Chapter 27: Robotics Lab

Perseverance City, October 31, 2141
Robotics Lab

“Ok, nice and easy,” said Ray as the interruptions had ceased and they were able to get their ABC Combat equipped robot to restart. When the pictures from Noxie showing Captain Reisman’s attack on Hilde started pouring into Ray’s office, causing political hell to break loose, they shut down the robots until Ray was able to get the 43rd fighter squadron back on the “yellow list.” Mars has a three tier access system. Red means you can come and go on the Red Planet as much as you want. Green means you’re banned from the Red Planet, go back to Earth, and Yellow means you’re allowed but not trusted.

When the political forest fires burned themselves out, it was time to dig into Kōngchéng. However, when they tried to initialize their ABC Combat robot, they found it was stalled. It was receiving and acknowledging commands, it just wasn’t executing them. Getting the stalled robot to restart was a pain in the ass and they had to air-drop a maintenance bot to trouble shoot the ABC Combat robot. Once the frozen circuit was identified and restarted, the ABC Combat robot was able to enter the station. It was followed by one of the original explorers and the maintenance bot.

Since Kōngchéng was nearly the same design as the Bradbury Canal, it wasn’t hard to gain access. A station maintenance bot, the type you see crawling over every orbital station fixing and maintaining the stations, crawled up on Kōngchéng and went to work on the door seal. The main door opened and Alan and Christa muttered, “what the hell?” the inner door was open, the airlock wasn’t locking anything in or out, there was no atmosphere in Kōngchéng.

“Jeezuz,” groaned Christa. “We’re not getting any of these drones back, are we.” Blowing open the doors on a colony or a space station is the last act of a dying population fighting back at something. Since there was no recorded attack on Kōngchéng by people (it was under 24/7 observation for decades) it was a something that attacked them. If someone even suspects there is a plague, all bots have to be abandoned in place. A Plague can rip through a closed community like a space station or a Martian colony and destroy the entire population in weeks, so Ray’s bots probably won’t be coming back for fear of bringing the plague back with it.

Their small army of robots moved through the colony, but the only thing they saw was empty corridors. There was no sign of humans around. A thick layer of ultra fine Martian dust covered everything and the maintenance bot had to constantly pressurize a tank with thin Martian air and blow the other robot’s optical lenses clear of dust. A wag once said that Mars’ atmosphere was 95% carbon dioxide and 96% dust.

Many of the hallway doors were closed and it would be a major effort to open them without power, so they were now touring the corridors of Kōngchéng, looking for an open door. The first one they found was a mop closet, so they resumed the tour. Eventually, they came to an intersection where two main corridors met. “Turn left here,” said Christa.

“Why?”

“Because on Bradbury Canal an intersection like that would lead to the hub, and the hub is a place where people meet.” Ray looked at her oddly and Christa continued, “Bradbury Canal and Kōngchéng are the same design, they are both Global Dynamics type A2 “Wagon Wheel” space stations that were assembled on the ground. Many Martian colonies started as a space station kit. The difference is that Bradbury Canal expanded into the area between the spokes.”