Mistrunner 3- Chapter 42 - To the Moon (Patreon)

Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like if Mira and I just settled down somewhere. No more fighting. No more crazy missions. Just us living normal lives. I know it’ll never happen, though. She would never be happy with anything ordinary.

Patrick Ward

I glanced around the warehouse, but I didn’t see anything out of place. Nor did anything trigger my {Mistrunner} senses. As far as I could tell, it was just a normal warehouse, completely devoid of security – Mist-based or more mundane. That lined up with my expectations. After all, when their city was so difficult to infiltrate, why would the Pacificians bother with elaborate defenses within Olympus?

After replacing the metal in the barrel, I resealed the lid and made sure that it looked undisturbed. Then, I used Stealth and set about exploring my location, eventually confirming my suspicions that it was a normal warehouse filled with identical barrels to the one I’d used to get into the city. Deciding that further inspection was pointless, I then started looking for a way out.

Soon enough, I found a door that I quickly Misthacked into. When I forced it open, I was confronted with an enclosed hallway – which surprised me because I had expected to end up outdoors. Even so, I didn’t let it throw me off too much, and I quickly started down the wide corridor as I searched for another exit.

Curiously, the place was entirely deserted, and I didn’t even detect any defenses. There weren’t even any cameras, which I found more than a little odd. Seeing that, I resolved to be even more cautions than normal, and my pace slowed down considerably. It was a good thing, too, because only a few hundred yards down that inordinately long corridor, I was nearly trampled by a vehicle. I narrowly managed to dodge to the side as the thing raced past. As it sped away, the curve of the hallway took it out of sight. However, it remained visible for long enough for me to get a good look.

And I found it very odd.

For one, the thing actually had wheels which were clad in great, knobby tires that would’ve been appropriate for trekking through the wilderness. That was odd enough, considering that the ambient Mist was easily thick enough to support hover vehicles.  What was even stranger was that the vehicle was entirely sealed. I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of the occupants because there were no visible windows. In fact, it looked like nothing so much as a sharply angled box on wheels.

Shaking my head, I wondered why the Pacificians had used such a vehicle, but there were no answers forthcoming, so I quickly moved on. I’d already gone a few hundred yards, but I kept going for hundreds more before I saw anything but the same repeating pattern of a modular hallway.

When I finally did, I couldn’t help but let out a gasp.

Because I was obviously no longer on Earth.

In fact, I could see my planet in the distance – a blue, white, and green orb that looked simultaneously far too small and more majestic than anything else I’d ever seen. The only thing that came close was when I saw the distant planet in the spider-infested Rift so long ago. But even that paled in comparison.

I was so startled that it took me a moment to notice the featureless gray landscape visible through the window.

Immediately, I tried to contact Patrick, but he was out of range. The same went for everyone else on my contact list. Even Gala and Dex back in the Bazaar were too far away to make a Secure Connection.

For a long moment, I stared out that window as I tried to make sense of what I saw.  But only one thing seemed to fit. I wasn’t on a space station. Nor was I on a ship. The rocky, grey landscape told me that much. So, I could only reason that, somehow, I’d ended up on the moon.

Which created a significant problem, largely that I had no notion of how to get home.

Since taking possession of the Leviathan, I’d taken the freedom it gave me for granted. And even without it, I knew how to get around the world. There were plenty of people who had ships, and there were public transportation options as well. They all came with significant downsides – expense and a lack of safety being chief among them – but it was comforting to know that, if I needed to be on the other side of a continent, there was enough infrastructure to allow for it.

But now?

How was I supposed to get home from the surface of the moon?

I’m not proud of it, but at that moment, I started to panic a little. It’s difficult to overstate just how shocking it is to suddenly look out a window and see the entire Earth thousands upon thousands of miles away. Perhaps I would have taken it much better if I’d expected it, but a thousand worries – ranging from how I was going to get home to what would happen if there was a leak in the window – crashed into me with overwhelming force.

I backed away from that window until my back hit the wall on the other side of the corridor. There I stood, my breath coming fast and shallow, until, a few minutes later, I managed to wrangle my anxious mind into some semblance of calm. Then, I forced myself to divide my problems into small, solvable chunks before organizing them in order of importance.

The first thing I needed to do was to figure out why the Pacificians had a base on the moon. I had some ideas about what its purpose might be, but I refused to even think about them until I had more information.

Second, I would have to find out how I’d gotten there. Because that was probably my only ticket home. If that wasn’t possible, then I’d have to reevaluate based on whatever information I could uncover.

In truth, I couldn’t make any real plans until I had more intelligence. So, in truth, nothing had really changed. Certainly, I was on the moon instead of in a Pacifician city called Olympus, but aside from the setting, my mission remained the same. With that in mind, I took a few deep breaths and then set off down the hallway.

Even so, I kept glancing to the other side of the hallway, half expecting it to burst before I was swallowed by the vacuum of space. Of course, I knew the moon had some sort of atmosphere, but to me, it would amount to the same thing. I could fight powerful enemies. I could survive in the dangerous wilds. But in space? I was just as vulnerable as anyone else.

It wasn’t just the lack of oxygen, either. There was radiation out there. Extreme temperatures. And who knew what else had come with the Mist? For all I knew, the moon was crawling with just as many native monsters as Earth, only they were suited to that inhospitable environment while I was…well, I was still human, with all the deficiencies that entailed.

But I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on it. Not when I knew I was in enemy territory, and in more way than one. So, I pushed those concerns out of my mind and focused on putting one metaphorical foot in front of the other. I needed to take one step at a time, or I’d be overwhelmed by the situation.

Like that, I continued down the hall, and eventually, I reached a three-way intersection. The corridor through which I’d been walking went off in either direction, but another path led to my right. I also noticed that it featured a slight decline, which suggested that it would descend underground.

I suspected that that direction would lead me to the Pacificians – if any even lived in the facility – but I wanted to keep going the way I’d been going. Because I’d learned over the years that, when mapping a new environment, it was important to keep to a pattern. Otherwise, it was easy to get lost.

So, I ignored the off-shoot and kept going down what I was rapidly beginning to think of as the main hall. For two more hours, I walked, and during that time, three more vehicles passed me by. None saw through Stealth, but each instance left me breathless. I knew how thin my margins were, and I was not prepared for a fight.

By the end of the second hour, just when I was beginning to consider heading back to the off-shoot I’d passed, the hall finally ended in a hangar.

In addition to a couple of ships, both of which looked like boxy cargo containers with wings, I finally got my first glimpse of the Pacificians. I slipped into the hangar and planted myself in an isolated corner while I watched. The men and women all looked disturbingly similar, with blonde hair and blue eyes, marking them as the same sort of androids I had seen back in Fortune. However, instead of blue, black, or brown robes, they were all dressed in green. I knew from my research – and the interrogation I’d staged back in Fortune – that the different color robes marked these people as more important than most I had seen before.

Not that it mattered. They were all enemies. I didn’t need to know how they stratified their odd society.

In any case, I continued to watch as the Pacificians offloaded crates from the ships and into the same sorts of vehicles I had seen racing along the hall. Once they were full, the vehicles took off the way I’d come.

I watched for almost an hour until, at last, the ships were completely emptied. That’s when I realized that I might’ve overstayed my welcome. The androids all boarded their ships, and once everyone had done so, a door slid shut, sealing the hall away while a much larger set of doors swung out, exposing the hangar to the lunar atmosphere.

Or the lack thereof.

Immediately, the air rushed out of the hanger. I grabbed ahold of a nearby rail on the wall, then dragged my respirator from my arsenal implant. I barely got it in place before the air completely drained from the enormous hangar.

Instantly, I felt my body lock up as it was assailed by a biting cold I can’t really describe. It was like I’d suddenly been encased in ice, though that wasn’t entirely accurate, either. I knew from school that the surface of the moon could reach temperatures as low as two-hundred degrees below zero, but knowing that and feeling it are two very different things. Fortunately, my Constitution gave me at least some resistance to the extreme temperatures, but even that wasn’t enough to completely shield me.

In short, I froze.

Literally.

I only survived due to two reasons. First, I had air to breathe, and I forced myself to continue to do so. That kept my body running, albeit poorly. Second, my inflated attributes gave me superhuman endurance.

But even then, I knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Thankfully, the two ships quickly lifted off and left the hangar behind. The doors swung shut, and with a hiss, the atmosphere within the hangar reverted to normal. I collapsed to the ground, and the impact made it feel like every cell in my body had shattered. Somehow, I managed to keep Stealth active – I think I hung on out of habit – and for a few long hours, I just lay there as my body struggled to combat the damage even that short exposure to the lunar atmosphere had done.

How long had those doors been open? A few minutes, at most. And it took me hours before I could even move, much less fully recover. However far I’d managed to come, my humanity was still intact enough that I couldn’t endure the rigors of space. If I hadn’t been in so much pain, I might’ve found that comforting, in a way. After all, I’d often wondered what my progression meant in terms of my continued humanity. Now, I knew that I was a long way off from pushing past my origin.

Gradually, I recovered, and eventually, I managed to grab a med-hypo from my arsenal implant and jab it into my hip. As the medication took hold, I felt a wave of relief; the hypo wouldn’t heal me, but it did ease my symptoms enough that I could get out of the hangar and find somewhere more appropriate for recovery.

With that, I dragged myself to my feet, then stumbled out of the hangar and into the corridor. For the next few hours, I staggered down the hall until, at last, I reached the warehouse in which I’d awoken. It still seemed deserted, and even if it wasn’t, the chamber was big enough that I could lose myself in it without much chance of discovery.

So, that’s what I did, eventually settling in between two rows of barrels. There, I continued my convalescence. I’d fought hundreds of battles over the past few years, but none had left me so thoroughly defeated as the lunar atmosphere.

As I recovered, I began to analyze my choices, and I came away extremely disappointed. The hangar doors hadn’t looked any different than the other walls, but in retrospect, I should have expected them to open. After all, that was what a hangar was for, wasn’t it? But I’d been so rattled by the setting that I hadn’t been thinking clearly. And it had nearly cost me my life.

A few more minutes, and I would have died right there on that floor.

No fighting back. No heroic last stands. Just an ignominious death. Patrick would’ve never even known what happened to me. I would just disappear from his life.

For long hours, I berated myself for my carelessness. But then, I pushed that aside. I knew what I had done wrong, and more importantly, I knew how to fix the problem. So, I resolved to pay better attention, then set my mind to recovery mode.

As I sat there for days, I saw more Pacificians dropping off or taking barrels away. None of them were looking for someone like me, though, so I remained undetected. Meanwhile, I occupied myself the same way I always did – by working on my Ghosts. This time, though, I chose to tweak some of the ones I thought might see some use if it came down to a fight within the lunar station.

After almost a week, I finally recovered. It was a good thing, too, because my supplies had begun to run low. Much longer, and I would have run out of water. But now that I’d had a chance to think about my situation, I was eager to see what else the station had to offer. So, once I made certain that I hadn’t left any evidence behind, I headed out of the warehouse and down the corridor until I reached the off-shoot.

Then, I set off down that comparatively smaller tunnel, hoping that I could find some information I could use.

About a mile – as far as I could tell – down that tunnel, I started to see more androids. They all wore the same green robes, and unless I looked very closely, they were as close to identical as people could be. There were subtle variations, especially between genders, but they were so small as to be mostly unimportant.

The facility changed as well, with the tunnel eventually giving way to a webwork of dormitories and living areas. I explored them all, though I found nothing of note until I stumbled upon a security terminal. With all the traffic, I could only connect to the terminal for a few seconds without risking detection, but in that time, I managed to download some basic information about the compound.

The moment I found an out-of-the-way corner of the facility, I settled in to give it a read. When I did, I discovered that the facility was meant to manufacture weaponized satellites that would, in turn, be deployed around the Earth. The files I’d downloaded didn’t specify their purpose, but it didn’t take me long to put two and two together.

The Pacificians intended to take over the world. And it seemed that I was the only person in a position to stop them. Because of course that would be the way it was.

I continued to read the file, internalizing the partial map that had been included. It didn’t feature any helpful labels, but I could infer the importance of a few distinctive areas. The first was a huge set of rooms in the opposite direction from the hangar that I suspected would be where the satellites were assembled. I knew I’d have to check to make sure, but I felt confident in that assumption.

If I kept going through the living quarters, I would find another set of rooms, the purpose of which wasn’t clear. I intended to check that first. So, after making certain I knew the way, I continued to creep through the facility. No one even suspected my presence, which was good because, even though I knew I’d have to eventually kill them all, I didn’t want things to happen before I was ready.

However, when I finally reached the mysterious rooms that were my destination, I found my resolve not to immediately destroy the entire facility wavering.

I shook my head and muttered to myself, “It’s always the same, isn’t it? We’re not people to them. We’re just things to be used.”

I was tempted to look away. I didn’t want to see what was in front of me. But this wasn’t like the situation with the people the E’rok Tan had turned into livestock. I couldn’t call Alistaris in to handle the situation while I moped around and pondered the meaning of humanity. Instead, I was the only person around. So, I forced myself to look. I made myself see precisely what the Pacificians had done.

As I did, my fists tightened, and my heartbeat quickened. Never had my resolve to kill the aliens been so palpable. But before I could get to that, I needed to right some wrongs. So, I strode forward to see if I could save the people in front of me.