Read Chapter 7: Shelter From the Sky

The outpost smelled of dust and recycled air that had gone stale days ago. Dr. Reyes lay on his side near the comm array, one arm stretched toward the console as if he'd been reaching for something when the end came. His visor was cracked, a spiderweb of fractures radiating from a single point at the left temple seam.

Elena knelt beside him, her gloved fingers tracing the edge of the visor. "He didn't have time to get his helmet off."

Jack stood at the door, keeping watch on the storm outside. The solar particles painted the sky in sheets of violet and green, beautiful and lethal. "Suit failure?"

"Seam rupture." She found it with her fingertips—a thin line of separation where the fabric met the collar ring. The seal had peeled back like a strip of tape, clean and deliberate. "Right along the weld point."

"Can't have been punctured. The micrometeorite shower was hours before Reyes's last check-in."

"I know."

Elena's throat tightened. She'd seen this exact failure mode before. Laboratory tests, six months ago on Earth. A batch of EVA suits with a flaw in the thermal welding process—the bonds degraded under temperature cycling, eventually failing at the most stress-bearing seams. She'd flagged it in her preliminary report, recommended a recall of the entire production run.

The mission director had called her into his office the next day. *Delays would cost billions, Dr. Vasquez. The suits pass certification. You're a geologist, not an engineer. Leave the materials science to the people who understand it.*

She'd signed the nondisclosure. She'd told herself it was a minor risk, a theoretical flaw that would never manifest in real conditions. The suits had been tested. The math had been checked. What were the odds?

Now Reyes lay dead at her feet, his face frozen in the rictus of explosive decompression, and the odds didn't matter anymore.

"Elena." Jack's voice cut through her spiral. "What are you looking at?"

She turned her head away too quickly. "Manufacturing flaw. Thermal cycling weakened the seam."

"You sound sure about that."

"I've seen it before." She stood, brushing dust from her knees. "Doesn't matter now. He's dead. We need to focus on the rover."

"That's it? We find a dead man with a failed suit and you just—"

"What do you want me to say, Jack?" She rounded on him, anger rising to cover the guilt. "He's dead because he was out here alone in a storm he should've seen coming. Because the base sent him to check a relay with no backup. Because the suits are cheap and the margins are thin and nobody wants to hear bad news when there's a schedule to keep."

The words hung between them. Jack studied her face with an intensity that made her want to look away again.

"You reported it, didn't you? The suit flaw."

Elena's jaw tightened. "I flagged a concern. It was overruled."

"And you let it go."

"I didn't *let* anything go. I was a junior scientist on my first deep-space rotation. They told me the testing was sound, that I was seeing patterns that weren't there. I had a choice between pushing back and losing my career or signing the paper and moving on." She laughed, a bitter sound. "And now I'm standing in a dead man's living room, and I don't know which choice was worse."

Jack didn't respond. He walked past her to the corpse, crouching to examine the failed seam with his own eyes. "This mean Reyes knew about the flaw?"

"How would he? It wasn't public knowledge. Just a quiet fix in the next production run, a memo buried in someone's drawer."

"So why did someone kill him?"

Elena froze. "What?"

"You heard the comm chatter before the explosion. Reyes was investigating the blast. He left Margolis a note about sabotage. Now he's dead from a suit flaw that just happens to match one you were told to hide." Jack looked up at her. "Seems like a lot of coincidences."

"You think the saboteur knew about the suit flaw?"

"I think someone doesn't want us reaching Relay 7. And they're cleaning up loose ends." He stood, brushing dust from his knees. "Which means they know about you too, Elena. They know you identified that flaw. Maybe they think you know more."

The cold in her chest had nothing to do with the outpost's failing heat. She thought of the pendant Marcus had given her, the symbol etched into its face matching the one on the cache. She thought of Reyes's note, the word *sabotage* written in hasty letters. She thought of everything she didn't know and everyone who might want to keep it that way.

"I don't know anything," she said quietly. "That's the worst part."

Jack held her gaze for a long moment. Then he turned to the rover's exterior access panel, now open on the floor. "Wheel assembly's cracked. We've got a spare in the cargo box, but the mount is bent. Going to take a few hours to straighten it well enough to drive."

"A few hours in this storm?"

"The outpost is shielded. We'll be fine." He paused. "Long enough for you to tell me what you're actually hiding."

"I'm not—"

"I saw your face when you read Reyes's note. You recognized something. And when you saw that symbol on the cache, you went pale." Jack's voice was even, patient, and somehow that was worse than if he'd shouted. "We're stranded out here with a target on our backs. I'd like to know if you're pointing us into a trap."

Elena opened her mouth to deflect, to lie, to protect the last secret she'd been carrying. But the image of Reyes's cracked visor wouldn't leave her mind. Dead because she hadn't pushed hard enough. Dead because silence had felt safer than standing up.

She pulled out the recorder she'd used to copy the data from Jack's hidden comm unit. Liang's message, preserved in compressed audio files. She'd meant to keep it secret, to use it as leverage when she needed it.

Now it seemed like the only honest thing she had left.

"Before you judge me for this," she said, "remember that you're carrying an illegal comm unit in a sealed locker. We all have secrets, Jack. The question is whether yours are worth the same lives mine are."

She pressed play, and Liang's voice filled the outpost.