Author's Note: I'm taking risks here; new genre, my first female narrator, present tense, a more complex lead character, deeper metaphors, etc. All of which is to say I would love to hear your feedback on whether any of this works so I can learn from my mistakes. Please let me know.
For fans of my previous work, I hope this short tale remains enjoyable. Don't worry, it is still erotica.
Thanks and, as always, please enjoy!
*****
1.
"Mela," I hear Commander Briggs squawk in my headset, "Since TJ's not here... you've got L-Sector."
I nod and look down. There is no point in reacting otherwise. Everyone knows L-Sector is a fucking mess.
"Anybody else got extra batt-packs, optics or armor," Briggs continues, "loan 'em to her. That is not a request."
Silence. Every squad leader is on this channel for the meeting, but a chorus of crosstalk would be amateur. Silence means yes.
Briggs moves on.
I feel a nudge on the back of my boot. Without even looking I know it is Specter. I turn my head just enough to see him.
Fuck. How does he do that? So much in just a face.
He perceives my fear I'm sure, but I take no shame in that. Smarts are the only chops that count up here. Tough ain't enough.
Briggs dishes out the rest of the assignments. Nothing compares to what he's just given me though, so I tune him out and try to visualize everything I need to do.
Twelve men report to me, all with post-graduate degrees. Like me, most are on loan from military. I'm Navy; a career blue-water girl until five years ago when NASA called.
Now I'm stuck way the hell up here, serving the longest sixteen months of my life. I made squad leader after only ninety days, but that's mostly because Briggs needs me. I crush at process. I crush at risk containment. I crush EE-repair. All priceless.
Briggs knows I keep my squad alive. They know it too so they more than just abide; they adhere. To them I am Mother Mela.
Top it all, I give good mike. By that I mean my radio voice is good. Back when 'Houston Center' still meant something, if they had actually let a woman on the microphone I would have owned that job. Of course, my parents weren't even born yet... but you get me.
I'm not going to tell you what I look like. Simply appreciate, if you will, that on the South Pole of the Moon every woman is a goddess. The only more-desired women are those headed for Mars, but that level of scarcity requires a one way ticket. So no thanks.
I intend to feel water again, on Earth I mean, someday. We don't get real water here. More like clarified pee.
I used to be a fairly serious swimmer back home. State Finals, invitationals, that sort of thing. So water is a big deal. It gave me strength and endurance. Now lunar gravity helps too. The amount of gear I can hump up here would squash a man back home. I like that.
But I miss it... the feel and sound of water. Immersion.
Anyway, everybody swears up here. If you utter a sentence without at least one foul word, we check your tags to see if your mixture went rich. Not kidding.
Equipment maintenance is 6 hours of everyone's day. That's required. And no days off unless you want to get injured.
Our distance from Earth dictates everything: sleep cycles, work cycles, how we eat, how we defecate and, most obvious, how we breathe. Even though we're indoors, a thin plastic hoop runs under everyone's nose, leaking just the right amount of oxygen to bring our air up to an adequate mixture. Without it you get sleepy quick. Only a few spots in our station have healthy ambient air, such as the algae farms. Here in the tactical bubble it's stale no matter how hard we run the circulators. So you need the oxygen boost, which originates from a reclaimant system sewn between the layers of our coveralls. It runs on body heat, urine and CO2. It doesn't produce enough O2 to live on indefinitely, but it's enough to boost the mixture so we don't need to be helmeted indoors. You just have to remember to inhale through your nose. That's why we sometimes refer to our Earth-bound colleagues as mouth-breathers. Affectionately, of course... always affectionately.
Back on point: Fucking L-Sector. Probably not going to sleep much between now and when we go external. The tractor tugs will all need to be checked, packed and charged. I'll have to scrounge for extra everything: derma-plasters, stims, supplements and maybe a new encryption key too. Probably 16 hours until we go external, then 20-30 hours down in the flats, separating fresh cargo from the wreckage of their delivery modules. Once the tugs are fully loaded we'll drag everything back up here to base. That's when I'll sleep.
Hopefully.
As soon as the meeting breaks up I spring for the ladder-tunnel that leads to my squad's LSS. That's a Life Support Sphere for you mouth-breathers. We call them bubbles. Other than Comm Center and the farms, bubbles are the only structures that are heated. Each squad has their own, dug into the high rim of the Shackleton Crater in a scattered array, connected to each other by long ladder-tunnels.
From outside, the growing scale of our mountainside base is mostly hidden. There are a few spots where ladder-tubes break the surface to skirt some un-drillable mass, but otherwise the only above-ground features are the solar panels (eternally-lit at the rim's summit), the tractor hangar and three communications towers.
Like everything, that architecture is all about risk containment and survivability. Individuals are allowed to die, mind you, but not the mission. At least that's the idea. So one or two LSSs might get taken out by a micro-meteor or an air leak, but the rest will be far enough away to survive.
Everything here is architected like that: triple-redundant, modular, self-sustaining. Otherwise we'd all be dead rather than just some.
Space is death, after all.
As I bound along the tunnel using that queer step-step-hop we all adopt at one-sixth G, I switch my headset back to channel 12 and listen to my squad chattering amongst themselves. They don't know it yet, of course, and I can't help but imagine their reactions.
Fucking L-sector.
I exit the first tunnel and leap across a five-way junction into another. Forty meters into that tube, the lights flicker. I catch an overhead rung to get feet-forward and then skid to a stop. I look back. It's just Specter signaling me. He knows my channel, but clearly doesn't want go public.
I check the time and wait.
His knees dip as he lands beside me. When I look into his face I see them... the sad eyes.
He peels off his bulky noise-cancelling headset and tosses it behind his back so it hangs by the cord. I roll my eyes but do the same. It's how we get offline.
We move to one side of the tunnel together, into a nook between two structural ribs. I check both ways to make sure we are alone. The incessant mechanical and circulation noise is quieter here than in the bubbles, but still pretty loud when you're not accustomed to having your bare ears exposed.
You don't want to be out here in the tunnels for long without a suit on. They run close to the surface and the walls are thin, so if the sun is behind the mountain you'll eventually freeze. Also the radiation is higher. But it's a place you can be alone.
Specter squares-off with me and leans in close so I can hear.
"You hafta sleep before you go external," he says, overcoming the ambient noise.
I shake my head no.
He grabs my wrist and pulls. "You do!"
I glance over my shoulder, pretending to check for visitors, but he turns my face back to him with a finger.
There's that look again. Goddamn it.
I duck my head toward his ear and shout, "I don't have time!"
He takes hold of my shoulders and gently shakes me. "Yes. You do!"
I shrug him off and make a move as if to leave. He catches my hand.
I let him hold on, but shout: "Is that all?"
Of course this wounds him. So I get the sad eyes again. But whatever, right? I mean, I have a brick shithouse worth of mission-criticals right now and Specter just wants to make eyes at me.
"I have some good spares for you," he says, "suit plates, batt-packs, stuff like that. I'll bring them later!"
I nod. My mind is back on-task, checklists unfurling behind my eyes. Again I glance toward my bubble.
"Also," he continues, "Mouse owes me a heater!"
My eyes snap back to him and my brain staggers off-course. He squeezes my hand.
