already, now weâre going to get noticed again?â
âThatâs not fair,â Keiko said. âAs your buddy, Iâm going to catch all that shit too. So the least you can do is help me take a dump.â
I groaned as Keiko raised a hand and waved.
âWhat is it?â the nearest instructor asked, her ponytail whipping around.
âI need to use a bathroom, instructor.â
âBuddy up. The nearest one is right across the museum. You have ten minutes. If youâre not aboard . . .â She let the missing words hang in the air.
I wondered what they did to recruits absent without leave here on the moon. The Accordance owned it outright, now. It didnât belong to humans anymore, even though they could see Tranquility Cityâs lights from Earth.
Humans hadnât been using the planets and their moons, the Accordance had noted. It was better they be developed by a civilization actually able to do so. It would happen anyway. That was the stick. The carrot was the offer to keep autonomy by signing off.
On Earth, humans still demanded the right to run themÂselves directly despite occupation, and would cause trouble to keep that. Here? The Accordance could do anything they wanted.
Be careful up here, I thought. Make it out the other side.
âWhereâs the museum, instructor?â Keiko asked.
She pointed between the restaurants across from us. Hand on shoulder, Keiko and I crossed the hundred yards of common area.
The Apollo Cultural Heritage Preservation Site. The pictures Iâd seen had never shown it surrounded by a pair of restaurants filled with tired-looking lunar miners in overalls.
On the other side of the translucent doors I saw a familiar boxy shape.
Keiko made a strangled sound. âBathrooms, here we go.â Right outside the museum, between the nearest restaurant and the museum.
âIâm going to let go of your shoulder now,â I said.
âYeah, whatever.â He scurried inside, and I heard a stall bang shut.
And just on the other side of the wall from where he squatted, something that took humanity decades to create gathered dust in an exhibit. The pinnacle of achievement in outer space. The farthest a human had ever gone from our world. The Apollo Lunar Module descent stage.
The Accordance had crossed stars. We had made it to the moon.
Keiko clamped his hand on my shoulder and I yelped. âYou look deep in thought,â he said.
âYeah, well.â
We crossed back. âWhat were you thinking so hard on? How much weâre going to kick ass at training camp?â
I opened my mouth to answer, but the response never came. A wave of hot energy smacked into the back of my head with a roar. The explosion came a split second later. Or, at least, my awareness of it did.
Things spun around me until my head smacked into the steel-and-concrete ground.
Everything faded. I lay still, blinking and looking at the world askew.
The roar hadnât stopped. It kept thundering on. A wind rushed past me up toward the ceiling. I wiped blood on my sleeves and twisted around. âKeiko?â I croaked.
People ran past us, trying to get through the ten-foot-thick doors that trundled toward each other to seal off the human section. They dodged chunks of metal and dirty moon concrete and just barely slid through.
A flurry of sharp dust whipped around, stinging my throat as I tried to pull in a deep breath.
âRecruits: on board, now!â an instructor shouted. âIn, in, in!â
âKeiko!â I staggered back in the direction Iâd been tossed from and away from the airlock where the instructor stood. âKeiko.â
âRecruit!â
I glanced back. No gray shapes stood in line anymore. Theyâd all boarded. Gotten safely inside the craft that would take us to our training camp. If I ran there, I might make it in. They would have to shut the door soon, to stop losing air.
Because that was what