Disclaimer: I don't own The Martian. I wish I was smart enough to come up with something like that!
What She Carried
Log Entry: Mission Day 687
This is it. Everything that we have been working for- and have been hoping for- since Sol 6 comes down to this. To today. Or more accurately, to a few tiny hours of today.
I don't think I've ever been more nervous in my entire life.
When I accepted the title as Commander for Ares III, I knew that there was bound to be at least something occurring during the mission that I would be unprepared for. I just also expected that, when the time came, I would somehow also to deal with it. And I never, ever, expected it to be something like this.
I thought the time had come on Sol 6, with the dust storm and Houston's order to evacuate early. Even though we were in peril- all of us- I felt strangely relieved when the order came. This is it, I can remember thinking. I was not prepared for this, I can, we can, deal with it. I was convinced that I'd be able to get Vogel, Beck, Martinez, Johanssen, Watney, and myself to the MAV and off of Mars before things got too bad.
Well, you obviously know how well that turned out.
Next, I thought it occurred once the remaining five of us made it back to Hermes. Of course, I was crushed by Mark's loss. Although logic told me that there was really nothing else I could have done (other than use telekinesis and prevent the satellite dish from crashing into him in the first place), I still felt, with undoubtable certainty, that it was my fault. I also knew that letting Watney die would be something that would follow me for the rest of my life.
Anyway, I was furious with myself for letting my teammate die, but I also thought that this would be the new thing I would have to deal with. I knew it would be much more difficult to deal with than… well, pretty much anything… especially since we still had the entire return trip to Earth wherein we still had to be ready for complications. Plus I knew that the rest of the crew was only slightly less devastated.
But then, because my world hadn't been shattered enough in the past few weeks, Mark Watney decided to screw everything over again by surviving Sol 6 with enough resources and intelligence to make a rescue plan possible. Possible, but not likely or easy.
So now I know- for sure this time- that the time has finally come. Recovering a crewmate from Mars, after we had left him for dead a year and a half ago, was one situation (perhaps one of the only situations), I had never, ever, imagined would occur. And there's bound to be at least one problem that presents itself before we get Watney back.
We're getting Watney back. We're actually getting him back. Despite all the time since Henderson's announcement, the Rich Purnell Maneuver, the Taiyang Shen, and our journey back to Mars, I still sometimes can't believe it.
Although, it's still almost equally likely for us to not get Mark back. There are so many things that could go wrong that I get a headache just trying to think of them all. The MAV could explode. Or it could have gotten damaged somehow by its time on Mars and not been able to launch. Or the modifications Watney had to do to it could kill him. Or, something could go wrong here on Hermes. We could miscalculate the intercept velocity or distance. Or something could go wrong when Beck retrieves Watney, like his tether snapping. Or he could be unable to grab him and the Hermes would pass by, dooming Mark to float around the planet in low orbit until he suffocates.
Okay Lewis. Get it together. Nothing good will come from worrying about problems you can't fix ahead of time. If one comes up, work through it while it's occurring. Vogel, Beck, Martinez, Johanssen, Watney, and I are smart. We wouldn't have been sent as astronauts to spend a month on a planet where we can't even breathe if we weren't. Together, we can solve whatever problems the MAV and Hermes throw at us. I hope.
I hope beyond anything that this works. If we fail, Mark dies. And I will have left him behind on Mars twice, but this time, no one would be able to help him.
T minus ninety minutes. Time to report to the bridge to prepare for intercept.
God, this better work.
Hi everyone! So I recently got super in to The Martian recently when I read the book and saw the movie- twice- in the span of a few weeks. Mark and Lewis' relationship has always been interesting for me, so I came up with this idea a few days ago and wrote it out when I probably should have been doing other things. I hope you like it! This is my first time writing for this fandom, so any reviews would be greatly appreciated!