Lunar Colony VI

by A Keuser

  “It’s that or stand around with my thumb up my nose.” Nala didn’t wait for a response as she scooped Susie up and headed for the lifts. Once inside, she looked at Susie with a smile. “Your mom is going to deal with that ugly thing and then come back downstairs to join us, okay?”

  Susie nodded and with one hand signed her understanding. There was no one in the colony with more faith in Angela than her daughter.

  Turan stepped inside and escorted them back to the aspersion hub in silence.

  Climbing down the ladder ahead of Susie, she caught the girl up before her feet touched the ground.

  Chadha glanced between her and Susie and met them halfway across the space with a scowl. “You didn’t have enough to do? You added babysitting to the list?”

  “Partner Chadha, this is Susie. She’s my best gal and she’s helping me out today.” Giving the woman a well-deserved glare, she said, “You aren’t.”

  Brushing past the partner, Nala sat Susie down on the floor and handed over her bag. “I’ll let you know what I need. Deal?”

  Susie nodded vigorously and opened the bag’s flap with grim determination.

  She had Susie find her a pen, then asked her to pull up the right folder on her tablet. Six years old or not, Susie was a whiz with computers.

  Other colony personnel joined them as she worked. Their presence was unnecessary, but she had nowhere else for them to be either.

  Nala knew the moment the comms came back on line; everyone, it seemed, had someone they needed to check on. She glanced around the toofull room and then back at Susie. She ignored them all, working through the systems on the tablet.

  Five minutes of tinkering and she thought she’d found an answer, only to discover it was a buried algorithm one of the scientists was using to hide his comm traffic with his girlfriend back on Earth.

  Susie waved her hand suddenly and shoved her finger at the tablet toward a blinking red box.

  Nala didn’t trust the tablet, so she tapped through the commands on the hard link console and when she read the data, a sickly cold swept over her.

  The aspersion hub had done exactly what it had been designed for and Tower C’s failure was not an accident. As she read further, it got worse.

  Nala slammed her hand against the panel’s housing and cursed. Beside her, Chadha flinched.

  “Find Dendrond. Now.” Nala closed her eyes. The information on the screen was too ugly to look at any longer. “She coded the hub to overload. I should have taken the time to read all the way through the damned code structure before I approved it.”

  Chadha glanced warily at the screen. “Could it have been an accident?”

  Clenching her jaw, Nala released the pressure before she spoke. “It was intentional. And if you don’t get her down here in the next ten minutes, it might be irreversible.”

  Chadha flinched, but didn’t argue further. With a snap of her fingers, she sent a security staffer scurrying back up the ladder. Turning away, she raised her comm to her ear and spoke in low, harsh tones.

  “I’m not going to take you on blind faith like Chadha will,” Elodie said as she stepped to the computer console beside her and looked at the screen. “Tell me what has you convinced we can’t fix this on our own.”

  “The code she put in – the one I didn’t have enough time to proof – it has a cascading series of failures written into the background program. And because the system requires both permissions, I can’t do anything about it without her.”

  “Why would she do that?” Elodie asked, concerned eyes fixed on the control panel.

  “Because she’s been working with Diana.” Chadha pulled her comm from her ear. “She’s not responding to comms, none of our people can track her down, and I just got word: she’s the one who evacuated the C Tower before it had issues. Knowing all that, on top of this…? How could she not be involved?”

  “If she was involved… who else among us is as well?” Elodie’s piercing glare lit upon Nala and she rolled her eyes at the partner’s thinly veiled accusation.

  Angela dropped down the ladder to join them as another shuddering quake rippled through the colony around them. She ducked in beside Nala and they crouched against the wall shielding Susie. Steadying herself, Nala threw her hands over her head as metal twisted and panels fell from the wall. Susie cowered below them with her hands pressed tightly against her ears.

  When the rolling shudder stopped, they broke apart and surveyed the damage.

  Angela stepped away from the others, comm in one hand, the other holding tight to her daughter’s.

  “We shouldn’t have allowed children,” Elodie muttered as she kicked a piece of debris away and shook her head.

  Partner Chadha had stopped, her sudden stillness putting Nala on edge. When she followed the woman’s sight line, she saw the reason for her tightly pressed scowl.

  A crack ran through the support structure. The wide fissure left the crossbeam sagging under the colony’s weight. Swallowing the fearful lump in her throat, Nala turned back to her work, looking for any way to stop another tremor from killing them all.

  Angela tugged at her arm and pulled her away from the crowd to the back wall. With Susie squeezed in beside her, she said, “I just got ahold of Lunar Twelve.”

  Nala nodded, absently, her eyes tracing the length of the crack. “Are they willing to take some of our people?”

  “Yes, but that’s not why we need to talk.”

  The incendiary specialist paused, glancing nervously at the backs of the security personnel closest to them.

  Nala glared at her. “You’re scaring me, Angela. After everything that’s happened this week. I don’t need the suspense.”

  Swallowing loudly, Angela said, “Ethan isn’t there.”

  “He already ditched them?” Nala couldn’t fathom it, Ethan had spent years working for a transfer to one of the newer colonies. He wasn’t the sort to flake when he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.

  “No, they have no record of his transfer….” Angela glanced at the security guard closest to them and winced. “According to their head of security, they had no openings and haven’t hired anyone in over a year.”

  Nala couldn’t think of what to say as her mind turned over this new information. Ethan had assured her he’d arrived at his new position and was settling in fine. If he’d lied to her about that…. She shook away the suspicion. He had nothing to gain from what was happening now.

  Angela looked at the others and back again. “He was the one who sent you to Dendrond’s apartment when you got caught in the skywalk.”

  “He’s also the one who cut me out of the skywalk and almost died with us when we couldn’t defuse the other bomb.” Nala shook her head, “No, Ethan is my friend. He wouldn’t have done any of this.”

  Angela frowned. “I don’t know, sometimes the people you call friend have terrible secrets they never intended to share.”

  Before Nala could defend herself against her own past, the remaining partners called for silence. When the space quieted, and all eyes were on Partner Chadha, she spoke.

  “This is that proverbial straw.” Chadha looked at the crack over head with a defeated sigh and a grim scowl. “Begin the evacuation. Don’t do an all call, go through sector by sector, we’ll do a full announcement once we’ve got half of the colony emptied. I don’t want anyone trampled. And I don’t want a panic.”

  The partners and security staff left to marshal their troops and begin the evacuation. Nala didn’t move. She stared down at the aspersion hub – at the device she’d powered up that had destroyed her home – and the enormity of Diana’s plan finally sank in.

  “If you want to take anything with you, you’ll want to go now.” Chadha stood at the railing, the skin over her knuckles taut as she held it in a death grip. “Whatever you leave behind… make sure your guilt stays with it. This was not your fault. Dendrond played us all....”

  Nala turned away, but stopped and said the words that would not
leave her mind. “I carry enough guilt with me for the lifetime I spent as Verity… more isn’t going to kill me.”

  She left Chadha in the aspersion hub chamber and climbed back to the main corridors of the colony. She didn’t turn toward her apartment. Until the colony was past hope, she would try to fix it.

  NON-PASSIVE FAILURE

  T

  he colony had emergency drills for everything. They’d run through fire, bomb, and infectious diseases drills each month

  since Nala Klef signed her contract. With the comm systems back up and running, security crews had been dispatched to start evacuation procedures. Moving the displaced residents of C Tower was the easiest course of action, as they were already in a group and technically staged for departure.

  The colony’s partners sent their teams off to handle the evacuation and then reassembled, conferring.

  Nala glanced across the room to where Susie stood at the window. Six years old, and already she eavesdropped like a champ.

  Her mother, Angela, was downstairs, helping the others to evacuate the colonists. Susie had come to the partners' council chambers with Nala. Ostensibly out of the way, with brows knit, the little girl’s arms were crossed tightly over her chest. Nala knew Susie was listening to every word she could catch of the partners’ conversation.

  When she caught Nala looking, Susie smiled guiltily and signed a non-apology.

  Walking over to the window, Nala sat on its ledge and kept the partners in her line of sight as she gave Susie a hopeful smile.

  "At least you get to go for a moon walk," she said quietly.

  Susie’s fingers moved in slow, determined signs as she agreed that her mother would never let her take a surface walk without impending doom.

  Nala laughed and rested her head back against thick polymer-coated glass. "I'm surprised your Uncle Boudri was never able to talk her into it."

  Frowning, Susie asked where he was, why he wasn’t helping… why he’d left.

  Before she answered, Nala licked her lips, using the pause to give her time to decide what to say. In the end, she settled on the truth.

  "I don't know. He was supposed to be working for Lunar Twelve now, but it looks like that's not what happened."

  Susie's brow wrinkled and her lips twisted as she considered that. After a moment's hesitation, she signed, "He's in trouble."

  Ethan had spent nearly as much time with Angela and Susie as Nala had. If Susie thought something was off about his behavior, she was probably right.

  With a new reason to worry, Nala asked, “Why do you think that?”

  Susie’s fingers fluttered again, and Nala’s stomach sank as Susie described a woman with scars from her shoulder down her arm.

  The description matched that of the woman who had killed Nala’s crew and countless others; it sent a shiver down her spine. “This woman, Diana, did she see you?”

  Susie nodded and made a rude gesture before signing that Diana assumed she was deaf, as so many others did.

  The hatch opening in the corridor drew their attention as Angela stepped inside, leveling a stern stare at them. "We need to get going. Susie's in the next transport schedule, and I need to get her over there and get back as quickly as possible."

  Nala nodded as Angela took hold of the girl's hand. "Be safe."

  Looking at her with an all too familiar frown, Angela said, "Don't do anything... you’d normally do before I get back."

  Crossing her heart, Nala gave her friend a weak smile. "Wouldn't dream of it."

  The three lingering partners made their decisions and broke apart. Nala watched the women move in an odd ballet. Nods of agreement in an odd synchronicity followed by a seemingly choreographed turn.

  Partner Turan came toward her with a determination that might have scared her on another day. Today, she saw the woman's movements as a clear sign of their dire situation.

  Nala imagined her own expression was a reflection of the partner’s. She loved this colony, as did all of the others, and she was determined to keep it from dying.

  A week ago, that hadn't been too difficult of a proposition.

  "We need to get the C Tower functioning again," Turan said.

  Nala hesitated, then said, "Is that really our first priority? There are a dozen other systems that need repair – all of which I’d put higher on a list of to-dos.”

  “The station’s systems already think we're in a catastrophic collapse."

  "I know," Nala said, too quickly.

  Turan narrowed her eyes, "Then you know we can't hope to disentangle the aspersion hub or the dampening coil until we fix that."

  Nala studied her before it clicked. "C Tower has to be functioning before the computers will accept changes… and that's how she put us into this lock down."

  "Yep.” Turan replied curtly and punched in her access codes, holding open the lift door. “Let's get you suited up again."

  Without disguising her groan, Nala joined Turan in the lift and collapsed backward against the lefthand wall.

  Turan leaned against the opposite wall. "Well, I suppose one of your problems will be solved if we can't get things fixed. We can't fire you if your job no longer exists, or if we’re all dead."

  Nala blinked at her before settling on what to say. "You're not very good at trying to lighten the mood. But I guess this is technically my fault.”

  "No," Turan said. Her fists were clenched and her tone harsh. "This is not your fault. This is Diana's fault and it's Dendrond's fault."

  Nala flinched at the name of the colony partner she had briefly called a friend.

  If Turan noticed, she said nothing of it, continuing without pause. "We are going to fix these problems and we're going to fix that crack and we're going to get back to business as normal."

  "Are we going to catch Diana and Dendrond?"

  "We've tasked security with that job. If they’re still inside the colony walls they won't get past us again. And if they’re gone, they won’t get back in."

  Nala had a feeling that, whatever the two women hoped to accomplish, they were done with the colony. Everything they’d planned to do was likely already in place.

  Suited up and at the C Tower’s emergency airlock, Turan gave her a smile and hesitant thumbs-up. “Once you get in there and get everything sorted, we’ll be able to flip the switch and get us back up and running.”

  Partner Chadha jogged to them from the flickering light of an access corridor and whispered something to Turan before she turned to Nala.

  "You know what to do. We've got all of the residents of Towers C and B evacuated and are in the final stages with Tower A. In half an hour, we'll be down to a skeleton crew and we'll all look a little more like you." Chadha nodded at the spacesuit she wore. "There's no one on this colony I trust more than you to get in there and get it figured out."

  "Even knowing my past?" Nala said, biting her tongue as soon as she asked it. She shouldn’t need more validation, but she worried the partners would not forget or forgive her nefarious past anytime soon.

  "Even then," Chadha said as she held open the airlock door.

  They operated the door's locking mechanism together, one on either side, locking her in, and Nala did one last check of her helmet's seal before giving Chadha the thumbs up. "Good to go in here."

  Nala waited as Chadha vented the air from the small compartment. Glancing at the doorway to the C Tower, she couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to open the hatch under explosive decompression. It was not a pleasurable prospect.

  Moving to less morbid thoughts, she checked the display on her suit’s arm and noted the time. Angela would be back in a handful of minutes and if the woman didn't find her way to a comm set, Nala was going to kick her when she saw her next.

  Nala cycled through the C Tower hatch and pushed the door open – an odd experience with the lower gravity now surrounding her.

  Once inside, she glanced back into the airlock chamber.

  Through the closed h
atch on the other side, Turan gave her a quick nod before she disappeared back into the brightness of the viable section.

  Turning slowly, so her flash lamp gave her a full view of the space around her, she noted the few obstructions.

  Any room was creepy when you knew it was abandoned. Even more so when you knew it could

  - and would – kill you under the right circumstances. Nala would be keeping her helmet on, thank you very much.

  Not that she expected anyone to ask her to remove it.

  "Focus," she told herself, and immediately pursed her lips hoping no one was listening.

  A discarded beaker rolled off the counter and made it’s slow decent to the floor, its contents suspended in bubbles across as they spilled out. The white light of her flashlamp left ghostly shadows on the walls and view ports. It was the silence that was the worst of all.

  She had a long walk ahead of her and as she stepped into the corridor, she cursed. It would be longer than expected.

  The corridor to her left was filled with fire suppression foam.

  Swallowing down the claustrophobic feelings that threatened to grip her, she considered her options. She could cut through it, but she didn’t know how long that would take, and without knowing what was on the other side, it was not a risk she was willing to take. That left her with the safer, but likely longer option.

  She punched the foam and let out a frustrated sigh before turning on her heel. She bounded down the corridor in the other direction. If she was going to make progress, she needed to hustle.

  It took her twenty minutes to navigate the foamfilled corridor detour, and another five to open the access panel she needed. When it came loose, she pushed it aside and let it fall slowly away - there would be time for cleanup later.

  Two tones sounded in her ear and then her comms connected. “About time,” she grumbled.

  "Hope you've been having an easier time of it than I have," Angela's voice crackled in her ear. "The partners of Colony Eight are real jerks, in case you were wondering."

  "I hadn't given it much thought, actually," Nala said. “How’s the evac coming along?”