Titan Cruel Moon

by Kate Rauner

  Fynn's eager expression hardened. "Magnus was there? That murderer."

  Greta tapped a finger to her lips, signaling for quiet. "I won't talk about it. Not what Magnus did to Yash, and not what I did to Tanaka. Not even with you. It's easier for the truth to slip out if we talk, and you saw how the Kin reacted tonight. No one must ever know."

  Fynn opened his mouth, then stopped short and took a deep breath. "Okay, so what about Maliah? I don't believe her. She's changed."

  "She's still your sister."

  "She's Tanaka's heir. He went crazy and now she's going crazy too. Starving us, dividing Kin into factions. The adjuncts got my crew thrown out of their barracks, and she didn't stop them."

  Greta's shoulders tightened. "Play on fears. Create an enemy. These are old tricks for gaining power."

  "There's plenty of real danger to be afraid of. If this bubble we live in pops, one gasp of the atmosphere outside will kill you. Titan doesn't care. It doesn't even know we're here."

  Greta pulled out her pad. "For now, I can only accept what Maliah says. I'm asking Liam for a status on the Herschel." She frowned at his text reply. "He's letting the AI operate all four shuttles to nudge the segments into place. I wish he'd hurry."

  Fynn shook his head. "The segments may be weightless, but they still have momentum. Liam couldn't repair a crash between two pieces, and then we'd never have a spinning station. I think Dad said something about that once. The way to move things fast in space is to move them slowly."

  Greta's frown deepened. "Then get the Gravitron operating, Fynn. As soon as you can."

  He snorted. "To help Maliah?"

  "To help us all. Because Titan only provides fourteen percent of Earth's gravity, and it doesn't care about that either."

  They walked out together and stopped at the door. Overhead, people rode high into the dome. Every flier was in use circling the tower, zigzagging in twisted patterns.

  Greta bounded onto the playing field and gazed up. Maliah flew in the Kin's midst. Her golden ponytail streamed behind her, and her graceful moves were unmistakable as she dodged among the orange ceiling banners. She leaped off her flier, arms spread wide. Trina and Shun rose slowly and caught her across their clenched arms as cheers echoed around them.

  A sigh escaped and Greta realized she'd been holding her breath. Close by her side, some of Fynn's childhood admiration for his sister lighted his face.

  "These are Kin," Greta said. "We're still the Kin, despite our troubles. All they needed to recover was a good meal. We'll get through this, Fynn. You'll see."

  His face stiffened again but he said nothing.

  ***

  Lukas was babysitting the furnaces that night. He had a pouch of tortellini balanced on one of the heat exchanger tubes, warming for supper.

  "I didn't leave the console for long." Lukas said when Fynn hopped up on the platform.

  Fynn held both hands up, open wide. "No way I'd expect you to skip the feast."

  "I didn't try to stop Kin when they grabbed all the fliers." Lukas sounded apologetic.

  "I wouldn't have either. Mom thinks it's good for them to play. Watch through the village dome's cameras and enjoy the show."

  Fynn hopped off and stepped to the corner of a pallet, to the spot where Yash had died. He felt numb when he stood there. Weak. When he turned toward the furnaces, he found Lukas watching him with his hands shoved into pockets.

  "I'm gonna stow my meal in my bin," Fynn said from a distance. He didn't want sympathy right now. "I'm going for a walk on the surface."

  "By yourself?"

  "I won't go far. Just to check a few things before bed."

  Outside, Fynn jumped off the dock and floated to the surface. Directly overhead, the sky was a huge blurred patch of yellow that faded to dull orange and finally merged with the brown lake at the horizon. Maybe it was Titan's night, and he was looking at a full Saturn through the haze.

  He put a hand on the hose that ran from the methane pump to the dome and felt the subtle vibration. The system was operating normally. The closest tie-down rod disappeared into flat hard ice, with no trace of vibration there. He bounced to a tie-down on the greenhouse dome, then a quarter way around to the next one. Both were firm. He walked with one hand on the dome's edge, feeling the solidly inflated floor, and along the tunnel to the village dome. The tunnel wasn't perfectly straight. Fynn hadn't noticed that before, but maybe he hadn't paid attention. The lakeshore curved slightly so the decabots may have accordioned the far side of the stubs when they'd connected the greenhouse. It all felt solid, so nothing to worry about.

  Fynn circled the dome to stand below the hot air tunnel. It arched over the shielding ice wall and connected high on the village dome's side.

  Funny. The tunnel rippled more than he remembered.

  One good hop brought Fynn to the ice blocks surrounding the fission dome. The wall's surface reflected the yellowish sky, but the ground looked lumpy. He dropped to his knees and spread out his hands. It was hard to be sure through the suit, but he thought the ridges on the gloves were catching on something.

  He patted the wall. From what his father told him, the decabots had inflated the dome, dragged the fission plant inside, and then built the ice wall. So the tie-downs were on the inner side of the wall, beyond his view in visual light, but one should be right about here.

  Fynn continued around the ice wall and stumbled. A block the size of a boot lay on the ground. It wasn't loose, but rather heaved up slightly. There were more blocks in small irregular shapes spreading out from the base of the shield wall.

  Fynn leaned into the thick atmosphere and galloped past the decabots' switchbacked entrance to the next tie-down. The ground was heaved up there too.

  A knot twisted Fynn's stomach. The fission dome was pulling loose of its anchors. If the dome took off like a balloon, it might tear the hot air tunnel off the village dome and the colony's warm, breathable air would pour out faster than anyone could stop it. This was more important than anything happening inside the domes.

  ***

  An incoming message pinged Maliah's ear gel. She'd retained the private message option for herself and the adjuncts, but they maneuvered their fliers in formation around her, and none of them gestured to her. They weren't calling. She opened comms.

  It was Fynn. "We've got a huge problem. I've got to talk to you right away."

  Maliah scanned the floor below her. There he stood, waving. He headed to the stairs so she deftly dropped her flier onto the tower's top balcony.

  Flushed and sweaty from flying, Maliah pushed up her sleeves and yanked at the snaps on her coveralls. As soon as Fynn emerged on the stairs, she barked at him. "What are you doing in a surface suit?"

  "I just came in from the surface. The tie-downs on the fission dome are pulling loose. If that tunnel to the reactor rips, we'll lose our air."

  She crossed her arms and glared at him as he explained what he'd seen.

  "After three years, why would the fission dome pull loose now?" Her growing suspicions made it hard to accept what he was saying.

  "The dome's hot from the nuclear reactor. The floor's been warming, so the ground underneath's been warming. It's got to be changing the ice."

  She harrumphed. Fynn always second-guessed everything and always expected the worst.

  "What do you mean? That it's melting? Do you expect me to believe the ground's melting when Titan's, like, two hundred degrees below zero?"

  "Not melting, no." Fynn's eyes flashed the way they did when he was solving a tough puzzle. "The crystal structure must be changing. There's not a lot of data on how ice behaves at Titan's temperatures, but there would be density transitions. That's got to be what's happening."

  He was interrupting Maliah's big day, her celebration. "So a couple years after landing, the reactor will float away? When the Cohorts designed our colony, do you think they didn't consider that?"

  "I have no idea what anyone considered. I wasn't part of the secret tea
m, remember?"

  They glared at each other, but her brother twisted a hand through his hair and bit his lip. He looked honestly worried. "What do you want me to do?" she asked.

  "Do you have the Cohorts' passwords? Open the decabots' programming. Let me see if they have protocols to secure the dome, or let me add new programming. If I can tell the bots to tow the reactor away..."

  "What? That's our power source."

  "I've got a furnace running smoothly. My crew can power the colony."

  "Now I see." Maliah jammed her fists into her sides till they hurt. "You want me to be dependent on you. You and those furnaces."

  "Are you crazy? This isn't about depending on me or any other single person. Are you forgetting that Titan can kill us?"

  "Titan's the only thing I can rely on. Your furnaces don't work right. Max has whiteflies. Dad's dead, and the Cohorts. And Tanaka." A sob choked her. Maliah's heart was racing and she could hardly breathe. But she wouldn't lose control. Not now, not in front of Fynn. Kin depended on her. Tanaka's legacy depended on her.

  Maliah took a step backwards and tapped her sleeve. "Adjuncts. Fynn is here with me on the balcony. Get up here and grab him. Grab his crew."

  Her words went over the open channel. A dozen Kin jerked their fliers upright and spun, confused for a moment. Than someone dived toward the balcony.

  Fynn leaped over the rail, fell in slow motion, and landed with a roll. Maliah shook off her surprise. He'd never done as well in field meets.

  Magnus spun in front of her, struggling to control his flier.

  "There." Maliah pointed to Fynn galloping toward the greenhouse tunnel. Magnus streaked toward him. The fool hit the edge of the opening, and windmilled off his flier. The machine bounced against the dome wall and floated to the floor.

  Fynn's crew was corralled on the playing field, surrounded by Kin who shoved them back into the center of the mob.

  Maliah launched her flier to hover above them. "Lock them inside a bin."

  Three figures flailed as they were hoisted away. The crowd separated and the last of Fynn's crew was dragged forward and tossed into the bin. A lid dropped over them and ratchets clicked as straps were tightened.

  More Kin hopped to the tower's base carrying Magnus, who drooped unconscious in their arms.

  "Take that idiot to the clinic," Maliah said. If someone got hurt, she was glad it was Magnus. She rose higher in the dome to watch the greenhouse tunnel. People were rushing in and out, but she didn't see Fynn or that curly headed woman from his crew.

  Chapter 28

  R ica was checking the furnaces when Fynn raced in, shouting for her to follow him. He slammed the airlock door behind them and fumbled for a spare boot to jam in the wheel handle. "Get into a suit. Hurry."

  Angry faces appeared at the airlock's window and thumps echoed as if the airlock was a drum.

  Rica scrambled into a surface suit and spoke between pants. "What's... happening?"

  Fynn relayed what he'd seen outside and Maliah's reaction. "We can't let them stuff us in a bin."

  "What good can we do outside?"

  "I don't know. I need to think." He'd lost his helmet somewhere in the greenhouse and snatched up another. "If we leave the outer door open, no one can follow us, and we can swap out charged life support packs and stay out forever." Well, not forever, but Rica was moving fast so she didn't quibble.

  Once they were safe on the surface, adrenalin drained from Fynn's body and it was impossible to maintain a panic. Fynn showed Rica the heaving ground around the fission dome.

  "This shouldn't be possible," Rica said. "Why doesn't the dome vent the reactor's excess heat?"

  "It does, but the reactors been in that dome for a few years. Maybe the floor warmed up enough to heat the ground underneath. I don't know."

  "Could the Herschel get a view from orbit?"

  "Through Titan's haze, they won't see details. Just a hot spot." Fynn rubbed a hand over his thigh. Stupidly, he'd left his pad with its text link to the ship in his coveralls, now sealed inside the surface suit.

  A blue light blinked in his helmet, down by his jaw. Fynn tapped his sleeve to open the channel and heard Drew. "Fynn, are you receiving me? We've been watching the village dome feed and saw you run."

  "Drew. How'd you know to call on a suit channel?"

  "I saw you run to the airlock. There's a crowd there now, by the way, pounding on the door. Whatever you did to lock it, is holding."

  "That's good, because I left the outer door open." Surely, someone would notice the wide-open hatch through the window and realize the danger. If his pursuers managed to yank the airlock open, Titan's cold nitrogen atmosphere would flood through. If they couldn't get the door closed quickly, or if they damaged it too badly to seal, Fynn's escape might kill them before the nuclear reactor could.

  "Send a message over the open channel. Tell them to stop."

  "They may be figuring it out for themselves. Kin are milling around now. None of the cameras aim through the crowd very well, but I think they're taking turns looking out the window."

  Fynn heaved out his breath. "Good enough for now. Watch the airlock, will you? If they start beating on the door again, I'll run over there and shut the outer door. What's happening in the village dome?"

  "More milling around. Look, I can tell something big is happening, but you've got to explain what's going on."

  While they talked, Fynn and Rica walked under the hot air tunnel that arched high above the ice wall and strained at the bottom edge of its connection to the village dome.

  "Liam's on his way down," Drew said. "To rescue you."

  "What about everyone else in the domes?"

  "They don't look like they want to be rescued."

  ***

  Liam's shuttle flew in low over the hills to avoid the nuclear reactor's radiation. He dropped onto the landing zone but made no move toward the village dock.

  Fynn and Rica bounced over to the shuttle's front cameras. They couldn't see inside, but knew Liam saw them. The blue comm light blinked again in Fynn's helmet.

  "Been talking to Maliah as I descended," Liam said. "Told her I'd evacuate as many as the shuttle holds. She won't let anyone leave. You and Rica, hop inside and we'll return to the Herschel."

  Chills ran through Fynn. "What about people inside the colony?"

  "I've got over three hundred Kin in stasis. We'll repair the domes after things settle down and start over."

  Fynn turned to stare into Rica's faceplate. She must be listening because she looked shocked.

  "Abandon the others? You can't be serious."

  Liam's tone deepened again. "What choice do we have? As for the adjuncts - they wanted to hijack my ship. I owe them nothing."

  "There are good people inside."

  "Your mother, I know. And others." Liam's voice lost its angry edge. "I'll send Greta a text. If she gets into an airlock, it'll be a life raft. Could pick her up. After."

  Drew broke in. "I'm watching the dome camera feeds. There are adjuncts at both airlocks. I don't think anyone's going to get through a hatch."

  "How long before the fission dome rips loose?" Liam asked.

  Doubt struck Fynn. He'd called this an emergency, but he didn't really know. "I can't tell. Minutes. Hours. Could be days, I suppose."

  "Days! If it tears... would a small leak release the pressure? Are you sure this is a crisis?"

  Possibilities raced through Fynn's mind as his stomach knotted. On his helmet's infrared display, a fierce white column rose behind the shielding wall. The dome strained at its anchors despite most of the heat already venting. "Nothing small's going to make a difference. If the ground warmed from the reactor's heat, it happened over months. Maybe over years."

  "So," Liam said. "Not good. I'll try to get a look."

  He crawled the shuttle past the main dock and pivoted its cameras toward the dome. "One of the shuttle's cameras is portable. I'll send the feed to your suit sleeve." Liam unfolded a manipula
tor arm and plucked a camera from the hull. He held it, periscope style, above the ice wall.

  The vent sleeve was gone. In its place, a hole a meter wide or more opened over the reactor. In visible light, only a few details were clear within the dark dome.

  Like the furnaces, the reactor sat off-center in its dome. Also like the furnaces, there wasn't much to see. The nuclear core and Stirling generator were sealed in a steel cylinder about Fynn's height, and he recognized the shadowed shapes of heat exchangers and ducting.

  Liam panned the camera across the dome floor. "Whoa."

  Rica waved her arm at Fynn and he stared at his own sleeve. The floor sloped upwards. The far side of the dome was rising.

  He galloped to the closest tie-down where ice bulged around the anchor. A block the size of a helmet had lifted a hand's breadth since he'd last checked. It seemed to be stable for the moment. If this had something to do with crystalline structures in the ice, maybe it was going through another phase transition. The ground might be stable for a while, but Fynn wouldn't risk his life on how long the anchor would hold. A chill ran through his gut. Yeah, this was a crisis.

  "Why aren't the decabots doing something?" Rica asked. The robots sat motionless by the side of the main dock. Liam's landing brought them over, but apparently, a dome lifting off didn't trigger one of their active programs.

  "Can the shuttle's manipulator arms close off the hot air tunnel?" Fynn asked.

  "Can't hover that precisely," Liam said. "Don't have enough shielding to hang over the reactor anyway."

  "Crawl closer and try reaching up from the ground. If you can hold it closed, we can seal it with a welder from the decabots' tools and cut the reactor loose."

  "We don't have fliers to get up there," Rica said.

  "Too close to the top of the shielding wall," Liam added. He raised both of the shuttle's arms and spread the fingers, maneuvered the hands around, pressed and squeezed, but the fingers were too short. He could only flatten half the tunnel while the rest swelled, threatening to rupture.