Luke Marusiak - Lifeboat Moon

Mark waved back. “Good luck. I’ll see you at the end of this.” Mark yearned for that to be true. There was too much motion and too much urgency for a proper goodbye — for any goodbye at all. He loved that woman and his ridiculous wave was the only indication. Why didn’t I holler that I love her for all to hear? But the moment passed.

“There’s no battery operated beacon here,” Thad said. “I’ve scoured every inch of this reactor and the solar array. Doug must’ve masked it and is using direct power.”

Mark looked at the trackers. The pod headed for the air reactor and solar array was only five minutes away. The destruction of that air and power alone would doom them. “Thad, shut the whole thing off. Turn off the main breaker. Shut off all power coming out of the solar array.”

“What?”

“Shut the whole thing off and I’ll run the control room on batteries until we divert the pods.”

“The air reactor will stop and everyone will lose ventilation.”

“There’s no time and I have to get control of this pod now.”

“Will do.” Thad’s voice was clipped short by the sudden electrical relay clack.

The control room lights dimmed and then flicked on. The monitor screens remained lit. I hope this works! Mark tapped in the override code and grabbed the control joystick. For a moment his memory flashed back to Creech Air Force Base in Nevada when he piloted drones. Then he was on a mission to destroy. Now, he was acting the savior. He exhaled in relief when he saw he had control of the pod headed for the Nexus.

The pod hadn’t lit its thrusters and accelerated like the one that wiped out the director’s quarters. Not yet. Mark yawed the pod ninety degrees as it deorbited in descent and lit the thrusters when it was a 170 kilometers away. He saw its distance increase to 220 kilometers. Good! He cut the thrusters, yawed the pod 180 degrees — pointing straight down — and lit the thrusters a last time.

A dull impact thud and ripple of vibration told Mark the first pod was down. One down, two to go. He glanced at the telemetry of the pod headed for Japan Station. Come on Katsumi — steer that away. He smiled when he saw the indication of the pod yawing ninety degrees. They saw what I did and are using the same procedure. There was nothing elegant about the procedure, but it was effective. Another dull thud and light ripple indicated the second pod was down. Two down, one to go.

Mark tapped the override control commands for the third pod — the one descending toward the Nexus — and nothing happened. He flicked the intercom to talk to Chuck and realized it was disabled due to the main power being off. Mark looked at the monitor and saw that the pod was yawing on its own.

A flash of panic gripped him. There was no time. He stood and as he bounded to the Nexus to see what happened to Chuck saw something in the control room that caught his eye. He bounded back to the control room and scrambled to extract the device secured under the desk. It was the battery operated remote control pod that was used to direct the first pod to crash into the director’s quarters.

He looked at the monitor and realized he had a scant three minutes till the pod hit the Nexus. Mark grabbed his helmet, secured it in place, and pressurized his spacesuit. There’s no time. Move! In the throes of desperate action, Mark moved on instinct. He had one move left and it was a long shot.

Mark tucked the battery powered beacon remote under his arm and bounded to the hangar. He opened the lock, entered, and counted the precious seconds as it depressurized. The moment the hatch to the outside flashed green, Mark opened it and bounded out onto the ledge. He could see the pod thrusters in the sky. He bounded three times, heart in throat, toward the solar array and away from Moon Base Armstrong. When he felt he was between the moon base and the solar array he turned on the beacon remote.

He saw the telltale green blinking on the beacon indicating a locked signal. Once this beacon spelled doom for Director Collier and ArmCon Little. Now, it was the last hope for what remained of Moon Base Armstrong.

Mark looked at the descending pod with a shudder. He assumed the quarterback’s stance he used in high school and launched the blinking beacon as far as he could in a line between the moon base and the solar array.

The pod thrusters stayed lit but Mark was sure he saw it change course and follow the remote beacon. In seconds, experienced solely as sensations rather than thought, the pod roared down on a twisting angling path, and crashed into the beacon that had landed a scant 200 meters from the moon base.

The first two pods announced their impact with the moon by a dull thud. The third pod crash was a close explosive force that created a devastating seismic wave. The pod crash induced moonquake lifted the space-suited Major Mark Martelli a meter off the lunar surface. He landed face down in the moon dust only to be lifted and dropped again from the ringing force of the crash.

Mark felt as if he were on the end of a cracking whip, smacking again and again into the surface, gasping for air in helpless terror. There was nothing he could do. His thoughts came as flashes of fear. Would the plexiglass tube shatter with Sally and others in it? Would Thad be incapacitated and unable to turn the power on? Would the solar array and air reactor be so damaged by the seismic force as to be beyond repair? Would Japan Station survive this moonquake which was far beyond the first that induced leaks in both moon bases?

When his bouncing distance lessened to mere centimeters, Mark attempted to regain his feet. He managed to rise to a knee when he saw Thad.

“The tube looks intact,” Thad’s voice came through his helmet. He must have left his communications channel open.

“Is the power back on?”

“Not yet.”

Mark struggled to his feet. “Unless you see knocked over panels, turn the main bus power back on.”

“Working it.” Thad bounded toward the solar array.

Mark bounded once toward Thad. His thoughts, as the vibrating surface lessened, cleared. What the hell happened to Chuck and the netting? He looked back toward Moon Base Armstrong’s entrance and the connected plexiglass tube. Both were invisible in the ink-black darkness of the Shackleton Crater shadow.

He sighed with intense relief when the entrance lights flickered and then lit with steady warm beams of illumination and civilization itself. The plexiglass tube remained. All of that bracing of the tube bottom with the new flexible silica magnesium sealing spray did the trick. He turned back toward the air reactor and saw Thad bound toward him and admired his ease of movement, even on the vibrating surface.

“Good job Thad. That was a near run thing.”

“The NASA dampeners on the solar array fixtures and air reactor saved us. Their bases shook like hell but the solar panel assemblies and the air reactor were undamaged.”

“That’s great news. Go and make sure everyone got through the plexiglass tube okay. I can see that this end is still standing.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get Chuck. Something went wrong with the RF shielding in the Nexus. I had no time to find out what.”

Mark and Thad bounded toward Moon Base Armstrong’s entry. “Mark, I had my helmet video recording and may have caught it.”

“Caught what?”

“Your handheld launch of that beacon. That was one hell of a throw.”

“It was all I could think of. I hope to hell the plexiglass walkway held.” Mark and Thad bounded toward the entrance. Both settled on short jumps as the moon’s vibration shortened their bound landing stops.