Jasleen didn’t exactly enjoy going on Moonwalks, but it was part of her job. On this occasion, it was to accompany a tech on some routine solar panel maintenance.
On Earth, people went outside to get fresh air and some personal space. On the Moon, going outside meant exposure to freezing vacuum and deadly cosmic rays, which required wearing a suit that weighed hundreds of pounds on Earth. As a marine, she had worn all sorts of environmental and combat gear, from flak vests to firesuits and, on at least one occasion, all of the above at once. There was nothing quite like shrugging on hot, heavy, and life-saving combat wear in scorching two-hundred-degree heat. Next to that, wearing a spacesuit—or a moonsuit as the locals called them—should be a piece of cake, but Jasleen always balked at the prospect.
She was fine once she got everything snapped and twisted together and got her portable air supply turned on, as she did now. But the prospect was daunting. It was in these moments that she questioned her sanity for following Mara up here.
It was cramped in the airlock with their bulky suits, and Jasleen had to remember to lower her gold visor as the door cycled open and blinding sunlight, unimpeded by any kind of atmosphere and bouncing off the super reflective lunar regolith, filled the small space.
Moonwalks were like sea-diving. You had to use the buddy system. That meant no one went out alone. For some reason, it also meant that most of Luna 1’s personnel were required to make the occasional lunar excursion. This time it was Jasleen’s turn to draw the short straw, so she ambled alongside a man named Sam Morrison as they headed toward a waiting rover.
Lunar rovers were crude, utilitarian affairs that reminded Jasleen of the erector set her brother Amed had played with as a child. She grabbed the sides of the vehicle and pulled herself aboard as Morrison disconnected the rover’s charging cable and went around to the driver’s side. Once they were situated, Morrison started the vehicle.
The rover throbbed gently beneath her as they pulled away from the base, the airless tires kicking up bits of ash-gray dust that would take several minutes to settle in the lesser gravity.
They drove along a well-worn track, riding through rover ruts that would still be there when the sun went nova. All around her Jasleen saw signs of human habitation even in this absolutely inhospitable place. Boot prints. Bits of foil and other metallic detritus that was part and parcel with human beings living their lives. It was somehow comforting. The airless gray landscape felt less empty, a little less inimical to biological life.
“This shouldn’t take too long,” Morrison said over the common channel. His tone sounded apologetic. “Damn moon dust gets in the power converters, shorts them out. Gotta change them out on the regular. Pain in the ass, but…here we are.”
Morrison piloted the rover to a stop in front of the wide expanse of solar arrays that powered the base.
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“Need any help?” Jasleen asked as they alighted from the rover. She felt silly accompanying him.
“Nah. I got it.”
Morrison grabbed a toolbox one-handed that looked like it weighed a hundred pounds on Earth and trudged toward a large black plastic junction box set between two rows of solar panels.
Jasleen walked with him, feeling useless and somewhat annoyed. But she kept a lookout for hidden dangers, even though she wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Anything could happen. Something could fall on Morrison. He could be electrocuted. The ground beneath them could give way, leaving her to render aid and call for help. But the possibility of any of these outcomes was remote.
She watched Morrison open a compartment on the box and start removing its contents, letting the plastic cover sink slowly to the ground. As he worked, something caught the corner of her eye. A flash of sunlight glinting off of something. Something that had moved.
Jasleen stepped around the junction box to stare between a row of solar arrays. A lone figure standing just a few feet away.
“The hell?”
Jasleen jumped, startled. Not at the figure’s presence, but his appearance. He was entirely naked, his face and most of his body covered in some silvery black substance that looked like a combination of spiderwebs and solder.
Before Jasleen had barely registered the figure’s presence, he leaped high into the air, coming down right in front of her, slamming a fist into her chest.
Warning lights flickered inside her helmet and alarms went off in her ears as she felt herself flying backward. The figure appeared to pull back away from her as she flew through the thin, almost nonexistent lunar atmosphere, stopping only when she struck something hard and unyielding. She cried out in pain as her back spasmed. Jasleen twisted around as best she could to see what she hit. A solar array lay behind and partially beneath her, its brittle collection panel shattered into hundreds of black shards.
By this time Morrison had gotten a feeling that something wasn’t quite right, and as he rose to his feet the figure sunk his fist deep into Morrison’s chest. The tech doubled over, crying out in pain over the helmet radio.
“Morrison!” Jasleen shouted.
The tech dropped like a slow-motion stone, and Jasleen was on her feet, running toward the thing, her combat instincts winning out over her drive for self-preservation. Her sidearm was in her hand, firing, the only sound a dull thud that carried through her suit. She’d had a physics lesson about firing guns on the Moon, but the only thing she could remember about it was that, without air resistance, a bullet would travel about six times farther here than on Earth. She hoped she was close enough that it wouldn’t be an issue.
She got the figure in the side of the head as it looked down at Morrison, its head cocked to one side as if studying its handiwork. The figure’s head slammed to the right as the bullet exited, bringing blood, bone, and bits of brain with it that crystallized in the freezing vacuum to settle on the ground as gory red snow. The figure teetered for a minute, then fell onto its back not far from where Morrison lay slumped in his pressure suit. Jasleen was already halfway to him as the figure fell.
“Morrison! Can you hear me?”
She pulled at him, half turning, half dragging him away from the array so she could get a good look at his injuries. He stared sightlessly up at her, his brown eyes bulging, his lips blue. Whatever his internal injuries were, the hole in his suit had let all the oxygen escape. He was dead.