Stranded on a Storm Moon Read online

  JUPITER’S GLORY

  BOOK 6:

  STRANDED ON A STORM MOON

  Adam Carter

  Copyright 2019, © Adam Carter. All rights reserved. No content may be reproduced without permission of the author.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dinner was going well. That was good, since it was pretty much the only thing that was. Gordon Hawthorn had been many things over the years – engineer, husband, happy – but all of that was gone now. If there was, however, one thing he would never lose it was his mastery over the culinary arts. The wok sizzled with just the right amount of oil, the roots were browning nicely and the leaves were shrivelling under the heat. He added some diced rat, pretended it was beef, and stirred vigorously.

  He hummed a merry tune while he worked, although there was nothing more to do with the dinner but leave it to simmer. The more he touched it now, the more he would ruin it, so he pottered about the log cabin, tidying up and dusting the furniture. Dusting was one of those chores which never quite ended, but Hawthorn did it anyway. He no longer even complained about it, for this was life and there was no changing it now.

  The cabin was fairly small, but then so was the world. It consisted of two rooms: a kitchen-cum-bedroom-cum-everything else and a walk-in cupboard. There was little furniture, but there was a roof and that was all he cared about. He had no idea who had built the cabin, but whoever it was no longer used it. Perhaps they went home, perhaps they died, he did not much care. Finding the cabin at all was the reason he was still alive and he was not about to ask too many questions.

  Returning to the kitchen-end of the room, he removed the wok from the heat and tipped the contents onto three plates. The stove was formed of a pile of rocks with a hollow in which he shoved some kindling and whatever wood he could find. Since there was no wood on the world, he had been forced to use the floorboards, which was not ideal, and made him cook less often. Again, he sometimes wondered about the cabin’s former occupants, but it seemed whoever had built the place had brought their own wood. The cabin had provided several other items, including candles which afforded at least a little light. It was a far cry from what he was used to, but it could have been a lot worse.

  The door opened to admit the howling wind. A tall figure huddled in thick furs stumbled into the room, carrying what looked like a couple of hares. Hawthorn looked again and saw they were just rats. It did not matter what world people went to, there would always be rats.

  “Honey,” the figure said as she shrugged off the heavy furs, “I’m home.”

  “Put your feet up, Iris, I have dinner all ready. I’ll fetch some hot water and massage your feet afterwards.”

  “Stop trying so hard,” she said, collapsing into a chair at the dining table. Iris Arowana was a woman in her late twenties. She had dark eyes, dark hair and always wore dark clothes. At that moment she was exhausted and all but collapsed at the table. Hawthorn was a little older, his former job as an engineer and mechanic having bulked him up and honed his muscles. He had never in his worst nightmares imagined he would become a homemaker.

  Bringing two of the plates to the table, he set them down and took the seat opposite. “How was work?” he asked as he started on his dinner.

  “Bad. Got worse when I caught those rats. What are we having?”

  “Beef.”

  “Really?”

  “No. Rat.”

  “Oh.” She pushed the meat and leaves around her plate with a fork. “Couldn’t we at least have it in a stew? I couldn’t taste it so much when it was in a stew.”

  “We had stew yesterday. And stew takes water. We don’t have a whole lot of water.”

  “What are we down to?”

  “Let’s just say it would be nice if you could find some out there.”

  “There’s nothing out there to find.” Arowana continued to push her food around and eventually took a bite of the rat meat. She pulled a face. “We’re out of seasoning, too?”

  “We only have what we found in this cabin, remember. We were lucky there were barrels of water left behind. Seasoning isn’t our main concern.”

  “I can’t find any trace of whoever built this place.”

  “You won’t,” Hawthorn said. “I pulled up another floorboard today for the fire. Found this underneath.” He passed something across the table and Arowana took it. It was a newspaper dated twenty years earlier. “There were a couple of other bits under that floorboard,” Hawthorn said. “A novel, a pen, a notepad …”

  “I’ll take the pen and notepad.”

  “You’re not going to comment on the date?”

  “I noticed it, yes. So, whoever built this cabin was here twenty years ago and used a loose floorboard to bury their personal effects. Yes, I agree they’re long dead, and yes, I agree it doesn’t matter who put this place here because it saved our lives. Getting upset about it isn’t going to help any.”

  “Iris, if this cabin’s been abandoned for twenty years, it means we’re probably going to die here, too.”

  “For one thing, we know whoever built this cabin arrived twenty years ago, not that they died at that time. And for another, we’ve been here three months and we’re still alive. That has to count for something.”

  “Yeah, it means we’re running out of water. We have to face facts. There’s nothing out there to find. This entire world is too small to find anything new.”

  “So you want to give up? You want to be Lawrence Oates and leave me behind with the rest of the water?”

  “Why do you have to do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “Argue with everything I say.”

  “You’re the one who’s arguing. I’m just saying I prefer stew.”

  “Just eat the rat.”

  Arowana forked another piece of meat and chewed it angrily.

  “Good,” Hawthorn said. “We’re getting along again.”

  “Gordon, what do you use for oil?”

  “Hmm?”

  “In the wok. What do you use for oil?”

  “You really don’t want to know.”

  Arowana finished her meal in silence. Neither of them liked the food, but they both knew if they did not eat, they would die all the sooner.

  “Make any new friends today at work?” Hawthorn asked as he cleared the table.

  “I found a trench.”

  “A trench?”

  “I nearly fell down it. The storm’s still raging out there and visibility’s down to almost zero. Couldn’t see how far down it went, but the fall probably would have broken my neck.”

  “Who’d have thought you would have found a trench after three months of nothing? Natural?”

  “Of course it’s natural. I set a marker close to it so I won’t fall down next time I’m that way. Still, if I walk in the opposite direction, the marker will be on the other side of the trench.”

  That was the problem with the world they were on. Valetudo was a small moon of Jupiter, the smallest Hawthorn had ever visited. It was only one kilometre in diameter, which meant they could travel around the entire moon in no time at all. The terrible storms outside stopped them from doing so, however, for even a ten-metre stroll would sometimes take twenty minutes. Valetudo was an odd world which had been terraformed but abandoned because the process had not worked too well. There were a few animals and plants on the moon, but even those were scarce. There was no way the place could be of any use to human settlers. It was not simply the size which was an issue, but the way the terraforming process had not quite worked. It had made the world a living hell and no one was interested in claiming it.

  Hawthorn had theorised that the cabin may have been built by someone who was determined to make a go of living on Valetudo. Clear
ly, that had not worked out too well for them.

  It was all well and good to claim he did not care who put the cabin there, but after three months with nothing else to keep him occupied, he was beginning to go spare.

  “I got caught in the rain, too,” Arowana said offhandedly.

  “The rain? Iris, you should have said.” Hawthorn moved across to the furs she had discarded. He picked them up carefully and found rainwater had pooled beneath them. He hung up the coat in its usual place. Beneath the coat-hook, the floorboards had been eaten away by the steady dripping from the garment. The rain on Valetudo was acidic, but not immediately lethal. One could walk around in it for a while and be fine, just so long as it didn’t get into the eyes.

  “Any luck yet with purifying the rain?” Arowana asked.

  “Nope. Still nowhere close to wanting to drink it.”

  “Shame. Anyway, I’m going to sleep. Thanks for dinner.”

  “I’ll try to be quiet.”

  Arowana moved over to one side of the room and lay down. There were a lot of useful things in the cabin, a number of blankets among them. As pushed for space as they were, it was difficult for the two of them to sleep far enough apart, but they managed it. There had been a time when they had been lovers, but that seemed like an eternity ago. It was, he reflected sourly as he cleaned the plates away, what had got them into this mess to begin with.

  Taking up the third plate he had filled from the wok, Hawthorn walked over to the second room in the cabin – the walk-in cupboard. Opening the door, he found it dark within, for there were no candles in the walk-in cupboard. There were a lot of cans, some crates and all the barrels of water. Hawthorn would have called it a pantry, except that it was of the same temperature as the rest of the cabin.

  There was something else in the cupboard, and she rocked slowly back and forth, her knees brought up to her chin, her arms wrapped about her legs.

  Bethany Hart was a young woman with long red hair and startling hazel eyes. Her body was bronzed through her constant work at a forge she had built, which had at the same time built her muscles and kept her incredibly fit. She wore the same grubby work trousers and dirty white T-shirt she had come to the cabin with, for Hawthorn had never managed to get her to change. This of course meant she didn’t smell too good, but with limited water, none of them had bathed in three months so she was not the only one. With the mind of a genius, Bethany Hart had both beauty and brains. She could have achieved so much with her life.

  Instead, at nineteen years old, she had been abducted and tormented both physically and emotionally for two years. Hawthorn had been trying to bring her mind back to the real world but instead she threw herself into her work and hammered away at her forge.

  She had been without her forge for the past three months. Unable to cope, she had sat in the cupboard, hardly talking to either of her companions.

  “I brought dinner,” Hawthorn said, placing the plate on the floor beside her.

  Hart did not reply.

  “How was your day?” he asked jovially.

  Again, nothing.

  He sat nearby and leaned his back against the wall. “Don’t know about you, Beth, but I’m getting fed up with this world. Valetudo. Roman name for the Greek goddess Hygieia. Goddess of health and hygiene, right? One of fate’s little ironies.”

  Still nothing.

  “Iris found a trench today. It’s funny, even if it led to the centre of the moon, it’d still only go down half a kilometre. This must be the smallest moon anyone ever tried to terraform, Beth. I can’t begin to think why anyone would have tried it.” He looked at her and wished she would say something. Sometimes she did, when she wasn’t so terrified. She had good days, but this was one of her bad ones. Even on the good days, she was hardly sociable, although most days she did not register he was there. If he left the food, he knew she would eat it, because it was always gone when he came back for her plate. She knew she had to survive, which was likely how she had got through her two years of torment at the hands of the pirates who had kidnapped her.

  Hawthorn was glad he had no idea what that was like.

  “Iris set up another marker today,” Hawthorn said, “so that’s good news. You built any more for us yet?”

  Nothing.

  “That’s all right,” Hawthorn said, “I’ll construct the next one. You concentrate on coping with all this. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Again.”

  She did not so much as blink.

  “Anyway,” Hawthorn said, rising, “in your own time, Beth. And if you want to talk, you know where to find me.”

  He left her alone and closed the door after him. He felt terrible for having dragged her to Valetudo with them, but there was nothing he could do about it. Thanks to him, two of the people he cared about most could end up being killed. He was only grateful that if they died, he would go with them.

  Taking up a blanket, he lay on the floorboards as far from Arowana as he could and settled down to sleep. Things would look better in the morning. No, he amended, things would look exactly the same in the morning.

  CHAPTER TWO

  She could not see, could not hear, and every time she opened her mouth it filled with grit; but Arowana had a job to do and she was getting on with it. The winds of Valetudo were harsh and unforgiving, her skin was perpetually sore and her tongue was always dry. Hawthorn’s foot massages did help, truth be told, although that had started out as a joke. After three months, it was one of the only things Arowana had to look forward to after a hard day’s work.

  The wind did not so much as howl around her as wail hysterically. Even wearing gloves, she could barely feel the metal beneath her hands, but she could not afford to sit out the storm. Sometimes they were not as bad – today, the storm was one of the worst she had ever known – but if she did not check all the markers every day, she was liable to miss something. When they had first arrived on Valetudo, they had discussed what their roles would be. With Hart on the verge of a complete mental breakdown, they had decided it would be best for Hawthorn to stay with her. If he was out in the storm, dealing with the markers, his mind would be elsewhere and he was liable to get into trouble. That was not to say he had not taken a few shifts himself, for such times had given Arowana a break. One time she had fallen ill and was bedridden for a week, during which he had not only taken over the work, but had nursed her back to health and continued with Hart’s recovery.

  He was, she had to admit, an amazing man.

  But they were not together any more, not officially anyway. They had met under arduous circumstances and were forced to remain together because of Arowana. They had been together for five months on board their sword-ship, travelling the Jupiter system and righting wrongs, or just ignoring them if they didn’t feel up to it. After five months, Arowana had to question why they were together, whether their relationship would work, and whether it was something either of them wanted or just something they felt obliged to continue. A further three months on Valetudo and she was still avoiding the issue.

  The wind forced the metal pole back into her face and Arowana realised she had stopped concentrating.

  The markers were all the same: long metal poles which she had to stick in the ground so they pointed towards the sky. They received signals from passing spacecraft and could relay any communications she and Hawthorn wanted to send. The storm tended to knock them over or damage them by constantly blasting them with sand, so Arowana had to check each marker at least once a day. She liked to cycle through each of them four times each day, but when the storm was terrible she often struggled to get through them even once.

  Forcing the marker back against the storm, Arowana slotted it back in its place and it stopped moving. There would have been an electronic click and buzz from the marker’s base to say it had been accepted into its mooring, but over the storm she could not hear it, or even see the flashing green lights.

  Stepping back from the marker, she figured it would probably stand for anot
her few hours, but knew by the time she came back to it, the thing would be on the ground.

  Not for the first time, she wondered why they were bothering. Thus far they had received no signals, which meant no one had passed them by. Valetudo was not on any of the major trading routes and no one ever went to the moon itself, so there was little chance anyone would pass them by in the next few years. Space was a big place, and within the Jupiter system alone, it was not likely for a spacecraft to just happen upon people who were stranded.

  Stranded.

  They would not have been stranded at all if not for Wraith. She wanted to believe his intentions had been good, but she was never quite certain with Wraith. If he was there on Valetudo with them, she would have shoved him naked into the storm to see how he liked it. Actually, she corrected, if Wraith appeared on Valetudo she would forgive him everything and hug him so fiercely she would break his spine.

  A much more fitting end for the man.

  Moving away from the marker, Arowana knew that if it had fallen down already she would not have heard it, nor would she have been able to see it. Instead of worrying about that, she made her way back to the nearest dugout and dropped inside. As with everything else in the storm, the dugouts were impossible to see, but through survival instinct alone had Arowana gained an uncanny ability to know precisely where the closest one could be found.

  As havens went, it was not much, but it served its purpose. Each dugout was nothing more than a grave-like impression in the rock and sand of Valetudo, with a rock overhang preventing the harsh battering wind from reaching her. Nor was there much room in the dugout, but as Arowana settled down for a rest, she found herself relaxing. The howl of the wind was overhead and therefore not something to worry about, and she was able to see now. The temperature was warmer in the dugout and she was able to remove her gloves to rub her hands together in order to restore circulation. She would not remove her warm furs, but did raise her thick goggles so she could see what she was doing.