It was approximately 228 Kelvin on Rig Kappa-Bravo at the central mines entrance when the creature struck. The wind was blowing NE at a rate of 25 m/s kicking up ice, obscuring the 380 to 700-nanometer band of their optical sensors.
The rare-earth metal mining rig had turned into a point of company interest shortly after the uncovering of strange artefacts, namely a dagger, an unidentified corpse, and some robes designed for a human of around 8ft tall. No human colonies had been documented out on the ice before the mining rig arrived, as such W-Y had deployed more personnel Valentina included.
Valentina, a tall slender 2nd generation synth, was outside the pressurized womb of the rig. She stood out in the cold in full mining uniform, a large clutch of dog tags displayed from a pouch on her belt.
Valentina was on secondary duties, standing perfectly motionless talking on radio-link without moving their mouth in order to minimize any vibrations, so as to not disturb their readings.
These secondary duties consisted of using their hyper-sensitive suite of accelerometers, gravimeters, and barometers, to measure minute changes in the movement of the rock around them. Enabling them to effectively predict any cave-in before it happened, allowing for the evacuation of personnel and equipment safely and efficiently.
“45 below, practically tropical today, Skipper” she noted cheerily as the miners set to work establishing the drilling equipment around her. This was one of her preplanned conversation starters, some people found her repetitive use of these phrases unnerving, the personnel however seemed to enjoy the routine.
“Eye, I think we might have a barbecue later,” Rigging Officer Orlando Skips joked.
Valentina paused to process a reply. Internally, she could view her responses as a branching decision tree. It sped up social situations to handle them this way, her runtime was precious and currently dedicated to problems more imperative than fraternization.
“Not enough meat for the barbie, Skipper”. She parrotted in a practised mock Australian accent.
“You’ve said that three times this week Val. Want me to check your circuits” Goaded Explosives Rigger, Sasha Vogel.
Not all people enjoy the repetition, Valentina mentally noted, generating a new decision tree for interactions with Vogel.
“Predetermined responses cut down on my processing time, Vogel. Dedicating more of it to socialization would cut down on my ability to measure for quakes. My predictions suggest a 15% chance for a rockfall today, Good odds.”
“There’s the metal brain we love, Val. Keep those numbers running, I don’t want shit coming down on me unexpected.” Vogel replied.
“Quit bugging the synth, Vogel.” Skipps warned “She’s sure as shit got enough to think about. Even if she’s as socially capable as your novelty talking toaster.”
“I like to think I’m quite humorous,” Valentina retorted in mock anger. Another one of her pre-planned responses.
“Now that’s a joke.” Vogel laughed, “Get back to reading the earth. I don’t want my tag to end up in your pockets.”
The outside pressure sat at 50662 PA, despite this, a massive near-flat ice sheet covering a lake of salt water and methane mix spanned most of the valley in which the rig was situated. The ice (which, Valentina hypothesized, must have initially been left over from sublimated standing water) acted as a sort of pressure cap for the lake. Dregs of liquid methane sat ever ready to boil off into the mostly nitrogen atmosphere.
The Rig itself was a standard modular construction seen almost everywhere in deep-space mining colonies. It was something that Valentina never failed to marvel at, perfectly utilitarian, just enough engineering to keep its occupants alive, no more, no less.
The personnel around her looked very much like balloon men Valentina mused, sitting in their half-spacesuit-half-pressuresuit mining rigs which kept them warm, watered, and oxygenated. All so far as Valentina was concerned was nominal.
Then the plasma shots roared.
Valentina’s combat subroutines kicked in as time began to proceed at a much slower pace. The apertures of her eyes widened letting in wavelengths deep into the infrared spectrum. Sat fixed atop the coolant arm of the mining rig was a figure, nearly invisible in infrared and clearly cloaked by something. The figure was only illuminated by the glowing bolt of a fourth plasma shot snaking its way towards the miners. Her head twisted at lightning speed following the path the previous bolt had taken. One of the miners had taken a bolt to the upper right chest, and Valentina was sure she could see the inside lining of one of his lungs as he fell in slow motion.
His heart would stop, that one thing was sure. A fist-sized hole in a lung would do that to a human. The low pressure would probably cause his other lung to collapse even before it filled with blood drowning him. The other three shots were closely clustered on a thin metal casing of a mining drill which sat slightly in front of the centre of the man's chest. How had the hostile gunner taken such an accurate cluster of shots on that one miner? If the gunner was human, nothing short of thermals would have given them the visibility needed in this weather.
“Contact. Gunner. 314. Hit the deck!”
Valentina gathered all the evidence before acting, the man still falling slowly to the ground. It was clear that this one miner was unlikely to survive. The wind and the temperature would ruin any chance of his survival by causing him to cool unevenly, leading to ice crystals forming and searing their way through his capillaries. The miner would be brain-dead in approximately five minutes. The solution was simple, albeit unorthodox, Valentina would have to reduce the cooling of the miner to a survivable level, something only a good insulator would do. She grabbed the falling miner with one hand, and with her foot, cracked a large enough hole in the ice and dropped him in.
“Your death is imminent. Time to brain death can only be prolonged by cryogenic temperatures. I am sorry to do this to you. You will likely die.”
She was moving before he was fully submerged; the methane water boiled aggressively around him. The next step was to reduce the attacker's visibility, what was clear is that it didn’t use visible light to see, what wasn’t it if it could see in more than infrared, with no time to test this she gambled.
Valentina took the main hose of an oxygen tank, and fed it into a cross valve that met up with a fuel tank, opening both and taking a welder to the output, she started a blaze spitting directly up and out of the cave's mouth.
In the approximately 10 seconds that had elapsed the other personnel had managed to duck, fall, or run behind the machinery. At least they were secure for now, Calculating the quickest route to a deeper and more secure mine section she radioed a set of map instructions to everyone's portable PDAs
“Follow this, stick together, radio for help” came her call.
The shots from the gunner had become more frequent and sporadic, clustering around the rough previous position of crew or whizzing over their heads. The good news, Valentina thought, was that the gunner couldn’t see in anything other than infrared.
With the miners secured, and her patient quickly dying in the lake, her next act had to be offensive, eliminating the threat. She grabbed a white tarp off of one of the nearby machines and wrapped it around her body, sprinting forward without the need to swing her arms, quickly closing the distance between the rig and herself. Synths don’t leave heat signatures.
She only managed to get within 200 meters of the structure before the creature dropped directly on top of her, knocking her flat on her back. It had a strange scimitar in its hand.
“Not human” Valentina noted out loud, in return, it only grunted in a strange tongue.
The scimitar came crashing down on top of her with no way to totally dodge it; she instead focused on minimizing damage, bringing her left forearm in between the blade and her neck, it dug deep and stuck fast into the metal of her arm.
Acting quickly she twisted, easily lifting the bulk up above her head with her right hand, her left arm lying limp, control wires severed. This was going to have to be done one-handed. The creature in return pulled in vain at the scimitar now trapped within her forearm. She flung the creature fast into a nearby ore-crate, wrenching the scimitar from its grip in the process.
The creature to its merit landed solidly on its feet stanced ready in a combat position, as it lunged back forward towards Valentina. The synth simply fell back onto one knee, freed the scimitar with her right hand and levelled it towards the beast's chest, the creature impaled itself before it could slow down.
Making use of the creature's pain, something she’d never experienced herself, Valentina rapidly drew the scimitar up and across the creature's chest. Strange organs spilled out leaving the creature disembowelled, as it writhed and cried out. It was incapacitated. Valentina did not wait for it to die before sprinting back to her dying patient.
It was only when she got to the submerged miner that the creature’s self-destruct went off. Ripping free the ice the Rig was sitting on and causing major fires.
Valentina had made a mistake, she thought she’d acted to save lives, this time however, she had yet more nametags to add to her collection, some who died outright in the explosion, others who were consumed by the ensuing fires.