Chapter 17

In the end, our girls’ night turned out to be not so different from the first scenario I had discarded, proving that 81% chances still left 19% for another possibility to be true.

Nhi made us sit in our underclothes, so it probably counted as sitting in pajamas. She claimed that her overalls looked too much like work, and prevented her from relaxing and enjoying our time. We spent countless hours playing different games until she revealed her big surprise, which she argued would help us feel like we were on holiday. I didn’t have any need for holidays, and I doubted Eva felt any different, but in the end, we agreed to “camp” in the biosphere.

Sven was definitely right when he said that sometimes it was just easier to agree with what she wanted, but in the end, it was she who regretted her decision. Soon after we lay down in our makeshift bed, she got up, claiming that the ground was too hard and there was no way for her to fall asleep there. She left, leaving me to wonder why she hadn’t considered that scenario before she suggested it to us.

Eva felt tense, and I don’t think she appreciated the idea of “camping” and would have preferred to sleep in her bed instead. The night cycle had already started, and the biosphere had started to cool down, so I pressed my back against hers to keep her warm.

“What are you doing?”, she asked quietly, and I could feel her stiffening.

“Keeping you warm”, I said softly.

She lay still for a few moments and then softened and turned to me.

“Rea….”

I turned as well, but before she had a chance to finish, the alarms rang through the station. She leapt up, and I grabbed her hand.

“It's the solar flare warning, we have time to prepare.”

She looked at me, her eyes wide and full of adrenaline.

“We are safe”, I said, gently squeezing her hand, and she calmed.

We ran to the command centre, meeting Sven and Nhi at the door, and rushed in. Only then did I notice that I still held Eva’s hand, and I let go and looked at the screens.

We had 4 hours to prepare, Amin told us. For the first time since we came to the station, he acted as a commander, giving us tasks and checklists that needed to be followed in order to secure the station and ensure that none of the vital systems would be damaged by the flare.

His calm confidence eased the tension, and he put his hand on Raul’s shoulder.

“You know what to do, right?”

Raul nodded.

“Sven, you know the drill, so go through the auxiliary checklists if you have time.”

He turned to Nhi.

“There are some emergency rations in the shelter. You really like Rea’s drinks, so you will enjoy them.”

She chuckled, and he looked at Eva.

“Don’t forget to secure your precious coffee. Rea, cross-check all the checklists. Everyone knows what to do?”

We nodded and he gave us a mock salute.

“All crew to the battle stations.”

We went our separate ways, carrying out our tasks. A class M solar flare required us to use some extraordinary checklists to ensure the safety of the equipment, but we had more than enough time to do it.

I connected my systems to the main computer to monitor the execution of the protocol and started working on securing the reactor and auxiliary power cells. I didn’t have any capacity left to think about Eva or try to figure out what she had wanted to say earlier.

We had 38 minutes left when I finished my tasks and went back to the command centre to report it to Amin. He nodded with a smile.

“Well done, Rea”

We waited for the rest of the crew to finish their tasks, and with 21 minutes left, everyone was back.

“Shall we go? Shall we go?”, Nhi said excitedly. It seemed that her initial fear had turned into thrills of doing something different than her normal routine.

Sven smiled and shook his head.

“We will be stuck there for hours, you remember? Knowing you, you will get bored the moment we lock the door.”

She poked him in the rib.

“I am not that bad.”

“You are”, Sven chuckled.

With 10 minutes left, we walked to the shelter, and I wondered what data source Sven had used to predict Nhi’s behaviour. He was accurate in 88% of the cases, and that could not be explained by pure chance. Living with someone in a small space definitely gave you enough input to create a behavioural model of the person, but even before the anomalies had appeared, I could only predict 67% of Eva’s behaviour.