Read Chapter 6: Storm Warning

The alarm cut through the rover’s cabin like a knife through tin. Elena’s hand shot to the console, her eyes scanning the readout that had materialized on the main display. The cheerful, simulated voice of the base AI—a voice she’d grown to hate—followed it a half-second later.

*“Warning: Coronal mass ejection detected. Estimated time to peak particle flux: 132 minutes. Recommend immediate shelter or relay station access.”*

Jack’s knuckles went white on the steering yoke. He didn’t look at her. “How far to Relay 7?”

Elena pulled up the nav overlay. Her throat felt dry. “If we take the plain, 10 kilometers. The crater field route is out of the question—we don’t have that kind of time. We go straight across.”

“The plain’s suicide if we lose radiation shielding. We’ll be exposed for—” he did the calculation in his head, a muscle in his jaw ticking, “—forty-five minutes minimum at full burn.”

“We’re already exposed.” She gestured at the suit charge indicator blinking at 68%. “And the rover’s hull is rated for intermittent flux. We make it to Relay 7, we get inside the base shell, and we wait it out. We don’t have a choice.”

Jack pressed the throttle. The engines whined, complaining in a pitch Elena had learned to translate as *you’re asking too much.* The rover lurched forward, skimming across the regolith with the kind of haste that felt reckless even by Jack’s standards.

“Hold on,” he said, more to the machine than to her.

The plain stretched before them like a flat, gray ocean frozen mid-wave. The horizon curved gently against the black sky, and the sun—that harsh, unblinking eye—was doing something to her body she couldn’t feel yet. The radiation would hit them through the hull in minutes, not hours. She watched the dose meter creep upward on her suit’s readout. Seven milliSieverts. Eight. Nine.

“How long until the peak?” she asked.

“Ninety minutes. Maybe less. This thing’s moving faster than the early models.” He flicked a glance at her. “You did update the solar weather models before we lost the link?”

“Yes. Four days ago. This one wasn’t on the schedule.”

That shut him up. Neither of them said what they were both thinking: the CME wasn’t natural. The base’s magnetic shield had been designed to deflect exactly this kind of event, and it had failed on schedule with the explosion that had trapped them outside.

Elena buckled her restraint harness with unnecessary force. The rover hit a patch of uneven ground and launched them both briefly off their seats. Jack swore, recovered, and pushed the throttle further. The ride became a teeth-rattling vibration that made her molars ache.

“You’re going to shake the damn wheels off,” she said.

“The wheels will survive. I’m more worried about the suspension.”

“Don’t be. I designed it.” It was bait, a throwaway line meant to needle him, but she saw his grip tighten.

They cleared the first 2 kilometers. Then 3. The dose meter hit 40 milliSieverts. Elena’s bones suddenly felt very aware of their own density. She pulled up the diagnostic overlay for the rover’s directional antenna, the one they’d need to broadcast a signal if Relay 7 was beyond reach.

The entire display flickered. Static ate the icons like mold.

“We’re losing electronics,” she said. “The hardened systems are starting to glitch.”

“Can you bypass the shielding array and route power to the drive system?”

“No. That kills the nav and the comm. And the thermal controls. You want to freeze to death or fry?”

“I want us to get there before the storm does.”

They hit the 4-kilometer mark. The ground beneath them changed. The smooth regolith gave way to a fine, dust-covered pattern of cracks—not the shallow thermal fractures she’d seen in satellite images, but something deeper. She leaned forward, squinting at the terrain data scrolling by.

“Jack, slow down.”

“No.”

“Jack. There was a seismic event reported in this sector three days ago. I need the ground-penetrating radar readout.”

He didn’t slow, but he didn’t argue. She pulled up the radar on the secondary screen. The image resolved into a hazy, layered cross-section of the lunar crust. And there, directly in their path, a dark, jagged void two meters wide. At least four meters deep.

“Stop the rover,” she said, her voice flat.

“Elena, if I stop, we miss the window.”

“If you don’t stop, we miss the ground. Stop the rover.”

He slammed the brake. The vehicle skidded, the wheels gouging tracks in the regolith, and came to a halt with its forward edge fifteen meters from the crevice. She’d seen the radar just in time. Jack exhaled, a sound of pure profanity.

“How do we get around it?” he asked.

“We don’t. We cross it.” She was already unbuckling, moving to the rear compartment. The spare wheel mount was there, but what she needed was slimmer. The tool locker opened with a hiss. Inside, nestled among the clamps and sealant tubes, was a folding bridge—a light alloysheet rated for a rover’s weight, designed for emergency crossings of exactly this kind of terrain.

“We don’t have time to deploy it,” Jack said, appearing behind her.

“We don’t have time not to. Help me carry it.”

They wrestled the sheet out of the locker. It was lightweight—maybe twenty kilograms—but awkward, as long as the rover and twice as wide as the crevice. They dragged it to the edge and laid it across the gap. The seam met the opposite lip with six centimeters of purchase, not ideal but enough.

Jack tested it by stepping on the edge. It held. “You first,” he said.

Elena didn’t argue. She drove the rover forward, one steady, smooth motion, holding her breath as the front wheels touched the sheet. The metal flexed, groaning, and then the vehicle was over, the rear wheels following with only a small bounce off the far lip. She stopped on the other side and let herself breathe.

Jack was already jogging toward the passenger door. He climbed in, his face flushed under the orange glare of the interior lights. “How much time?”

She checked. “Sixty minutes to peak. We’ve cleared 5 kilometers. We can make it.”

But the rover had other ideas. As she pressed the throttle, a low grinding sound emerged from the front-right wheel. The vehicle shuddered, pulling slightly to the left.

“We just damaged something,” she said. “When we crossed.”

Jack killed the throttle and dropped to his knees beside the wheel well. She joined him, the dust stirring around their boots. The damage was visible immediately: a thin spider-web crack in the wheel's composite hub, where the landing on the far lip had twisted the load distribution. It wasn’t a blowout, but it would spread with every rotation. At speed, it would shatter.

“We can’t drive on this,” he said.

“No shit.”

Elena ran back to the rover’s rear utility locker and pulled out the spare plate—a reinforced section of titanium alloy originally meant to patch hull breaches, never wheels. She grabbed the clamp kit and returned, dropping to her knees in the dust beside him.

“The plate will redistribute the load, but it’ll slow us down. Maybe 20 percent.”

“We don’t have 20 percent.”

“Then we make the time up.” She began securing the plate against the damaged hub, her movements quick and practiced. Jack watched her, then reached for the second clamp and began anchoring it opposite her. Their hands brushed. Neither acknowledged it.

Seven minutes later, the plate was secured. Elena gave the wheel a last, solid tap with the flat of her hand, then stood. The dose counter on her suit had climbed to 85 milliSieverts. She could feel it now—a thrumming under her skin, a low-key nausea she blamed on the radiation and not on the fact that Jack was watching her with an expression she couldn’t read.

She climbed back into the driver’s seat without waiting for his argument. This time, she drove.

The rover limped forward at a reduced speed, the patched wheel thumping a steady rhythm against the ground. She pushed it as hard as she dared, feeling every crack in the terrain transfer through the seat. Ten kilometers per hour. Fifteen. The open plain gave way to rolling low hills, then to the familiar outline of a geological outpost—a small, automated research shack that sat five kilometers short of Relay 7, a halfway point she’d marked on her map months ago.

“We take cover there,” she said.

“That’s not Relay 7.”

“It’s a building. It has walls. It’s closer.” She killed the throttle and let the rover drift to a halt beside the outpost’s exterior airlock. The doors were intact. The lights inside flickered.

Jack looked at her, then at the sky, where the blackness had begun to shimmer with faint, static-like pulses. The storm was here.

“Get inside,” she said. “Now.”

She didn’t wait for his answer. She opened the hatch and crawled into the outpost, Jack behind her, as the first wave of charged particles engulfed the plain outside.

The door sealed shut behind them, and for one moment, all was silent.

Then Elena saw it: the figure slumped against the far wall, wearing a suit that was torn open at the chest seam. The visor was cracked. The O2 line was disconnected. The face inside was gray, frozen in a rictus of surprise.

She knew him. Dr. Reyes. The man who had left them the note about the sabotage.