Read Chapter 12: The Night Shift

The maintenance corridor on Level 3 smelled of recycled air and ozone, the familiar tang of machinery that had run too hot for too long. Élise stood with her back against a coolant pipe, watching the crew filter in through three separate access points—Callum had arranged it like a military operation, which was either reassuring or alarming depending on how you looked at it.

Ten miners. Fewer than she'd hoped, more than she'd feared.

She recognized most of them. There was Dmitri Volkov, the drilling foreman who never smiled and whose hands bore scars from thirty years of working rock. Marta Chen from the refining deck, thin and watchful. Two women Élise knew only by face from the mess hall. A young man named Reyes who ran the ore transport rail. The others were a blur of jumpsuits and anxious eyes.

Callum stood at the corridor's junction, his back to the main passage, watching for anyone who shouldn't be there. His jaw was set tight beneath the gray stubble.

"Thank you for coming," Élise said, keeping her voice low. The corridor carried sound more than she liked. "I know what this looks like. A midnight meeting in a maintenance tunnel. It looks like something out of a bad holodrama."

Dmitri grunted. "It looks like trouble. Which is why I'm here. What's happening, Marchand?"

Élise looked at the faces turned toward her. She saw fear there, and fatigue, and something else—a kind of weary hope that she recognized from every station she'd ever worked. The hope that someone, finally, was going to tell them the truth.

"The base is compromised," she said. "Structurally. The reports we were given don't match the original surveys. I have proof."

She pulled out her tablet and projected the comparison onto the corridor wall: the original structural survey from six months ago, the filed report with its altered load-bearing calculations, the gap where the alloy test data should have been. The crew leaned in, some squinting at the numbers.

Marta Chen frowned. "These figures... that's a forty percent reduction in tensile strength. There's no way that passed inspection."

"It didn't," Élise said. "Not legitimately. The anomaly flag was overridden at Fournier's clearance level, and the inspection was never actually completed."

A murmur rippled through the group. Reyes, the young transport operator, shook his head. "Wait. So the base is falling apart and management knows about it? And they just... didn't tell us?"

"That's what I'm saying."

Dmitri's face was unreadable, but his hands had curled into fists. "Why? What do they gain?"

Callum stepped away from his post, moving closer. "That's the question we've been asking. And what we've found is that they're preparing for something. There's an unregistered vessel coming, and someone—a structural engineer—was supposed to be on it. He never made it to L2. His records say he did, but he didn't. The trail was forged."

The corridor fell silent. Élise could hear the hum of the ventilation fans above them, the distant thud of machinery through the walls.

"An inspector who never arrived," Marta said slowly. "A structural report that's been doctored. And a ship that's coming anyway." She looked at Élise. "You're saying they're going to abandon us."

"I'm saying the evidence points to it. The emergency broadcast system has been reconfigured to exclude the management quarters. They don't hear the alarms. We do. They're rehearsing us, drilling us, so that when something fails, we evacuate while they stay safe."

"Evacuate where?" Reyes asked. His voice cracked slightly. "There's no ship scheduled for us. The next transport isn't for six weeks."

"Exactly."

A heavyset man Élise didn't know spoke up for the first time. "So what are we going to do about it?"

The question hung in the air. Élise could feel the weight of it, the same weight she'd felt fifteen years ago on Etam Station when the hull breach alarms had started screaming and she'd run for the pod alone.

"First, we need to be careful," she said. "We need to document everything. Gather more evidence. There's strength in numbers, but only if we're smart about how we use it."

"Smart," Dmitri repeated. "You want us to be smart while the base falls down around us?" He gestured at the wall. "You heard what you just said. Forty percent reduction in tensile strength. That's not a slow decay. That's a deadline. How long do we have?"

Élise hesitated. She'd done the calculations in her head a dozen times, running the numbers through every model she knew. The answer was never good.

"Based on the stress patterns I've been tracking, and the rate of alloy degradation if the metallurgy specs are accurate..." She paused. "Three weeks. Maybe four. The hydrogen fusion plant could hold longer, but not much."

"Three weeks," Reyes said, his voice hollow. "We have three weeks before the base starts coming apart?"

"Not this base," Élise corrected. "The skeleton that's holding this base together. The panels might hold, the air might stay in, but the structural integrity is already compromised. When it goes, it'll go fast."

Marta's eyes narrowed. "You said the original survey was from six months ago. The base has been running for five years. How long has this been going on?"

"Longer than the survey. The alloy sections were substandard from the start. I'd say the whole Hab Ring was built with faulty materials—or at least a portion of it was. Enough to make the whole thing unstable under the right conditions."

A woman Élise recognized as one of the hydroponics techs stepped forward. "My name is Julia Park. I work in the hydroponics bay. I found something too." She looked at her hands, then back at the group. "The oxygen leak a few days ago—the one that triggered the alarm in our section—I checked the system logs afterward. The valve that failed had been tampered with. The seal was scored, deliberately, like someone had cut into it with a tool."

Élise felt her stomach drop. She'd suspected the leak was staged, but hearing it confirmed by someone who'd seen the physical evidence made it real.

"Tampered how?" Callum asked.

"Not enough to cause an immediate rupture," Julia said. "Enough to cause a slow leak about three weeks after the damage was done. It was a timer."

"To see how we'd respond," Dmitri said quietly. "To test the drill."

"They're conditioning us," Élise said. "They want us primed to panic when the evacuation order comes. They want us to move fast, without asking questions, without checking for a ship that might not be there."

The corridor was silent again. Then Reyes spoke, his voice carrying an edge of anger that hadn't been there before. "So what are we doing to do? Just sit here and wait for them to load up their escape vessel and leave us to die?"

"Of course not," Élise said quickly. "But we can't rush into this either. If we move without a clear plan, we'll just hand them an excuse to isolate us—or worse, lock us in our quarters while they evac."

"Then we take the ship," Dmitri said. "We take the base. Any means necessary."

The words hung in the air like a detonation charge, waiting for a signal.

"I second that," Reyes said. "We're not going to just lie down and let them kill us."

"Hold on," Callum said, stepping between the two men and the rest of the group. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We need to think this through—"

"Think?" Dmitri turned on him. "We've been thinking. We've been cordial. We've been filing grievances and waiting for management to show a conscience. And you know what that got us? A base that's falling apart and an inspector who never arrived."

"He's right," another voice said. A woman Élise recognized from the maintenance crew—Sam Okafor. "We've seen what happens to people who trust the company. They get sedated without their consent." She looked at Élise. "Dr. Hélène told you about that."

"She did."

"So what more evidence do we need?" Okafor asked. "They're drugging us. They're lying to us. They're setting us up to take the blame when this place falls apart."

"Which is why we have the advantage," Élise said, forcing calm into her voice. "They think we don't know. They think we're going to go along with their plan because we always have. That gives us time—time to organize, to protect ourselves, to make sure that when they try to leave, we're ready."

"Ready how?" Dmitri asked. "Ready to storm the shuttle bay? You heard about the ship that's coming. It's not a transport. It's got Vasseur's identifier tied to it. Whatever it is, it's not here to pick us up."

"Then we take it," Reyes repeated. "Those are the only options. Either we take their ship, or we die on this rock."

The corridor erupted into overlapping voices, some angry, some frightened, some arguing for caution. Élise watched the faces around her and felt the gap between what she wanted and what was possible grow wider by the second.

"Enough!" Callum's voice cut through the noise. He held up his hands. "We can't vote on anything tonight. We don't even have a quorum. But this conversation isn't over."

"It needs to end somewhere," Dmitri said.

"It will," Callum replied. "But not in a corridor at two in the morning, without everyone on board. We owe the crew that much."

The miners exchanged glances. Élise could see the energy in the room shifting—the anger was still there, but it was being channeled now, held in check for a moment longer.

"Three days," Dmitri said finally. "We meet again in three days. If we don't have a plan by then—a real plan, not just talk—I'm taking matters into my own hands."

He turned and walked out through the access hatch without looking back. One by one, the others followed, until only Élise, Callum, and Julia Park remained.

"They're going to move faster than we can control," Callum said quietly. "Dmitri has a following. If he decides to act—"

"Then we need to be ready to act first," Élise said. She looked at the empty corridor, at the fading footsteps of the crew. "Because if we're not, they'll hang us all."

Julia was still there, her arms crossed. "You mentioned the ship that's coming. What if Dmitri's right? What if taking it is the only option?"

Élise met her eyes. "Then we'd better figure out how to do it without killing everyone on board." She paused. "Including ourselves."

The ventilation fans hummed overhead, carrying the recycled breath of ten conspirators into the darkness. Somewhere above them, the base groaned—a sound Élise had grown so accustomed to that she barely heard it anymore. But tonight it sounded different.

It sounded like a countdown.