Chapter 7
For the next several months aboard the orbiting station, Lorin Mason had mixed feelings about the crew's reaction to her run-in with Smuke and her subsequent meeting with Fannon. It seemed her message of being left alone had been truly taken to heart, as she had not been bothered once since her encounters. Her trepidation was founded in the complete lack of attention she had received, and it made her wonder if they were planning something. Fannon had become a complete recluse, locked in his tower and delving out orders via data-messages.
She almost wanted to pick a fight, just to remind them that she could take any one of them down.
Boredom was also setting in, and not for just the dozen crewmen. Lorin had read and re-read the files she had been given for the Spirit of Fire's last scheduled colony plant and she could probably recite every officer's fist and last name, their place of birth, and how long they had been serving in the CAA's colonial endeavors. It was all useful intel, but her eyes were getting tired of the same text week in and week out. Her sleep patterns started to change; sleeping for nearly half a day then not at all for several days was a common occurrence.
Checking to make sure her door was still firmly locked behind her, Lorin headed out during the designated "late" hours of the night. She had been provided with enough supplies for an indefinite stay, but the small freighter she had arrived on had left the bulk of the station's last delivery in the cargo hold to be slowly divvied out over time. Lorin was running low on ration bars and water, things she had learned to live off of years ago, and she dare not ask Fannon if she could take some of his reserves locked away in the galley.
The station, and she assumed the crew as well, was currently in a lull of activity. Their current orbit took them around the dark side of Corra and the only illumination found aboard the station was from the dimmed glowpanels running along the corridors' ceilings. Some buzzed and flickered, another sign that the station's usefulness was coming to a close.
Previously a research platform for the colony, the Lunar Orbiting Station had recently been retrofitted and stripped of its probe bays and other long-range scanners, leaving it a hollow shell of its once former glory. Lorin figured there had been a few veteran crewmen that stayed to help Fannon, though she doubted they realized how quickly the conditions could deteriorate. Or maybe they never cared in the first place.
Lorin reached the lift only to find it currently in use. She growled to herself and started for the stairs on the opposite end of the T-junction. The stairs were extremely narrow, only permitting one person going one direction at a time, and she had a hard time believing Fannon could fit sideways, let alone normally. She was halfway down to the next level when she heard the lift come to a stop. Freezing, she slowly and quietly turned around and crept into the shadows of the stairwell.
Smuke and another crewman she couldn't recognize emerged from the lift and looked down the dark corridor before stopping in the middle of the intersection, both in close conversation. Their whispers echoed off the metallic walls as Lorin listened in.
"I'm telling you, the CAA doesn't like it when ONI interferes with colony business. If we can prove Mason is a spook, lock her in her room, and wait for the Spirit of Fire to show up and tell 'em we bagged an intruder, then we can finally get a cushy office position back on Earth. Or hell, I'll take an inner colony for that matter."
"That's a lot of 'ifs', Smuke," the other muttered.
"Élan, look. If we're wrong, we'll say it was for security reasons or something, but I'm tired of acting like our ticket off this station is never going to come. It's here, Élan, and it's name is Lorin Mason."
Élan shook his head. "Fannon's never going to go for this."
"He doesn't have to know," Smuke reasoned. "Besides, I think the fat-ass is losing it mentally. Pretty soon he'll be like Franklin."
"No one could get that bad. Especially since the CAA sent those Xanri pills with the last supply shipment." Élan leaned in. "You're still taking your dosage, aren't you?"
"Of course. It's Fannon who concerns me." Smuke shrugged. "The man is taking enough to comatose a squad of Marines. I don't know how he's even functioning."
"And you're willing to risk upsetting the only ranking member of the station by hiding an ONI spook until the colony ship arrives?" Élan shook his head. "Now I'm wondering if you are popping too many Xanri."
Smuke hissed a sigh. "Look, if you don't want to be a part of this, I can go ask Packard if he wants to help."
Even with the dim lighting, Lorin could see Élan's face scrunch up. "So you don't care about her physical state at all? Packard won't be able to keep his hands off of her, regardless if she's knocked out cold."
"You're right," Smuke laughed. "He is a registered sex offender."
Lorin felt her skin crawl and she suppressed a shiver. The fact that she had never ran into Packard told her that Fannon was wise enough to keep the brute stationed somewhere far enough away from her—or maybe Packard was just biding his time.
"Well," Élan started, "when do you want to get started?"
"Let's wait till the end of the week. I bet we can hammer out the details of our plan by Wednesday, then I'll get with you about swiping Fannon's master passcode datacard." Smuke smiled. "In his current state, it should be too hard to steal it out from under his stubby little fingers."
Élan scratched at the stubble on his face before nodding. "Alright."
Smuke slapped the other on the back as they headed off towards their respective quarters. "Everything's going to fall in place. You'll see."
Élan muttered something else, but he was too far down the corridor for Lorin to hear. Taking a deep breath and exhaling it slowly, she realized things were about to get pretty crazy on the small lunar station. But what should I do?
As Lorin started down the steps to head towards the cargo hold once more, ideas poured into her mind. One way to deal with the two conspirators was to simply confront them and put them in the infirmary—or morgue, if it came to that. She also considered alerting Fannon of the plan, though if what Smuke had said about the station manager's mental state was true, then he might completely flip out. Or he might take their idea and instigate one of his own.
Two flights of narrow stairs later, Lorin arrived at the cargo hold as well as a conclusion. She realized that even outnumbered, she would be able to take down two intruders that no longer had the element of surprise. It didn't come from arrogance but confidence in her training. And she highly doubted that her sidearm was detected when she came on board, being stowed away with her toiletries. If Smuke and Élan were dumb enough to take her on, then she'd be ready for them.
She swiped her passcard through the reader and entered the room filled with shelving units full of supplies of every kind. Lorin quickly found the bins of foodstuffs and other necessities and consolidated the provisions into a near-empty container for easier transport. She figured having more than enough to sustain her for a month would be advantageous, considering the Spirit of Fire could arrive in a few days or weeks.
As she turned to go, her eyes caught the glint of something shiny fastened to the wall. Lorin frowned and walked over to find a trio of emergency breather masks housed in a thick plastic case. Couldn't hurt, she thought with a shrug. She took one of the masks and stuffed it inside her container. Her gaze drifted over the rest of the cargo hold, seeing if anything else was worthy of attention. There wasn't. Everything else she needed was back in her room. Content with her plunder, Lorin headed back the way she had come, keeping her eyes alert.
The warning sirens screeched into the early morning hour, snapping Lorin Mason out of her day-long slumber. Her eyes quickly adjusted to the flashing red lights illuminating her cabin as her mind played catch-up with the circumstances. A glance at her wrist chrono told her it was 0330 Thursday morning. This has to be Smuke and Élan's doing. But they're at least a day early.She frowned. Then again, why would they set off the fire alarm?
Confused, Lorin hustled to the thick metal door and placed the back of her hand on it. It was cool. The fire alarm could have been just a diversion, but she wasn't going to take any chances. She quickly tugged on her boots and pulled her hair back in a knot. Lorin grabbed her pistol from the footlocker at the end of her bed and donned on the emergency backpack she had packed on Monday. Along with extra rounds for her M6, she had all of her datacards, a few ration bars, hydration packets, and her set of credentials to show Captain Markus Alexander. And just to be safe, she grabbed the emergency breather mask stowed away in her closet.
She checked her pistol one last time, doubting that Fannon's no-weapons-allowed policy would be upheld in such dire circumstances, and slowly turned the wheel to open the door. Outside her room the hallway was bathed in red from the warning lights, and yet no smoke was found. Cautiously stepping out into the hallway with her pistol raised, Lorin kept her eyes alert with each stride. Hers was the only private quarters on this side of the station and she figured the bulk of the dozen crewmen would still be in their bunks across from the lift lobby.
It was eerie, walking down the glowing red corridor with no one else around during an emergency situation. Maybe they have all been planning this for me. She came to the lounge where she was expecting to find at least a sign that it had just been vacated, but there were no empty bottles, or cards, or crewmen to be found. Is no one even on shift? She checked the corners of the lounge with a sweep of her pistol and started for the lift lobby.
She was three meters from the arched entryway when she heard a gurgling sound. Lorin slid to the side of the hall, and slowly poked her head out. From her vantage point she could see a pair of shaking legs hanging out of the lift. As she stepped into the lobby she could see those legs belonged to Élan who was sprawled on the floor, halfway out of the lift. His overalls were soaked in blood from what was most likely a large gunshot wound to his stomach. It seemed he had fallen out of the lift only to try to crawl back inside and didn't have enough strength to do it.
His glazed-over eyes met hers and he coughed. "Mason," he wheezed.
Lorin checked down the other hall then positioned herself to squat down near Élan and still keep an eye on the stairwell. She could tell he wasn't going to make it much longer. "Where are the others?" she asked. "Where's Smuke?"
He shook his head and his eyes half closed. "Fannon," he breathed. "I tried to . . . ." He trailed off and his head rolled to one side.
"What about Fannon?" she hissed, smacking his cheek.
Élan seemed to muster up strength with a heaving last breath. "He's going to kill us all." He let out a racking cough and the expression of pain on his face froze then relaxed. He was gone.
Lorin swore under her breath. Had Fannon found out about Smuke's plan and decide to take action? Anger simmered in the back of her mind. Not only did Lorin have to watch out for Smuke, but Fannon had now likely gone completely mad.
A muffled roar echoed up from both the lift shaft and the stairwell as the metal floor shuddered for a brief moment. Lorin strained her ears and crept towards the stairwell. Another vibration nearly knocked her from her crouch and this time there was little doubt what it was.
Blast doors were slamming shut on the lower decks of the station.
Either from lack of use over the years or poor design, the huge metal doors were sending tremors throughout the lunar station, sounding off like a death knoll. The emergency protocol was to help halt the spread of a fire by sealing off sections of the station and venting the atmosphere, but Lorin highly doubted the failsafe would work.
A tiny squawk of static caused Lorin to spin around and look back at Élan's lifeless form. A hiss of white noise burst through the tiny earpiece the now-dead crewman wore, and she hurried over and tugged the comm unit free from the inside of Élan's jacket. It was a simple two-way radio that the crew used when the landlines didn't work.
"Élan, you still there? What happened?" Smuke's voice asked from the earpiece.
Lorin dialed back the volume and placed it in her left ear. "He's dead," she said quietly.
"What?" Smuke growled.
"It's Mason," she identified herself. "I think Fannon killed him." Lorin swallowed when another blast door closed, this time sounding closer than the others. "Did you feel that? Fannon must be using the fire protocol to seal off the lower decks. And he'll lock us here and kill us too if we don't stop him from venting this entire station."
"I'll deal with Fannon after I deal with you," Smuke said with an eerie calmness.
"Listen, you idiot. From the sound if it, he's already begun sealing off the deck below us and if we don't stop him soon we'll all be dead within minutes." Lorin got to her feet and dragged Élan's body clear of the closing lift doors.
"She's right, Smuke," a tiny, distant voice said over Smuke's own comm unit, as if he was standing next to him.
"Shut up!" the enraged crewman answered.
Lorin pressed the lift button to take her two levels up, but the control panel gave a negative, three-tiered note sequence. The lift was locked due to the fire emergency protocol, and the control panel required a five-digit code that she didn't know.
"She's at the lift!" Smuke announced, only this time his voice sounded closer somehow.
Lorin bolted for the stairwell. She swung the door shut behind her and started up the stairs. The heavy clattering of boots against the deck gave her the clear indication that Smuke and the others were hot on her trail. She was about to fly up the next level's set of stairs when the door she had shut swung open and someone fired up at her. The pair of bullets ricocheted off the grated steps and struck the stairwell walls, one striking close to her face. She answered back with a few shots of her own and the figure in the doorway backed out.
"Leave her! We'll take the lift up and flush her out," Smuke yelled from down below.
Gritting her teeth, Lorin raced towards the next level, Deck 5, in hopes to beat Smuke and his cronies, but she paused and ran onto Deck 4. Doing a quick glance into the lobby and seeing no one else around, she fired three shots into the lift control box, hoping to slow them down.
It paid off. She was betting that Smuke would take a little time entering the code to active the lift, thus buying her the precious moments she needed. The light above the exterior lift doors glowed a passive red and she returned to the stairwell, aiming her M6 down towards the lower levels.
She hurried up the steps to the level where the Emergency Evacuation Map told everyone to go. Feeling her lungs begin to ache, she charged up the last few steps . . . and almost got her head blown off. In the Deck 5 lift lobby, sheltered behind an overturned desk, was Fannon with a UNSC-issued shotgun and a feral grin on his face. Lorin ducked down the steps just in time, as another burst of buckshot nearly knocked the stairwell door off its hinges. Another pistol fired at her from two levels below and she pressed herself against the wall, taking aim at the culprit in the process.
But she never had to fire. The thick blast door on Deck 3 came down from the ceiling and took the crewman's arm off at the elbow, completely sealing off the stairwell from the rest of the level. Lorin gulped in a fresh breath and refocused on the other end of the firefight.
"No one is getting off this station," Fannon said darkly.
Even from the safety of the stairwell Lorin could hear Fannon enter a code on a datapad, and more thunderous noises thumped below her. She poked her head out just enough to permit her right eye to catch Fannon fiddling with his master security controller datapad. He quickly set it down and brought his shotgun up. "Not even an ONI spook!" He accented the last word with a blast from a single shell.
Luckily Lorin was ready for it and pulled back in time to let the door take the brunt of the blast and finally detach from its hinges. It slammed down on the landing and snapped in half. "What are you talking about?" she yelled back to Fannon, trying to get him to stop firing for one second.
"Don't play coy with me. I know Élan and the others were planning something with you. If they thought they could take you right out from under me, I'll show them just how wrong they were." He cocked his shotgun once more. "You'll be my ticket off this prison!"
Another thud echoed through the station, only this one sounded like it was right next to Lorin. It took a second for her to realize that it wasn't another blast door closing. The lift had arrived on Deck 5. When the doors parted, Fannon swung his barrel over and fired. The two men standing in front of the group took the brunt of the shot and they slumped forward.
"Shut the doors!" Smuke ordered, but the two fallen crewmen's bodies stopped the lift doors from completely closing. Lorin could imagine the rest of the lift's occupants hugging the sides of the car while one tried to push or pull the dead out of the way. Another pistol joined in to return fire at Fannon and a round hit the desk in front of the portly man still firing towards the lift.
Now is my chance. Lorin crouched then sprung into action. From the layout she had previously studied, she knew the life-pod chamber was directly to her left, and she bolted for the open door while firing blindly back at Fannon. Someone else shouted something unintelligible and another firearm joined in the fight.
When Lorin was three paces away from the thick metal door, she suddenly felt a sharp pain stab through her left side only to be supplemented by instant warmth. She cringed and staggered the last few steps, as the blast door alarm sounded. She didn't even have the mind to swear and she leaped through the opening. The blast door slammed down behind her when she landed hard on the cold metal floor.
Lorin rolled onto her backside and sat up, wincing through the pain. Even through the sealed doorway she could still hear the exchange of gunfire, but another noise rose to take its place. It was a sloshing sound coming from behind her. And it was getting louder. She craned her neck around to see that the round that had gone straight through her side had struck one of the hydraulic lines running along the wall that supplied the life-pod bay launchers. If the tubes didn't have enough hydraulic fluid in them, then the pods would not be able to launch. She needed to hurry.
Cringing and clutching her side, Lorin got to her feet, trying to avoid the growing puddle of liquid. The firefight outside sounded as if it had just ended and she risked a glance through the small glass slit on the blast door. What she saw didn't bring her much comfort. Fannon was bent over the desk, dead and bloodied, and Smuke was prying the master security controller from his hands. Lorin bit back a curse, jumped over the hydraulic fluid puddle, and started heading down the curved hallway that would lead to the life-pod bay.
"Get the door open, Smuke! She's going for the life-pods!" Lorin nearly stumbled to the ground when she heard the shrill voice scream into her earpiece that she forgot was still in her ear. She reached out to the wall to help stabilize her when she heard Smuke's response. "I don't know which door this one is. Hell, I'll just open them all up!"
With a moan that seemed to vibrate the entire station, every closed blast door opened simultaneously. And within the span of Lorin taking one shallow breath, the fire alarm klaxons wailed to life.
"What the—" someone called from around the curved hallway. "There really was a fire? Smuke, you idiot!"
Why would Fannon risk the entire station by starting a fire? Frustrated, she threw the two-way radio to the ground. Lorin heard Smuke growl as she took up a defensive position at the end of the hall where the life-pod bay opened up and took aim back towards the voices. She heard Smuke and a few others swear aloud, and the sound of bodies hitting thick liquid echoed down the hallway.
"Get moving!" Smuke ordered.
When the first hydraulic fluid-drenched crewman came around the corner with a nasty looking pistol in hand, Lorin fired twice, striking him in the stomach and chest. He went down without as much as a whimper and the other crewmen hastily backed up.
"Mason," Smuke called from around the curve. "You know the high body count isn't going to look good on your yearly ONI review."
Lorin mentally rolled her eyes. "You just don't get it, do you? You're so selfish that you were willing to risk the lives of everyone aboard this station for a false chance of freedom."
"Look who's talking," he chided back. "This place is burning down and you're the one stopping us from getting to the life-pods."
A bitter reply was on her tongue, but she clamped her mouth shut when the pain in her side reminded her of the reality of the situation. Deep down, she knew she couldn't trust Smuke and the few that were left, but she didn't have to be a monster about it. "Fine. If you toss your weapons and come out with your hands up, I won't stop you from leaving."
Lorin looked over her shoulder at the two rows of six life-pods waiting to be released from the bay. She stretched out her left hand and primed the nearest one. But before she turned her attention back to the curve in the hallway, Lorin noticed one of the life-pods on the opposite side of the bay's walkway was missing. She froze. Someone else has already left this station. What if it wasn't Fannon that had started the fire?
"Okay, we'll come out," Smuke said. "Just don't shoot us."
Before Lorin could bring her focus back to Smuke and the others, a warm rush of air pushed through the hallway and knocked Lorin to the floor. The fire had quickly spread, faster than she thought possible, and blue flames started to spread along the ceiling of the hallway like spilt coffee on a table. Lorin backpedaled to the life-pod she had just activated and used its side railing to bring herself to her feet.
Lorin grabbed the medpack from the wall and tried to ignore the horrid screams coming from the doomed, hydraulic fluid-covered crewmen that had undoubtedly been lit on fire. She hopped in the life-pod and keyed the capsule-like door shut, wincing again as her side make contact with the uncomfortable rider's seat. The triangular window slit on the door allowed for a panoramic view of the blue flames beginning to snake down the walls of the bay. C'mon, c'mon, she urged the slowly-sealing hatch.
Checking the gauges, the fluid levels were dangerously low but would just be enough to get her one life-pod off the station. She pressed the release button and hurried with the restraint harness. A five tonal countdown started.
With two tones left to tick off, a bloodied, burning hand slapped against the right edge of Lorin's view. Smuke's charred face then appeared above her through the window and he screamed something incoherent. Lorin closed her eyes, and with the last chime of the countdown, the pod disengaged from the station with a sputtered kick, leaving Smuke behind in the flames.
As her life-pod rocketed away from the lunar orbiting station, Lorin could see the extent of the damage and she shuddered. The lowermost decks were blackened beyond repair and the middle decks that housed the orbital thrusters were already void of power. The only thing that had not yet been touched by the fire was Fannon's tower, a monument to the man's own destruction.
From Lorin's best estimate, the station wouldn't completely burn itself to dust before crashing onto the dark side of Corra, but it would most likely leave a giant stain on the moon's surface for years to come.
She looked down at the pod's auto-trajectory course and tried to relax. Being so close to a moon without proper atmosphere, the life-pod's computer had sent Lorin on an orbital course with Verent instead. With luck, the pod would safely tuck into the planet's atmosphere, waiting for a response from the distress signal it was now emitting.
But there was another life-pod out there, somewhere floating around Verent as well. Lorin could only guess as to who had left before her, but it was beyond her scope of speculation at the moment.
As her adrenaline began to come down, the throbbing in her side reminded her of more immediate concerns. Lorin managed to remove her backpack, pull her blood-stained shirt off over her head, nearly scrapping her elbows on the metal ceiling, and examine the wound. It wasn't anything life threatening, but she did want to patch it up quickly. The round had only gone through a thin layer of muscle, entering and exiting only inches apart. Using the medpack's contents she was able to disinfect the bullet wound and wrap her lower torso with meditape. It would slightly hinder her movement, but she wasn't going to do much of anything until she was rescued.
And if the Spirit of Fire is on schedule, they should be arriving any day now. As the life-pod's maneuvering jets oriented its course for the last time, Lorin took the emergency thermal blanket stuffed under her seat and settled in for a long wait. Her eyes began to grow heavy as she watched the world of Verent slowly turn below her.