Read Chapter 19: The First Defeat

Callum’s voice crackled through the suit radio before the airlock finished cycling. “We’re back. Don’t get excited.”

Élise’s stomach tightened. She’d been standing at the Bay Two observation window for the last hour, watching the two battered Mk-III haulers drift in on maneuvering thrusters, their hulls streaked with lunar dust and the scorch marks of a hard vacuum rendezvous. She’d hoped for something—anything—that would change the math. Fifteen seats. Thirty-seven mutineers. A shuttle that couldn’t navigate past the Moon’s horizon without a functioning comm array.

The inner door hissed open. Callum stepped through first, his visor up, face streaked with grime. Behind him came Yuki, hauling a gray equipment case the size of a coffin. Her shoulders sagged under the weight, and not just from the mass.

“Tell me,” Élise said.

Callum unclipped his helmet and set it on the deck with a hollow clang. “The phased array on the Mk-III’s comm mast is cracked. Not the housing—the actual ceramic wafer inside. Can’t be fused, can’t be patched. We pulled every spare from the lockers and tried three different configurations.” He shook his head. “It’s dead.”

“There’s no second unit?” Élise asked, already knowing the answer.

Yuki set the case down gently, like it contained a body. “We stripped three of the four haulers. The fourth is buried under a rockfall from the last quake—no way to dig it out without a full excavation crew and three days we don’t have.” She opened the case, revealing a tangle of cabling and a shattered ceramic board the size of a dinner plate. A clean fracture ran through the center, splitting the etched gold traces like a river through a valley. “This is what we’ve got. One cracked wafer and a lot of wishes.”

Élise stared at the wreckage. Without that wafer, the shuttle’s navigation computer couldn’t receive the rendezvous coordinates from the rescue vessel—couldn’t confirm its own position relative to the transfer orbit. The shuttle had enough delta-v to reach the rendezvous point blind, but the margin for error was measured in meters. Miss by more than a hundred and the rescue vessel would have to burn its own limited fuel to chase them down. The vessel’s captain wouldn’t do that. Not for a crew of mutineers.

“What about the managers’ shuttle?” Élise asked. “The one firing on the outer doors?”

Callum grimaced. “We thought about that. But the shuttle’s on the far side of the base, and every time we get close to that section, the outer door takes another hit. The structural sensors are screaming. One more direct blast and the whole Bay One bulkhead could collapse.”

“So we’re stuck,” Yuki said, her voice flat. “Fifteen seats, thirty-seven crew, and no way to tell the rescue ship where to find us.”

The observation window vibrated. A low rumble traveled through the deck plates, the distant thud of another impact against the outer doors. Élise checked the structural readout on her wrist display. Hull integrity in Bay One was down to seventy-one percent. The management shuttle had been firing on and off for two hours now, and each hit made the numbers drop a little more.

“They’re not trying to escape,” Élise said, more to herself than the others. “They’re trying to make sure we can’t.”

“Because they know we’ll never make it home,” Yuki said quietly. “If we die here, the mutiny never happened. Just a gas leak, a tragic accident, a crew that didn’t follow safety protocols.”

Élise turned away from the window. Her eyes fell on the case of broken tech, then swept across the bay floor—the fuel drums, the oxygen tanks she’d liberated from the hidden reserve, the scattered tools and spare parts that had been stockpiled over fifteen years of mining operations. She was a repair chief. She’d spent her whole career making broken things work again.

“Strip the managers’ quarters,” she said.

Callum blinked. “What?”

“Every quarter on the command level. The ones for the director, the deputy director, the corporate liaison.” Élise’s mind was already racing. “Management didn’t come here to work the mines. They came here to oversee. That means comms equipment. Private terminals. Spare handhelds. Anything with a transmitter.”

“You think they kept a spare comm unit in their bedrooms?” Yuki asked, skepticism heavy in her voice.

“I think they kept everything they needed to feel secure,” Élise replied. “And people like that don’t trust the base’s shared infrastructure. They bring their own toys. Encrypted, isolated, redundant.” She gestured toward the command level stairwell. “Go. Every room. Tear up the floor panels if you have to. I want anything that can send a signal.”

Callum nodded slowly, then motioned for Yuki to follow. They headed across the bay floor, their boots echoing against the metal grating.

Élise stayed at the window, watching the distant flashes of the management shuttle’s thrusters through the heavy plasteel. Each pulse was a small sun igniting against the outer door, a fist of plasma hammering at the last barrier between the base and the void. She calculated the time remaining. Four hours, maybe five, before Bay One’s outer door failed entirely. After that, the bay would vent, and the shuttle would be exposed to the hard vacuum of the lunar surface—but so would the rest of the base if the bulkheads didn’t hold.

Her wrist display buzzed. A message from Dmitri, routed through the internal comms. *Bay Two seal check complete. Haven’t found the saboteur’s second device yet. Will keep sweeping.* She typed a brief acknowledgment and pocketed her hands.

Amir. She still hadn’t decided what to do about him. He was confined to quarters under guard, but the scavenging team had been scheduled to leave in three hours. If the managers’ quarters turned up nothing, she’d need that team to go further out, maybe to the comm relay station on the eastern ridge. And she couldn’t take Amir on that run, not with the crew’s trust fracturing.

But she also couldn’t leave him behind where he might find another way to cause damage.

The observation window shuddered again. This time the rumble was deeper, and a warning light flashed on the structural panel. Bay One integrity: sixty-seven percent. The management shuttle was adapting, targeting the same spot repeatedly, concentrating its fire.

“Élise.” Callum’s voice came over the suit radio, breathless. “We found something. Get up here.”

She was moving before she acknowledged the message, taking the stairs two at a time toward the command level. The corridor was dark—power had been cut to nonessential sections hours ago—and she navigated by the glow strips on the floor and the dull red emergency lighting.

Callum met her at the door to the corporate liaison’s quarters. The room had been tossed—mattress pulled off the frame, drawers yanked out and emptied onto the floor, wall panels pried loose and hanging at odd angles. Yuki was on her knees beside the bed, holding a small access panel open in the deck plating.

“Under the floor,” Yuki said, looking up. “Fiber optic cable running down to a junction box. Buried junction box, encrypted, with its own power source.”

Élise crouched beside her, peering into the gap. The box was compact, about the size of a hardcover book, wrapped in thermal shielding. A single data port gleamed on its face, coated in dust that hadn’t been disturbed in years.

“What’s it connected to?” Élise asked.

Yuki shook her head. “Can’t tell without opening it. But it’s not standard base infrastructure. This is a private feed.” She traced the cable back along the floor. “Runs toward the comms tower, but it doesn’t merge with the main array. It’s a separate line.”

Élise felt something shift in her chest—a flicker of possibility where there had been only dead weight. “Can we power it?”

“Already tried. It’s hardwired to the backup generator stack, but there’s a cut switch somewhere between the breaker box and this junction.” Yuki gestured at the cable, where a thin section had been cleanly severed. “Someone clipped it before they left.”

“Management,” Élise said grimly. “They cut their own escape route so nobody else could use it.”

Callum leaned over them. “Can we bypass the cut? Splice it?”

“If I had the right tools, maybe. But the break is clean—deliberate—and the cable has tamper detection built in. If I try to patch it wrong, it’ll burn out the junction box and everything inside.” Yuki sat back on her heels, wiping sweat from her brow. “I’d need a compatible connector, and those aren’t standard. They’re corporate-grade encryption hardware.”

Élise stared at the junction box for a long moment. Then she stood.

“The managers didn’t cut this cable by hand,” she said slowly. “They used a tool. A crimping tool with a specific profile, calibrated for this cable type.” She looked at Yuki. “Where would they keep a tool like that?”

Yuki’s brow furrowed. “If it’s corporate-issue, they’d keep it in the vault. With the override codes.”

Élise’s eyes narrowed. Osei was on his way to breach that vault right now, working to access the shuttle nav codes through the secondary maintenance path. If he succeeded, they’d have those codes. But the tool—that was another thing entirely.

And they were running out of time.