Days Twenty-three to Twenty-five
"NO WAY," Danny muttered to himself as he marched around Paulux. "No way we're agreeing..." The very thought of it made his head pound so loud, he couldn't hear his own voice.
He looked up as he entered the space between the ships. The benches were empty, and Mickmi stood in her spacesuit outside Deymos' entrance, waiting for him.
—Mickmi, I know what's bothering you. But we're not letting Selina push us—she doesn't understand...
Halting at the top of the ramp, he met her gaze through their helmets, and a wave of sadness washed through him again. A deep furrow formed between Mickmi's brows.
—I apologize, Daniel. I have much to contemplate.
He stared at her. —What? Come on, you can't seriously be considering what she's suggesting?
"Ready to work?" she asked through the comms. She held his gaze a moment longer before stepping into her ship's airlock.
She wasn't about to discuss it now. He would have to wait till evening.
"Yeah," he said, clamping down on his indignation. He stepped in beside her, feeling stiff inside.
∞
The day couldn't pass fast enough for Danny. He almost succeeded in keeping his mind off the subject altogether to focus on the work, despite the unsettled agitation in the pit of his stomach. It tried its best to interfere with his appetite too that evening, but he was just too hungry not to eat. By then he'd settled on the decision to wait on Mickmi. He wouldn't try to communicate with her until she was ready to talk.
No matter how much it chafed at him.
They'd probably talk about it when they retired for the night. They'd talk about it, and everything would be alright. Then they'd fall asleep in each other's arms...
Refreshed and with his equilibrium almost restored, Danny waited by the sleeping bench, staring out the view screen without seeing. He tried to picture the throne inside the virtual crystal dome Selina had created at the crowning, with the two lions flanking the entrance. Mickmi would sit on it, and he'd be... standing beside her holding a tall shield? With a spear in his other hand?
That sounded so medieval, instead of being four thousand-plus years into the future...
Maybe his designation was a symbolic one.
Danny paused, expecting some facts about the royal palace Mickmi would ascend to, to pop into the fore. But his mental library remained silent on the topic, leaving his fertile imagination to reference picture books he'd read as a child and movies he'd watched.
A soft swoosh-swoosh of the hygienic door opening and closing interrupted his thoughts, and he spun around to meet Mickmi halfway across the floor.
"Are you okay?" he asked, his arms encircling her.
Her hands pressed against his chest as she heaved a deep breath. Pushing him back, she pulled herself out of his embrace and met his gaze.
"I am conflicted, Daniel. You are in my heart..."
The uneasiness returned with a vengeance, constricting Danny's heart. He searched her eyes. "But?"
She directed him to sit facing her on the padded bench. For a while, they sat silent, holding each other's gaze.
—Mi?
Her brow contracted. "I cannot abandon my people, Daniel. This is what I trained for all my life."
"I'm not asking you to."
"As Queen, my heart must be undivided."
"Do you really think that? I mean, I know what Selina says about protocol and all that, but do you really think us will interfere with your commitment to your people? You can decide, you know. You're the Queen."
A breath escaped Mickmi, and she lowered her gaze to her hands resting on her knee. "Daniel, I cannot... We cannot share bed together." She looked up again, the pain of a decision written across her face. "We cannot play with the well of emotions... and desire—"
"This isn't a game we're playing, Mi!" He stared at her in disbelief. "How can you even imply that?"
Several seconds of silence passed with their gazes locked until a realization prompted a sinking feeling in Danny. "Please don't ask me to leave you, Mi," he said, his tone soft.
When she didn't reply, neither aloud nor by thought, he shook his head slowly. "And please don't even consider that. Selina is wrong."
"It would make it easier for you."
"Not for you."
"Your peace of mind would."
"I don't care. I want to remember."
She drew a deep breath, nodded once, and rose. "You may sleep here. I shall make another—"
Danny jumped to his feet. "No, I can't take your bed—you take it. I'll sleep on the floor like I did before. It's my job not to leave you unguarded."
He stuck out his hand and waited.
"It's an agreement. So we shake on it. Unless," he searched her gaze, "can't we touch at all?"
Her brows contracted with emotion as she placed her hand in his, and he closed his fingers around it. With their gazes locked, he placed his other hand on top.
"You are my Shield," she whispered, her eyes glistening.
Danny wanted to pull her into his arms so badly. He wanted to kiss her like there was no tomorrow. And she could feel it. She could feel him.
This agreement was going to be torture for both of them. He had to rope himself in, rope in his passion for her, or he might force circumstances they'd both regret for the rest of their lives. He couldn't bear the idea of never seeing her again. It would be equivalent to him breaking his promise.
He swallowed. At the spur of the moment, he bent over her hand and brought it to his lips, pressing it hard for several seconds before he looked up to meet her gaze.
A tear had escaped, perched at the rise of her cheekbone. It just sat there, refusing the lighter gravity.
"I'm your Shield." He squeezed her hand again. "Queen Lepantra."
Mickmi acknowledged his formal address with a slight, tilted nod of her head, and followed his guiding her back to sit on the sleeping bench.
"Good night, my Queen." Reluctant, he released her hand.
For the next couple of days, Danny resigned himself to their agreement. He focused on the work and slept on the padded floor next to Mickmi's bed. His dreams grew restless, sometimes waking him in the middle of the night. He could never remember them. But sometimes, he felt like he'd been standing at a shoreline, staring at the track the moon painted across the still water and a silhouette inside a pavilion glowing white in the moonlight.
It awoke him too early in the morning with such deep longing in his heart that he had to remove himself to the main cabin to compose himself. Mickmi would find him there, and they would exchange the usual greetings, but not much more than that. Neither found comfort in idle conversation—their pain was too fresh.
∞
Work continued non-stop on what would become the rescue mission construction base. Mickmi and Lora completed boring the length of the cavern and started two new tunnels to mark its upper boundaries. Halfway into day four, the excavator teams reached the end of the thirty-kilometer cavern and turned around to focus on expanding its width and height with the plasma orbs. The teams covered more ground on the way back because they didn't need to drill anymore. The size also meant that Blanc Aave no longer needed to suck the super-heated plasma all the way out of the cavern for cooling. By the time her spout covered a quarter of the distance, the particles' temperatures had already dropped to safe levels. But she continued reaching to the Moon's surface as a long tube connecting the two levels for some other reason.
The Mothership skeleton extended a third of the length of the cavern before forming a second row of ribs outside the original hull, doubling its width. Inside, large sections of horizontal and vertical partitions formed. A growing stream of autonomous machines of various shapes and sizes left the manufacturing room and entered the Mothership via the opening at the fore. Artemae was the only one to go inside to follow the interior construction.
In the mornings, they would discuss the work plan for the day. Each 'night', the sisters picked up the men to fly back to camp, leaving the borers where they'd reached. The camp was now settled as a set of semi-permanent benches a quarter-way into the cavern, but the shield dome had to be reformed each time they returned.
After every evening meal, Artemae reported to the sisters and the teams, sometimes throwing up 3D projections inside the dome to relay something specific. Muzzy was only allowed to record those sessions with the still camera, so Eckstein jotted copiously in his journal whatever Artemae shared. He'd already started on his third one. Blanc's mist drew together to her ghostly form while in attendance. But she kept her distance, further away in the evenings than the mornings, never entering the camp with the energy she'd accumulated.
At the end of day five on the moon, Artemae had something else to show. After their meal, she led the team to the opposite side of the cave via a diagonal flight path over the growing ship.
Jagg couldn't help himself. He grinned like an idiot as he hung, Superman-style without the cape, over the massive structure. He turned around to take in its length, his spacesuit responding to his every intentional thought and hand movement. Then he thrust his fist forward in that iconic gesture of takeoff and caught up with the others as they started down the other side of the ship.
They entered the wide opening to a side cavern. This was not the one Danny's team had first drilled out, but a side tunnel inside appeared to connect to it. Near the entrance stood a curved container full of cloudy green liquid, its dense core morphing its shape. The tank rose some three heads above Jagg. Inside, vigorous bubbles rose from a vertical pipe with holes at the bottom end, sparkling from the soft, inbuilt overhead lighting. Several other similar but larger tanks were at different stages of completion further into the cavern. Flexi-pipes led to each one from a dark tank beside the entrance, which connected to a long pipe leading out through the cavern to the surface.
Artemae's animated hands punctuated her satisfaction that the starter tanks would be the first installation once the Mothership had grown to minimum size required. Food production and storage would be well advanced in eight weeks to feed thousands of people for several months.
Water. It was water, Jagg realized, and in the next moment, it occurred to him that these tanks would have to be filled with water.
"Man, you're gonna use up all our drinking water!"
"Oh no, there's no need for that," Artemae responded. "There's plenty of ice in our crater."
The other men looked as surprised as he felt.
"On dry-like-chip regolith?" Tillman asked. "When there's no atmosphere?"
"Yeah," Muzzy said, "I don't remember seeing any frozen lakes on our flyover."
"Oh," Danny said. "They found lots of frozen water molecules trapped in the lunar soil, and patches of ice in some of the permanently dark areas of the crater."
"Who found?" Eckstein asked. "I've never heard of any reports like that."
Danny hesitated, then turned to Mickmi. "Wouldn't it be the same here? That's info from your moon."
"Aye." Mickmi nodded.
"That's right, my honored sir," Artemae responded before Mickmi could continue. "Actually, with the proper processing facilities, there'd be enough ice in this crater to supply the population of a small city or two for years." She patted the glass. "Blanc Aave helped with harvesting the ice, separating it from the minerals, and purifying the water as she brought it down here. I have the algae feeding on an appropriate mineral blend for optimum growth, and after these tanks have been integrated into the hull tanks, harvesting for storage will begin. That is, when growth has achieved harvesting density. It's pretty much harvesting on a continuous basis from thereon."
"I wouldn't wanna eat just that green stuff alone day in and day out," Jagg commented. "I'd choke on it."
"Get used to it, kid." Atlas walked around the tank. "What do you think we've been eating these past five days?"
Danny was chuckling. "That is what we've been eating since we took off, you know. It forms the base to build whatever menu you like. Not sure how they do it, though."
"Then, this space will be used for producing equipment and furnishings for all the functional areas needed," Artemae continued. "Except for the installations for ship operations, environmental and life support systems, and related facilities. Those will be grown into place as ship integrations.
"Let's take a look at aviatics."
Artemae led the team to another large opening over a kilometer further along the main cavern.
A large, partially covered skeletal framework stood inside on three legs, its top stretching in a gentle curve from end to end. The underside had a bulge in the center, barely big enough to accommodate one person. A strange engine took up the rear quarter of it, with the rest covered with tubes, panels, and instruments. Next to it stood a larger construction, taking the form of a shuttle with stubby wings. Its body was almost as big as the sisters' ships, meant to accommodate crew and passengers.
Lora strode under the wing of the smaller one, gazing into its center.
"This will autonomously scan for survivors and map the on-the-ground situation?"
"Correct. This is our first OWL, housing multiple ocular wavelength scanners. It will scout the situation for us. And over there will be a rescue-triage shuttle. Both their engines, flight, and navigation operations are according to tested blueprints I found in Deymos' read-only memory banks. But for the interior installations and capabilities, I combined from several models. And I had to use an older engine model that optimized antimatter as the primary energy source.
"When these two are complete, my Queen and you can inspect, test, and approve before production on the remaining fleet will commence. We'll have a total of forty rescue shuttles to be manned by three or four people, and twelve OWL scouts."
∞
They left Artemae behind and headed back, walking beside a section of newly covered ribs, the surface skin still rippling with activity. Further forward, where it had settled into a smooth satin finish, the team took to the air back to the camp.
Jagg and Muzzy arrived last. As they waited for their turn through the airlock, Muzzy lifted the camera off his chest and inspected it, mumbling to himself. "Just a dozen left..."
Inside, the sisters had disappeared into Mickmi's ship, probably for their nightly planning of their mission. Two of the men had entered the ships as well, as they were too many to waste time taking turns in the fancy bathrooms. That left Tillman digging in his seabag, and Danny, who reclined with bent legs on a bench.
Jagg found that unusual as he stepped through the opening in the dome.
Muzzy turned around beside him to look back at the Mothership.
"I wonder if she'd allow me to shoot now? I could finish this roll."
Jagg followed his gaze.
Selina's mist glowed two hundred meters away, moving along the newly-established skin of the ship.
Muzzy stepped back outside before the airlock closed. "I'll be right back."
"Sure." Jagg shrugged.
Tillman looked up. "Hey, Muzzy! Where you going?"
"I'm just going to talk to Misty." Muzzy reattached the camera to his spacesuit.
"Stay frosty."
"Copy that." Muzzy started walking, then took to the air.
The inner lock opened. Jagg deactivated his helmet and took off the gloves as he walked over to Danny, who raised himself up on his elbow.
"Wassup? Trouble in paradise?"
"What's he doing?" Danny waved him out of the way.
Jagg turned to look, stepping aside. "Oh, he just wanted to ask if him could—"
"Miss Blanc." Muzzy's voice sounded through the comms implanted next to Jagg's jawbone. The man was on the ground again, approaching the animated mist. "Mind if I—"
Danny leaped to his feet and yelled, "No, no, get away from her!"
—Keep safe distance from me! Selina's broadcasted thought-voice blurted at the same time in Jagg's mind.
The mist exploded, its flare turning the cavern into the brilliance of a sun. A tortured scream filled Jagg's ears before it cut off with a thud, and darkness returned.
"Jesus fucking Christ!" Jagg couldn't see. Blinking, he tried to clear the echo of the glare filling his vision.
— ∞ —
© 2022 by kemorgan65