In low Earth orbit, Solar System
Renée d’Argenteuil, the NOSTROMO’s weapons officer and customary night watch bridge commander, watched intently on the bridge sphere’s holographic display surface the approach of a surface-to-orbit cargo transporter loaded with more materiel and supplies for the planet Asiana and its new ASEAN colony. While the first batch of 26,000 colonists were now established on Asiana and were continuing the construction and planting work there, many more colonists, along with millions of tons of extra materiel and equipment, still needed to be transported from Earth to Asiana, some 536
light years away in the XO-1 System. The ASEAN community on Earth was pinning a lot of hope on the colonization of Asiana, which promised to relieve the population pressure and problems of dwindling resources suffered for over 300 years by the countries which
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were members of the ASEAN, which comprised a good quarter of the Earth’s population.
It thus was investing heavily in that project, in which the assistance of the NOSTROMO
held a crucial role. The XO-1 System and its second planet, XO-1c, now named Asiana, had in fact been mapped for the first time by one of the heavy fighters of the NOSTROMO and had been subsequently registered by the Spacers League’s Space Registrar Office as officially being the property of the New Haven Corporation. Tina Forster, in alliance with the Ceres Consortium and the Vesta Corporation, had then offered to lease the XO-1 System to the ASEAN, so that it could build a colony on its second planet, with the intent of eventually outright sell it once the ASEAN would be firmly established on Asiana and would have become a new member of the Spacers League. However, not everybody on Earth or in the Spacers League had been happy on learning about that project. On Earth, jealousy and cries of ‘preferential treatment’
had come from nations and groups of nations, notably the European Union, which had hoped to have been offered the XO-1 System in place of the ASEAN. However, the hostility and inertia shown in the past by those countries had made Tina reject their pleas outright. In the Spacers League, the Pallas Mining Industries, always ready to expand its assets, had made fruitless attempts at gaining ownership of the XO-1 System or to at the least gain the mining rights there, but had been firmly rebuffed by the High Council. In some five years, if all went well, there was going to be over 24 million citizens of the ASEAN living on Asiana and exploiting vast surfaces of hydroponic gardens, along with the mineral deposits on its moon and in the system’s asteroid belt.
Another five years more and Asiana should be able to declare itself as self-sufficient from Earth. This project thus would fulfill one of the goals cherished by Tina Forster and other visionaries in the Spacers League: to expand Humanity into a prosperous and peaceful Space community across this quadrant of the Milky Way Galaxy.
The cargo transporter was now only a few minutes from docking with the NOSTROMO when Anwar Duharto, one of the sensors and communications specialists of the NOSTROMO, stiffened in his station’s chair as he listened to an incoming transmission. He then pivoted his chair around to face Renée, who was sitting in the command chair normally occupied by Tina Forster.
‘’Renée, we are now getting a general call for help from the EUROPA Orbital Terminal: they have fire onboard and can’t control it. They are calling for the assistance
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of anyone able to quickly intervene in order to evacuate the people presently on the terminal.’
‘’Damn! Internal fire is about the worst thing that could happen aboard a spaceship or a Space station. Try to get more details about the situation on EUROPA, notably the number of people to be evacuated and where they have assembled in the station. In the meantime, I will put our emergency services on full alert and will inform Tina of this.’
‘’Understood, Renée.’
As Duharto spoke on the radio with the EUROPA station, Renée called via the ship’s intercom system the ship’s medical center, located some 85 meters below the bridge sphere, where she got a quick answer from the center’s emergency dispatcher.
‘’Medical Center’s dispatch, Nurse Romanova speaking!’
‘’This is d’Argenteuil, on the bridge: the EUROPA Space terminal has declared an emergency due to an internal fire and is asking for all the help it can get. Go to full alert and mobilize at once all your rescue and medical personnel. I will provide you with more details about that situation once I will get extra information from EUROPA.’
Renée’s second call was to Tina Forster’s suite, waking up a still sleeping Tina, who answered in a groggy voice.
‘’Tina speaking! What’s up?’
‘’The EUROPA Orbital Terminal is suffering an uncontrolled internal fire and has asked for help. I already alerted our medical center and ordered it to fully mobilize its personnel. I am still waiting for further details from EUROPA on their situation. I was planning next to alert our shuttle pilots, so that we could quickly be ready to launch them towards EUROPA.’
‘’Do that!’ said Tina, who was now fully awake. ‘’Have all our available rescue and paramedic teams board our shuttles and launch them as they become ready to fly out. I will be up on the bridge in less than five minutes.’
‘’Understood, Tina.’ said Renée, who then switched one of her communications channels to the frequency of the orbital distress network, in order to hear who else was responding to the call for help from the EUROPA terminal. That station was easily one of the oldest orbital installations still turning around Earth and she had heard plenty of stories about its ageing systems and poor maintenance record. In truth, the European Union, which owned the terminal and was exploiting it for all its worth, was said to have been quite sparing in its maintenance of the orbital terminal and, if under the authority of
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the Spacers League instead of under that of the European Union, would probably have been closed for multiple security violations or forced to effect repairs and improvements in order to stay open. Renée shook her head at those thoughts: Space was no place to be stingy about security or maintenance.
03:17 (Universal Time)
Emergency Medical Response Teams Duty Center
Medical Center of the NOSTROMO, Level 575
Having run to her individual equipment locker, Greta Norstrom hurried to put on as quickly as she could her customized light spacesuit, proving in the process to be much faster than her human colleagues. Only Tom Hanks, an android who had taken like her the specialty of combat paramedic, was proving as fast as she was. Hanks was however a much more experience android than her, having participated in four battles against the Space Predators, including the rescue of the battered remains of the Spacers League battle squadron, which had fallen into a Space Predator trap some five years ago and had only been saved in extremis by the quick response of the NOSTROMO. Both Greta and Tom, now fully suited up and carrying their medical supply bags, then went on a common accord to the adjacent vast storage room where emergency medical equipment and supplies were stored. There, they grabbed one of the hundreds of sealed anti-gravity rescue capsules stored in their special racks, activating it before sliding it out of its storage rack. That capsule, able to contain one person while still compact enough to go through opened hatches and doors, could be pressurized and sealed, to be able to carry a patient across the vacuum of Space. It also was equipped with a full panoply of life support and monitoring equipment and was fireproofed. With its anti-gravity field activated, it floated by itself above the deck, making it dead easy to move it around. With Tom leading and holding the handle at one extremity of the capsule and with Greta holding the aft handle, the pair ran with their capsule to the nearest lift in the central rotunda of the Core Section and entered its cabin, where Tom punched the number for the small craft hangar complex. When they arrived at the level of the hangar complex and ran with their capsule out into the terminal’s craft circulation deck, they found one shuttle already out of its individual hangar and parked near the core rotunda.
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‘’Nice!’ said Tom Hanks at the sight of the waiting shuttle. ‘’That’s what I call a quick response indeed. Let’s go in at once.’
Following him and still holding her end of the rescue capsule, Greta ran with him to the opened aft access ramp of the shuttle, a wedge-shaped craft some twenty meters in length by twelve meters in width and nine meters in height. Once inside, they secured their capsule in the cargo bay before going forward to the cockpit of the craft, where they found the pilot and copilot sitting at their piloting stations. Maria Sharapova and William Windsor, both androids and the pilot and copilot of the shuttle, looked up and back at them when they entered the cockpit section, with Sharapova then speaking to them.
‘’We just got an update about the situation on the EUROPA station: things are really bad there and we will need to hurry to go help them. As soon as we will have a few more paramedics onboard we will fly out to the EUROPA station. You brought a rescue capsule with you?’
‘’Yes, we did!’ replied Tom Hanks. ‘’I saw Weatherly and Weiss close behind us, also with a capsule. They should be here very soon.’
‘’Good! How many paramedics were present at the response team duty center?’
‘’Only seven, three of them Humans. You may know that we don’t exactly have a ton of paramedics and nurses as part of the ship’s medical staff. It will take some precious minutes before we could muster more personnel for this emergency.’
‘’Then, we will fly out as soon as the other pair of paramedics and their capsule are onboard: I see another shuttle now coming out of its hangar: it will be able to carry the next paramedic teams to show up.’
Just as Sharapova said that, Magdalena Weiss, an android combat paramedic with the looks of a young and pretty Semitic woman, appeared in the door of the cockpit.
‘’Me and Michael Weatherly are now inside with our capsule.’
‘’Excellent! We can now fly out to the EUROPA station.’
‘’Wait!’ suddenly said Greta Norstrom, having thought about something. ‘’Let’s take with us a couple of the firefighting robots stationed nearby on this terminal’s deck.’
Both Hanks and Sharapova smiled at her suggestion, obviously liking it: the firefighting robots of the NOSTROMO, specially designed to combat fires aboard spaceships, could fly around in either Space or inside a ship or station, were nearly impervious to fire and were armed with highly effective cryogenic nitrogen gas extinguishers.
‘’A great idea! Go get the two nearest firefighting robots and bring them inside our shuttle.’
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Before Greta could take one step, she was stopped by a datalink transmission from
‘GUARDIAN’, one of the sub-AI computers of SPIRIT which was tasked with the control of the internal security systems of the NOSTROMO.
‘’No need for that, Legionnaire Norstrom: two firefighting robots are already heading towards your shuttle and should roll aboard in about nine seconds.’
‘’Very well, GUARDIAN.’ replied Sharapova, using her own datalink system, before speaking to the three paramedics standing in the cockpit. ‘’Alright, go take your seats and buckle up, people.’
Greta. Tom and Magdalena then ran back in the cargo bay, where they sat next to Michael Wetherley, who was also an android paramedic, and buckled up their safety harnesses. As they were doing that, two compact robots painted in bright orange and red flew inside by the aft access ramp, which then closed up behind them. Seconds later, the shuttle started moving, entering one of the two craft inner airlocks of the complex. Once cycled through the airlock, the shuttle started flying down the 620-meter-long tunnel leading to open Space, which had a cross-section of 200 meters by 180
meters, to finally emerge outside of the ship through a set of opened armored sliding doors. As soon as her shuttle was in outer Space, Maria glanced at her positional Space chart display and veered hard right towards the position of the EUROPA Orbital Terminal, then switched on the intercom linking her to her passengers in the cargo bay.
‘’We are now out and on our way to EUROPA. We should be there in approximately eleven minutes.’
She next spoke to her copilot, William Windsor.
‘’William, contact the control center of the EUROPA Orbital Terminal, tell them we are coming and ask them where we will be needed the most.’
‘’On it!... EUROPA Control, this is Rescue Team Alpha, from the NOSTROMO.
We should be at your location in eleven minutes. We need to know where you will need us most for us to disembark our paramedics and load up your people in need of rescue, over.’
To William’s dismay, he had to repeat his message four times before getting a response.
‘’Rescue Team Alpha, this is EUROPA Control. Most of our people are presently boarding our lifeboats but we have a number of people trapped by fire on the lower decks of our southwest quadrant. The nearest docking station to that area is our Number Four Docking Station. We will now have its signal beacons flash intermittent red in order to help you find it.’
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‘’Thank you, EUROPA Control. Could you have someone familiar with your station’s layout wait for us at that docking station, so that he or she could guide us around once inside, over?’
The response William then got was both a delayed one and, when given, was done with clear embarrassment in the tone of voice of his interlocutor, who was a woman.
‘’I’m afraid that we don’t have anyone available there, Rescue Team Alpha: I am alone in the control center, over.’
‘’Alone? Where are the other controllers?’
‘’They already left in a small shuttle a few minutes ago, over.’
Despite both being androids, William and Maria reflexively looked at each other for a short moment, taking in that damning piece of news. William then came back on the radio.
‘’Understood, EUROPA Control. We will manage by ourselves. Just advise your survivors trapped in your southwest sector to get as close as possible to your Docking Station Four.’
‘’Will do!’
With that radio conversation now over, William used their long-range optical camera to locate the big space station in the black of Space.
‘’I see the station, Maria. We are still too far to see the beacon lights of its Number Four Docking Station but I will advise you as soon as I see them.’
‘’Deal!’ simply said Maria while pushing ahead at best speed.
Some four minutes later, William spoke again.
‘’I can now see the blinking beacon lights of Number Four Docking Station. I can also see the glow of extensive internal fires through the observation bays aboard EUROPA. This is not good. The oxygen aboard is going to be all consumed quickly by those flames. Then, when the oxygen will have all burned away, we will see the flames die out.’
‘’...Along with the people inside.’ added Maria. ‘’We will have to act quickly in order to save these people. To the paramedics in the cargo bay: we can see extensive fires inside the station. You better seal your spacesuits before entering it.’
‘’We acknowledge that.’ was the answer from Tom Hanks. Maria then started her approach to the station, keeping her speed as high as possible without risking a collision. Three minutes later, her shuttle came to a stop against the docking station
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marked by blinking red lights. A large flexible adaptor clamp then extended itself, gluing itself around the side airlock of the shuttle with the help of magnets. A force field completed the air integrity of the link, with compressed air then filling that space while a telescopic bridge deployed itself from the station. The four paramedics on the shuttle, led by Tom Hanks, rushed in with their two rescue capsules and two firefighting robots as soon as the side door of their shuttle opened up. Inside, they found a relatively small compartment with an airtight door that gave access to the station proper. When Tom opened that door, he was nearly trampled by a panicked crowd of about seventy people wanting to run inside the shuttle. Only his strength as an android made him able to withstand the push from that crowd.
‘’STOP PUSHING AND CALM DOWN, PEOPLE! BE ORDERLY AND YOU
WILL BE ABLE TO EVACUATE SAFELY. I SAID CALM DOWN!’
He finally had to push back quite brutally a fat man in his fifties who was doing the most pushing, making him fall hard on his bum.
‘’I SAID CALM DOWN! Michael, Magdalena, give your capsule to Greta and stay here to organize this evacuation. Me and Greta will push further inside with our capsules.’
‘’Got it!’
With Greta taking hold of their second rescue capsule and with the two firefighting robots following closely behind, Tom headed towards a bank of elevators visible in the back of the room he was in. Thankfully, there was a large electronic display board next to these elevators, with a color deck display of the various areas of the station and the ubiquitous
‘you are here’ arrow indicating where he was presently. Tom looked at it for a few seconds, recording its details inside his electronic database before calling the station’s control center via the intercom system next to the display board.
‘’Control room, this is Rescue Team Alpha. We are now inside of your station and the people present near the docking station are now boarding our shuttle. Do you have wounded people or other people in danger in other parts of your station?’
‘’There are a group of some twenty people, some wounded, three decks above you, in an observation lounge. They are however trapped there by fire and can’t use the lifts or the emergency staircases to come to you.’
‘’We will see if we can get through to them, miss. What about your own situation?’
There was a moment of hesitation before the poor woman answered him.
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‘’I am trapped by fire inside the control room. If I open the doors of the lifts or of the staircases to leave, I will then let in the flames and the smoke.’
‘’I will go get her with one firefighting robot, Tom. Take the other robot with you and go get those people upstairs.’ said at once Greta. ‘’That woman deserves to live.’
‘’Agreed! Good luck on your side, Greta. I will get Michael and Magdalena to follow me as soon as the people in the boarding lounge will all be aboard our shuttle.
Take a few seconds to record the information on this display board, then go.’
Greta did as Tom had told her and was soon running along a long passageway leading to the center of the station, dragging behind her the floating rescue capsule and followed by her firefighting robot. The situation suddenly went from bad to worse when all the lights suddenly went out, while the artificial gravity around the station failed, probably thanks to the station’s main power generators shutting down because of the fires. Thankfully, an android like her could easily move and navigate in such conditions with the help of her built-in gravity drive system and the infrared sensors linked to her eyes. She also lit the frontal lamp of her spacesuit helmet for good measure and flew on, floating with her rescue capsule a meter above the deck of the passageway. Getting after a couple minutes to a point below the station’s control room, Greta then entered a stairwell that would lead her up to the control room, ignoring a nearby bank of lifts and thus obeying a very old but still most relevant safety rule: in case of fire, don’t use the elevators! However, as soon as she was inside that stairwell, she was enveloped with thick black smoke which was filling the whole stairwell. Her spacesuit sensors immediately analyzed that smoke and found it to be from burning hydrocarbons...and very toxic. That smoke was also quite hot. An unprotected Human would collapse and die within seconds if it would inhale that smoke. Thankfully, even without her spacesuit, Greta could function within such smoke, with the only consequence being her artificial skin being blackened by soot particles. With her spacesuit on, she risked little, thus started flying upwards inside the stairwell, her capsule and robot still behind her. Six levels up, she stopped at the level of the station’s control room, which was marked by an indication panel on the door at that level. Before opening it, she however spoke on her radio to the woman inside the control room.
‘’Control room, I am now at your level, inside the emergency stairwell connected to your room. The stairwell is however filled with toxic smoke but I have a rescue
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capsule with me and a firefighting robot. Do you have a spacesuit or oxygen mask with you, over?’
‘’Negative! The adjacent locker room where my spacesuit is stored is presently filled with smoke and thus inaccessible to me. What should we do now?’
‘’What we will do is that, at my signal, you will take a deep breath and hold it in while crouching down. I will then open the door of the stairwell and rush to you, then will put you in my rescue capsule and seal you in. Finally, I will bring you to my shuttle while you are safely inside my capsule, which is fire resistant and airtight.’
‘’Thank God for your help, miss. I will be near the stations next to the north side external viewing bays.’
‘’I copy that. On my count, take a breath and hold it in, miss.
Three...two...one...breathe!’
As soon as she said that, Greta threw the door of the stairwell open and rushed inside, immediately turning towards the northern side of the station while dragging her capsule.
Thick black smoke immediately started filling the large control room but Greta had time to get to the woman sitting on the deck near the observation bays before the first plumes of smoke started to fill that part of the control room. Opening quickly her rescue capsule’s transparent top half, she then guided the woman inside it and made her lay down on her back, then closed and sealed it. By then, the visibility around the control room was next to zero, while the ambient temperature was rising quickly, it already being around 120 degrees Celsius. Dragging behind her her capsule and its precious occupant, Greta flew back towards the stairwell she had used to come up to the control room. She was about to enter the stairwell when the whole station shook, while Greta heard the rumble of a distant but powerful explosion. Ignoring that, she entered the stairwell and started to fly down with her capsule and her robot, to return to the deck level where she had entered the stairwell. Flying out of the stairwell and into the long passageway, Greta felt another, closer explosion, with what looked like a wall of fire traveling down the passageway towards her. Her instant reaction was to push her gravity drive unit to the maximum while sending an electronic order to her firefighting robot.
‘Unit 232, spray a wide cone of cryogenic nitrogen gas at that coming fireball: cool it down!’
‘Executing order!’ answered the robot, who stopped in mid-air and pivoted 180
degrees, then sprayed a wide cone of cryogenic nitrogen gas across the whole cross-
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section of the passageway. At first, that spray apparently had little effect but, as the robot sprayed in continuous mode, that wall of fire soon turned into a simple tempest of thick black smoke. Greta took full advantage of that and covered the whole 400-meter-long passageway in mere seconds, braking only at the last moment when close to the door giving access to the boarding lounge of Number Four Docking Station. She and her robot actually beat the incoming cloud of black smoke to the door and managed to get inside the lounge and to close the door before the smoke could enter through that door. Her next move was to bring her capsule inside the waiting shuttle, where she opened it and let the woman she had saved out of the rescue capsule.
‘’You are now safely aboard our shuttle and will soon be flown to my ship, the NOSTROMO. I will now have to go back in to go help my comrades save other people in danger.’
‘’Bless you, miss! What is your name, so that I can thank you properly later on?’
‘’Greta Norstrom, Legionnaire Greta Norstrom.’
The eyes of the woman then opened wide with surprise.
‘’You...you are an android?’
‘’Yes, I am, like my companions. I now have to go. Be safe, miss.’
Greta then left again the shuttle with her rescue capsule, joining up with her firefighting robot and heading up to rejoin her other three comrades. William Windsor, who was helping calm down and reassure the survivors now filling the cargo bay of the shuttle, then guided the woman to a seat that was still unoccupied and sat her in it.
‘’Have you suffered any wounds, miss? Do you need any treatment, or maybe water?’
‘’Some water will be nice, thank you, sir.’
As William went to get a bottle of water for her, the woman shrank in her seat, retroactively hit by the incredible stress she had just lived through, and started to sob: so many persons she knew had just died on the EUROPA station, including two of her best friends.
07:41 (Universal Time)