Lire le chapitre 27: New Oxygen

Elena’s suit hissed as she sealed the helmet, the recycled air tasting of metal and her own stale breath. Jack was already at the inner airlock door, his bulky frame silhouetted against the red emergency lights. He didn’t look back as he spoke, voice crackling through the suit’s comm.

“Two hundred meters due east, past the comms tower. There’s a storage shed the emergency protocols don’t list. Kepler and I stashed spare O₂ tanks there after the first quake scare. Old habit.”

Elena checked her suit’s pressure gauge. Forty minutes of internal reserve. Enough for the trip if nothing went wrong. Nothing had gone wrong in the past day, she thought bitterly. That was the problem.

“What about Liang?” she asked, glancing back at the med-bay’s observation window, where Liang lay motionless under a thin thermal blanket, his vitals flickering on a monitor.

“Kessler’s out cold. The AI’s still locked down but it doesn’t have controls in the med-bay besides the door. Liang’s stable. We have four hours of oxygen left in this bay. If we get the tanks, we buy ourselves more time. If we don’t, rescue gets here in six.” Jack’s voice was clipped, professional. “We go. Now.”

The outer door slid open with a groan, revealing the lunar surface—a field of black glass and gray dust under a sky frozen in perpetual night. The Earth hung overhead, a blue marble streaked with clouds, impossibly serene. Elena felt a pang of something she refused to name.

They moved in silence, boots crunching over the regolith. The comms tower was a skeletal wreck, twisted and blackened from the second fire. Jack kept a steady pace, his long legs eating up the distance. Elena focused on his footprints, counting her steps. One, two, three. Don’t think about Marcus’s voice on that recording, apologizing from beyond the grave. Don’t think about the fact that everything she’d built, everything she’d lost, had been a chess piece for Minos.

“There.” Jack pointed. A low, squat structure, half-buried under a drift of ejected rock. It looked untouched—no scorch marks, no breach. Jack jogged ahead and pried the handle. The door swung open with a welcome hiss of pressurized air.

Inside, a row of tanks stood upright, gleaming under a layer of fine dust. Enough oxygen for a small army. Elena counted. Eight tanks. Twelve hours each at low flow. Enough to keep them breathing for days.

“You knew this was here,” she said, not quite accusing.

Jack had already grabbed two tanks and was checking their valves. “I know a lot of things about this base that aren’t on the official maps. Call it professional paranoia.” He handed her one. “Carry this. We take two more for Liang and the med-bay.”

Elena hoisted the tank, feeling the weight settle against her hip. The plan was simple. Return to the airlock, hook the tanks into the med-bay’s auxiliary supply, wait for rescue. Maybe even get a few hours of sleep. Her body ached with exhaustion, every muscle screaming from the hours of tension. It felt almost too easy. That was the warning.

They hauled the tanks outside, the red dust kicking up around their boots. Elena turned back toward the base, and stopped.

A light.

Not a star. Not an orbital flare. A light descending out of the black sky, growing brighter, larger. A shuttle, burning retrograde, coming down fast toward the landing pads.

Jack swore, low and long. “That’s not the rescue window. They said six hours.”

“Maybe they came early,” Elena heard herself say, but her stomach had already tightened into a knot.

The shuttle landed with a ground-shaking thud, kicking up a cloud of regolith that drifted slowly in the low gravity. Through the dust, Elena could see its markings—a sleek, corporate insignia she recognized with a jolt of cold recognition. Minos Aerospace. The same logo that had been emblazoned on the files Liang had shown them.

A ramp lowered. A figure in a pristine white suit stepped out, followed by another. They moved toward the base’s main airlock, their suits bristling with equipment. No. Not equipment. Sensors.

“Jack,” Elena said. “Those aren’t rescue crews.”

The comm crackled. A woman’s voice, professional and clipped. “Erato base, this is Horizon shuttle Kestrel. We have received a directive from Earth Command. Due to reports of a possible unknown pathogen outbreak at Erato, you are ordered to remain in place. A full quarantine protocol is now in effect. Any personnel attempting to leave will be detained for medical evaluation.”

Elena felt the words land like blows. Pathogen. There was no pathogen. There was only evidence. Minos’s evidence.

“Quarantine,” Jack repeated, his voice flat. “They’re going to lock us in with the fire and the lockdown and let nature take its course.”

The suited figures had reached the main airlock. They were spraying something—a decontamination mist, thick and white—against the exterior hatch. Sealing it. The base’s AI, still under Minos’s control, would obey their commands. They were sealing them in.

Elena’s grip tightened on the tank. She looked at Jack. His face, through the visor, was a mask of controlled fury. But his eyes—his eyes were calculating. He was already looking past the quarantine crew, past the shuttle, at something she couldn’t see.

“My contact,” he said. “Iris Lambert. She runs the Kestrel’s sister ship, the Auriga. She’s the one I was supposed to signal if we needed extraction. She’s not on this mission.”

“So she’s not here,” Elena said.

“No, but she knows I’m here.” Jack turned to face her, and a grim smile touched his lips. “And she answers my calls. The question is whether she’ll believe yours.”

Elena stared at him. The quarantine team had finished their spray and were entering the airlock. The shuttle’s landing lights blinked once, twice, then went dark. A countdown began in her head, silent and relentless.

“I’ve got the evidence,” she said. “All of it. Liang’s statement. Marcus’s confession. The Minos files. We send it to her, she has to believe it.”

“She doesn’t have to do anything,” Jack said. “She’s a pilot. She follows orders, or she doesn’t. Either way, she’ll be here in forty minutes. And we’ll have about three hours of oxygen left by then, even with the tanks.”

The quarantine crew had disappeared into the base. The exterior airlock had cycled shut. Somewhere inside, the AI was already reconfiguring the locks, turning the med-bay into a tomb under Minos’s instructions.

Elena looked down at the tank in her hands. New oxygen. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

“Then we make the call,” she said. “And we hope Iris Lambert is the friend you think she is.”