Read Chapter 12: The Oasis

The green-house module appeared out of the haze like a mirage—a silver blister clinging to the regolith, its dome streaked with frost and the faded letters: OASIS-2.

Elena killed the rover's engine. It shuddered once, then died with a wheeze that sounded terminal. She sat there a moment, hands still on the controls, letting the silence settle. Beside her, Jack stirred, his jaw tight. He'd stopped complaining about his leg two hours ago. That worried her more than any amount of swearing.

"I'll go first," she said.

"Like hell you will."

"You're in no shape to—"

"Check the integrity of the dome, the seal on the airlock, the structural welds," he cut in, rattling off the words like a checklist he'd memorized years ago. "You think I'm going to let you limp in there blind?" He reached for his suit helmet, then winced as the motion pulled at his pinned leg. "We go together."

They went together.

The airlock cycled slow—ancient machinery grinding against years of neglect—and when the inner door finally sighed open, the warmth hit Elena like a wall. Real warmth. Green, humid air rolled over her faceplate, fogging the visor. She blinked, cleared it, and stared.

Rows of hydroponic trays stretched the length of the module, leaves curling toward the pale purple glow of grow lights. Lettuce, tomatoes, something that looked suspiciously like cilantro. A small orchard of dwarf citrus trees huddled in the far corner, their branches heavy with fruit. The air smelled alive—dirt and chlorophyll and water. After days of filtered oxygen and recycled nothing, it was overwhelming.

"Holy hell," Jack breathed beside her. "It's a garden."

Elena unsealed her helmet first, then her gloves. The air was thick and sweet on her skin. She crossed to the nearest tray, ran her fingers along the broad leaf of a spinach plant. Real. It was real.

"Check for a terminal," she said, forcing practicality back into her voice. "Anything wired to the relay network."

Jack was already moving, limping toward a console built into the far wall. He'd shed his suit jacket, revealing the bloodstained wrap around his thigh. Elena made a note to change the dressing soon. Fresh water, clean bandages—if the module had a medical kit, they might actually get through this.

"Got something," Jack said. He was leaning over the console, tapping at a cracked screen. "But it's not much. Probably a backup node for the irrigation system, maybe some light communications logs."

Elena crossed to stand behind him. The screen glowed pale green, displaying rows of automated system reports. Nothing useful. She reached past him, her fingers brushing his arm as she aimed for the interface panel—then stopped.

"Wait," she said. "Go back."

Jack looked up at her. "Back where?"

"The directory tree. Second level. There's a folder marked 'archived.'" She pointed at the faint text. "Someone partitioned this system. The daily reports are just noise. The archived file is where the real data would be."

Jack didn't move. His hand hovered over the keyboard, not quite resting on it. "We don't have time for this, Elena. Oasis is just a pit stop. We need to get to Relay 7, get that dish fully functional, and—"

"And then what?" Elena heard her voice sharpen. "Fix the base? It's gone, Jack. The explosion took out half of Copernicus, and the rest is buried under regolith that'll take months to excavate—assuming Command even sends a crew back. By the time anyone gets here, the air recycling will fail, the fusion core will shut down, and every survivor in cryo will be dead."

Jack's eyes narrowed. "You don't know that."

"I know what happens when a base loses power for more than seventy-two hours. Do you?" She crossed her arms. "Liang launched a pod before the explosion. If we want answers—if we want whatever's left of that data core—we need to find where he went. That means tracing his communications, his escape route, anything. This terminal might have the key."

"It might also have nothing," Jack said flatly. "And every hour we spend digging through old files is an hour we're not moving toward a solution."

"Moving toward what solution? The rover's dying. Your leg is dying. We can't make Relay 7 without repairs and supplies, and we can't get those without—" She jabbed a finger at the screen. "—information. The base is gone. Everything we built there is gone. The only thing left is what Liang took with him and what we can learn about where he went. So yes, I'm going to waste ten minutes checking a burned-out directory tree, because if I'm wrong, we haven't lost anything. And if I'm right, we have a direction. That's the difference between wandering the surface until we die and actually surviving."

She pulled her hand back, breathing hard. Jack stared at her for a long moment. She could read the calculation in his eyes—the weighing of options, the testing of trust.

Finally, he stepped aside.

"Ten minutes," he said. "Then we go."

Elena slid into the seat. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling up the directory, drilling down through layers of system logs and automated maintenance reports. She was so focused that when the data finally resolved, it took her a breath to understand what she was seeing.

"Jack," she said slowly. "Look at this."

He crouched beside her, hissing as his injured leg bent. But his attention was on the screen—on the timestamped entry scrawled across it.

**CARGO MANIFEST, DOCK 7-A: UNREGISTERED ATTACHED POD.** **DEPARTURE: 03:47:12 UTC.** **DELTA-V: SUFFICIENT FOR TRANSFER TO OFFSITE INTERMEDIATE NODE.** **PASSENGER CODED: L.W.**

"Liang Wei," Jack whispered. "He launched before the explosion. Not after."

Elena scrolled down, pulling up trajectory tables, fuel calculations, the faint ghost of a communications handshake with an unlisted relay. "He had a backup plan. A pod pre-positioned, pre-fueled, launched the moment whatever happened at Copernicus went wrong."

She paused. The data revealed something else—a second handshake, this one encrypted, bouncing through a relay near the lunar south pole. She squinted at the coordinates.

"Jack. That relay station he pinged—it's not listed on any official registry."

Jack was silent for a moment. Then, quietly: "There are old military relays down there. Decommissioned. Off the books."

Elena looked up at him. "You know how to reach them."

It wasn't a question.

Jack met her gaze. His face was unreadable, but something behind his eyes had shifted. "If Liang is using one of those, he didn't just happen to find it. He knew someone who gave him access. Someone with old clearance codes."

"Someone from your pilot corps?"

Jack shook his head slowly. "Someone from my side of the fence. Or someone who used to be." He reached past her, tapping the screen to highlight a string of metadata buried in the transmission logs. "This handshake protocol? It's the same one we used during the Mars relays. Before the joint missions were decommissioned."

Elena felt cold. "Mars."

"Yeah." Jack's voice was tight. "I need to tell you something about Liang. About who he was before the moon. About what happened on Mars—and who he might have been working with."

He looked at her, and Elena saw something she hadn't seen before in his eyes: uncertainty.

"His old partner was a geologist, Elena. A woman who led a team on EVA when a dust storm hit. Three people died because she made the wrong call."

The air in the module suddenly felt very thin.

"Her name," Jack said, "was Elena Vasquez."