Read Chapter 15: Relay 7

The station door stood before them, a dark slab of reinforced alloy against the pale lunar dust. Elena pressed her gloved hand against the seam, feeling for any give. Nothing. The emergency lock light blinked a sullen amber.

"It's sealed," she said, her voice flat inside her helmet. The oxygen warning buzzed faintly at the edge of her awareness—her tank had dipped below fifteen percent.

Jack limped up beside her, one hand braced on her shoulder for support. His suit had taken the brunt of the fall, but his left leg was angled wrong beneath the joint seals. He hadn't complained once during the run. That worried her more than the wound itself.

"I've got the codes," he said. "Old pilot corps clearance. Might still work."

She stepped aside. "If this is the person Liang got in before us, those codes could be burned."

"It's worth a shot." He keyed in a sequence on the exterior keypad, then pressed his palm flat against the sensor plate. There was a long pause. The amber light flickered, hesitated, then turned a steady green.

The door hissed open.

The airlock chamber was small, utilitarian, lit by a single flickering strip. Elena moved through the inner door first, pulling off her helmet as she crossed the threshold. The recycled air smelled faintly of ozone and dust—old systems, still running, barely.

Jack sealed the airlock behind them and dropped his helmet onto a workbench. Sweat streaked his face. She could see the pain in the way he held his jaw.

"Sit down," she said. "Before you fall down."

He didn't argue. He found a stool near the main console and eased himself down, one hand gripping his thigh. Elena scanned the room. Computer terminal, good condition. The station looked unoccupied—but recent. A thermal mug on the edge of the desk. A data chip beside it, still plugged into the drive.

"Someone's been here," she said. "Recently."

She reached for the chip. Jack's hand wrapped around her wrist, startling her.

"Slow," he said. "You don't know what that is."

"We don't have time for careful, Jack." But she pulled back, and he released her. She circled the console, easing the monitor toward her. The system was still on. A message window blinked at the bottom of the screen, waiting for input.

There was a file waiting. Labeled: *ELENA—WATCH FIRST.*

She met Jack's eyes. He gave a small nod.

She clicked play.

The screen flickered, then resolved into Liang Wei's face. He looked older than she'd imagined, haggard, with a thin beard and dark circles under his eyes. But his voice was steady when he spoke.

"Elena. If you're seeing this, you made it. You made it farther than I thought you would." He paused, glancing off-screen like he was checking something. "The data core wasn't stolen. I took it. I took it to protect it, because I found out what was really on it—a full record of the Copernicus mining project. And the reason the base exploded wasn't a system failure."

Jack leaned forward, his knuckles whitening on his thigh.

"The AI was deliberately tampered with," Liang continued. "About six hours before the incident. Someone on Earth did it. Aris Chen, director of operations. She had a vested interest in burying the project's true cost, the deaths, the cover-up of the ice-core depletion readings. She didn't want the mission extension because it would expose the fraud. So she buried the base instead."

Elena's breath caught. Aris Chen. The name rang a bell—she'd seen it in a briefing two years ago on base command oversight.

"The recording self-deletes in ninety seconds," Liang said. "This data is your proof. Send it to Earth. Make sure it gets to the oversight council. Not command. The council."

The video ended. The screen went dark.

A soft whine built somewhere in the station's walls. Then the whole room shook.

"That's not normal," Jack said, already on his feet.

Elena grabbed the console edge as another tremor hit. A sharp crack echoed from the far wall, and a panel crumpled inward. Sparks sprayed from a junction box overhead. The transmitter stack beside the window flickered, hissed, and went dead.

"No." Elena stared at the smoking wreckage. "No. We had it."

Jack's face went pale, but not from pain. "He did this before he left. Another failsafe."

Elena's hand hovered over the dead console. "We had the proof. We *had* it."

Jack didn't answer. The only sound in the room was the thin hiss of the dying transmitter and the distant groan of settling lunar rock.