APRIL 8, 2074


    LUNAR TRANSPORT VEHICLE


    Lunar Positioning System coords 25°59’40.67" N 16°50’49.69" W


    He’d intended to miss the twilight phantoms and sleep through the trip past daylight. Instead, his neuroface buzzed inside his skull. He woke to the eerie red glow of the rover’s night mode. Outside, the lunar surface swallowed light like obsidian and melted seamlessly into a luminous sky spattered with stars. The land was dark for hundreds of kilometers, except for one set of blinking red lights to his left, where the Milky Way’s starry archway met the horizon’s aniline black arc. His legs were numb from sitting and his neuroface hummed like tinnitus.


    Jin muted his alerts, shifted in his seat, and closed his eyes. Thirty seconds ago, he was in the pool with Leyna. They had snuck in after hours and were at the deep end, floating and kissing. Her hand was on his back, moving down inside his bathing suit and about to slip it off.


    His neuroface jabbed again, this time an angry emoji popped up on the console followed by, “answer me. dammit.”


    The rover’s console mirrored his phone. There were thirteen messages before that, seven from Leyna.


    Morning was still fifteen minutes over the horizon. He tossed and stretched his legs. He’d seen a lunar sunrise before and hoped to avoid it. There were no breathtaking vivid reds or oranges over blue water. Lunar twilight was a ghastly grayscape, where mountains cast shadows of razor-sharp teeth and craters cast demonic grins. It was purgatory personified, with leaden phantoms rising from boulders.


    A glowing square next to his waypoint on the map read eight hundred and four kilometers per hour, heading thirty-four degrees northeast, and an altitude of five kilometers. Nine hundred kilometers traveled and another two thousand and change to go. He was crossing Mare Imbrium, threading equidistant between the craters Lambert on the west and Timocharis on the east. Each was wide and deep enough to swallow half of London, or maybe all of New York City, if it was crimped into a bowl and the water poured in after. During the day, the outer ramparts defining both craters would rise to the left and right. At night, the moon’s surface was a black hole of nothingness.


    The flashing red lights in the East were keeping pace with the rover. They seemed a little brighter than before, but his nav display wasn’t registering a ship within two dozen kilometers.


    He clicked on Leyna’s avatar and sent, “About a third of the way there. I fell asleep.”


    His phone thundered. The console exploded like a flashbang in the cab and bathed him in blue light. He had to squint to see Leyna on the screen. A pewter wall that was not their office framed her face. Her baby blue eyes were icy underneath the denim baseball cap embroidered with the Lunar Colony Security shield and logo.


    “There you are. I called you seven times,” she whispered. She was moving. It appeared she was in a lower-level concourse on the colony.


    “I missed you too. Why are you whispering?”


    “I’m in the tunnels. Did you see the video I sent?”


    He scrolled through his messages to see that something hadn’t downloaded. “Hasn’t come through. What happened with Vega?”


    “Kate’s bringing it back.”


    “Always the plan. Why aren’t you in the office? What’s the problem with Vega?”


    “Nothing is wrong with Vega. Well—Kate thinks it has malware, but I can’t find anything.”


    “Why does she think it has malware?”


    Leyna’s image jostled, and the scenery behind her blurred and spun. A door closed behind her. “The ship tried to connect. Her pressure suit blocked it.”Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    “That ship is old and its software has a million trapdoors. It’s designed to block anything suspicious.”


    “What I said, too. But that’s not why I called you.”


    “I had a dream about us.”


    “Too bad you’re off chasing malware at some remote mining colony or we could make it come true.”


    “I had to go.”


    “You didn’t.” Leyna made a pig-snorting noise.


    “I am not glory hogging.”


    Leyna snorted again and smiled. “While you were napping like a baby, we had another homicide.”


    He sat up and looked outside. All he saw was his reflection. At least he was missing the twilight. “I can turn around.”


    “No need. I can handle it.”


    “What happened?”


    “Watch the video. One of the sex workers killed a client. I’d call it self-defense, if that were an option.”


    The file she sent still hadn’t downloaded. “Who got killed?”


    “A subhuman piece of shit if you ask me. Won’t be missed.”


    “Who’s the suspect?”


    “A gynoid. Doing the universe a favor. Probably a programming defect. They are supposed to go into dummy mode when the client gets too aggressive but—”


    The screen pixelated and froze.


    He tapped the console and swiped through to connections. The call was still active. “But what, Leyna?”


    “…repeated he’s coming…”


    The screen went black and then the rover’s cab returned to its eerie red glow. The call dropped. His map froze, too.


    He tried messaging, “You cut off. Who’s coming?”


    No response. His eyes readjusted to the dark. He saw blinking red lights just outside his right window. Maybe a few hundred meters at most. It was alongside him, pacing him. Each red flash lit a small silvery disc of metal. How did it sneak up on him while he was on the call?


    He punched in a new heading to return to the colony. He swiped, touched, and retouched, but the console had ceased accepting commands.


    The map pixelated and then flickered. His position and heading updated. Eight hundred and four kilometers per hour, heading thirty-four degrees northeast, and an altitude of five kilometers. One thousand one hundred kilometers traveled. The same speed and heading, but two hundred more kilometers than when his neuroface buzzed him awake.


    Ahead, the sun peeped over the horizon and he saw the jagged white outline of the lunar sunrise.


    He messaged again, “You dropped. Who is coming?”


    Again, there was no response.


    Programming defect. Was whatever malware that infected the mining outpost now infecting the colony? And now the rover?


    There were no oranges or silvers on the horizon. The sun blinked on and the terrain beneath changed to dusty, gravelly gray, dotted with boulders that cast oblique sawtooth shadows. Timocharis’ ramparts formed a ghastly frown in the sunlight.


    A silvery metallic lunar transport vehicle hovered over his right shoulder with its red lights struggling to be seen against the sun’s glare. It was identical to his, except no cockpit. Polished, immaculate, aluminum. A drone. There were no numbers or identifying marks. If it had a transponder active, it didn’t register on his map.


    He tried to change his heading again, but the console still wasn’t responding to his commands. His speed and heading hadn’t changed. He didn’t feel as if he were falling, braking, or accelerating. All the status gauges—fuel, oxygen, and electrical—were normal. Whatever was wrong with the console hadn’t impacted the engines or environmental system. He had an EVA suit in the back, but it wouldn’t do him any good at this speed and altitude.


    Every cell in his body screamed. He wanted to punch the screen or the window. He was trapped. Would the rover slow down as planned, or run out of fuel and plummet to the ground?


    The drone over his right shoulder stalked him, neither speeding up, slowing down, nor drifting away. It hovered three hundred meters away. He felt hunted.


    He tried disconnecting his phone from his console. He messaged Leyna, “you disconnected.”


    His signal had five bars, but there was no response.


    He messaged, “There is a drone shadowing me.”


    Still no response.


    He pressed the emergency button on the console, and then the one on his phone. Nothing happened.


    He thought about the dream. He wanted to go back to the pool with Leyna. Or better yet, go back in time, wake up, watch whatever video she sent, and turn back to the colony before she called.


    He succumbed to panic and punched the dashboard. It made a sickening crack. The console map flickered again.


    So this was how it ended for him. The rover’s gauge read twenty-three hours of oxygen, but he’d become another frigid impact crater long before that.


    He messaged Leyna, “I love you,” although he didn’t expect it to go through. He tried the emergency button again. Dead.


    The interior speakers bellowed, “There is no need for anxiety, Jinho Knight.”


    “Who is this?”


    The gray drone outside his window dipped and rotated while staying in formation with him, like an airplane dipping its wings, although it had none. His rover rotated as if in acknowledgment. There was nothing inside the cab to grasp. He felt like he was falling and slid towards the window. Then, as quickly as his rover pivoted, it returned to level flight.


    “We control your ship.”


    How did they hack into his ship? “Where are you taking me?”


    “We will escort you to our temple. You will retrieve your kind for disposal. As you planned.”


    He wasn’t trapped. He messaged Leyna, “I’ve been kidnapped.”


    His phone beeped. Message failed to deliver.


    He sunk back in his chair and closed his eyes, trying to remember her warm lips against his. Cherry. Her lipstick always smelled like cherry. But he couldn’t picture it. All he saw in the dark was Timocharis’ hideous grin and the leaden phantoms of lunar twilight.