Chapter 9 - Footprints in Grey Dust

When dusk settled over Cape Canaveral, the Atlantic appeared to swallow the sun whole, setting the launch facility ablaze in copper glow. Charlie stood on the observation gantry above Pad 39C, helmet tucked beneath one arm, pressure suit humming faint diagnostics against his ribs. Inside him the five heart-nodes thrummed steady as metronomes—calming yet urgent, as though the planet itself were nudging him upward. Beyond the pad, Artemis XII's dual-stage heavy-lift rocket rose 110 meters, floodlights turning its white skin into mirrored dawn. On its payload fairing shone a fresh insignia: a stylised five-rune medallion crowned by a crescent moon.

Richard tightened Charlie's suit seals. "First time I've suited my son for orbit," he said, voice pitched between pride and paternal twitch. "Let's make it memorable and not fatal."

Charlie smirked despite nerves. "Memorable I can promise."

NASA's briefing room radiated a carnival of accents—JPL engineers, ESA payload specialists, CNSA orbital navigators, plus the new wildcard contingent: World Custodian Council Liaisons. Angus, Maeve, Kelan, and Dr. Miriam Mbatha fielded questions on geomagnetic flux. Aisha, Lin, and Mateo—three of the academy's youngest prodigies—sat wide-eyed behind a reinforced gallery glass, guests but not yet crew.

Mission Commander Dr. Elena Vega—lean, flinty, once a volcanologist—tapped a laser pointer on a lunar projection. "Primary objective: land at Von Kármán crater on the far side. Deploy two rovers. Investigate anomalous pyramidic mass here." A red triangle flashed. "Secondary objective: install quantum repeater for far-side communications."

She nodded to Charlie and Leyla. "Custodian team will assess artifact. NASA retains operational command until artifact classified safe." Her eyes lingered on Angus's staff. "No surprises that blow holes in my ship, sir."

Angus bowed in mock solemnity. "Only if holes already exist."

Jonas Greene, NASA security chief, addressed the elephant. "Reptilian threat status: low but non-zero. Dreadnought destroyed, yet sleeper agents remain. Florida checkpoints triple-screened."

Maeve whispered to Kelan, "Paranoia is a wise cloak tonight."

Hours before launch, a storm brewed beyond the cape—thunderheads stacked like anvils. In Hangar E, technician Nora Patel adjusted fuel cell valves on the upper stage. As she reached for a torque wrench, a fellow tech she'd never met motioned her aside, eyes oddly dilated.

"Valve mis-calibrated," he murmured, slipping a data pad into her hand. "Pressure risk to crew."

She scanned numbers—off by mere hair-widths. Heart quickened; she strode toward the valve cluster, unaware of shadow behind. The stranger raised a hypospray—reptile nanite venom designed to mimic sudden aneurysm.

A glint—obsidian marble—struck the spray, shattering it. Lautaro stepped from scaffolding, sling whirring. "Snake's fang," he growled, cuffing the impostor who hissed, vertical pupils flashing. Security swarmed. Under ultraviolet, the man's skin shimmered with sub-dermal scales.

Richard thanked Lautaro later beside coffee urns. "First catch of the night."

"Where one serpent hides, nest slithers," Lautaro warned.

NASA upped sweeps; yet the storm intensified, winds rattling hangar doors like restless spirits.

T-0 minus six minutes: Artemis XII's crew strapped into Orpheus Mk IV capsule—Commander Vega, Pilot Mikhail Petrov, Engineer Aya Ishikawa, Payload Specialist Charlie, and Science Officer Leyla. Outside, Angus, Maeve, Kelan, Dr. Mbatha, and Jonas Greene would follow via a second launch in three days if site secure.

Charlie's pulse synced with engines thumping up the frame. Ground Control voice crackled: "Range green. Weather holding—storm skirt will clear pad five minutes post-launch."

At T-0, engines roared, daylight inverting night. Charlie pressed back against couch as 7.8 million pounds of thrust bulled them skyward. Vibrations rattled teeth; medallion under suit felt molten.

Max Q passed; first stage separated; silence brief as chapel hush; second stage lit. Commander Vega reported, "Nominal trajectory." Charlie glimpsed Atlantic shimmering like spilled mercury.

Then alarms. Petrov cursed in Russian—external camera showed a sleek probe riding their exhaust plume, nose aglow violet. "Reptilian hitchhiker," Vega snarled.

Leyla thumbed open a panel; inside, a copper-sigiled canister labeled Sun-Shard Microburst. Charlie armed it, fed coordinates to Orpheus attitude jets. Capsule yawed 15 degrees; canister deployed. A blossom of white-blue fire engulfed the probe—sensors flashed clear.

Vega exhaled. "That counts as a surprise, Highlander."

Three days' coast orbit preceded Trans-Lunar Injection. Earth shrank to swirl marble; medallion's runes pulsed slower, attuned to nodes beyond reach. In micro-g, Charlie rehearsed breath with Commander Vega—turns out she had studied mindfulness to calm pre-launch jitters. She, in turn, drilled him on EVA protocols: "Vacuum doesn't pardon telekinesis errors."

Mid-voyage, Dr. Mbatha's seismographs down-linked from Earth recorded minor tectonic shifts—plates breathing easier, she said. But entangled sensors also pinged an echo from Von Kármán: a pulse not lunar quake, but rhythmic—as if node embryo quickened beneath dust.

Orbit insertion executed flawlessly; spacecraft docked with pre-deployed Zephyr lander. Final systems check; Tic-tac silence of space outside.

Dawn over Von Kármán crater spilled sunlight onto lander deck. Zephyr's descent engines whispered into regolith. Dust plumed in slow motion; landing struts kissed grey soil. Charlie's visor HUD displayed vitals stable.

First step: Commander Vega planted boots, recited lineage of spacefarers. Charlie followed—fifth footprint human, first of the Gifted line upon lunar far side.

Ahead, partly buried by eons, jutted a ziggurat of translucent glass blocks, each facet catching sun to cast prismatic halos. Height sixty meters, terraced. No flagging by orbit radar due to silica reflectance tuned to deflect scan—reptilian craft or human telescopes.

Pilot Petrov gasped. "Khristos…"

Leyla's voice trembled wonder. "Earth's myths reached here. But who built—Custodians or reptiles?"

Charlie sensed dual signatures: ancient human node cords, but also psion scorch marks. A battle long ago froze mid-page.

They approached. At the stair base, lunar dust parted by unseen breeze. Lines of symbols appeared—Sanskrit om, Mayan ik, Celtic triskele, and new glyph of five-point star encircling serpent split. Tilting medallion triggered faint gold pulse.

Commander Vega assigned tasks: Petrov guard lander; Ishikawa set comms repeater; Vega, Charlie, Leyla enter. They tethered lines—dull safety compared to rainbow serpents, but comforting.

Interior corridor lit by faint aurora-like glow. Walls of glass held shadows of figures long turned vapor—human, reptile, locked in dance. In the heart chamber floated a small dodecahedron of moonstone crystal, dull, tethered by broken cables.

Leyla swept scanner. "Node embryonic—never fully born. Needs catalyst."

Charlie removed medallion. Fifth rune—Xi'an—bright. The center disk remained blank: a placeholder maybe for Celestial Node. He pressed it to moonstone; runes flared, searching, but power stuttered—like a match in thin air.

Not enough? He remembered Mbatha's data: plate resonance. Here, no tectonics; lunar core cold. Need an energy surge.

Commander Vega radioed Petrov for power status—reactor nominal. Leyla eyed engine reserves. Sacrifice ascent fuel? Mission risk catastrophic.

Charlie's thoughts drifted to Earth—children lifting pencils, minds bright. Energy of living hearts traveled lattice. Could it leap gap to moon? Unknown.

He closed eyes, called silently—not command, but invitation. Innumerable pulses echoed: students in Geneva, monks on Skellig, tourists at Giza, random souls feeling odd tingle. Energy prickled along spine, across vacuum.

Rune slot filled—silver new symbol, crescent cradling five-point star. Node embryo pulsed, glowed, lifted cables free. A harmonic thrummed—sub-audible yet felt through bones despite suit.

Glass blocks brightened; dead corridor murals animating in light. Outside, Earthrise tinted blue-green aura across crater.

Leyla's voice awed. "We made first off-world node."

Commander Vega simply whispered, "History just tilted."

Back on Earth, in Deep Coil bunker, sirens woke Tzeker from cryo. Holos showed moon node activation. Rage boiled. "The sky belongs to us." He triggered fallback: transmission to hidden gene vats on Mars and Io—Project Dragontooth.

But in Geneva, Academy sensors caught surges. Maeve alerted Angus. A plan formed: intercept off-world threat before it matured—next mission now inevitable.

Meanwhile, sleeper agents on Earth splintered—without psion grid many reconsidered loyalties. Dr. Belgrave testified before Custodian tribunal, exposing reptilian infiltration of pharmaceuticals. Clean-up teams mobilized.

On a rise above the glass ziggurat, Charlie, Vega, and Leyla planted a simple plaque: Here humankind learned the sky sings back. They saluted Earth hanging vast, cloud swirling.

Vega spoke first. "You changed mission parameters, Mr. Mutton. But you delivered a marvel."

Charlie shook head. "I only opened a door others built."

Leyla placed hand on his visor. "Doors remain. Mars, Io, deeper. We walk not as conquerors, but custodians."

They clasped gauntlets in silent vow. Beyond them, faint lines of light spidered from ziggurat apex into lunar regolith—laying newborn lattice like seedlings of sunrise.

In the capsule that night, Charlie journaled on a tablet:

Five earthly heartbeats and one lunar echo.

The song grows.

We must teach harmony faster than discord learns new tunes.

He saved the file under title EVENTBORN2138CE, smiled, and drifted to sleep cradled by weightlessness and the quietest lullaby—the universe, freshly unchained, humming possibility.