Funeral for Anya

Interfaith Chapel, Anya Bykov’s funeral

Speaker: Andrew Bailey, Chief Operations Officer

It’s an honor to give the first eulogy for such a pillar of our community. Anya left us far too soon.

Here on the Martian frontier we take our risks. We steel ourselves to the unknown. We work hard. We improvise. We lean on one another and we build a community where nothing but lifeless wilderness once stood.

We survive.

And, sometimes, we die.

Anya Bykov was here from the beginning, twelve years ago, breaking ground. She sweat more than all of us to start this colony. All of my conversations with Anya since my landing were very productive, very valuable. I had the highest respect for her.

But, tragedy visits. Despite all of our caution, all of our safety measures.

It’s natural to cast our blame on something, on someone, when Death knocks at the colony door. The investigation was thorough, and the blame lies with Mars. That cave-in was triggered by the vibrations of the excavator. We’d been digging in that lava tube for months, always wary, for Mars is savage and souls are precious. The god of war doesn’t want us living here, doesn’t want us digging about in his veins, doesn’t want us extracting his water, or building our comfortable domiciles.

Anya Bykov was a hero for fighting Mars. She ramped up the safety regulations and saved many lives. Because of her, we’re developed enough to ease back a few of the more onerous restrictions.

We’re here to build, to live, and someday, to thrive. The death of Anya is a sad stepping stone toward that goal.

Anya, just as your life had made us all stronger and wiser, so does your death. 

_________________________

Speaker: Camila Rojas, Ground Vehicle Maintenance

Thank you, Mr. Bailey, for the kind words.

Oh, Anya. I loved you like a sister. A sister that I fought with all the time. Constantly. When you were pissed, everyone ran and hid, afraid of your wrath. You weren’t a spitfire. You were a storm, a damn storm when it came to safety.

We sent all the rookies to you. Every year the newbs got stuck in your safety classes. You’d scare them with accident vids. You made us all sign away our rights to video of our deaths if, Heaven forbid, some accident might be our end. “Nothing’s more instructional than a death,” you’d say, making me cringe at that cackle of yours. “If you’re gonna die in an accident, at least make the next crew smarter.”

Excuse me. Sorry. Hold on a second. Ugh, this is hard.

Okay.

But it all came from the heart, I know it did. You lost your husband to an accident just a couple years in. And you went about trying to save everyone else. And I know regulations you got passed and all your pestering saved a lot of lives. Countless lives.

So, now it all comes full circle. Everything went according to the book in that lava tube. Your book, Anya. And Mars still got you.

You’re a bitch, Mars.

You were, too, Anya. But we loved you. We will always love you.

_________________________

Speaker: Finlo Poulsen, information networks technician

The day before yesterday was the saddest day of my life. My new life, that is. Here. Camila’s right. Anya’s safety class was my third day after hitting dirt, and it scared me sh—I mean, it really scared me. What did I sign up for, right?

But Anya was a pioneer’s pioneer. She knew everything. And you could ask her anything, anytime. I mean, geology, meteorology, rover and excavator repair, life systems—like, she lived and breathed all that stuff, all that stuff that it takes for us to live and breathe out here, right?

Anya was like a mom to me. To a lot of us. She’d whack you upside the helmet if she caught you doing something backwards outside, not triple-checking. But she was with me in the hospital and held my hand as they patched my broken arm. She knew I wasn’t doing enough exercise and called me out. Like a mom, right?

Anyway, there’s something important I need to show you. Really important.

There’s a microcam at the far end of the lava tube. Anya had me set it up, along with like a hundred others. They’re not part of the feeds, they’ve got their own memory and network and only her trusted posse knows about them. I’ll nix the cycling photos of Anya for a moment and flick it up on the screen.

It’s not going to show Anya’s death. Promise. It’s wide angle, see, and she’s down there by the vehicle charging station. The clip stops before anything falls all the way.

Look here, there at the roof at that fissure.

There! See that?

Let’s run that again, slow. That flash. I’ll freeze it. That’s a minor charge going off. It was preceded by a brief radio transmission at 321 megahertz, also recorded by the cam.

None of the network cams caught any of this. Because everything was doctored, and real quick, too. There had to be several people operating this assassination, making a nearly perfect accident, tracks covered.

Whoah! Please settle down, everyone. Just wait.

Anya’s last words; everyone was wondering about them. She said, after she cursed, “LT5C.”

A lot of conspiracy crap has been going around about that. Let’s put it all to rest: Lava Tube Cam Five. She knew that if she didn’t survive, that feed was the best view of the situation. Maybe she’d suspected what happened. I don’t know. I think so. We followed the book in this tube, delays and all, right?

So we do know who did this. The executive suits came down to cut costs, cut our safety regs. And they decided to cut the one standing in the way.

Hey! Bailey’s trying to leave! Tackle him!

You had a hand in this!