Read Chapter 13: The First Strike

The knock came at 03:14, three sharp raps against the maintenance bay door. Élise had been dozing on a crate of spare regulator valves, her neck aching from the angle. She was on her feet before her eyes fully opened, one hand on the torque wrench at her belt.

Callum was already at the door, peering through the slit. His face went tight. He pulled the latch and Dmitri Volkov shouldered in, followed by two miners Élise didn't recognize by name—she only knew their faces from the mess hall, the kind of quiet men who ate fast and talked little.

Dmitri looked past Callum, straight at Élise. His jaw was set, his coveralls streaked with grease.

"Evacuation order just went out on the internal net," he said. "Voluntary. Essential personnel only. Shuttle departs in eight hours."

Callum's hand went to the tablet on his hip. Élise watched him scroll, his finger moving fast across the screen. The silence stretched long enough that even Dmitri's shoulders started to tense.

"They've listed the names," Callum said, his voice flat. "Every manager. Every corporate liaison. Hélène Magnusson. The comms technician, the two pilots who didn't fly in. Forty-seven people."

"And us?" Élise asked, though she already knew the answer.

Callum turned the tablet toward her. The list scrolled past the names she recognized from the sealed conference rooms, from the schedule rotations that kept management quarters insulated from the rest of the base. No miner's name appeared. No deck techs. No hydraulics specialists. No one who had ever turned a wrench in this place.

Julia Park's name was not there either. Neither was Callum's. Neither was hers.

"Essential personnel," Dmitri repeated, his voice dripping with bile. "They're leaving us here."

Élise moved past him to the door. She needed to see it for herself, needed to see the order on a screen she could trust. The corridor outside the maintenance bay was still half-dark, the lighting dimmed to night-cycle levels. She walked fast toward the nearest common terminal at the intersection of Sections 4 and 6.

The screen glowed pale blue in the dark. She brought up the internal notices feed. There it was, timestamped 02:58. A formal memo from Commander Reyes, framed in the kind of corporate language that coated bile in honey:

*In light of ongoing operational difficulties and to preserve continuity of essential functions, the company has authorized an early voluntary departure for key personnel whose continued presence is critical to corporate oversight. This decision follows standard contingency protocols. All departing personnel are asked to assemble at the main airlock by 10:00.*

Below it, the list. She read the names even though she didn't need to. Reyes. The deputy commander, Arnaud. The four department heads who rarely left their offices. Hélène. The safety compliance officer who had signed off on the structural inspections Élise had flagged as falsified.

None of them would be missed when the base collapsed.

She didn't realize her hands were shaking until Dmitri spoke from behind her.

"They're not coming back."

Callum had followed them out. He stood in the corridor, tablet still in his hand, his face pale under the dim emergency lights.

"This isn't an evacuation," Élise said slowly, turning the words over. "This is a bailout. They're abandoning us ahead of schedule. They don't even have to wait for the collapse—they're just leaving us to it."

Dmitri slammed his fist against the corridor wall. The paneling shuddered. "And what do we do? Wait here to die while they take the only shuttle?"

Callum raised a hand. "We don't even know if there's only one shuttle. The unregistered vessel is still scheduled for arrival—"

"Which none of us are cleared to fly," Dmitri cut in. "And the managers know it. They're holding the keys to everything."

Élise stared at the screen. Forty-seven names. Eight hours. She calculated the timing in her head: if the managers were organized—and they always were—they'd be packed within two hours. Baggage would be transferred to the shuttle by 07:00. The airlock would cycle at 09:30. By noon, the base would belong to the people who had nowhere to go.

She thought of the structural crack in her quarters. The calcium lines spreading through the hull's stress points. The three to four weeks she'd estimated, maybe less now that she factored in whatever Vasseur had been brought in to document.

They didn't have three weeks. They might not even have three days.

"What do we do?" she asked, more to herself than to the men around her.

Dmitri stepped closer. His voice was low, urgent. "We take the airlock. Lock it down tight. If they want to leave, they'll have to negotiate."

"Negotiate with what?" Callum shot back. "They control the comms. They control the shuttle. If we lock them in, they'll just wait us out."

Élise turned from the screen. "No," she said slowly. "They can't wait us out. They have eight hours because the shuttle's launch window is fixed. The orbital mechanics don't bend—the window closes when it closes."

Dmitri's eyes went sharp. "Then we don't have to stop them from getting to the shuttle. We just have to stop them from getting to the airlock."

Callum looked between them, uncertainty flickering across his face. "You're talking about mutiny."

"I'm talking about survival," Élise said. "They've already made their choice. They wrote our names off the list before they even printed it."

She looked back at the screen. The names glowed back at her, endless and indifferent.

"You heard Julia," she continued. "The leak was staged. The alarms were rigged. Vasseur was supposed to stamp their paperwork before they left. They've been planning this for months. The only difference is they're leaving us early because they've already gotten what they needed—cover story, inspection trail, everything."

Dmitri was already moving. "I know guys who'll back us. Kolya, Sanko, the two on C-shift. They're awake. We can take the airlock control room in twenty minutes."

Élise caught his arm. "Not yet. We need the list first. Everyone on this base who isn't on that manifest. We need to know exactly how many of us there are, and how many of us are willing to fight."

Callum was scrolling through his tablet again. "There are a hundred and twelve crew total. Minus forty-seven managers and the two pilots. That's sixty-three of us."

Sixty-three against a ship that could hold maybe thirty.

But the managers weren't planning on taking passengers.

The minutes were ticking. Élise looked between Callum and Dmitri, the accountant and the hammer. Both essential. Both dangerous in different ways.

"Get your men," she told Dmitri. "I'll get the rest. We meet at the airlock control room in one hour."

She tapped the screen, killing the notice. The corridor fell into deeper darkness.

"Heading to the airlock," Dmitri said, and was gone.

Callum looked at her. "And what do we do once we have it?"

Élise thought of the structural crack in her quarters. The spread of the damage. The days they had left.

"Then we find a way home."