by A Keuser
“We were,” Eri said. “The statement garnered curious glances from Angela and Boudri, but Nala ignored it. She didn’t have time to care about what they might think.
“Sadly, we just have to hope no one’s in the tertiary corridors. The backup system is already priming for disaster mode.”
“How long do we have before the main corridors go?”
“Not long enough to get everyone into the med bays… which would be ideal.”
“Those – and the partner’s council chamber – will be the last to go,” Eri said, glancing out the dark windows behind them.
“We should find a way to contact the other colonies for help.”
Angela snorted and said, “We can’t
communicate within the colony; how are we supposed to get ahold of them?”
“The astral communications lab has all the equipment we could possibly need to send a signal.”
“But once they got it, they’d spend three weeks trying to prove it was alien in origin and we could be dead by then.”
“And if we’re not, the partners will crucify you for bringing another colony into our business.”
Angell muttered an irritated curse before she turned to Eri. “Why are you so secretive?”
“Uh, more important things are going on!” Nala finally broke into their conversation. She was up to her shoulder in the compartment, arms being scratched by the old and brittle wires’ jackets. “Guys. If you aren’t going to be helpful, you should get to one of the medical compartments.”
“We’re not leaving you out here alone.”
“She won’t be,” Eri said.
“To get us back online, I need to figure out why the power cut, right?” Nala asked. “When I checked the collection pools twenty minutes ago, they were all nominal. So somewhere between the source and the rest of the station, things were cut. Where do I need to go?”
Ethan let out a long breath. “The core is the easiest place – in theory – to get that done, but it’s under heavy security. Even with a power cut like this it would be next to impossible to get inside of.”
“He’s right. The next option would be a distribution junction…” Eri paused, shaking her head. “No, the hub. Since all the power cut at once.”
Nala clenched her teeth and pulled her arm and the lead from the panel. “It sounds like I have some climbing to do.”
The hub was out of reach for a reason. And if this wasn’t the source of their problems…. She’d have wasted an awful lot of time climbing in and out for nothing.
The circular chamber’s outer walls were packed tightly with cooling vents and fans. Dead center, like the core of an apple, the hub’s spindly coil pulsed with light and fed power to the rest of the colony. Beside it was a similar structure that lay on its side and a console where commands could be input on site if needed.
It was the only terminal in the entire facility Nala felt confident was working
The oddity in the room was the darkness that started five feet up the hub’s spindle, and the glowing red ring that marked the power’s
termination.
She’d only seen a dampening collar once. It was an ugly piece of tech created by and for the sort of people she’d once worked for. People who felt the best way to fell a giant was to cut its legs off, and what did the Lunar Colony Exploration Corporation stand on if not their ability to control the power?
She fumbled through her bag and pulled out the temperature gun. Most days it wasn’t
particularly necessary, but with a dampening coil….
She aimed the gun, pulled the trigger and read the numbers the lasers popped out on the back display. “Damn.”
Hustling over to the ladder, she looked up the tunnel and shouted, “The good news is that this is the problem. The bad news…. I might fry half the system in my attempt to fix it.”
“What’s going on down there?” Ethan asked. “Are the lines cut?”
“Unfortunately, whoever screwed us over put a dampening collar on the distribution coil.”
“What does that mean?” Angela’s head bumped against Eri’s as they both looked down through the access tunnel.
“Means there’s a big ugly ring wrapped around the optical cables that is leaching out their energy and turning it into a self-defense system. If I touch the ugly bastard, it’ll likely fry me and then destroy the hub.”
“So what do we do?”
Nala looked over her shoulder and swore under her breath before she looked back up to them. “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it. I can reroute the power through the aspersion hub…. It’ll keep us going until the power dies out of the ring and we can remove it.”
“You need clearance to do that.” Eri said, her voice hollow in the cavernous expanse.
“Yep, which means I need you and Ethan to climb down here.”
She prepped the conversion as she waited for them. It would be sloppy, the aspersion hub hadn’t gotten its name lightly. It was a method of colony control they’d never used – in her lifetime anyway – and one she’d hoped to never need.
With the clearance of the partners and station security, they could cut life support to whole sections of the colony. She swiped at the screen, flipping through the colony sections, assuring herself for the third time that all sections would receive full power and full life support. She was trying to save lives, not end them.
Eri touched her lightly on the shoulder and she flinched. “Sorry, I was just doing a third check.”
Nodding, Eri moved to the terminal beside Boudri.
“It’s a lucky thing they haven’t wiped me from the system yet,” he said as he punched in his clearance code.
Eri stepped in behind him and wordlessly did the same.
Behind them, the red light that had glowed dimly between the two hubs blinked twice and died as the yellow one beside it pulsed to life.
With a fortifying breath, Nala took hold of the lever that would alter the flow of power, switching circuits, much like the railways of old would switch tracks.
Normal operation would have seen a brief hiccup in power at which time the switch would be thrown.
She heaved on the lever, and around them, the pulsating noise of the dammed power echoed from the walls.
Using the full force of her weight, she hauled back on the lever and it crested over the arch. Leaning on it for the added force, she – and it – dropped to the decking. The lever slid home with a “shhk,” and the lights beside her turned to green.
Pushing back to her feet, she did a quick check of the machinery in front of her.
The aspersion hub glowed a placid blue as though it wasn’t designed to kill hundreds in one fell swoop.
Eri stood beside her and let out a grateful sigh before glancing to Ethan and saying, “As last acts go… I’d say you’re leaving this colony with a deed for which you can hold your head high.”
“Yeah, not that I plan on telling anyone I’m the first person in fifty years to use my clearance to initialize an aspersion hub.” He winked at Nala.
Eri reached out and took the tablet from Nala’s bag and tapped through several screens before handing it back. “I’ve upgraded your clearance level, we have to lock the hub down so no one will be able to use it for ill deeds.”
Nala accepted the clearance level and moved back to the input console with Eri. One final check to be sure all sections had returned to power and they secured the lockdown procedure.
“We’ll have to go brief the other partners,” Eri said with an apologetic wince.
Nodding, though she didn’t want to deal with them, Nala packed up her things and started for the ladder behind the others before saying, “A word of advice, Ethan? Run while you have the chance.”
Ethan laughed and continued to make his way up the access ladder. She knew he would be gone soon, regardless of her warning.
The partners had told them to wait, and when Angela commed her to let her know Ethan’s departure had bee
n moved up, she let the Partners deliberate without her.
Ethan Boudri stood beside the LTV, suited up but helmet off. “If you ever want to take a holiday, come over and visit me on Twelve.”
“Sure,” she said, rolling her eyes. “If things here ever stabilize again, I’ll do just that.”
“We had fun. I’m pretty sure we’ll be having more of the same in the future.” He snapped his helmet in place and climbed into the LTV.
“Your friend will be sorely missed,” Eri said, stepping up beside her. “I’ve already received complaints from his supervisor. Apparently his replacement is not of high enough caliber. She wants us to find a new one.”
The LTV rolled away and into the largest airlock – designed to accommodate it – and Nala winced at the cracking sound as its wheels crushed something.
The something turned out to be a slimline keyboard for data input. It reminded her of the brick she’d found here earlier. Pulling open the flap of her bag, she dug through its contents and retrieved the brick and her tablet.
“What’s that?” Eri peered over her shoulder, but didn’t reach for the device.
“Not sure yet, but I intend to find out.”
Nala sorted through the leads she had that would attach tablet to the brick and finally found the right one.
It took another three minutes to figure out how to turn the thing on. Whatever it was, the tech was old enough it took an age to boot.
She watched the LTV ferry Boudri away from the colony while she waited.
“The partners are holding a special council tonight to decide how they’ll explain the outage to the other colonies,” Partner Dendrond said. “So far they’re sticking with glitching software that our techs have already fixed.”
“They still don’t know about the skywalk bomb threat?”
“That was much easier to keep under wraps.” Eri leaned over and jostled her with her shoulder. “Imagine if they’d fired you? We’d still be floating around with our proverbial heads up our proverbial butts.”
“Think they would have canned me if the rest of my staff wasn’t on leave?” Nala asked.
“Likely… that does feel a little coincidental, don’t you think?”
Nala frowned as Eri followed her to the benches beside the lifts. “Let’s hope that’s all it is. Coincidence doesn’t continue to haunt you the way intent does.”
A dull bleep from the tablet in her hand pulled her attention to the screen as a bead of light chased itself in a circle and then the screen faded into focus.
The gray, static visage of the Face stared up at her and she and Eri shared a look.
In the bottom center of the screen, a cursor flashed, waiting for input. Nala tentatively typed in “command index.”
Rather than providing her with a list of acceptable commands, the Face parroted the two words in a quick and cool tone.
Nala stared at the screen with a growing dread. “If this is what was talking to me in the skywalk… our troubles have just begun.”
ZERO PROXIMITY
N
ala stared at the gray brick on her coffee table and wondered if it was too late to transfer back to Earth. The eclipse had
passed, light filtered in through her windows from the lunar surface, and Partner Eri Dendrond reclined on the opposite side of her living room.
While Nala was sprawled on the couch, chewing on painkillers to subdue the ache in her shoulders, Eri sat with her legs folded beneath her, a cup of hot green tea in the hands she had rested in her lap. The brick had no more answers to give them, and in a few hours, the other partners who governed Lunar Colony Six would require she surrender it to them.
That brick held a possible connection between the attempt to blow up one of the colony’s sky walks, with her inside, and an unknown dissident who had managed to get a dampening collar around the colony’s power hub.
Nala and her friends had managed to deal with both of those issues. She was determined to get through any other problems that might arise, though with Ethan Boudri, her friend and one-time station security guru out of the picture, her list of tentative allies had dropped to two: the colony incendiary specialist — who was currently attending a meeting with her daughter’s — and Eri. Two days ago, she would have counted the woman as the biggest thorn in her side. Today, she’d begun to change her mind.
They sat in relative silence, but Nala had too many things on her mind to think that would last.
“I’m still stuck on the lilies,” Eri said.
Her words made Nala flinch and she sat up, trying to disguise the movement.
“Sorry,” Eri said, proving Nala’s newly upright position hadn’t hidden her ill ease.
Glancing at her cautiously, Eri continued. “Someone is doing this, and if they aren’t the ones who put lilies in your apartment and then stole them back… I can’t imagine what’s going on with that.”
“Working off the assumption there’s no such things as a coincidence, we should start from the beginning.”
“No. We should start from the end: The Face.”
“Funny, I was going to suggest that was the beginning.” Nala pulled out her dry erase pen and cleared her glass coffee table. “First major event: The Face arms bombs in the skywalk.” She wrote “skywalk” on the table.
“That failed, so they connected the dampening ring to the hub.” As Eri said it, she wrote that part too and circled it.
She moved back to the far left of the table and scribbled out another note. “Boudri called me and sent me to your apartment.”
“He did?” Eri narrowed her gaze at the text on the table. “Why?”
“Because of your leak.”
Eri glanced up at her, brows furrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My apartment was dry as a desert when I left this morning.”
“Interesting.” Nala paused and looked down at the markings. “Well, someone sent through a demand that I go to your apartment to fix a leak, and because of where I was in relation to your apartment, I took the skywalk short cut.” She wrote “set up?” above the two points on the timeline.
“So, if you were meant to be in there when the trap was sprung, whoever set said trap had to know you would take the shortcut.”
“And they’d have to have had clearance to get in and out of the skywalk to place the bombs. I think I was meant to find mine in the floor space, but I don’t think I was supposed to live through the second one. If it hadn’t been for the non-conductive fluid there’s no way Angela and I could have stopped that one.”
“So they also know who you are?” Eri asked, though Nala knew she didn’t need an answer.
Instead of agreeing, she added, “And they have access to lilies. Too bad there’s no way to plug all that data into a search.”
“Isn’t it just?” Eri muttered to herself as she tapped a finger on the tabletop while Nala scrawled more notes.
When Nala was finished, they looked over the timeline and shared a discouraged look.
Nala’s comm beeped and she pulled the thing from the strap of her bag. “No rest for the wicked,” she grumbled before answering it. “Klef.”
A rasping laugh met her and a woman’s voice said, “How does it feel to know you’ve gotten away with murder?"
The husky voice cut out with the click of the comm.
After a moment’s hesitation while her brain caught up with her, Nala pulled the back off the comm and wired the receiver into her tablet. She could track them; she’d done it once before, though only with Ethan’s help.
“What is it?” Eri asked, scooting closer.
“Time to track a creep.”
She tapped through the commands available to her and routed the colony systems into a life force function. “With a little luck….”
The comm beeped again and she swore. Luck was not on her side at the moment.
After a pause, the colony operator grumbled at her and then switched to a sickly sweet tone to say, “Patch call from Et
han Boudri.”
“You have ridiculously poor timing,” she said when the patch tone sounded.
“Just letting you know I’m here, settled in and absolutely hating it.”
“Liar.” She envied him the relative luxuries available on Lunar Twelve.
“True.” He sighed audibly. “These facilities are pretty nice compared to what Six has.”
“Glad you made it, but bigger things are going on here.”
“I’ll call you when I’m not bogged down with intake paperwork.” Ethan clucked his tongue. “I’ll talk to you after your grunts get back and return to their normal schedule of sleeping on the job.”
Nala cut the comm and looked across the table at Eri with an irritated scowl. “Well, so much for tracing the call.”
“Get some sleep. The other partners are going to want to talk to you in the morning. I’d prepare a speech if I was you.”
“I can only do one or the other,” Nala said with an exhausted smile.
After ushering Eri out the door and washing up her tea mug, she scrubbed the remains of the white powder from her body. Then she found her much beloved bed and slept.
Nala woke that morning and considered her speech preparations while she brushed her teeth. She abandoned the idea as she knotted her box braids up behind her head and out of the way.
She pulled on her shirt in a sleepy haze. Rubbing at her eye with the heel of one hand, she stuffed her feet through her pants and straight into her boots. She was not going to be late, but she was not going to let them bully her. She needed coffee.
Walking through her apartment, she yawned and stretched out her arms, inhaling the pleasant scent that wafted from her kitchen. Her mind processed the smell as she caught a white blur in her periphery. She spun around, moving too quickly. Her hand hit the vase and it wobbled.
She grabbed the lilies before they fell from the counter. Clutching at them, afraid they would disappear if she hesitated even for a second, Nala took a deep breath.
She pulled her reassembled comm from her pocket and called Eri. “Tell your fellow partners, I’m going to have to take a rain check. The lilies are back.”