Abandoned

The shuttle settled down gently on the lunar regolith, the anti-grav engines barely disturbing the dust. Dustin stretched and pulled back from the controls, double checking his suit’s seals one final time. The outpost hadn’t been finished it seemed - it was complete enough to function according to Sola’s sensors, but was lacking a lot of modern comforts including a proper shuttle dock apparently. Rye was already waiting at the airlock by the time he was content that he wasn’t about to suffocate in the moon’s thin atmosphere; technically, it was breathable, it was just at a density so far below that of Earth as to cause near immediate hypoxia if you tried it.

With a hiss, the airlock cycled and Dustin toggled his communicator on. “You hear us ok, Sola?” He said as he stepped lightly out and began walking the short distance to the station’s entrance. “Confirmed captain - although there appears to be some static distortion effect in play.” The AI’s response was calming, as was the voice of Emely a moment later. “We’ve rerouted the communication through the shuttle’s antenna. If you can get the station powered up we should be able to use that instead - in the meantime though you might find you lose signal in some places due to the bounce being imprecise.”

That didn’t bode well. Dustin turned to glance at Rye, but she just grinned from inside her helmet and raised a multitool. “I’ll get this place online if it’s possible, Dusty. Let’s go.” The station’s airlock was to Dustin’s lack of surprise unpowered. Orbital scans on the way in had shown the station was powered down - or possibly had never been powered up - but fortunately the lock had the old fashioned wheel arrangements beloved of cheap shuttles, emergency bays and colonial outposts. Between the pair of them they managed to unscrew it, opening the door and stepping inside. As they worked the wheel again, Dustin tried very hard not to think about the fact that they were currently locking themselves into a dead base.

Atmosphere flooded the airlock as soon as they cracked the inner door. Dustin checked the readout on his suit. Good oxy mix for both humans and Rabyth alike - but without power the temperature was far too low to risk popping his helmet. Rye meanwhile was already stalking forward, following a bundle of cables that ran overhead. “Power lines for the airlock. Most likely hook in to a main junction - ah, here!” She commented, pausing only to work her multitool, effortlessly removing a wall panel. “Hmm. Heavy cables heading straight down. No geological activity on the scans so probably reactor underground. Look around and see if you can find any way of getting lower Dusty.”

He found it a little while later, dimly illuminated by the light of his helmet torch. A lift door on one side of what looked like a central rotunda or gathering spot - all benches around what would probably have been a nice ornamental planter if it wasn’t frozen near-solid. Rye appraised the door carefully after he called her over. “I’d have preferred stairs, even in this low gravity I don’t fancy falling down a lift - or having a lift fall on me.” The bunny girl commented, even as she worked her magic on the doors and managed to wedge them part-way open to reveal a large dark pit below. “But given this is the only way down we’ve found - this is probably it. Huh, would you look at that - old style with a cable, not the new pressurized ones. You can really tell this is a colony in development with anachronisms like that.”

The pair shimmied down the cable a short time later; Rye had jury-rigged some descenders out of some scrap pieces left over from the outpost’s construction. While Dustin did trust his engineer, he remained glad that the moon had lower than usual gravity as he slid downwards; while he trusted her, he didn’t entirely trust a potentially sabotaged lunar outpost to be made of functional material. At last they reached the bottom and unclipped their makeshift harnesses. As they did so, Dustin couldn’t help but breath a sigh of relief that earned him a grin from the engineer before she darted off following power cables again. He followed her down a dingy access tunnel - and then paused. They’d walked into a wide open room that housed the main power plant for the station.

Rye gave a low whistle as she surveyed what lay in front of her. “You got your recording running Dusty? Cos there is no way this isn’t sabotage. That power coil’s been completely stripped, the inverters are blown - if this had been caused by a running generator it’d have blown a hole straight through the roof.” Dustin grimaced - even he could see how the reactor had been hacked apart. “Can you get it online? I don’t think…” he began - before he felt the vibrations coming from back the way they’d come. Even in the thin atmosphere, he heard the crash - and darting back realized the elevator cable had fallen. Then he glanced at the end of the tangled mess of wire. No, not fallen; the faint glow of heat from a laser cutter was still present on the severed end.

“Sola, come in” he said, toggling his communicator from local comms. No response. Only static. He tried a couple more times, then returned to the power room. “Well?” Rye asked from where she was busying herself with working on the power plant. “Someone cut the cable and I’m only getting static on the comms. Someone else is in here Rye, and I can’t raise the ship.” The Rabyth didn’t seem too worried. “It’ll be fine. If they were going to attack us, they’d probably have done so when we were halfway down the cable. They want to scare us into making a mistake. And if we leave it, Meli and Emely will look for us long before our oxygen supplies start to run out. In the meantime - hand me that cyclical inverter would you? - lets try and get the lights on in here.”

Dustin worried to himself about their unknown assailant, the risks to Rye and himself - but also the potential risks to the rest of the crew. Would they too get trapped, coming to try and rescue him and Rye? The only option would be to get the station online and send a warning message it seemed - but that required rebuilding a shattered reactor. With nothing else for it, he threw himself into every task the bunny girl gave him, his only option to trust in the ridiculous skills of his chief engineer. Skills that after almost half an hour of solid work were suddenly met with success as with a dim whine the generator began to spool up and the lights started to flicker on.

“That should do for now, give us some light to see by to get the rest of the systems powered up properly and give us a shot at getting up and out via that lift shaft. The cable’s gone, but the whole station has low-grade gravity plating on the floors. If I can wire it right, I should be able to get it to boost us back up the shaft if we jump. It’s only two floor or so, easily doable.” Rye sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as Dustin, but the return of the light was comforting if nothing else. “Can we get comms running too?” He asked, looking dubiously at the hissing reactor. “Not from down here. There’s no remote controls to anything on the main network so we’d need to get topside to turn it back on.” Came the depressingly predictable answer.