19 June 2016 (ROUGHEX on Luna)
During a fleet manoeuvre exercise, two spacecraft collide. Piper and Whitfield are in sickbay for some weeks; Isomäki and Quaid are banged up, but less seriously. Fleming, who was flag on the exercise and thus responsible even if she’s not responsible, takes it hard. There’s extensive digging into who said what to whom; eventually it’s traced back to a number of fairly innocent mistakes, which just happened to align with each other, and no formal blame is assigned.
Those four miss the Rough Terrain Exercise on Luna, however. It’s a two-hundred mile traverse across the Mare Humorum and nearby areas, expected to take around two days; the team’s dropped off with supplies, maps, and minimal navigation gear, with an instruction to maintain external comms silence except in medical emergency. They come to broad agreement on the right direction to go in, Morrish taking the lead, and set off.
The first exercise point is a ravine: the exercise orders state that a light bridge is to be constructed under the guidance of an umpire, but there’s no sign of the umpire. The team looks around a bit, and Gretton spots a pile of débris that turns out to be plastic beams, dropped at great speed, that might well be bridge-construction material. Nobody really has bridge-building skills, but they start to make plans while waiting for the umpire.
The team gets the beams (and binding cables) inventoried, and Keene plans a slingshot. At the bottom of the stack of beams is the remains of a radio homing beacon, damaged by having had a bunch of beams dropped on it; Fleming tries to fix it up, but doesn’t have any luck. They discuss whether it’s more appropriate to continue waiting for the umpire, or continue with the task with their suits recording what they do; eventually they come down on the side of “showing a bit of initiative” (on the basis that they are getting officer training) over “strictly following orders”, and having waited for an hour attempt to put their various bridge-building schemes into practice. Gretton’s comes out best, treating it as a short wide spaceship with two widely-spaced engines, and the structure holds up as they cross. They stow the structure on the other side, but don’t dismantle it.
As the team continues into rougher terrain, they receive a flash message: “simulated orbital bombardment incoming, observe and report”. Several of the team spot spacecraft in a plausible sort of position for a munitions drop, as well as a sudden chaff bloom; some minutes later there are ground tremors, though no flashes.
“Do I want to go and look at the unexploded ordnance? Let me think.” – Morrish
Out of the mountainous area, and down onto the smoother terrain of the mare, the team finds a group of cyclopean ruins with bizarre angles, made out of some kind of black stone – and about half a mile off, a cluster of simulated orbital bombardment munitions. It’s assumed that these ruins are more simulation, rather than something mysteriously un-spotted over several hundred years of lunar habitation.
Several more hours across the dust, and the team spies a small crashed spacecraft. It’s made grazing contact with the lunar surface, some time in the last hundred years or so judging by the clean gouge it’s left in the surface, but it’s emitting a little heat so it’s probably more recent than that. On closer approach, the team spies two figures in pressure suits, apparently arguing with each other.
Gretton spots the ship’s markings: Stella Stellarum, British civil registry. It was probably quite a neat little spacecraft before the crash. Keene and Gretton advance; the two figures are gesturing at each other, and the short-range radio traffic between them includes “I told you not to override the autopilot”. When the cadets introduce themselves, they sort themselves out and look for “the banner”: “Lunar Preservation Society - Navy Off the Moon - Luna should be Kept Pristine”.
Keene offers assistance, but the shorter of the two women (Adrienne) is more interested in ranting about this precious untouched environment (and not at all about the wide trail of wreckage from the spacecraft). She does mention that they’ve pulled their distress beacon, though the team can’t pick it up (“Typical, I knew we shouldn’t have bought that ship from your brother-in-law”). Fleming takes a look and decides that the beacon would be working better if it hadn’t been landed on and gradually scraped off across the surface of the moon.
Keene asks about air supply: the suits have around five hours each. They consider taking the pair with them another two hours or so to the bivouac point (“The moon is supposed to be free for all!” “Shut up, Adrienne.”), but considering the quality of the basic ship-suits they’re wearing Findlay calls in an emergency instead. An evacuation shuttle is dispatched; while they wait, Adrienne continues in denial, while Marisol is more practical in terms of keeping them both alive. By the time rescue arrives, they’re staying in the shadow of the ship to avoid overheating their suits; they’re loaded aboard the shuttle for transfer to one of the orbital stations. The team moves on to the bivouac point, finding a small passive marker and setting up their pressurised shelter, then rotating watches during the “night”. Stark ends up drawing the long straw for the full night’s sleep, and being in charge next day.
The rest passes uneventfully, and everyone’s well rested for the next day’s timed march; Fleming lags behind a little, but is keeping up. At the pickup point there’s a note: “The pickup point has been moved. I’m sure you can work out where it is.” (On the other side: “Congratulations, you looked at the other side of the note.”) Gretton spies some disturbed ground around two hundred yards away, and Fleming picks up a very weak radio signal in the same place. Another note there reads “Revised pickup point – hope you didn’t go all the way back to the start to find this”. About ten minutes after the team presses the button, a shuttle comes in to land and end the exercise (Slade is looking very happy, while her co-pilot’s looking annoyed; apparently he bet the team wouldn’t find the second marker for another two days).
It turns out that the umpire has got himself lost, though he’s eventually found with a visual search of the surface. Marisol and Adrienne Yang appear to be genuine nuisances, though Marisol has sent a letter of thanks.
There’s some discussion of the postings people are going to apply for following the cadet cruise: Morrish is going for warfare officer in the colonial fleets, both Keene and Findlay favour colonial postings, while Gretton favours engineering or navigation on a deep survey post.
Morrish gets an acknowledgement of receipt of the bottle he sent – though no further communication.