Read Chapter 9: First Move

The storm died the way it had come—not with a fade, but a snap. One moment the wind was screaming against the outpost walls, the next it was gone, leaving a silence so complete Elena heard the hum of her own blood.

Jack was already on his feet, testing his weight on the rover’s damaged wheel. “It’ll hold. Barely.”

Elena pulled her helmet on, not bothering to answer. She’d spent the last six hours replaying the maintenance log in her head, each line a fresh accusation. Someone had buried her suit flaw report. Someone had killed Reyes for digging it up. And the man standing beside her, the man who’d promised to share truths, had gone quiet the moment she’d asked about his orders.

They loaded what they could carry. Reyes’s body stayed in the outpost, sealed in a storage locker with a note for the recovery team. Elena didn’t look back as they drove away.

The crater field was worse than she remembered. Every shadow was a drop-off. Every ridge a potential collapse. Jack navigated with a surgeon’s care, but the rover’s damaged suspension made every bump a gamble.

“Left,” Elena said. “The ground density’s lower there. More porous.”

“Or it’s a sinkhole.”

“It’s regolith. Not limestone.”

“Forgive me for not trusting the geology report written by a woman who—” He cut himself off.

“Who what?”

“Who’s already got one foot on the ship back home.”

The words hung between them, sharp and unfair. Elena opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought of his amateur psychologizing when the rover lurched violently to the right. Jack cursed, wrenching the controls, but the ground beneath the right wheel gave way with a sound like tearing cloth.

The world tilted. Elena’s harness caught her hard across the chest. Metal shrieked against rock. Then the rover slammed onto its side, and everything went still.

For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. Then the dust settled, and she heard Jack’s voice, tight with pain.

“Elena. You good?”

“I’m fine.” She unclipped her harness, dropping into the space where the floor had been. Jack was hanging awkwardly, his leg wedged under the console. Even through the suit’s padding, she could see the wrong angle of it.

“Help me get this off,” he said, already straining against the console.

“Don’t move. You’ll make it worse.” She crawled toward him, reaching for the release latch on the console’s mounting bracket. Her hand brushed something on his thigh. Something hard. Not part of the suit’s standard equipment.

She pulled her hand back. Then, slowly, she pressed the seam of his thigh pocket.

“Jack. What’s in here?”

His face went still. The kind of stillness that wasn’t calm—it was calculation. And for a long moment, he didn’t answer.

“A spare power cell,” he said.

“This doesn’t feel like a power cell.”

“Elena, we don’t have time for this. My leg’s going numb.”

She found the seam release. It wasn’t standard issue—it was a concealed latch, the kind used by survey teams working in hostile territory. The kind that kept classified equipment hidden from casual inspection.

The compartment opened.

The detonator was small, military-grade, designed for demolition work. It had been primed once, then disarmed. Elena held it up, her hand steady despite the cold that crept up her spine.

“Explain,” she said. “Now.”

Jack’s jaw tightened. Then he let out a breath, long and slow, like a man surrendering something he’d carried for years.

“I wasn’t sent to pilot the transport runs,” he said. “I was sent to investigate the reactor reports. Something didn’t add up. Command wanted someone on-site who could—” He gestured at the detonator in her hand.

“Plant charges?”

“A tracker. On the base’s core housing. It monitors for tampering. Remote access. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

“But someone did.” Elena’s voice was flat. “Reyes is dead. Three people died in Sector C. And you had a bomb on my base.”

“It wasn’t armed. It was never meant to be armed. I was doing my job.”

“Your job.” She heard the distance in her own voice. “And what was your job with me, Jack? Were you watching me too?”

He didn’t answer. But the silence was enough.

Elena looked at the detonator in her hand. Then she looked at the man pinned beneath the console, his leg twisted, his face open in a way she hadn’t seen before. He’d helped her. Saved her. She’d started to believe he was different.

“I need to get the console off you,” she said. “And then we’re going to have a long conversation about what else you’re hiding.”

She turned away, reaching for the extraction tool. Behind her, Jack said nothing. And that was worse than any lie he could have told.