The Planet of the Dead: Seeking a Status Quo

After the Martians’ apparent revelation of the state of their planet, things had moved both slowly and rapidly in the ensuing hours. Code Burroughs had become more apt for the situation than it was ever intended to be. Despite that, there was only so much they could provide at the time. Jameson organized what he could from the station, but the situation was both unprecedented and complex.

Linguists, biologists, cultural experts, government overseers, and such, had been quietly brought into the fold to aid in communication and conduct from afar. Microbiologists to immediately raise alarms on xenoviruses and bacteria, so afar was how things were going to be for the foreseeable future as they were effectively in quarantine. That meant little given they were on Mars and had planned on being there for a long while. The little it did mean was that they were relatively free to make their own decisions.

Which Sasha had been doing anyway.

The decisions they had main thus far was to make the front of the facility, where the life support systems were found, the ‘base’ of operations. It was easiest for the Humans to access. The Martians had returned to it, compliant despite the language barrier. The language barrier was what they sought to work through first.

They had been set up with technology to aid in creating a rudimentary translator between English and the Martian language. Klaus and Charlie, a member of the station with a surprising linguistics background, were hard at work with two of the Martians to create a corpus for them, written and verbal. The technology would sync to their tablets so they need not be anchored to the base to communicate with the new words they had translated. Tablets had been provided for the Martians as well to use in return.

Tam was setting up medical and other equipment that would allow them to stay there for longer. All were wearing full suits except for Sasha. If there was fear they could contract something, the same applied in reverse. Sasha continued to forego putting her helmet back on both on the basis that the damage had been done and that her suit was damaged anyway.

There were more pressing matters to be dealt with in any case.

Those matters she was attempting to coordinate with Are’shel on. The Humans had their resources, but what did the Martians require for life? They had established both oxygen and water as needs, and those were covered, but food was the current problem.

Are’shel descended into pits of silence at random points, only to be shaken out of it by the unknown words of his fellow Martians. Sasha could understand why. Survival, perhaps, seemed meaningless given they were probably the last. And absolutely daunting.

But they kept focus. Sasha could not help but feel awe and admiration at their composure. And, to a lesser sense, her own.

After establishing the need for them to find food for them, the Martians talked amongst themselves and Are’shel returned to Sasha and gestured to the way out of the room. He began to leave and Sasha followed.

Before leaving, she turned back and said: “We are looking for food for them.”

“Be careful!” Tam cried out.

“Will do,” Sasha replied and left the main room, Are’shel at the lead.

They were going down hallways she had not traversed. He muttered something and Sasha did not know how to respond. He stopped moving and she stopped with him.

He pulled out the tablet and started drawing out what looked like a map of the facility. Eventually, the meaning for his words became approximately clear—Are’shel was trying to explain where they were going and why. He believed there could be food somewhere. Or something akin to it, anyway.

Sasha nodded and then said via the tablet: “Yes.”

“Yes,” he echoed using the tablet as well. They kept on going.

They barely made it far in the dim tunnels before the corpus pinged with new translations. Sasha scanned over it. They had made a great deal of progress, more than she was expecting. It made sense—seemingly all of them were scientific, logical sorts and all able to grasp abstract associations. The grammar aspect was even beginning to form.

Sasha tried out the translation function, selecting what she wanted to say and letting it speak the Martian words in turn.

Are’shel had apparently the same idea as both their tablets began to speak at the same time, drowning out both the Martian and English words translated. Sasha laughed and Are’shel made some sort of snorting noise. Sasha gestured for him to go first.

Are’shel tensed up and then said: “Know. Means. Dead.”

The true intent of that question was clear.

Sasha replied back: “No.” She paused and elaborated: “Mars. No oxygen. No life on surface.”

“Understand.” He was scrolling through the corpus. He did not seem to be able to find the exact words, he settled for: “Uncertain. Food.”

Sasha wanted to say that they would figure it out, but they lacked the deftness of words for that sentiment. Instead she asked, more practically. “Duration. No food.”

Thankfully, they had general time terms translated so he could answer this.

“Two and a half days,” Are’shel replied.

There was nothing more that could be said about that.

Besides, it looked like they were approaching something meaningful—it turned into an unseen space, sloping downward. The air felt thicker the closer they went to the turn. Unease filled Sasha. When they arrived at the turn, the reason for this was apparent: part of the room had collapsed. Machinery of unknown purpose was bent at awkward angles and debris was strewn about. Not to mention, Martian earth was splattered about, some areas more covered than others.

If Tam were here, she would refuse them to go any further.

But she was not.

Are’shel seemed to swear at the sight before hastily rushing into the space. Sasha echoed Tam’s words to ears incapable of understanding the sentiment. All of his arms were working to unearth something, sand being kicked up due to their rapid movements. Unwilling to leave him to his task alone, Sasha strayed further into the room, looking around, trying to see what he was looking for.

It would have made more sense if he had provided her a drawing of what they needed, but Sasha could not blame his lack of foresight. Not at all.

She could, however, blame herself for what happened next.

Are’shel was aggressively pulling at something, and loud creaking rang out. Sasha’s gaze snapped to where the creaking rang out from. A piece of bowed metal attached to the cracked ceiling seemed to finally be giving up after who knows how long it had been set that way.

It all happened so quickly that Sasha barely had time to get out of the way—she focused her efforts on warning Are’shel to the best of her ability.

“Are’shel!” Sasha called out. He snapped out of his movements just before it mattered.

Metal sheared, gravity took its toll, and it all came crashing down atop Sasha.

Well, not all of it, just that piece, and not all of Sasha.

Just one of her legs. Are’shel was clear from it, which was all she cared about. Her suit was further compromised, she could tell that clearly. Not that it exactly mattered when she was pinned with a hunk of metal in a subterranean Martian base. Tam would kill her, though.

Are’shel was crying out words she did not understand and he approached her carefully. He was basically crawling, frantically looking at where she was crushed. Words were spoken between them, Sasha telling him to return back and him telling her who knows what.

The meaning was clear, though: Are’shel was dead set on trying to get her out alone.

Which seemed apt—they both seemed very similar, despite all the apparent differences. The differences that were apparent, the physical ones, showed themselves in force when his four arms tried to pull her out. She let out an anguished cry at the tugging force. Blood began to ooze from her leg and Are’shel stopped.

“Try raising it,” Sasha said without the aid of her tablet, voice strained, and motioned for him to try to lift the metal.

Are’shel rolled his shoulders and did just that, rising up from the ground. He managed to lift it just enough and Sasha pulled herself back from under it. Without prompting, he let go of the metal, heaving. It thudded against the ground and Are’shel stared down at her.

She tried to pick herself off the ground, maybe she could limp back-

Are’shel picked her up effortlessly.

She had some questions on Martian strength, but this answered a little bit. His hand was clamped down on her wound—that answered something about their biology too.

“Thank you,” Sasha whispered as he took her back to the base.

Nothing was said in reply until he said a single word followed by a string of words.

She could guess what that meant. She wondered how much of her guesses would turn out to be true, in the end. Hopefully soon emotional sentiments and more complex ideas would be translatable and all that had happened could be expanded upon.

Hopefully they were able to get to that point.

Two and a half days…two days basically now…

Options ran through her mind, distracting herself from Are’shel’s hold on her and the distance being crossed out.

Soon enough, they were back at the base and Tam was there, looking quite alarmed. The other two Martians, still working with Klaus and Charlie, snapped and Are’shel quickly said some words to them.

“What happened?” Tam asked. She was going to be furious with her, Sasha just knew it.

“Part of the facility is unstable and it fell on top of me,” Sasha explained—still from Are’shel’s arms.

Tam pointed to a space on the side of the base and Are’shel slowly placed Sasha down onto it. She sighed as she went to procure a med-kit and scanner.

“Your leg is broken and your suit is further damaged,” Tam said evenly. Are’shel moved to loom over Tam, to see the results of the scanner. “Tablet is fine, though.”

“Not surprising,” Sasha said. Tam showed her the results—an image of her broken bone. A not-so nice break. The injury was starting to get to her. “Can it be fixed?”

“Yes,” Tam said. “It will take time.”

Time. The Martians were running out of time.

“I don’t think they found food. Going to need some equipment to deal with that room to see if any is there,” Sasha reported as Tam pulled out some equipment to fix her folly. Klaus was looking over to them warily. Sasha continued: “If we can’t find any, then we need to work quickly to understand what they can eat and need nutritionally. They only have about two days without food.”

“Understood,” Tam said. “I need to sedate you.”

Sasha blinked at her then looked to Are’shel, who had an…interesting expression on his face.

“Have we translated unconsciousness?” Sasha asked.

“We will now!” Charlie exclaimed.

Tam, being Tam, did not wait another moment to inject her.

A thought struck her before oblivion would take her. “He touched my blood…figure out if that is a problem…”

Then she was out.

When Sasha woke an unknown amount of time later, Are’shel was seated beside her and Tam was running scans over her.

“Food was found and extracted with a rover. The blood issue seems to be a non-issue. Your leg will be perfectly fine,” Tam reported off, listing the answers to all the questions Sasha was going to ask.

“Thank you,” Sasha said hoarsely. Her mouth was dry.

Water was offered to her by Klaus and she took a sip. “It was just a few hours you were out. Jameson is irate.” He sighed audibly even through his suit filter.

“Of course,” Sasha said. That would be something she had to deal with later.

“You can try walking in a few minutes,” Tam said and walked away.

“Glad you are okay,” Klaus said, smiling.

He then went back to work, although it seemed the Martians were also staring at her rather than working with Charlie or Klaus. They stopped looking at her when she turned to Are’shel.

Are’shel was staring at her intently. No tablet on him, he said, with a funky accent: “Sasha—sorry.”

Sasha blinked at him and replied: “Sorry, Are’shel.”

He grabbed onto her hand with one of his.

Everything was fine for now, but they continued to ride the edge of everything falling apart. Mistakes could be deadly and mistakes were going to be made, with so much still not known. But they had survived this long, somehow. They would figure it out together. One moment at a time.