Orphans of Apollo - S3 E1
Dawn Without Darkness
New to the series: start here
From the ashes of forgotten space dreams, a new era of exploration begins.
Subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss any future episodes.
September 2056
The voices Lana could hear through her door were muffled so she could not make out what they were saying, but from the tone they sounded excited. They had been on the ground in Antarctica for a week now. It hadn’t been the best start, with Brant getting injured and Pieter’s attempts to undermine Lana’s leadership, but over the last few days, things had settled down. They had reworked the schedule and could probably still achieve most of their objectives. Having a clear purpose and knowing what to do was a good thing for a group of people living in such a confined space. Nevertheless, Lana had sensed over the last few days a little cabin fever setting in and she was glad today the first expedition would head out.
Looking at her watch, Lana saw it was 04:58. They were not supposed to get underway until 08:00. They had spent yesterday loading and prepping the rover, so everything was ready to go. She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but her heart was racing. There was no way she could go back to sleep now. Pulling on some clothes, she opened her door. Zawadi and Brant were over in the kitchen preparing their breakfast and making a terrible job of trying to be quiet.
“You couldn’t sleep either?” quipped Brant as he turned around from the kitchen area.
“Evidently not,” Lana replied, rubbing her eyes.
“Sorry Lana,” said Zawadi sheepishly. “It’s just I think we are all so excited about heading out in the rover, none of us can sleep.”
“It is exciting, isn’t it,” said Lana. “I wish I was going with you.”
The door to Pieter’s room opened. “Morning team. I hope you guys aren’t going to leave me behind.”
Joanna and Aiden’s doors also opened and they emerged into the common area, eyes perfectly adjusted to the light.
“Well, I guess none of us could sleep then,” said Lana. “We may as well get into things.”
“It’s not like we have to wait for the sun to come up before we head off,” said Brant. They all laughed wryly.
With that, they all set about their morning ablutions. One shower and one toilet between six had its obvious challenges. Lana admitted to herself as she headed downstairs for her turn to use them. She would be glad to only have three crew members in the hab for a few days. More so, it would also be nice just to be with Aiden and Joanna. She thought she could sense something between Joanna and Brant. Although she hadn’t said as much, Joanna was certainly not fully on board with Brant going on the expedition.
Feeling suitably refreshed, Lana headed back upstairs to get some breakfast. Pieter saw Lana had returned from the bathroom and took the cue to take his turn. Aiden sat food in one hand, tablet in the other.
Lana leaned over his shoulder. “Everything good with the rover?”
“I’m just looking through that now, but it should be. I set a planned departure time of 08:00, so it should be working towards readying itself for then.”
The previous day Aiden and Pieter had connected Rover 1 to its auxiliary consumables trailer. They were now parked next to the primary airlock, still connected to the hab by an umbilical cable.
“All systems look like they check out. Rover and auxiliary batteries are up to operating temperature and now just trickle charging. The cabin heater has just come on, so it should be toasty and warm by the time they are ready to leave.”
When the rovers were not in use for a period, a heater maintained their batteries at about five degrees above freezing. It would then bring them up to an optimum operating temperature of around twenty degrees prior to use or charging. The batteries would then generally maintain that temperature during use or charging, but in the frigid conditions of Antarctica, they needed a heater to maintain a safe temperature when not in use.
“And the weather?” asked Lana.
“Climatic conditions are great. The Sun is a little active right now, so there is a chance of some solar flare activity.”
Joanna turned around from where she was making a drink. “Yes, I saw that. If it wasn’t summer, we would be getting some awesome aurora.”
“Nothing for us to worry about though?”
“Don’t think so Lana, at worst there could be some interference with high data rate satellite communications from the rover, but voice should be ok, and there shouldn’t be any effect on messaging and telemetry.”
“Great.” Lana went over to the bench where Joanna was emptying a sachet of porridge into a bowl. She selected a sachet of her own from the cupboard above the bench.
“We’ll be able to keep an eye on them just fine,” she whispered to Joanna.
Joanna blushed, and a little smile formed on her lips. “I just worry about Brant trying to do too much. He still only really has the use of one hand when he is wearing a suit.”
“I think we have all learned from what happened on the landing. Pieter and Brant seem to be working together well, plus they have Zawadi with them, and she is about as risk averse as anyone.”
“I guess you are right.” Joanna looked up at Lana. “I’m going to miss having him around, that’s all. At least they are only going to be away for a few days this time.”
Lana looked over Joanna’s shoulder towards Aiden. “Yes, they will be back in no time.”
If you know someone you think would enjoy “Orphans of Apollo” or any of the other writing in “Explorations” please share this publication with them.
Elseware
I hope you enjoyed the latest episode of Orphans of Apollo. It’s a bit of a slow start to this season, but things will start to get interesting. As I have mentioned many times, I’m serialising a draft which was written as a complete novel and not originally intended for serialisation. Sometimes it doesn’t break into neatly sized episodes with their own mini story arcs as it perhaps would do if it had been written as a serial to start with. That’s also one reason why I have put together what I have written so far into an ebook. It’s essentially the first half of the novel, so you can read it all together if you wish.
Andor has been out for a few weeks now, but this week we started watching the second season. I have always been a huge fan of Star Wars, ever since my dad rented the original trilogy on VHS when I was about six. I must have seen those original movies at least a hundred times. They formed a big part of the culture of my childhood. The thing was when I first watched the movies none of the other kids had seen them. I was too young to catch them when they originally came out and this was before the revival of the late 90s.
I’m not a fan of all the new Star Wars productions and to this date have not seen episodes VII, VIII and IX. For me, the story stops at the end of Return of the Jedi. However, the new stuff is not all bad and Andor is definitely one of the better productions - at least the first season, I haven’t seen enough of the second yet. As Stellan Skarsgard describes it, “it’s like Star Wars for grown ups.” Not that all Star Wars is not for grown ups, of course! It’s just a lot more gritty. Definitely worth checking it out.
When I write, I tend to imagine the scenes as if I were watching a movie and then describe what I’m seeing in my head. In Scrivener, I have a folder for all the main charters in Orphans of Apollo. Sometimes I will put a photograph in there of an actor or personality that looks like I imagine the character. I have always imagined the character of Christian Larsson as Stellan Skarsgard. In Andor Skarsgard plays the character of Luthen Rael.
This week I also listened to an interview with Substack founders Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie. The most interesting bit for me and all you other fiction writers out there is that fiction on the platform is well and truly on their radar. They have acknowledged they could bring some features which would make fiction work better on Substack. If you read or write fiction on Substack, which I assume you do if you are reading this, it is also worth checking out.
I hope you all have a good week.
Thanks for reading - the future belongs to the optimists.
Alex