Read Chapter 14: Suit Crisis

The rover wheezed like a dying animal, its frame shuddering with each labored rotation of the wheels. Elena watched the power readout flicker from six percent to five and felt the cold creep of inevitability settle in her chest.

“Two klicks,” Jack said, peering through the dust-caked windscreen. His voice was tight, controlled—the same voice he’d used when confessing about the tracker. “We can make it if we push.”

“We can’t push. The cell is almost gone.” Elena tapped the display. “At this draw, we’ve got maybe fifteen minutes of drive time. Then nothing.”

Jack shifted in his seat, wincing as his injured leg bumped against the console. “There’s an abandoned prospecting drone about half a klick east. Old mining survey model. If we cannibalize its power cell, we might get enough juice to reach the relay.”

“Too risky.” Elena shook her head. “We don’t know what condition that drone is in. If its cell is degraded or punctured, we’d be stripping a dead battery for scraps. And that’s assuming we can even get to it—the terrain between here and there is crater field.”

“So we walk.”

“Walk? Jack, you can barely stand.”

His jaw tightened. “I can stand well enough.”

Elena looked at him—really looked. The pain lines around his eyes, the way his hand rested on his thigh like he was holding something together. She thought about the med supplies in her pack, the dwindling antibiotic vials, the splint she’d improvised from a rover strut.

“We walk,” she said.

The decision felt like a mistake the moment she spoke it, but the rover’s power cell chose that exact second to drop to four percent, as if endorsing her call.

They moved fast, or as fast as two people in bulky suits could move across the lunar regolith. Jack limped beside her, his breathing harsh in the helmet comms. Elena kept her pace measured, resisting the urge to surge ahead. Every few meters she glanced at his leg, watching for signs of collapse.

“Stop staring at me,” Jack said.

“Stop limping.”

“I’m not limping. I’m adjusting my stride for the terrain.”

“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.”

“You haven’t known me long enough to make that call.”

Elena almost laughed, but the sound died in her throat when she felt it—the faint hiss, barely audible through her helmet. She froze mid-step.

“Elena?” Jack’s voice sharpened. “What is it?”

She looked down. Her left boot. A thin stream of vapor was escaping from a hairline crack along the sole seal.

“Boot leak,” she said, keeping her voice level. “Small. Maybe a pinhole.”

“How small?”

“Small enough that I’m not dead yet.”

Jack was already checking his suit readout through the HUD. “You’re venting oxygen. Not fast, but fast enough to matter. How much O2 do you have left?”

Elena checked. The display blinked at her—forty-one minutes of breathable air, and falling faster now with the leak.

“Enough,” she said.

“Enough for what? A stroll?”

“Enough to reach Relay 7. If we double-time.”

Jack stared at her through the faceplates. She could see the calculation behind his eyes—the same calculus she’d already run. Forty-one minutes to cover two kilometers in lunar gravity, injured leg, leaking boot, with the clock ticking down.

“Move,” he said.

They ran. Or as close to running as the moon allowed. Elena’s strides were long and bouncing, her boots kicking up fine dust that hung in the air like smoke. Jack matched her pace despite his leg, each landing sending a visible jolt through his frame. His teeth were gritted. He didn’t complain.

Elena checked her oxygen. Thirty-five minutes.

The terrain was brutal—rubble fields, steep ridges, and patches of soft regolith that swallowed their footsteps. Elena’s boot leak grew worse with each impact, the hiss becoming a whisper, then a soft whistle. She could feel the cold creeping in around her toes.

“Thirty minutes,” she called out.

“Keep moving.”

A kilometer left. The relay station was visible now, a distant glint on the horizon—too far. Not far enough. Both true at once.

Elena’s breath came in ragged pulls. The O2 gauge dipped lower. Twenty-five minutes.

“Jack.”

“I see it.”

He was slowing. His gait had become asymmetric, dragging his injured leg more with each step. Elena grabbed his arm and pulled him forward.

“Don’t you dare fall behind,” she said. “Not after all this.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” His voice was a thin wire stretched taut.

Five hundred meters. The relay grew from a glint to a shape—a tower with a dish, dark and silent against the stars. Elena’s oxygen readout flickered. Eighteen minutes.

“The airlock,” Jack rasped. “There should be an emergency seal module.”

“I see it.”

They were close now. Three hundred meters. Two. Elena’s vision started to blur at the edges—oxygen deprivation, she knew. Her lungs burned. Each step took an eternity and a blink.

One hundred meters.

“Come on,” she said.

Fifty.

Jack stumbled. Elena caught him, slung his arm over her shoulder, and dragged him forward. Her oxygen counter flashed a warning—ten percent remaining.

The airlock door was right in front of her. She slammed her gloved hand against the emergency release, felt the mechanism groan, heard the hiss of pressurized gas as the seal cracked open.

She pulled Jack inside, hit the door control, and collapsed against the wall as the inner hatch cycled. The chamber pressurized, and she tore off her helmet just as the last dregs of oxygen gave out.

She was still gasping when she heard it—a sound that made her blood run cold.

A low, rhythmic thumping from beyond the inner hatch. Someone was inside the relay station.

Jack’s hand shot up, signaling silence. His suit light cut black. His voice came through the helmet speaker, barely above a whisper.

“We’re not alone.”