Chapter 19
On the day of the crash, Lyra was pacing. At first, she couldn’t get a hold of anyone. Lyra thought she would crawl out of her own skin from worry, and the fact that the Prime Council deliberately shut down all ‘non-essential communications’ to the area of Siderotil made her furious and frustrated at the same time.
By the time she hacked an array of com-sats to bounce the signal from the emergency response frequencies, she could do nothing but listen to reports of bodies taken out of the habitat. The first responders never named any of the casualties, so it gave her little comfort. There seemed to be fewer bodies than the total population of the habitat. And they seemed to be mobilizing more people to collect the refugees into nearby habs. Refugees, that was good.
Finally, after ten hours of pacing and querying her tablet and cursing at the empty hab-unit, she finally got Diggs on the comms. She nearly cried from relief but was quickly overtaken by anger.
“What is going on up there! Diggs, no one will tell us anything!” Instantly anger got sidelined by more worry, and before he could respond she said, “is my sister ok? Anyone from our crew got hurt?”
“Everyone is ok,” he said. “From our crew, at least. There were about two dozen people close to the crash site that didn’t make it out.” He looked so tired, and still quite shocked by what happened. Her anger seemed to fade a little.
“Cassy is ok?” She asked, again. He nodded. That was good.
“Cassy and Mani got a little banged up when the wheel stopped, but they are still on their feet. I haven’t seen Lukus, but Mani told me he saw him get evacuated to another habitat.” He paused, and then he said, “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“What the hell happened?” She was getting impatient again. “The entire habitat crashed?”
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“There was a collision between hoppers. I wasn’t here when it happened, I was working the water mines. But Cassy says she saw it. She said she saw…” then he suddenly seemed more wary, more careful, “I don’t know what she thinks she saw. I think she was safe in her stall when it happened. I’ll have to tell you more later, when we meet.”
She tried to tell him that she will come up to help, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “No one is coming up here. If anything it makes me want to get our people and leave right away.” He seemed to consider it a little more, then he added “It is really chaotic here right now, they don’t need more people to house and feed while they are cleaning up. Besides, the Butterbough operation is more important, you’d be more useful to us there than here. And safer.”
Over the next few days she got occasional messages updating her of how they were setting up in the new habitat, and how the operation to fix the crashed ground wheel was going. But no direct calls. They were too busy, she thought. And tried to keep herself busy, too.
The new bioreactors were slowly getting filled with soil, and two rows of buildings were coming up next to them, one with storage units and one with refineries and a half-built factory. They were already bringing in water and desalinating them, but it was not yet clear what to do with the salt and water she was separating. Some of it will go to food production, but the rest was unclear. Maybe she should start splitting water into hydrogen. That will probably sell, although she had to check if there were more efficient ways to make it.
After a week she finally managed to get Diggs on the call, but he had little to tell her, besides that they were back working the mines and disassembling the buildings near Siderotil, which still lay broken on the rocks, and that she should expect some more building supplies to arrive over the next few days. She thought about asking to talk to her sister, but refrained. She was probably busy. Much more busy than herself, here.
Ten silent days later, while she was sending the last modules to the factory site, she got a data drop from Major Diggs, with details of some metallic asteroid she had never heard of. A few minutes later she got back to her stall and saw she had a call waiting.
“I had the strangest meeting today,” he said, thoughtfully. “But really it would be a lot better if we talk about things when I arrive. I asked the others to finish up and start the ride down South as soon as they can. I’ll be going on a hopper right now, as soon as I locate one that I’ve not used recently.” He looked like he wasn’t sure if he should say more. What has he gotten himself into? He suddenly remembered his message from before. “Take the time to study the rock I sent you,” he said. “And we can have a talk about setting up operations on Castlerock when I arrive.”
“What do you mean, setting up operations? I just finished setting up here!” She was glad he was coming down, finally, and that the others were joining soon, too. But she mostly wanted someone to tell her what the hell is going on.
He had a crooked smile, “I’m not sure, yet. But we may have gotten an option to rocket out of here. And we need to figure this out soon.” That part about going soon had him more worried than pleased, it seemed. Ever since the crash she had gotten a feeling from Diggs that things have gotten more urgent.
“Alright. Safe travels. We’ll talk more when you arrive.” She signed off. Indeed, there would be so much to discuss when he finally arrived.
