Read Chapter 11: Signal Lost

Elena had the dish aligned within the hour, but the silence that followed felt heavier than the vacuum outside.

She sat cross-legged on the cold metal floor, hands wrapped around a lukewarm ration bar she hadn't eaten. Jack leaned against the wall near the airlock, his bandaged leg propped on a supply crate. His jaw was set, eyes fixed on the speaker grille above the console like he could will a signal through it.

"Try the frequency again," he said.

"I've tried it eleven times." Elena didn't look up. Her fingers hovered over the tuning dial. "The storm is still scattering the lower bands. Reyes's log mentioned an uplink window at—"

A burst of static ripped through the speaker. Both of them froze.

The static resolved into a voice—thin, fractured, warped by interference, but unmistakably human. It spoke in clipped Cantonese between bursts of white noise.

"—repeat, this is Liang Wei. If anyone is receiving—sabotage was cover––perative objective—"

Elena scrambled to adjust the gain. The words kept slicing in and out like a bad cut.

"—stolen data core. Not reactor damage. Repeat: the detonation was to mask the—"

The signal collapsed into a shriek of noise, then silence.

Elena sat back, pulse hammering. She looked at Jack—and stopped.

He had gone pale. Not the pallor of blood loss but something deeper. His hand gripped the crate edge so hard his knuckles had turned bone-white.

"Jack?"

"Liang." The name came out rough, barely a breath. "That's Liang Wei. I know his voice."

"You know him?"

"He was in the pilot corps with me. We trained together. Eighteen months on the Europa runs before I transferred to lunar ops." Jack's eyes didn't move from the speaker. "He was supposed to be on Earth for the next two years. Family leave."

Elena processed that quickly. "He wasn't supposed to be on the base at all."

"No."

"Then what was he doing there?"

Jack's mouth worked, but no words came out. Elena watched the conflict play across his face—some internal negotiation she couldn't see. She pressed harder.

"You said you were sent to investigate reactor irregularities. But Liang was your friend. And he just told us the explosion was a cover-up to steal a data core. That's not a reactor problem, Jack. That's espionage. And you recognized his voice immediately, which tells me you weren't surprised to hear it."

"I wasn't." The admission hung in the air.

Elena waited.

Jack exhaled slowly, his breath fogging briefly in the cold air. "Liang and I were supposed to meet. Off-book. He sent a ping two days before the explosion saying he had information about something wrong with the base's command systems. Something beyond the reactor. He used our old pilot's code—the one we used to flag unsafe flight patterns. It meant: trust no one else."

"And you didn't tell Command?"

"Tell them what?" Jack's voice sharpened. "That I'd gotten a vague warning from a friend who wasn't supposed to be there? I had orders to investigate reactor irregularities. Operational security meant I was already flying under a false identity. If I'd flagged Liang's ping, Command would have shut me down and pulled me out before I got within a kilometer of the truth."

"You don't know that."

"I know my chain of command." He met her eyes. "And I know that every communication from that base was being monitored by someone. If I'd mentioned Liang, they would have found him before I did."

Elena's stomach turned over. The detonator in her suit compartment suddenly felt heavier, like a second heartbeat. She thought about the beacon in her pocket—the distress signal she'd been carrying since the first crossing. The one she'd told Jack nothing about. The one that would bring a Command rescue ship roaring down on them as soon as the storm fully cleared.

She should tell him. She knew she should. The pact they'd made—the one she'd already broken—demanded it. But the word *Command* echoed in her skull, and she thought of Liang's garbled warning about trust and cover-ups. If Command sent Jack to investigate in secret, and someone in Command was covering for a stolen data core, then her beacon might not summon help. It might summon whoever had buried her report. Whoever had killed Reyes.

Whoever would kill her for what she knew.

She made the calculation in less than three seconds. She kept the beacon.

Jack was watching her. She saw it in the slight narrowing of his eyes—he could read her silences now, even if he couldn't read her reasons.

"What aren't you telling me?" he asked quietly.

"Nothing you need to know right now." The lie tasted metallic. "We need to move. If Liang launched something before the explosion—if there's a secondary data cache—Relay 7 is the only place on this route that can boost a transmission to the outpost's backup array."

Jack's jaw tightened, but he nodded. He started testing his leg, wincing as he straightened it.

"Can you walk?"

"I can crawl if I have to."

They redistributed the supplies. Elena took the heavier pack, leaving Jack the lighter load despite his protests. She checked the rover's frame—bent but functional. The real damage was to the wheel alignment, which she'd jury-rigged with a length of cable from the outpost's emergency kit. It would hold if they drove slow and smooth.

She didn't mention the beacon. She didn't mention that she'd memorized every word of Liang's broadcast and already started cross-referencing the data core references against the maintenance logs from Reyes's outpost. Too many pieces fit. Too neatly.

They climbed into the rover. Jack's hand found the ignition, and the engine coughed to life. Elena watched the horizon: Relay 7 was a faint silver needle against the dark, impossible distance away.

"Elena." Jack's voice was low, careful. "When we get there—whatever we find—you should know something."

"What?"

"Liang isn't the only one who thought the base was compromised before the explosion." He wouldn't look at her. "There was a third person. A scientist. They reached out to me the same day Liang did, using a command override code that shouldn't have existed."

Elena's blood went cold. "Who?"

"I didn't get a name. But the code they used was a geologist's field override." Now he looked at her, held her gaze. "A specialist code. The kind only a few people on the base would have."

The ground seemed to tilt beneath her. Her suit—her old suit, before the seam flaw, before she'd reported it. She'd used that override a hundred times. It was tied to her identity.

"Liang isn't the only one who thought the base was compromised before the explosion." Jack's voice was low, careful. "There was a third person. A scientist. They reached out to me the same day Liang did, using a command override code that shouldn't have existed."

Elena's blood went cold. "Who?"

"I didn't get a name. But the code they used was a geologist's field override." Now he looked at her, held her gaze. "A specialist code. The kind only a few people on the base would have."

The ground seemed to tilt beneath her. Her suit—her old suit, before the seam flaw, before she'd reported it. She'd used that override a hundred times. It was tied to her identity.

"Maybe you already know," Jack said quietly. "Maybe you've known all along."