Read Chapter 16: The Shuttle Problem

The vibration through the deck plates was unmistakable now. A deep, rhythmic thrum that had nothing to do with life support or the drilling rigs. It was the heartbeat of a fusion torch burning through pre-ignition, and it was coming from the management shuttle bay.

Élise pressed her palm flat against the corridor wall, feeling the pulse travel up her arm. "He's not waiting for the eight hours. Massey is running early."

Callum was already moving, his long strides eating up the corridor toward the maintenance junction. "Can he get through the airlock controls? We locked them down."

"We locked the *egress* controls. The ferry protocol shutdown was physical." Élise broke into a jog beside him. "But if Massey thinks he can override the outer door manually, he might try a burn-through. That torch could slag the outer seal and vent the entire bay."

She turned down a narrower service passage, the lights flickering overhead as the shuttle's engine draw stole power from the base grid. They emerged into what had once been the vehicle maintenance bay—now a graveyard of half-disassembled mining haulers and the skeletal remains of the assembly frame they'd secured the night before.

Dmitri was already there, his broad frame hunched over a portable scanner he'd jury-rigged to the frame's control interface. He looked up as they entered, his face grim in the red emergency lighting.

"Management shuttle is cycling pre-burn," he said. "But that's not the problem."

"There's a bigger problem than a man trying to escape in a ship that could take out half the base?"

Dmitri jerked his thumb toward the far wall of the bay, where the outline of the maintenance airlock showed against the dark. "The *Dragonfly* is in the repair cradle. Port thruster assembly is still detached. They didn't finish stripping it before we shut them down."

Élise felt the floor drop out of her stomach. The Dragonfly. The second shuttle—the one that was supposed to be the evacuation's backup. It sat there, a sleek arrowhead of reinforced carbon and ceramic, its starboard engine gaping open like a wound.

"How bad?"

"Bad enough. The thruster is sitting on a cart beside the cradle. The mounting bolts are loose, but the fuel lines were cut clean, and the control harness was pulled." Dmitri shook his head. "It's not a quick repair. It's a full reinstall with re-certification of the feed lines. That's days of work, not hours."

Callum swore under his breath. "So we have one functional shuttle. How many can it carry?"

"Fifteen. Maybe sixteen if we leave out the seats and use the cargo area. Life support is rated for a standard crew complement plus margin." Élise was already running calculations in her head. "We have forty-eight people in this mutiny now. Even if we strip the Dragonfly for parts and get it flying, we're still looking at two ships that can carry maybe thirty total."

The shuttle engine note outside changed, dropping to a lower frequency. Élise felt it through her boots, through her teeth. "How long until Massey's shuttle is ready?"

Dmitri consulted his scanner. "He's doing a slow burn to test the seals. Maybe twenty minutes before he attempts the door."

"He'll find it locked. But he'll also find the comm antenna is dead, and he'll know what that means." Élise turned to face the assembled repair crew, the half-dozen miners who had followed her into this bay on instinct. They were tired, running on adrenaline and fear, and they were looking at her for answers she wasn't sure she had.

"We need to inventory every scrap of metal that can hold atmosphere," she said. "Every decommissioned vehicle, every cargo pod, anything that has a pressure hull and a docking collar. And we need to do it now."

The next forty minutes were a blur of motion. Élise sent runners through the maintenance tunnels, pulling the crew from their posts, dragging them into a working party that moved through the base with grim efficiency. They found things: a cargo pod meant for transporting volatile samples, its pressure seals intact; an old excavation vehicle with a cracked viewport that could be welded; the frame of a mobile drilling platform that was little more than a cockpit and an engine.

But none of it was a shuttle. None of it could reach Earth's orbit, let alone survive re-entry.

Élise stood in the middle of Bay Three, surrounded by the scavenged components that could never become a ship, and felt the weight of every decision she'd made in the last twenty-four hours pressing down on her shoulders. She'd taken a base. She'd cut off communication with Earth. She'd convinced forty-eight people to risk everything on her plan to get them home.

And home was a thousand kilometers above her head, separated by vacuum and physics and the simple, brutal math of life support capacity.

"We could double up," Callum said, appearing at her elbow with a tablet in hand. "Push the shuttle past its rated limits. If we strip everything non-essential, pack people in like we're shipping ore..."

"The life support can't handle it. The scrubbers will saturate in twelve hours if we double the load. We'd be dead before we reached Earth's orbit." Élise rubbed her tired eyes. "No. We need a second carrier."

"From what? We've inventoried everything that can hold pressure. There's nothing—"

"The decommissioned mining vehicles." Élise looked past Callum's shoulder to where Dmitri was examining the stripped Dragonfly. "The big ones. The Mk-III haulers they used for deep-core extraction. They have pressure hulls rated for surface work. With enough seals and patch plates, we could make them vacuum-capable for a short window."

"The Mk-IIIs were decommissioned because their containment fields destabilized. They're sitting in the east storage dome, half stripped for parts. And they were never designed for orbital flight."

"They don't need to be." Élise's mind was racing now, fitting pieces together. "They just need to be able to reach low lunar orbit and dock with something that can take the crew the rest of the way. We can use the shuttle to ferry people in batches, but we need a secondary rendezvous point—"

"With what?" Callum demanded. "Docking at what? We don't have a station in lunar orbit. We don't have—"

"We have the outpost at Synodic Point." Dmitri looked up from his diagnostic work, his voice flat. "The automated relay station. It has a pressurized docking ring and life support rated for a crew of twelve. It's meant for maintenance crews."

Callum stared at him. "That station was decommissioned five years ago. It's a ghost station."

"It's a pressurized hull," Élise said. "It's a place to wait. And if we can get the haulers spaceworthy and the shuttle flying, we can shuttle the crew up in waves. The Mk-IIIs can reach low orbit with enough fuel if we strip them to bare bones. It's a one-way trip, but they don't need to come back."

Dmitri grunted. "That's a lot of ifs."

"It's a plan," Élise countered. "And it's better than leaving half our people here to die." She turned to face the room. "Dmitri, you and your team start on the Dragonfly. Get that thruster reinstalled. I need it flight-ready in forty-eight hours."

"And the Mk-IIIs?"

"I'll take a team to the east dome and start stripping them now." She looked at Callum. "I need you to hold the airlock controls. If Massey tries to burn through the outer door, I need someone there who can relieve the chamber pressure and vent the bay before the explosion takes us with it."

Callum nodded, his expression tight. "And the security guards we left in the storage room?"

Élise had almost forgotten them. The two men she'd subdued during the ferry protocol shutdown, bound and locked in a supply closet off Bay Three. "Keep them under guard. If Massey's shuttle manages to leave, they're witness to what we did. We don't need them telling that story to Earth before we have a chance to tell ours."

She was halfway to the door when the base intercom crackled to life. A voice she recognized—Osei, the comm technician who had led the dissenting faction.

"Élise. If you can hear this, I need you to know that I've restored the auxiliary antenna uplink. It's not the main dish, but it'll carry a signal."

Élise froze. "Osei, don't—"

"I'm not calling Earth. I'm calling *you*." The voice was strained, apologetic. "Massey's shuttle just fired its main engine. He's trying to blow the outer doors. And he's already sent a transmission on an emergency channel—before you cut the antenna."

The bottom fell out of Élise's stomach. "What transmission?"

"Mayday. He's calling it a mutiny and requesting immediate military assistance from Earth. ETA on any response is four hours minimum."

Four hours. The base's structural integrity was already compromised. The shuttle was attempting a burn-through that could compromise the entire airlock complex. And now Earth knew they'd taken the base.

The window wasn't three days. It wasn't even three hours. It was three.