David Pedreira: Gunpowder Moon

As it was, the only intel Dechert had was his own memory of the horrific scene, which tormented him with disjointed flashbacks of color, sound, and smell. The burnt cordite scent of the Moon mixing with the unmistakable smell of an explosion, which had either infiltrated his spacesuit somehow or had been some kind of olfactory hallucination triggered from his time in the war. The sight of Cole collapsed in a ring of debris only five yards from the helmet that would have saved him. Cole had tried to get to it. His right hand was dug into the regolith in front of his body, and the tracks left behind him were those of a man crawling. Thatch’s voice, high-pitched and desperate from the cockpit as Dechert and Waters tried to work on Cole’s body. The flotsam from the explosion, which blew equipment that wasn’t locked down out of the Molly Hatchet ’s EVA module in a concussive instant. And the emptiness inside the back of the crawler, void of oxygen and warmth, with only a few tools left to show the life that had once been there. Dechert had glanced inside just long enough to take the grim inventory: a surveying tripod latched down to the port wall; a gammon reel that had somehow managed to stay inside the tiny workroom when the air blew out; magnetic locaters clipped onto a small workbench; and Thatch’s spacesuit, an eerily human-looking thing inside the blown-out module—its white gleaming hulk strapped to the bulkhead, dirtied with gray moondust on its legs and boots.

Mocking everyone, as if saying, “This one could have saved him. This one had a helmet attached to it.”

Who the hell would do this? The question spun in Dechert’s mind like something without weight being blown through a storm. Would the Chinese go as far as murder because of a territorial pissing match? The Russians? An American? A loner with some kind of grudge, or maybe even Moon hysteria? A kid back at Peary Crater had gone Moon-crazy last year, and it took four men to stop him from using a breccia drill to punch a six-inch hole in one of the station’s central-hub portholes. He had just wanted to get a little fresh air, he explained afterward, when he was sedated and shackled to a wall.

The suspects were many; the suspects were nonexistent. This was the Moon, and none of it made any sense.

The com buzzed above Dechert’s head, and he looked up with regret at the blinking control panel. It buzzed again. Dechert tried to resist the years of military conditioning that willed him to answer. Eventually, though—moving in slow motion, cursing as he did—he flipped the metal toggle and sat down on the bench again.

“Yes?”

“Commander, we just got a flash message from Peary Crater, marked for priority,” said Quarles, and he sounded no happier than Dechert felt. “It came in with a quantum encryption code. You believe that shit? They’re sending a shuttle down here at 1430. We’re getting a visit from the Space Mining Administration.”

I bet we are , Dechert thought.

“Right. Tell Vernon to prep the hangar and turn on the basin’s running lights. Get the CORE’s autonomics configured for extra souls. You know where Thatch is?”

“He’s in the observatory with Lane.”

“Okay. I’ll be there, too.”

He looked at Cole’s closed locker one last time and stood up, feeling old and encumbered even in the microgravity. Even his anger felt weak. Too many suspects. No suspects. Or was it really a mystery at all? The SMA and the Chinese Lunar Authority had been bickering about mineral rights for months. The U.S. and Chinese governments had entered the fray at the prodding of the bureaucrats in their mahogany-walled think tanks. A crisis waiting for a tipping point. Hadn’t the same thing happened hundreds of times before—the few pushing the gullible straight toward the walls of Troy?

It almost didn’t matter who killed Cole, Dechert decided. There were progressions falling into place now that seemed inevitable. He had seen them in action before in Lebanon, in the Bake back in the ’60s. One tribal killing, one soldier dropped by a sniper, one bomb landing on the wrong house, and the lid had blown off. He had seen it before.

He didn’t want to see it again.

How to explain the Moon’s thunderous star field to the uninitiated? It would be like describing the yellows and reds of van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows to a blind man. Even an exile like Dechert tired of Luna’s gray sterility, but he never lost the wonder of her heavens. The crescent Earth was low over the Mons Argaeus and the sun still lingered in the sky on its western descent, but the observatory’s reverse apertures blocked their blinding effects on the star field above Serenity 1 as Dechert walked through the hatchway. The room’s nanoglass dome peered like a bulbous eye from under the blanket of regolith covering the rest of the base. It was lit by starlight; the Milky Way hung overhead like a vertical swarm of fireflies.

Thatch and Lane were at the back of the room, sitting on the ends of two formfitting recliners. Thatch had Lane’s silver flask in his hand.

Dechert walked over to them. “Bourbon, I hope?”

Thatch handed it to him without looking up. Dechert took a drink and the whiskey hit his nose and throat with the punch of wood smoke. Memories of Earth flooded back to him: the old memories of camping in the White Mountains north of the Kancamagus Highway and fishing Sawyer Pond for brown trout, of sitting with his back to a fire under the stars and drinking away the troubles that lay to the south.

“That’s the good stuff,” he said.

“Booker’s,” Lane said. “Just came up.”

Dechert took another swig before handing the flask to Lane. He leaned back against one of the dome’s metal reinforcing beams and looked down at them. Lane was tiny next to Thatch’s big frame. Neither of them returned his gaze. Thatch’s bushy brown hair was matted to his head and flecked with dust.

“The SMA’s sending a team down from the North Pole. Should be here in a few hours.”

They didn’t respond. Dechert uncrossed his feet and then crossed them the other way. He wished he had listened when the military tried to teach him about grief counseling during the desert wars. He always figured it didn’t really matter.

He wasn’t sure his belief had changed, either.

“Thatch, I know you already debriefed, but I’m guessing they’re going to want to go over everything again.”

Thatch grunted. Lane handed him the flask and squeezed his shoulder.

“Look, Thatch, take another hit on that bourbon and go get a shower and some sleep,” Dechert said. “I know you’re messed up, but I’m going to need you. We’re all going to need one another for the next couple of days.”

Thatch looked up. His smallish eyes were red and swollen. He took another drink and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll square up.”

He pushed himself from the chair and handed Lane the flask and shuffled his way to the door. He turned around before he got there.

“You know it should have been me out there.”

Dechert shook his head. “It could have been either of you, Thatch. It was just a short straw, long straw kind of thing. Believe me, I’ve been there before.”

“No. It should have been me. I let Cole run the perimeter check and the first test strips when we got to Posidonius. It was my turn to EVA, but he was already suited up and he wanted to go back out, and I let him do it. I don’t know why I let him do it.”

Lane started to protest but Dechert cut her off. “Cole ran the initial perimeter check?” Usually the senior miner did the first EVA on the Moon.

“Yeah. He was all charged up and he wanted to get out there and it was the Posidonius overflow. Nice and safe, so I let him do it. But it was my turn to go out for the second walk, and I don’t know why I didn’t. I think maybe I was being lazy.”