Skyler found the medical bay, which at the moment was quite busy. The intake section consisted of a curved central desk and a small waiting area, currently filled with bored-looking base personnel representing every color of the organizational rainbow: blue for science and medical, red for operations, and gold for command.
“Dr. Cole?” said a short Asian woman from behind the desk. She wore blue surgical scrubs and a hopeful expression.
“The one and only,” she said, approaching the desk. “I just got in. Or up. Whatever.”
“We’re glad to see you. We’re a little understaffed at the moment. I’m April Park, your nurse.”
“Yes, of course. Nice to meet you.” She looked around. “Well, I guess I’d better get started. Who’s on first?”
The nurse tapped her workstation, and Skyler’s slate chimed. She swiped at it, calling up the information on her first patient on the Moon.
“She’s in three,” said Nurse Park, jerking her thumb behind her. “Right back there to the right.”
“Thank you.”
Skyler entered the room and found a small, thin woman sitting on the exam table, ankles crossed, hands clenched together, a worried expression on her face.
Skyler glanced through the woman’s chart on her slate. She had passed out during her shift in the hydroponics bay and complained of being tired.
“Mrs. Ramirez,” Skyler said. “I’m Dr. Cole. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” said the woman. “I just fainted a few hours ago. I’ve never fainted in my life.”
“All right,” Skyler said with a smile. “Let’s see what’s going on with you.”
* * *
Teague watched the playback for the third time.
The shuttle rose from its birth, a trio of blue flames from the ion engines dancing as it climbed into the black sky. It lanced toward Earth and, as it diminished into the distance, became a white-hot ball of incandescence, brightening the pale lunar landscape below briefly before winking out of existence altogether.
Teague stared at the screen, belief catching up to incredulity. There had been—could be—no survivors.
“What happened? Pilot error? Engine failure?”
“No way to tell yet, sir,” said Romeo. “Crews are on their way to the wreckage site now. But I’ve never seen a shuttle just blow up like that, not without signs of trouble beforehand.”
“A bomb?” Teague’s mouth went dry as she said the word.
“It’s a possibility.”
“I need to speak with General Steen.”
“This is some first day,” said Romeo. “Sir.”
“You’re not kidding. Coordinate efforts. Let me know as soon as we find anything. I’ll be in my ready room.”
Teague put in a call to General Steen’s office at the Pentagon. After several minutes of being routed through various switchboards and assistants, plus the two-second delay between Earth and the Moon, the General’s face finally appeared on Teague’s slate screen.
General Steen had square, severe features, as if his head had been carved from solid rock. Heavy-lidded dark eyes gave him a stern, imposing countenance. His dark hair was thinning on top and had turned salt and pepper at the temples.
“Harry. I see you made it up OK.”
“Yes sir,” said Teague. “But we have a problem.”
“Yes, Donovan’s shuttle. I’ve just been briefed. Any idea what happened?”
“Not yet. We’ve got a team out examing the wreckage, but we haven’t ruled out anything yet.”
The General shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Given the reason Donovan was on that bird, I smell skullduggery.”
“Yes sir.” Teague did as well, but he hoped they were wrong.
“I don’t have to tell you this is serious business,” said Steen. “The UN Council is breathing down my neck for answers.”
“As soon as we know something I’ll contact you,” said Teague.
“Good. I’ll try to keep the UN vultures off your ass long enough to get it done. And to that end, I’m sending up a little gift on the next supply shuttle. Something you might need if things get a little pear-shaped.”
Teague arched an eyebrow. “Sir?”
The General raised a steadying hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you have everything under control. Keep me apprised. Steen out.”
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Before Teague could ask him what he meant by gift or pear-shaped, the screen went blank. He pondered Steen’s words for a long moment before getting back to work.
He was going over incident reports from ground crews who had witnessed the shuttle exploding over their heads when Leneski appeared.
“Hi, Mike. What’s up?”
“I’m here to rescue you.” The lanky man stepped fully into the room. “Come on. It’s almost shift change. The night crew can handle it. Let me buy you a steak dinner.”
“Donovan’s shuttle exploded,” said Teague. “I’m a little busy.”
Leneski spread out his arms. “All the more reason.”
Teague eyed the readout on his system that counted down the time remaining on the decryption. He still had more than fifteen hours. The shuttle explosion was being investigated. And the hour was getting late, according to the clock on his screen. Being on the Moon was destroying his sense of time. He sighed. “Sold.”
Teague stood and followed Leneski out of the command blister. Leneski led him through a warren of tunnels and connecting corridors from the control center blister to the larger Aldrin Dome, where they climbed aboard a maglev train. They selected a pair of padded seats opposite the door and sat down. A few other Luna personnel were entering and exiting the train, glancing at Teague and speaking to one another in hurried whispers.
“That’s right,” Leneski muttered. “There’s a new sheriff in town.”
Teague didn’t know if he wanted to wave at the people pointing and staring at him or curl into a fetal position. The train took off like a rocket, the scenery outside alternating between blurry lights and people and blurry gray lunar rock. “I had forgotten this place was so huge.”
“It’s gotten bigger over the years,” said Leneski. This dome was completed last year as part of a private commercial proof of concept. Conyers wanted to build a slew of hotels up here.”
Teague smiled. Walter Conyers was an aerospace and methane hydrate billionaire. His rocket company had sent the first construction packages to the Moon more than a decade ago. Time Magazine had called him the Hope for the Future. The idea of a hotel up here seemed silly now when there were so many more pressing concerns back on Earth. “I saw the unfinished complex on the way in,” said Teague.
“There’s a lot of unfinished projects up here,” said Leneski.
The train stopped and Leneski rose, Teague following suit. “Come on. I know a great place. Best vat-grown steak on the Moon.”
They exited the tube train and emerged in a large open area. Teague gawked at the curve of the massive dome, titanium and nanocarbon struts rising hundreds of feet into the airless void, holding back the vacuum, radiation, and constant barrage of photons from their own sun. It truly was a marvel of engineering. A series of large screens ringed the dome’s top, linked to cameras placed in the same positions on the outside, giving the illusion that wide sections of the dome were transparent. Clearly visible was the blue-white marble of Earth.
The interior area it protected was almost mundane in comparison. The floor was covered with cream-colored ceramic tiles, the walls ringed with greenery. A wide greenspace positioned directly beneath the dome housed a water feature and trees growing tall and spindly in the low lunar gravity. If Teague didn’t know any better, he’d think he was in a shopping mall.
“This way,” Leneski said, heading for a complex of shops and restaurants.
“I’m afraid I’m going to get lost,” Teague said.
Leneski laughed. “Nah. You’ll get the hang of this place. It’s really not that hard to find your way around. It looks bigger than it is.”
They entered an establishment identified only as The Steakhouse and sat at a table in the back. Leneski sat with his back to the white plastic wall and began fiddling with the menu, his finger swiping through pages of food options.
“I’ll dial us up a couple of porterhouses,” he said. “You’ll thank me later.”
“You’re the gourmet around here, Mike,” Teague said. What he really wanted was something to drink. He found the interactive beverage listing and ordered himself a beer, glad that they had just been resupplied from Earth on the same shuttle that brought him and Skyler to Luna.
Their steaks came soon after, sizzling hot, served on a stainless steel platter atop a bamboo plate.
“This smells great,” said Teague, digging in. “The mushrooms are a nice touch.”
“The mushrooms are real,” said Leneski. “Grown in a cavern a stone’s throw from here. The meat, not so much.”
Teague chuckled and took a bite. He hadn’t had actual beef from an actual cow in years. It was getting so he didn’t think he could tell the difference anymore.
“So what happened with the outgoing commander?” he asked after they had both taken a few bites.
Leneski sipped at his bulb of beer. “Donovan was OK. At least at first. But he had no business running this base. It was all about optics with him. Politics. He’s a military veteran, a hero of the Climate Wars. Social media darling. All the usual bullshit. Shooting him up here was just for the media, a way to get a lot of eyeballs on Luna fast, to distract everyone from all the problems back down the well.”
Leneski cut another slice out of his steak. “He didn’t know how to talk to the scientists. And they resented his military-style discipline. He also didn't know how to function in a world where everyone wasn't kissing his ass. Pompous prick.”
Teague took another sip of beer. “When I spoke to him he told me not to trust anyone.” He purposefully didn't add that General Steen had told him the same thing.
Leneski chuckled. “Yeah, he would say that. It’s hard to have trust when you haven’t engendered any. Look, Harry. There are three hundred people up here. Good, talented, smart hard-working people. They’ll do a good job for you. But you gotta meet ’em halfway.”
Or what? Teague thought. They’ll blow me up? “Is there anyone else I should be worried about?”
Leneski looked up from cutting his steak into bite-sized pieces. “No. I don’t think so. The few who were loyal to Donovan shipped out weeks ago. One went back to Earth to be court-martialed, and another went to Mars I think, probably to screw up something there. Now there’s an even worse situation than we’ve got right here. No colony, just a half-dozen scared shitless scientists, a leaky pressure dome, toxic dust, and a half-assed potato crop.”
“Do you know who might want to kill Donovan?”
Leneski looked at him, considering the question around a mouthful of mushrooms. “I can’t think of anyone who liked him. But I also can’t think of anyone with the enmity or the expertise to blow him out of the sky. His leaving for Earth was good enough.”
Teague finished his meal in silence, thinking over everything that had happened in the two hours since his arrival. His veiled conversation with Donovan, the drive he’d slipped him, the shuttle explosion. Commanding Luna 1 was going to be more of a challenge than he first thought. As he drained his beer bulb he wondered just what he was getting himself into. Was someone waiting in the wings to blow him up too?
Leneski turned the conversation to more neutral subjects. The current situation on Earth. Funny stories from their shared past. For a moment Teague could forget he was eating fake steak on the Moon and investigating the death of his predecessor as he reminisced with an old friend. Little by little he began to relax, feeling at ease in the one-sixth g instead of afraid he would fly into the air at the slightest misstep. They stayed at their table long after their meals had been consumed, drinking and swapping old war stories. For a moment the surface of the Moon almost felt like home.