Read Chapter 35: The Impossible Choice

The numbers on Élise’s wrist display ticked past the four-hour mark as she stared at the schematic of the enforcement vessel. The thing was a corporate executioner—sleek, black, bristling with point-defense cannons that were now dead weight. But its AI core was still alive, still pulsing with the codes that would either save them or turn the whole ship into a fireball with her inside it.

“You’re not coming,” she said without turning around.

Vasseur stood in the doorway of the workshop, one arm in a sling, his face the color of spent fuel. The tracer polymer in his blood had been explained to him in clinical terms. He understood what it meant: every step he took was a beacon pointing back to Earth. Every heartbeat announced itself to the lawyers who wanted him dead.

“You need me on that ship,” he said. “The AI is trained to recognize my voice patterns. I can talk it through the handshake protocol—buy you time while you jack in.”

“And the moment you cross the threshold, Earth knows where you are. They’ll detonate the charge in the foundation. We’ll lose the base while we’re sitting in a disabled ship with a self-destruct countdown.”

“They’ll detonate it anyway.” Vasseur stepped into the room, his boots heavy on the grated floor. “Once they realize the boarding party failed, that demolition charge becomes their only move. You think they’re waiting for a polite moment?”

Élise finally turned. The man looked like a ghost wearing human skin. The hours since his rescue had carved new lines into his face, and the poison was doing its slow work behind his eyes. She’d read his file before the corporation had scrubbed it. He had a daughter in Lyon. A garden she’d never see bloom.

“You’ll be dead in seven hours if we don’t find the neutralizer,” she said. “And if you come with me, you might be dead in six. The acceleration stress, the suit breach risk—”

“I’ve done the math.” He held up his good hand, fingers spread. “I’d rather die useful than be a corpse that got carried around for sentiment.”

The workshop door slid open and Callum stepped in, his face already set in the expression of a man who knew he wasn’t going to like what came next. “Ferris is talking. Says the AI’s override token expires when the self-destruct sequence enters its final phase. We’ve got four hours, give or take, before we can’t cancel it from inside.”

“Then we go now.” Élise pulled her helmet from its cradle. “Callum, you have the base.”

“Like hell I do.” He planted himself in her path. “You’re the only one who understands the laser rig’s harmonies. If the residual mining equipment needs emergency calibration mid-fight, I’m reading schematics while we burn.”

“You’ve run the secondary drills.” She didn’t make it a question. “You know the prisoner rotation, the airlock protocols, the evac plan if the demolition charge goes hot. And you have Abu and Reyes handling engineering. They don’t need me for that.”

“They need you for everything else.” Callum’s voice cracked on the last word. “You’re the one who got us here. You’re the reason they trust the plan at all. If you go on that ship and don’t come back, Élise, this whole thing falls apart. Not because of tactics. Because you’re the glue.”

The word hung between them like a bad omen. Élise felt the weight of fifteen years of remote stations pressing down on her shoulders. She remembered the last evacuation—the one where she had been the only one to make it to the escape pod. She remembered the faces of the crew she’d left behind, frozen in her memory like frames of a film she couldn’t stop replaying.

She reached out and gripped Callum’s shoulder. “You’re not them. And I’m not that technician anymore. I’ve spent the last six hours planning this breach, and I know the risk better than anyone. But if we don’t control that ship, we don’t control anything. Not the base. Not the Earth-return contracts. Not our futures.”

“You don’t have to be the one to go,” he said quietly. “Send me. I can jack in. I can—”

“You can’t.” Vasseur cut in. “The AI’s voice-recognition lock is keyed to my bio-signature. It will open its core access panel for me and only me. And Élise is the only one who knows the skeleton key code well enough to input it under pressure.” He gestured between the two of them. “We’re not a delegation. We’re a lock and a key.”

Callum’s jaw worked. He looked like he wanted to argue, wanted to find a way to keep her safe in the base’s cramped corridors, to pretend the enforcement vessel wasn’t a tomb floating a kilometer away with their names painted on it.

Élise pulled him into a brief, hard hug. “Ten hours,” she said. “If we’re not back in ten, assume the worst and activate the base’s emergency thrusters. Get everyone off the rock. Use the prisoners as bargaining chips if you have to.”

“Ten hours,” he repeated, his voice thick.

She released him and turned to the assembled team in the main bay. Abu was at the drone controls, running final propellant checks on the modified transfer vehicle. Reyes was checking weapons—the captured contractor rifles and the jury-rigged taser launchers they’d cobbled together. The two engineers flanked the airlock like sentinels, waiting for orders.

“Listen up,” Élise said, her voice carrying over the hum of the base’s ventilation system. “We have one shot at this. Vasseur and I are going to board the enforcement vessel. Abu, you’re our pilot—you’ll fly the drone to the hull breach point and hold position. Reyes, you’re our overwatch in the airlock. If anything moves on that ship that isn’t us, you light it up.”

“What about the prisoners?” Reyes asked, gesturing toward the bay where the captured boarders were trussed into cryo-couches. “Ferris still says there’s a secondary team aboard the vessel.”

“Then we’ll deal with them.” Élise pulled her helmet on, the seals hissing as they seated against her suit collar. “The AI is the target. The token is the objective. Everything else is noise.”

She checked the clock on her HUD. Four hours to the self-destruct’s final phase. Seven hours to Vasseur’s cardiotoxin deadline. And somewhere in the base’s foundation, a demolition charge ticked toward an unknown zero, waiting for a signal Earth was probably already preparing to send.

“Move out,” she said.

The airlock cycled, and the lunar surface spread before them—a silent, gray emptiness that had never cared about their small dramas. Élise stepped onto the regolith and did not look back. She couldn’t afford to. Behind her, the base hummed with borrowed time. Ahead of her, the disabled enforcement vessel hung against the starfield like a dark blade, its AI waiting to greet them.

Her comm crackled. Vasseur’s voice, quiet and tight. “The tracer polymer is already reporting our exit vector to Earth. They know we’re coming.”

Élise kept walking. “Good. Let them watch.”