by Gemma Fowler
Maybe it was the right time to . . .
‘Seb,’ she began, taking a deep breath. She’d been going crazy about when to tell Seb her secret. Maybe the best place was when they were trapped in a buggi on the edge of nowhere and he was getting all mushy. At least he couldn’t storm off.
‘What’s up?’ Seb turned and smiled.
A cold sweat broke out all over Aggie’s body. Seb was the most important thing to her in the world, and she was about to tell him she’d been lying to him every minute of every day they’d known each other. She’d run over this moment in her head a million times but no matter how she phrased it, it always sounded terrible. She checked the buggi quickly, making sure there wasn’t anything he could throw at her.
‘Come on,’ Seb said, his eyes going all watery. ‘What’s up?’ His voice had gone gooey too, as if he was expecting something completely different to happen.
Aggie’s heart went up a gear. ‘I just, oh wow. Seb, I—’
‘Frag!’ Seb shouted. ‘B-boulder!’
Aggie turned just in time to see a huge chunk of rock heading straight for them. The buggi made a crunching spraying noise and came to a stop, lodged in between two huge rocks.
*
Aggie looked around and saw nothing but moon rock.
Seb looked down at the control panel as if it was a piece of alien technology. The whole dash sang with flickering red warning lights.
‘You clagger’s ass, Seb! Look what you’ve done!’
‘Hey, that was not my fault!’ Seb gasped. ‘Tell Celeste she’s a clagger’s ass!’
He had a point. How could the computer not see boulders this size?
Seb looked so panicked it made Aggie’s stomach spin. ‘I’m sure we can get it out,’ she said quickly, ‘then the buggi will self-heal.’
‘It has limits, man,’ Seb said looking out at the crushed hull. ‘This isn’t exactly a scratch is it?’
Aggie put her head in her hands. How could this have happened? She’d never heard of a buggi crashing before, Celeste was flawless, not one glitch in ten years.
Seb took a deep breath, ‘Celeste?’
Nothing.
‘Celeste!’ Aggie shouted.
Seb winced. ‘Woah, dude, she hasn’t got a hearing problem. Though I definitely do now.’
‘Sorry.’
The dash was blank now. For once, Aggie wanted Celeste there. She thought about the cold, desolate surface around them. How long could they be out here before a rescue team found them? Hours? Days? They needed to do something.
Aggie put a hand on Seb’s arm. ‘It’s OK. Just, back us up and we’ll see how bad it is.’
Seb looked at the controls and shrugged.
‘Nobody knows how to fly these things in manual,’ he said, chewing his lip. ‘Maybe I can figure out reverse.’
Aggie could see the red glow of the border beacons pulsing on the rocks behind them. They must be really close to the border, but what choice did they have? ‘Do it. It’ll be OK.’
Seb nodded. ‘I wish I had your confidence.’ He pulled the lever back.
The sound of rushing moondust hitting the sides of the buggi was deafening as Seb revved the fans. They ricocheted off the rocks like a ping-pong ball, but they were going backwards. Sort of.
After a few more seconds of screeching, rocking and scraping, the crumpled buggi made its way out of the gap between the boulders and shot backwards at such a speed that it sent Aggie slamming up against the hull.
‘Earth’s sake, Seb, take some of the power off!’ she shouted, but the craft was vibrating so much she doubted Seb could hear. Aggie watched, powerless, as the red pulse of the beacons first blinded her, then started to sink away into the distance.
‘Seb!’ She cried. Panic was starting to rise in her throat now as she watched the screens and Ether in the buggi blink, then go offline.
‘BORDER BREACH. BORDER BREACH. BORDER BREACH.’
Celeste’s automated voice boomed overhead. A red light descended over the cabin, highlighting the concentrated panic on Seb’s sweating forehead as he wrestled with the manual controls.
Still they shot backwards at a vomit-inducing speed; the border was nothing but a red glow beyond the jagged ground. They were on the Far Side. Properly on the Far Side. This was bad. Really bad.
‘AUTOMATIC CUT-OUT ACTIVATED. ONE MOMENT PLEASE . . .’
‘What?’ Aggie shouted in confusion. The fans stopped and the buggi slammed heavily into the dust.
‘Ouch,’ Seb moaned as he peeled himself from the control panel. ‘That did not go as planned. At all.’
‘What’s it doing?’ Aggie panted, looking at the dead, still Ether on the control panel.
‘They have some homing fail-safe device in there, I think. No Celeste, though – its automatic.’
Aggie nodded. How long would that take?
Outside the buggi, the landscape was already a million miles away from the smooth mares and low-rising craters of the Near Side. The Far Side was jagged, cracked and ravaged. The distant, lumbering lunar sunrise illuminated what looked like a huge, black valley heading for miles into the darkness.
‘Seb,’ Aggie said, gazing at the valley, both horrified and fascinated. ‘Look at this, it’s kind of beautiful over here. More interesting than our side . . .’
She glanced over her shoulder, but Seb was still busy playing with the buggi’s controls.
‘I mean,’ Aggie continued, still totally absorbed in the view. She was sure she could see lumite sparkling where the sunlight hit the rocks in the canyon, ‘it’s such a shame that it’s too dangerous . . .’
The words dried up in Aggie’s mouth.
She saw something in the dust. Something small, something grey and rounded like a Near Side boulder. It was just so out of place in this harsh, jagged landscape.
Then it moved.
‘Seb,’ Aggie said.
As the thing moved, dust started to fall from its body, revealing more of what lay beneath. Something soft and padded, shiny in places . . .
‘Seb.’
Another layer of dust sifted away, revealing something golden and round. It was a golden globe, twisting up at her, reflecting the sun into Aggie’s eyes. Aggie’s heart jumped into her mouth.
It was a man.
A man in an old, white spacesuit, made filthy with grey dust. His massive round helmet was the old kind, his oxygen tank looked bigger than the buggi itself. As the man crawled forwards, an arm reached out towards them, a giant, gloved hand pleading with her, beckoning her, asking her for help.
But Aggie just stared, too shocked to do anything other than blink and breathe.
She watched the hand fall softly back into the dust. She let out a cry and pushed her seat back, jarring Seb in the ribs. ‘Aw, man! Aggs, seriously, I do not need . . . Hey, what’s wrong?’
‘I . . . there’s . . .’ Aggie couldn’t produce words. Instead she pointed out towards the surface, refusing to turn her own head. She didn’t want to see the man again, his clawing, grasping hand was already burnt into her brain.
Seb followed her shaking hand and peered out of the buggi. ‘What? I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘What were you looking at?’
Aggie took a breath and turned her head. The controls on the buggi started to hum. Seb had got the emergency systems going, ready to pilot them back to the safety of the Near Side.
‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’
Aggie peered back out of the windows.
‘No,’ she said, scanning the surface around them. ‘No!’
Seb grabbed her shoulder, his eyes wide and wild.
‘What is it Aggs? You’re freaking me out, man.’
‘There . . .’ Aggie stuttered, pointing out to the patch of dirt. ‘A man . . .’
‘Aggie!’ Seb cried as Aggie kicked out at the buggi’s hatch release mechanism.
She shrugged his hands away and pushed at the smooth hull as it slowly separated from the buggi. She couldn’t j
ust watch someone die out there – she had to help them. Whoever was in that suit didn’t have long.
‘Aggie! That’s the fragging Far Side, you black hole!’ Seb shouted as Aggie leapt onto the dusty surface, her overall sensing a change in pressure and unfolding her helmet just in time.
Dust kicked up around her as she skidded, first on two feet, then on her hands and knees, finally coming to a rest beside the massive golden head.
‘What?’ She said to herself quietly, ‘How?’
It was just a helmet. Just an old, battered-up helmet half buried in the dust and rocks. There wasn’t a body to save. But Aggie could have sworn she’d seen it move.
‘A fragging helmet?’ Seb was suddenly beside her, showering her in another wave of dust.
‘Yeah,’ Aggie replied, twisting her head from side to side, looking for the man.
‘It’s just a helmet!’ Seb slapped his thighs in frustration and pointed to the buggi that was still glowing red with warnings.
‘Aggie. Dude. We’ve got to go quick. Celeste’s gonna have reported a malfunction by now. It’s only a helmet. Just calm down.’
Aggie couldn’t. ‘I know what I saw Seb.’
He followed her as she scrabbled in the dust around the helmet. ‘Aggie, a person can’t just disappear. Look, listen to someone that knows . . . this place does crazy things to you, you know. Makes your eyes play tricks . . . Aggie!’
Aggie wasn’t listening. She threw herself back down into the dust and pulled out a whole arm section, then a massive surface boot. There was a whole suit here, buried in the dust. That must have been what she’d seen.
‘How did this even get here?’ Seb panted, staring as Aggie pulled sections of ancient suit out of the ground. ‘It’s not as if some dude got a bit hot or something and decided to take off his suit and get a bit of air.’
Aggie’s head shot up so quickly Seb jumped. ‘Exactly.’
‘Exactly what?’
‘No one would do that.’
Aggie grabbed the collapsible bag from her utility belt and started to shove the bits of suit inside.
‘What are you doing?’ Seb’s voice was so high it hardly registered on her comms.
‘What does it look like I’m doing?’
‘Well it looks like you’re taking the suit, but that can’t be true because that’s what a crazy person would do.’
‘I’m not leaving it here.’
‘Aggie, just leave it. We’ll get back and tell the G Face guards that we noticed something on the wrong side of the border. They’ll come down here and—’
‘You can’t see this site from the border,’ Aggie said flatly, still cramming the last of the massive suit into the bag. ‘We’ll get found out, plus they’ll find the tracks and then with Celeste’s report . . .’
Seb looked up at the sky. ‘The shuttle. Earth below.’
Aggie stood up. ‘I think that’s it.’
‘You’re seriously taking it?’
‘We need to go,’ Aggie said, staring at the tracks they’d made in the dust.
‘OK. You’re actually taking it. Cosmic.’
As Seb guided the broken buggi slowly back to the border, Aggie watched the place where she’d seen the man until it disappeared behind the horizon. Her chest heaved. She felt she was going mad; Seb was certainly looking at her that way. But Aggie knew what she’d seen.
She’d seen a man, out there on the surface, as clear as Seb was next to her now. She’d seen him die, and then disappear.
A hallucination, like Seb’s Rock-Aliens?
She clung to the suit inside the kit bag. That was real. She could feel it.
What in all the seven states was going on?
Day-Cycle 08
Aggie had never experienced silence like this on the base before. No hum of the air con, no whine of the gravity systems, no personnel. She tipped her head back and basked in it.
She was standing in the centre of a hexagonal room coated in thick, white sails. They pulsed a soft yellow light, giving her the feeling that she was on the inside of a huge egg. Along one of the walls, a bank of camera lenses stared out into the white space like a spider’s eyes.
The Forecast Suite.
Mir had spent the last few hours assessing Aggie for a range of different qualities that it was obvious she didn’t have. Aggie’s personal favourite was the exercise in which Mir had stood her in front of a mirror and encouraged her to ‘get a better smile’. Aggie had endured it all without a word, until she’d suggested this visit – vid suites freaked her out.
But when they finally did descend on the Forecast Suite Aggie understood why. This place clearly wasn’t designed for humans. This was Celeste’s domain.
Aggie peered down the camera lens. A tiny, upside-down version of her looked back. The miniature Aggie looked tired, and had a coffee stain on her overall.
She sighed. She could hardly believe it had only been a week since Rix had visited her in Spooner’s office. One week. Aggie’s old life in Domestic had already faded. In fact, so much crazy stuff had happened to her, she was surprised she could remember that far back at all.
‘Aggie, it’s almost time to go,’ Mir said from the other side of the room. Breaking the precious silence. ‘I still can’t believe they let us in here. Nobody has access to this suite, ever.’ She stroked the white sails fondly.
Aggie smiled weakly and checked the cameras for the red recording light again. Nothing. Safe.
‘I hope you like it in here,’ Mir continued. ‘After the party, Rix will want you on the Forecasts.’
Aggie rolled her eyes. Mir obviously caught it in the camera’s reflection.
‘Think about it, Aggie. Who’ll want Celeste’s avatar when they can have the Angel?’
Aggie’s stomach rumbled loudly. ‘Everyone. When they realize the Angel is just me.’
Mir gave her one of her looks. Aggie turned away, wrapped her arms around her stomach and sighed.
Recently, she had felt as if she was having an out-of-body experience, as if she was watching somebody else’s life slowly unravel. Everything that was happening to her was somehow worse than the last. It had been a full Earth day since she and Seb had pretty much destroyed the buggi on the border, and Aggie was prepared to take the blame. Seb was already in enough trouble for the Rock-Aliens – if they found out about this he’d be Shuttled for good.
But Aggie had checked the records and there was nothing. She’d been expecting to be called straight in to see the commander as soon as they landed at the buggi park. She was ready to be shouted at for being reckless and disobedient and not appreciating her delicate situation or something. But there was nothing. There weren’t even any guards to meet them at the park. Seb thought it was the best luck ever, but Aggie couldn’t help but think otherwise.
The hallucination she’d had was playing on her mind. It was so real, so vivid. She’d stopped calling Seb a black hole for the Rock-Aliens – he was right, the Borderlands really did mess with you.
‘Hey Mir,’ Celeste whispered from some hidden place above their heads, making Aggie jump. ‘Your priority clearance for this sector ends in fifteen minutes.’
Mir smiled up at the ceiling, ‘Thank you, Celeste.’
She turned to Aggie. ‘We have one more thing to do today,’ she said quickly. ‘It is very important – for the party.’
Aggie shrugged. ‘Everything for the party’s important, isn’t it?’
Mir smiled tightly. ‘It’s not a bad thing.’
‘We have different ideas of what bad is.’
Mir nodded. ‘Yes. We do.’
Aggie felt the air around them tense. This was how they were, since Aggie had run away on the face. Spikey.
Aggie thought Mir was OK, but the Earth Relations girl just continued to rub her up the wrong way. Secretly, she felt they were the wrong way around – Aggie should be the nobody and Mir the beautiful, elegant, capable, Angel of Adrianne.
Aggie followed Mir towards the d
oor, then spotted something in the smooth white wall. A dent. A hole just big enough to fit a hand through. Aggie bent down. There was a button in there. A big shiny white button.
‘Aggie, no!’ Mir grabbed Aggie’s wrist and pulled it out of the hole. ‘That’s the manual function for the cameras. Don’t ever press that.’
‘What would it do?’ Aggie said, peering in the hole.
‘Broadcast us bickering to the whole world.’
Aggie’s hand sprung away. ‘Oh, right.’
She bit her lip. What was it about buttons that meant you felt you had to press them? Seb’s bad influence, probably. She pushed her hands into her armpits to avoid the temptation.
‘Stay bright, ladies,’ Celeste said as the two girls exited the Forecast Suite and started to make their way through to the main Tranquillity foyer, Mir rattling on about broadcast techniques or something.
Tranquillity Base – the massive Lunar Inc. HQ building – was built deep into the moon rock that formed the edge of the sprawling lowland of the Sea of Tranquillity. And, as the only truly public-facing part of the base, everything about it was designed to wow.
Above Aggie’s head, a giant glowing globe of the moon hung inside the vast foyer. A detailed hologram of the Lunar Base glittered across its surface, showing the outline of the buildings and mining domes that clustered the Near Side. Lush green plants hung from planters in the walls around it and lined the edges of the seating areas that were dotted around the foyer floor. She could hear the sound of rushing water drifting through the sound of hushed footsteps and voices.
She shook her head. Tranquillity wasn’t like the rest of the base at all. It was more like a luxury hotel.
As they passed through the foyer, some of the personnel glanced at Aggie’s stained and faded Analysis overall. They probably thought she was here for the disciplinary board, about to get Shuttled. She didn’t blame them.
Mir veered to the left and ducked through a dusty service hatch, into what looked like an old maintenance corridor.
‘Shortcut,’ she said over her shoulder, answering a question Aggie hadn’t asked. Aggie frowned. Mir wasn’t exactly the shortcut type.
What was going on?
