Candidate
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly. —Thomas Henry Huxley, Collected Essays of Thomas Huxley
The Void, Outside of Prime Dome
Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge
4452.2.13 Interstellar
One of the Beta Stationers comm’ed Janus on the suit-to-suit, asking him for help. It was toward the end of early shift, not so late that the sun was coming over the horizon but close enough that the stars nearest to the curvature to the east were getting hard to see. Janus was on quota, with no urgent maintenance left on his list, so he acknowledged the transmission and made his way over.
The Beta Stationer’s suit lights washed over him as he got closer, and he raised his hand to shield himself from the glare.
“Sorry,” the other early-shifter said, dimming his lights.
Janus lowered his hand, saw the problem, and groaned. Irkalla was a mostly lifeless rock, and life here had to be assembled from raw elements and low-level forms such as bacteria, plankton, fungi, and algae. One of Prime Dome’s main exports was dehydrated biomass, which other settlements used as a growth medium for their own agricultural efforts. But Irkalla was only mostly lifeless, and one of the many complications of surviving in the void was the triliths.
Triliths were four-legged silicon-based lifeforms that incorporated hydrocarbons as both blood and lubricant. Their makeup varied based on the minerals they were birthed in and later consumed, but they tended to concentrate hard substances such as boron, tungsten, and crystallized carbon or silica in their claw tips.
One of them had ripped through one of the water recovery stations. The insulated steel pipes had been torn open like they were made of tinfoil, and the leachate, still rich in organic compounds, had sprayed and oozed onto the ground until the pumps and valves automatically sealed—at which point the trilith had moved to the next one, damaging four pipes in total.
“Greedy little bastard, wasn’t he?” the Beta Stationer said.
Janus pointed to his head, then at the Beta Stationer in agreement. “We need to find it before sunrise.”
“I’ll go left, you go right?”
“Yep,” Janus said, starting a simple, hemispherical search pattern.
There were several problems with triliths, other than the fact they could breach suits, pipes, and even dome walls to get at what they wanted. The first was that they looked like rocks. Irkalla had a lot of rocks, so telling the living ones from the regular ones was an exercise in frustration. Janus had an idea of how big the thing was from the damage it caused—about the size of a grapefruit—but that was also assuming it hadn’t dug down into the dust to digest its meal.
The second problem was that triliths attracted more triliths. They would investigate light sources and mechanical rhythms, and they could “see” the light shift from organic compounds breaking down in vacuum. While there was no air for them to call out in, they also used their own ground vibrations to communicate such finds to each other. Callie probably knew more about why they’d share such a precious resource, but the end result was that if they didn’t find the vermin now, there would be more of them tomorrow.
Janus didn’t want to think about the kind of damage they could do if they burrowed into one of the farms, or the dome itself.
“Find anything yet?” he asked.
“No,” the Beta Stationer answered.
The sun came up over the horizon.
Janus caught a glint out of the corner of his eye and turned. There was a slate-gray rock with more quartz in it than was typical, catching the light. Was it a little more symmetrical than would have been normal? He grabbed a rock hammer from his toolbox, keeping his eye on the suspected critter.
“Should we head back?” the Beta Stationer asked.
“I think I’ve got it,” Janus said.
The “rock” popped up on four pointed legs and started skittering away.
Janus ran after it. It zigged and zagged, making him skid in the ultrafine dust, but with the sun rising and no insulation to speak of, the silicoid was heating up and slowing down. Janus managed to dive forward and get a gloved hand on the squirming trilith, and he brought the hammer down hard, cracking its stone exterior.
The trilith jerked, alarmed ripples of green, blue, and red crossing its body.
“Sorry, little guy.” Janus brought the hammer down again, and this time the head punched into the trilith a full four centimeters. The trilith stopped moving.
“Nice one,” the Beta Stationer said, offering him a hand up. Janus took it and stood, giving the dead trilith a nudge with his boot, just to be sure.
“Janus, is everything all right?” Meg said on the comm.
“Trilith got at the pipes in unit fifty-six,” Janus said, patting the Beta Stationer on the shoulder before heading back toward his toolbox. “I’d get a drone on it to watch in case more of them come, then put it on the high-priority list for late-shift.”
“Got it. How bad’s the damage?” Meg asked.
Janus knelt by his toolbox. “Four pipes damaged. Nothing done to the pumps, but they’ll have to be checked and cleared. I’ll write it up if you—” He was cut off by an emergency klaxon on the common band. Janus lifted his head to look at the dome, its sides partially polarized and reflecting the morning sun. The rotating yellow hazard lights around the Sector Six airlock were on, he heard screams over the comm, and Janus watched in horror as the outer doors bulged and blew out, sending bodies flying and ripping suits open with shrapnel.
Janus triggered a timer, picked up his toolbox, and sprinted toward the dome. A hard suit would seal around the wearer’s neck and shoulders in the event of a breach, but that didn’t help if the visor was damaged. Most people carried repair kits, but the wearer had an average of six seconds of consciousness to make their own repairs. Most of the time, it was the first person to reach them who saved their life.
From the moment a hard suit worker passed out without air, they had one to two minutes before hypoxia started to do permanent brain damage. That was sixty-six seconds at worst to get them sealed up, make sure their air supply was working, and move to the next victim before their lives changed forever.
After four minutes without air, they weren’t coming back.
Janus ran. He was one of the first to react, although far from the closest, and other hard suit workers were converging on the airlock as fast as their legs could carry them. Janus was breathing hard, suit heating up, fog blurring his visor. As he pulled up to the site, he saw there were dozens of injured people on the ground and only five or six people working on them. He moved to the nearest suit.
Fifty-one seconds since the outer door blew open.
The first person he found was a woman, middle-aged, who must have been standing in front of the doors when they blew because she had multiple breaches in her suit and an open tear at her neck. The readout on her chest was nothing but red. Janus shone a light through her visor to be sure. Her eyes were glassy, and the helmet’s interior was coated in blood, as was the dust around her. He dragged her to the side so no one else would waste time on her, and broadcast on the common band. “Put the dead ones here, and focus on the ones we can save!”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
No one argued. Another of the rescuers dragged a body over while Janus moved to the next person who needed his help.
One minute and fifteen seconds.
This one must have been inside. Her visor was cracked, and the suit-pressure warning was flashing red. Janus pulled out a can of clear quick-sealing adhesive and sprayed the cracked glass. He rolled the hard suit on its side, checking the air supply, and found a rip in the hose that connected the suit to primary life support, which he fixed with duct tape. He rolled her back over, checked her chest piece, and saw the helmet at least was pressurizing again. He shone his light through the visor.
And he froze.
The woman inside the suit was Lira Allencourt.
Janus didn’t know whether to bless his luck or curse it. Here he was, the life of the only person in the whole world he considered an enemy in his hands. Her death was nothing but a quick tug on that hose and a short drag to the growing dead pile away, and no one would know except Janus. If only that wasn’t one person too many. “I’ve got a live one, here. Is anyone a medic?”
“Bring them here!” yelled a man kneeling by a suit missing a leg. “There’s too many for me to handle. Where the hell is help?”
“Sector Four gate’s five kilometers away. That’s five minutes each way by buggy, more if they’re driving slow to spare their passengers’ injuries,” Janus said, dropping Lira off, unconscious but alive.
“Some of these won’t survive ten minutes,” the medic told Janus, looking up at him, eyes meeting through visors and vacuum. “What do we do?”
Janus looked at the busted airlock. Condensation was still pouring out of it. Overpressure. That’s why it burst. It was either a software glitch or a failed sensor…
“I’ve got the lead aspirant, here!” someone shouted. Janus saw three people converging on a suit. “Medic!”
“Survivor preserve us,” the medic swore, leaving his patient to run after Craig-void-take-him-Bennin.
Two minutes and twenty-five seconds.
Janus didn’t care, not about Craig, or Lira, or whether a spaceship from the times before the exodus came down to pluck the aspirant and other worthies from the dust. He had dozens of people dying meters from health and safety. “Meg!”
“What?
“I need to get all the live ones into the airlock.”
“What airlock? The mess of twisted metal over there that just killed ten people?”
“Yes, exactly,” Janus said, grabbing his toolbox and heading for the wreckage. “I think I can pressurize it long enough to get them inside.”
Meg swore, but she started ordering her crew to grab the survivors while Janus ducked through the outer door, careful not to cut his suit on the sharp, ruptured access. Air and condensation were still venting into the chamber, coating the left bulkhead with ice crystals. There had been some sort of overpressure event. Shouldn’t have happened. Shouldn’t have been vacuum-sucking possible with the safety vents designed to blow out first, but with the way people kept bypassing the system, no one had noticed that the backup to the backup system had failed.
Janus looked around the airlock chamber. Superficial damage. There were traces of black hydraulic fluid around the inner-door access panel, but the secondary system would have sealed itself off in case of a rupture. He tried to connect to sector maintenance via comm, but the lines were completely clobbered.
“Meg, I need you again!” he called out just as she came through the outer door dragging a survivor.
“What now?”
“Your comm priority code,” Janus said, dropping his toolbox and ripping the access panel open.
“You’d better know what you’re doing,” she grumbled, and flicked him a temporary authorization over the suit-to-suit.
Janus used it to bypass the system that screened and triaged maintenance requests. “Sector Six Maintenance. Why are you using this code?”
“I need to speak to the head of sector maintenance,” Janus said.
“Take a number. We’ve got an emergency—”
Janus looked behind him. There were now dozens of survivors laid out on the floor of the airlock, and more being carried in. “Tell him it’s Janus Invarian, I’m in the Sector Six airlock with suit-breached survivors, there’s blood everywhere, and I need to speak to him now,” Janus said.
Three minutes and nineteen seconds since breach, his heads-up display showed.
The line went silent, but the dispatcher didn’t break the connection. Janus used the time to fit two repair clamps above and below the main hydraulic pump, where the lines had blown. He didn’t have high hopes the primary system would work, but with the reinforcement, maybe it wouldn’t compromise the secondary system.
Meg bumped his shoulder. “We’ve got everyone inside.”
Janus frowned. “That’s everyone who made it?”
“The people helping the aspirant are waiting for a buggy to carry him to Sector Four.”
“That’s a mistake,” Janus said.
“They’re scared, Janus. One of them tried to swing a wrench at me. They’re not going to trust an outsider with the life of the dome’s champion.”
“Invarian?” said the head of sector maintenance over the comm. “This had better be good.”
“I’ve got two-dozen survivors in the Sector Six airlock. They need medical care.” Janus checked the time: three minutes and thirty-seven seconds. “Seconds matter.”
“Is Craig Bennin among them? Dome admin is all over my ass to mount a rescue mission.”
“Hold on!” Janus said, putting him on hold. He looked at Meg. “We need the aspirant in here right now.”
She waved her suited hand to tell him it wasn’t happening. “They threatened to fight us if we tried to take him again. The mad bastards think outsiders tried to murder him.”
Janus looked at the clock. Three minutes and fifty seconds. There was one person outside who might be fine or already dead; there were close to thirty inside who were dying. The rescue buggies would be there for the aspirant in a minute or less. Craig would probably be okay. If Janus tried to take him by force, more people would die. “Seal us in,” he told Meg, and he saw her eyes widen through her visor. “I need you outside to hold that breach, Meg. Once we’re pressurized and the inner door’s open, the whole sector is at risk.”
“I understand,” Meg said, grabbing three more early-shifters and squeezing back out through the ruptured door. She triggered the emergency system, instantly deploying an inflatable barrier that expanded and self-sealed the far end of the chamber. The barrier would form-fit to the breach as the pressure rose but wouldn’t last if someone took a sharp object to it.
“I’m back. We have the aspirant,” Janus told the head of maintenance.
“Praise the Survivor. What do you need?” the man asked.
“I need you to use the software override to take manual control of the air distribution system before we get a second blowout.”
“I can’t,” the head of maintenance said. “Control system is shot, or we would have shut it off already. You need to replace it. I’ll talk you through it.”
Janus swore, checked his suit’s pressure sensor, and rushed to the APF control panel. The chamber was pressurizing at about one atmosphere every twenty seconds, and at three atmospheres they would either rupture again or kill the breached survivors. He forced the front of the control panel open with a crowbar and looked inside at the blackened electronics.
“Trilith crap,” the head of maintenance. “Okay, new plan. I need you to wire the APF into your suit computer and I’ll access the program from here.”
Janus hesitated for a fraction of a second, knowing that if whatever fault killed the control system fried his suit computer, he might not have air to breathe either. “You’ve got those rescue buggies still on the way, right?”
“Yes, of course,” the head of maintenance said. “Now, pull the plug with the green and blue cabling, and insert it into your suit jack.”
Janus did as he was told, praying for the Survivor’s luck that the cables didn’t spark and ignite him in the high-oxygen atmosphere. Out of the frying pan into the fire.
“Janus!” Meg said over the comm. “Hurry up! They’re trying to break in!”
“They can’t!” Janus said, gauntleted fingers fumbling with the wires. “We’re pressurized. They’ll blow the airlock all over again!”
“We’ll try to hold them!” Meg answered.
“I’ve got the connection!” the head of maintenance said, and Janus slumped against the wall. He felt both exhausted and elated. In the middle of one of the worst times of his life, he’d shown he could pull it together and do his job under extreme pressure. He’d saved lives, and while that was a reward in of itself, he hoped it would also show dome administration that he was the kind of person they wanted to work for them, maybe even put him in charge of something.
The flow of oxygen slowed and then reversed, bringing the pressure back down to a Standard atmosphere.
“Meg?” Janus said over the comm. “I think we’re going to make it! Have the rescue buggies reached you yet?”
She didn’t answer.
“Meg?” Janus asked, switching to the early-shift common channel. “Are you out there?”
One of the other members of the team answered. “Meg’s gone, Janus. The idiots guarding the aspirant were trying to breach the airlock. We tried to stop them, and it got ugly. She died stopping them from killing everyone.”
***
The airlock’s inner door squealed open. It had to be forced with a hydraulic spreader because of the damage, but they got it far enough open for rescuers to flood in. The Sector Six medical staff quickly took control, stabilizing the most critical patients first before moving them. Janus sat against the airlock wall, cables snaking from his chest plate to the burnt-out control panel, helmet off. His own primary life-support system wasn’t working anyway, so there was no point in wearing it.
“Where’s the aspirant?” a doctor demanded.
“Outside,” someone said. “He got rescued.”
“What do you mean he got rescued? He’s supposed to be in here!”
Janus watched without saying anything. The sounds came to him like his head was underwater. All he could think about were the numbers. Five injured people died in the airlock. Twenty-seven injured people lived. Two early-shifters, including Meg, died preventing the crazed people outside from cutting the emergency barrier open. Only one of the attackers died, as well as Craig Bennin, Prime Dome’s leading aspirant candidate, and Janus had lied about him being in the airlock to get the others help. Was that murder? Did it matter if it was, or that the idiots outside insisted on waiting for rescue until it was clear Janus’s plan was working? An aspirant was dead, and so were eight additional people who died in the initial blast.
Ryler, I need you to go to my apartment and get Callie. Take her to your parents’ place. Make sure she stays safe, Janus sent over the comm.
Janus? What’s happened? Ryler answered. Janus?
The restraints dome-sec clamped around Janus’s wrists cut him off from the dome noosphere, preventing him from answering.
They took him away.