Reaching Gateway

          The two hundred kilometer-per-hour winds brought stones to clang against the armored hide of the Core Module.

         Joanne barely noticed as she tapped at her screen, her eyes riveted on glowing lines of code that flickered like ephemeral fish. All around her, computer racks blinked and whirred, their arrays of status lights playing a rainbow of colors on Joanne's painfully plain features. She discovered and corrected the flaw in the code that shut off the habitat's exterior lights after ten minutes of operation.

         "Good!" called Marques from Engineering. "We're in business. Call Hawking. Tell then to send the lander. Good job, Joanne!"

         Joanne didn't reply. She began searching for the next problem.

         "Joanne?"

         Muffled footsteps thumped against spark-free decks and echoed from titanium bulkheads as Cienna tramped into Core, trailed by Marques and Kai.

         "Doing her thing again?" said Kai.

         He snapped his fingers next to Joanne's head, drawing a grunt of annoyance, but not slackening her pace.

         "Only Té knows what she's thinking," said Kai. "That's our stoic code jockey."

         "Leave her alone, Kai," said Cienna. "She's the only reason the Colonial Authority's garbage computers haven't self-destructed by now. Marques, ETA on the package?"

         Marques checked his watch.

         "Thirty minutes."

         "And we get our first shipment!" said Kai, rubbing his hands together. "We're gonna have a luau, complete with mai tais. Well, as close to a luau as I can get with synth-algae. You up for that, Joanne?"

         Joanne, excised a subroutine from a particularly troublesome class and began rewriting it.

         "Come on, even you can't say no to that!" said Kai.

         "Back to the grind," said Cienna. She patted Joanne's arm on her way out. Joanne jerked her arm away.

         "Don't forget to write, Joanne!" said Kai as the two men followed Cienna out.

         Joanne splayed a particularly troublesome code class across four screens. She stared, her eyes flicking back and forth as patterns emerged from the indifferent lines of text and explored possible permutations of instances. A rare emotion creased her brow as she frowned. Something was off, the pattern unbalanced. It would not do for the first expedition to Gateway to be scrubbed by a cascading software failure. She began tracing individual lines of code through instances. Savory smells of simulated pork and tangy smells of citrus crept into Core, making Joanne's mouth water, but she didn't stop.

         Kai's voice leapt from the intercom and pierced her focus.

         "Joanne! Dinner's ready! You coming?"

         The fingers paused, and her forehead creased again. Joanne hesitated until her stomach growled and decided for her. She saved her work and shuffled off toward the galley.

         An approximation of kalua pig rested on the center table of the galley. Marques was already slicing into it. Kai emerged from the kitchen carrying a pan of rolls in one hand and a bowl of poi in the other.

         "She unplugs for dinner!" said Kai.

         He placed the sides next to the "pork" and stepped back.

         "Anybody got any words?"

         Everyone glanced at Marques, who nodded. The four explorers joined hands and bowed heads.

         "Té be with us now," said Marques. "Fill our lungs with your breath and speak wisdom through our mouths. Fill our bellies with nourishment and give strength to our backs. Fill our heads with knowledge and move our hands to their tasks with purpose. Fill our hearts with your love and mercy, oh Té, and lead us to the banks of the River Koh, and live as one with you and your sisters. We thank you for all these things, and for what we have received. Jerah-dan-murisen."

         "Surenen murisen," answered the group, Joanne's lips moving silently.

         The prayer finished, the explorers began eating.

         "Do you believe in Té, Joanne?" said Kai.

         "Joann's beliefs are not your concern," said Cienna, as she tore a roll from the pan.

         "You don't always need to protect her," said Kai, eyeing Joanne as he chewed. "The closest thing to prayer I've seen her do is when she stares at that screen. The focus. Does a code jockey's gods live in those lines of code?"

         Joanne answered by gulping her pineapple juice and stuffing a slice of pork into her mouth.

         "Hey!" said Kai in irritation. "We've been here a month, and you haven't said five words to us!"

         "Leave her alone, Kai," said Cienna. "I told you-"

         "Yeah, yeah. Her business. But we're stuck here for two years, and she's acting like a piece of equipment or something."

         "You know she's sitting right here, don't you?" said Marques.

         Kai glowered.

         "I'm just saying what you're all thinking. She hasn't said a word, like we're not even here-"

         "If she doesn't want to talk, she doesn't have to!" said Cienna.

         Joanne wiped her mouth and suddenly stood up. She left the galley, headed for the Core.

         "What did I say?" she heard Kai mutter behind her.

         "Honestly, Kai, you can be such a douche," said Cienna. "Now you've pissed her off."

         "How can you tell?"

         Joanne shuffled back to Core. Outside the viewports, the landscape was rocky and forbidding reddish-gray rock, and the sky glowed a faint pink from Gateway's single red sun. The effect was like something from the cover of a sci-fi novel, but Joanne showed no interest.

         To the north, Mount Suno towered above the station, reaching into the pink sky, where clouds whipped by at surreal speeds. The scientists back on Earth had estimated that this mountain would protect the facility from the worst of the winds. Gateway One's crew weren't convinced.

         Joanne reached the Core and sat at her station. The screens sprang to life around her and her fingers flew across oceans of code once again.

         WHAM!

         The entire station rang like a bell. Joanne's fingers paused.

         "Damage report!" said Cienna's frantic voice over the intercom.

         WHAM! WHAM!

         Kai dashed in, wearing an armored environment suit, his oxygen mask dangling from the side of his face. He carried another mask in his left hand.

         "Joanne, we've got a situation!" he said, his dark eyes wide. "Put this on!"

         Joanne stared at the mask.

         WHAM!

         A hiss, then roar announced the breach, followed by wailing of klaxons. Joanne snatched the masked and put it on, taking a deep breath of the canned air. The roar of gale-force winds entering the station was deafening, and debris began to enter the core. Joanne saw her screens go dark.

         "Systems down!" she yelled.

         Kai yelled something she couldn't hear, and then dragged her out of the core. He fingered a switch on Joanne's mask.

         "Can you hear me?"

         Joanne nodded.

         "We're breached!" said Kai. "The wind's picked up and we're getting boulders thrown at us."

         "Any ideas where they're coming from?" said Cienna's voice over the circuit.

         "Mount Suno," said Marques's voice. "There are larger rocks coming off the flanks. The wind is carrying them to our location."

         "How? We've never seen the wind pick up anything larger than a fist!"

         "The wind is two hundred kph down here, but there's a gradient. It's nearly a thousand kph near the summit. That's enough to pick up metric tonnes of rock."

         "What about the Hawking's defense network?" said Kai.

         "That first big hit took out the communications array," said Marques. "The Hawking doesn't even know anything's wrong. I might be able to jury rig one the portable rigs, but it will take a while, and the Hawking is in geosynchronous orbit, pretty far off. We need to be precise."

         Joanne suddenly jerked free of Kai and dashed toward the Hub.

         "Joanne!"

         Kai hurried after her.

         "Where the hell are you going?" he huffed, trying to keep up in his armor.

         "The diagnostic panel," said Joanne.

         "On the roof? Are you nuts?"

         "I can use it to connect to the defense net."

         "I hear you," said Marques, "But you're going to get pulverized out there! The rocks are reaching meter-size!"

         "No choice," said Joanne.

         They suddenly arrived at the hub, and Joanne clambered up the ladder and opened the hatch. The wind tore at her head as she emerged and threatened to tear off her mask. Everywhere, the light was a sickly pink tinge. She pulled herself up and grabbed one of the many handholds that sprouted from the hull. Kai followed.

         Mount Suno loomed high above, a majestic and terrible god spitting stones down upon them. Rocks were striking the hull of the station all around her, making her acutely aware of her soft, unarmored skin.

         "We need to be quick!" said Kai. "Those are awfully big rocks coming down!"

         Joanne spotted the communications array. A half-meter boulder had crushed the conduit that led inside the hull, leaving the array cut off. It was only five meters away, but the winds made her journey perilous. She pulled herself hand-over-hand to the array. Unlatching the maintenance hatch resulted in the wind funneling inside and ripping the hatch off its hinges, sending it clanging away to oblivion. The maintenance panel winked at her, about the size of a pencil case.

         "That's it?" said Kai over her shoulder.

         Joanne tapped the tiny screen twice. She was rewarded with a command prompt. A stone struck the array just above her head, shattering and showering her with fragments. Kai pushed her into the tiny space and pressed himself against her.

         "I'm going to shield you," he said. "But you need to get this done fast!"

         Joanne got to work. There was no graphical interface on this screen, only torrents of code in their rawest format, but that was all Joanne needed. She searched until she found the array communications protocols and was able to initiate a handshake with the Hawking, invisibly high above. Behind her, she heard a thump, and Kai grunted and noisily exhaled. He slumped against her, a heavy weight still protecting her. Joanne's forehead creased, and her fingers flew even faster. She felt another thump and Kai's body shuddered. Something on the screen acknowledged her requests.

         Blinding white light pierced the gloom inside the array. It flared again and again, in rapid irregular pulses. Joanne no longer heard stones striking the station. She pushed Kai away, and he slumped to the hull.

         "I don't hear any more impacts," said Cienna's voice over the network. "You did it!"

         Joanne didn't answer. She gently turned Kai over and saw the massive dent in his armor, just to the right of his spine.

         "Kai needs medical attention," said Joanne.

         She dragged Kai toward the hatch as the Hawking continued firing at errant stones. Marques met her there and helped lower Kai to the deck. With the hatch sealed, Marques stripped off his own mask.

         "Breach is sealed," he said. "We have oxygen again."

         Joanne pulled off Kai's mask. His face was ashen and his eyes were closed. A thin trickle of blood issued from the corner of his mouth. Joanne's brow creased deeply.

         Cienna arrived carrying a doc pack. She opened it and waved the analyzer over Kai's still body.

         "He's alive," said Cienna. "Four crushed ribs and a punctured lung. Probably more internal injuries. We need to get him to sick bay."

         She applied an injector to Kai's exposed neck.

         Kai's eyes fluttered open.

         "Té, that hurts!" he said. "How bad is it?"

         "You'll live, you crazy jerks," said Cienna,"Both of you!"

         Kai managed a grin.

         "Saved your haole asses, didn't we?"

         Kai grunted and managed to sit up. He reached up for a hand, and Joanne pulled him to his feet.

         "Whoa!" said Marques. "You need to-"

         "Relax," said Kai. "I'm going to sick bay! But I'm gonna walk. You coming?"

         Leaning on Joanne he limped down the corridor toward sick bay.

         "So, does this means we're finally friends?" said Kai.

         Joanne's answer was a slight squeeze to his ribcage which drew a grunt of pain through a grin.

         "That's my little stoic code jockey."


Word count: 1979