Read Chapter 17: The Defector

The vibration came up through Amir’s boots before the sound reached him—the slow, grinding pulse of the management shuttle still hammering against the outer airlock doors. Three hours now. Three hours of metal screaming against metal, and the base’s structural alarms had gone from intermittent to a low, constant whine that lived in the back of every skull.

Amir counted the seconds between each impact. *One. Two. Three. Four.* The rhythm was almost hypnotic. Almost enough to cover the soft click of the access panel he’d pried open with his multitool.

He crouched in the shadow of the antenna housing, fingers working through the bundled cables he’d exposed. The main feed was dead—Élise had seen to that—but the auxiliary uplink was a different animal. Osei had rebuilt it in under an hour, which was impressive in its own way. Annoying, too. Made it harder to justify what Amir was doing.

*You’re not betraying anyone,* he told himself. *You’re saving them.*

He found the signal relay and traced it to the junction box. A small splice, that’s all it would take. A burst transmission on an encrypted band. Earth would receive the coordinates, the situation report, the confirmation that sixty-three miners had been taken hostage by their own repair chief.

Amir’s hands were shaking. He pressed them flat against the cold metal to steady himself.

The shuttle slammed against the doors again. The floor shuddered.

*They’re trying to burn through,* Amir thought. *And if they do, we’re all dead. The base will decompress. Élise’s little revolution won’t matter because there won’t be anything left to save.*

He needed Earth to intervene. Needed someone with authority to order the shuttle to stand down, to send help, to end this before it ended all of them.

His fingers found the wire he needed. Copper, insulated, marked with a tag that read *EMERGENCY RELAY – DO NOT DISCONNECT*. He peeled back the insulation with his teeth and reached for the splice tool in his pocket.

A hand closed around his wrist.

Amir’s breath caught. He twisted his head, already knowing what he’d see.

Dmitri Antonov looked down at him with eyes the color of frozen iron. The big Ukrainian had been Élise’s shadow since the vote, his presence at every meeting, every checkpoint, every door she needed held. He moved like a man who had never learned to be quiet, and yet Amir hadn’t heard him coming.

“What are you doing, little bird?” Dmitri’s voice was soft. Almost gentle. That was worse.

Amir tried to pull his wrist free. Dmitri’s grip tightened. The bones ground together and Amir bit down on a gasp.

“Nothing,” Amir managed. “I was just—checking the connections. Osei asked me to—“

“Osei asks everyone to do many things.” Dmitri reached down with his free hand and batted the splice tool from Amir’s grip. It clattered across the floor and came to rest against the antenna housing. “But Osei does not ask anyone to touch the emergency relay. I know this because I read the maintenance logs. Every night. It is my job.”

Amir’s throat went dry. “I wasn’t—“

“You were.” Dmitri pulled Amir to his feet with a single, brutal motion. The back of Amir’s head cracked against the antenna housing and his vision swam. “You were sending a signal. To Earth. You were telling them what we did.”

“What *we* did?” Amir found his voice, blood hot in his cheeks. “What *she* did. Élise. She’s the one who locked out the airlocks. She’s the one who disabled the comms and held management at gunpoint. I didn’t vote for this. I never voted for this.”

Dmitri’s face didn’t change. He dragged Amir forward by the collar of his suit, past the antenna housing, toward the maintenance bay’s outer viewport. The shuttle was visible through the reinforced glass—a sleeker silhouette against the black, its maneuvering thrusters bleeding faint gouts of fire as it nudged closer to the base’s hull.

“You see that?” Dmitri said. He forced Amir’s face toward the viewport. “That is management. That is the people you want to help. They are trying to blast through our doors. They would rather vent all of us into space than let us take what is rightfully ours.”

Amir’s nose was inches from the cold glass. The shuttle’s engines flared again. The floor trembled.

“They left us,” Dmitri continued. “They gave the order to evacuate forty-seven people and leave sixty-three behind. You think Earth will help you? You think Earth cares about miners?” He laughed, a low sound with no humor in it. “Earth sent the shutdown order. Earth approved the evacuation. Earth will do nothing.”

“They don’t know what’s happening,” Amir insisted. “They only know what management told them. If I could explain—“

“They will not listen.”

“You don’t know that.”

Dmitri’s hand moved from Amir’s collar to the back of his neck. His grip was like a vise, pushing Amir’s face against the glass until his cheek flattened and the cold burned his skin.

“I know this,” Dmitri said slowly, “because I have been on this base for nine years. I have watched management lie. I have watched them cheat. I have watched them walk away from every promise they ever made. And now, when they are trying to kill us, you want to send them a message. You want to say *please.*”

He pulled Amir’s head back, then drove it forward again. The glass cracked. A hairline fracture spiderwebbed from the impact point.

“You are a traitor,” Dmitri said. “And traitors do not get second chances.”

He dragged Amir toward the inner airlock door. The one that led to the unpressurized maintenance shell—the one that opened onto the lunar surface.

Amir’s blood went cold. “No. No, you can’t—“

“I can.” Dmitri’s hand found the control panel. His fingers hovered over the cycle button. “One press, and the outer door opens. You will be out there in fifteen seconds. Your suit will hold for about six minutes before the cold gets through. You will have time to think about what you did.”

“Dmitri, please—“

“Do you have anything to say? Any last words for Earth?”

Amir’s mind was blank. He could hear his own heartbeat, loud in his ears, and beneath it the distant thrum of the shuttle still firing against the doors.

“I’m not a traitor,” he whispered.

Dmitri’s finger pressed the button. The inner door began to cycle, the hiss of air pressure changing audible through the hull.

Amir screamed.

“Stop.”

The voice came from behind them. Quiet, but firm. Amir twisted his head, still pinned against the door, and saw Élise Marchand standing in the corridor entrance. She was in her full EVA suit, helmet tucked under one arm, her face lit by the red emergency strobes that had been flashing for the better part of an hour.

Dmitri didn’t turn. “He was sending a signal.”

“I know.” Élise walked closer. Her footsteps were measured. Calm. “I saw him on the camera feeds. I’ve been watching him for the last hour.”

Amir’s stomach dropped. *She knew. She knew the whole time.*

Dmitri’s jaw tightened. “Then you know what he was trying to do. He was going to tell Earth about the mutiny. He was going to give them our position, our numbers, everything. If they send reinforcements—“

“They’ll send them anyway.” Élise stopped a few feet away. She looked at Amir, and her expression was not angry. It was tired. Older than her years. “The distress signal already went out before we killed the antenna. Osei made sure of that. Earth already knows what we did. This wouldn’t have changed anything.”

Dmitri’s eyes narrowed. “He was still—“

“He was scared.” Élise’s gaze held Amir’s. “He’s twenty-three years old. He signed on for a three-year contract, and he’s not even halfway through. He’s never been in a fight before, and now he’s part of a mutiny he didn’t vote for.” She took a step closer. “Amir, is that right? You didn’t vote for me.”

Amir swallowed. His throat was raw from screaming. “I… didn’t think it would work. I thought negotiation—“

“Was the right play.” Élise nodded slowly. “Maybe it was. Maybe it still is. But we don’t get to pick the battlefield anymore. We only get to pick how we fight on it.”

She turned to Dmitri. “Let him go.”

Dmitri’s hand didn’t move from the control panel. “He will try again.”

“I know.” Élise looked back at Amir. “But he’s not an enemy. He’s a miner with a different opinion. We’re going to need everyone we have if we’re going to get off this rock alive.” She paused. “Put him in the observation deck under guard. He can watch the shuttle burn through the doors that are supposed to keep us safe. Maybe he’ll learn something.”

Dmitri’s eyes flicked to hers. For a long moment, they stood in silence, the shuttle’s engines thrumming through the floor.

Then Dmitri released Amir’s neck. Amir collapsed to his knees, gasping for air.

“If he tries again,” Dmitri said, in the same quiet voice, “I will not ask permission.”

He stepped past Élise and disappeared into the corridor’s shadows.

Amir stayed on the floor, hands pressed to the cold metal, body shaking. Élise crouched in front of him. She studied him for a moment, then reached out and took his chin, lifting his face to meet hers.

“I’m going to show you something,” she said. “In two hours, I’m taking a team out to the Mk-III haulers in the eastern field. We’re going to try to make them spaceworthy. It’s a suicide mission, and I’m asking people to volunteer.” She paused. “I want you on that team.”

Amir’s eyes widened. “What? I just tried to—“

“You tried to save yourself by any means available. That’s not a traitor’s instinct. That’s a survivor’s instinct.” Élise let go of his chin and stood. “I need survivors on my team. If you want to prove you’re more than a scared kid with a wire cutter, that’s your chance.”

She turned and walked toward the corridor, leaving Amir on the floor, the cracked viewport beside him still showing the shuttle’s relentless assault on the doors.

“Two hours,” she said without looking back. “Don’t be late.”