Lunar Escape

by C P MacDonald

  After what felt like hours the lone security guard turned to answer a comm from the other guards, which placed his back to them. Calin opened the inner airlock slowly and smoothly as possible and they both hunched over to run to the only cover in the lobby, the security desk itself. Crouched down with their backs to the desk, they slid their helmets into their collars. He turned to peek over the edge and could see the guard still had his back to them speaking over the comm station. He slipped his pistol from its holster as noiselessly as possible and flipped it to grab it by its barrel. He placed one hand on top of the desk and vaulted over to swing the butt of the pistol down as hard as he could to the back of the guards head. With a sickening thud, the guard slumped over as he slid out of his chair, unconscious.

  Calin tabbed through the security cameras until he found the other guards. They were already on their way back down in the express elevator. He grabbed Shona’s hand and led her away from the security station down a hallway until they could see a large picture window on the end looking out over the city.

  “Don’t stop running,” he ordered Shona as they both ran full speed down the hall. As he ran he accessed the drone they had skyjacked via a remote panel on his arm and commanded the drone to drop to their side of the building and five levels down. Already halfway down the long hall, he grabbed Shona and pulled her into an alcove. He pulled his pistol from its holster and braced himself against the corner before he fired off two shots at the reinforced glass at the end of the hall. With the second hit, the glass blew out, propelled by the explosive decompression of the hallway. Security doors behind them slammed down to prevent the air from the rest of the building from escaping out onto the surface of the moon. And coincidently, also blocked off the security guards.

  “Quick! Before the window seals!” he pushed Shona ahead of him toward the window as the hacked drone zoomed past the window and hovered right below. Shona reached the window and carefully stepped from the sill to the top of the drone. Calin was right behind her, about to step through the window when the buildings safety systems kicked in and an emergency shutter slid down over the window, nearly chopping his foot off and blocked his escape.

  He keyed his comm and told Shona, “I’m cut off. When you get to the ground, go to Sub-Level and find Dean. Then you guys come get me, you hear?” He hit the drone remote on his suit to order it to quickly descend.

  “Copy, you hold on. We’ll get you out.” came her reply.

  The air rushed back into the now sealed hallway so he could hear the safety doors behind him unlock and the shouts of the security guards ordering him not to move. Which was a redundant command he thought when he turned, hand on his gun, and saw a stun grenade fly through the air toward him before it exploded and knocked him unconscious.

  Chapter 10

  Even before his eyes opened, Calin could feel the rocking of the transport truck under him, and a headache that pounded across the front of his skull. He cracked his eyes open slowly, but the light that flooded in painfully blinded him for a few seconds. With a groan, he rolled over and forced himself to sit upright on the metal bench. A difficult move with his hands handcuffed behind his back. When his eyes had adjusted to the influx of light, he could confirm his suspicion. He was in the back of a prisoner transport truck, a guest of the PPD.

  “Ah… you’re finally awake,” one of the two guards who sat across from him said with a sneer. The guard looked at the tablet in his hand and continued, “Calin Aku, Captain of the Sea Rover, wanted for smuggling, harboring fugitives, transportation of illegal goods, tax evasion, and desertion.”

  At the last charge Calin corrected him, “Hey, I was medically discharged.” With a shrug he said, “As for the rest, what can I say? I'm good at what I do.”

  He gave the guard a big grin, “And if I’m causing you guys trouble, a bonus for me.”

  The guard looked up over at Calin and snarled, “We’ve been looking for you for a while. I bet I'll get a bonus for bringing you in.” He turned to the other guard who sat at a control panel for the transport and ordered, “Let us drift off the road a little, somewhere over rough terrain. If anyone asks, the prisoner got bounced around when we ‘accidentally’ went off-road.”

  The driver laughed and made a minor change to their route while the head guard stood up and tightened his armored gloves with a sadistic grin.

  Behind his back Calin twisted his left hand and tapped out a specific sequence on the back of his right glove to activate the nullifier built into his spacesuit. The status indicator on his handcuffs turned from green to red and fell off his wrists. The guard's eyes widened in surprise when the cuffs clattered to the floor. Then his eyes closed when Calin’s metal hand connected with his jaw. Calin spun behind the guard and pulled him in front of him as the driver turned and pointed a blaster. The driver hesitated, trying to get a clear shot at Calin. That was all the delay he needed to reach down and pull the unconscious guard's gun out of its holster. As soon as he grabbed it he realized it was his own gun. That thieving stealing son of a bitch he thought as he shot the guard in the driver's seat.

  He put his gun back in the holster on his thigh where it belonged and dragged the guard out of the driver station to throw him to the floor. It was almost amusing to watch the guard bounce in the low Moon gravity. But one glace at the control panel confirmed he was not out of the frying pan yet. The guard had managed to lock the controls; the truck was on autopilot until it reached its programmed destination, the PPD prison complex outside Caldera City. He slammed his fist against the wall. "Shit!" he yelled.

  He squatted down and tore out the bottom out of the dashboard, maybe he could hot-wire the transport and override its programming he thought.

  But he began to smell smoke and heard a slight hissing sound coming from the roof of the transport. He looked up saw the glow of a circle being burned through the roof. Quickly he activated his helmet, it surrounded his head just as the circle completed and blew out, along with all the air. Then a familiar spacesuit helmet poked down through the hole.

  “Hey there handsome, need a ride?” asked Shona with a grin as she offered a hand down to him.

  “Nice timing,” he commented happily. “The inflight hospitality here is a little lacking.”

  As Shona gave him a hand up out of the truck he asked, “How did you get here?” but then he spotted the security drone they had used before as it hovered into view, tethered to the transport by a rope.

  “You were the only prisoner transport leaving the city, it wasn’t hard to track you down. I didn’t have time to contact your buddy Dean, so I improvised.” She said and gestured up to the drone.

  Calin couldn’t help but be mighty impressed with her ingenuity.

  When he looked around to see where they were, he noticed the transport had started up the wall of Peary Crater. The PPD prisoner complex was located right on the other side of the rim.

  “We need to get off this ride, now.” He used the low Moon gravity to jump up to the drone and turned to catch Shona as she followed him up.

  “We need a place to lie low and figure out what’s on this stick,” added Shona as she patted her pocket.

  He knew of the perfect spot, although he was not in the habit of bringing anyone back to his hidden little base. But under the circumstances, he figured he figured he didn't have much choice. With a suggestive grin he asked, “Wanna go to my place?”

  She rolled her eyes and groaned before she passed the drone controls over to him, “If it’s a safe place to hide, I’ll guess I’ll have to risk it.”

  Careful to keep the drone low to the ground to avoid radar, it took Calin an hour to navigate to his little home away from home. In the public records he had an assigned cubicle in Caldera City just like everyone else. But his real home was a former military outpost buried in a mountainside outside Peary Crater. Even though he would wipe the drone’s memory he didn’t trust it to forget where it had been so he landed them at the base of the mountain instead of at
his airlock.

  He climbed down off the drone and pointed up the mountain. “It’s all uphill from here.”

  They worked their way up the mountainside, and even in full spacesuits it was a walk in the park in the low Moon gravity. While he waited for Shona to catch up, Calin turned around and looked out over the Moon surface. Regardless of how many times he had made this climb, the view from 500 meters up never got old. Off to his right in the crater below, was the spaceport with a half dozen shuttles and cargo rockets poised to take off. The spacesuited spaceport workers looked like little white ants at this distance as they scurried around and prepped ships for liftoff. The Earth had just peeked over the horizon in all of its blue marbled glory. Calin didn’t get to come out here often, away from the hustle and bustle of Caldera City. When he glanced up the mountain, he could just make out the outline of the airlock to his little outpost. He had stumbled across it back in his patrol days and kept it a secret for all these years.

  The old outpost was from the early days of Caldera City, back when it was just a cobbled together moon base for a few mining corporations. Originally, all mining was done on the surface, which required more active surface security such as patrols and flyovers. Eventually, the mining corporations moved underground to where the higher concentrations of ore were and they abandoned the outposts. He knew of three other abandoned outposts, but moonquakes and landslides had destroyed them all. This one he was happy to discover was still airtight.

  Slowly, over the years, he and Dean had brought out camouflaged solar panels for power, modern air filtration units and air tanks, and even installed gravity plates. The hangar doors were recessed back into the canyon wall under an overhang. If you didn't know it was there, you could fly right by and never know it was there.

  Reaching down, he gave Shona a hand up the last boulder. She turned to look out over the moon surface so he waited a few minutes to let her soak in the sight; it was something a lot of Moonies never appreciated. The Moon was a beautiful place if you ignored all the progress made by man that marred its surface.

  When she turned back to look up the mountain, he glimpsed the surprise on her face through her faceplate when she spotted the old airlock in the mountainside. She tilted her head to one side at him, "I was wondering where you were taking me. What the hell is this?"

  Calin stepped up to the airlock, pulled a cable from his suit and plugged it into a receptacle next to the airlock. When he spoke into his helmet mike, “Open sesame” he could hear Shona try to suppress a laugh over their comms. The voice recognition in the door analyzed his voice patterns, decided it was him, and opened the outer door of the airlock. He stepped to the side, bowed to Shona and gestured “Ladies first”. He followed her in to close and seal the door. There was a split second between the door closing and the interior lights turning on that left them in complete darkness. Once the lights flared on he thumbed the activation panel on the wall. Clouds of compressed air surrounded them as the airlock cycled and pumped air into the lock. And once the air pressure had equalized, the inner door irised open.

  Calin led the way through the door, slid his helmet back and breathed deeply. The air had a tinge of Moon dust and old metal but smelled as wonderful as a field of flowers after breathing the canned air in his suit for hours.

  He motioned for Shona to take off her helmet and said with a proud smile, “Mi casa es su casa. It may not be much but no one will find us here. We are completely off the grid and no one knows of this place".

  Shona removed her helmet and ran her fingers through her matted hair as she looked around the entranceway. It amazed her how old the base was. She could see it had been built with welded steel frames and walls instead of the modern 3D printed construction of Caldera City.

  Calin knew what a long day was like in a spacesuit and motioned to a door to the right, “The head is in there. There’s a 1000 gallon water tank, so there’s plenty of water for a shower and get cleaned up. And inside the closet there is a couple of old coveralls, might be one small enough for you,” he said. “Go ahead and help yourself, I’ll give you a tour around later.”

  She gave him a smile of gratitude and preceded to peel out of her suit to hang it on the storage hooks next to the airlock. “What about food? You got a kitchen in this Lunar penthouse of yours?” she asked.

  “Sure do, I keep it fully stocked. You never know when you need to lie low for a while, so I’ve kept it prepared for long stays. It can support us with food, water, and air for 6 weeks before we will need to worry about resupplying or cleaning the air scrubbers. Dean and I stay out here all the time. You can have first shot at the shower while I go heat us up some food”.

  Later, after they had both cleaned up and eaten Calin took Shona on a tour of the old outpost.

  “These outposts are a leftover from the original colonial days when Caldera City was just a corporate moon base. These outposts were set in a perimeter around the crater and the major mining sites. They had designed them to station a quad patrol, 3 moonwalkers and a pilot. Quakes and landslides destroyed most of the outposts, but I found this one when I flew surface patrol not too long after they assigned me to the spaceport.”

  “Patrol? Assigned? You were with PPD?” Shona asked in surprise.

  “For a short time,” he answered. “I’ll explain later.”

  He grabbed her by the hand and continued to give her a tour of the two-level outpost. The first level, where they had entered, included a small sitting room with a table and some chairs, a galley, fresher, and a small barracks with 4 bunk beds. It may not qualify as a luxury, but the outpost was private and off the grid. And perfect for people in his profession.

  The second floor above was the hangar. Originally used to store drones and a surface skimmer, but now it served as his own private hangar for his ship. In the corner was an old fashion wheeled moon buggy that had been left behind, one of the many little projects Dean worked on to refurbish in his spare time. Across the entire southern wall was the force field protected hangar door. And parked majestically in the hangar's center was a patched and banged up ship.

  “Shona, let me introduce you to the Sea Rover.” He gestured at the ship.

  They crossed the hangar to the ship. Dean, who had been installing the new sensor mesh, clambered over the top of the hull into view. When he spotted them he gave a quick wave with a grease-covered hand.

  As they walked up the loading ramp of the Sea Rover, Shona held up the encrypted security stick, “Did you say you knew someone who could read this?” she asked.

  “Yea, a guy called Mouse down on Earth. I can call him and send him the data, he owes me a few favors.”

  “Can we trust him?” Shona inquired nervously.

  “I try not to let him near my computers or my ship, but yea we can trust him. He hates the Solar System Authority as much as anyone.”

  He sat down at the comm station aboard the Sea Rover and set up an encrypted call to Puerto Espacial where Mouse lived.

  The vid-screen came alive to display a thin pale man, his thick curly hair in wild disarray.

  “Wha… what? Who is this? How did… how did you get this number?” Mouse stammered and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

  “Mouse, it’s me. What time is it there?” asked Calin.

  “It’s early man,” Mouse yawned. “It’s only 1pm. What do you want?”

  Wordlessly Calin held up the encrypted stick to the camera for Mouse to see.

  When he saw the security stick Mouse came fully awake, his eyes lite up with life. “That’s a THD-45 security stick, you don’t see many of those floating around.” He said, impressed.

  Calin plugged the stick into a port in the communication panel, “We need to know what it has on it. Can you open it up?”

  A hurt expression crossed Mouse’s face, “Really? Can I open it up? Did you seriously just ask that?” The hurt in his voice was genuine. “Bytes are bytes, no matter what kind of fancy algorithm they used to rearrange them,” h
e added as his fingers flew over his keyboard. He made some quick motions across his screen to activate the various custom apps he used for hacking.

  He slipped on a pair of VR gloves and glasses to dive into the 3-dimensional world of security algorithm and firewalls. Mouse never stopped talking as his fingers danced in the air as he typed commands, grabbed virtual files only he could see and swiped them away. “This is high-level stuff you got here Calin. Triple layer AFD encryptions, AI activated firewalls, biometric passcodes. The only time you see this level of security is…” He stopped all of his movements and ripped the VR glasses off his eyes as snapped his head toward the camera, “… is on government hardware. Damn it Calin what did you send me?” he asked harshly.

  “A challenge?” Calin replied, his eyes sparkled with amusement at Mouse.

  “Son of a bitch, you damn pirate! You… you’re.. You’re right” he agreed with a laugh. “You know me too well, I can’t pass up a chance to root out Big Brother’s secrets”. Mouse cracked his knuckles and scooped up a slice of cold pizza off the table next to him. After he took a huge bite, he slipped the glasses back over his eyes and said seriously “Let’s get to work then.”

  “Ooohh… tricky tricky! That’s not nice, Let’s not allow you to do that shall we?” Mouse muttered to himself as he worked on the encrypted file. His hands twitched in the air before him as he coordinated a symphony of hacking and code building at a level that few people could comprehend.

  “Boom!” shouted Mouse suddenly. With a final swipe of his hand, he sent the file to a viewscreen on the wall. “There she is!”