Lunar Colony VI

by A Keuser

  Lunar Colony VI

  A. B. Keuser

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Safety Zone Copyright ©2015 by Amy Johnson Gravity Darkening Copyright ©2015 by Amy Johnson

  Zero Proximity Copyright ©2015 by Amy Johnson Terminal Shift Copyright ©2015 by Amy Johnson Non-Passive Failure Copyright ©2015 by Amy Johnson

  http://www.abkeuser.com

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1511821957

  ISBN-13: 978-1511821957

  DEDICATION

  This collection of stories is for anyone who has ever felt that there was something greater at work against them. They are for anyone who has ever made a mistake in their life and wished to undo it.

  Most importantly these are for those who love to dream of a life among the stars… with their feet planted firmly on the ground.

  CONTENTS

  Safety Zone Gravity Darkening Zero Proximity Terminal Shift Non-Passive Failure

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to take a moment to thank those who enjoyed this episodic story first. The ones who read it without knowing if it would have an end and who trusted in Nala to find her way out of my head. Much thanks to Katie, Natalie, Jenna, Earl, and Barb, for reading rough drafts and finding ways to encourage improvement where needed.

  And thank you to those who are reading this now, for the first time as a whole collection. Enjoy your time in my head.

  SAFETY ZONE

  Death lurked around every corner. It hid behind hatches and tapped at the bulkheads in the dark of night. Playing in

  the vacuum of space, it waited for its next victim. Most inhabitants of Lunar Colony Six had forgotten that. They hurried through the tubular corridors, ignoring the beautiful, deadly darkness above their head. Only a few still cared about the glimmer of Earthshine.

  Nala Klef wasn’t in either of those groups. As maintenance chief, she was hyper-aware of the dangers outside their artificial ecosystem. For the same reason, she was too busy to look to the stars, or watch the transit of the blue and white marble she’d once called home.

  Around her, the lighting was dim. She walked along the curved corridor on Tower B’s sixteenth floor and stifled a yawn. Any self-respecting denizen would be asleep by now. She glanced at her watch to confirm and frowned.

  Her communicator buzzed against her hip, and she pulled it from its holster. She paused three seconds to decide if she wanted to throw the thing out an airlock instead of answering. The caller ID made up her mind for her. “Glorified Janitor, at your service.”

  Another yawn took over. She was a glorified janitor in need of thirty hours of sleep.

  “You know you’re more than that, right?” Ethan Boudri sounded as tired as she felt. If the time on her watch was right, he was fifteen minutes away from ending a twelve hour shift.

  “What’s the job?”

  While he grumbled, she glared at her reflection in one of the colony’s few shiny metal walls – tousled box braids in need of a hair tie – poking at the dark circles forming in her deep brown skin. Her bloodshot eyes were a fright and she rummaged the biggest pouch of her bag with her free hand.

  “Partner Dendrond has an emergency situation.”

  The colony’s Partners had a knack for bringing up a new “emergency situation” at the tail end of her work day. Every day.

  “My shift ended hours ago. Two, if we’re being picky about details. So, if this is a real emergency, point me toward the fire. If not, tell Dendrond to stuff it.” After another half minute of searching in her bag, she found her roll of bottles.

  “You’re the one who approved time off for Kiln and Sarpo.”

  Frowning, she shook her head at her selfinflicted irritation. Both of her techs had legitimate reasons for needing a vacation. She wasn’t going to invalidate one by approving his request and making the other stay behind.

  “Are you going to tell me what the situation is? Or do I have to guess?”

  She ran her fingers along the bottles’ raised labels as she read them. She sorted through the things she didn’t need: Non-conductive fluid… glue… lubricant… penetrating oil… and snatched up the eye drops. The only downside of the overworked O2 scrubbers was their efficiency in pulling moisture from the recirculated air.

  Pulling the drops from their slot in the pouch, she double-checked their label. She didn’t want to confuse with the other items in the kit.

  “She says she’s got a broken water pipe in her wall. She repeated the words ‘flooded’ and ‘soaked’ ad nauseam as she demanded you come fix it immediately.”

  Nala dropped a cold bead of liquid in each eye, blinking as she wiped away the excess.

  “It’s not the overtime I mind,” she said.

  A trip to Partner Silvia Dendrond’s apartment meant subjecting herself to lewd comments. If she was unlucky, Dendrond would add too-appreciative glances to the list of offenses. And if Nala wasn’t vigilant, the worst of the woman’s tactics would come out to play. It had never worked before, but Dendrond often tried to bully Nala into her specialty sanitation shower.

  “Want me to come play chaperone?”

  The question dissipated her dread. “Would you, please?”

  He laughed, but a yawn stole the last of his mirth.

  “Don’t worry about it, Ethan,” she said sweeping a box braid away from her face. “I’ll get in and out as quick as I can and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  “Let’s shoot for afternoon. I’m going to want to sleep for a month. Since I can’t do that… I’ll settle for sleeping through the hours most people refer to as morning.”

  Boudri cut the comm signal and she made for the lift. Partner Dendrond lived in one of three penthouse apartments in Tower A. There was only one way a normal person could get from B to A.

  But Nala wasn’t the average colony resident.

  She stepped into the lift and punched the button for descent. Silence accompanied her and she marked the lift’s broken audio transmitter down on her “get around to it” list. Stuffing her pad back in her bag, she leaned against the back wall and closed her eyes. If she wasn’t careful, she’d fall asleep standing.

  Her stomach settled with a flip – the only sign the lift had reached its terminus.

  The doors opened to the twelfth floor where potted plants shivered in the downdraft of the tower’s aircon. Signs glued to the wall pointed toward the colony’s auxiliary medical facility.

  Nala stepped out into the corridor and tapped a finger on the part of the sign she’d painted over years ago. She paused to look out the wide viewport. Gray and pocked, the landscape beyond glittered with the lights of newer colonies. Earth hung overhead, like a ball mid-bounce, threatening to crash down on them.

  There was a potential for poetic justice in that - escaping the political minefield of Earth… just to wind up squashed like a bug on the moon.

  The thought made her stomach flip again. She moved away from the familiar landscape and slipped through the silent halls trying to drive the memories away.

  She passed door after door, the band of light through each one’s center glowing red. Offices locked up tight for the night. This floor held no residential units. The domicile modules had safety codes that kept them four airlocks away from the chemical labs fitted on this level. However, they too would have displayed a lock-light this late into the normal sleep cycle.

  Her destination was just around the next curve. It came into view, an oddity among the red glow.

  This status indicator band glowed yellow and dark text scrolled ov
er the ribbon of light like the warning tape seen in police dramas of an older Earth. The warning that forbade entry was superfluous; no one could open the environmental doors without a specific code in their station keycard.

  Nala had that code.

  A quick swipe of her colony identification card, and she was in.

  The doors clunked shut behind her and she paused, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness of the skywalk.

  The ten meter-long connection between two spires was a shortcut she only used if she had to.

  Or if she was in a hurry.

  Or if it made her life easier.

  Or if she felt like it.

  Her boot tread moved the threadbare carpet with each step. Worn to strings, it shifted over the foundation paneling. If the skywalk still functioned in its original capacity, she’d have pulled out her list. As it was, administration had closed off the corridor years ago. Its only remaining function was to provide structural linkage and support for the A and B Towers.

  Halfway across, her path illuminated only by the colony’s exterior lights, she paused. Head down, she listened for the sound that had stopped her: the faintest of clicking noises, like electronic components trying to reinitialize.

  Silence met her ears.

  With a relieved sigh, she continued on. She was being paranoid. Her addled brain was a sure sign of a lack of sleep. Partner Dendrond was likely better off dealing with her alleged leak than having Nala cause a worse problem due to fatigue.

  Next, she’d see little green men scaling the walls.

  She massaged her cheeks and tried to ignore the prickling feeling that washed over her. A thrum overhead raised her hackles and she swallowed hard, trying to convince herself it was her imagination.

  The monitors in the corners above the doors flickered to life, casting an eerie glow into the tube.

  Nala stopped dead in her tracks, icy fingers of dread caressing her spine.

  The skywalk’s circuits were non-operational. She’d personally disconnected them three years ago. The screens shouldn’t have had enough reserve power for one to switch on, much less both.

  Fuzzing, the screen finally blurred into focus. A gray, lifeless face stared down at her, unseeing. The proverbial man-in-the-moon.

  “We are The Face.” The words filtered through the skywalk’s speakers as gooseflesh rose on her arms. Her eyes locked on the digitized mouth as it moved in exaggerated enunciation.

  The dramatic pause was familiar. It sent a jolt of cold fear and hot adrenaline through her veins. She bolted for the hatch at the opposite end of the skywalk, boots pounding on the deck.

  She slid her card through the slot of the electronic lock, twice, a third time.

  Nala was familiar with what The Face was – what they did.

  Panicked anticipation lanced through her. Nothing happened.

  Kicking open the panel below the card reader, she yanked as hard as she could on the emergency door release. The lever came away in her hand and she fell backward. Pain laced through her hip as it connected with the hard floor.

  “Do not attempt to escape. Our operatives have disabled all methods of egress.” The Face’s focus settled on the middle of the skywalk as its distorted voice echoed around her. “Protocols enacted as this recording initialized. Please remain calm. Attempts at escape or rescue may result in premature detonation of explosive charges. We appreciate your cooperation. The Face does not desire you to meet a cold and airless end as you fall to your death. We expect Senior Partner Schrift will save your many lives in his benevolence.”

  Scrambling away from the door, she wrenched her bag’s strap over her head and dug through its contents. She was not going to die in a

  decommissioned skywalk because The Face deemed it so. She paused, looking up to the passive face on the screen and leaned back, taking deep breaths to calm her nerves.

  With her back to the cool, transparent skywalk wall, Nala cursed her shortcut.

  “Limited” did not begin to describe her options.

  The Face no longer existed. Colony security busted the lot of them in a raid two years earlier. The few remaining members were harmless social dissidents with loads of bark, but no teeth.

  As for the benevolence of Senior Partner Shrift…. that died with him three months after his strike force purged The Face.

  Nala laughed at her current predicament. It was either that or cry.

  Trapped by the machinations of a defunct terrorist cell whose outdated demands would help no one.

  Strobes flickered throughout the colony towers and spindles. From her perch – in her glass prison

  – she could see the warning lights ripple through the facility.

  If The Face’s protocol didn’t send a message to the administration control center, she’d be on her own. Shaking away that thought, she ignored her foolishness. They’d receive an alert the moment an incendiary device armed itself.

  Colony citizens streamed past the windows a level below, headed toward the emergency staging locations.

  Standard colony procedure: Evacuate, seal off, and minimize damage.

  The damage they needed to minimize was not just structural. The inter-space press met terrorism of any sort on the colonies with severe censure. This would be a PR nightmare.

  Or it might have been. Nala sorted out her tools, taking stock of what little she had to work with. She tried not to think about how the colony’s PR mavens could spin this little disaster.

  Her attempt was a miserable failure.

  They had half of their work cut out for them. After all, one life was better than a dozen in the scheme of things. And they could play off her death as a hazard of the job she’d signed up for. Maybe they’d make her out to be a hero.

  Swallowing that moment of wry humor, she turned back to the panel.

  If they dug too far into her past, they’d cast her as the villain.

  The remains of the emergency lever’s wiring stuck out at her like the stiff legs of a dead insect. Pushing them aside, she fiddled through the electronics.

  In a handful of minutes, station security would arrive. They would take control. They’d tell her if she could fight for her own life… or if they expected her to die as an acceptable loss.

  Flicking on her flashlamp, she surveyed the damage. This panel was a mess of unequalled proportions.

  Leaving her tools, she ran to the other side of the skywalk and kicked out the opposite panel.

  There was no lever to use.

  Staring down at the empty space, her lamps beam traveled over the precise incisions in the wires. Whoever removed this emergency lever had done so on purpose and with care.

  She was stuck unless someone pulled her out from the other side of the door.

  The lamp flickered in her hand, and she smacked it three times before the beam returned to full brightness.

  “Of course the battery decides to fail now.”

  She flicked it off. Better to conserve the light for when she might need it than waste it now when she still had to figure out what she was going to do.

  Through the bright exterior lights, she squinted into the distance. The glimmering illumination of the newer colonies shimmered like a mirage. In her periphery, The Face blinked, its focus shifting as though watching over a flock under its care.

  She shivered in the eerie silence surrounding her. Outside the skywalk’s curved window, she saw straggling station denizens running for the exigency routes. The corridor that lead from Tower A’s outer walkway toward its interior stairwell was a bottleneck.

  Letting out a breath, she turned away from the bedlam, watching a shuttle land on the Lunar Twelve landing field. The colony administration wouldn’t notify the other colonies unless the emergency protocols failed. As far as they knew, everything was business as usual.

  The lights flickered on overhead, and the thrum of the air pushers gave her something to listen to besides her own thoughts. It meant they’d reconnected life support – something she
’d failed to think about as she ran from one side to the other. Unlimited air wouldn’t solve her problems, but it meant she wasn’t alone.

  A crackling buzz at the door pulled her attention from the air vent.

  The broken speaker was a memento from a disgruntled Partner moments after the others removed him from his position. She’d never fixed it because the order to decommission the skywalk went through days earlier.

  Three removed screws, one half-connected wire twisted, and she could make out the scratchy voice on the other end.

  “If you’re in there, let me know you can hear me. If you’ve tried so far, knock on the Tower Aside hatch.” Boudri’s voice was faint.

  “You’re supposed to be off duty, Ethan.”

  “That makes two of us. Whatever you triggered made its way to the mainframe while I was still up there,” Boudri said. His distant voice echoed against the mangled parts in the panel. “I wasn’t going to leave you up here by yourself.”

  “No, but you could have left this decision to someone else. It might have been easier.” Nala sorted through her kit. “You might have to make the hard call.”

  “We’re going to get you out of there.”

  She breathed out a slow sigh, trying to let herself believe the lie. “What did The Face tell you? It says it’s got explosives and that trying to get out will trigger them early.”

  “You think it’s a bluff?”

  A quick glance at the airless vacuum beyond the skywalk’s windows and she shook her head. “I don’t think I’m willing to find out.”

  “The official communique is that they have hostages. There are charges on either side of the sky walk, and they’re going to blow them if we don’t meet their demands”.

  “That could be a lie. You know they were notorious for misleading security about the placement of their bombs…. What are their demands?”

  “They want the nonexistent lunar penal colony to release a dozen political prisoners. And they want the late Partner Schrift to give them a million dollars. They say the money will help return the released prisoners to their previous life status.”