Fatal Discovery

Chapter 1

Section One

Orbiting Mars

0523 Hours

April 7th, 2167

Alyssa...

Alyssa was starring into blackness. She knew someone was calling her name, but she couldn’t bring herself out of the serene bliss that she called sleep.

Alyssa...

There it was again. The voice sounded familiar. She decided to force herself to get up.

I can do this, she though, I’ll count to three. One... Two... Three...

Alyssa sat up in her bed, if it could be called a bed. It was only a few centimeters thick... or, more accurately, a few centimeters thin.

“Alyssa Anderson!”

She smiled. The voice coming from the communications panel belonged to her long-time friend, Captain Avery Fletcher.

Actually he was more than a friend, as they had been engaged at one point in time. Their relationship was at best, complicated. They remained “friends” for the time being. Although Alyssa hoped they could one day resume their romantic relationship. They had broken off their engagement because of the demands of their respective jobs, but Alyssa was willing to work passed that.

She reached over and pressed a green button on the comm panel, “Sorry about that Fletch, I couldn’t sleep last night so I took some a sedative. I didn’t realize we were going to be arriving this soon.”

“I didn’t think we would be either, but it seems that weather men are just as bad at predicting weather on the surface of the Sun as they are at predicting weather on Earth.”

Fletcher was of course talking about a solar flare. As far as mankind had come technologically, it would seem that this would be no big deal, but a single solar flare, tens of millions of kilometers away would still knock out all communication in the system and reek havoc on navigational computers.

"The flare subsided sooner than they thought so the navi-computer compensated for lost time and got us here sooner than expected.

Alyssa smiled, “Well I suppose it is for the better. I’ll be up in ten minutes.”

“Right.” The comm panel beeped softly as the transmission terminated.

Alyssa stood and quickly dressed in her standard uniform (navy blue with a zipper in the back) brushed her teeth and washed her face, as was the norm for her.

She looked in the mirror as she pulled her shoulder length, fiery red hair back with a hairband. She thanked god everyday there were no regulations on hair length. She had had long hair since she was young and she didn’t want to part with it anytime soon.

She brushed a hair off of the small gray patch on her upper right arm that identified her as Director Alyssa Anderson, Science Division.

She looked around her room for what would almost be the last time. She would come back once more to gather her things before moving down to the surface. Her “spacious” living quarters were only fifty square meters, but this was considered larger than normal because most other people on the Excelsior only had twenty-five square meters. One of the perks of being Chief Scientist was an extra twenty-five square meters in living space, but Alyssa would gladly have traded the space for a simpler task on this mission.

The Division of Off Planet Mining had selected Alyssa from a list of twelve others qualified for this mission. Of course she had been honored, but that still didn’t make the job any easier.