The Moon Talker - Chapter 32
Goodbye, Commander
Eight hours later, Nkosi and his colonist mining crew are loading the first tonne of the pure lithium payload. The target is thirty-five tonnes, five more than necessary for the ACD fleet. Johnson said this was needed for extra mission redundancy, though it more likely has something to do with paying for the replacement Orion-X ship and colonist labour.
It’s risky work, so I’ll get the surviving extraction bots up and running for the sake of the miners and their families, and get those drones up in the air asap now the damage is done, and The Moon is gone. Even thinking those words, as pragmatic as they are, feels alien, like they belong to another Harper from a parallel universe.
I’m cocooned in a sleeping bag, thankfully not weightless this time, in the ship’s crew quarters. This space is quite different to the configuration of our original Orion-X. All concept of personal space has been ripped out to accommodate triple the amount of crew. All cabins now bunk three at once. Any space for personal effects, including clothes, is reduced to a single ten-litre flight case.
It’s still a fight to open my eyelids against the glare of the harsh LED cabin lighting, even with Lebedev’s old-school aviator sunglasses on, and my distance vision is blurrier than I recall.
The cabin door’s wide open, and Johnson’s boots enter unannounced. Squinting my eyes open reveals an older-looking woman than my hero who left Earth. Her face is gaunt and dark folds sag under her eyes, which have lost their fire. Her US military regulation close crop hair has grown out into a budding, greying afro. It’s not how I expected her to look, after living the life of luxury with my father these past months.
She scraps a flight case over the the bottom bunk where I lay and sits on her makeshift stool. “How’s the sight?”
“Weird,” I say.
“I bet. We’ll get you fully checked over in Rovaniemi.”
“Rovaniemi?” Primary Ground Control is little more than rubble. My father’s work. The catalyst for this whole deadly chain of events.
“Harper, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Lowering my head, I peep over the top of the sunglasses and look Johnson in the eye.
She exhales deeply, then averts her eyes to the floor. “It’s Capaldi. He’s alive. Severely burned, but alive.”
I sit bolt upright, “What the—” and bang my head on the bunk above me. “How long have you known?!”
“About a month ago, when our internet privileges were restored. Lebedev was able to circumnavigate the Colony’s many network restrictions and contact Rovanemi via a secret online portal.”
Both my mind and heart are racing. “Well, that’s great news Commander. So what about you two, and my father?”
Johnson shifts and squirms on the flight case. “Look, this is what I was trying to tell you at your father’s goddamn dinner party, in the garden, before you went all psycho Moon bitch on me.”
“Thanks. I suppose I did somewhat lose my shit.”
“Not my finest hour either,” says Johnson. “Moving on— I was so angry when Marvin died, or so we thought. I was alone, and your father… well, it just happened.”
“But the bombing of Rovanemi, the master codes, the attack on our ship that killed Burns, my Mama’s murder, even — it was all my father’s scheming. How could you?!”
Johnson stands up and starts pacing around the small cabin. She’s lost weight that she didn’t have to lose. Johnson is the most courageous person I have ever known. But all the people who have been on my side these past months: Yang, Sköld, Dr Ross, and The Jailer, have taught me about so many other forms of courage. Even O’Malley’s apology took guts.
It’s understandable that Johnson didn’t believe in The Moon at first, but to give up on me so soon after Burnsy’s death? Well, that’s not a person I need in my life anymore, despite everyone I have lost throughout this mission. I’m confused at who she’s become, yet I yearn for the surrogate mother figure she once was to me, and I don’t know whether to love, hate or pity her.
Johnson breaks the silence. “Thinking of Marvin, Burns and our failure, well, I hit the drink, I’m ashamed to say. It was a one night stand of regret, and I should have left it at that.
“But your father’s money and power was the only way — the only way — to get those ACDs in the sky. So we made a deal. Despite the front, there was nothing romantic or sexual between us after that: just business.”
I screw my face up. “Yuck. So you got command back and a ship. And he gets the extra five tonnes.”
“Yep.”
With solid-state lithium batteries, which my father would have no doubt coerced me into making in the exchange for my freedom from prison, the range of the lunar cruisers would increase ten-fold. He would have expanded the Colony, the farms and mining operations across the entire near-side of the Moon. All the while imposing a heavy levy on the remaining populations who could afford ACDs to clear their air.
The rich would live and the poor would die, and my father would control all industry in the solar system that mattered, including the remaining vast reserves of lunar lithium.
Except he’d given up all those greedy grand plans up in one instance to save me. And I still don’t know why, or what to make of all this death and betrayal, over a few shipping containers of soft metal.
“He does love and respect you, your father,” says Johnson, “in his own way. He talked about you always, and the future the three of us could have together.”
“Don’t make me sick.”
“I hear ya.”
I turn to the far wall, and shake my head from side-to-side. What a shit show. “So, what’s going to happen to the great ape anyway?”
“Your friend, The Jailer, will move him into your old cell once discharged by medical. He will be tried for treason and multiple crimes against humanity.”
Then Johnson falls silent. Hanging on for an olive branch I suppose. Maybe I can forgive her in time, but she’s deluded if she thinks that’s happening here, or this century. But for now, it is necessary to be civil with her.
I lean forwards. “So, what about the Flight Director and you?”
“Marvin’s in a bad way. He’s not long for this world. I can only hope he forgives me enough to be by his side until he passes on.”
“If he does, then he’s a better person than me.”
Johnson acknowledges my position with a solemn nod, then turns to leave. “I hate your father. He makes my skin crawl and I wish that bullet had struck an inch lower.”
Tears stream into the corners of my open mouth, then there’s a knock.
“Am I interrupting?” says the deep voice of Nkosi, as he stands head bowed in the doorway. And it’s not just the low spaceship ceilings reducing his usual proud stance. He looks, well, sheepish.
“Yes,” snaps Johnson. “What is it?”
“Loading complete, Commander.”
She nods. “Very good. I’ll be down to inspect in five.”
But Nkosi remains rooted. “There’s a few things that I need to say to you both. Two minutes.”
Before Johnson can say no, I nod my approval. Usually I can’t bear to be in the same room as Nkosi. But there’s something different about his weary, nervous demeanor and use of full sentences that intrigues me.
Nkosi straightens up as best he can. “I was fourteen when my father came home. He served ten years for poaching elephants in Kruger. We couldn’t afford to visit him once. He was a stranger to me.
“Two months later, I have come of age — a man, and he takes me hunting to our sacred Hluhluwe-iMfolozi reserve. Crouching in the long grasses, he presents me his own father’s rifle — you will remember it well, Harper — and points out a black rhino, not 300 metres down the valley. He says, ‘The last in the wild, my gift to you.’
“I hold the barrel as he trained me and through the scope I sight this strange, magnificent animal, a beast of legend. And it must smell us, because it looks me direct in the eye, then proud and without fear it snorts and stamps. And I remember growing up without a father and that can’t be me. So I drop the rifle.
“He doesn’t curse, my father. He doesn’t hit me, or say a word. He just scoops up the gun and bang! — drops that poor creature dead. The shot rings out across the valley, and scattered sparrows fill the sky. He kills the whole animal, to take one priceless part.
“Eight furious rangers ambush us as he is sawing the horn, caught with that poor creature’s blood on his hands. They know him, and his past, and aim to shoot him dead. I run in front, ‘No, it was me,’ I cry. ‘I shot the rhino.’ And my father says nothing at all.
“So I am locked up for 12 years, and demonised in the news — ‘Rhino’s Bane’ they called me. I could have choose to die in there, a scared, helpless boy, famous for all the wrong reasons. Instead, I embraced the stereotype thrust upon me, and built my own legend. I built my body and wits, and killed those who attacked me, and those I was paid to, and I survived.
“A few years after release, your father rescued me from the criminal underworld and debts with the wrong people. He gave me purpose - his purposes.”
Nkosi’s whole body quivers, his amber eyes fixed on me, burning up like two meteors. Johnson’s head dips in slow, knowing nods. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because all my life, there’s been a bad man on my shoulder, bidding me do his dirty work. But that’s not me, Harper. I am no Rhino’s Bane. It’s an act that got me through prison, an act your father told me to keep up, to scare you and keep you in line. But also, I’m here to protect you.”
“Protect me?”
“Yes, it’s the only reason that me and my father’s rifle were on our ship. I didn’t know what was coming, but Mr Gold told me to keep you safe at all costs. Commander Johnson is right — he does love you, in his own way, despite his temper. For my part in all of this and your suffering, I am sorry, Mission Leader Gold.”
I offer my right hand, and he shakes it.
As we fly over the near-side of the Moon on our final entry, my window is facing outwards and for the first time in months, Earth appears. I grab a nearby pair of binos, focus them, and gasp.
The Permacloud seems even thicker and darker. Even about the South Pole where before the faintest outline of Antarctica could be glimpsed, now lay only a solid sphere of toxic plumes.
The atmosphere’s tipping point has been breached. As I gaze upon humanity’s impending self-destruction, I should feel despair, or even anger, at our mission failure. At my failure.
But instead I have numb limbs and a Moon-sized void in my soul, where once hope for humanity, and our once beautiful blue planet was found.
“Initiating landing sequence,” says the ship’s computer. My glimpse of Earth vanishes as the ship upends itself for vertical landing.
The helium-3 fission blasters fire in silence to slow our ascent, and the command module shakes under the fine balance of multiple competing forces. After all that drama, we touch down on the lunar surface with little more than a bump.
“Landing successful,” says the ship. “Engine power down sequence commencing.”
“No one disembarks until I say so, right?” says Johnson over comms.
“Yes, Commander,” replies a grizzled chorus.
The clockwise spiral seating arrangement means that each passenger has to wait for the person to the left and below the to exit first. The astronauts, seated facing upwards in the nose of the craft are the first to leave. There’s a faint whirring noise as their seats rotate forwards ninety degrees until they are sat upright.
The clang of boots on metal ladder rungs reverberate around the command module as Johnson and Lebedev make their thirty-foot descent. Out of the large windows in front, I take my first squint at the Lunar Colony Spaceport. Like a vast lunarcrete igloo, its dome shape and two-inch thick transparent aluminium windows have been withstanding micro-meteorite impacts for forty years now.
Johnson jumps off the last step with a deafening stomp that reverberates around the command module. “Everyone! Feet flat and hands between your knees.”
She circles our central seating column, checking for compliance. “All in position. Proceed.”
Lebedev pulls a large lever down to initiate the passenger disembark sequence. A series of steel steps extend from the footwell and right armrest of each passenger flight chair, forming a huge spiral staircase.
Even in the one-sixth gravity of the Moon, a fall from the top would be deadly. So a thick wire cord spirals around the central seating column and our flight suits are always carabiner-clipped on to prevent falls.
As I’m at the bottom of the staircase, I’ll be first off and then Yang.
“Right, I will take care of our two stowaways,” barks Johnson over our headset comms. “The rest of you, stay seated until you are each instructed to disembark by Lieutenant Lebedev.”
She stands before me. Our eyes meet for a moment before she averts hers to insert an ID card into a scanner in my seat. The electro-magnetic harness buckle unfastens and I get up.
I’m soon joined by Yang and the three of us move into the direct exit airlock.
The airlock takes several minutes to cycle. I face the wall. Nothing is said.
“Atmospheric normalisation complete,” says a robotic voice at long last. The inner air lock door opens to a long, stark white tunnel. We follow Johnson into the lift at the end.
Inside, Johnson removes her own space suit gloves with practised eased and, without asking, passes them to me to hold so she can twist off her helmet.
Meanwhile, the lift has descended the full length of the great rocket ship. The doors open to an astronauts’ cloakroom. It’s utilitarian in the military fashion, with two long rows of benches and lockers with no thought for privacy.
Without making eye contact or a single word, Johnson removes my own gloves and helmet.
“Sköld and O’Malley?” I ask.
Johnson stows my gear into a locker and slams the door shut. “Here, safe.” She moves on to help Yang.
I start removing my boots and suit. “And what of us?”
“All military personnel are subject to military law,” says Johnson. “Upon our return to Earth, you will both be court martialled for desertion of duties and mission sabotage.”
With no suitable civilian government or legal framework now in place on Earth, Nkosi, Burns, Patel, Yang and I had to join the remnants of the Northern Alliance military. My token rank is Warrant Officer. I hate being part of the NA, but that was the deal.
“That’s outrageous,” says Yang. “You still need us both to run the ACD programme. We won’t co-operate!”
Johnson huffs. “Nothing new there then. Cut the shit Yang. I got Harper off manslaughter charges for Burns and Klingemann. You can’t have expected more than that.”
I put a hand on Yang’s shoulder. He looks at me and the fire in his eyes subdues a little. The power of sight is a wonderous thing.
All three of us are now dressed down to our dirty, sweaty jumpsuits. But comfort and hygiene are not on the agenda.
With her back turned to us, Johnson beckons us forwards with a single wave down the corridor. The walls and floors are plain, monotone grey polished lunarcrete. The ceiling has uniform fibreglass tiles and fluorescent strip lights, straight out of a twentieth century office block. I expected a spaceport to look, well, much cooler than this.
Johnson stops by the third door on the left, briefing room 2, and holds it open.
Sköld runs to meet me and throws her arms around my neck. She kisses me on the cheek and exclaims, “Oh Harper, we thought we had lost you out there! And I hear your sight is back!” Then she whispers in my ear, “Backup complete.”
I pull away from her in genuine surprise on multiple fronts. Smiling at her in bemusement, my expression somehow manages to convey, ‘How?!’
With a simple pout and hand motion, Sköld tells me all that I need to know. She’s the greatest hacker alive, perhaps of all time, and not even The Moon can keep her out.
We have it. Everything. A complete download of ten billion years of The Moon’s gravitional raw data, memories, and cognitive functions, uploaded by MAIA to a low Earth-orbit data centre. All we need to figure out was how to restore the data to a structure we can analyse. Then maybe, and it’s a big, unprecedented maybe, we can restore The Moon’s consciousness.
Not a simple task in any circumstance to recover millions of zetabytes of data from an alien format. A problem that on the face of it, seems impossible. My favourite kind.
My heart races and the embers of my soul rekindle, just a little, just enough to keep fighting.
I grab Sköld’s slender arms with both hands and beam, “I’m pleased to see you too.”
Sköld returns a brief, bashful smile, then snaps back into her trademark attitude. “Meh, it’s better for you. You look, and smell, like shit.”
We laugh. She’s really grown from the pre-teen mugshots in the briefing files I have been visualising her by. Her hair is cut short and rough, and dyed a frozen blue like her eyes. There are over ten piercings on her face and ears, with retro tribal tattoos rising from her wrists to her neck.
Sköld isn’t a conventionally beautiful young woman, whatever the hell that means or matters these days. But she’s beautiful to me. She rescued me from despair in prison and now she has saved The Moon’s conciousness with her own unique brilliance. My heart overflows with pride.
Then over her shoulder, I catch sight of a tall, dark-haired man, looking at me expectantly. His kind brown eyes and lips smile shyly. A close-fitting, sweat-stained t-shirt displays his toned physique. It’s a working man’s body, not over-built from preening at the gym.
After gazing at O’Malley for several seconds, he breaks the awkward silence. “Miss Harper, it’s a relief to see you, safe and well.”
But I still don’t know what to say. It’s like Burnsy is standing in front of me, minus the scraggedy beard and wild hair. And as I still awaken from my grief over losing my Mama, the truth is there plain to see — I loved that man. I always did and always will.
Caru ti am byth, Burnsy.
Sköld clicks her fingers in front of my face. “Hej, you done crushing on soldier boy or what? Sheesh, it’s like you ain’t seen a man in months.”
Half-mortified, half-amused, I flick Sköld a two-finger salute and do my best not to grin. “Thank you, Brian, for bringing this cheeky cow home in one piece. You’re a good man.”
He beams from ear-to-ear, and we shake hands politely, like new neighbours or work colleagues.
“And it’s good to see you too, Dr Yang,” says O’Malley.
“Finally, somebody noticed me!” says Yang. And they laugh, bro-hug and slap each others’ backs, for some reason.
Mäkinen and three more Northern Alliance soldiers stomp into the room, killing the party vibes with their stern expressions.
“Copy that,” says Johnson in her headset. “Harper, Dr Yang — the payload and Colony miners have been offloaded. So wrap this up and say your goodbyes.”
Recalling my final words with Martinez after Dr Ross’s funeral, I turn to Johnson and offer my right hand. “Goodbye, Commander.”
“I meant say goodbye to them, blockhead,” says Johnson. “You’re coming with me, to Earth.”
“Who won the emergency election today” I ask.
Johnson screws her eyes up at me. “Well I assume Méndez — she’s the only one who had met the ballot threshold last I heard.”
I look up at the disabled holoscreen in the corner of the room. “Shall we check the news?”
“What are you getting at Harper?” says Johnson. “Enough of this.” She beckons the soldiers over. “Take them away.”
“Holoscreen on, channel one,” I say, as handcuffs ratchet open behind me.
Sure enough, the local Colony news channel are broadcasting the election results. Commentators are debating immediate policy priorities for the now legitimate Lunar Republic, over a montage of Méndez celebrating with her supporters. Then there’s me, confronting Simmons. My father lays soaked in blood at my feet as I summon the power of The Moon, with eyes shut and arms held wide like an almighty mage.
It’s like watching a movie of someone else.
As my hands are pulled behind me and cuffed, there’s a faint muffled protest from my friends. But I don’t struggle and stay transfixed on the news.
At the bottom of the screen, a tickertape banner loops the same simple message, over and over again. “Maria Méndez elected as the Lunar Republic’s first Prime Minister. Harper Gold, daughter of former disgraced President Jack Gold, is Deputy PM.”
“What does that mean?!” exclaims Mäkinen, the sell out, as he watches his former co-conspirators celebrate on screen. Mendez had stayed true to her cause, and won.
And with that, she enters the room on cue. ““It means, Assistant Flight Director, that according to the Solar System Treaty of 2042, both Deputy Prime Minister Harper Gold, and our new Minister for Science, Dr Lin Yang, have diplomatic immunity.”
Johnson stands hands on hips, shaking her head. “Goddammit! Release her.”
O’Malley and Sköld shriek with joy. Yang and Mäkinen both stare at me open-mouthed.
The cuffs and unwanted grip fall away, and I rub my wrists and smile. Wins aren’t always easy to come by in life, especially ones grabbed from the jaws of defeat. So I take more than a moment to savour this one.
Unlike my father, I’m not going to prison. And no-one’s taking me to back to Earth. I’m staying here, a free and elected woman, in my new home on the Moon.
I walk over to the perplexed-looking Yang and take his hand, then turn to face Johnson.
Snarling, she points a damming finger towards me. “Burns and Klingemann are dead because of you. You think you can cheat justice that easy? We’ll see what Capaldi makes of this!”
The mention of Burnsy wipes the grin off my face. But I must mask it, and be a strong leader. “Don’t you and Mäkinen have the first test batch of lithium to refine? I would hurry, if I were you.”
And with that, they storm off without another word.
“Ja, safe travels bitches!” adds Sköld, helpfully.
My companions and I group hug in delight and relief, and I find myself in the midst of the circle, looking down at our feet, shedding a tear for everyone I’ve lost on this journey: Burnsy, Dr Ross, even the memories of Mama, and of course The Moon. And I will mourn for them forever.
But I have gained a big brother and spiritual guide in Yang. A younger sister in Sköld, who I will mentor on how to create things, not only destroy them. And several other new friends at the Colony, including O’Malley, Méndez and The Jailer.
We will move on, this new team of ours. And I’m ready to be more than an engineer — to be a leader, for everyone who calls the Moon their home, and somehow for the people of Earth too.
It’s time to heal and rebuild, to fix my father’s mistakes, and some of my own.
Thanks to Sköld and MAIA, The Moon is not all gone. And unless I’m very much mistaken, as my father’s deputy VP of Gold Holdings, I now control all company assets and interests given his incarceration, including five tonnes of pure lithium soon enough. There has to be a solution in all of that to bring The Moon back. There must be.
From here, Yang and I will help get those 3,000 ACDs airbourne, and program an equal and fair flight plan. Those drones will slow the thickening of the Permacloud. But our original mission is nowhere near complete and I’m not giving up.
There’s only one being powerful enough to solve planet-sized problems. So for the sake of life on Earth, The Moon must rise again.
THE END.
Explore short stories and more content from Martin Grace, including announcements about the forthcoming Future Britains anthology, over at Sol Stories.