The Girl In The Wreckage

The place was a mess. Steel girders floated past as I stood on the wreckage of the space station orbiting Mars.  I had to quickly duck for cover a few times to avoid being hit by one.

Mangled and mutilated body parts of the now dead occupants dispersed themselves amongst the debris as a contrast with the hard solid metal as evidence that someone live there, someone who cared about another person, or was cared by them.

And I had the unenviable task of making sense of this.

As the chief incident investigator, I had to provide a report on what had happened to destroy the space station. Given the extent of the destruction, piecing together the evidence wouldn’t be easy.

I had to start somewhere, so I headed across one arm still attached to the central hub. The journey was slow and treacherous, my steps careful as I released one magnetic boot at a time to move forward at a snail’s pace, constantly watchful for any detritus on a collision course with me.

After what seemed like an eternity. I made it to the hub without an injury, found an opening into it and entered the now almost dark interior. The light on my helmet illuminated my way as I headed for the systems backup centre deep in the hub and well protected by armour plating.

Fortunately, I knew the layout of the station from previous tours designed for such a retrieval of data, so I knew my way. I continued along the curving corridor of the level I had entered dodging more floating wreckage and items not secured prior to the destruction.

I needed to ascend, at least that’s what it would be if the station had gravity, three levels up from where I was. No elevators worked, so the stairwell was my only path to my goal. I only hoped that they were still intact enough for me to manoeuvre myself through the stairwell space.

It took little time for me to reach my destination level, but when I tried opening the door into the corridor, it was locked closed, a flashing emergency sign above the door advising atmosphere on the other side. I cursed. Of all the places still air tight with atmosphere the area where I needed to go just had to be one of them.

All stairwell access doors also acted as isolation barriers to seal off any levels if they depressurised, or, in this case, the stairwell lost pressure. That meant they were an airlock arrangement and I had the codes to activate the hatches to get through. Using the codes, I negotiated my way through it, floating through to the other side, now dark and eerie without the dim reflected Martian light I had in the wreckage outside.

My helmet light revealed more floating unsecured articles, but no bodies; something that didn’t surprise me. The space I now occupied was usually deserted, as no one had a reason to go there except for the routine maintenance required on an infrequent basis.

I pulled myself along the corridor until I found the systems backup centre and entered the room. It was intact and the equipment remained functional, evidenced by the green blinking lights. Good. I had a more than average chance of finding out what happened here. Pulling out my data analyser from the equipment bag I brought with me, I plugged it into the data transfer socket and started extracting records from the backup storage.

“Hello,” a girl’s voice said from behind me.

Shocked, my pulse speeding up to warp speed, I jerked around to see who it was.

A girl about ten years old stood five metres away. She shone a brilliant white and wore a dress extending halfway down her thighs with sleeves to her elbows, also shining brilliant white. Her hair was lush, wavy and platinum blonde. She stood relaxed and unconcerned as if she waited for her best friend.

“Who are you,” I asked.

To be continued… I know, ending on a cliffhanger sucks, but that’s show business.