Read Chapter 28: Friends in Low Places

The console on Elena’s wrist went dead. She slapped it twice, but the signal indicator stayed flat—the short-range channel Iris had given them was now just static. They were standing in the shadow of the salvage shed, snow-frosted dust drifting around their boots, Kessler’s cut power lines lying in coils behind them like dead snakes.

“She’s gone,” Elena said. Her voice came out thin inside the helmet.

Jack limped closer, favoring his leg more than he’d let himself a minute ago. “She’s not gone. She’s orbiting. She said ten minutes. We’ve used four.”

“That was before we got stuck on this side of the base. She’s locked onto the med-bay beacon, not us.” Elena looked back at the bulk of the main module, smoke still curling from its seam. The only way back inside was the route Kessler had cut. Or the long way around—past the reactor housing, over the crater field, through the crevasse zone.

“Her call’s coming in on the emergency band,” Jack said. He tilted his helmet toward hers, and she caught the sweat beading on his upper lip through the visor. “Frequency hop. Old pilot trick. She’ll find us.”

Elena unclipped her radio and switched bands. Static hissed, then a woman’s voice cut through, tight and clipped.

“That you, Vasquez? You’re off-grid and I don’t like it.”

“Iris.” Elena exhaled. “We’re at the salvage shed, northwest quadrant. Kessler cut the base power lines, and we can’t get back to the med-bay airlock.”

A pause. Then: “You’re telling me you’re stranded outside the base with no way in, no way out, and you need me to park my shuttle on a surface that Earth Control just told me is contaminated?”

“We’re not contaminated.”

“Everyone says that.”

Jack grabbed the radio from Elena’s hand. “Iris. It’s Jack. I sent you those files three days ago. You read them?”

Another pause. Elena held her breath. She watched Jack’s face, the way his jaw tightened as he waited. He’d mentioned the files—his backup. His insurance. But he hadn’t told her exactly what was in them until a half hour ago, when he’d said TerraCore’s name like it tasted bad.

“I read them,” Iris said slowly. “And I’m still wondering why you sent them to me instead of Earth Control.”

“Because I needed someone who’d ask questions before shooting,” Jack said. “You still asking?”

“I’m asking. You’ve got ninety seconds before the scan window closes and Control sees me holding position. And if I put down on that sector, I’m putting my license—and maybe more—on the line. So give me one reason I shouldn’t just fly away and pretend I never heard you.”

Jack looked at Elena. She knew what he was asking. Trust. She had evidence. Proof. Marcus’s message, the logs, the TerraCore orders Kessler had transmitted. And Jack had his files. But none of that fit through a radio channel in ninety seconds.

“We send you a packet,” Elena said. “Encrypted. Hash-verified. You check it while you burn for the LZ.”

“LZ? You think I’m landing on this dust ball?” Iris’s voice snapped, but there was an edge of curiosity under it.

“You land on it,” Elena said, “and you get your shuttle out of the scan window before Control can blink. You know the terrain. You’re the one who flew supply runs through the Tycho approach in zero vis.”

Silence stretched for what felt like a full minute. Elena’s suit heater hummed. Jack shifted his weight and winced.

Then—static crackled, and Iris spoke. “Fine. Send the packet. I’ll verify it, and if it checks out, I’m putting down at Grid Foxtrot-Niner. But here’s the thing—I’m not coming to the base, and you’re not coming to me on foot in the open. The scanner will see any heat signature crossing that plain.”

“Then where?” Jack asked.

“There’s a secondary airlock on the far side of the reactor housing. The old maintenance access. It opens to the crevasse field—rough terrain, but the thermal signature of ice and shadow will mask you from the satellite pass for about eleven minutes. If you can make it across the main fissure to the ridge on the far side, I can set the shuttle down in the blind spot there. But you’ve got to cross the crevasse itself.”

Elena’s stomach dropped. She’d studied the maps. The main fissure was a fifteen-meter gap in places, bridged only by ice shelves and frozen rubble that had been unstable for years.

“You’re joking,” she said.

“I don’t joke, Vasquez. My clearance window is closing. Either you cross that crevasse in the next twelve minutes, or I button up and get clear of this sector before Control sends someone to ask me what I was doing. I’m not going to prison for a geology lecture and some files.”

Jack took a breath. “We’ll make it.”

“You’d better,” Iris said. “I’m powering down to whisper mode now. If I don’t see you on the ridge in twelve minutes, I’m gone. And don’t bother calling me—I’ll be silent.”

The channel went dead.

Elena stared at Jack. “You can’t cross that crevasse. Not with that leg.”

“I can, or we stay here and suffocate in about four hours when the med-bay recyclers fail. Those are the options, Elena.”

“We could try the main airlock again. The fire suppressors—Kessler’s out, but we could jam the seal, force our way in.”

“And then what?” Jack’s voice was flat. “We’re inside a base with no power lines, no communications, and Earth Control’s about to quarantine the whole sector. We need Iris. We need that shuttle.”

Elena looked at the distant reactor housing, then beyond it to the dark line of the crevasse field. The sun was low, throwing long shadows across the regolith. Eleven minutes. Fifteen meters of unstable ice and rock. A wounded man. A betrayer still loose somewhere in the base, maybe.

“Fine,” she said. “But I go first. If the bridge holds me, it’ll hold you.”

Jack shook his head. “I go first. You’re the one who knows the geology—you can read the ice better from the edge. And if it collapses, I’m lighter.”

“You’re hurt.”

“I’m lighter,” he repeated. He grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “And if I fall, you’ll have to pull me up. That’s the deal now, isn’t it?”

He unhooked the tether from his suit and clipped one end to his harness, handing the other to Elena.

“We trust each other,” he said. “Or we don’t make it across.”

Elena clipped the tether to her own harness. The line between them went taut.

“Let’s move,” she said.

They broke into a jog across the cratered plain, Jack’s gait uneven beside her, his leg dragging with every third stride. Ahead, the crevasse field opened like a dark wound in the lunar crust. Elena counted seconds in her head. Ten minutes left. Then nine. The ridge on the far side was a thin, pale line of ice against the black sky.

And behind them, from the base’s main module, a light blinked on.

Not a distress beacon. Not the med-bay.

It was the service airlock cycle light—the one Kessler had used to escape.

And it was still lit.