Backup

A story

Photo by Matheus Frade on Unsplash

Luna’s sixteenth birthday went, mostly, exactly as planned. Her friends had decorated her locker with balloons, streamers, and even a few real flowers, a tradition someone had started in Habitat 19 that had spread through the whole colony like a solar storm. After school, she and her twin sister, Aster, swung by Command to pick up their learner’s permits so they could finally drive the family rover. They ate cake. They opened presents. Aster trounced her at every single one of their new video games. All the things Luna had expected.

What she hadn’t expected was to be woken that night by a gloved hand clamped over her mouth.

Her arm made a movement between a flail and a punch, but it got the job done: the assailant stumbled back with a sharp “ow!” It took Luna’s brain a second to come fully online, but when it did, she recognized the voice.

“Aster? What on new earth?”

“Shhh! They’ll hear you!”

“Who?”

“Our parents, idiot. C’mon, we need to get going.”

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the bunkroom, Luna realized what Aster was wearing. “Why do you have your surface suit on?” She already dreaded the answer.

Aster’s grin gleamed beneath the orange emergency lighting. “We’re doing the Run.”

The Run, like most dumb things their classmates did for fun, had begun as a viral video challenge. But unlike rover wheelies and chugging mushroom-based biofuel, this one had stuck around, becoming something of a rite of passage. The idea was simple enough: trek to the summit of Vesuvius Mons. The problem: to get there, you had to sneak up to the planet’s surface and cross five kilometers of canyon, dodging dust devils, flash floods, lightning sand, poisonous glow-geckos, and whatever other extraterrestrial dangers their scientists hadn’t yet catalogued. Oh, and get back underground before the skin-melting, radiation-blasting local star peeked above the horizon.

“Are you crazy?” After sixteen years, the question had become mostly rhetorical.

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Loony?” She tossed Luna a suit.

“Safely tucked in bed. And don’t call me that.”

“We’re burning moonlight. Up and at ’em!”

Aster waltzed out of the room. Luna cursed and scrambled after her, tugging on the jumpsuit, boots, gloves, and helmet as she walked.

“I can’t believe you’re risking your neck for a stupid challenge.”

“I’m risking our necks. And the Run is a time-honored tradition.”

“If you can call something posted on the Wormhole barely a year ago ‘time-honored.’ If someone dared you to eat soap, would you?”

“Honestly? Probably.” Aster turned and walked backwards down the hall. “But if you’re too scared, I can go alone,” she goaded with a smirk.

“Or I can wake Mom and Dad.” They both knew it was an empty threat. While Luna tried to be a voice of reason, she was no snitch.

At the front door, Luna reached for the radios, but Aster stopped her. “No comms. It’s part of the challenge.”

“I’m not going surface-side without a way to call for backup.”

“Them’s the rules. Wait.” She rummaged through the equipment locker. “Here you go.” She had a twinkle in her eye as she handed Luna a small silver object.

“A whistle?”

“Hikers on Earth used them for emergencies. Consider it your emotional support whistle.”

Aster ignored the shove her jest earned, eased the door open, and slipped into the corridor. Luna pocketed the whistle, then bade a silent farewell to their safe, comfortable, climate-controlled bunker.

Aster had picked the perfect time. It was late enough that Habitat 12’s grand atrium was deserted as residents were either in bed, working the night shift, or inside the restaurants and bars, but not so late the sunrise would catch them. They almost made it to the hatch of one of the ladders leading aboveground when—

“Hold it.”

They froze as a security guard rolled up behind them in a cart. He hefted himself out and looked them up and down once. Two teenagers in surface suits standing next to a hatch. There was no use pretending they were only strolling to the café.

“Minors aren’t allowed outside without authorization.”

“You know, technically, we’ve orbited the sun thirty-seven times,” Aster said. “Concepts like ‘birthdays’ and ‘age’ are terrestrial-normative bull.”

He seemed unimpressed. “Let’s go, ladies.” He jerked a thumb toward the back of the cart and reached for the radio clipped to his chest.

“We have permission,” Luna blurted out.

The guard raised an eyebrow.

“Ms. Waller gave us special permission for an astronomy project.” Her heart pounded as the man narrowed his eyes skeptically. “She said she cleared it with Command. Maybe if you check . . .”

Doubt flickered in his eyes. He walked back and opened the laptop mounted on the cart’s dashboard. The twins exchanged a look.

And ran.

They turned a dozen blind corners and slowed only when they could no longer hear the guard’s angry shouts. Aster rested her hands on her knees, panting. Then she laughed.

“It’s not funny.” But when her sister cackled louder, Luna chuckled too.

“Come on, I think we’re close to another hatch.”

This one was mercifully unguarded. They climbed the three-story ladder, emerged into the airlock, and sealed the hatch behind them. Aster took out a camera and turned it on selfie mode.

“What’s up? This is Disaster, here with my sister, Loony.”

“Luna,” she muttered.

“And we’re doing the Run. Wish us luck!” She blew the camera a kiss and shut it off.

“Can’t the authorities see these videos on the Wormhole?”

“It’s a teens-only channel.”

“You really think that’s private?”

Aster shrugged. “No one’s gotten in trouble yet.”

Luna couldn’t argue with her logic. They opened the final hatch. Even hours after sunset, a blast of hot air hit her like an oven. She followed Aster outside and inhaled deeply, smelling cactus and soil. The atmosphere was too toxic to forgo a mask for long, but she couldn’t help snatching the opportunity to breathe something besides the stale filtered air of the habitat.

She closed her helmet’s facemask and gazed up, almost staggering beneath the weight of the wide starry sky. One of the planet’s two moons hung high overhead. Although students took biannual field trips aboveground, the sight never got old.

“Ready?”

Luna hesitated. Were they actually doing this? Up to this point it hadn’t seemed real, just another harebrained scheme that would fizzle out before they faced anything remotely dangerous. That delusion rapidly evaporated in the darkness. It wasn’t too late to turn back.

But a familiar feeling hit her. It was the same feeling as when their parents’ friends gushed about Aster’s prospects at the Academy then added, “So has Luna been thinking about her future too?” It was the same feeling as when her longtime crush in seventh grade said, “You’re Aster’s sister, right?” and wondered if she’d introduce him. She’d always played second fiddle. Plan B. The backup. The spare. What would happen if Aster completed this challenge and she didn’t? How long would it take to escape that particular shadow?

“Let’s do this.”

The first leg of their journey was smooth, even pleasant. The suits kept them cool, and scrambling up and down the luminescent blue and black rocks of the canyon made Luna feel like one of the ancient astronauts who first explored and colonized the galaxy, not a high school girl whose knowledge of her own planet mostly came from textbooks.

“Wait here,” Aster said. “I’m going to the top of that bluff to look around.”

“Do you really think we should . . .” She’d already bounded off. “. . . split up?” Luna finished.

Luna continued along the path they’d been following. She’d gotten into a pretty good rhythm. Jump to a boulder, walk across. Jump to the next boulder, walk across. Jump to a boulder—

ZAP!

A mechanical voice sounded in her helmet. Warning: Battery at 30%.

She stood on one foot, stock-still. She’d stepped on lightning sand. One more contact with the static-charged sand would deplete her battery completely, leaving her no protection from the burning, toxic air.

“Aster!” she yelled.

Aster didn’t come.

Panic flooded her body. Then she remembered the whistle.

She fumbled for it, careful not to lose her balance, removed her facemask, and blew.

It didn’t make a sound.

She didn’t know how long she stood there, feeling every shift of sand beneath her boot, but it felt like hours. She almost cried in relief when her sister finally reappeared.

“Stay back! It’s lightning sand.”

Aster’s eyes grew wide, but she sprang into action. She chucked several small rocks into the sand, forming a footpath for Luna to safely extricate herself.

“Your stupid whistle doesn’t work,” she spat as soon as both feet were on solid ground.

“Thanks for saving my life, Aster,” Aster said in a mocking high pitch. But she frowned and took the whistle to examine it. “Oh. It’s a dog whistle.”

“What?”

“Ultrasonic. Some flora and fauna react to the sound, so they use these in scientific experiments.”

“It’s a fat nothing is what it is.”

Aster looked up and let out a small gasp. “I wouldn’t say it does nothing.”

She was staring at something over Luna’s shoulder. Luna spun around.

Several creatures had scuttled up behind them, clacking their claws. They looked not unlike hermit crabs, if hermit crabs grew to the size of wolfhounds.

“Do you think they’d chase—” Luna began, but Aster had already taken off at a sprint. Luna had no choice but to follow.

“Whew. That was close,” Aster said breezily when they reached the top of the bluff.

“You idiot! Why did you run?”

“We got away, didn’t we?”

“You never listen to me!” Luna fumed. “You rush headlong into danger without stopping to think, without a backup plan.”

“Oh, right. We should do things your way and draft a risk assessment with diagrams and annotations before ever leaving the bunker. Maybe by the time we turn sixty-six, we can finally venture out and have some fun.” She spun on her heel and stomped off. Luna followed, ready to continue arguing, but didn’t get the chance. Aster stepped on a thin sheet of rock, and with a loud crack it gave way and she plummeted into a crevasse with a startled scream. Luna tried to grab her but lost her own footing and slid in a more controlled descent.

“Aster!” She rushed to where her twin lay motionless.

“My ankle,” she whined.

Luna crouched and checked the panel on the wrist of Aster’s suit to make sure it was undamaged, then ran a full bio-scan. “It says nothing’s broken. Probably a sprain.”

Aster’s groan suggested this was little comfort.

Luna flipped on her helmet’s flashlight and took in their surroundings. Rocks, more rocks, and a pile of discarded shells, but no way out.

“It looks like those crab things come down here too.”

“Terrific. Wonderful. Love that for us.”

“I told you we should’ve brought a radio for backup.” Luna struggled to keep the fear out of her tone.

Aster’s next words barely rose above a whisper. “You are my backup.”

Luna stared, wide-eyed, as her sister’s eyes fluttered shut.

Then she set her jaw, took a deep breath, and rose to her feet.

She tried to scale the steep canyon wall and slipped several times before giving up. “OK, new plan.” Her eyes darted everywhere. “The crabs come here,” she murmured.

“Yes, we’ve established that terrifying fact.”

“Aster, do you trust me?”

“Not at all.”

“Sounds about right.”

Luna once again blew the whistle.

Right on cue, a couple of agitated crabs came scurrying through the gulch. She stayed frozen, praying they weren’t vicious flesh-eating crabs, but they raced past the two humans.

Luna followed them, treading softly. At the end of the gulch, they turned aside and crawled up a gentle slope that had been camouflaged in the shadow of the wall.

“I found our way out.”

Luna helped Aster to her feet, and together they stumbled up the path. They reached the top as the sky was changing from pitch-black to dark blue. “So much for the Run,” Aster sighed.

Vesuvius Mons towered over them, so close they could almost touch it.

“We still have time,” Luna said.

If Aster looked shocked when she plunged into a fissure, it was nothing to how she looked now.

“You still want to finish?”

“We’ve come this far. It might be more of a Limp than a Run, but I’ll be damned if we don’t see this through.”

Aster grinned brighter than the moon overhead.

The final two kilometers were grueling, but they made it with time to spare for the return journey. Luna took out the camera and pressed record. “This is Loony.”

“And I’m Disaster.”

“And we’ve done the Run!” they said together.

They shut it off and exchanged a smile.

The second quarter-phase moon was now rising as the first set. Their disparate phases would soon be out of sync, but for now, they mirrored one another, two halves of a whole.

The girls began the trek back home, Luna in the lead.

---

Margaret Bush lives in Houston, Texas, where she works as a technical editor. Besides writing fiction and poetry, her hobbies include reading, playing board games, pretending she knows how to garden, and silently correcting people's grammar. Her hobbies do not include writing personal bios, but here we are.