Luke Marusiak - Lifeboat Moon

Mark removed his helmet, took the box, and examined it. “This looks like a chisel.”

“A remote controlled spring loaded chisel,” Zeke said removing his helmet. “The seal was sabotaged.”

“Whomever did it, didn’t figure on Gitty.” Sally looked at the chisel. “This wasn’t meant to cause a leak, it was meant to cause a full on breach that would permanently ruin the Manufacturing Pod much like the med-bay.”

“Thank God for Gitty,” Mark said. He shuddered. “Yumi was right. We still haven’t overcome our disease in Moon Base Armstrong.”

“Disease?” Sally asked.

“Katsumi and Yumi believe we have people in our moon base so despairing over the loss of earth they want to finish humanity’s destruction.”

“They’ve nearly succeeded,” Zeke said.

“Doug or Chuck did this,” Mark said.

“Or someone else on the Manufacturing Pod crew. It was odd that only Jim was in here when the spring loaded chisel was triggered.”

“Did the recordings survive?” Sally asked.

“Let’s find out,” Zeke said. The two went to a terminal and Sally logged into her account.

“The remote controlled devices used to activate the beacons that caused the pod crash and used to trigger this spring loaded chisel could only have been made here in the Manufacturing Pod.” Mark stared at the box and looked at the sealed crack. “Only someone who knew about the previous Manufacturing Pod vulnerability at this seam could have done this.”

“We have a video of Gitty’s heroics,” Sally said.

Mark turned to the screen. “What about before that?”

Sally scanned backwards in time on the video to before the leak started. “We can barely see the device on the floor.” She found a segment that showed a flicker of movement. “I believe this is when the box was triggered.”

“What was going on then?” Mark asked.

Sally cleared her throat. “If you remember, that’s when I came to see you to talk about the cave floor collapse.”

Mark chuckled. “I’ll never forget that Sally.” He intentionally phrased the sentence with double meaning. “Chuck was on shift. Doug was in his quarters.”

“Who placed the box?” Zeke asked.

“I’ll reel it back.” Sally went back in a fast scan mode day after day. “Hmm… that box was there for some time. I wonder why no one noticed it.”

“Are you sure it’s there?” Mark asked. “That area isn’t well lit.”

Sally zoomed in on the bottom of the seal and saw a pixilation circle around the box. “Oh no — someone tampered with this video.”

“Who is committed to our destruction and has the skills to do this?” Mark asked.

“This isn’t a onetime emotional response,” Zeke said.

“What do you mean?”

“The pod crash, the quarters leak in Habitation Tube Two, Art’s suicide after seeing the culling plan, and now this remote triggered Manufacturing Pod seal leak… all of it was done with the purpose of destroying Moon Base Armstrong.” Zeke turned to Sally. “Is it possible to get a log of material use of the Manufacturing Pod?”

“Yes why?”

“We should be able to find out the inventory change of remote control boxes.”

“That’s right, all components have automated shelf inventory trackers. Our saboteur tampered with the video but they may have forgotten about the trackers.”

“We need to find out who did this.”

“I don’t know if we can find out who,” Sally said, “but I’m sure we can find out what.”

Zeke, Mark, and Sally huddled over the log report display of equipment. With the moon buggy and fuel cell construction, a significant amount of components were logged. They scanned row after row of components that the trackers indicated were drawn from inventory. “This is too detailed,” Zeke said.

“I’ll search on radio frequency controls — oscillators and transmitters.” Sally adjusted the search parameters.

“Whoa.” Zeke saw it first. “There were several remote transmitters removed from the Manufacturing Pod.”

“It’s worse than that,” Sally said. “There were also beacons and beacon emulators removed.”

“What’s that mean?” Mark asked.

“It means this isn’t the last of the sabotage. If I had to guess, I’d say someone is looking to crash another pod.”

Days went by after the momentous discovery in the Manufacturing Pod. Mark’s suspicions swung from Chuck to Doug and then to someone else on the Manufacturing Pod crew. He discounted Japan Station’s suspicions of Thad but wondered if it could be someone other than Chuck or Doug.

Sally stayed in Mark’s quarters and he took consolation that the search to find the saboteur put both on a mission of something other than meager survival. Mark assigned Jim Staid to replace Art as Shift Supervisor with most of his overlap occurring with Doug.

Mark trusted Jim for two reasons. First, Jim was nearly killed by the sabotage. Second, and most important, Jim had Gitty or, perhaps a better way to say it, Gitty had Jim. He had something to live for, he had someone to live up to. Mark realized that, in the Moon Base Armstrong crew’s fight for survival, there was nothing more powerful than the partnership of love. There was nothing he could count on more as proof of trust than love. Mark had no doubt Jim could be trusted.

The only place to start the pod decent from orbit was the control room. Mark assigned Jim to the control room with a distinct purpose in mind. The assignment of Jim always paired someone Mark utterly trusted with someone he suspected.

Jim overlapped most with Doug and Sally overlapped most with Chuck. The conversation Mark and Sally had with Jim about guarding against sabotage was well received. It turned out he suspected sabotage ever since the pod crash and the director’s and ArmCon’s death.

Mark was expanding his inner circle of trust. He first could utterly rely on Sally, Zeke, Thad, Brexton, and Jim. When he discovered Thad and Tina Bennet were a couple he gladly added Tina to his inner circle. He never liked the cronyism he saw from time to time in the U.S. Air Force but, up here with their survival at stake, he needed people he could trust with his life.

Japan Station was a problem. Katsumi and Yumi wanted Doug and Chuck to be removed from any position where they could do harm. They needed Moon Base Armstrong as much as Moon Base Armstrong needed them but they hated how Mark approached the specter of further sabotage.

“If someone from Moon Base Armstrong wants to destroy your crew, a pod crash before we pressurize the cave would do it,” Yumi said on her private communications channel to Mark. The two stood outside the newly sealed cave entrance.

The work had two major projects left. One project consisted of connecting the plexiglass tube up the staircase to a person-sized load lock before the main cave hatch. The other project was to excavate a ramp two highway lanes wide for the moon buggy to transport equipment to the large load lock.

The interior of the cave had four times the space of Moon Base Armstrong and Japan Station combined. Mark looked at the overlapping seals. They had the right material and the right seals in place. One thing about Japan Station — they perfected making silica magnesium construction walls. He pointed to the overlapping connected walls. “We have everything we need to occupy this cave except air.” Mark heard Yumi laugh and was stunned at the uncharacteristic reaction.

“Your enemy, by crashing the supply pod, exposed the cave. And the cave will save us — as long as we remove the enemy.”

“I told you the safety actions we put in place.”

“You left two in positions of power who may wish to do harm. One of them, Charles Tully, attacked you.”