Lunara: The Original Trilogy

by Wyatt Davenport

  "I’m not saying he is guilty of the conspiracy against Mars. But he did know about a large cache of meteor stones somewhere. The markings and the identification tags were legitimate. You have a copy of the report Josef Vhortov gave us, so you have a list of the metalor tags. I checked the Martian database aboard the Zephyrian yacht, and I can’t find a record of them using it after their arrival."

  "Thousands of tags aren’t traceable anymore," Sarah said, pressing her forefinger to her thumb to emphasize her point. "Illegally trading metalor is a lucrative business."

  "But more than a million tons are missing, and someone can’t just steal it without it showing up somewhere. The molecular bonding of at least one of them would appear. You know Mars tracks every single fragment of metalor from its processing to its final manufacturing point. And in the slim chance of recycling it, we amend the record, which can’t be overwritten. So your father must have known where all the metalor was going."

  "I suppose he did," Sarah said, and then turned toward the bay window. He followed her view to the Lunara tower, snapped at its base, lying along the lunar surface. "You see the damage done to Lunara and the damage on Mars. Are you sorry for what you have done?"

  "At first a little, but now I realize the war started with the attack against me. I was the first victim. I thought what I did let down everyone. Mars has long been my adversary, and once again, it hurt me. The MSA is an extension of everything Mars and humanity embodies: war, destruction, and deceit."

  "So you are impenitent about what happened to the consuls, Madelyn White, or my family? Are they collateral damage to you?"

  "Of course not. I watched each of them die, and I was helpless to do anything. It pained me as much as anyone. I have my head on straight now, and I realize the truth. I’m ready to reclaim the planet with the Alliance. Chloe and I have special abilities to help."

  "Your abilities didn’t help you before. What makes you so sure they can help you now?"

  "Because of Hans Bauer."

  "He is the Mars Medical doctor responsible for the torture of Chloe Smith, Chief Falloom, you, and countless other Alliance citizens. I don’t see how he aided you unless you were working for the MSA."

  "I told you. I’m not part of the MSA," he said firmly. "His experiments on us have made me strong, and Chloe more aware of everything around us. He woke us. We aren’t suffering from the same trauma as the other torture victims. Chloe and I are better than we were before. With my strength and agility, I’m invaluable to any special operations task force. If you want the chancellor dead, I can kill him."

  Her eyes opened wide and trained themselves on him. She sat down, leaning in toward him. "You would kill the—"

  BOOM!

  Her chair kicked to the side. She grabbed at the table and managed to steady herself when her knee hit the floor.

  He bent to steady himself against the shaking and scooted toward her.

  The lines on her face tightened with concern. "Are there earthquakes on the moon?" she shouted above the rattling of the shaking room.

  "The moon doesn’t have quakes," he said. "It could be a meteor strike, but we should have detected it long before."

  Slowly, the trembling waned.

  Sarah pulled out her CommUn, paged the command station, and searched Seth’s eyes for answers.

  He stared past her. "Look, fire coming out of the utilities sector."

  "A geyser’s worth!" she exclaimed.

  Flames kicked one hundred paces out of a jagged hole on the northwest portion. He couldn’t imagine the amount of fuel it would take to spit that far into the vacuum of space. He moved to the window.

  Sarah followed behind him. "What is in the utilities sector?"

  "The sewage reprocessing, the heating and cooling generators, and the water cleansing plant, along with hundreds of other small systems that keep most of Lunara running."

  "So basically, we are all in serious trouble."

  "A lot more than you think," he said. "If the heating and cooling generators are down, that means the air scrubbers are also down. With the influx of people in the colony, the carbon dioxide levels will rise to dangerous levels. And if our blood gets too much carbon dioxide—"

  "We will all pass out from hypercapnia. I read up on deep space colonies. Great, this is all I needed."

  "Minister Cortez," a voice said over her CommUn. "This is Command Controller Sikes. You paged?"

  "Sikes, have reports come in about the explosion in the utility section of the colony?"

  "Yes, Minister. Nothing conclusive so far. Captain Dalton, Chief Falloom, and General McCloud were in the control station and are headed to survey the situation now. If you get to green station in the next five minutes, you should be able to board the transit they are about to leave on."

  "Radio ahead and tell them to hold the train for me at green station." Sarah turned to him. "What is the fastest way there?"

  "I’m coming with you," he said, moving to the door.

  Sarah stopped and didn’t follow, holding her hands to her side.

  He twisted to face her, and before he took a fatal step toward her, he saw her rigid posture. "I’m going to green station with you."

  "I don’t want you coming," Sarah said. "People are dying down there, and you will only distract everyone. You realize that they hate you."

  "I have no other choice. They need me now. Someone has to risk himself to save the people who are trapped. I will go."

  She shrugged one shoulder. "And that will make a difference?"

  "I can’t turn back the past. If I’m willing to risk myself, it can only turn out good for you and for them. Either I rescue someone, or I die."

  "Good point," Sarah said, taking a step toward the door before she paused where Seth was standing, reached out with her arm and grabbed his elbow. "I’m calling the shots down there. Don’t think about doing anything without my permission."

  "I understand," he said. "Can we go? The train will be arriving in a matter of minutes, and we have three corridors to traverse."

  "Why didn’t you tell me?"

  Chapter 6

  As the elevator door opened, Eamonn, Ty, Sarah, and Parker moved out. Seth lingered behind. The smoke-filled room provided the opportunity for him to regain trust. He would play the part of the hero. He followed them into the room.

  "What happened here?" Sarah said to the lead officer of the emergency medical personnel.

  "Minister," the officer stood, raising his posture to meet her. "I can’t tell for sure, but we have at least five casualties and about twenty injuries. Mostly burns."

  Away from them, Seth noticed Arleen Kelter, head of Lunara utilities, talking frantically with several members of her team. She was a friend, and if anyone could give a rough estimate of what had happened, it would be her. He followed Ty and Parker toward Kelter.

  "Arleen, what happened?" Ty called as he approached them.

  "An explosion in the water processing plant. We got lucky, and it didn’t do any damage to the structure. We retrofitted the tanks and the pumps with metalor shields a few months ago," Arleen said, her face covered in soot.

  "We don’t have much metalor shielding in the colony," Ty said, cocking one brow. "Why would they strike the one place that is protected?"

  "Only you and my team know about it," Kelter said. "We don’t send a status report to Mars very often. I checked the last report, and I didn’t list it as having shielding."

  "What is the status of the structure around the explosion?"

  "The explosion tore a hole in the pump room. The fountain of fire and smoke exiting the colony was more of a show than anything. The explosion gashed a three-meter hole and the metalor shielding deflected most of the fire up through it. However, the metalor’s strength directed the blast out the doorways of the pump room into the control room. The fire killed five people near the door—such a tragic way to die." Arleen paused. "We have the pump room depressurized. The fire is out…but we can’t put out the
fire in the control room to drop the pressurization hatches. People are still in there. I didn’t want to make that call."

  "People are still in the room," Seth said. "Parker, let’s go."

  He grabbed the fire masks from Arleen and headed toward the control room.

  "Seth, wait," Ty called. "We can’t put more people in there. If the temp gets too hot, we will have to depressurize. We can’t risk the colony."

  Seth turned to Ty. "Give us five minutes. If the temperature reads hot, eject us into space. We have to help."

  Eamonn came rushing from the side and tossed a fire coat to him and another to Parker. "I’m coming, too."

  "You sure?" Seth said.

  "Don’t be dumb." Eamonn turned toward Ty. "Tell the girls that we love them."

  He spotted Parker taking a long glance across the room toward Sarah as she ordered the medical personnel to assist the burn victims. Parker’s passion created an odd feeling within him. He had never seen his friend in love before, or with such purpose.

  They slipped on their masks and headed toward the control room.

  Seth waved his hand in front of his face to brush away the smoke. The temperature had increased to scorching hot as soon as they entered the corridor outside of the control room. He couldn’t imagine how hot it was inside the room itself. As smoke billowed out of the doorway, emergency personnel huddled beside it attending to a handful of coughing and wheezing victims.

  "How many are left in the control room?" Eamonn shouted toward the commander of the emergency unit abandoning the control room.

  "Only one, but the poor woman is trapped behind a wall of flames and debris. I don’t know if we can get her out in time!" the commander shouted back.

  "Head back into the main corridor," Eamonn said. "We’ll try to get her out. Don’t risk yourself again. Take these people to safety."

  "Okay," the commander replied. "Take this extinguisher. It might help on the smaller flames…and my coat, you can wrap her in it."

  "Thanks."

  Eamonn let the people pass and then turned to Parker and Seth and waved them forward. A woman screamed as they crept toward the door. Smoke poured out of the door at a terrifying speed.

  Seth moved ahead of Eamonn and scuttled into the room, staying close to the floor. He felt a wall of heat hit him instantly, as if he was in an oven set on broil. The heat wave pulsed against his body, stinging his arms and legs, and he thought for a moment he was on fire, but Eamonn, close beside him, flashed a thumb up for him to continue.

  At first glance, the woman was hidden from his view, and the air roaring throughout the room drowned out her cries for help. Seth swiveled his head to the right. In the control room’s administration station, no one was visible. Eamonn grabbed his arm and pointed to the side. Following his outstretched arm, Seth spotted her through his watering eyes. He blinked continuously to assure himself she was there.

  Eamonn signaled Parker to secure the doorway and make sure they had a path back after they retrieved the woman. Seth continued to scuttle toward her. He kicked and used his elbows to clear the melted terminals and chairs.

  He had been in the room a number of times as a child. It was a regular stop on Ty’s routine of walking the colony at least once a week, but as he grew up, he stopped following Ty on his weekly rounds. So he hadn’t been in this room for a number of years, but he recognized where the woman was trapped at the bottom of the leveled room. It was in what the workers called "the pit," a carved out semicircle housing a variety of computer systems and monitoring screens.

  A fallen beam and assorted debris pinned her in. The flames around the debris had subsided, but she still couldn’t get over it.

  Seth coughed. The air was getting thin, and he knew they only had a few minutes or they would all suffocate. Sweat poured like a river down his back. "Eamonn, get back to Parker. Nothing you can do here. I’ll follow with the woman."

  "No chance. I can’t leave you," Eamonn replied. "You need help carrying her."

  "Stay here then. I’ll be back." He moved up, braced himself in front of the beam, sprang up with tremendous force, jumped high into the air, and landed on the other side next to the woman.

  When he touched her, the woman collapsed to the ground. He removed his mask and placed it over her head. His eyes stung instantly when the smoke hit them. Nothing he could do about it.

  Grabbing the woman by the waist, he heaved her over his shoulder, braced himself again, and jumped up and over the beam.

  As he came down on the other side, the woman’s weight shifted, and he stumbled and fell to one knee. His shoulder touched a metal rail along the wall, and the heat pushed through his coat to his skin. "Ahh!" he screamed, almost dropping the woman.

  Eamonn pulled the woman from his shoulder and wrapped her in the extra coat. They both pulled her along the floor toward an awaiting Parker.

  They exited into the corridor and coughed uncontrollably.

  Parker lingered at the doorway.

  Seth started to pull him but realized Ty would be depressurizing the control room at any moment.

  Parker gritted his teeth as his hands bore the burning pain of the handle, and he slammed the door shut. Immediately the depressurizing gates opened, and the fire and heat of the control room was sucked into the vacuum of space. One instant the room was unbearably hot, and now the entire room was below freezing.

  Seth coughed the smoke out as a cool rush of air from the opposite end of the corridor blew over him, sending a welcome chill down his back.

  "Olivia!" a man shouted, pushing past the workers in the corridor and racing toward Seth and the woman in his arms. Seth eyed the man. He had seen him before on Lunara but couldn’t remember when or where. "It’s okay, she’s my wife," the man said.

  "Her hands are burned, and she has taken in a lot of smoke," Seth said as he placed her gently on the gurney the medical personnel brought over. "Make sure she gets some painkillers."

  "All right," the medical officer replied as he started to wrap her hands in an antiseptic cloth. As fresh oxygen was pumped into her lungs, she became more alert and coughed to the side as the ash and soot from the smoke came back out of her lungs. She struggled to open her eyes.

  "Thank you," she murmured.

  "Don’t talk," Seth said gently. "Just relax and rest. You are safe now."

  Her husband brushed her tattered hair tenderly and kissed her on the forehead. "Just rest, baby. The doctors will fix your hands."

  She smiled wanly before letting her tired body consume her as she slipped into unconsciousness.

  The man turned toward Seth. "I can’t thank you enough for what you did for my wife. If you ever need a favor, just ask. My name is Miles Namath, and my wife is Olivia."

  "No favors needed. Just take your wife to the hospital and get her better."

  "You bet," the man replied. He took over Seth’s position beside the gurney and helped the medical personnel wheel his wife toward the hospital, leaving Seth to stare out of the bay window at the debris falling back toward the surface, a mixture of chairs and computer terminals. A terrifying reminder of where he could have been if he had failed.

  "Parker!" Sarah ran to him. Passing Seth, her sneer was apparent, but she didn’t say anything to him, continuing toward Parker. "What happened to you?"

  "Sarah," Parker said. "It’s only a small burn. Someone had to shut the control room."

  "Why didn’t Seth close the door? You shouldn’t be the one risking your life repeatedly. You aren’t allowed to risk your life again."

  "Is this my wife or the minister talking?"

  "Both," she said with an unyielding expression. "Where are the medical personnel?" She waved toward a group that was tending to a group of patients. "Help my husband. His hands are burned. Now, come over here."

  "Calm down," Parker said. "My hands are low priority, and Eamonn already wrapped them."

  "He isn’t a doctor, and you won’t be so gallant when they have to chop off your hands wh
en infection sets in. I thought Seth had some super healing ability. Why didn’t he do it?"

  "He was carrying the woman."

  "He is a coward."

  "I will ignore your comments because you are obviously distraught," he said. "And just for your information, Seth risked his life for the woman. He was the person who went into the fire, and he was the only one in the solar system who could have made the jump he did to get the woman out from behind the fallen debris. I want you to apologize to him."

  "I didn’t do anything wrong to him," Sarah said, taken aback. "I have every right to doubt him after what he did."

  "You might doubt him for other reasons, but you were wrong about what he did in there. I think that he deserves something from you and all other people who doubted his commitment."

  Sarah snorted.

  "He’s over there." Parker pointed toward Seth who was still staring at the crowd of people.

  "Ms. Cortez," Ty said, moving up toward the group.

  "Sorry, business to attend to," she said, mocking Parker’s insistent tone. "Maybe later."

  "Eamonn, you should hear this, too," Ty said, waving Eamonn over to the group.

  "What’s up?" Eamonn said, between coughs.

  "According to the security reports and eyewitness accounts, a homemade bomb caused the explosion. One of the guards rigged it up…a defector during the takeover invasion. He placed it close to the oxyhydrogen tanks."

  "Thus the bloom of fire," Eamonn said.

  Ty nodded. "It was a suicide bombing, so we can’t question him about allies or other possible threats. I have ordered all personnel to work in pairs for now. A full report will be on your desks by the end of the hour."

  "Suicide bombing? Was this guy a nut job?" Eamonn said with a hint of surprise in his tone.

  Parker felt the same surprise. Martian people valued life more than their Earthan counterparts did. It didn’t make sense. Even this war spared plenty of lives by keeping the colonial fighting to a minimum. Most of the fighting was outside the colonies or in orbit.

  "Not according to his file," Ty replied. "But this investigation is only minutes old."