Luke Marusiak - Lifeboat Moon

I need to create multiple emergencies that overwhelm Mark’s ability to respond. I need to overwhelm both Mark’s and Japan Station’s ability to respond. He had the embedded algorithms to do that. Doug hoped for a near spiritual realization of the liberation from suffering he was providing. He’d hoped to take his time and use phased destruction. That would’ve been the most meaningful way to end humanity’s suffering. But the cave and the work with Japan Station were unexpected. They not only prevented phased destruction, they risked Doug’s ability to thoroughly extinguish the last excuse of humanity.

I must use my back door and launch my Armageddon protocol from my quarters tonight. An hour or two after I’m off shift , I need to strike. That will be best , his inner voice coached. It’s time to free everyone from their suffering. It’s time to free you from your suffering. Doug snorted. I just wish I could see the expression on their faces , he thought, when all this goes down. It’s only a matter of hours.

Mark broke the seal of his helmet, removed it, and sucked in the new cave air. “Whew — that smells like gunpowder.” Others around him — Zeke, Habi, Thad, Tina, and Yumi — laughed. “But it’s air.” The new air was cool but not frigid. Mark looked at the cave interior and realized this was the first time anyone had ever seen the raw regolith without bulky spacesuits.

“It worked,” Thad said. “The air content’s about fifty-fifty — half oxygen and half nitrogen.”

“We believe we’ll become accustomed to the odor after a short time,” Yumi said.

Mark scanned the vast area. He bounded to a side wall, removed his glove, and felt it with his bare hand. The side of the cave felt like it consisted of bundled razor blades. “Careful. This will cut bare skin to ribbons.”

“There’s a lot of work to do,” Zeke said, “but we can start living in the cave right now.” He bounded beside Mark. “Let me show you what we’re doing to take care of that roughness.” Zeke led Mark to the back of the central cavern and pointed to a smooth place on the wall. Zeke put his bare hand on the wall. “Feel that.”

Mark followed suit and put his hand on the smooth section of wall. It felt rubbery with interlocking ridges. “Did you treat this with your spray?”

“Yes. Jerry and his team have just started producing it in the Manufacturing Area.”

Habi and Yumi came alongside. “We have Japan Station to thank for this compound,” Habi said.

“And we have Doctor Ben-Ami to thank for the sprayer,” Yumi said. “Our partnership is going well.”

“Major Martelli,” Habi said. “Jerry’s in the Manufacturing Area. I’d love to show you what we’re doing in there.”

“Already? We just pressurized these caverns.”

“We were able to start production with the added power.”

“Let’s go.” The group went into Cave Branch Two which was dedicated for the Moon Base Armstrong crew. Mark examined the results of the mapping work teams but hadn’t done exploratory work after the mishap of the falling floor in Cave Branch One weeks before. He remembered seeing the large recess in the leftmost branch on the map. The reality of their new Manufacturing Area stunned him. “This place must be three times larger than what you had in Moon Base Armstrong.”

Jerry met the team at the entrance. He laughed at Mark’s surprise. “This is a real manufacturing set up. What we had in Moon Base Armstrong was a setup for prototypes.” He pointed to three full lines of equipment that were capped by a large perpendicular row of electronic testers. “We’ve set these up for material processing, parts fabrication, and assembly. At the end we assemble the electronics and do the final quality checks. We’re targeting having our first soup to nuts lunar produced moon buggies in two weeks.”

Mark was captivated. “How did you get so far along before the pressurization?”

Jerry pointed to rows of spacesuit air tanks lined up at the entrance. “These are the first thing we’ve been making. We manufactured these canisters with 3D printing and filled them with air from a nozzle connection on Japan Station’s cave air inlets. These moon produced tanks enabled us to work fourteen hours straight.”

“And you needed food,” Tina said behind them. “I made sure when they got back to the moon base they got a day’s worth of hydroponic produced food to keep them going. Now that the cave is pressurized and we have plentiful water, I can start with a double of food production in the first month. We’ll triple it by month three and from there, it’ll be up to us as to how much extra we should make.”

“Agriculture Manager Christina Bennet’s work is most impressive,” Yumi said. “She was able to work with our team to incorporate rice into a modified hydroponic system.”

“I’d love to show you Major Martelli,” Tina said.

Mark turned and saw Tina’s expression of unadulterated pride. Thad stood next to her beaming. “Let’s check it out,” Mark said. The group exited the Manufacturing Area, bounded to the exit of Cave Branch Two and into the main area. “This is so large. It’s fantastic that we were able to get it pressurized so fast.”

“You’re idea to use one of your nitrogen tanks made today possible,” Yumi said. “We’ll be able to assemble the interior and have time to align on our anti-static protocols.”

Mark and the team bounded into Cave Branch One. He felt a rush of anxiety. This is where Sally and I nearly died due to the cave in.

“As you can see,” Tina said. “We’ve graded the steep slope you and Sally discovered into steps and sealed the growing area.”

“Sealed?”

“Between the carbon dioxide, excrement based carbon fertilizer, and high humidity; we’ll have to be masked to work in there. It’s not much different than what we do in Moon Base Armstrong’s Agriculture Pod. We used Japan Station manufactured slabs similar to the ones that sealed the cave mouth and put windows on them. The mulch container you brought is up against the wall on the left.”

Mark peered inside and noted the bright lights and rows of hydroponically grown crops. In a place without order we impose it with straight lines, he thought. In spite of everything to include a crewmember bent on destruction, the human survivors were carving out a new life.

The group went to the main area of the cave. Mark noted a large net on the far wall next to Cave Branch Three, next to Japan Station’s area. He pointed to it and turned to Yumi. “What’s that?”

“It is the RF shield we used to block our signals going to China Station. We didn’t need it for that purpose anymore so are using it to cover the rough wall surface until we produce enough of Doctor Ben-Ami’s soft treatment.”

The vestige of old national hatreds reminded Mark of the current individual hatred in Doug Graham that he’d have to deal with. There was no time like the present. He saw Yumi talking in an agitated voice into her headset and looked at his helmet. He hadn’t put his comms back on after removing it. Mark pulled the earpiece-microphone assembly out of his helmet and put it on. What he heard chilled him to the core.

“Mark come in!” Sally’s voice was on the edge of panic. “All three supply pods are signaling that they are descending.”

“How?”

“We didn’t give the command. It must be Doug.”

“Mark this is Chuck. We are tracking the deorbits and see all three coming down at the worst places. One is coming down dead center on Japan Station, one is coming down on Moon Base Armstrong’s air reactor and solar array, and one is coming down dead center on the Nexus.”