Read Chapter 10: Aftermath: First Crack

The rover lay on its side like a dead animal, one wheel still spinning lazily against the pale gray regolith. Elena killed the motor with a stab of her thumb and sat there, breathing hard, her gloved hands gripping the controls as if the machine might decide to roll again.

Beside her, Jack made a sound—low, guttural, teeth clenched. His leg was twisted under the console, the suit fabric bunched and strained around the knee. When she looked at him, his face was a mask of controlled pain, the kind she'd seen on men who refused to admit they were hurt until it was too late.

"Don't move," she said.

"Wasn't planning on it."

She unbuckled and climbed over the seat, careful not to put weight on him. The cabin had tilted into a forty-five-degree angle, the window on her side now a skylight showing dull gray sky. She braced her feet against the dash and worked her hands under his thigh.

"On three. One—"

"Just do it."

She pulled. Jack screamed through his teeth, a sound that died almost immediately, swallowed by the effort of control. His leg came free and he dragged himself up onto the seat, cradling the limb like something fragile.

Elena dropped back into her seat and studied the damage. The suit's outer layer had torn at the knee—the same seam, she couldn't help but notice, that had failed on the geologist in the outpost. The material was stripped down to the grip layer, and beneath that, the pale flesh of his knee was swollen and wrong-shaped.

She didn't need the medical scanner to know it was bad.

"We need to right the rover," she said.

"Elena—"

"We need to right the rover, Jack, because the alternative is sitting here until the sun goes down and the cold gets us. Your leg isn't going to matter then."

He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded once, jaw tight.

They worked together in silence. She had him brace against the seatback while she climbed outside and anchored the winch cable to a nearby rock outcropping. The motor whined, strained, and then the rover came over with a groan of tortured metal and settled on its wheels. All four held.

When she climbed back inside, Jack had managed to get himself into the passenger seat and was pressing a field dressing against his knee. His work was clumsy, one-handed, the other arm too weak to hold the bandage taut.

She took it from him without asking. He let her.

The medical kit was small—field grade, meant for scrapes and minor burns, not joint trauma. She found a compression wrap and a syringe of anti-inflammatory. The painkillers she had to measure carefully. They had two vials left, and the walk to Relay 7 was impossible on a shattered knee.

"That's going to wear off in four hours," she said, taping the manual splint into place. "Long enough to get us most of the way."

"Then what?"

"Then we find more. Or we don't."

Jack let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "You always this optimistic?"

"No. I'm honest. It's different."

She finished the wrap and set her hands on her knees. Dust clung to her suit, smeared across the arms and chest from the crawl over the rocks. She could feel the grit inside her collar, grinding against her neck.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He didn't pretend to misunderstand. "Because I didn't know who I could trust."

"You thought it was me."

"I didn't know." He shifted, wincing. "You found the flaw. You filed the report. The report disappeared. People don't usually file reports that get buried unless they're the reason the reports got buried. So yeah. I suspected you. Sue me."

She wanted to be angry. The words sat in her throat, hot and ready. But she'd hidden the pendant from Reyes's cache. She'd lied to his face. She had no high ground here, and she knew it.

"I didn't sabotage the base," she said quietly. "I only tried to tell the truth."

"Good. Then we have something in common."

It wasn't forgiveness or trust. It was a cease-fire. She'd take it.

They drove in silence after that, the rover limping across a landscape of shattered craters and razorback ridges. The sun was low and orange, throwing long shadows that made the terrain look like a halfway-formed nightmare. Jack kept his leg propped up on the dash, his hand loose on the grab bar. He didn't complain.

She watched him from the corner of her eye. The way his jaw tightened every time the rover hit a bump. The way his fingers tapped against the bar, counting time until the painkiller wore off.

"You served?" she asked.

"Fifteen years."

"What did you fly?"

"Transports, mostly. Lunar supply runs. Once had a captain who bet me I couldn't thread a landing through a dust storm in Mare Nubium. The bet was a case of scotch. I lost, and he made me calculate the buoyancy equations for a hydrogen balloon as punishment." A shadow of a smile. "Never let a marine calculate anything."

"You were marine corps?"

"Before I got sensible and started flying."

She let the silence stretch, comfortable now. The trust didn't matter. Not yet. What mattered was that they moved forward.

The relay appeared at the top of a rise—a skeletal tower of aluminum and composite, its dish tilted at a broken angle, its signal lights dark. Elena pulled the rover up alongside it and cut the engine.

"Looks dead," Jack said.

"It is." She studied the dish. "The alignment servos must have burned out when the storm hit. The dish can be moved manually, but someone has to go outside and crank it into position. That's a spacewalk."

He looked at her. "You're volunteering?"

"I'm the one whose legs aren't shattered."

He laughed, then winced. "Fair."

She suited up, running the seal checks herself. Jack watched her from the passenger seat, his expression unreadable. She didn't say anything before she cycled through the lock, and the struts held to the ladder as the world opened in front of her.

The surface was quiet in a way that never stopped unsettling her. The stars were painted and motionless, the horizon close and curved. She made her way along the relay arm with careful method, the tether clicking behind her, her boots leaving shallow prints in the dust.

The manual crank was stiff. She pulled off her gloves to get a better grip and felt the cold bite immediately through her suit's heating elements. She cranked the dish nineteen clicks, then three back, watching the alignment readout on her wrist as the numbers crawled toward the green zone.

Half working. Better than nothing.

It was when she stopped to rest that she saw it.

A flash to the northeast. Low on the horizon, brief and bright, like a mirror catching the sun. She blinked, looked away, looked back. Nothing. But her heart was hammering anyway.

Distress beacon. Farther than Relay 7, closer than the base. The only person who would be out there—who could be alive out there—was Liang.

She stared at the horizon until her eyes ached, memorizing the coordinates. The flash didn't repeat.

"Elena?" Jack's voice crackled in her ear. "Status?"

"Almost done." She pulled her gloves back on and finished the last alignment clicks. "Dish is set. Heading back."

The walk across the surface took six minutes. She felt the weight of what she'd seen pressing down on her the whole way, and when she cycled back through the lock, she made sure her face was smooth and open.

Jack was where she left him, his leg propped up, his eyes suspicious. "Everything okay out there?"

"Fine." She peeled off her helmet and shook the sweat out of her hair. "We should test the dish. Try to hit the relay."

He watched her a moment longer and then nodded, reaching for the comms panel.

The blue-white flash stayed burned in her mind. Liang, alive, somewhere northeast.

She would tell Jack. Later. When it made sense. When it was a choice and not a confession.

For now, she let the silence settle around them like dust.