Day 5: A Turning Point


The night is always darkest just before the dawn. That's one of those turns of phrase that's floated around for who knows how long. Let me tell you something right now, dear reader. That statement is a complete load of plasma wash.

First of all, anyone who's pulled an all-nighter in their lives should be keenly aware that the actual darkest part of the night is midnight, exactly halfway between dust and dawn. "Just before the dawn," which we'll assume is one hour before sunrise, you should already have seen the stars fade out of plain sight by the sun, even below the horizon.

But there's also the issue of the quote itself. First of all, the quote is incorrect. The actual quote reads; Thus, as it is always darkest just before the day dawneth, so God useth to visit His servants with greatest afflictions when he intendeth their speedy advancement. Most language art teachers hate the flowery old-time English, and even more hate associations with the Christian Bible, so the quote is usually shortened to; It is always darkest just before the day dawneth. And despite the attempt to remove the Christian reference, the quote is often attributed to the St James Bible – though no one ever seems to know exactly which part of the St James Bible – so it becomes (wrongly) Anglicized as; The night is always darkest just before the dawn.

For the record, the originator of this oft-maligned quote is one Thomas Fuller, an English churchman who is widely considered to be the first writer to earn a living – a fairly comfortable living, even by the standard of the time, by his words alone. The quote in question comes from his book A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, Book II, ch. XI, which could be argued is the first example of investigative journalism. Thomas' book was a collection of maps and guides of the Holy Land, the area of Earth we now call Isreal.

At this point, most of my readers are probably asking something along the lines of, "Krin, why the hell are you boring me with a history lesson about some dusty old book that no one could give a single toss about?"

It's really important to me, my dear reader, that you understand how a simple geography book can change into a malformed quote that everyone dismisses as highfalutin bullshit because no one cared enough to preserve the original meaning. I absolutely, in the strongest possible terms, do not want this to happen with my final story about my last day on Torian IV.

Things had finally started to calm down by the fifth day. Nia had been told that the Klingons had backed off for the time being, so the Venture and her relief force would be here by the end of tomorrow. Despite everything, the twenty thousand survivors we had been looking after were getting fed, clothed and watered. CPO Kaaran and his guys were managing to keep the lights on. Julian and his team and finally gotten everyone out of surgery, and Sargent Talla and the Squirrels were keeping everything safe and secure.

I had just started to breathe easy when Kitty buzzed me into a meeting with Nia, Julian and Talla.

"Guys," the anime girl sighed, "We've got a problem. The Volcano is gonna blow up again."

Kitty used her holographic wizardry to bring up a very detailed display of the inside of Aylos and explained our new problem. "I've been sending recon drones once a day to keep an eye on this thing. The gasses that caused the first eruption are still bubbling away in the magma chamber. If they keep agitating, they're gonna blow up again, probably even worse than the first time."

What that means to the average reader, is that the catastrophic Supervolcano could erupt once more, at any time and without any warning, and this time, it would destroy the entire colony, if not the entire planet.

Nia was our leader, and she took charge of the problem without a second thought. "What can we do to stop this, Kitty?"

"I'm not really sure. Starfleet SOP says I should try to remove the gasses by beaming them out or displacing them with my tractor beam. But I can't do either of those things yet because the ash in the stratosphere is still ruining my sensors. The only other option would be sealing the magma chamber. I could do it on a good day with phasers, but again, I can't get a target lock from up here, and that could be risky. If I'm even 1% off, I could hit the gasses and blow up Aylos anyway."

"Is there another way to seal the chamber? All we need to do is cut off its source of oxygen, que?" Julian asked.

"Hmm," Kitty replied, putting her hand on her holographic chin, "I guess you could do it with a large enough rock, or by dropping rubble into the chamber. But odds are the magma would just melt the rock before it settles. You'd have to do it all at once, and the only way you can do that would be by blasting part of the mountain top off. And like I just said, I can't get a lock from up here with my phasers or torpedoes."

"You can't link an OSP (orbital strike package) to one of our targeting lases?" Sargent Palla asked.

"No, Sarge. I'd need a direct line of sight with your lase, and obviously I can't do that through an ash cloud."

Palla shrugged. "Alright, this seems easy enough then. How many det-packs would it take to blow the top of a mountain off?"

Kitty in turned shrugged. "Well, I guess you Squirrels probably have enough det-packs with you to get it done. But you can't just blow the mountain top straight off. You're gonna have to set a really specific shaped charge. And you're going to have to set it about halfway down the magma tube. And that's really hot. My recon drone says its about 800 Celsius there. I'm pretty sure that melts humans."

It was Julian's turn to shrug now. "Shouldn't be a problem Pequeño gato azul, one of the colonists found Volcano gear that protects us squishy humans up to about 1500. That said, I wouldn't wanna spend too long down there even with gear on. You're talking about dehydration, exhaustion, hypothermia. In and out in ten minutes, no more hombre."

"And how are you gonna climb down a mountain that's nearly forty thousand feet tall inside of ten minutes?" I asked.

Palla shrugged, yet again. "The Raptor has a 10 000 foot rescue cable. And If I remember right, the cable is rated for 2000. Just hook it on to my back, lower me down, and I'll set those charges."

Nia stood up instead of shrugging. "And I don't suppose any of your shuttle pilots are qualified for class Y atmospheric entry, are they Sarge?"

"That's a negative, Boss Piggie."

"Lucky for you, I am. Get yourself geared up, I want to be in the air in twenty minutes."

"I'm coming too!" I said suddenly, in an uncharacteristic moment of bravery, "This will be the best part of my story."

No one said another word after that, until we were in the air anyway.


•~:~•


I don't know if words can fully explain how hot it is to be 5 000 feet above the magma chamber of an active Supervolcano, but I'll try. Think about the absolute hottest, most scorching day you've ever been in. Where you might have been sweating buckets and cursing the sun, thinking your very flesh was going to melt right off your bones. Close your eyes, and think hard. Got it? That's pretty hot, right?

That's like walking into an ice cooler compared to what I was feeling when Nia settled the Raptor into place. Even in our bulky volcano gear, and with the Raptor's life support system on full-tilt A/C

"You wanna make sure you hold this damn thing steady, Boss Piggie? It's hard enough I gotta set these charges all on my own, but I don't wanna cut a hole in my suit here cause your sweaty little piggie hands jerked the attitude control over too far!" Palla cursed over the comm as he lowered himself down via a cable that's maybe an inch thick.

Nia, who kept her focus on her flight controls the whole time, dared to curse back. "Listen, I promised that you could take me for a drink after this, but if you want a snowball's hopes in hell of convincing me to slip off my boxers, keep your mouth shut and get a move on, Sarge!"

"Aye Ma'am! Sharkies lead the way!"

It took five minutes for Sargent Palla to lower himself down to the spot that Kitty had indicated to set the charges. It took him barely thirty seconds to set six det-packs. "Okay, I'm all clear. Pull me up!"

Standing next to the controls by the open hatch, I looked down into the chamber and tried to see if I could see Palla. All I could see was the red maw of liquid magma, which might just be what hell itself looks like. I hit the switch, and the winch started pulling my little Squirrel friend back up, but it stopped after just a few seconds and wouldn't budge again.

"What the f*k are you doing up there Pigeon?! It's starting to get a little warm down here!"

While Palla was shouting at me, I looked up to see what happened. The actual cable might be able to survive temperatures like that, but the winch obviously couldn't. The gears had melted into a pile of slag. And before I could even start to think of telling Nia about it, the entire winch assembly melted right off the side of the Raptor.

Fighter Pilots often report a strange thing that happens during combat that they call time compression. Basically, when faced with an emergency, the mind slows down your individual perception of time. What actually takes only 30 seconds to happen feels like an eternity in your mind. And for that eternity of thirty seconds, you can think and do things you wouldn't be able to do normally. And it took the entire eternity of thirty seconds, but I reached out with my right hand and snagged that cable.

Instantly, I was jerked off my feet and on my back, and not in the good way like I dreamed about having Julian on the lounge chair next to the pool at the Intercontinental. I was seconds away from falling out of the Raptor and 5 000 feet into the red maw of hell's own nightmare. Nia set the shuttle on auto pilot, jumped out of her seat, held the rescue strap on the back of my gear and shouted out three simple words that saved my life. "Spread your legs!"

I did, and my feet braced me against the side of the Raptor on either side of the open hatch. I wasn't going to fall, but I was also the only thing keeping Pella from falling. I do a light jog every other day, but I wont pretend that I'm a combat experienced Marine either, dear reader. It was my five-foot-two, one hundred and six pound frame keeping the 6'4, 240lbs of Sargent Pella alive, and I had to pull him up 5 000 thousand feet by hand. It took ten minutes, and just when I thought I was finally going to lose my grip, Pella hauled himself inside and slammed the hatch shut. "Go!"

Nia didn't need any encouragement. She slammed the throttle to full power and flew us back towards the shopping mall. About half a second later, Pella hit the switch on his detonator, and I swore that I can still hear the ringing in my ears even a week later. But it was Kitty's voice that cleared out that ringing noise.

"You did it guys! Good job! My recon drone says the magma chamber is sealed up tight! I can already see the ash volume in the stratosphere dropping. You all get free head-pats when you come back to my ship, kay?"

Pella ripped off the bulky mask of his gear, sweating profusely and could only manage a brief chuckle. I drenched his face with some water, and he finally regained the ability to speak. "Who pulled me up?"

"She did," Nia said, pointing at me.

"No shit?" Pella asked with a raised eyebrow. All I could do was nod, too exhausted for words at this point.

Pella got up and gave me a head-pat in Kitty's place. "You know what? You're alright Pigeon. You come by the Officer's Club at Camp Nath sometime. Me and the boys will buy ya a drink."

Reader, I've won a Pulitzer, a Jack Webster and a Nick Clarke in the same year. That's a very impressive list of accolades in any profession. But none of those awards even come close to the feeling of appreciation I felt from those three simple words I heard, while I was lying on the deck of a Raptor, drenched in sweat and reeking of volcanic ash.

You're alright Pigeon.


•~:~•