This is some raw text from the MSS 'Falling Through the Stars', and is an excerpt from a sequence where characters are filling in backstory for the MSS in a conversation about a lead character's (Corwen Blount) backgrounds. The finished product is a lot better fleshed out than this sample.
“My grandfather got us out after my Dad was killed in the battle of Winchester.”
“That was rough. Didn’t the Europeans slaughter all the English rebels who surrendered? Shot them with anesthetic darts and removed their brains to power those bloody cyborg things of theirs?”
“I was too young to know. Granddad never said. He got my brother and me out on a private flight to Denmark, took the overnight ferry to Oslo, and flew us out via Iceland. That was before the European invasion of Sweden of course. I was only nine at the time, so the details are pretty hazy. I mostly remember the cold.”
“What about your mom?”
“She was the reason Dad went to war, so Granddad said. She was an English monarchist. A dissident. She got arrested, sent to El Hierro, and that was that.”
“Yeah, we all know what went on there.”
“Well no one really did until Dick Windsor escaped.”
“Does anyone know how many people died out there?”
“Several million. That’s the gossip. I heard an intelligence team sent a remote stealth probe to El Hierro. Twenty separate compounds holding five thousand people, each serving a central lab facility. Ten week rotation.”
“Like a twentieth century concentration camp?”
“In spades. Better organised by an order of magnitude.”
“You want to hear the worst of it?”
“Go on.”
“All the remains were used for transplant and food cultures.”
“You mean…”
“When a body was done with, they broke it down into the protein soup used to grow spare transplant parts for the ruling elite. The remainder, rumour has it, was turned into high protein food supplements. Granddad said the Gaian food agency called it Go-Quorn and pretended it was part of a healthy vegetarian diet.”
“I feel sick.”
“Well do it in the lower corridor.”
“How could they? Europe is a civilized culture, all those churches and mosques. All that history.”
“I don’t know. They just did.”
“So why didn’t we just wipe them out? We still had a few nukes.”
“North America wasn’t very strong at the time. The politicians wanted to pretend that it wasn’t happening because no one could afford a war.”
“If we ever make it back to Earth, I’m going to write my Congressman.”
“You do that. We have to get back to Earth first. Hey, here come the search party. Anything to report?”
“No way to the surface. We’ve lost about sixty percent of the base, but the good news is that all the agri-modules are okay, and we’ve got heating, power and water.”
“We’re just trapped.”
“We think we’ve got atmospheric containment, but there’s a slight leak showing up on instruments.”
“How slight?”
“Five litres an hour. We think.”
“We can live with that. For another nine months at least. What’s the state of mental health?”
“We lost half our personnel, so there are some issues with grief and shock. Two cases of genuine confinement disorder under sedation. A few frayed tempers. I think everyone’s got a little cabin fever after this long trapped underground. Tell you the truth, I think we got off lightly.”
“Lightly?”
“Could be a lot worse. The last view we had from the surface indicated that the attackers had been pretty well slaughtered. That was months ago.”
“So Earth either thinks we’re all dead, or the Europeans are.”
“Hope it’s the latter.”
“Hope there’s an Earth left to go back to.”
“How about communications?”
“Still off line. An ECM pulse fried the main comms net and we don’t have any spares.”
“Can we improvise something?”
“Spark transmitter, or we can rig a transmitter dish and booster amplifier for when we’ve dug our way to the surface again.”
“If we can.”
“How is the digging coming along?”
“Slowly. Half the caldera wall came down on the upper levels during the first assault. Millions of tons of rock. Most of our mining equipment is worn out and failing. It just wasn’t designed for this kind of use.”
Corwen was silent for a moment. “We need to think sideways here.”
“Such as?”
“You tell me the upper levels are blocked, and I’m guessing it will take us months to clear a safe path through the overburden.”
“And..?”
“Why don’t we go sideways?” Corwen suggested.
“Explain.”
“We still haven’t explored all the galleries still in Mars atmosphere. Why don’t we just expand the base sideways?”
“Because there are active vents full of toxic fumes. The kind that can even eat through an environment suit in a couple of hours.”
“Do we still have any suit gel? That blue stuff which acts as an emergency sealant in case of puncture?”
“Of course. Ten cases. No one uses it any more.”
“That’s acid resistant isn’t it?”
“Yes of course, it’s an inert compound gel. It can handle ph levels as low as minus point five. Just in case someone is sick inside their suit and vomits gastric acid on the helmet joints.”
“Cover the suits with it. That will extend the working time in any corrosive atmosphere.”
“Be damn slippery.”
“Better that than dead from decompression. We can keep on expanding the base until we find a vent leading surfacewards.”
“I’ll talk to the digging crews. We’ll go back to vent and passage mapping.”
“Bart, Colleen, Lafik. We can do this.”
“I hope so, Corwen. For all our sakes, I hope so.”
”Let’s just do it, and spare me your existential doubts.”
“It’s how we built Arsia Mons base, and I’m pretty sure we’ve got enough expandite foam and partitions. I recall arguing with the construction chief about storage just before the attack.” The ever cautious Lafik put slender brown fingers to his cheek.
“Joanna, how many effective personnel do we have?” Corwen’s head swung like a laser targeting system.
“Technicians and construction, forty. Administration, fifteen including me. Medical, eight, three Doctors and five nurses out of twelve. Food production, nine. Combat, six. Thirty eight Combat in the infirmary, six awaiting discharge. Oh and Professor Merriman and his five merry roving Areologists.” Joanna Lindstrom, a pale Nordic blonde answered crisply.
Corwen Blount drummed his fingers for a moment. “I want everyone put into two hour shifts. One construction technician to lead each shift. Teach two Comms technicians the fine art of pressure sealing and testing the new sections. Two shifts searching passageways at any given time, two putting in partitions and hatches at fifty metre intervals. That way we can give everyone sufficient rest and keep them focussed on getting out of here alive.”
Orders, make the judgement call and put it into action, no matter how scared you feel inside went his inner narrative.
“I’m good with that.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
“This means all of us. We lead from the front.” Corwen’s face split into a schoolboy grin.
Confidence, Corwen, confidence. Bullshit baffles brains and confounds insuperable odds.
Lafik raised a sceptical eyebrow. “What about the chain of command?” He asked archly.
“We have to be the strong links.” Corwen grinned back at him.
Lafik turned his face away and thought he loves this, he truly does. Corwen saw the flicker of doubt and decided to assign his lead technician a less mission critical role. Lafik might crack and run in a real emergency. Highly competent as he was in his speciality, that anxiety streak of his might sabotage a tricky situation. “Get Merriman in here if you can find him.” Corwen ordered. “I need his input on the local geology.”
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