David Pedreira: Gunpowder Moon

Decompression alarm. Dechert almost didn’t believe it. What the hell could cause a decompression alarm on the Molly Hatchet ? They were on the Serenity plain, as smooth a terrain as you could hope for on the Moon. They weren’t drilling and they weren’t supposed to be moving for another three hours. And other than her fickle electronics, the Hatchet was built like a navy warship—a bulk of carbon-carbon weave wrapped over a skin of superalloy.

He didn’t stop to put on his heavysuit, bolting out of his room and careening through the crew quarters passageway in an unsteady sprint, half flying through the low gravity as he used his arms to ward off the pipes and conduits that layered the white-tubed walls of the station in corded veins. He almost hit Vernon head-on as he approached the CORE’s outer hatch.

“This shit real?” Vernon asked. His eyes were wide and his forehead gleamed.

Dechert barely heard him. He yanked at the CORE’s hatch, almost pulling it off its moorings. Quarles was already at the telemetry station. He didn’t take the time to look up.

“It’s a definite decompression,” he said. “I’m getting sporadic data from the low-gain antenna. They’ve lost pressurization in the aft section.” He punched up a schematic of the Molly Hatchet on a stereoscopic display and finally looked at Dechert. “It’s in the EVA room, boss, but the hatch is dogged. I’m reading a closed hatch.”

Dechert said a quick prayer that Thatch and Benson were in the Hatchet ’s cockpit. “Can we raise them?” Where the hell was Lane? She must be on-station in the main hangar or Bio-Med, or she’d already be up here by now.

“Trying.”

“Keep trying, and turn off master-alarm audio. Remain at condition one,” Dechert said. He punched the com. “Lane, are you down there?”

“Jonathan’s right, Commander,” Lane said. “The beacon triggered in aft EVA. Navigation module is still pressurized, but I’m reading no primary life support in the aft section.”

The emergency beacon only went off if a module lost pressure outside of the standard depressurization sequence. Explosive decompression.

“I’m trying cockpit and suit coms,” Lane continued. “System is green but no response.”

The tension in her voice filled the CORE. She left the channel open as she repeated calls to Thatch and Benson every five seconds. The static that came back across the Moon broken by her metered transmissions chilled each of them, slowing them down as they waited to hear a human voice cutting into the distortion.

“Vernon, get the shuttle ready,” Dechert said finally, flipping channels on the com to see if Thatch and Cole were knocked off frequency. “Maximum velocity profile. You’re flying. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

He gave up on the com and pulled the base phone off the wall. “Peary Crater, this is Serenity 1, Peary Crater, SOS-1. We’ve got a master decompression alarm on MH-2. I repeat…”

The landline immediately crackled to life. At least someone was working up north. “Serenity 1, Peary Crater, I copy a master alarm on mobile habitation number two. Can you confirm?”

The dispatcher’s voice sounded too calm, and it made Dechert angry. The bastard probably hadn’t been outside of an airlock in months. But he took a deep breath, because snapping at this com-jockey wasn’t going to change anything. “Confirmed, Peary Crater, decompression alarm on MH-2. No communications from crew. She is four-seven-zero klicks north-northeast of the station, just southwest of Posidonius. We’re relaying coordinates and launching the shuttle. I’ll be on open com in five minutes.”

Dechert hung up the phone before hearing a reply. He knew that Commodore Yates was already stirring to action and would be looking for an immediate briefing. He didn’t want to talk to him until after the launch. Economy of motion , he thought. Economy of action. What did Fletcher tell him? Time kills on the Moon. Have to move quickly.

“Jonathan you’ve got the CORE. Give us telemetry updates as you get them and help Vernon upload a flight profile. We’ll be on open channel.”

Quarles nodded, his face fixed to the display screens and his shaven head gleaming as his hands moved across the console. Dechert lurched out of the room, sealing the hatch behind him. He ran down the launch checklist in his mind as he flew down the red-lit passageways, past the hatches for Observatory, Greenhouse, Supply, Bio-Med, and Astro-Mechanical. Launches made him nervous, even with Vernon flying. They had to stay sharp. Couldn’t compound one emergency by creating another. Dechert felt the old carbonation of self-doubt bubble up inside him and tried to push it back down. His heart pounded and his mouth felt papery. He wished he had ordered Quarles to turn off the emergency lighting along with the audio.

Lane was fighting to get a pressure suit on Waters when Dechert got to the hangar. After John Ross Fletcher was killed in the Sea of Clouds crash, they didn’t fly without personal life support. Neither of them spoke, barely looking up as he came into the room. Dechert went to a locker and grabbed a suit. He threw it onto a bench and picked up the flight pad.

“I’ve already got her sequenced,” Waters said. “Tanks are stirred, electrostatic shielding coming online.”

Dechert looked at Vernon and saw a thin line of wet running down one cheek into the thick, dark stubble of his beard. Lane was pale and silent, moving as fast as she could. Dechert put down the pad and attacked his suit, knowing it would take him at least three minutes to get it on and powered up.

Time kills on the Moon.

“They’re probably just off-com,” Dechert said, knowing how unlikely that sounded. “Concentrate on the mission. We’ll get them back.”

Thatcher’s voice broke through a field of static when they were four hundred kilometers out. It sounded as if he was talking through a stream of running water. “Serenity, this is Molly Hatchet . We’ve got an emer… decompression in port EVA module. Can you hear me? Can’t raise Cole. Cole is… outer hat…” He spoke in quick, confused bursts.

“We read you, Molly Hatchet ,” Dechert replied. “We’re inbound shuttle, five minutes out. I repeat, ETA zero-five minutes. Uh, Thatch, give me Nav-Mod’s status and repeat last on Cole.”

The com popped and hissed like a blown transformer. Solar activity again, or worse. Dechert prayed Thatcher was confused about Cole Benson or that he hadn’t heard him correctly. Maybe Cole was stuck in the prep module with the inner hatch sealed off, and the Molly ’s internal communications weren’t working.

Thatch’s voice came through again in garbled urgency. “Explosion… A module. Boards green in navigation. Cole… EVA. I can’t reach him. Do you read… Commander?… Cole.”

Static washed out Thatch’s last sentence, but they had heard enough. Cole was in the EVA module. Now in open space. Was he just getting back into the crawler or prepping to go out? Please, God, let him be in a pressure suit.

Dechert looked over at Vernon but his flight officer didn’t look back. The big man kept his face forward, concentrating on flying as they skimmed over the Sea of Serenity at nearly a kilometer per second. The shuttle’s multidirectional HEDM thrusters hissed with propellant bursts, keeping the scarab-shaped craft from tumbling out of control. Dechert thought he could see Posidonius in the distance, its shallow rim almost overwashed by an ancient lava flow. The crater’s sloping western spine grew too slowly in the cockpit window.

“Forty klicks out, descending to one hundred meters,” Vernon said. “Retracting electrostatic spheres, radiation levels in the green.”