Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
Holly woke to a sound she couldn’t place.
It was dark. The dome’s daylight cycle hadn’t engaged yet, and the room was lit only by the faint blue glow of Rasker’s personal transmitter on the dresser.
She was warm. The sheets smelled of salty air and the soap he used.
His arm was draped across her waist, heavy with sleep.
She could sink into this. Be here, forever.
This man, and all the parts that made him who he was, had burrowed into her heart.
She was making Moone’s Landing a working station again, and she’d found love.
This was about as blissful as she’d ever been in her entire adult life.
The sound came again. A buzz. Insistent and small.
Her wrist comm. She had left it on his bedside table, and the screen was lit, pulsing with notifications. She reached across Rasker’s chest and picked it up, blinking at the display.
Fourteen messages. No, sixteen. The number climbed as she watched. Most of them from Sam.
Holly’s stomach tightened. She popped out the earpiece and pressed it into her ear.
She hesitated, knowing in her gut that nothing good was contained in these messages.
The bliss she’d felt was about to be shattered, and she packed up as much of it as she could, shoved it into a quiet pocket of her mind, and tapped the first message.
Sam’s voice was clipped, controlled, but she could hear urgency beneath it. This was new.
Holly. Pressure spike in the water system. The reading I flagged last night just blew past tolerance. I’m heading down to check it.
She tapped the next one. Timestamp: forty minutes later.
It’s bad. Main distribution line ruptured somewhere in the underground system.
Water is dumping through the rain heads at full volume in three zones.
The garden took a direct hit. I’ve shut down what I can from up here, but the manual valves are underground and the caverns are flooding. I can’t get in there.
The next.
The cavern backup has knocked the filtration system offline. No water running to the square or the hotel. Repeat, no water to the hotel. Your guests have no water in their rooms.
And the next, his voice tighter now, stripped of everything but information.
Air circulators are down. Don’t know if it’s related or coincidence but the timing is suspicious. Spaceport grid is fluctuating again. I’ve rerouted power to keep the force fields stable, but I’m juggling. Holly, I need you at the control tower. We may need to evacuate.
Holly sat up. The sheet fell away from her and cool air hit her skin, but she barely noticed. She was already pulling messages forward, scanning timestamps, listening to the cascade of increasingly dire updates that had accumulated while she slept.
The garden. The water. The circulators. The spaceport power.
Everything. Everything at once.
Her ears popped. A sharp, uncomfortable pressure shift that made her swallow hard. The air pressure was off. She could feel it now, a subtle wrongness in the atmosphere. A sense that everything was about to fall apart.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and grabbed her clothes from the floor where she had left them hours ago, in a different lifetime, when the biggest thing on her mind was whether to stay or go.
“Holly?”
Rasker’s voice was rough with sleep. He pushed himself up on one elbow, his dark blue hair falling across his face. In the dim light, she could see the confusion in his expression shifting to concern as he watched her pull on her pants with shaking hands.
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything.” She yanked her tunic over her head and turned to face him.
“The water system blew overnight. It’s flooding the caverns and dumping water on the gardens.
There’s no water running to the hotel, which means our guests have nothing.
The air circulators are offline and the spaceport power is fluctuating.
” She heard her own voice and it sounded distant.
Too calm. The kind of calm that comes before the ground gives way. “Sam is talking about evacuating.”
Rasker was out of bed before she finished explaining. He pulled on his clothes. The look on his face had changed entirely. The softness of the man who had carried her through his door was gone. In its place was the sharp, focused consultant she had met on her first day.
“How long ago?” he asked.
“The first message came in about three hours ago. I slept through all of them.” The guilt of that hit her like a fist. Three hours. Sam had been fighting this alone for three hours while she slept in room seventeen.
“Holly.” Rasker caught her arm as she moved toward the door. His grip was firm but his voice was steady. “This isn’t your fault.”
She looked at him. There were things she wanted to say.
Things about last night, about what it meant, about what she hoped was waiting for them on the other side of this.
But there was no time for any of it. The conversation they needed to have would have to wait, again, and the irony of that was bitter enough to taste.
“I know,” she said. “I have to go.”
He released her arm. “I’m coming with you.”
They left room seventeen together. The hallway was dim and the air was already different.
Heavier. The faint, stale undertone that Holly remembered from her first days at Moone’s Landing was creeping back, the circulators no longer pushing fresh air through the dome.
Her ears popped again as they walked, and she swallowed to clear the pressure.
The lobby was not empty.
Luv was in the center of the floor, her optical sensors blazing red, engaged in what appeared to be a heated exchange with Alyce, who stood with her d-pad clutched to her chest and her braids in disarray.
“What do you mean, you’re not sure where she is?” Alyce was saying. “If you’ll let me inside her room—”
“I’m telling you, she’s not in there,” Luv fired back, her metal arms gesticulating. “She didn’t come home last night. Holly’s a grown woman, and I can guess where she is, but it’s not my business and I’ll not interfere.”
“It’s everyone’s business when the station is falling apart and the owner is nowhere to be found,” Alyce bellowed, and there was no way the guests in the closest rooms didn’t hear.
“I’m here,” Holly said.
Both of them turned. Alyce’s face flooded with relief. Luv’s optical sensors shifted from red to amber, which Holly had learned was the Homeboti’s version of guarded concern.
“I got Sam’s messages,” Holly said. “How bad is it?”
Alyce didn’t soften the blow. “Bad. The water system failure cascaded. Whatever blew in the underground pipes sent pressure surging through the rain distribution network. Three zones got hit with full-volume water dumps when there was no rain scheduled. The garden took the worst of it. Mish is down there now, trying to salvage what she can, but from what Sam described, a significant portion of the crops are destroyed.” She glanced at her d-pad.
“The caverns are flooded up to the walkway. No one can access the water station or the pools. The filtration system is submerged, which means no clean water anywhere on the station until it’s drained and repaired. ”
“The hotel guests,” Holly said, pressing a hand to her stomach, which rolled at the news.
“Waking up, I imagine. They won’t be happy. No water means no sanitation. The air pressure will affect certain species more than others.” Alyce met her eyes. “We need to get them out, Holly.”
Holly nodded. The decision should have been agonizing, but it wasn’t. The safety of the people on her station came first. It would always come first.
“I’ll send the evacuation notice.” She pulled up her wrist comm and composed the message with a voice that wanted to tremble but didn’t, because she wouldn’t let it.
She kept it brief and professional, the way Alyce would have done it: Due to a technical issue affecting water and air systems, Moone’s Landing is requesting all guests to evacuate as a safety precaution.
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
Please make your way to the spaceport at your earliest convenience.
Docking and departure fees are waived. We hope to welcome you back soon.
She sent it to every occupied room and stood in the lobby as the responses began arriving. Confused pings. Alarmed questions. One angry message from a Gardran traveler who had been enjoying his stay and wanted to know if a refund would be issued.
Holly answered each customer with a steady assurance she didn’t feel: Yes. Full refund. We deeply apologize for the inconvenience. All the professional language to make people relax just a little bit.
Within the hour, the hotel emptied. Holly watched from the lobby doors as guests filed out into the square, carrying their bags, their faces tight with concern.
Some moved quickly. Others lingered, looking back at the hotel with the expression of people who were confused and wanted to ask questions, but knew they probably didn’t want the answers.
The human woman in the battered flight suit paused on the steps and caught Holly’s eye.
She gave a small nod before heading toward the spaceport.
Holly stood there until the last guest was gone.
The garlands Harry had strung on the lampposts hung still in the uncirculated air, their metallic caps catching what little light the dome’s early cycle provided.
Less than twelve hours ago, this place had been alive with music and laughter and people buying cupcakes.
Now, the square was empty. Holly hugged her arms around her, unable to shake off a sense that what had happened was not a coincidence.
That the other shoe had not yet dropped. It was an absolutely awful feeling.
With Luv doing a sweep through the hotel just in case they’d missed anyone, Holly joined Alyce and Rasker, and the three of them headed for the spaceport.