Tevun-Krus #91 - LunarPunk

Eclipsed - A Short Story by @sleepingdraco

Eclipsed

By sleepingdraco

The dust, the fine impossible-to-brush-off silt that coated her skin made it impossible to forget Luna. Luna hated the dust and complained about it constantly. This amused Solaire because it had coated both of them since their birth on the large post-apocalyptic inhabited moon of Vitre. Solaire had honestly never noticed it before and now when she lay alone at night it felt as if it seeped into her skin, tunneling through her veins and into the hole in heart that Luna had left.

During the day, Solaire didn't feel so bad while she scaled the rocky hillsides, retracing the path she and Luna had taken over the past month. Slowly and carefully she dismantled all of the 'water sensors' Luna had set.

Having just scaled a particularly steep hillside to the final device, Solaire sat down to rest. The sun had set and another moon hung low in the horizon. The shadow of Vitre began to creep across this bright lunar orb in the sky. Solaire leaned against a rock to watch and thought about how naive and blinded by love she had been. Her dog Bounder (more of a large local lunar gopher than a true dog) sat beside her. Solaire cut off a slice of dried meat for her companion with the large knife she kept strapped to her thigh. She ruffled his dusty, mangy coat and gave him a small measured sip of water.

Solaire had met Luna not long after her father's air dehumidifier gave out and he had died of dehydration. The Elite, the ruling class who lived on atop the hillsides in relative luxury, issued only one dehumidifier per person to the lower class who had lost the war. They were only designed to last 20 years but her father's had lasted a good deal longer. He refused to take even a drop from Solaire's dehumidifier to wet his lips on his deathbed. Solaire weathered the loss of her father better than she thought she would. When she had first found herself alone she felt his present at night as if he were still awake, reading just around the corner in their small underground bunker.

Her father had worked for the Elite. Everyone had to because there weren't enough nutrients in the mole-like vermin the lower class lived off. Solaire's father had traveled through the barren landscape tending wells that extracted minerals from deep within the crust of the moon. These minerals were traded intergalactically by the Elite and funded their elegant lifestyle. But despite living in their mansions on the hills, they were restless on Vitre, sick of depending on water they pulled from the air. And even in their palatial homes, the dust seeped in. Everyone knew life could not remain forever on Vitre. The only place close enough to move was the moon of Hella, but Vitre's large shadow eclipsed it so often it usually remained coated in ice.

Luna was privy to the Elite's plan, but Solaire didn't know that the day they met at a remote well. Solaire had assumed her father's job and had resigned herself to a solitary life.

Luna was dark-eyed, tall, and sensual. All Solaire had known of sex before meeting Luna was her father's warning never to become a Watcher, a lookout, a lower-class citizen who lived among the Elite, not hired but seduced to slavery with scraps of delicious imported food and drink. The Watchers manned the lookout towers, shooting down fellow countrymen if they tried to break in, even those starving to death. The Watchers lived at the mercy of their owners and were frequently their sex slaves.

Luna taught Solaire to make love, activated erogenous zones Solaire hadn't even known existed. Solaire followed Luna around like a love-sick puppy.

It helped that Luna always seemed to have more rations than her father ever had. She always had a plausible reason – she'd found an abandoned bunker, or a soldier's backpack. These discoveries always happened when Solaire was tending to a well or asleep in Luna's bed.

One night after passing out from love making, Solaire woke to the sound of Luna dressing in the dark. She lay still until Luna left and then quietly rose and followed her. Not far from her home Luna met a man, an Elite.

"Your seat on a transporter has been secured," she heard him say. "Will the detonators be ready on time?"

"Absolutely," whispered Luna, her voice giddy with excitement. "Before the next eclipse of Hella is complete, Vitre will blow."

"We can't wait any longer," said the man. "We will have just enough fuel left for the short journey to Hella."

Solaire's heart lurched. She couldn't breathe. Slowly and silently she slunk back to Luna's bed and pretended to be asleep when she returned.

The eclipse across Vitre was now a quarter of the way across. Bounder curled up beside Solaire and went to sleep. A cool breeze crept up the hillside. She put her pack behind her head and reclined, marveling at the stars for a few minutes. They had never looked so bright before. Solarie closed her eyes.

The rumble of rockets launching roiled through the barren canyons below them. Soon twenty spacecraft lit the darkening skies. The Elite had left Vitre. Solaire watched them disappear into the night sky until one by one they extinguished like sparks.

She smiled to herself and for the first time since meeting Luna she felt her father's presence again as if he sat just a few meters away. Solaire drifted off into a dreamless slumber.

Bounder licked her face as the first morning rays pierced the valley before them. Solaire rolled over, stiff from sleeping on the ground and pushed herself to her feet. She navigated the scree, climbing the steep hillside to a now uninhabited mansion at the top. No Watcher manned the machine guns of the lookout tower. She easily climbed the fence and found an opening to let Bounder in after her.

They wandered through deserted halls, sweltering hot with no fuel for the air conditioning. Solaire came upon a massive store of water in gallon-sized heavy black plastic bags. She took out her knife and sliced into one. Warm liquid soaked her hand and wrist just like the night she had plunged the knife into Luna's neck.