The Enzymatic Surge

It did not burn through like sulfuric acid; there was no smoke, no violent hiss of chemical combustion. Instead, the synthetic fabric seemed to drink the fluid. The white neoprene turned a dull, translucent grey. Tiny, microscopic fissures branched outward from the drop in a tight, webbed pattern. The smooth, flexible synthetic material swelled, curdled, and then abruptly lost all tension, sagging like rotten fruit skin.

Within forty seconds, the amber needles from the sludge began to sprout along the weave, consuming the polyurethane backing. The flexible knee bellows turned into a chalky, brittle crust.

Colmhaign reached down and pressed the flat of his thumb against the treated spot.

The high-tensile, certified synthetic suit material shattered under his thumb with a dry, papery snap, crumbling into a shower of white powder and brittle grey flakes on the tabletop.

Riosbh gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.

Murchadh stared at the hole in the suit. His stomach dropped, a cold, heavy sickness pooling beneath his ribs.

"Synthetic polymers," Colmhaign said, his voice level and entirely devoid of triumph. "Polyurethane. Neoprene. Silicone. Nylon. The Breath-Tide isn't just an atmospheric dust storm. It is an enzymatic reproductive surge. The spores don't attack rock or iron because there is no bio-available carbon to harvest. But our seals, our suits, our synthetic filters—they are long-chain petroleum polymers. To the Vaeluigh, our life-support infrastructure is food."

Murchadh picked up a pinch of the white dust from the table. It disintegrated between his calloused fingers into fine grease. He looked from the destroyed suit to the emergency bulkhead, then to the ventilation ducts above their heads.

"The outer door gaskets," Murchadh whispered, the realization hitting him like a blow to the solar plexus. "The entire exterior airlock uses molded neoprene double-lips."

"When the barometric wave hits the outer station hull," Colmhaign said, "the spores will pack into the door seams under three hundred kilopascals of pressure. In two hours, those neoprene gaskets will soften into mush. In three hours, the pressure differential will blow the liquefied seals out of the door channels, and this mess hall will flood with external air."

"And the suits in the locker..." Riosbh's voice shook violently. "The reserve gear... all the Mark-Fours..."

"Will rot on their racks before midnight," Colmhaign finished. "If we stay inside this station, we are not holding a fortress. We are sitting in a pantry."

The silence returned, absolute and suffocating. The buzzing emergency light overhead seemed louder now, its intermittent hum a reminder of the failing power grid.

Murchadh slowly set his calipers down on the table. Five years of faith in the station's heavy iron walls, five years of maintaining scrubbers, checking torques, and trusting corporate blueprints dissolved with that pinch of ruined white powder. The rules had not just failed; the rules were a blueprint for suffocation.

He looked at Colmhaign. "How long do the old vulcanized canvas suits last?"

Colmhaign pulled one of the heavy, clumsy suits from his pack on the floor. It was ugly, thick, and smelled of tallow and pine tar. "Heavy unbleached flax canvas, soaked in boiled linseed oil and vulcanized natural rubber. Brass zippers, lead-soldered seams, quartz viewports. No petroleum synthetics. The spores will coat the outer canvas, but the enzymatic inhibitors in the pine resin prevent them from digesting the flax fibers. They'll stiffen in the cold, but they won't rot."

"How many do we have?" Riosbh asked, her eyes darting toward the storage bins in the back.

"Three," Murchadh answered before Colmhaign could speak. The memory of his supply manifests flared in his mind with sudden, razor-sharp clarity. "Two heavy maintenance rigs from the sub-surface boiler overhaul three years ago, and the emergency survey suit the geological team left behind in Locker Seven."

"Three suits," Riosbh said, her breath catching. "For three people. No spares."

"No spares," Murchadh said. He walked over to the corner locker, grabbed the heavy iron handle, and wrenched it open. The three suits hung inside like empty, headless corpses—stiff, brown, smelling of cold tallow and sulfur.

He dragged the first one out and threw it onto the prep table, sweeping Riosbh's burned circuit boards aside without an apology.

"If we're doing this," Murchadh said, his voice dropping into the harsh, no-nonsense rhythm of a workshop under emergency orders, "we don't walk out of here with factory fittings. Riosbh, stop staring at the manuals. Grab the wire brush and the tallow tub from the lower shelf."

Riosbh blinked, startled out of her daze. "The... the tallow?"

"The brass teeth on these zippers are oxidized," Murchadh barked, grabbing a steel wire brush from his hip pocket and attacking the corroded collar of the first canvas suit. "If a zipper binds half a kilometer down the culvert, we can't peel the canvas back without snapping the brass teeth. Scrape the green verdigris off every tooth, pack them with tallow, and work the sliders back and forth fifty times until they glide clean."

Riosbh nodded frantically, scrambling to the shelf and hauling down the heavy tin of yellow tallow.

Colmhaign watched Murchadh for a second, a faint, almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgment passing between them. Then Colmhaign knelt beside the three portable rebreathers on the deck plates.

"The culvert to Station Two is eight kilometers," Colmhaign said, opening the maintenance hatch of the first oxygen pack. "The basalt walls are forty meters high, which will shield us from the worst of the transverse gale, but the floor is an active drainage channel. We'll be wading through six inches of mineral slurry and loose shale. At three kilometers per hour under heavy canvas loads, that's two hours and forty minutes of continuous transit."

"And the rebreathers?" Murchadh asked, leaning over the table as he scrubbed the brass teeth of the second suit.

"Each rebreather carries two lead-sealed soda-lime canisters," Colmhaign said, tapping the heavy grey cylinders. "Four hours of scrubber capacity per pack. That gives us an eighty-minute safety buffer. If someone slips, fractures an ankle, or a joint bellows freezes up, that buffer burns fast."

"What about the valves?" Murchadh asked, stepping over to examine the rebreather manifold. He picked up one of the brass demand valves, squinting through the inspection aperture. "The diaphragm in this regulator is synthetic elastomer. If the external atmosphere leaks past the check-valve, the diaphragm will dissolve in twenty minutes."

"I pulled three replacement diaphragms from the old pneumatic drill kits," Colmhaign said, holding up a small tin containing discs of thin, oiled calfskin leather. "Hand-cut, treated with beeswax. They have higher hysteresis than rubber, so breathing resistance will be heavier, but they won't digest."

Murchadh took one of the leather discs, turning it over in his rough fingers, testing its suppleness. It was crude, ancient technology—the kind of field expedient used a century ago before polymers made industrial logistics cheap and fragile. But it would hold.

"You had this planned before we even climbed down to sublevel one," Murchadh said.

"I had the calculations run," Colmhaign replied evenly. "Planning requires having three people who agree to put their boots on the ice."

Murchadh looked over at Riosbh. She was on her knees by the prep table, vigorously working tallow into the brass teeth of a canvas sleeve with a stiff bristle brush. Her hands were trembling, but she was rubbing the grease deep into the seams, following the mechanical reality because the administrative reality had evaporated beneath her feet.

"She's twenty-two years old, Colmhaign," Murchadh said quietly, his voice dropping so low it barely carried over the scrub of Riosbh's brush. "She was assigned here six months ago out of the regional academy. She's never walked ten paces outside a pressurized habitat."

"Then she learns on the first pace," Colmhaign said, fitting the oiled leather diaphragm into the brass regulator body and tightening the collar with a spanner. "Or she stays here and breathes crystal in six hours."

Murchadh looked at his grease-pencil numbers on the bulkhead: ninety-six cubic meters, thinning air, a metabolic sink below their feet growing hungrier by the minute.

He picked up the third canvas suit, hauled it into his arms, and slung it over his shoulder.

"Let's get the pressure gauges calibrated," Murchadh said, turning toward the tool rack. "If we're leaving Station One to rot, I'm taking every brass fitting that isn't bolted to the foundation."

Colmhaign tightened the last brass screw on the rebreather manifold and set the wrench aside.

"We move in forty minutes," Colmhaign said.

Outside, beyond the double-walled titanium plates and the doomed neoprene seals, the deep, rhythmic groan of the planetary Breath-Tide began to vibrate through the floor deck, a low, subsonic hum that rattled the loose tools against the zinc table. Murchadh didn't look at the walls. He picked up his torque wrench, knelt by the suits, and began checking every single seam for the long dark ahead.