Gurminder

CU Control was being biggun a pain, again with these exit delays. It was like they knew he had a schedule to keeps.

“What’s holding things up?” Gurminder Kalsi, Indiclan bornhere wanted to know, leaning forwards to check the queue his rover had been stuck behind and then leaning back in his seat hard in frustration.

“Standard pass check, Kal Rover Four,” the gruff feminine voice crackled over the speakers. “Priority rated. You know the drill. No one likes the OT, least of all me.”

Of course he knew the drill. First it was the Corps, Then MarsGov. Then newlanders. And finally bornheres, last as always. But his stress increased every minute he had to stand there. His codes had cleared, but that didn’t mean CU was going to do a check, but it definitely felt like they’d singled his rig out.

A whole hour and three minutes passed before he was allowed to pull his rover out into the red. And thankfully no secondary inspection. He was able to roll out onto the sand and rock free and good and was on his way. Wish he’d been out when he’d been supposed to, though, what with the durst storm he now had to outrun.

The storm turned out to be lighter than broadcast though, affecting a slight tinkling sound on the cockpit glass of his rig as it rolled along the relatively newly flattened A3 bypass, but he still took the op to swear at it. Something else too, the rig felt different somehow than the way it had since he’d pulled it into the CU transport hub the night before. He’s taken account of the refuel and the cargo adding weight, but there was something else that had seemed out of order, a feeling that had grown as his 24-wheeler rolled east across Elysium Planitia an hour now out of Cerberus Underhill. It wasn’t his first trip to the Hole and he was taking a different route. Was it visuals he was following tracks of more vehicles than he’d expected. No, that wasn’t it. Just something that nagged at him. Had he missed any checks? Nope, the onboard confirmed, all was marked, if anything he over listed.

What then?

There was something cracked about the rig, had to be. In the rearviews, the sky was pinking above the craggy silhouette of the Cerberus Fosse. It would be day soon. He’d have to wait until light to do a full check. Worse came to worse, there was an emergency reststop half way to his destination, five hours away on the main road if there was real trouble.

It was still beyond the hills, the horizon even.

But, yeah, Gurminder did follow his hunches. Everyone did on this big dumb red rock. But that wasn’t going to happen until it was a lot closer to zero.

In the meantime, he repeatedly glanced over the meters on the cockpit dashboard for any anomalies the big articulated transport systems might reveal. He finally spotted what was off just after full sunrise. That was it!  He tapped the oxygen meter to make sure it wasn’t sticking.  Yes.

Three hours out of CU and it had moved well more than it should have, almost twice as much down from 99% to 92%. Not enough to be a problem, he’d still have more than 50% on reaching his destination if the line kept it’s drop, which it looked like it was doing, but a definite anomaly and trouble if for any reason it got worse. Ten-ton wheeled carriers like this rig had nominal sixteen hours of air in the main tanks, tripled effectively when the scrubbers were taken into account.

Still, according to the log, the drop had been steady from a couple hours before leaving Cerberus.

Could just be a faulty relay sending bad information? If so, he had to check it out. Inaccurate data on the meters could kill you just as easily as a hole in the windshield.

“Anything you don’t pay attention too will kill you,” his nanna always said. The prima mechanic of Indiclan, her mantra had been since forever. “We depend on machines, and but they will break down without a moment’s notice. So pay attention!”

Crack!

He still remembered the canings he’d received when she ever caught him not paying enough attention to her warnings, orders, still feared her scrutiny even when he grew to tower over her. She’d been a newlander from way back, and they were all strong as hulks, just like the colonizers now were as well.

Once the temp gauge pulled up enough for him to risk an EVA if he needed to, Gurminder took a breath and unlocked his belts. Getting up, he wiped his hands on his ribbed shirt, unbent his tall lean body and began to check the cockpit linkages as the first step of potentially a long work test.

If there was a leak, or a problem with the scrubbers, what looked like steady drop would quickly and unpredictably get much worse. He didn’t like the idea of having to call for help out on the Planitia. MarsCorp was getting more suspicious these days, all things considered, and not everything he carried was legal according to the new ColCorp red book. Some of what he was carrying would land him on Phobos if MarSec even got a whiff. With a sigh, he leaned over the controls and pulled the big rig to a shuddering halt. He had to check it out what the problem was and if it made him even more late than he was, but Rusclan would be happier they got their haul than if it never showed.