Free The Curse of Europa by Brian Kayser Page A

face through her helmet as she falls. From the bio-suit com unit he can still hear her. He hears her haunting screams and gasps as she goes down, slowly out of sight. Then her final words, “Oh God, Oh my God I’m {sssssst}ing… it’s dark... I’m {ssssssst}{ssssst},” then nothing but silence. Juliana is gone.
Turk just lays there, nearly lifeless, staring down into the black hole of death.
     

Chapter 13: Too Little Too Late
** 10 minutes earlier **
     
H icks and Fedoseev are at their drill location checking their equipment. Their drill is still working and everything looks good. Fedoseev is gathering surface samples and placing them into buckets when they both feel the ground shake slightly.
“Commander, do you feel that – yes?” Fedoseev asks as he freezes in place to try to determine if it is just him or if the ground is shaking.
Hicks responds, “Yes… I do! That’s some pretty major movement isn’t it?”
“Da, little more movement than I think good,” Fedoseev responds with concern in his voice, reaching up to twirl his mustache out of habit – but of course unable to in his bio-suit. He walks to the equipment that is measuring seismic activity, sets down his sample buckets, and starts interacting with the controls, to see what levels they are measuring.
Then they both hear over the public com, and look at each other’s concerned faces, as they hear Doctor Evans’ plea, “PATRICK, PATRICK, I NEED HELP!”
Hicks instantly yells into the com, “Turk! Turk! Do you copy? Lieutenant Commander Turkovitch do you copy!” He does not get a response.
“Doctor Evans, do you copy?” Hicks pleads.
All they hear back a minute later is, “PATRICK, I’M SLIPPING, WHERE ARE YOU?”
Hicks tries to contact them again, “Doctor Evans, Turk! Do you copy? Can either of you hear me?” No response.
“Lt. Glover, do you copy? This is Hicks”
“I copy Commander – I’m monitoring a situation… Turkovitch and Evans seem to have a problem on their hands; I lost com-link with Turk. I’m tapping into Evans’ helmet video feed right now. Please hold a moment.”
“Holy crap! What the hell?” Glover blurts out.
“WHAT! What’s going on Erick?” screams Hicks.
“Holy crap commander, it looks like it is raining over there. And there are huge piles of ice chunks…. DAMN… the rover is trashed; it is on its side in all that ice. Let me review the recorded video from a few minutes ago.”
What seems like an eternity of 10 seconds pass when they hear Glover back on the com unit. “Holy…, crap…, a geyser of water is shooting up from Turk’s drill location, that must be the rain… obviously.”
“Are Turk and Evans okay? Are they near the geyser?” Hicks asks in a panic.
“I can’t tell yet… Oh crap! I think Turk got hit by a huge ice chunk that got launched into the air by the geyser, that’s when I lost his com-link!”
“FEDOSEEV! Get in the rover NOW, we’re heading over there. Erick… transmit their coordinates to our rover’s navigation system ASAP. For right now I’m just going to head in that general direction.”
“Will do, sending it now,” Glover responds.
As soon as Fedoseev jumps into his seat in the rover, Hicks punches the accelerator and spins it around, kicking up snow but agonizing at the slow 15Kph rate of travel that it maxes out at. The rover receives the coordinates and estimates about five minutes travel time at top speed.
The five minutes seem like an eternity as all they can do is listen to the mayhem and play-by-play from Glover.
“Commander… I see Turk from Doctor Evans’ visor camera, he just emerged out of that pile of ice… He is making his way to Evans. I still don’t have a com-link with him.”
“Turkovitch, do you copy,” Glover broadcasts out a few times at full power to no reply.
“The geyser just stopped, there is no more water shooting up from it.” Glover announces.
“Well that’s good news! We are still going to go over there to make sure