I know it should be “wars,” but I wanted to finish up this sequence from back in April. Good Lord, has it really been that long?

Well, Graf and his team set down on the Moon but are immediately informed there is a problem and are underway again almost immediately.

“You’re not kidding, are you?” Graf asked the CO of Lunar Base Hood, Styles.  He was still getting used to the lower gravity and almost bumped his head on the ceiling from standing too fast.

“Not at all, decanus,” Commander Styles replied, wondering how a non-subject of Her Majesty was even a minor underofficer.  “The distress signal was just ten minutes ago, shortly after your team cleared decontam.  And as we all know…”

“…there are no such things as coincidences,” Graf sighed.  Years with his Machine wife had that woven into his being.  “Okay, so when and where?”

“We can get you onto a suborbital shuttle in thirty minutes.  Grab some water, first,” Styles said.  “The call was from Mine one-seven-three, so it will take you about two hours to get there.”

He paused.

“Depending on who’s piloting.”

“It will be me, so my wife does not leave us smears on the wall at a fifteen G lift,” Graf said, not happy at the slight to his Russian wife by an officer of Aurelia’s imperium.  “Do you have text or recording of the distress call?”

“Yes.” The CO leaned forward to tap his tablet.

“Rebels!” was shouted from the small speaker.  “They are killing everyone!  The lower levels are dead!  A handful of us are near the exit, awaiting extraction!”  There were garbled words, static, then nothing.

Wonderful, Graf thought.

“Right,” he said, standing, with a proper salute.  “We’ll be on our way.”

Graf made a pass over the mine.  Pai, next to him, had a cord from the back of her neck to the control panel.  The other six were three-by-three in the cramped area behind them.  “Lots of junk on the surface,” he noted.  “Like they randomly tossed it out.  Do you have the personnel records?”

“Yes, in mind,” Pai replied in a soft tone.  “A mix of Rus and imperials.  Two Australians.  The politics of four of them was already suspect.”

There was a slow-motion civil war opening in the Polar Alliance.  On Earth, the moon, and Mars.  It was the dissatisfaction of the leadership of Demi-humans and Machines, leading to a “Human Front” movement.  There had been several attempts on Empress Aurelia’s life, and it was just a matter of time before they got ‘round to Graf’s wife, the mother of his children, and his children.

I never wanted any of this.  All we asked was to be let alone.

“There are five underground levels, proper, of the mine, before the tunnels branch out in their search for frozen deuterium,” Pai said in a declamatory voice, so everyone could hear.  Graf steadied the shuttle and landed it no more than a hundred meters from the main door.  “Y’all,” he thought it cute she used that Southern term, “know there were thirty people here.  No idea who’s alive or dead.  Or who is on our side or not.  Be careful.”

Kitted in skinsuits but with machine pistols on tactical slings across their chests, they shuffled or skipped across the lunar surface.  The waste of sealed, unused crates was so much as to guarantee a firing if not a firing squad.  Pausing at the door, Graf looked to his wife.  She smiled, and it opened.  Closed behind them, he was pleased that it cycled, and his helmet showed sufficient oxygen.  He opened his faceplate.

“Breathable air,” he began, “but keep your helmets…on…”

The inner door opened.  A woman, stripped to her waist, hung from cords tied to her arms.  TRAITER, misspelled, was written in her own blood across her chest.  On the floor, in more blood, not yet brown, was a phrase in Russian.  Graf could speak and listen, but reading…

“Pai?” he asked.

“оставить надежду,” she said.  And turned to look at him.  “Abandon hope.”

“Cut her down,” he detailed two of his men.  “We’ll take the body with us when we leave.  Let’s press on.”

He noted Pai took off her helmet and clipped it to her belt.  “I can hear better this way,” was her smile to him.  “In fact, this door…”

She pointed to the second on the right.  Graf tried the keycard, but nothing.  Even Pai shook her head.  “Physically blocked.”  So, he pounded on it.

Moments later, it opened no more than two inches.  The terrified eyes of a man looked out at him.

“Decanus Winstead with a team from the imperium.  We’re here to rescue you.”

Wider now, he saw three men and two women.  “Thank God!” the one who had opened it cried.  “Rebels!  It’s hell down below!  Get us out of here!”

“We need to complete our scouting mission,” he replied, pushing the man off of him.  “Then, we’ll get everyone back on our shuttle.”

“Scouting mission!” the older of the two women shouted.  “You’ll be dead!  Then we are!”

Her wild eyes rolled to Pai.  “And you’re taking a woman down there!  They will eat her!”

“Those are our orders, ma’am,” Graf said, taking a step back.  “Resecure the door, and we’ll be back in a bit.”

“DEAD!” was the scream as the door closed.

“Right,” Graf turned to his team.  Six pairs of human eyes and one of Machine gold looked back at his.  “Elevators are obviously out, so stairs.  The floor plan, Pai?” “This way,” she said, taking the lead, but moving, for her, very carefully.