Sullivan hesitated, then her mood changed from that of a gate-keeper to a colleague. “Understand, Doctor, all hell broke loose here this morning. Mr. Carter and Ed Mitchell have been working on a plan to send a ship to Luna, but I don’t know where they’re at with it. Still gathering intel from the comms unit and satellite imagery of the area around the lab, I think.”
They entered the elevator and Sullivan touched the glass panel for the 43rd floor. The doors hissed shut, and the cab ascended.
“So, Kate and the girl contacted you?”
Esther wondered how much she should divulge, but knew the assistants to these CEOs were often more trusted than their own business partners in operational matters. In the back of her mind, she recognized this would help her build trust with Clayton and, therefore, was good for negotiations.
“Yes. Both survived the incident and are heading to the Aristoteles mine site.”
“There’s an abandoned habitat there.”
“Correct, and they hope to get it operational until we can rescue them.”
The elevator decelerated and the moment it stopped at Clayton’s floor, the doors whooshed open. The two women stepped out into a chaotic scene. A young clerk brushed Esther’s elbow as he raced by, carrying loose papers, his tie undone and indie-comm chiming away.
“Sorry!” he shouted over his shoulder.
“If you think this is bad,” Sullivan said out of the side of her mouth, “you should see the mess downstairs in tech ops. It’s madness.” She motioned to her. “I’ll take you to the war room.”
As Esther approached Clayton’s office, his deep voice boomed down the hall. Two other suits pushed by her and marched into the anteroom. Esther paused beside the entrance marked CEO.
“Please wait here, Doctor.”
Sullivan wandered into the melee. A moment later, she reappeared, still looking grim, but waved Esther through.
Clayton towered over his desk and smiled with no hint of emotion when she entered. He had an earpiece and was speaking with someone.
“Okay, I understand . . . thanks. Keep me apprised.” He pulled the piece from his ear and tossed it on a pile of papers and maps littering his desktop.
“Esther, I’m glad you stayed but I wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Did Sullivan tell you what I know?”
“Only that you heard from our two employees up there and apparently they’re still alive—which is great news, but it brings a lot more urgency to what we hope to do.” He motioned for her to sit down at his small table, and joined her, ignoring the other men and women in the office, some standing, some sitting at the sofa.
“Tell me what you know.”
Esther recounted the entire story from the time Jim Atteberry called her at the airport to when she arrived at Titanius, but neglected to mention that Kate said she thought the Rossian vessel may have had something to do with it. As she spoke, Clayton sat transfixed, leaning forward over the small table, hands folded together, head bowed. Twice he threw her a questioning glance, as if noting a lack of clarity in the air, then returned to his assumed position.
“The bottom line is we’re now talking about human lives at stake and we’ve got to rescue them.”
He was lost in silent thought. What is he thinking?
“The latest star chart showing locations of the nearest ships is here, and I’m sending a copy to your indie-comm.” She punched the device, then continued. “We have diverted two—the Englander and the Xing Xing—but it’ll take them at least a day or two to reach Luna.” She leaned back. “Not looking good, I’m afraid.”
Clayton raised his head and stared at her, the crow’s feet deeply lined on his tired face, worry radiating from his dark eyes. He exhaled and motioned for her to move in closer.
“This is helpful information, Esther, and distressing,” he whispered. “We’ve been running around this morning, as you can tell,” he waved across the room, “trying to assess the damage and figure out what might have happened. We finally got some lunarsat images of the area. It’s a goddamn mess. I’ve never seen anything like it. Thank God the two workers weren’t inside when it blew.”
“And now they’re waiting for us somewhere up there.”
Clayton nodded and lowered his voice again. “I think we have to prepare for the worst, you understand?”
“I do, but still, we’ve got to try rescuing them. If they can find emergency oxygen, one of the diverted ships can pick them up.”
Carter’s brow furrowed, much to Esther’s curiosity. In her mind, this was simple: establish comms with Kate, divert a ship and see what they can do to bring a happy ending to this misadventure. Why is he being so coy?
Clayton’s face relaxed, and he quickly suppressed the inkling of a smile.
“I think we can do better than the Englander, and certainly better than that Xing Xing piece of trash, Esther.”
“Oh?”
“Have you heard about our new prototype corvette?”
Kate
It was easy in the monochromatic monotony of the grey landscape for her mind to wander, given the lack of solid sleep and nourishment. But that’s what transpired after several more hours on the scooter, en route to the Aristoteles mining operation.
They’d spent little time at the Apollo 17 landing site, but while resting there, Mary’s interest grew in the original lunar rover tracks, still visible from over a hundred years ago, and the now-defunct stars and stripes of the US flag before the second civil war ended its use. They replaced their O2 canisters and stretched. Eventually, after walking around for several minutes, reliving what the old astronauts must have experienced, Mary noted the enduring pain in her elbow again and returned to the scooter. After pumping a smaller dose of pseudophine into her envirosuit, she fell asleep for another few hours.
During that time, Kate’s mind conjured up all kinds of madness. She fought the urge to cut, hard and deep, and fall into a heavy sleep, and she hoped to hell the habitat was salvageable. At one point, she also daydreamed she was back at work with the Spacers, heading to a so-called hostile target, ready to unleash a wicked and disruptive virus into their computer systems. She even glimpsed—or had she—a beautiful blue light following her in the sky, but after shaking her head, the manifestation had disappeared. She half-dozed, half-dreamed while the scooter remained on auto-pilot, cruising ever northward.
The chime in her helmet sounded like part of a dream, but she soon realized it was the scooter’s guidance system alerting her to arrival at their destination.
“Pump ammonium carbonate inhalant, 0.5 CCs.”
Her eyes fluttered awake and Kate’s breathing intensified. Even the low dose of smelling salt was enough to knock the cobwebs out of her thoughts and allow her to refocus. She got her bearings.
“Do you see it, Mares?” She heard Mary struggle and twist her body around to observe the Aristoteles Mining Corporation’s strip mining operation in all its grotesque glory.
“It’s huge.”
The scooter slowed to no-wake velocity and floated past hectares of mined surface material, deep pits, abandoned outbuildings and concrete rubble. Diggers, scrapers, draglines of various sizes, all had gouged this area years ago before the United Nations secured agreements from governments and corporations to outlaw strip mining on the near side. To the right, machines had piled high the remains of their extraction in designated dump zones, left over from when the space transports arrived on their regular schedules.
“Who ran this, Kate?”
“A consortium of companies operating under the Aristoteles Mining Corp banner. The dozers and diggers were all remote-controlled from Earth. I know they still have offices in Brazil, but I think there’s a group in India involved too, on the far side operations.” She looked over the scarred landscape, stripped of surface material. “It’s not as if they’re destroying rain forest or anything like that, but good god, this is an ugly way to pull minerals and gases out of the ground, don’t you t
hink?”
Mary ignored the question. “Kate, we should scout around and see if there’s a satellite cam somewhere. They might still monitor the site.”
Kate eyed the abandoned habitat coming into view in front of her, then swung hard to starboard and investigated the pits and debris. After ten minutes, she made her way to the center building and circled it.
“What do you think?”
“Too soon to tell. If they’re still watching this place, it’s not obvious.” She paused. “Hey, check out the solar panels.” She pointed to an array about twenty meters away from the main building. “We might be able to salvage them. Power will be an issue unless there’s operational backup.” She pulled back and floated to the primary access portal. “First things first, Mares. Let’s see if we can fix this junk.”
Kate nudged the scooter in to land not five meters away from the main portal. The ugly rumors about this site are all true. There were no lights at all on the habitat, no beacon above, nothing showing anyone had ever been here in years. Some broken equipment—a couple of lunar runners and tubing—lay scattered about the entrance way. Kate heaved them up and tossed them aside, clearing a spot for them to open the external port.
The airlock had no residual power, so she found the manual lever and yanked it, exposing the internal chamber. The hatchway to the interior was already open, and bands of sunlight shone in through two small viewports, but otherwise, gloomy darkness bathed the place. She and Mary clicked on their helmet lights and proceeded in through the airlock.
They walked into the main common area that served as a control room, similar to their lunar lab setup except on a larger scale. Instead of a window facing the mining operation, workers had constructed a large viewscreen in the wall, and a massive operations table curved around in front like a horseshoe.
At one point, it would have been full of workstations for the engineers and techs of the mine site. Now, nothing remained except the built-in power ports, a few cables of various lengths strewn about, a broken chair in the corner, and moon dust everywhere.
“Check around, Mares, for any obvious containment breaches.”
They split up and made a close visual inspection of the control room, using infrared frequency scans in their visors, and hands and eyes. After fifteen minutes, they met again.
“I found no breaks, Kate. You?”
“No, and that gives me hope. If we can rig up the oxygenator and scrubbers, I mean, if they’re still working, we’ll be good here.”
“Nova!”
“How’s the wing?” She nodded at Mary’s arm.
“Sore as hell, but I got it managed now. More frustrating than anything else.”
Kate pointed to the far end of the control room. “I bet that’s the door to the living quarters. There’s another over here, too. The galley, I suspect.”
They stepped over fallen debris, making their way to the first access port. Kate swung it open, revealing a two meter length of airlock and a second hatchway. She pulled on that and peered into the adjoining space. Remnants of personnel quarters came into view. Something—maybe one of the mining machines—had run into the habitat, tearing a massive hole and scattering broken cots and other equipment around it.
Kate said, “We have to seal this airlock up tight as hell. I’d like to rig a backup access point here if possible, but I don’t see how.”
Mary wandered into what used to be a bunkhouse of sorts for the builders. Most personal effects had disappeared, but a few things remained. She lifted someone’s dust-covered paper notepad from a corner beside a cot leaning at an awkward angle. A mug sat on a bedside table as if a worker had just taken a sip from it. Other odds and ends were scattered about like flotsam.
“Probably twenty or thirty guys were here building this place.” Mary poked through the damaged area. “I hope this happened after everyone left.”
Kate motioned to her. “Come on, let’s find—”
“Hey, look!” Mary raised a scratched and dented cylindrical canister and waved it around. “This is oxygen, isn’t it?” Kate lunged over a broken cot and other debris on the floor and sidled up to her for a closer inspection. It appeared to be a portable O2 tank. It lacked a gauge or any other sign of its contents although at some point it had been labeled. Despite the scars, the connector was identical to the universal standard for terran air canisters.
“If there’s one, we may find more, right?” Mary’s voice radiated hope and excitement.
Kate had already performed the calculations in her mind. Assuming the Titanius operators back on Earth knew of the emergency, and if they diverted a nearby ship to Aristoteles, then they were looking at one or two days before rescue.
Only six hours of oxygen remained in their canisters. Tops. And if they couldn’t get the oxygenator running, Kate knew a single canister between them would be nothing more than a cruel joke.
Mary
A constant dull ache replaced the earlier throbbing in her elbow that pounded a trail from her wrist up to her shoulder. Mary flexed her right hand fingers, gingerly at first, and then with more confidence as she discovered the additional movement caused no further pain. The healing had begun even without the medi-patch. She had infused no more pseudophine inhalant since the stretch break at that old Apollo site, and if possible, she preferred staying off the meds.
Kate busied herself by poking around the control room and investigating the various workstation panels while Mary continued her search for additional O2 canisters. Kate seemed less than enthusiastic with her discovery of the solitary cylinder, but there must be more somewhere in this complex, abandoned or not. It’s something she read about in a camping guide once, of all things, and as with other documents, never forgot: always leave firewood behind for the next traveler. Perhaps it applied to the lunar workers, too.
The sleeping quarters, coated in dust from the massive wall breach, sat in streaky shadows and gloom. Mary conducted a quick walk through, starting at the far end. The module ran long and narrow, with bunks aligned, one on top of the other, down the sides with a shallow walkway between them. A grey and white bulkhead covered the length of the structure. Small, metallic bedside tables and a few orphaned storage bins were interspersed throughout the cots, each pair book-ended by built-in lockers. She checked those.
The first half-dozen lockers were empty. One of them had a checklist stuck inside the door; the workers used another as a garbage bin for construction material. She’d uncovered a variety of building bricks, tubes, steel pipe and clamps in it. They were all dust-filled but otherwise in good repair.
“Find anything back there, Mary?” Kate’s voice startled her.
“No extra canisters yet, but I’ve just started looking.” Her helmet radio crackled with static.
“Listen, as soon as you’re done, come with me to inspect the solar array. I uncovered the power input node here for it, and if it’s still operational, we’ll be able to fire up this unit and maybe get the comms working.”
“Sure, on my way.”
Mary glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping quarters, hesitated for a moment, then checked her balance and stepped back over the debris to the main control room. When she pushed through the access portal, she noticed Kate over in a corner, kneeling in front a large junction box, out of which all kinds of reinforced cables ran. She held a thick, flexible feedline in her hands and appeared to be studying its interior.
“What is that?”
Kate held up the cable. “It’s the main power line for this control room, and possibly for the entire habitat. I can’t believe it’s still in decent shape, but with all this dust I’m not sure how well it’ll work.” She pulled herself up to a standing position. “Of course, that’s moot if we have no power source, so are you ready to check out the solar array?”
“Okay.” Mary was the first to admit she didn’t know much about solar arrays other than their basic configurations and parts, and she guessed the system here on the moon would have a host o
f environmental reinforcements to withstand the extreme temperatures.
They stepped through the external access portal onto the lunar surface and bounded toward the array. Kate remained quiet, and Mary wondered if the lack of sleep and stress was more than she could handle. In the weeks she’d spent with her at the Lunar Geophysical Lab, she recognized Kate cherished her privacy and other than on rare occasions, had kept a lot of her past and inner thoughts to herself. If there was something work-related, Kate chatted up a storm, but anything else of a more personal nature, she’d close up. But she was like that back home too.
As they stopped in front of the array, Mary understood her insignificance. The panels towered over her, angled on thick metal bases with pivoting heads—no doubt so they could always face the maximum amount of sunlight. Ten massive blocks sat there like stone sentries.
Kate paused and scrutinized the design. “Seems they’ve got a whack of smaller panels linked up on each base. Probably not the most secure arrangement, but the Moon is normally a quiet place. Other than cold, heat and dust, the worst thing would be a meteor hitting it, and then its configuration wouldn’t matter.”
“Still, a machine rammed through the habitat . . .”
“Smart ass.”
Mary chuckled, and Kate snorted right back at her. “There’s a ladder over here,” she said, catching her breath. “Let’s have a closer look.”
Kate swung the long metal apparatus up against the first of the solar blocks and climbed up. Mary watched as she brushed dust off the sides before descending again. “Something crushed that one. No good for us. Let’s check out the others.”
Mary stayed on the ground while Kate inspected the next four groups. None of them were functional. Some had either been cracked or shattered, others broken. Kate said if she had the time and the proper tools, she could repair them, but neither were available.
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