Gunpowder Moon

“Welcome to the Moon, son.”

  They found the catwalk, which rose over the rock pile in an arch that came close to the lava tube’s rounded ceiling. Dechert fell into line behind his mentor for the steep climb. He made an effort to keep his focus on the alien world in front of him; this was his first extended Moonwalk with Fletcher, and he wanted to leave a good impression. A twenty-centimeter pipe ran along the base of the catwalk and out to the tube’s entrance, looking like an artery pumping the lifeblood of the American lunar colonies straight from the heart of the Moon. At its end, three hundred meters down the tunnel, lay Peary Crater and Serenity 1’s frozen manna—the greatest deposit of ice found to date on Luna.

  Fletcher leaped up the narrow catwalk two steps at a time, reaching the top and stopping to wait for his pupil. He leaned back against the railing and folded his arms, looking down at Dechert with his helmet tilted back.

  “You never run out of energy, do you?” Dechert asked between breaths. He felt light-headed and wondered if the walk-profile computer had somehow screwed up his gas mix.

  “This is the Moon, kid, not some low-orbit getaway for wannabes. There’s no time for half-assing it up here.”

  “Well, that’s the first time I’ve been called a kid in about a decade,” Dechert replied, “so I’ll forgive the part about half-assing it.”

  He made it to the top of the catwalk and took a few long, deep pulls of air. They looked down the other side to see an even larger rubble field than the one they had just climbed over. Massifs of anorthosite and troctolite lay strewn along two sides of a deep, angled depression. It looked as if a giant child had punched through one of the cavern walls hundreds of thousands of years ago, collapsing the roof and leaving a large oblong dent in the floor, which grew deeper and more elongated at its western edge. The pipe running along the catwalk snaked through the boulder field and disappeared into the cigar-shaped hole, and as they began to descend the stairs, Dechert could see what they had come for: ice. Small deposits of it frozen into the lunar bedrock, dirty-gray but flecked with slivers of white that gleamed in the fluorescent lighting. Ice that would never melt, hidden away from the sun that now broiled the Serenity plain a few hundred meters above them.

  “The cosmic mother lode,” Fletcher said. “The day we found this was the day that we knew we could live on the Moon without having to squeeze water from miles of polar rock. The day we knew we could survive in situ, straight off the land.”

  “Minus the occasional imported beefsteak,” Dechert said.

  “Mmm. For now. But one day we’ll overcome that deficiency as well.”

  Dechert looked over at his boss. He spoke with the fervor of a man who had just found God and wanted to share him with the rest of the world. But Fletcher’s religion wasn’t theistic, Dechert knew; it was a worship of space. The SMA’s chief lunar explorer hadn’t been back on Earth in six years, the longest off-planet stretch ever for any human being. And he wasn’t going back any time soon—in six months the greatest pioneer the Moon had ever seen would be heading to Mars to set up a way station at its icy south pole.

  “As you can see, the comet fragment came in at just the right angle of attack to not completely collapse the tube,” Fletcher said, drawing his arm in an arc across the width of the tunnel. “It was large enough to leave a viable deposit of volatiles, and just small enough to not annihilate them when it exploded.”

  “The Goldilocks comet,” Dechert said.

  “Exactly. Four times larger than any other known water deposit on the Moon, and much easier to extract than perma-ice.”

  They stepped down from the base of the stairwell and made their way through the narrow path cut into the boulder field. Dechert reached the edge of the impact crater and looked down into the pit, where a robotic sifter scraped at the ice and rock, heating it up and then sucking the water into the processing pipe for export back to the silos.

  “How much is left?”

  “At least nine hundred thousand cubic meters. Enough to supply a good chunk of our lunar operations for ten years, if you include recycling. And by then we’ll find more.”

  Dechert peered down into the pit again, making sure he had a strong grip on a reinforced metal stanchion that had been spiked into an overhanging ledge.

  “Must have been a bitch getting the sifters set up down there.”

  “Yeah, it was.”

  Dechert looked over at him. “And after all this work, you’re going to Mars to start all over again?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You still haven’t told me why.”

  Fletcher leaned back from the hole and looked at the man who would be taking over his command at Sea of Serenity 1.

  “Because it’s farther out and it’s running its own circle around the sun, free of the Earth. A new world altogether.”

  Dechert shook his head. He knew the excitement of exploring alien worlds, but he would never feel it like Fletcher. Dechert had come to the Moon for escape more than illumination, and he wondered if his boss had already figured that out. Joining the SMA wasn’t the typical career path for a dust-broken marine and ex-pilot who had been shot at too many times.

  “Yeah, but Mars?”

  “Why not? Jupiter’s at least six years away. They’re not even sure the He-3 scoops will survive the Jovian atmosphere, and the last plans I saw for an ice-shielded base on Europa were a disaster waiting to happen.” He patted the large pipe coming up from the comet’s crater. “Mars is the best thing we’ve got going right now. I’ll think of Jupiter once the god of war starts to bore me.”

  Good Lord, Dechert thought, the Christopher Columbus of space. How do you replace a man like this?

  “Do you think I can hack it up here, John?” he asked.

  They stood in silence for a few seconds, both of them looking down into the deep hollow as the sifter sniffed and crawled for water, and life.

  “Yeah, I think you’ll be fine,” Fletcher said. “Just remember two things.”

  “Okay?”

  “One: Keep your crew alive. No one needs to be a hero up here.” He patted Dechert on the shoulder and headed toward the tunnel’s exit.

  “And two?”

  Fletcher held up a second finger as he reached the catwalk and began the long climb back to the lunar surface, his back still turned to Dechert. “Don’t let anything happen to my station.”

  “Commander, it’s Lane. Go secure.”

  Her voice cut into Dechert’s daydream at the midpoint of their second hop back to the shuttle, as the three astronauts descended from four thousand meters over the outer washes of the Lake of Happiness. She didn’t yell, but the tension in her voice unloosed the ghosts that had lingered in Dechert’s mind for years, snapping him back to the present.

  “Yes—okay, hold on. I’m secure.”

  “Dechert, we just got a solar-flare warning from NB-2. I repeat: We just got a solar-flare warning from NB-2.”

  Dechert felt like he’d been punched in the throat. His eyes watered, and he swallowed what moisture was left in his mouth to make sure his voice would sound even and in pitch when he replied.

  “Confirm, Lane, you have a solar-flare warning from Lin Tzu.”

  “That’s confirmed.”

  He waited for another second, but she didn’t say anything else, and then he realized that she didn’t have to say anything else.

  “All right. Get everyone out of the CORE and down into the main hangar, right now. Get ready for immediate evacuation. I repeat, immediate departure from the station.”

  “Copy. We’ll be there in one minute.” She hesitated for a second. “Standard will want to know why.”

  “Tell him whatever the hell you have to. Tell him you can run the autodefenses from the flying deck, but on my orders I want you thirty seconds from bugout at the first sign of incoming. Just don’t let him know about our trip wire.”

  “Okay. I’m on my way.”

  So here it was. Weeks of slow burn coming to real fire. Hi
s station was about to be hit by the Chinese. The station Fletcher had hacked out of the ground in the frontier days of the Moon, working sixteen hours a shift on the regolith before collapsing for a few hours of rest in an inflatable bubble-tent. The station Dechert had made his own through more than three long years of careful stewardship. And his people—Lane and Quarles and Vernon—were still stuck inside. Still vulnerable.

  Have to get them the hell out of there.

  Have to get them into Menelaus Crater.

  The rebreathers in Dechert’s suit grew loud once again. He felt blood rushing into his ears and the pounding sound of flowing liquid that it carried with it. What was his obligation to Peary Crater and the military men who now ran it? He wasn’t a soldier anymore. Did he have to warn them that an attack on Serenity 1 was imminent? He had pledged to Lin Tzu that any warning between them would remain that way, at least until something showed up on radar. Let the sons of bitches at Peary Crater and New Beijing 1 fend for themselves.

  But could he do that—hold back information from his own people at the North Pole? A strike was about to be launched on a U.S. mining station, and the next one could be aimed at Peary Crater. Telling Trayborr about it now would give him a tactical advantage, a chance to go on the offensive before being hit himself. Dechert thought of his friendship with Lin Tzu and how alike they were—two men who had seen too much in life and had escaped to a quiet, frozen world devoid of the heat of war. But they weren’t friends anymore, and the heat of war had followed them up from Earth. As of two minutes ago, they couldn’t even say they were the same people who had set up the warning in the first place. Lin might have made a last gesture by sending the signal to Serenity, but now he would be preparing for battle. And knowing Lin, Dechert realized that his Chinese counterpart had warned him knowing full well that Dechert would have to break his pledge.

  “Peary Crater, Cherokee,” Dechert said between closed teeth onto an open channel on the com, and as he prepared to break a promise to his friend, he saw a streak of brilliant white on the peripheral edge of his field of vision. He turned his head and saw a sight he could never have envisioned on the Moon: three missiles flying overhead, overtaking the astronauts as they sped to the east—straight toward the Sea of Serenity.

  23

  “Hale, two-thirty high. Missiles.”

  Hale and Thatch snapped their heads to the right, and the three of them watched in silence as the missiles flew over the lunar surface on a direct course to Sea of Serenity 1.

  “Mother of God,” Thatch whispered.

  Hale clicked his com. “Peary Crater, Cherokee.”

  “Cherokee, Peary Crater, go ahead.”

  “Peary Crater, we have Vampires. I repeat, Vampires. Eyes on a hostile package inbound to Serenity. Three missiles tracking southeast out of the Mare Imbrium, heading approximately one hundred and ten degrees.”

  “Please confirm, Cherokee, you have visual on hostile missiles, outbound from the Mare Imbrium toward Serenity 1.”

  “Confirmed, headed for Serenity. We’re a few klicks away. They look like large hypervelocities.”

  “Copy, Cherokee. Give me a range please, and confirm they’re of cruise variety.”

  “Confirmed cruise missiles. Not SAMs. Repeat, not SAMs. Maybe six hundred klicks from Serenity 1. I repeat, roughly six-zero-zero klicks from the station.”

  “Roger that. Stand by,” the voice said, and the line went dead.

  As the conversation between Hale and Peary Crater went on in the foggy background, Dechert switched channels with a blink of his eyes and yelled into his com, keeping sight of the receding missiles as he fought to maintain his composure.

  “Serenity, this is Dechert. You have incoming missiles, six hundred klicks out. I repeat, you have three missiles inbound. Confirm last and reply.”

  Quarles came on the line. “Serenity here. Shit, are you serious?”

  “Dead serious, Jonathan. You’ve got maybe five minutes. Put the defenses on auto and get the hell out of there. I repeat: Bug out as soon as antimissile defenses are online. I’m patching Hale and Thatch into our coms.”

  “Roger, we’re ten seconds from the flying deck, preparing to turn AMD and pulse shielding over to the computer. Estimate bugout in three minutes.”

  “Make it two. And switch on the video feed in the hangar. I want to watch the prep. Are Lane and Vernon on com?”

  “Getting their helmets on now.”

  “Vernon?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Fire up the rover while Lane and Quarles handle the defenses. Don’t worry about system checks. I want you out of there in no more than two minutes. You need to be at least a klick away when those things hit the defense grid. Confirm, please.”

  “Confirmed. We’re out of here in two.”

  Standard’s voice cut into their clipped discussion. “Commander, listen, believe me I want to evacuate the station as much as anyone, but I need authorization from Peary Crater for us to bug out during a . . .”

  “You’ve got authorization, Commissioner, from me,” Dechert said. “Now get off the line.”

  Dechert, Thatch, and Hale were a thousand meters over the Lake of Happiness and descending. Just one more hop to the shuttle. Then ten minutes to Menelaus Crater to pick up his crew. Dechert seethed in frustration, trapped by the autosequence of their leaps along the northern rim of the Mare Vaporum. A jetsuit hop couldn’t be sped up. He couldn’t outrun a cruise missile. He couldn’t get to the station in time to do anything. All he could do was listen and watch.

  The walk-profile computers on their chestplates beeped out the final descent sequences, and Dechert could see on his heads-up display that the landing beacon had overridden an incoming video transmission from Serenity. The feed wouldn’t cut in on a priority operation. “Five, four, three, two, one, mark, step, and step, and firing.”

  Dechert, Hale, and Thatch rocketed up from the lunar basin one last time. Four kilometers from the shuttle now. Getting closer. Radio traffic flew across the Moon in a dizzying flurry of opposing voices. Someone was calling Dechert’s name from Peary Crater. He ignored them.

  The direct video feed Quarles had set up flared to life in the lower left corner of Dechert’s heads-up display, and he used his visual cues to increase its size until it took up the bottom half of his field of vision. The camera provided a 180-degree view of the main hangar. Lane was at the flying deck, suited up, punching in commands for the CORE to take over the defense of the station. Quarles was checking the back of Standard’s pressure suit, making sure of the gas mixes. Waters was nowhere to be seen. Must already be in the Bullpen heating up the rover.

  “We’re all green on personal life support,” Lane said on the com. “Depressurizing main hangar and opening Bullpen door now. Vernon, you can open the outer hatch in ten seconds from my mark. Mark.”

  “Opening outer hatch in ten seconds. Rover warmed and ready.”

  Hale’s voice cut in. “Briggs, set the AMD to account for multiple incoming targets; algorithmic random maneuvering. Those are spore missiles coming at you. They’re going to open up and launch a spread of projectiles, and they’re all gonna be smart.”

  “Copy,” Lane said. “AMD and lasers set to intelligent defense. Electromagnetic pulse shielding at a hundred percent, fusion reactor encased in second shield.”

  Dechert went through a mental checklist of their evacuation procedure. Station secured. Shield doors down. Power grid at minimum sustaining. Reactor encased in liquid metal. Defenses engaged.

  “Lane, confirm evacuation sequence is complete and bug out.”

  “Confirmed complete.”

  “Quarles, verify.”

  “I agree, Commander. We’re ready to go.”

  Dechert checked the chronometer on his heads-up display. They had three minutes. Maybe four. He could hear the outer hatch opening through the background hiss of the com, its door beeping a muted alert that the vacuum of space was about to be let into the station. They we
re going to make it, with a decent margin for error.

  “Okay, let’s . . .”

  His helmet erupted with alarms before he could finish speaking. Fast-beeping shutdown alarms from Serenity 1’s fusion reactor. Slower, deeper pressure-door alarms. Chimes for a computer master alert. A symphony of alarms. More alarms than he could register.

  Dechert looked at the video on his heads-up display, confused by the sudden flurry of noise. The video blurred and slowed down. The main hangar went red, its emergency lighting on full. A white and yellow strobe flashed on top of the pressure door leading to the Bullpen. The two-ton door began to shut. The exit from the station began to shut.

  “Quarles, what the hell?”

  The wailing sirens continued.

  “Shit, I don’t know. We’re on automatic lockdown. Shit, everything’s locking down!”

  “Override.”

  “Trying now.” Quarles leaped up to the flying deck. He punched the touchscreens on the plasma banks, his fingers thick and unwieldy in the pressure gloves. The sirens kept going. The Bullpen pressure door—now a third of the way shut.

  “Quarles, override!” Dechert yelled. “Vernon!”

  “Yeah. Outer doors just shut and sealed,” Vernon said. “I can’t get them back open.”

  “Get the Bullpen door,” Dechert yelled. “Vernon, Bullpen hatch is closing!”

  He saw Lane and Quarles look up from the flying deck’s control bank at the hatch that was sealing them into the station. They froze for a fraction of a second, and then returned their focus to the control bank. Standard stood in the background, unmoving except for his helmet, which swiveled from right to left in uncertainty.

  “Sonofabitch!” Vernon yelled, still outside of the camera’s view.

  Lane and Quarles ran through recovery sequences, yelling at each other in bits and pieces of short, staccato jargon.

  “Main buses A, B, C, and D, off line. E through H nominal.”

  “I’m locked out of the system. CORE is not responding.”

  “Reactor undervolt. Liquid-metal sphere stable, but fusion first-wall is unresponsive. It’s gonna shut down from lack of inner containment.”