Read Chapter 21: The Price of Time

The command deck smelled of ozone and old fear. Élise stood at the console with the FalconKey chip in her palm, its tiny blue light pulsing like a heartbeat. Through the viewport, the management shuttle hung motionless against the black, a patient predator waiting for them to blink.

"They stopped firing for a reason," Osei said from the auxiliary station, voice low. "That's not mercy. That's repositioning."

"Or waiting for reinforcements." Callum's hands hovered over the nav interface. "We need to decide. Now."

Élise turned the chip over. Fifty grams of plastic and circuitry that could save them or doom them. The director had hidden it in a floor safe beneath his private quarters, a coward's insurance policy for a man who never intended to share it. She thought of her father's stories from the old mines—company men who kept escape pods for themselves while the crews choked on silicate dust. Management had written this evacuation order before the first explosion, she was certain now. The oxygen reserve behind the false wall was proof enough.

"Élise." Amir's voice came from the guard station where Chen watched him. She'd let him out of the brig to help strip the managers' quarters, and he'd earned his place on this deck through sheer useful terror. "If you send that signal, the corporation knows exactly where we are. They'll scramble a response team. Company security. Not rescue."

"I'm aware of what the signal does, Amir."

"Then you're aware we're choosing which enemy meets us first. The rescue vessel might be the one that puts us in body bags."

Silence stretched. Dmitri shifted near the airlock ladder, arms crossed, watching Élise with the wary patience of a man who'd survived too many company lies.

"The outer doors have maybe six hours of integrity left," Callum said quietly. "If they blow, the whole habitat depressurizes in stages. We'll lose the workshop deck first. Then engineering. Then we die in the dark with our suits on."

Élise looked at the shuttle through the viewport. Fifteen people could fit in the one functional shuttle. The salvage team had stripped the Mk-III haulers for parts, but the commute remained dead. Even if they dragged every working component from the maintenance bay, they'd be building a scrap-tin coffin for at least three more bodies.

"Osei," she said. "When management's shuttle fired on the outer doors, how much structural damage did it actually do?"

Osei pulled up a damage schematic on his screen. "Breach points at sectors three and seven. Emergency seals held. They're not using heavy munitions—just point-defense thrusters aimed at stress points. Slow burn."

"They're chewing through the shell," Élise said. "Not killing us fast. Just making sure we can't leave."

"That's the read."

Élise pressed the FalconKey chip into the reader. The console chirped, displaying a single line of confirmation text and a menu of recovery options. One press. That was all it took.

"Callum, is the beacon interface ready?"

"Nav system's patched. I can route the signal through the shuttle's transponder in thirty seconds."

"Thirty seconds, then," she said.

"Wait." Dmitri stepped forward. "We should vote. Put it to the crew—"

"There's no time for a vote." Élise's voice was flat. "We have six hours before the doors fail. Three hours of that we need for launch prep. The FalconKey brings a vessel in forty-eight. If we don't launch before the doors go, we don't launch at all. We don't get to vote on physics, Dmitri."

"This isn't physics. This is trust. We're pinning our lives on a corporation that wanted us dead."

"Pin our lives on the alternative, then." She gestured at the shuttle. "Fifteen seats. Twenty-three crew. The empty void. Pick one."

Dmitri's jaw tightened. He looked away first.

Élise turned to Callum. "Run the interface."

The engineer's fingers flew across the console. Green light bloomed on the nav screen as the FalconKey code burned into the shuttle's transponder logs. The base's main antenna—repaired and jury-rigged by a crew working on fear and stolen oxygen—hummed to life. The signal left the moon in a tight point beam aimed at the recovery network's relay station in lunar orbit.

Everyone on deck held their breath.

The console pinged. A single line of text scrolled across the screen:

FALCONKEY CONFIRMED. RESCUE VESSEL ARRIVING IN 72 HOURS. STANDBY.

"Seventy-two hours," Amir said. "That's more than the forty-eight they promised."

"The FalconKey network doesn't promise precise arrival times," Osei said slowly. "They auto-calculate. That's the response time for a ship coming from—" He worked the math on a side screen. "Mars. Or the Belt. Not Earth."

"Someone was already in transit," Élise said. "Before we even sent the signal."

The implications hung in the sterile air. A third-party vessel coming from deep space wasn't a random rescue. It was a positioned response. Someone had been waiting for this beacon to light up.

Callum swallowed. "That transponder address—it's military-grade encryption. Corporate ghost-fleet level. Whoever this is, they're not casual deep-space salvage operators."

Élise looked at the shuttle, pale and motionless against the stars. She'd pulled the trigger. Now they had to survive the next three days before whatever arrived decided how the story ended.

"Osei," she said, her voice steady. "I want every defense system on this base inventoried. Turrets, point-defense cannons, anything we can route power to. We prep for visitors—friendly or otherwise."

"What about the oxygen reserve?" Chen asked.

"Rationing begins now. Three shifts per day, minimal activity periods. We stretch every canister to hour seventy-two and one heartbeat beyond."

She stepped away from the console, feeling the weight of every eye on her. The base hummed its quiet mechanical song, oblivious to the countdown ticking through its bones.

"We're still alive," Dmitri said, but his voice lacked conviction.

"For now," Élise said. "That's the best any of us gets."