02/11/2022 Snippet, THE THING IN THE AIRLOCK.

Backstory!

“Yeah. The first part, it was easy to figure out. Those were her notes on the embezzlers. Those people, she used their names and IDNs. Made it really easy to look them up. But everybody’s names in the second half were color-coded. Mr. Green, Ms. Red, stuff like that. No other ways to identify them.”

“Why on Earth would she do that?” Tobias scratched his chin. At some point the base would run out of depilatory, and that would be an annoying day. “Maybe some of the names in the first part match up with the ones in the second?”

“I thought of that, Commander. But there were only five names in the first half, and they’re all listed as being dead.” Domaine hesitated. “Their department was in Piper Dome.”

“Ah.” Piper Dome (formerly the main administrative hub of Heinlein Station) somehow had its doors sealed and its life support system turned down to one-fourth pressure on the first day of the apocalypse. Tobias was well aware by now that panicky anoxia was not the worst way to die on the moon, but it had not been an auspicious omen to mark the start of his tenure as Acting Commandant.