to ignore once she got used to them. Part of her wished she could turn the thing off. It would probably cut down on the mundanity if she could pretend she wasn't working right now. She was just exploring instead. Making her way over the incredible and broken landscape of Proxima b.

It was beautiful in its own way. From what their readings told them, volcanic activity on Proxima was relatively common. It made sense; it was why there was an atmosphere at all even though the planet was so terribly close to its star. The radiation should have burned off everything billions of years ago, but evidently chance did its best trying to make life happen. It hadn't, not on any large scale, but there'd still been shockwaves through the scientific community when samples from water in the atmosphere came back with single cells and something resembling slime molds. If something, even something so simple, could evolve on a tidally locked and irradiated planet, what did that say about other places? Places more suitable for life? 

Scanning the miles of ashen stone and volcanic glass, Melody heaved another sigh. That discovery was over sixty years dead. Way before even her time, and she already felt ancient pushing fifty. Nothing else beyond valuable ores had been found on Proxima since, and another discovery had completely blown it to the wayside. Ross 128 b had large enough accessible bodies of water to easily explore, and they'd found creatures similar to jellyfish. That one happened only ten years ago, and was still pretty fresh in everyone's mind. Now, with a brand new colony en-route to the Tau Ceti solar system, folks in the scientific field tended to regard Proxima as the ugly ex that it only dated because it was available at the time.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Her suit beeped again. It was the same beep for everything: incoming communications, proximity alerts, oxygen expenditure. Over the years she'd applied a little imagination to it, and now she could almost swear they had variety. This beep was telling her she'd reached one of the assigned sample sites, and it was time to set up shop. 

Melody brought the extractor to bear. It was a terribly simple piece of equipment, really, but for things like this, a little brute force was all they really required. Sampling used to be automated, but their fresh box of transponders for controlling their drones mysteriously disappeared. They'd turn up eventually, either smuggled off by some black market runner from the colony or snatched up for somebody's pet project on the station. For now, they made do with what they had. 

Thrusting the tip into the ground, she curled her fingers around the top of the pole and keyed some of the buttons there. Two prongs popped out of the sides near the bottom, and there was a satisfying chk as a razor-sharp piece of titanium was thrust into the rock at breakneck speeds. Melody unceremoniously hopped up onto the prongs with both feet, bouncing up and down, wriggling a bit to ensure the sample was properly cleaved off and sucked back up into the tube for processing. 

"Doctor Liu." 

She didn't jump this time, which made her mildly less irritated by the interruption. 

"What is it."

"I'm reading a problem with one of the deep boring sites."

She blinked. "What kind of problem?"

"Unclear. It appears to have struck something the borer can't get through. Too dense."

That was a bit of a shock. Those sites were intended to find new places to dig for mining. What Melody was doing might be more in the name of discovery and progress, but it was the mines that paid the bills.

So there shouldn't be anything the borers couldn't get through. 

"Which one? Am I the closest to it?"

"That is why I contacted you, yes."

Melody fought the urge to roll her eyes, then gave in anyway. Why bother? It wasn't like he could see her face, just her readouts. "Wonderful. I only have limited repair tools with me, but I could probably at least take a look and figure out the problem. I'd have to make a second trip to get it up and running again."

"It's imperative that we get that boring machine up and running again as soon as possible."

"I'm quite aware of that. It's also imperative you know I can't work miracles. Send me the coordinates and I'll check it out."

She flicked her wrist again and heard the satisfying beep of a closed channel. An instant later, she opened another, patching herself in to the others out gathering samples. There were five total, including the shuttle's pilot. Henry Jacobsen was one of the rare few who'd started out as a colonist but proved himself smart enough to get a job on Pawar Bora, which meant she respected him. Nobody'd given Jacobsen any handouts just because his dad was someone important. 

"Henry, Liu here."

"Reading you loud and clear, Miss Liu. Problem?"

"Kovalyov's sending me to check one of the deep-boring stations. It's a couple miles off my course, so I might be a bit late getting back to the ship."

"You think I'd really leave without you?" His voice was wry, teasing. She couldn't help but smirk. 

"Probably. Then you'd be top engineer up at the station. It's a dog eat dog world, you know?"

He laughed. "There aren't any dogs here. Don't think it still applies."

"Bullshit. I'm talking to one right now."

The laughter grew, and she relished it for a moment before letting the connection cut off again. Only eleven of the twenty lights on the side of her extractor were lit, but she'd have to turn in without completing her row today. She doubted anyone would grump about it except Paul, and he'd only succeed in making everyone hate him a little more.

The gravity was really starting to press now. It wasn't enough to be painful, but she was at the age that she could feel the distinct ache between her shoulders. She found herself looking down more often than not, though that wasn't so terrible. Beyond the reddish shimmer of the sun reflecting off the black rock, there were lovely whirling patterns here and there that caught her eye. Some of it was certainly from age-old lava flows, but given sparse underground pockets of water found in this area, some of them were also likely signs of something else. There was ample water on the side facing away from the sun, hidden beneath a thick surface of ice, but most water on this side tended to get caught up in the atmosphere. Even now, she still hoped that with enough sampling they'd find something that'd survived from the time when there might have been rivers and streams here. Something more than single cells. Something to make all her time feel worthwhile.

When she reached the borer, she couldn't help but wrinkle her nose. It was an inelegant looking device, three thick metal prongs that curved towards the ground and joined in a point fifty feet in the air. Most of her time lately had been working on the station's shiny new telescope, with its iridescent solar sails and sleek titanium hull. This thing had never so much as known a lick of paint. It was just set down and bolted into the ground, and now it looked like an obscene tick, its centerpiece an insistent drill which was now giving erratic jerks clockwise, unable to move. 

"Son of a bitch," she breathed. "It really is stuck." 

She ran the rest of the way, which, given that it was downhill, ended with her almost falling over herself at the bottom. She realized she was suddenly excited. This wasn't precisely her area of expertise, mostly because there were plenty of people who specialized with the mining equipment, but she knew enough to know this was a strange development. That drill could cut through damn near anything, but there was one material that still tended to be stubborn about it. A material which tended to crop up rather abundantly given the kind of time and pressure Proxima b and its volcanoes had had. 

Diamond. 

Melody was breathless by the time she got to the main terminal beside the machine. Her fingers skidded over the keys, studying the readouts thus far. Iron. Nickel. Traces of platinum, which would make a good deal of people happy once these data points were transcribed and sent up for processing. She frowned, confusion replacing her excitement. The computer was chewing through some kind of compound, or at least trying to, but it was evidently unfamiliar with what it was. Which was impossible. 

She grunted, then opened her communications again. 

"Paul. I think something's wrong with the sensor on this thing. I'm going to bring it up and take a look at it."

"How long will that take?"

"Twenty minutes, probably. It's extended about two hundred feet deep at the moment. Takes a while for the drill to retract back into itself."

"Try to be quick, Melody. The samples should be-"

She clicked off, already keying in the commands to get the borer moving. The screen in front of her acknowledged the sequence, but when she looked up, the drill continued its shuddering back and forth jerk. A red line of text flashed across the terminal: 

Unable to clear obstruction. 

"I'm not asking you to clear it," she muttered under her breath. "I'm telling you to pull away from it."

She keyed the command again. 

Unable to clear obstruction. 

Melody sighed. She stepped away from the terminal, kicking it in recompense. It didn't appear to mind. She stepped closer to the machine itself, though she doubted there was anything she could do from there either. From a distance, it was easier to forget the sheer size of these things, but up close, it was less like a tick and more like a dinosaur. With the above-ground tubing fully extended, the drill had enough room to reach impressive speeds before it struck the ground. Which meant there was a lot of force on impact. 

Which meant it shouldn't be stuck. 

In between the three legs holding it up, Melody furrowed her brows. Up close, she could hear the faint churning more clearly. A circle of rocky debris had been spat up around where the drill entered the ground, and while some of it held a promising twinkle that hinted there could be something valuable there, nothing out of the ordinary really stood out to her. 

She started kicking the debris out of the way, shoving it to the side with her foot. A rain of volcanic glass followed. Bits of dust and stone. And then a sheen of something red. It rolled out of the pile, sliding down and coming to an almost delicate rest beside her. It was about the size of her hand, and most of it was too ashy to really make out. She crouched and plucked it up, turning it over in her hands, trying to clean it off.

It was deep red. Red the color of blood. At first, she thought it was completely opaque, but the more she stared at it the more she realized there were patterns lurking beneath the surface. Fascinated, she began turning it over in the light, studying it from different angles. The glint from the looming sun warming her back caught the material just so, and abruptly a scrawl of symbols bloomed over the surface. Looping, whirling, incomprehensible symbols. Writing. 

Writing in no human language she'd ever seen before. 

Melody's mouth went dry. Shock ran through her. Her fingers clutched the object with such ferocity she felt her knuckles crack. "No," she breathed. "No way. No way. No fucking way." 

Her reaction shifted the stone and the writing disappeared. 

"No!" She whirled around, lifting and turning it about desperately. Mindless giddiness swept through her. "Oh no no. I saw you, you little bastard. I saw you. You do that shit again."

Behind her, the drill abruptly ceased its jerkish struggling. Melody didn't notice. 

"Uh uh. Give it up, pal. Don't be shy."

The drill began to inch deeper into the ground. 

"I know that wasn't a trick of the light."

Far above her head, the metal struts holding the drill in place began to buckle. Three struts, each ten feet around, started to struggle against the weight. 

Melody didn't realize what was happening until the bolts gave a high pitched, horrible shriek. She jerked her head upwards, cried out, and then started making a run for it, holding the strange chunk of rock tightly. She was fast, and adrenaline made her forget her earlier fatigue in an instant. She launched forward, and she almost made it. Almost.

She got about two good leaps away from the boring machine before the ground cracked open. All of that metal bent, caved in on itself, and disappeared into a chasm below.

And Melody, screaming, went down with it.