Chapter Text
Sol 6
A major windstorm swept through Acidalia Planitia. Unfortunately, Houston majorly underestimated its sheer strength. Thus, schedules for a normal day with the instruction to get into the Hab when the storm hit were sent.
Johanssen and the others had barely started sipping their coffee when Lewis began to talk.
“Mission updates from Houston for today.” Lewis said. “Satellites show a storm coming, but we can do surface ops until it hits. Johanssen, Houston brought the MAV patch ahead to today. It should have downloaded automatically onto the MAV but apparently something went wrong and thus it needs to be completed manually. Watney, you’re with Johanssen. Martinez, you will be running communications and monitoring weather. Vogel, you’re coming with me to get samples. Beck, you’re working the spectrometer today, run sample batches two to four through it.”
“I’m sorry, what? The MAV is my only job. What exactly am I supposed to do then?” Martinez felt obliged to mention before Watney could comment.
“Don’t know why they did this, just know we have to deal with it. Also, Martinez, keep the comms clear of chatter this time.” Lewis said.
“That was more like Watney’s fault, but OK” said Martinez, “Am I authorized to cut the comms if he gets too talkative?”
“Given what happened yesterday, I’d like to say yes but it's against protocol when a storm is approaching to have the comms turned off or use separate channels” Lewis reminded him, “Next time”.
Johanssen realized she’d been half asleep when Lewis started the briefing. However, now didn’t seem like the time to mention it. She’d ask someone else later; probably Watney given that he would come with her to the MAV. Lewis normally never briefed the crew over breakfast for the reason that Johanssen always worried that she’d missed something before her first cup of coffee of the day, needing to ask someone else later to double-check, so something was different this sol.
<~~~>
Four astronauts looked eastward, their bulky but highly flexible EVA suits making them seem nearly identical, as they looked outwards searching the horizons for a storm.
“Am I missing something,” Watney pointed out “or where’s the storm?”
For a few minutes only the quiet hum of EVA suit life support could be heard. Then Vogel spotted it. “Think it’s that darker speck? Appears quite far. Houston must have miscalculated its wind speed, looks to be much less than they said” he said in his German accent.
“Maybe the winds died down. Strange though, the weather prediction models are rarely off that much” Johanssen said, being somewhat more accustomed to the deep learning weather prediction models that ran onboard the Hermes than the others despite having nearly no clue on how Martian weather patterns actually worked.
“Well, more time than we need then. Vogel, our EVA’s all about chem analysis, so you’re in charge of what we dig up”
“Ja,” Vogel said. “Please dig thirty centimeters and get soil samples near flag number three we put up yesterday. At least one hundred grams each. Very important to be a depth of thirty centimeters, more if there is a buildup of sand.”
“Will do”
In the meantime Johanssen and Watney boarded a rover, uninterested in walking the entire distance to the MAV. It was standard procedure to do so, given the fact that despite having fairly high flexibility, Ares EVA suits still were quite heavy even in Mars gravity.
Watney while waiting for the rover airlock to cycle: “Vogel, the soil samples you’re getting are actually dirt – ”
“Houston said soil. Tell that to Houston” Vogel interrupted, to Watney’s annoyance.
Once inside they popped off the helmets to use the rover’s life support and save on space suit resources despite the short drive. In the meantime, Johanssen took the opportunity to double check with Watney about the briefing despite (as normal) having most of it right thanks to neither Houston nor Commander Lewis really knowing why the MAV didn’t succeed in doing its software patch.
A short while later, they arrived at the MAV. They climbed inside, fully removing their EVA suits. Personally, Watney didn’t fully understand Houston’s reasoning behind asking him to come too but also didn’t particularly mind chilling in one of the MAV’s acceleration couches next to Johanssen while she checked the patch process. Every sol so far had been mostly constant work, relaxation being one of NASA’s last priorities given the cost of an Ares mission and the limited surface time.
“Don’t get the point of this EVA. They could’ve done this remotely,” She stated while absentmindedly looking out of a window, “Well except maybe they wanted to make sure it got sorted before that thing hits. Yeah, probably that’s why” as she stared at the storm, waiting for the MAV’s computers to wake up and load the correct programs for software updates, and subconsciously being irritated at how long it was taking.
“They just wanted you outside again. Get some fresh air, enjoy the nature” Watney said with an unreadable expression; Johanssen hadn’t been on any EVAs for the past two sols.
“Why is it getting so big?” she mused, having glanced through one of the windows to the storm, making Watney instantly forget any half-baked jokes he was thinking of. “Uh – MAV to HAB, Martinez, answer?”
The comms was silent for a few moments, then a scuffling sound was heard as Beck moved his headset microphone in the correct position.
“Beck here. Sorry, Martinez is in the toilet. What’s wrong?”
“Beck, can you check on the weather reports?”
“Oh-kay – gimme a moment. Storm is getting bigger but not really closing the distance yet. Starting to pick up wind from the weather stations, 60 kilometers per hour, gusting to 70.” A message received alert pinged in the MAV, interrupting Beck. A similar one echoed through the comms. “NASA just upgraded the storm estimate to severe in three hours, they say to make sure we’re back in the Hab before then.”
“Ok, heading back to the Hab soon, we’re nearly finished. Johanssen, how’s the patch going so far?” Lewis’ voice came over the comms.
“The primary navigation computer is giving me trouble. Don’t know what’s taking so long yet” Johanssen paused, reading off the MAV’s computer displays, the software once again reporting a failed update, “Something definitely is wrong with it. We could be here for a while.”
“Come back to the Hab when you can then. Even if the storm hits, you should be safe in the rover or the MAV”
“Roger. See you in a few minutes” she said over the comms, then disengaged the push-to-talk switch and glanced at Watney, “Most pointless EVA. Ever. Undoing Houston’s work”
“True. At least you got to do something” he said while Johanssen waited for the MAV computer to bring up its activity monitor.
“I didn’t miss anything on why I had to do this instead of anyone else this morning, did I?”
“As far as I know, no. Stop being paranoid, we all don’t know what went wrong with this thing. Want me to re-check today’s briefing?”
“Might as well”
<~~~>
Watney was contemplating the cost/benefits of writing reports out of sheer boredom. Johanssen had been wrestling with the MAV’s computer for half an hour. Even with Houston’s help (minimal) they still couldn’t stop it from acting sluggish and being overloaded. When Johanssen tried to reset the MAV computers to their original software, a background patch process unexpectedly failed halfway through and wreaked havoc on their OS system files. This was highly unusual, given the many interlocks, safety checks and redundancies to prevent any such thing from happening.
“It’s almost as if it’s been hacked” Johanssen mused, not realizing she talked out loud; or perhaps she forgot Watney (who had done a fairly admirable job of being quiet) was there, as she struggled to make sense of the suddenly corrupted files.
“By what? Martians? There’s only us here” Watney responded, making Johanssen jump.
“Fu – “ Johanssen began, “Watney, don’t try giving me heart attacks, not on Mars, not on Earth, ever again”
“Uh repeat that please Johanssen?” Martinez asked over the comms but unable to hide his amusement. He and Watney had always gotten a kick out of messing with the rest of the crew from time to time, even though the results (his clothes mysteriously and inexplicably getting frozen in the Hab a few sols earlier) sometimes made him wonder if they accidentally started a prank war.
“Watney is being an ass. Well, the MAV is doing it too, but still” she said, then muted the comms, ending the conversation. Martinez sighed and went back to his reports and weather monitoring task.
Eventually Johanssen and Houston managed to reset the MAV firmware. It got re-installed and re-configured correctly using a new procedure created by the MAV software engineers who had been called in to help, but it took the better part of an hour to make sure it was safe to use in the event of an abort. Thankfully, Watney could help with that by running the checks, then double- and triple-checks on the MAV using the backup computer to make sure it would react correctly to different scenarios. He still ended up deciding he wouldn’t be interested in ‘chilling’ on Mars ever again.
<~~~>
Multiple hours later
“Commander, we got a new weather update” said Johanssen, having resumed her role of watching the weather while the others got on with soil experiments, analyzing the dirt samples or writing reports.
“What is it?”
“Wind is getting stronger. Weather stations report sustained winds of 90 kilometers per hour, gusting to 120. The new wind speed trend started just a few minutes ago”
Everyone else paused to come check what Johanssen had on her laptop.
“What’s the abort wind speed?” asked Beck tensely.
“Technically 150. Anymore and the MAV might tip. And ours was already leaning slightly since the storm that happened before we landed” Martinez offered.
“OK. Everyone, get into flight suits in case we have to abort” Lewis ordered.
“Should we get into the rovers? Could get to the MAV faster that way” Watney said as he struggled into his flight suit. When Lewis looked doubtful he added “Those things are basically tanks. They’re not going anywhere”
“Rovers are basically dead, the Hab was put in low power mode when the storm hit so they never got a chance to recharge” Johanssen reminded him. “Plus, add the airlock cycling time, and it would be faster to just walk”
As the hab was powered by solar panels and wind storms could block light to them for multiple sols on end, it was standard procedure to put the Hab in low power mode during storms to conserve energy for critical life support.
The storm started to rage stronger. A particularly strong blast buffeted the Hab and forced the canvas inwards slightly against the internal air pressure.
“Just saying. And maybe we could use them to tie down the MAV, so it’s less likely to tip”
“How? If you tie it to anything except the descent stage, we won’t be able to launch” Martinez objected, “It would be safer to simply launch if the MAV shows signs of tipping”
Lewis looked over Johanssen’s EVA suited shoulder. “Johanssen, how much do we trust the wind predictions?”
“Not as much as before. They’re clearly off today for some reason”
Everyone changed into flight suits, watching the weather station data feeds as the wind fluctuated.
After a few more minutes and some particularly bad gusts, an alarm fired on the Hab’s primary computer, making everyone jump inside their suits. Johanssen silenced it, then read it out. “Primary comms antenna lost signal with Earth. It’s changing to the MAV backup comms now.”
Lewis made a decision. “Prep for abort. We’ll wait it out in the MAV.”
“Aye, commander” Martinez got up and put on his helmet.
<~~~>
While walking towards the MAV and fighting the winds, Johanssen felt slightly dis-oriented. After all, visibility was practically zero – she could barely see the ground underneath her despite her helmet lights on at full blast. For a second she turned around to find Watney to hold on to him to prevent getting lost. That was when the primary communications antenna broke off its titanium mount and smashed into them both.
Because the Martian atmosphere is so weak, sound doesn’t carry very well. Instead, the rest of the crew heard the warning for someone else’s spacesuit decompression alarm triggering, followed by two L.O.S. (loss of signal) annunciations for both Johanssen and Watney. In confusion, they turned around to see Watney and Johanssen both no longer there.
“Watney!?” Lewis exclaimed despite the L.O.S. indicators clearly stating that they couldn’t hear them. “Johanssen?” she yelled out into the void.
“What happened?” asked Vogel, as confused as everyone else.
“Best guess is that they got carried off by the wind somehow” Lewis said, despite knowing it sounded ridiculous. “Or hit by some debris. Beck, Vogel, follow me at a few meters distance. Keep an eye out, take small steps in case they are prone. Martinez, get the MAV ready”
Martinez and Beck both checked their suit computers and tried to say something at the same time. After a moment, Martinez let Beck talk first.
“Commander, just before L.O.S, the last packet sent by Johanssen’s bio-monitor was heart rate zero, blood pressure zero, body temperature thirty-seven.”, he paused, “Watney’s last transmission was before his decompression, it’s nominal. No transmission after that”
“Commander, the MAV’s going to tip if we wait much longer," warned Martinez the second Beck finished, “I can see it physically tilting by a few degrees. We’ll have to go soon”
“Temperature thirty-seven degrees?” Lewis asked, clawing at anything that would suggest they were still alive.
“It takes a while – it takes a while for it to cool” explained Beck, “if she’d be dead. And Watney had his decompression alarm go off.”
“Dr. Beck, how long can a person survive decompression?” Vogel asked a few minutes later as they trudged onwards through the storm.
“A minute at best. Assuming it wasn’t a bad decompression, which I doubt” Beck said, his voice chocking full of emotion as the realization that his friends were likely dead, “Something hitting him hard enough to just make him disappear – could’ve easily destroyed his suit”
Martinez managed to get himself into the MAV in record time, setting the airlock to emergency full speed cycling mode. As he went upstairs to power it on, he noticed a problem.
“Commander, the primary, backup and abort guidance computer are all giving me error codes – 1704, 1706, and 1901. I don’t know what it means, but it’s reporting ‘no-go’ for launch” Martinez said, “No idea what it is. I need help getting it online”
Conscious that their way of getting off Mars was now compromised and they needed to get it fixed before the MAV tipped, Lewis made the tough decision to order everyone else into the MAV while she continued to search.
“Martinez, what are the odds of successfully completing a fully manual launch?”
“Abort computer is giving me the ship’s attitude, but that’s about it. No velocity data. It would take a small miracle for me to get this into orbit in one piece” he responded, rapidly flipping through the manual in hopes of finding anything, “And a few of the screens are not turning on at all”
Vogel and Beck got into the MAV’s airlock and started to cycle it as quickly as possible, and then climbed into their respective acceleration couches. “I’ve never seen anything like this” Vogel said, “It’s like those full computer failures on the simulators Johanssen was trained for but here it’s just – dead”
A groan of tortured metal sounded throughout the MAV as the entire structure swayed around in the wind. One of the metal honeycomb shock absorbers had been crushed a bit further on one of the MAV’s landing legs, causing it to tip further.
Beck managed to finally re-boot the abort guidance computer. “It’s like it’s overloaded” he mused, “I’m going to manually de-activate all non-essential programs. We just want basic guidance, we’ll try to add back more later”. He wished Johanssen had been there – she’d probably have been able to do that in seconds.
Minutes later, the MAV was still swaying about, being buffeted by the extreme winds.
“Lewis, I know you don’t want to hear this” Beck began, forcing his voice out, “but they’re dead. We need to leave before we’re dead too”
“Copy that, coming to the MAV airlock now”
“What on earth is wrong with you, man?” Martinez stopped working on the computer to turn around and look at Beck.
“We might die too” he looked at Martinez, “They wouldn’t have wanted that” as his voice cracked.
Lewis climbed into the MAV and sat in her acceleration couch silently.
“Commander, I need verbal confirmation to – “
“Launch.”
“Okay… Beck, start reading out the manual launch procedure” Martinez said, as he realized that he didn’t trust the computers with anything.
“Detach launch clamps” said Beck, who had the procedure booklet already open. He and Martinez both reached to the switch, but then hesitated.
“Crap.” said Martinez decidedly after a few seconds.
“What’s wrong?” asked Vogel.
“I’m worried the 1st ascent stage would flip if we detach the clamps, but the manual launch system has a few interlocks preventing us from doing anything else unless we detach them,” answered Martinez after a pause, “… we’re probably screwed here, the MAV either tips or we tip the MAV”
Vogel had been shuffling through a procedure booklet for a while now, “There’s a bypass, just flip the manual launch engine start override switches”. That’s a mouthful, he thought, but it wasn’t the time to mention it.
“OK, then we just do the rest of the procedure…”
After doing the rest of the procedure, the crew were ready to launch the MAV. The computers were still acting up, but the primary guidance computer was finally giving the critical information for a launch and was no longer giving the error code after they turned off the comms, rover IR camera, proximity radar, weather monitoring systems, engine monitors, and anything else non-essential for the immediate launch.
“Vogel, I’ll start the engines, if everything looks good, pull the launch clamps switch” Martinez instructed, hoping everything would work despite being so far off procedure. There was no time to check anything though, as the MAV was so close to tipping. And then the one final massive gust of wind came.
“We’re tipping!” called out Beck as Martinez pulled the engine start switches and throttled them up, expecting a roar from the engines that never came. Around the same time, Vogel pulled the launch clamps switches by accident as the MAV got shoved around in the wind. As a result, it sheared off of the descent stage and smashed into the ground. The capsule rapidly de-pressurized; liquid oxygen and methane started to spill everywhere from cracked fuel tanks.
“One spark and we’re dead” Vogel commented, before he realised that they would probably die on Mars anyway.
“We were screwed or we were screwed. Now we’re screwed anyway I guess” responded Martinez, everyone else frozen.
“I guess we can confirm the engines never ignited” said Vogel, “Or we’d have made a new crater”
<~~~>
Two hours later the winds had dropped to some extent. The liquid methane and oxygen had mostly boiled off, being whipped away by the extreme winds which had gotten stronger with every gust for a solid hour before finally abating.
Inside the MAV, the astronauts had been sitting silently, thinking that every moment would be their end. However, as the vibrations echoing throughout the cracked fuel tanks began to subside, Commander Lewis snapped back into action.
“Think we can go outside now without risking everything blowing up on us?”
Vogel thought for a moment, “If it would have blown up, it would have blown up already but perhaps let’s not exit through the fuel tanks.”
Lewis did a 180 and began to try opening the docking port hatch. It took significantly more force than normal before it finally snapped open, and Lewis began to climb out. “I’m going to search for them some more. We’ll line up and try again”
“Lewis, they’re dead” Beck pointed out. Lewis didn’t respond
The others quickly followed suit. Visibility was gradually improving, so it didn’t take long until Beck spotted Johanssen. Privately, despite a desperate hope that they would somehow be alive, he truly expected both Watney and Johanssen to be dead.
Instead, Johanssen proved to be more alive than dead when Martinez’s attempt to lift her (“How on Mars do you go about picking up someone else in an EVA suit?”) ended with her slightly waking up enough to tell him “Let me sleep…”.
JOHANSSEN’S LOG:
Somehow, I’m not dead. I’ll be able to appreciate that, hopefully, some day.
Right now, I’m in the Hab, in my bunk, typing this because to be honest there simply isn’t much to do. Bossy Beck isn’t letting me do anything and has banned me from coffee for the foreseeable future. Life on Mars is going to be grim until that passes.
I kind of get why though. I tried to walk on my own legs for a moment to go to the bathroom and nearly threw up and passed out. I have a splitting headache and, as Beck put it to me very clearly, a concussion. My right arm isn’t looking too good right now. Once the painkillers wear off it will be murder.
So, back to the moment when everything went sideways: I got dis-oriented in the storm, turned to try get a hold of Watney, and everything after that is fuzzy. Beck’s opinion is the fact that I can remember stuff from right then is a very good sign, but who knows if that’s the truth or if he just wants me to quit worrying.
I got hit by the primary comms antenna; it hit the back of my suit. It launched me a fair distance over the Martian surface. Only for a couple dozen meters or so. Whatever debris had attacked me mostly glanced off of me and gave Watney the gift of the majority of its velocity. Unfortunately, a good chunk of wire from it tried to mangle my right arm. It also smashed my EVA camera in so there is no ‘over the shoulder’ perspective of what happened.
Right now we’re praying that it isn’t broken bones, which would be bad news seeing that our way out is gone, comms with Houston have been lost, and the only x-ray machine is in Martian orbit.
Beyond that, my next memory is Martinez trying to come up with a way to carry me to the Hab. A bit confused why they just didn’t drag me the entire way like protocol dictates. The rover batteries were dead so for him there was no easy way out. And apparently it’s freaking awkward. Beck wouldn’t let me try to walk at first, then eventually he gave up given the fact that my situation would be much better handled in the Hab.
I got really dizzy just trying to move in the EVA suit, but Martinez and Beck did an admirable job of not letting me fall after discussing the costs/benefits of getting one of the rover trailers to use as a stretcher. They can be pulled manually or towed by rover. Lewis and Vogel decided to keep searching in the hopes of finding Watney too.
As for comms and the LOS signal they got, it would appear that A: my biomonitor got broken by the impact with… whatever it was, and B: my suit antenna got completely ripped off. Honestly, the fact that it would transmit for even a few meters while I walked back to the Hab was surprising.
What I don’t get is how I wasn’t dead when they picked me up. Beck was behind me the entire way to the Hab. I didn’t really notice at the time, but at the Hab Martinez helped me remove my suit. Beck gave him a weird look when he took my PLSS (portable life support system – for non-space people that’s the backpack we wear) off. Martinez must have not got the memo because he unintentionally put it in a place where I could see it.
Yeah, I could have died many times. The thing’s guts were hanging out all over the place, its protective back panel ripped clean off. I suppose that’s why they didn’t drag me like they should have. By all rights I should be dead. But I’m not, Beck has given me some powerful (not really) painkillers for my arm.
Thinking about it, why don’t we have stretchers? Getting to the Hab would have been a lot easier if we did.
I’ll skip over the stuff he did to gauge my injuries and so in. I was kind of half-asleep and dizzy thanks to the painkillers. Not the best combination when stranded on Mars but you don’t get to pick and choose your injuries.
So far they haven’t found Watney yet, despite coming back in, changing into surface EVA suits, and charging back out to continue searching.
I think I got hit by something today. Can’t remember what. Can’t remember when. Everything hurts. Why won’t Beck let me have coffee? My arm is murdering me. What happened to it? Why am I writing this?
I’m normally more of a night owl / insomniac, and theoretically, something about being stuck on Mars should keep me awake, but right now I just want to Zzz. I’ll deal with finding ways to not die later. Maybe Beck slipped something in the meds he gave me before I started writing. That sounds wro-
LOG DRAFT SAVED.
<~~~>
“You’re not making sense,” said Beck, having watched Johanssen logging what had happened for the past ten minutes.
“I’m not?” Johanssen asked.
“Yeah. You’re repeating yourself in your logs. Why are you even doing them? You hate them,” he asked, concerned, “Where are you going?” as Johanssen tried to get up.
“Toilet - need to” Johanssen tried, then gave up and unsteadily sat back down in her bunk, “I hate logging?” she asked.
This can’t be good, thought Beck, getting ready for a long night.
Press Room, Johnson Space Centre, Houston, Texas.
“Good evening” Director of NASA, Teddy Sandars, said to the hall of reporters. It was not a ‘good’ evening. There was nothing good about it at all. And he certainly wasn’t looking forward to having to deal with a press conference on top of everything else.
Naturally, it was impossible to keep the information from leaking, as with NASA being a public domain organization, there were no secrets – officially. Thus within a mere couple of tens of minutes of the LOS, theories had run rampant all around the world ranging from deliberate sabotage and explosions to solar flares and even aliens.
“We will be making an important announcement shortly. Please take your seats” he said, waiting for the reporters’ murmurs to calm down, “There will be no questions at this time, but we will have a full press conference with a Q&A in about an hour”
He silently prayed that the extra hour would be enough to reveal the necessary answers to the hundreds of questions that would surely get thrown around immediately afterwards.
Silence finally gripped the room. Teddy Sanders took a deep breath and explained the events leading up to the MAV tipping. The reporters listened quietly hoping to glean new information but there was nothing new to be heard.
“However, after the end of the dust storm we have noticed activity that proves that at least two of the Ares 3 crew are alive. Against normal protocol, there are two EVA suits with lights turned on visible in this satellite picture, despite it being night at Acidalia Planitia. Unfortunately, as of this time it would appear that their MAV has crushed its comms systems when tipping as it fell onto the antennas,” he said, changing the picture behind him to a satellite picture of a metallic speck, far from the Hab, “Additionally, the Hab backup communication antenna appears to be around fifty kilometres away from the Hab, seemingly fully detached from its mounting system.”
With that, absolute pandemonium exploded in the room as Teddy Sanders took his leave.