Artemis

The screen showed a satellite picture of our local area in Mare Tranquillitatis. Artemis was a tiny blob of circles brilliantly illuminated by sunlight.

“We’re in the lowlands,” Trond said. “There’s plenty of olivine and ilmenite around. Those are great for making iron, but if you want aluminum you need anorthite. It’s rare around here, but the highlands are littered with it. So Sanchez’s harvesters operate in the Moltke Foothills three kilometers south of here.”

He turned on his Gizmo’s laser pointer and pointed to a region south of the city.

“The harvesters are almost completely autonomous. They only call home for instructions if they get stuck or can’t figure out what to do next. They’re an essential part of the company’s operations, they’re all in one place, and they’re completely unguarded.”

“Okay,” I said. “I see where this is going….”

“Yeah,” he said. “I want you to sabotage those harvesters. Take them all out at once. And make sure they can’t be repaired. It’ll take Sanchez at least a month to get replacements shipped here from Earth. During that time they’ll get no new anorthite. No anorthite means no oxygen production. No oxygen production means I win.”

I folded my arms. “I don’t know if this works for me, Trond. Sanchez has like a hundred employees, right? I don’t want to put people out of their jobs.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Trond said. “I want to buy the company, not ruin it. Everyone will keep their jobs.”

“Okay, but I don’t know anything about harvesters.”

His fingers flew over the controls and the display changed to a picture of a harvester. It looked like something from a catalogue. “The harvesters are Toyota Tsukurumas. I have four of them in my warehouse, ready for use.”

Whoa. Okay. Something the size of a harvester would have to be shipped in chunks and assembled here. Plus, it would have to be done in secret so no one asked awkward questions like “Say, Trond, why is your company assembling harvesters?” He’d had his people on this for a long time.

He must have seen the gears turning in my head. “Yeah. I’ve been working on this for a while. Anyway, you’re welcome to examine my harvesters for as long as you want. All in secrecy of course.”

I got out of my chair and walked up to the screen. Man, that harvester was a beast. “So it’s my problem to find a weakness in these things? I’m not an engineer.”

“They’re automated vehicles without any security features at all. You’re clever, I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

“Okay, but what happens if I get caught?”

“Jazz who?” he said theatrically. “The delivery girl? I barely know her. Why would she do such a thing? I’m baffled.”

“I see how it is.”

“I’m just being honest. Part of the deal is your word that you won’t drag me down if you get caught.”

“Why me? What makes you think I can even pull this off?”

“Jazz, I’m a businessman,” he said. “My whole job is exploiting underutilized resources. And you are a massively underutilized resource.”

He stood and walked to the credenza for another pour. “You could have been anything. Didn’t want to be a welder? No problem. You could have been a scientist. An engineer. A politician. A business leader. Anything. But you’re a porter.”

I scowled.

“I’m not judging,” he said. “Just analyzing. You’re really smart and you want money. I need someone who’s really smart and I have money. Are you interested?”

“Hmm…” I took a moment to think. Was it even possible?

I’d need access to an airlock. There are only four airlocks in the whole city and you have be a licensed EVA Guild member to use them—their control panels check your Gizmo.

Then there was the three-kilometer trip to the Moltke Foothills. How would I do that? Walk? And once I was there, what would I do? The harvesters would have cameras and film everything in a 360-degree arc for navigational purposes. How would I sabotage them without getting spotted?

Also, I smelled bullshit in the air. Trond had been squirrely and evasive about his reasons for getting into aluminum. But it was my ass on the line if something went wrong, not his. And if I got caught I’d get exiled to Earth. I probably couldn’t stand up on Earth, let alone live there. I’d been in lunar gravity since I was six.

No. I was a smuggler, not a saboteur. And something smelled off about the whole thing.

“I’m sorry, but this isn’t my thing,” I said. “You’ll have to find someone else.”

“I’ll give you a million slugs.”