With Our Dying Breath

by Unknown

  But the military is a beast with two speeds; hurry-up and waiting. It was the waiting that gave these smart people the time to look at decisions post mortem, to break them down, to question the foundations orders had been built on. During crisis people wanted orders; when in the calm between storms they wanted answers.

  Some people had moral or religious objections to suicide. Oswald tried to be more circumspect. Many in the general population were due to mental illness, but the space service had fairly competent mental screening processes. Spacers who killed themselves had mostly fallen into a spiral of despair. Officers were trained to look for warning signs, but smart people were good at hiding things.

  Spacers preferred to vacc themselves in the airlock. De-pressurizing it left a person only a few seconds to reconsider before they were unable to act even if they changed their minds. It was odd to Oswald that few actually cast themselves into the endless night. Staring out that open airlock gave a death a physical avatar, banishing the metaphor with a truly endless black silence. A person may want to die, but they usually didn't want to drift endlessly in space.

  The flight surgeons, like the adorable Dr. Hines, said that it led to crippling euphoria and then a final, peaceful sleep. Certainly better than getting your lungs burned out due to a heat malfunction. Getting vaporized was certainly quicker by a few seconds, but sleep sounded better to Oswald.

  Perhaps the question was why hadn't he considered it? Had his mind been so assimilated into the military machine that it wasn't capable of accepting the obvious conclusion? Or was he deliberately war-gaming the short term so he had an excuse to not look at the end game from here? Had those now dead by their own hands looked around that final, inexorable corner and found a fate worse than death? One they avoided on their own terms?

  He wondered what he'd do when he finally peeked around that corner. When the universe finally dragged him kicking and screaming to his end. When he truly had to accept that his wife, daughters, his grandchild, possibly grandchildren, were dead in the centuries behind him. What would Colonel Pierce Oswald do when all paths had led inexorably to the grave? Murder was more likely; he was after all a killer by the numbers.

  But he didn't know. So Oswald decided to just do the next thing that he could. Burn the crew and his officers if need be. Ultimately, at the end of all the nets and conferences of really smart people, someone had to make the ultimate call. They had to pick the best suggestion among the snark, pablum, and second guessing. Or they had to find a reasonable compromise that was the closest to what those sparring smart fellas thought. Or a commander sometimes had to just burn all of them, tell them to shut up, and do what his unthinking gut told him to. Even if that decision was to do nothing.

  If a commander guessed right he and the crew got medals and ecofriendly ticker tape. If not, they got medals added to their records, the bold black asterisk meaning that it had been awarded posthumously. The parades were replaced with wakes carrying long ages of tradition behind like the train of a black wedding dress. If they had gone out in a spectacularly newsworthy way important they might get an monument.

  Oswald's gut said go to the moon. Not that there was much other choice, right or wrong, wise or foolish. And it definitely didn't look like there was an eco-friendly ticker tape parade in his future.

  or were well-loved by someone expensive, interactive, holographic

  Chapter 18 Oswald set Roland into orbit above Luna for a better look. There was still no other reply to their transmission and Oswald didn't want to risk pinging out there again unless the moon provided no answers.

  Deep craters with new crisp edges stood as grave markers over the ruined bodies of Luna's settlements. Some were in places unremarkable on Roland's map, leaving Oswald to guess as to whether they were stray attacks, structures built in his absence, or more destroyed EF secrets.

  The only untouched structure was one of Luna City's secondary spaceports, consisting of a large landing pad, launch tower, and four interconnected habitat rings. These common structures were colloquially known as hamster cages. The rest of the city had been levelled. The damage nearest the spaceport had been done with great precision; the inner habitats had just been levelled.

  Oswald accessed the crew database and searched for Luna, Moon, and Lunar. Just eighteen crew left. So few? He had known how many of Roland's had died but hadn't internalized the figure. Had not processed what it meant beyond the simple numbers. Thirty minus twelve. An equation far too simple for Colonel Oswald. But those small numbers added up and if he was going to accomplish some sort of final goal, he'd have to mind all his numbers.

  Several crew records flagged for the search. Many had served tours or trained at the lunar Earth Force facilities, including him. Two showed closer ties. Bowens' brother was serving on a missile batteries they'd confirmed destroyed; at least that wouldn't be an issue. Oswald chided himself for not removing the casualties from the active list. Flight Sergeant Swinwell's fiancé had been working as a financial analyst in Luna City.

  Oswald didn’t know exactly how the astrogation assistant felt seeing the ruins, not yet anyway. Despite the impossibility of it, Oswald would be hoping against hope that his family would have been the ones to make into those last habitats and through fortune and fortitude been able to survive until Roland had come to the rescue. Then he'd curse himself as a fool, before letting his hopes rise again.

  He messaged the department heads to keep a close eye on the flagged crew, especially for Breen to watch Swinwell. Oswald was hoping that the lure of landing and getting more information, or at least off the rocket, would keep everyone away from the airlock.

  "Sensor, Command. Anything?"

  "Negative on any thermal or EM, Command."

  "C'n D. Are we sure this is where the reply signal came from?" "Command," Trese was slow to answer. "I'd say from the moon

  certainly. But there's no way to tell if it was from this site. Theoretically it could have been some beacon that survived but is buried." "Sir, there is one way to make certain," McFarran offered.

  "Roger that, Aux. I was hoping to avoid transmitting again but given our lack of excess propellant, we don't have much choice." Oswald bit off a tiny piece of his lip as he watched the ruins slide behind the lunar horizon. "C'n D, make ready to send another ping. Lowest power, directional transmission. See if you can work up an angle that will give us the least reflection."

  "Roger, Colonel." Trese went silent as he began calibrating the transmitter and studying the terrain map. "Not much for the scattering. Even on low power, we'll get some at this altitude."

  "Your call, C'n D."

  An hour later Roland transmitted. The answer was immediate, as was the crew's reaction.

  "Welcome back, Roland."

  Oswald took a loud but shallow breath. "Anahita?"

  It was a space siren's call from the darkness that brought Roland to cheers and tears. "Come on down and see me some time, Roland actual." Her voice was as warm and cheery as ever, though the cheer sounded forced to Oswald. "We need to talk. Please maintain radio silence until you land."

  "C'n D, was that from the site?"

  "Roger, Colonel." Trese wasn't the only one who sounded choked up. "The direction finder picked it right out. Right in the center of those habs."

  No landing slope was provided and Oswald fought the urge to radio Anahita again, to hear her voice, to bombard her with questions before landing. He worked out the landing orbit himself and immediately forwarded it to the pilot.

  Two hours later the pilot fired off Roland's attached landing boosters and initiated touch-down. With the low gravity of Luna they could have landed and taken off using the LANTRn engine but it would have left the small patch of Luna City a radioactive waste. The boosters shook the spacecraft roughly. Oswald watched the descent, enjoying the pull of the moon and the push of the rockets.

  Three tail cameras showed the growing landing pad in the display. Moon dust was blasted out of the way by the booster and w
hen the long final blast roared the pad was completely cleared. Roland set down as gentle as a baby's kiss.

  "Very good," Oswald commented over the net. "Wait for landing gear positive lock and stabilization." Roland had only ever landed once in her twenty-year life and that too had been on a moon, Calisto. She had landed there in hopes of stealthily monitoring trans-Jovian movements of a suspected Centauri squadron. It succeeded and the enemy fleet was plotted and ambushed. That crew had been irradiated the following year and Roland recovered, refit, and re-crewed.

  The landing locks all showed green and the rocket stable. Oswald curbed his excitement and forced himself to unbuckle carefully so as not to fall out of his seat in the new gravity.

  "Roland. We have successfully landed at what is left of Luna City. All departments are to begin maintenance evolutions while I take a team to see what we can find." Oswald knew he should send others but Roland was down to almost fifty percent. He didn't want to take crew from needed tasks and no EF regulation was going to keep him from talking to Anahita.

  "Sir," McFarran clicked over the headset. "Flight Sergeant Swinwell is requesting, rather vociferously I must add, to be part of your team."

  "Permission granted, Aux. Have him meet me at the airlock. I also want an engineer."

  "Sir, do you think that is wise?"

  "I don't know." Oswald grunted as he struggled to get into the EVA suit. "But I know I'd want to go. Send him down."

  Oswald could almost make himself believe he was looking up into the night sky on Earth. But not for long. It was still good to be out of the ship and walking around. Being able to look on Luna City, even the ruins, brought the pleasant ghosts of the people that once lived here. His people had built and thrived on Luna. The comfort of those memories fought with the sense of loss borne of the realization of their ultimate fate.

  Roland stood stark against the moonscape, a proud monument to those same people. Her looks had improved greatly on the inside from a mix of hard work and complacency. The outside looked like it had been held helplessly over a gigantic torch. The skin and frame had passed all the stress tests and the light armor plates had done their job well. But Oswald figured that if any corporate spacecraft got a look at Roland they'd immediately file for salvage rights.

  The sight of deep foot prints in the regolith between the landing pad and the closest habitat sent Oswald's heart racing with hope. Then he realized that those foot prints could have belonged to the first men on the moon and he wouldn't be able to tell. Imagining the lifeless ages of Luna brought a short lived wave of despair. He wished he hadn't noticed the prints at all.

  Oswald had ordered a rescue box brought along but it was not needed. The big wheels on the access hatches gave the astronauts all the leverage needed to open them up. The airlock inside was in good working order with room for two. Swinwell slammed his fist on interior hatch angrily when they noticed red light that indicated no pressure inside. Oswald opened it and led them in.

  The inside of the first hamster cage was devoid of air, heat, and life. A thin layer of sparkling dust covered everything. There were bunks, living quarters, an entertainment room with an advanced communications suite, and pantry. In the center of each habitat was a sturdy hub and a plasticrete tunnel running off into darkness.

  "Looks like it might run to the opposite cage," Oswald offered after looking at the virtual map on his visor. "Let's go."

  They walked slowly, looking like children trying to walk in a pool where they could barely reach the floor. It was a small tunnel and the small jump of the lunar gait would have them constantly banging their helmets into the ceiling.

  "Look at these gauges, Colonel." The engineer, Lieutenant Devlin, tapped the large round gauge. "There's a good bit of air here. I wonder if we could pressurize one of these things. Power it up with a cable from Roland." Devlin was speaking as if he'd already received permission and started his project. "We'd be good to go. It would be nice to stretch out a bit and get some shut-eye on a real bed."

  Oswald realized that the man's idea of elbow room and what constituted a real bed had been molded by the confined quarters of a spacer's life. But he wasn't willing to entertain any such thoughts until Anahita explained what the fire was going on.

  "Maybe later, Lieutenant."

  "We could def make it happen, Cap'n," Devlin replied cheerfully.

  The tunnel came together with three other tunnels from the other habitats. In the center was a short stairwell leading to another dark tunnel. A faint green light was pulsing slowly somewhere out of sight. Oswald habitually checked his oxygen levels whenever crossing thresholds, saw he still had plenty, and bounced down the steps. The blinking light was so dim that it was washed away with the darkness when the astronauts' lights flooded the short tunnel. There was only one way to go.

  Oswald came to a stop with a series of small bounces and looked around, confused by what he saw. A flat wall some ten meters tall by thirty meters wide stood brooding over a chamber just wide enough for two men in EVA suits to walk next to it. Steel scaffolding ran the length of the wall. Two more scaffolds were below, each connected by a steel stair case. The scaffolds split the large wall into three distinct levels.

  The wall was made of some dark stone looking material and as Oswald continued to sweep his light across the facade he noticed that it had been divided into one meter squares. Each square had writing and a bas relief of a face in the center. The green blinking light was coming from one of those squares half-way down the top row.

  A trail of dust from the railing followed Oswald's hand and drifted slowly out of site. His light danced from square to square, stopping on each as he passed. Some he knew from Earth news or chain of command. An Asian face stared flatly back at him, recognizable even as a colorless stone carving.

  Supreme Leader of China Sheu Sun Given Honor 23JUL2210 The message was repeated in Chinese and again in the inscrutable Centauri script. At least that is what Oswald supposed, being illiterate in both of those languages. He flashed his light to the squares on either side and confirmed that the characters for "Given Honor" were the same in English, Chinese, and Centauri. All of the dates read the same.

  They passed the names of presidents, generals, and admirals carved in memoriam over their final resting places, each with their proud faces in the stone. Oswald stopped in front of the green light without looking. What once had been a beacon of hope was now a gloating, poisonous serpent's eye. He couldn't bring himself to too look at it.

  "Sir?"

  Oswald finally turned his body to face the stone and swallowed hard before forcing his eyes to read the text and see the lovely face.

  Supreme Commander of Earth Force General Anahita Khadem Given Honor 23JUL2210 Bile bubbled into his mouth and burned twice as hot on the way back down. The blinking green light came from a small compartment in the rock that sealed Anahita's ancient corpse. He pictured the command staff of Saturn Station; the unbidden image of Anahita's rotting face on one of the corpses—strung up with a jagged laser blast in her skull—made Oswald's knees buckle.

  Unseen hands from behind set him back upright and steadied him. Someone asked if he was ok. Instead of commenting on what a stupid question that was, Oswald gently waved them off and grabbed the railing with both hands. He could see nothing to open near the blinking light and assumed they'd have to rig some sort of wireless connection concocted to pry Anahita's final message from the grave. Oswald leaned closer look for any latches to flip or edges to pry and was suddenly blinded by a green flash.

  All three men fell clumsily backwards and would have tumbled to the bottom of the lunar mausoleum had the scaffolding not stopped them. Oswald realized he had not been torched by some ancient Centauri booby trap. The light was now an anemic red and a small flight package box was struggling to eject, like a baby not quite ready to be born. Oswald gave it a tug and it came out easily, revealing the word Pierce written in flowing, familiar hand. The red light winked into perpetual darkness.

/>   Oswald greedily shoved the box into a suite pouch and ordered the team back to Roland. He was grateful the retinal scanner had seen through his tears.

  Chapter 19 Oswald spent the laborious journey back to Roland trying to guess what new pieces the box might add to the puzzle. He hadn't had much luck figuring it out on his own and hoped whatever Anahita had left would help. Eagerness turned back to trepidation as the team neared the rocket and by the time they entered the airlock he was calm enough to strip his EVA suit without falling over.

  "Sir?" Hashi asked softly. Oswald shrugged and held up the box, displaying his name. "I'll tell you in a bit what's inside. I'm sure it is from Anahita... but no one is alive here." He saw the tightness in Hashi's face. "I think it would be better if you saw for yourself, Hashi. Get a team from engineering and life support to see if those cages will hold air. You'll get the big answer by going down the passage from the hub." Oswald turned and climbed nose-ward up the ladder. The effort of the climb tired him quickly; even low gravity strained his zero-g pampered muscles.

  "Norris." Oswald stuck his head through the control pod hatch. "Get a drone flying over what's left of Luna City. Get a couple pairs of eyes watching the feed just in case there is something to see."

  "Yes, Colonel." Norris leaned back slightly and looked at Oswald. "Did you find anything?"

  "That's what I'm going to find out."

  Norris let Oswald's cryptic reply go and started loading the drone control software.

  The seat around the conference table was far more comfortable with gravity than it was when strapped in with the zero-gravity webbing. Oswald slid to the middle of one bench and set the box with his name gently in the center. He slid the lid off, eagerness hurrying his actions on again. Inside was a small holo-transmitter with a weakly pulsing 'low battery' LED.