History

DATE: Year 315-A. Sol 12

LOCATION: Pluto Underground Complex (Vault Sector)

Lijo stepped out of the broken lift onto the frosted deck plating. In the center of the chamber sat the Primary Core, a monolithic pillar of black, reinforced composite holding the final, desperate reserves of the station's electrical grid.

To the left was the vault, its massive basalt door standing open.

-Six beats, Kora said over the sound of the machinery, dropping to her knees beside a stack of heavy industrial storage crates and starting to drag the first one toward the open vault door.

Lijo unholstered his high-torque wrench, slapping the reset interface to make sure his jury-rigged bypass slate was still holding back the WIP's network locks. He leaned over the Core's primary housing, jamming the wrench into the first explosive mounting bolt.

The metal buckled under the pressure and the seal broke.

-You're going to give yourself a hernia for a bunch of dead slates, Lijo grunted as he threw his weight into the next bolt. The WIP is just going to overwrite the storage sector anyway. Why do you care if a machine cleans the drive?

Kora lifted a heavy stack of E-ink displays.

-Because these aren't corporate logs, Lijo, she said, stacking the physical slates inside the basalt recess. These represent the human lineage of the Underground Cities. Three hundred years of medical histories, diaries, engineering schematics, and birth records from before the chartered associations took over the outer solar system.

-No Data Purge out here, Lijo said to himself. The Data Purge of Year 103-A had wiped out a lot of memory banks in the inner solar system.

She paused, lifting a heavy box of hardened data-chits.

-Most children in the inner system are cloned now to meet factory quotas, did you know that? Kora asked. Not out here. We existed. If the WIP wipes these servers, they erase that evidence.

Lijo stopped, his wrench hovering over the third bolt. He looked over at her. How had she ended up like this? She couldn’t be the last one. No one else had tried to rescue these archives?

-Five beats, Lijo muttered, turning back to the pillar.

He slammed the wrench into the final bracket. The mechanical housing of the Core split open. He reached in, his insulated gloves wrapping around the freezing handles of the processing unit.

The station gave a long, low shudder beneath their feet as he began to pull the iron out.