On a particularly cold and rather bitter morning, between a set mountain peaks that littered the horizon like the lower jaw of some incomprehensibly vast beast, and the equally large web of temporary habitation units from which he had came, a single man strode towards his destination. The morning star had risen just enough to provide a burnt orange distraction in an otherwise grey sky that hung over the world as a blanket. The man needn't take the walk, he needn't brave the cold or the threat of rain, but for some reason, be it to shake of the restlessness of his night or otherwise adapt his routine for the sake of it, on this morning he walked.
It gave him sight of something he hadn't seen from this perspective before. Lying deep within the valley that was still green on its fringes, the mine complex owned by UMI sprawled outwards for miles in every direction, like a violent stab of darker colours from a painter's pallet onto a formerly fair canvass. As he approached, the complex hummed gently, a soft calling to foil its physically intimidating appearance. Eventually, the man reached the building he knew to be his destination. He checked his watch, and being satisfied, pushed open a door to begin his shift.
"Fabien, good morning. There's something wrong with the deep drill over in Delta - coming up as an electronics malfunction."
There was a trace of concern in the voice that greeted Fabien, but it was diluted with the type of apathy that came with expectation. After his long walk, he looked at his colleague with a sense of mild annoyance. Fabien was the morning supervisor. He had expected it to be a quiet shift so he could catch up on his book; the idea of a manual fix on a deep drill first thing in the morning didn't fill his heart with joy. His colleague, John De Rus, had worked for UMI nearly all his life, and his fine grey hair and well worn smile lines indicated that this meant a substantial period of time. Delta line had the oldest drill on the project and it was showing signs of wear - that it had malfunctioned wasn't expected, but nor was it thought of as unusual.
"Can you fix it from here?" came the exasperated reply. Fabien was a younger man, but not young. He was forty-one, divorced, and somehow still regarded well enough to hold down a supervisor's job. His thin black hair sat on a shapeless face; he was a large man, although not fat. He waited patiently for John to check the readings on his screen before the older man could answer.
"Negative, it's a source issue. Maybe wires got fried up. Want me to go take a look?"
It was tempting and for a second Fabien considered it. John could take care of it, he had no doubt, but if management came on a routine tour and found he had sent a man two decades older down into Delta pit to perform a manual electronics fix... well, they wouldn't be all that impressed.
"No it's fine. I'll go. Just so happens to be the week the tech engineer calls in sick."
"Thought you young ones didn't get sick nowadays?" John had a hint of mockery in his voice. The implication was clear - this new generation were growing soft.
"So did I..." Fabien mused. It was curious the engineer had got sick so suddenly - he was fresh out of central training with its mandatory medical check. Still, it wasn't unheard of, and there was something in what John had said - this new generation were growing soft.
"I'll be back in ten or so - probably just be a blown fuse or something. These older models still use them!"
Fabien left the control room, grudgingly placing the book he had brought with him on the soft, brown leather chair. He exited the room through a set of automatic double doors, each dull grey panel shunting aside as he walked through. Once in the cross-base capsule he simply keyed in the delta pit code and felt the immediate jar of the clamps releasing. The capsule softened then, as if it was floating on foam - the fact that it was now speeding across the complex at up to 362mph seemed absurd. Within moments he had arrived at his destination.
The drill itself was around a mile underground. Delta pit was thought to have been exhausted, but an order had come through the previous evening to begin drilling again. Fabien didn't question it - it hadn't been unheard of for new deposits to have been found in previously "exhausted" pits, although he had told John to postpone activity until the morning. By entering through the top of the drill, Fabien made his way down through the body of the vast machine until he reached the place where the central electronic systems were kept. The old drill hadn't been started in a long time, so he was confident it would just be a wear and tear issue. So when he discovered the truth he stood there, for perhaps one whole minute, checking his mind to see if some fundamental error hadn't been made on his own part.
"John, do you copy?" he spoke, the uncertainty creeping in.
"Go ahead, Fabein." John replied.
"John, there's nothing here. The drill. It's... got nothing. The electronics have been stripped away."
"Stripped away? Why would they ask us to drill with a machine that contains nothing to work it?"
"They wouldn't..." came Fabein's reply, even more uncertain now. "John, send over an extraction drone. We're going to pull delta up to take a closer look. Something isn't right here."
"Roger, sending the drone."
Fabein waited, still and unmoving. There was no point investigating until they had pulled the drill unit up; on the surface they could do more to ascertain what the issue was. The drone took six minutes to arrive, and half an hour to extract the vast two hundred tonne drill. Finally, Fabein heard the thud of the locking clamps at the pit entrance secure the drill like the claws of a magnificent creature.
"Fabein! Something's wrong. There's a power build-up in the drill. These readings aren't right though." John's voice was urgent but laced with confusion. How could the drill have power without its central electronics?
From inside the core of the gigantic machine, Fabein could hear something below his feet. It sounded like the rising of a great pit of untapped power - somehow unnatural and false to his ears. Slowly, he inched his way down as the sound continued to rise and build. He descended two levels until he came to the door where the drill mechanisms themselves were housed. As he opened it his face drained itself, not only of blood, but of hope; he became not white, but ashen grey in the presence of what he saw.
"John..."
"Yes?" came the reply.
"I know what's wrong..."
Tuesday 20th April, 2348: TCM forward operating base - Regillus VI's moon... 08.35 Zulu
"Sergeant, when are we expecting that convoy to arrive?" The voice of Commander Christopher Kobayashi was deep and of a precise, reassuring sense of routine. The forward operating base had been established to facilitate the transition of the mining colony and habitat centres of Regillus VI to TCM command. This was the cusp of Terran space, and a great deal of time and money had been poured into securing it from the pioneering mega-corporation that was currently in charge. Things had to go well, and Commander Kobayashi was adamant that they would.
"Not until tomorrow morning, Commander. I'll check the computer for the exact time."
"Thank you, Sergeant."
From where the command centre was, a perfect view of Regillus VI was visible through the large transparent windows that surrounded the circular building in a 360 degree radius. Although they were approximately 350,000km from the surface, there was a sense of responsibility that hung over these men and women of the TCM. One that was in this morning hour, on a day much like any other in its routine and sense of paradigmatic practicality, irrevocably shattered.
"COMMANDER!" The voice that gave rise to the demand of attention broke the sense of tranquil purpose that had settled in the room until that moment. Commander Kobayashi wasted no time; instead of shouting back, he instilled a sense of calm by quickly, but firmly walking towards the desk from where the voice had came.
"What is it, corporal?" came his reply as he finally reached his destination.
"Sensors detect an enormous explosion. It's the UMI base, Commander."
"What type of explosion?" Kobayashi replied, a slight quiver inflected in his speech. The data coming in showed that it was immense, whatever its nature.
"Some kind of plasma... but that doesn't stack up!" The corporal was young and letting his emotions take the better of him.
"Let's deal with what we know first, corporal." Commander Kobayashi craned his neck away from the sensor screen, scanning the room briefly before finding his target.
"Comms, send a priority message to Lieutenant O'Rourke - tell him to assemble a first response team to extract survivors, but not to undertake any unnecessary risks. I want him and his team back in one piece. Then patch me through to Admiral Ryan, priority level alpha."
Tuesday 20th April, 2348: Grand Terra Station - home of the TCM third fleet... 10.00 Zulu
It was the type of hobby a child would love; one filled with wonder at man-made marvels and the power the human race had born into the universe. From her window she watched them, straining her eyes to make out the markings. Over each vessel the sun cast a bright yellow finger, making the metallic grey hulls of these unnatural creatures sing with radiant energy and stand out against the dark recesses of space. There was the Diomedes - a swift, sleek cruiser, all soft elongated edges that betrayed a punch worth of its heroic namesake. To its left, some-way behind, was the larger, more bellicose looking Ajax; an unkempt cousin to the former craft. Sienna spotted only two others - the Teucer, a destroyer, and a much smaller corvette - the Leitus. Taken from the third fleet, this small battle group of four ships had been nominated to escort a convoy of cargo vessels to Regillus VI to assist in the establishment of the new military facility there. Given the developments of the last hour or so, Admiral Ryan, Commander in Chief 3rd Fleet (CiC3F), and Major General Gromyko, Commandant Terran Military Police (CTMP), reached an agreement to release the Leitus from escort service to provide immediate transportation of an investigation team to Regillus VI. The team she had been asked to lead.
"Tea, strong English breakfast. No sugar." The words unfolded themselves in a delicate, precise command to the machine. It was an utterance spoken many times to request her favourite drink, but she still found it odd to ask. It used to be, growing up, that her father would have the tea waiting for her, brewing nicely in the pot in the morning for when she woke up. It was a loving memory, and one which always provoked a question if machines would ever develop such a paternal intuition.
Sienna glanced down at the watch on her wrist - a plain, black, analogue watch, unremarkable in most respects. The same could not be said for the rest of her uniform. She wore her best, short of full dress uniform. The black tunic piped with red and gold made her fair skin illuminate in the bright, artificial light of her room. Her shoes shone like quartz mirrors, her trousers neatly pressed. Her blonde hair was done up in a delicate manner but without over-formality; her eyes were like blue ink set against brilliant white. There were thirty five minutes until the meeting, but she was required to be there ten minutes early, which gave her just enough time to go over her notes once more and drink her tea. As the warm mug gave its warmth to her hands, she turned again to the profiles of her team.
Admiral Ryan and Major General Gromyko had made the calls, brought in their people, all she had to do was head it up. Easy? Perhaps, if she had a week to prepare, but that wasn't on the cards. If she was honest, she wasn't used to having a team assigned to her; the years of hard work it had taken to attain the rank of Major typically gave her the prerogative of selecting her own team, but there had been no time for that. There was some unspoken secret in this tragedy that would not reveal itself; a presence, a spectre of malice that clung to the words on her pad like a subconscious memory does to the conscious workings of the mind: there, real but unknown, overlooked. It wasn't a rational knowledge, more of a hunch, those strangest of things. For someone with a powerfully deductive mind, hunches played no part in formal reasoning, but experience had taught her that the galaxy was a place where not everything gave up its secrets easily to the stoic charms of logic. She would mind her thoughts, keep them open as long as she could.
Sienna finished her tea within fifteen minutes and walked out of her room, casting a glance once more to the void outside her window, and under it, the great blue marble of her home world. She knew at that moment, it would be a while until they were reunited. She arrived at a meeting room on the uppermost floor of the station at exactly 10.25. She opened the door and upon seeing the two men she was seeking, stood to immediate attention with a firm salute. The view out towards earth was spectacular, but she dare not gaze too long whilst in the presence of senior officers.
"At ease, Major." It was Admiral Ryan who spoke first. He was a lean man, although it was hard to tell under his stunningly white naval uniform. He was about fifty to fifty-five, and although his short hair was still brown in colour, he looked his years. There was a faint warmth in his greeting smile. "Come, take a seat," he continued.
"The rest of the team will arrive in ten minutes." It was Major-General Gromyko who spoke this time. He was of similar build and age to Ryan, although his features were more distinctly eastern. He was clearly Russian, but of those furthest east where Asian features start to appear in their visage. His green eyes were less warm than Ryan's, despite Sienna knowing him far better. He was clearly attempting to keep the whole affair formal to provide it with the gravity it warranted. That was fine with her. "It's important we brought the right people together quickly, Major," Gromyko continued, "this meeting will be brief but thorough. It's essential you get to know your team well. This doesn't have the hallmarks of one that will be over quickly." And with that, Sienna felt her subconscious pang come alive once more - her hunch all but known to be true.