Mira Novak pressed her gloved hand against the thick viewport, peering out at Pluto hanging motionless in Charon's starless sky. The dwarf planet loomed large and ghostly white-gray, its faint sunlight casting long, soft-edged shadows across the outpost's exterior. Even at "midday," the illumination was dim – Pluto's distant sun was no brighter than an Earthly twilight. Inside the sealed research and mining outpost known as Charon Base, the only true warmth and light came from humming heaters and LED panels lining the curved corridor behind her.
Mira exhaled slowly, watching a thin fog of condensation bloom on the glass and vanish. Focus, she chided herself. She was due in the control hub in a few minutes, and still needed to finish her rounds. As Chief Systems Engineer, Mira took pride in keeping the base's life-support and power systems stable, despite the hostile environment outside. On Pluto's largest moon, the vacuum and cold were relentless – -230°C on a "warm" day. If the base's systems hiccuped, life here could become very precarious, very fast.
This morning, something had hiccuped. During the graveyard shift, a minor power surge had tripped an alarm in the base's micro-reactor control panel. It lasted only a few milliseconds, but Mira had been alerted by her console as she slept. Now, walking the corridor toward the reactor monitoring station, she rubbed sleep from her eyes and reviewed the data on her tablet. The surge was tiny, well within safety margins, yet it was odd. Out here, every anomaly deserved scrutiny.
She passed through an oval hatch into the reactor room. The air was noticeably cooler here; waste heat was precious, redistributed to living areas rather than the unmanned reactor chamber. Mira pulled her fleece closer around her slim frame. In 0.03g gravity – barely three percent of Earth's – the fabric felt almost weightless on her shoulders. Nearly weightless or not, it still kept her warm.
Her boots clicked against the metal floor as she crossed to the control console. This room was cramped with machinery: the shielded reactor housing at center, thick coolant pipes running overhead, and an array of control racks blinking green. Mira tapped a touchscreen to query last night's logs. The surge had come from somewhere on the grid at 03:14 station time. The reactor output spiked momentarily by 5%, then settled. The automated systems hadn't flagged it as critical, but Mira's custom watchdog program had. She had written that code herself months ago, to catch any irregularities early.
"Show me substation draw…," she murmured, fingers dancing over the screen. A graph of power distribution appeared. It showed a brief, sharp uptake from the communications array and peripheral systems. Mira frowned, pushing a strand of dark hair behind her ear. At 03:14, most of the base was in low-power mode – the comm dish wasn't scheduled to transmit or receive anything heavy then, and certainly the drilling rigs were offline at night. So why the jump?
She ran a quick diagnostic. No obvious faults; all systems nominal. Could be a sensor glitch, she thought. Or perhaps a calibration issue in the battery buffers. Mira made a note to check the junction in person later. If a cable was loose and arcing in the extreme cold, that could explain a spike. The plan for the day suddenly grew in her mind: after the morning briefing, she'd suit up for an EVA to inspect the exterior power trunk and the comm array. Another day, another careful inspection – that was life on Charon Base.
Mira left the reactor room, clipping her tablet to her utility belt. Her ears caught a distant clank echoing through the metal corridors – likely thermal expansion or the automated drone bay door closing. The base constantly made such noises as it settled or as devices turned on and off, a mechanical chorus that underscored their isolation. She had grown accustomed to it, even found it comforting at times.
On her way to the hub, she passed the small laboratory module where Dr. Sora Alva was working. Through the round window of the lab hatch, Mira glimpsed Sora bent over a microscope, blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. Spread out before her were vials of ice-core samples collected from Pluto's surface. Mira recalled the excitement a few weeks back when Sora announced she'd found something unusual in a deep ice core – some kind of fossilized biological filament. A potential alien microorganism, frozen in Pluto's subsurface. It was the kind of discovery scientists dreamed of, though Sora was careful to keep expectations grounded.
Mira gave a little knock on the glass. Sora looked up, her face breaking into a quick grin of recognition. Through the window, she pantomimed sipping from a mug – an invitation for coffee later – then pointed at a sealed container on her bench, rolling her eyes in a "back to work" gesture. Mira nodded and smiled. She admired Sora's dedication. The discovery of that symbiont (as Sora called it) had electrified the science team, but it also worried Commander Patel. An alien life form, however dormant, was a wildcard. For now, the thing remained frozen and locked down, just another sample in a petri dish. Still, Mira had seen the hush of awe on Sora's face when she first described the filament's spiral structure. Mira made a mental note: check on how Sora's doing later. Isolation could get to the science types in different ways – obsession over experiments, or anxiety. A friendly chat over coffee might help.
Finally, Mira arrived at the control hub in the center of the base. The hub was a compact operations center, its ceiling low and curved. Screens covered the walls, showing live readouts: oxygen levels, suit telemetry, incoming comm status with Earth (just carrier signal hum at the moment), and Pluto's horizon via an external camera feed. Commander Arjun Patel stood at the central console, arms folded, already reviewing the morning reports.
Arjun looked up as Mira stepped in. He was tall even in the weak gravity, a lean figure with close-cropped black hair and a perpetually thoughtful expression. "Morning, Mira," he said, voice resonant in the quiet room. "I saw your note about a power fluctuation last night. Any update?"
"Morning, Commander," Mira replied with a small smile. "I'm still looking into it. Reactor's fine, and I think the surge came from the comms subsystem. Could be nothing – maybe the dish auto-tracked an unscheduled source or the amplifier recalibrated. But I'll do a walk-out to inspect, just in case."
Arjun's brow creased. "Unauthorized power draws in the middle of the night are not nothing out here." He rubbed his chin, then gestured to the holographic system map hovering above the console. "We'll talk about it in the briefing. I want all departments on alert for oddities. Last week's minor quake was enough of a surprise for one mission." He gave a wry half-smile, referring to a tremor they'd felt – likely Pluto's subsurface adjusting, or maybe Charon's crust – it had rattled the base lightly. Out here, even geology could catch them off guard.
Mira nodded. She shared the commander's cautious approach. In a small base of only four crew and a handful of intelligent drones, any anomaly had to be taken seriously. She unzipped a side pocket and handed him a dataslate summarizing the spike. "Here's the readout. It's minor, but I flagged it. I'm thinking of checking the node B junction on the main cable run."
Arjun took the slate and scanned it. "Good. Have Lucas go with you on the EVA, he can handle any mechanical fix if needed. No solo walks."
"Understood." Mira couldn't argue with that. Despite Charon's feeble gravity, an EVA always carried risks – micrometeorites, suit malfunctions, or simply stumbling into a crevasse hidden under nitrogen frost. Going in pairs was protocol.
A faint chime sounded from the console – 07:00 hours station time. Briefing time. Mira stood beside the commander as the rest of the crew filtered in. Lucas Zhang arrived first, moving with the springy step that everyone had in low gravity. He practically bounced through the hatch, one hand catching the doorframe to steady himself. A stocky man in his 30s, Lucas was the robotics and mining specialist – his coveralls perpetually marked with grease and regolith dust from tinkering in the drone garage.
"Morning, boss," Lucas said, giving Arjun a two-finger salute. "Mira." He nodded at her, flashing a quick friendly grin. "Heard we had a power blip? I hope it didn't fry the coffee machine, because I desperately need my caffeine ration."
Mira chuckled softly. "Coffee's safe, Lucas. I checked the first thing."
"Thank God." He pantomimed wiping sweat off his brow and leaned against a wall, careful not to push off too hard.
Dr. Sora Alva was next, entering with a data pad in hand. She was petite and moved a bit slower – not quite as accustomed to the moon-jumping strides as Lucas. "Sorry, sorry," she murmured, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "I lost track of time in the lab."
"Understandable," Arjun said with a mild nod. "I imagine frozen microbes are captivating breakfast companions."
Sora offered a polite smile. "I was just reviewing last night's thermal imaging on the sample. No noticeable changes." She took her seat at the console's perimeter, strapping a Velcro belt across her lap to keep herself from drifting up from the chair – a causal necessity in low-g meetings. The others did likewise.
Arjun cleared his throat. His commanding presence drew all eyes. "Alright, let's get started. We've got a busy day and some issues to address. Mira, you have something to report?"
Mira tapped the console and brought up a display of the base's power grid. "As the commander mentioned, we had a brief power surge overnight at 03:14. The source appears to be the communications array or something on that distribution line." A thin red spike blinked on the graph. "It was short – only a fraction of a second – but it was significant enough to notice, about a five percent jump in load. There were no scheduled operations at that time."
Lucas frowned, leaning forward. "Comms array draws extra power? We didn't have an uplink or any downlink in that window, as far as I know. The next Earth transmission is scheduled for 08:00 today, with the return ping at 12:30." Communication with Earth was a slow ritual – tightly scheduled bursts of data, accounting for the 5.5-hour one-way light delay. They typically exchanged messages just once a day.
"Correct," Mira said. "So, I intend to inspect the array and power lines. Possibly a hardware issue, or maybe the AI initiated a calibration routine we weren't aware of."
At the mention of the AI, Arjun's mouth pressed into a line. The base's central AI, dubbed CHARON (for "Cognitive Heuristic Autonomous Remote Operations Network"), handled countless tasks – life support adjustments, drone scheduling, environmental monitoring. It was supposed to keep everything running smoothly, and always inform the crew of major actions. If CHARON had done something unannounced, that was concerning.