Once inside and his suit on its hook, Martin headed for his capsule to take his nap. Eirene stepped out of the control module and stood in front of him. He attempted to pass around her, but she moved to bar his way.
He stared at her lean face. "What?"
She floated up to him until their noses almost touched. "Why are you such a pain in my ass, Martin?"
Martin did not respond, but raised a brow in surprise at her bluntness.
"Don't give me that look. You know for a fact that you purposefully try my patience every chance you get. Why is that?"
He did not have an answer. Maybe it was because she was so easy to annoy. It could be because she bossed him around and he wanted a little respect. Then again, he did not care what she thought of him. He was not there for her; he was there to complete a mission.
"Maybe if you took that stick out of your ass, we wouldn't have a problem," he said, and the look of pain that crossed her face made him want to take it back. He had nothing against the woman. He used to get along with her during training, and she was all right when she was not irritated. Thinking back, his actions had been a large part of that. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she spoke first.
"You Haieli are all the same. Heartless." She returned to the control module before he could respond.
Martin shrugged off the commander's racist remark, no longer sorry about his own comment, and continued toward his capsule. He nodded to Peji as he passed through the kitchen, then paused in the service node when he realized he had to use the restroom. Sighing, he thought that he might never get to take a nap at this rate.
After locking the door, Martin sat on the toilet and flipped the switch that activated the flush system. The sudden change in gravity make his stomach lurch. The latrine was the only other room besides the rec room that had artificial gravity to match that of the planet. Without proper gravity, using the toilet would have required a complicated mess of suction hoses; not as bad as an orbital space station toilet, but less simple than one in a location with full gravity. The increase felt good, proper and normal like gravity should be, but at the same time it made him queasy. The change was not something anyone got used to. Still, it was better than having to deal with free-roaming urine or fecal matter.
He was about finished when a large boom violently shook the latrine. Martin yanked up his pants and opened the small panel to peer out of the porthole in the door. The hatch across the hall had closed, red warning lights around its frame signaled that it was unsafe to open. Through its window, the infirmary module was in shambles. The far end of the module was gone, the walls bent and jagged edges, exposing the room to the starry sky.
With caution, Martin exited the latrine. The hatch to the habitat node had also closed itself in emergency. The scene through its porthole resembled that of the infirmary. Three of the nearest capsules and their section of the node were gone, and what remained of the node to the other five capsules was a torn, gaping hole. So much for his nap. He did not think that anyone was in any of the missing capsules, but Tui's capsule was one of those that remained, cut off from the rest of the base.
Martin rushed toward the nearest wall comm system and pressed the button reserved for announcements, which boomed to the whole base.
"Emergency! We have crew members possibly trapped in an unpressurized section of the base," he rambled. "The remaining capsules are secure, but the node between myself and them is destroyed. Does anyone copy?"
He paused to take a breath and wait for a reply. The capsules themselves would have their own pressurized emergency hatches, but they did not have individual airlocks, air feed, or power storage. Anyone inside would be all right, but they would not last long. Retrieving them would be complicated.
"Roger, Martin," came Eirene's voice. He had never been so happy to hear it. "I'm not sure what happened, but I'm in the control module and I see damage all over the base. Do you know who is trapped over there? Are you injured?"
Her concern surprised Martin. "Negative on both accounts. I figure Tui would still be resting in her capsule, but I passed Peji in the kitchen before the incident, so I cannot say for sure where he is," Martin blurted out as fast as he could. He heard blood pounding in his ears and felt his heart thumping against his ribs.
"I am here," another voice said over the comm system.
"Peji? Where are you?" the commander asked.
"Aye. I was letting Tui rest alone for a while so I could get some work done. I am trapped in the research lab. I am secure, but the garden is demolished, so I have no way of joining either of you," Peji answered. "Martin, how is Tui, and have either of you seen Druger or Raitrin?"
Martin examined the remaining capsules again. The capsules did not have windows facing in his direction. "I cannot see her. Her capsule appears to be intact, but the entire section is dark. All of the pipes and power lines were torn away with the habitat node. As for Druger and Raitrin, they were finishing up unloading the cargo. I had to leave early because my air tank had expired."
"All right," Eirene interrupted. "Martin, come join me at the hangar airlock if you can. We need to find out what happened. Peji, do you have power and life support?"
Peji did not respond right away. "A-as far as I can tell." His voice cracked. He sounded as though he was becoming increasingly worried, if not for himself, then for Tui.
"Then you will have to hang tight, for now."
"What about Tui?"
"She will just have to wait as well. We won't take long."
"Aye, commander."
Martin had left the service node as soon as Eirene had told him to join her, listening to the end of conversation over the loudspeakers. The remainder of the base seemed intact as he lopped toward the hangar. Some of the kitchen supplies and tools had fallen from their cupboards or hooks, but overall the module seemed undamaged. He paused in the kitchen to view the garden through a closed red-lit airlock hatch. Peji was right; the garden looked as bad as the missing section of the habitat node. Glass and dead plants littered the area. Martin could also see a large hole in the wall of the hangar facing the garden. A giant divot had been carved in the lunar soil, as well. It was as if something had burst from the hangar, smashed through the garden, and then swept away the infirmary and the habitat section. On the far side of the ruined garden, Peji paced inside the research lab, visible through the hatch that used to lead to the kitchen.
Martin continued toward the hangar, but by the time he arrived, the commander was suited up and dragging someone out of the hangar into the airlock. The scene through the airlock's hatch was chaos. Crates in the hangar were scattered, many spilling their contents. Broken equipment and splattered food covered the floor in a mix of shapes, colors, and shines. The walls of the hangar itself had buckled outward and been burned black, and some of the support beams had fallen. One working light remained on the ceiling, flickering as it swung.
As soon as the airlock was pressurized, Martin yanked open the hatch and rushed inside. He helped Eirene flip the person over and lift them onto the dressing bench. It was Raitrin. Blood from her forehead tinted the visor red. The arms and legs of her suit were shredded, and her air tank and hose were missing. Martin gently removed her helmet while Eirene ripped off her own and tossed it aside.
"Where's Druger?" Martin asked as he checked Raitrin for signs of life. She had a pulse.
"No idea. I assume dead."
Martin gave her a glare for her bluntness.
"What?" she said, giving him a look of incredulity. "Did you see the carnage out there? If he was standing anywhere near whatever it was that exploded, we will be lucky to find any part of him left."
"What could have done that?" Martin wondered aloud.
Raitrin coughed and put a gloved hand to her face. "The blue ... crate."
She tried to sit up, but the commander pushed her back down.
"What are you doing? Stay down! Are you insane? You just survived an explosion," Eirene yelled, but the mo'ken woman pushed her away and sat up anyway.
"It was the blue crate that exploded," she repeated. "Druger ... he was right there. He refused to bring it in. He argued with me, said that it wasn't safe to bring it in without knowing what it was. When he opened it up, it exploded. I was standing by the door when it happened and put my arms up in front of my helmet just in time." She looked down at her tattered suit and started pulling at it. "Get it off. Help-help me get it off!"
Martin and the commander aided Raitrin out of her suit. She was frantic. The memory of the explosion must have still been fresh in her mind. Once the suit was removed, she backed away from it and hugged her knees.
"We should get back to the control module," Eirene said. "I need to inform Mission Control of what has happened here."
Martin nodded and helped Raitrin to her feet. He guided the mo'ken woman through the node as the commander ran ahead.
"Are you all right?" he asked Raitrin. She shook her head, her arms wrapped around herself. She shivered as if she was cold. "Do you want me to get you anything? A sedative to help you calm your nerves?" Then he remembered that the infirmary was gone. "Or maybe just a drink?"
She nodded at that.
He guided her to a chair in the control module, then hurried to the kitchen. The contents of the drink cupboard had been shaken onto the floor, but most of them were intact. Alcohol was allowed in small doses on the base during certain free time hours. That was something they had fought for before the mission started—if they were going to be up there for so long, they had better be allowed to drink within reason.
Martin found a flavored wine cooler packet and rushed back to Raitrin, but halfway there, he found the commander bustling in his direction, carrying a space suit and pushing the mo'ken woman before her.
"Why ... what's going on?" Martin asked as they rushed past him.
"A fire broke out in the hangar and has spread to the airlock," she said. "We have to seal the kitchen hatch before the airlock blows."
Martin followed them back into the kitchen and slammed the hatch shut behind him, sealing it as fast as it would go. Eirene urged Raitrin toward the rec room, then tossed the suit onto one of the dining tables. Raitrin was fine until she reached the rec room, but the artificial gravity in the module became too much for her and she collapsed. Martin rushed to help her up and led her to the couch. He turned on the big screen to keep her preoccupied and found himself bewildered instead.
"Commander!" he yelled. "You might want to come see this."
"What is it?" Eirene asked as she approached the hatchway.
From the same news channel that Raitrin had been watching earlier, images and warnings of war flashed across the screen. The reporter spoke of sudden attacks, nation against nation. And the trigger that started it, the reporter proclaimed, was the bomb on the Hope Base.
The commander harrumphed. "Interesting."
Martin glanced over his shoulder at the commander. "Eirene, were you able to inform Mission Control of our situation?"
"Yes," she said. "I was discussing the situation with the downed spacecraft when it happened. Thought we lost the link there for a moment, but it must have just been a power fluctuation due to the explosion."
That meant that her information reached the nations and they declared war on one another, each thinking that the other had sent the bomb. The gods must be furious.
Martin was worried, not just because war was breaking out on the planet: Eirene was being unusually talkative. Their whole situation had Martin on edge, but her sudden openness made him wary.
"Anyway," she said. "We should figure out our situation and go get Peji."
"And Tui," Martin added. Eirene did not respond, but turned away and disappeared into the kitchen. Martin took a long look at Raitrin sitting on the couch in a daze, then chased after the commander. He did not like following her, but whatever was going on inside the roe woman's horn-less head, he needed to know and to keep her in sight.
When he entered the kitchen, he found her staring out the porthole of the hatch that led to the control module and the hangar. Gray tendrils passed across the glass. When Martin came up behind her, he saw that the entire passageway was filling up with black smoke.
"We will have to disconnect it before the fire reaches this section," she said, still facing the hatch.
Martin agreed, but when he moved for the release lever, she grabbed his arm and glared at him.
"Not you," she growled, then took a deep breath to calm herself. "I will do it. Suit up and go rescue Peji."
Martin backed away from the commander toward the hatchway that used to lead to the garden. He grabbed the suit off of the table and did not take his eyes off of her until he had entered the airlock and secured the hatch. The room rumbled and the lights dimmed briefly when the commander disconnected the burning section. Inside the small compartment, he felt safe away from whatever madness might be consuming the woman's mind. He tugged the suit on and fastened the helmet, then picked up a spare suit that hung in the airlock and exited out onto gray terrain.
All around him lay thick, shattered sections of glass from the garden's greenhouse panels, any one of which would mean the end of him if his suit was snagged. Amidst the destruction, bleak landscape, and the silence of space, Martin felt as if he had set foot on a planet of death.
He shook his head of any unsettling thoughts and aimed his mind toward the task at hand. Bringing the display panel on his wrist up to his face, he pressed the announcement comm button.
"Peji, do you read? I'm coming to get you. Over."
"Negative, Martin," Peji replied. "I'm fine here. Life support in here is working. Go check on Tui—"
"Martin, don't waste your time!" Eirene's voice boomed in his ears. "Even if she's alive, you have no way of rescuing her. Must I remind you that the capsules do not have individual airlocks."
Martin remembered well enough, but he also knew that they could not just leave Tui in there to die. Even if she still had enough air left, her capsule would get cold soon.
"I'm going to check on Tui."
"Damn it, Martin—" the commander yelled.
"There's nothing you can do to stop me," he said, cutting her off. "I need to at least see if she's alive. Martin out."
He broke his promise by turning off his headset again, but Eirene would not have stopped protesting. A beep sounded in his ear: the emergency comm signal. Any other time he would have turned his headset back on right away. The signal beeped again. He ignored it and headed for Tui.
The distance from the broken garden to the missing section of the habitat node was a good thirty paces away. The slow trek made the knot in his stomach grow tighter with each step. He could see the wreckage material scattered in a line before him, and far off in the distance, their buggy sat at the end of the line, mangled and twisted. Martin made sure to activate the comm for the research lab only this time.
"Peji, I think I found the cause of this chaos."
"You mean other than a bomb in our cargo?" Peji asked with a touch of sarcasm.
Martin would have chuckled, but he was not in the mood. "Yes. I can see a clear line of destruction leading to the buggy in the distance."
Peji did not respond right away.
"It is possible that the explosion turned the buggy into a projectile, which would explain how it burst through the hangar wall, then destroyed the garden and the habitat node. We were just unlucky that the explosion caused it to move horizontally instead of vertically."
Peji's explanation seemed logical to Martin. It would not have taken a very big explosion to send a vehicle into motion with so little gravity. "Druger must have opened the crate behind the buggy. Who ever sent the bomb ... their plans turned out much better than they could have hoped for."
"That is if Druger wasn't in on it to begin with," Peji said.
"C'mon, now. You don't think—"
"It is possible. The man wasn't very social."
Martin shook his head inside the helmet. "I guess, but I just don't see it. Druger a suicide bomber? Anyway, I'm here."
Stopping in front of the torn end of the habitat node, he peered into the dark tunnel. A small amount of light came through the airlock porthole at the end of the passageway. He lobbed the spare suit into the node, then climbed into the node himself, being cautious not to snag his own suit on one of the jagged metal edges.
It was darker inside Tui's capsule than in the node, her back window facing into the depths of space. The window and the hatch's porthole were gaining frost around their edges.
"I can see her! She's huddled under her blanket." Martin knocked on the hatch. There was no sign of movement. He pounded. A face peered out from under the covers, and he signaled her to come toward the door. Her movements were slow, but she obeyed, wobbling while holding her stomach. Sliding off the bed, she stumbled toward the hatch and leaned against it with her head down for a moment before looking up into his eyes.
"She's all right," Martin told Peji.
She mouthed something, but he could not hear her. She looked toward the comm next to the door, then back at him and shrugged. Her brows furrowed in confusion, then her eyes widened, the tint of blue drained from her complexion as she realized her predicament. Her head dropped again, and she wavered on her feet.
Martin did not know what to do. Her capsule had no power so there was no way to verbally communicate with her.
"Peji. I don't know what to do here."
"How were you planning on getting the suit to her to begin with?" asked Peji.
"I had considered using the buggy to move her capsule to the airlock at the end of the node, but that was before I saw what happened to the buggy. Without an airlock—"
Air. He could use magic to capture the air from her capsule and use it to lead her to safety. It would be difficult, and dangerous, but there was no other option.
"Martin? Are you still there? What were you saying? Martin!" Peji babbled in his ear.
"Yes! Yes, I'm here. I ... I'm going to use magic." There was no response from Peji. Martin turned to look across the landscape toward the research lab. He could see Peji staring at him through the porthole in the lab's airlock.
"I trust you," Peji finally responded. "You can do it."
Martin took a deep breath and steeled himself. Tui was an image of despair and desperation as she watched him. He composed a small, spherical magic barrier above his hand and held it up to the porthole for her to see. He pointed to it, then to her, puffed out his cheeks, and watched to see if she understood. Her eyes grew wide again, and she shook her head frantically, but he did not have time for her refusals. This was her only chance, and it was going to be the most difficult magic he had ever performed.
The emergency comm signal beeped again. He answered it out of reflex and immediately regretted it.
"Don't you dare, Martin!" Eirene yelled in his ear.
He lowered the orb and scanned for where she could be watching him from. He found her where he had stood earlier, at the hatch next to the latrine. With her nose crinkled in fury, she pointed at him.
"That is strictly forbidden and you know it!"
"There's no other way," Martin replied.
She huffed. "If you do this, I swear you will never have another assignment as long as I live."
Martin stared at her across the gap of the missing passageway. He could not believe the audacity of the woman. He would do whatever it took to save someone's life, regardless of the cost to his career.
"See if I care," he said before disconnecting from her again and turned away to deal with the situation at hand.
Closing his eyes, Martin gathered energy between his palms and composed a glowing, transparent barrier over the capsule's hatchway. He tried to ignore the feeling of Eirene's glare boring into him. He calmed his nerves and poked the barrier to test its strength. It seemed stable so far, but there was yet to be air fighting against it to reach the vacuum of space. Tui watched him, the blood drained from her face. Any remaining trace of blue had been replaced by a milky white.
He nodded to her, and she stepped back against the far wall. Bracing himself, he punched the hatch emergency release. The hatch ejected outward into the damaged node, but slammed against the barrier at full force and bounced back onto the capsule floor with a thud. The barrier shuddered. The air from the capsule pushed against it, causing it to bulge and flex, but Martin forced it steady.
He released the breath he had been holding. Next came the difficult part. He placed the suit in front of the hatchway and extended the barrier away from the capsule, enveloping the suit, until it formed a dome large enough for Tui to step into. She hopped over the hatch and slipped into the suit.
As Tui placed the helmet on her head, smiling at him through the visor, Martin let out a loud sigh of relief. The barrier remained stable, and she was alive and soon to be safe.
"Martin," she spoke into the helmet's microphone, her voice like music to his ears. Tui's brows furrowed and her lips thinned with frustration. "I can't seem to close the latch."
She turned to show him, fingering the latch on the side helmet. Martin's heart sank into his stomach. An orange repair tag covered the latch.
"I'm sorry, Tui. The helmet is broken."
"What?" she half screamed. "Why did you bring a broken helmet?"
"I was in a hurry to rescue you! I didn't notice ... I'm sorry!"
In a normal situation, the tag would have been noticed in an airlock as they suited up. Out here, holding the barrier with the capsule's hatch already blown, he had no way to return for a spare.
Tui dropped to her knees. "Now what are we going to do?" she said between sobs.
Martin kicked himself. He was so sure of himself, so worried about saving her, that he had failed. He had broken the rules, and in a way that could cost a crew member, his friend, their life. He wanted to cry with her, but that would not solve the problem, and they were running out of time. The air inside the barrier was growing colder by the second.
He took a deep breath and paused. "It is still all right," he said calmly.
"How is it all right?" Tears streamed down her face as she stared at him. "I'm going to die."
"No. We still have the air in the barrier. We just have to bring it with us. Keep the suit and helmet on, though. They will help to retain your body heat."
Tui reached inside the helmet to wipe her cheek, then stood and nodded.
"Okay. I trust you."
Martin closed the barrier behind her with one hand while stabilizing the barrier with the other. His nerves were a bundle of jittery, cold steel, every muscle in his body tense. Keeping a steady eye on Tui and the dome, he backed out of the broken node.
Getting out of the node was tricky. From the surface of the moon, Martin cautioned Tui to move slow so that he had time to adjust the dome into a bubble that wrapped around the edge of the jagged paneling toward the ground, but she dropped too soon. Martin threw the barrier down, keeping it over her as she fell and slammed onto her side. A shock wave rippled through the barrier. Martin struggled to keep it solid as it wavered and shuddered. He poured more of his energy into it until it snapped back into shape. Tui lay huddled in the gray dust, cowering in fear.
Martin's heart slammed against his ribs; the sounds of his breath and pounding blood were loud in his ears. Tui shook as she struggled to get to her feet. Martin gave her time to calm herself. She nodded, and they started moving, sliding the dome-shaped barrier against the surface of the moon.
Tui soon began to shiver. Her breath turned to frost on the helmet's visor. Even with naiads' natural resistance to cold temperatures, Selas's freezing atmosphere was more than any human being could endure unprotected. If not for the suit and helmet, she would have frozen to death before they were halfway to the kitchen airlock. Martin considered composing a bit of heat inside the bubble, but with all the energy he was already putting into the barrier itself, sparing any for warmth might cause him to lose his hold on the form of it altogether.
They were advancing at a steady pace when a bright spark of light caught the corner of Martin's eye. He turned toward the planet. A billowing white cloud towered into the sky, encompassed by an expanding, brilliant yellow ring.
All thought slipped from his mind at the horror before his eyes. The jittery bundle of nerves fell still, numb amongst the empty silence, like the silence that would follow that ring and cloud of death. It was an explosion the likes of which he had never seen nor heard, something that only the power of the gods could have created.
It took Martin a moment to realize that something had touched his foot. He looked down to find a glove grappling his boot. In his stupor, he had neglected Tui and released the barrier. The naiad woman lay on the ground, reaching for him, her mouth open in pure terror. He threw a barrier back over her, but it was too late; the air had already dispersed. While he could create warmth for her, he could not conjure oxygen out of the void.
Martin lifted Tui into his arms and bolted for the kitchen hatch as fast as the suit would allow. The shattered garden was still several paces ahead, but he had to try. He watched frost form around her lips and eyes as the water in her body evaporated. Tears blurred Martin's vision as he rushed. He apologized and begged for her to hold on. He promised her that he would get her to safety and warmth, but she could not hear him.
By the time he reached the hatch, only a stiff corpse remained. He dropped to his knees and cradled her in his arms, her helmet toppling into the dust. Tui stared at him with frozen terror. He had failed her; he had allowed himself to become distracted, and she was dead.
"Martin," Peji's voice came over the comm.
"I'm so sorry," Martin cried. "I'm so sorry! It was my fault."
"Stop lying to yourself."
The comm went silent.
"Peji?" Martin laid Tui's body on the ground and turned toward the research lab.
A silhouette stumbled out of the light that poured from the lab's open hatch. The mu'ris man wavered, his tail drooping as he blew a kiss to his naiad love, then looked up toward the stars before he collapsed.
"Peji!" Martin screamed, his own voice ringing in his ears within the helmet. Again he knew that no one would reply. He was alone in the dark void.
The lights within the airlock flickered, breaking him from a sorrowful trance. Martin did not remember entering. He found himself sitting on the floor staring at his hands, his suit and helmet discarded. Tears wet his palms. So much had gone wrong in a short time, and he was having difficulty comprehending it all. His brain felt like the cold, pale flesh of the naiad woman laying in the dust outside. His heart ached at the loss of friends that he had trained with and lived with for years. Although, his pain was nothing compared to the pain Peji must have felt as the woman he cared for died before his eyes.
Martin had watched them die, unable to save them. He knew that he had tried to do his best, more than what was allowed, but a voice in the back of his mind told him that he could have done just a little bit more. He should have stayed focused.
He shook the voice from his head, stood, and dried his face with his shirt. When he opened the hatch to the kitchen, Eirene leaped at him with a knife.
"You Haieli assholes!" she screamed.
Martin stumbled back into the airlock and fell against the far wall. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"You people think that you are the only ones who deserve to live!" the commander said. She slashed at his chest, but Martin weaved away from the mad woman. The airlock's lights flickered once again. "Those were your bombs that landed on my home! I bet you were in on the plan to blow up this base as well!"
Martin's mind raced for an answer, then he remembered the ringed cloud. The deaths of his friends had caused him to forget something so horrific. So much trauma at once.
"Wait, commander! I had nothing to do with this," he pleaded. "I've always thought of everyone here as family, even you. Why would I want to kill us all?"
"You look like you are still alive to me! Where are Peji and Tui? Did you kill them, too?" she said, accompanied by another slash that managed to slice a hole in his shirt.
All of the anger that Martin had been holding back from this woman met the anguish he was feeling, and he snapped. He caught her wrist mid swing and yanked her over his knee. She landed on her back with a crash that knocked the wind out of her. He ripped the knife from her hand and put the point to her throat.
"You listen to me, you bitch! I love these people!" Blackness filled the airlock as the lights wavered and winked out. "I would never—ugh!"
The emergency lights snapped on, casting a deep shadow across half of Eirene's surprised face. Martin stared at the knife that protruded from the commander's throat. She had kneed him in the groin during the moment of darkness in an attempt to supplant him, but it had caused him to fall forward and jam the knife into her neck instead.
He scrambled off of her as panic filled him. Blood seeped out of the corner of her mouth and pooled around her head. She gulped and flailed, her eyes darting back and forth as she pounded on the grated floor panels. A minute later, the room was silent. He stared down at the blood on his hands, Eirene's blood, and realized he was still holding the knife that had killed her. The knife that he had used to kill her. He shuddered and dropped it. The clang it made as it met the floor echoed Eirene's frantic yet futile struggle. Martin withdrew from the sound, and the past few minutes replayed in his mind. Peji and Tui begged him to save them, Eirene glared at him with wide-eyed hatred, but all of them looked to him with blame. He had killed three people, three friends, family. Only he and Raitrin remained.
Raitrin.
He screamed her name as he rushed out of the airlock. He feared that the commander had attacked her as well, regardless of the fact that Raitrin was not from Haiel.
He stopped at the hatchway that connected the kitchen to the rec room. The mo'ken woman still sat on the couch in the dim emergency light. She seemed to have recovered from her incident with the bomb.
"Martin?" Raitrin asked, peering over her shoulder at him. Her hand lingered near her mouth in shock over the chaotic events being shown on the flickering screen.
When she saw him, she frowned, then stood and turned to face him. "Are you all right? You have blood on your—"
She paused with her mouth open, confusion replacing the worry on her face. She looked down to where a long, black shard of metal protruded from her midsection. Her eyes grew wide. Placing her hands around the shard, Raitrin began to panic, sucking in air in short, stunted breaths. The object then receded, sliding out of her grip, until the tip vanished into her stomach.
Martin met Raitrin's pleading gaze with horror. She swayed, and her eyes rolled. Before he could move to catch her, she fell forward onto the couch. A towering shadow remained in her place, and Martin jumped. With short hair and beard, the figure was a silhouette against the light of the screen. A slew of buckles and buttons across its chest shone in the dim light, the outfit resembling an ebony spacesuit, but not one that Martin recognized. The figure rounded the couch in one smooth stride, holding a jagged sword that dripped with Raitrin's blood.
Raitrin's death left Martin once again numb, hollow. On top of everything else that had occurred, he could not make sense of what was now happening. Martin did not try to flee as the black-clad man step toward him. He could not have moved if he wanted to. His mind fumbled for a coherent thought as the blade slid between his ribs.
Martin gasped.
Pain snapped him back to clarity. Nose to nose with the figure, something about him seemed familiar. A face buried in the back of Martin's mind. A rumor, or maybe a myth. Something he had once read. The name of an ancient figure, supposedly found throughout history, wearing an odd black outfit.
"Mercadeus?"
The black-clad man's head jerked back from Martin's.
"How do you know that name?" He peered at Martin with thinned, sad eyes, and sighed. "It makes no difference.
"I'm sorry that it has to be this way," the figure continued. His voice was like that of a soothing father, calm and somber. "The bomb should have made all of your deaths quick. This is not what I wanted, but I cannot let it go any further. This planet cannot be allowed to draw attention to itself, and the children do not understand the severity of the situation. I need more time."
Martin gasped again as the blade was removed. He touched the wound and raised his hand in front of his face. Fresh blood coated his fingers, merging with the red stains that already blotted his skin. He stumbled backward. The room spun. He blinked and was on the floor, staring at the ceiling.
He had always thought that he would be afraid when his time came. He was alone with an ancient stranger, bleeding out onto the cold floor while the bodies of his team lay scattered across the surface of the moon. It was too late to feel fear; his friends were already dead, and he was dying.
He thought about everything that had happened until this moment. He had seen many wonders and sights over the years. The flight of the first rockets, the first landing on one of the moons. He had been to space and experienced history in the making.
He had gained a family and friends. He would miss the way Raitrin used to teased him during training, the smile that often covered Eirene's face before her horns had been removed, Peji's and Tui's quiet, shy flirting when they thought no one was looking, and even Druger's rare smirk.
And he had watched them die.
He would never again feel all of the joy and excitement they had experienced together throughout the training, the flight to the moon, and their lives here on this base.