The Moon Talker - Chapter 30
Lower Your Gun
We’ve been flying for an hour to the possible dig sites Yang had marked on a map. The lunar cruisers are limited to a maximum flight altitude of ten metres and range of eighteen hours. If we don’t find Johnson’s Orion-X within the next thirty minutes, then we’ll have to head back and The Moon will be lost.
“Got her!” says O’Malley. “Their ship’s peaking out from behind that crater ridge. Flying around to the southern edge, where’s there’s a natural gap.”
The confrontation with Johnson is close now. An acidic nausea rises from my empty stomach, stinging the back of my throat.
“Landing now,” says O’Malley. “There’s only one guard. I can sniper him, then we’ll steal that buggy there.”
“No,” I say. “They’ll be no blood spilt today on our account. Who’s the guard, can you tell?”
“It’s one of our original mission crew, from the suit design,” says Yang. “What shall we do?”
We started out eight-strong, all those months ago. A highly trained and skilled team, sent to save the Earth. Burnsy and now Klingemann are dead. Yang and I are outcasts, betrayed by the others. Though from their point of view, we have betrayed the original mission objective, humanity even.
Unless Nkosi escaped the blast radius in time, the slightest puncture in his EVA suit would equal a quick death. There’s no being injured in those sort of situations in space: he’s either dead or alive. And if alive, Nkosi will be down that tunnel leading the mining crew.
Patel, Johnson’s only remaining scientific asset, must be safe in the ship, triple-checking the reactor.
Mäkinen is at his flight control post back at the spaceport, because we slipped past him earlier.
That leaves only one man Johnson would trust to guard the ship and tunnel entrance. But we have no way of contacting him. Johnson’s crew aren’t using the comms link setup for the supposed Lunis-One sub-mission. They’ll be on another encrypted radio channel, for which we don’t have the time or means to hack right now.
“It’s Lebedev,” I say. “Set us down in plain sight fifty feet from the ship. Yang and I will walk to him. He will know it’s us.”
“Agreed,” says Yang. “Any other course of action will be taken as a threat.”
“It’s your funeral,” says O’Malley.
We say nothing in the thirty seconds it takes to land the cruiser within the crater at the agreed distance. Lebedev must have already spotted us and called for reinforcements.
Yang helps me down to the lunar surface this time, and I hold his arm as we take our first few careful hops together towards the ship.
I imagine the sight before me of the towering Orion-X ship, rising out of the epicentre of the vast impact crater, like an arrow that hit the target bullseye, shimmering in the full glare of the long lunar day.
“His gun is raised,” says Yang.
My grip tightens. “Keep going.”
Without my sight, there are no sensations external to my EVA suit, and the quickening huff of my breaths and noticeable body odour. It takes all the nerves and focus I have to maintain our sombre pace forwards, into the darkness.
“Stop right there,” says Lebedev, tuning into our correct mission comms frequency. “Harper, Dr Yang. You should not be here.”
“Neither should you,” I say. “Lunis-One was the agreed secondary objective.”
Lebedev does not respond.
“He’s talking, on another channel I guess,” says Yang. And there are no prizes for guessing who too.
So we wait. Mäkinen will be listening in on our comms, but we have nothing to hide.
“How close is Lebedev, Yang?”
“Six feet away.”
“Gun still raised?”
“Yes.”
“I have a clear shot,” says O’Malley.
“No!” I say. “No violence. I won’t bloody say it again. And we’re now on a shared comms channel, for God’s sake.”
“Roger that, mission leader.” Despite the rebuke, O’Malley’s voice is flat and calm, and I doubt that he has lowered his own sniper rifle.
“Commander Johnson orders that you return to The Colony immediately,” says Lebedev. “We will collect Dr Yang and yourself for the flight home, to Earth.”
“Not happening,” I say. “Patch me into her comms, now.”
“No.”
“Then lower your gun and let us pass.”
“Not a chance.”
If I leave, then The Moon is gone. But if I push forwards, then Lebedev is more likely to shoot me dead than disobey his Commander. Then O’Malley will kill him. Then Johnson would come after him, and Yang and Sköld for good measure. And The Moon will be lost anyway.
I only met Lebedev’s family once, at the mission send-off party two days before launch. His wife was painfully shy, making me the extrovert for once in our limited conversation. She barely looked me in the eye, for her and Lebedev gazed at each other throughout the night, smiling to one another, glancing away only to check on their two boys tearing about, causing happy mischief. Mischief instigated by Klingemann, and a big bag of sugary treats.
Time for a detour around this impasse. “How is Nkosi?”
“Bruised is all,” says Lebedev.
“That’s good.” And I mean it. This mission has seen enough bloodshed. “I am so sorry about Klingemann. I tried—”
“We know. Go home, Harper.”
But I’ve come too far to give up now. The Moon needs us. “Lower your gun, please, or The Moon will disable it.”
There is a long pause before Lebedev says, “You’re bluffing.”
My heart pounds, compelling me onwards. “Lower your gun. Last chance.”
“Never.”
Letting go of Yang’s arm, I take a careful step forward, trusting I am facing Lebedev.
“Harper, no!” says Yang and O’Malley together.
I take another mini leap of faith forwards. “The gun won’t fire,”
“Stop there, Harper!” says Lebedev. But I take another baby hop towards him.
“Harper, stop! Final warning!”
“You won’t shoot me. You’re a good man, Alek.”
I reach out with both gloves, and feel the spongy padding of an EVA suit. With Lebedev’s considerable height compared to me, I guess that my palms are on his chest.
Something hard pokes through the many layers of my suit into my stomach. The rifle muzzle.
After a long, heart-stopping moment, that pointing pressure releases, and I embrace him, as best as our bulky attire allows.
Lebedev hugs me back, and somehow, in the silent darkness, I feel his pain flow through to me, as his body convulses with home sickness and grief.
Eventually, Lebedev pulls away. “I’ll take you both down there, in the buggy.”
“No you won’t,” says Patel. “Lebedev, the Commander is furious. You can’t let these fools through.”
“Put that pistol away, Patel,” says Lebedev. “They have a sniper on our position.”
“What’s happening?” I say, trembling. “O’Malley, I said stand down!”
Lebedev pushes me behind his own body.
“It lied to us Harper, your precious Moon,” says Patel. “There was a subtle yet fatal flaw in the ACD localised gravity formula. The graviton flooring won’t be enough to contain the plasma with the proposed reduced magnetism. And what with all the ‘quantum gravity entangled networks’, and everything it ‘revealed’ to us. It’s all nonsense. Made-up magic. And it fooled you, but not me.”
My head spins and knees buckle. Patel could have told me his concerns days ago. I would have listened. Wouldn’t I?
“You’re wrong,” I say. “It wouldn’t do that.” But The Moon has proven it will do anything to save itself. It had existed for eons before even our own star was born. We mean nothing to it. I mean nothing to it. I’m a single grain of sand: nothing special amidst the infinite shifting dunes of time.
“Patel’s right, Harper,” says Johnson, cutting in on the comms. “The whole graviton flooring idea, Mäkinen’s Lunis-One plan — baloney, all of it. Total bullshit. The lithium, your original plan, it’s the only way. That’s the truth.”
“I can’t accept that!” I cry, then switch to our private channel. “Sköld, you there?” No answer. “Sköld, come in!”
“Okay, sheesh I hear you, Harper. Trying to frickin’ focus here. What’s up?”
“Patch The Moon through.”
“Can’t. Shut us out.”
The Moon had promised it would open up to her. It had lied, again.
“Shit. Keep trying,” I say, then flick back to the main frequency. “O’Malley, go to Sköld. Take her back to the Colony, now!”
“What about you?” he says.
“Harper and Dr Yang will be safe with us. I guarantee you that, Sergeant,” says Johnson. “Lebedev, bring them down to the tent so we can talk this through in person.”
“Yes, Commander,” he says.
“Patel, you’ve obviously got big enough balls to guard the ship until Lebedev returns. Now lower that weapon and let them pass. Clear?”
“Yes, Commander,” says Patel.
Yang takes my arm again, but I don’t feel any more stable or reassured. I’m not angry with The Moon for deceiving me to defend itself. That’s like being angry with the ocean for making waves. But I’m at a loss on how to save it now, or even whether I should. The stark reality is that this ancient being can see the truth of our predicament, unbiased by human emotion, experience and desire. I was kidding myself that my crew would ever go for an alternative plan, when mining that pure lithium was the only proven way to eradicate the Permacloud in our lifetimes.
And as for me? Well The Moon saw straight through me, peeling away the layers of intelligence and intentions right back to my core values: I will never sacrifice my friends, nor even a single stranger to save it, and always choose them over The Moon. Yang and I have been foolish to think that there wouldn’t be that choice to make. Johnson knew it, and my father knew it too.
As The Moon slips away from me, along with my Mama and the chance of ever seeing with my own eyes again, it feels like someone else’s body is being seated and strapped into the lunar buggy. Only the slight forwards tug in our seatbelts snaps me back, as we descend into the mineshaft — that tomb of my my own making.
Next chapter drops 1st May.
Explore short stories and more content from Martin Grace, including announcements about the forthcoming Future Britains anthology, over at Sol Stories.