“What the . . .”
Ken swore as he watched the large chunk of rock sucked toward the troll in a cloud of fine gray dirt.
I opened fire. “Jump away, Ken!” I shouted.
Bullets struck the cannon, knocking it sideways just enough that the line of darkness wobbled off to the right. With the cannon beam’s hold on it broken, the boulder dropped, and Ken made like a grasshopper, shooting off for the ridge Amira had come from.
“What the hell was that?” he asked.
“I think it’s packing something like a portable wormhole in there. A weaponized tractor beam,” Amira said. “Ken, keep coming for the ridge, there are places to hide on the other side.”
I leapt the other way, heading back for the craters. The troll bounded after me. Every time I landed, I spun off in a new direction, waiting for the line of darkness to reach out and grab me. Or for a giant rocky foot to plaster me against the surface.
I was rabbiting away, swerving this way and that as best I could, but it was slowly, ploddingly, getting closer. It had thrown the wormhole cannon away. Had I broken it?
“Hold on,” Boris said. “I think I can distract it a second.”
I turned my head back in midleap and saw the sparkle of an explosion in the bay doors. The troll paused the next time it landed, and then turned back for a second.
That’s all I needed.
I skimmed low across the landscape and made it over a nearby set of ridges. Once I had lunar mass between me and the troll, I randomly bounced this way and that from hard, rocky surfaces so I didn’t leave footprints.
And then I dug in and froze.
No looking over the lip and getting spotted this time. The troll was out there stomping on bugs, and I was going to be a good little cockroach and stay put in the dark crevice I’d found.
“Dev?” Amira whispered, even though she didn’t need to. “You there?”
“Yeah. Ken?”
“Yeah. Boris?”
No reply.
“Boris?”
A loud grunt, some spitting sounds, and a metallic screech filled our ears. “Boris!” we all shouted.
“I’m still here,” Boris panted.
“You okay?”
“I’m happy to report that the welding torch does cut through raptor armor,” he said. “However, the downside is a bit limiting: You have to get rather close to them. Hang on.”
The silence stretched. And none of us seemed to want to jinx it by saying anything.
Then Boris was back. “I’m sorry, I have to blow something else up.”
A very distinct thump came through my helmet.
Amira swore.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“The other troll just jumped past us, headed toward the mines. I think they spotted some movement.”
“Efua?” I called. “Did you hear that?”
She didn’t respond.
“There are,” Boris interjected, “a bloody shitload of crickets swarming out of here. I’d stay very, very still for a long while.”
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked him.
“I think I convinced them I blew myself up. I found a nice hiding spot in the wreckage; they’re not pawing through it. So let’s just wait for everything to die down, shall we?”
“Sounds like a plan.” I was on my back, shoved deep into a crack. I stared at the rock above my helmet.
I’m a shadow, I told the lunar landscape. A shadow in the dark under this rock. A shadow that wasn’t going to move for a good long time.
But that wasn’t good. I had stopped running. Stopped moving around. Stopped reacting.
I had time to think now.
Time to think about all the recruits’ faces that I’d seen mangled and staring past me as I passed them in the airless corridors.
Time to realize that Casimir wasn’t going to ever bark orders at me. Katrin wasn’t going to give me a disgusted look for breaking Amira’s ribs due to my stupidity.
Right now, I’d trade anything for their frosty silence at the table.
I suddenly wish I’d never known their names.
And then I felt horrible for wishing it. I closed my eyes and began to shiver, hoping it wasn’t causing my armor to twitch.
“Dig in!” Ken shouted.
The explosions started again. The Conglomerate ship, apparently not wanting to wait for the trolls to dig up every rock and crevice, floated over the landscape. A full-on barrage of furious light and energy danced around us. Rocks jumped and tumbled around me. New craters spewed liquified moon rock up into the dark, where it slowly misted and settled back down to the ground.
22
“You know what I’ve always wondered?” Boris suddenly broke the silence.
I snapped my eyes open and looked around. The crater was empty. I’d nodded off. I’d needed it. I glanced at the time stamp floating over the visor. I’d been asleep for twenty minutes.
Damn. I could have been killed in my sleep. Melted by one of those explosions from the ship.
“I’ve always wanted to know what struthiforms think of breakfast burritos,” Boris continued.
“What?” Amira’s voice sounded crusty and strained.
“It’s the eggs, yeah?” Boris sniffed. “I mean, scrambled eggs. They’re giant ostriches, how does that look?”
“Well, like us eating a small mammal, like a pig,” Ken chimed in.
“Veal,” Amira said. “Baby mammal.”
“Hmmm . . .” Boris sounded unsure. “I guess so.”
I opened my mouth to tell them about Shriek, and that the struthiforms were all dying because they couldn’t go back to their home world.
But since we didn’t know whether we were about to lose ours, why harsh everyone’s mellow? “What does it look like out there? They still hunting us?”
Quiet.
“Hello, can you guys hear me?”
“Devlin”—Amira sounded worried—“what have you been doing the last half hour? Sleeping? We’ve been calling for you.”
“Well . . .” I cleared my throat. “Yes, sorry. I nodded off.” The regular rhythm of the bombing had become constant. A background noise.
“Damn,” Boris said. “You’re all ice. You slept through all that? Shit, I’m still vibrating.”
I opened my mouth to reply. To tell them I was so exhausted, I couldn’t help it, and that thinking about the dead just on the other side of the ridge was too much.
“They left,” Ken reported. “Ten minutes and nothing has moved near me or Amira. No more explosions. No hunting parties.”
“Could be a trap,” Amira said. “We’ve been discussing that. Then Boris changed the subject.”
“You were all boring me,” Boris said. “I’m hiding under shuttle debris, and I can’t so much as twitch, and you two are just going around and around. Not discussing. Arguing.”
I looked around the crater I’d hidden inside. Nothing.
The debate started up again, Amira assuming that there were at least crickets out hiding away, as still as we were, waiting to get triggered. Ken insisting that he could move around his hiding spot.
I tumbled out onto the dirt and rock. I didn’t want to put anyone else at risk, and we couldn’t wait here forever. Eventually, someone had to be the first to put themselves in the crosshairs. If there were any.
My joints protested, but after a few seconds of movement, they warmed and loosened up. It felt good to stand.
Nothing moved but me. The attack I’d been half tensing for didn’t come.
I scrabbled up to the rim and bounced off across to the ridge. “I’m out in the open,” I reported. “Nothing coming after me.”
“Shit,” Ken said. “I knew it. I’m—”
“Why don’t you two stay where you are,” I int
errupted. “Boris, you too. In case the enemy is waiting for more movement.”
“Okay,” they muttered.
I slithered up the rim and looked out over toward the Conglomerate ship. It hung over the main base again, tentacles down. There was nothing out on the plain between us but newly pockmarked ground.
“Did Efua make it to the mines?” I asked.
“We are here,” Efua said. “We found some air canisters. We think. We’re trying to understand how to hook them up to our suits.”
“Can you call out from there?”
“No,” Efua said. “We are still being jammed.”
I looked at the ruins of the base, thinking. “Efua, you said the crickets came and took Commander Zeus away. To the officers’ quarters?”
Efua was quiet for a second. “I think so. In that direction, at least.”
Amira jumped in. “Zeus’s transponder is there. Whether that means Zeus is there or not, I can’t say. I’d need to get closer to verify, grab some higher bandwidth, line-of-sight comms.”
“What about our rank transponders?” I asked quickly, thinking back to Amira’s lecture that the tattoos had trackers in them.
“I, obviously, killed them a long time ago,” Amira said, almost as if she were talking to a child. “Or we’d be toothpaste under troll toes.”
Sure. That made sense.
“What are you thinking?” Ken asked.
I looked off in the direction of the launcher. Safety. For now. What would a fighter do here? Hide like a cockroach? Until his air ran out?
Or . . .
Or what?
“Zeus and the other Arvani in their quarters, and the struthiforms, if they’re alive, have heavier armor. They’re trained for this. They’re officers. They know what our options are. They’ve fought the Conglomerate before. We’re untrained recruits. I think we need Zeus back.”
“That sadistic bastard?” Ken asked.
“Captain Calamari is crazy,” Amira agreed. “But Devlin has a point: We could aim that crazy at the Conglomerate bastards.”
Boris laughed. “Captain Calamari? Why didn’t I think of that? You even demoted him . . . to an appetizer! We called him Sergeant Suckers. I do have some leftover explosives for getting inside the Arvani quarters.”
“Or we can just get me close enough that I can pop the locks. What are you thinking, Devlin?” Amira asked.
“We take our time. Shadow to shadow. Total sneak mode. If it feels risky, don’t move. We have our suits, and we have all day to get there. We’re going to converge on it from all points. No rush.” We were going to be good little stealthy cockroaches. “If we get spotted, scatter and hide again. Once inside, kill anything in our way, get the commander and any other Accordance survivors.”
“I like it,” Ken said. “We take the fight back to them.”
“And what about us?” Efua asked.
“Give us twenty-five hours from now. If we go silent, try to get out from the jamming and get a signal back to Tranquility.”
“Good luck,” Efua said.
“You too,” I replied, and began to slither to the nearest rock.
23
Five hours. Five hours of slinking across the fields of gray waste. Five hours of waiting to get caught. Five hours of tension building. The closer we got to the Arvani officers’ quarters, the more I felt like something in the back of my neck was going to snap.
“Worse game of red light, green light ever,” Amira said.
One of us would advance, the other watch from a safe position, and the other two would stay hidden.
Foot by foot.
Inch by inch.
We converged on the airlock. Boris bounded up the last few feet, unslinging an arm-sized black claw with four sharp points at the end. The alien welding torch.
“We ready?” I asked.
Boris held up a disk. “I have explosives,” he said happily. Then he awkwardly held up the welding torch.
Amira walked up to the doors. “I already said there’s no need.”
“We’ll see.” Boris strapped the disk back onto his hip.
Ken stepped forward. “Boris, you and me are in first, we have the guns. Amira, Devlin, come in behind us. Amira: when you’re ready.”
I got in place behind Ken.
“On three. One, two, three.” Amira waved a hand and the airlock doors slid up and open. A cloud of wet air puffed out past us.
We slipped in, the outer door closed behind us, and Amira held up a hand. “There’s a raptor on the other side,” she said. “Wait a second. He’s turning away. And . . . Get ready.”
This was it.
I crouched. Ken pulled the MP9 up tight to his shoulder and Boris held up the torch. The four claw points lit up and glowed white-hot. Energy leapt out from each point and met in the air a foot ahead.
“Anytime,” Boris said.
“Now.” Amira waved her hand and the inner door opened.
Ken jumped into the air. The raptor spun at us, raising a weapon even as Ken arced toward it, firing with quick bursts that did little more than plink off the armor around the raptor’s claws. The shielding was too tough.
But Ken had known that going in. He wasn’t trying to break the armor. The kinetic energy of each bullet was hitting the raptor’s weapon, making it hard to bring the burst of energy to bear on us.
And to give Boris time to close the distance without being carved up.
When Boris struck the raptor, both bodies tumbled end over end. And then he jammed the welding torch up into the raptor’s jaw.
The white-hot energy point at the torch’s end sizzled and spat as it ate right through the alien’s helmet. The inside of the visor filled with steam and heat, then burst open like wet fruit.
Boris shoved the armored corpse off and to the side, jumping up, ready for the next attack.
Nothing.
We stood on metal grating that led down to a very tropical-looking spit of sand, and beyond that a deep pool. Purple-and-black shrubs cluttered around in transparent tubs, their fronds dropping toward the water.
In other rooms leading off from the main common area, I saw water fountains and tiled wading pools.
“I guess it makes sense the Arvani officers’ club would look like a bathhouse,” Boris said. “Are we going to have to go swimming to find the prisoners?”
“No,” Ken said, coming back around a corner. “They’re all stacked up along the back of this pool.”
Five Arvani bodies had been ripped right out of their traveling armor.
“Beached squid,” Amira said.
“Yeah.” Their long tentacles were coiled like rope in the sand, which had absorbed enough of their spilled fluids to look somewhat jellied.
“That raptor stacked them up nice and pretty,” I observed.
“Movement!” Ken shouted.
Something rippled in the water of the common pool. We moved along the wall, Ken and Boris taking point again. The light of the torch dazzled against the walls and rippled reflections in the wavelets past the sand.
“Come out slowly, or we shoot!” Ken shouted on the common channel.
A familiar, mechanically translated “voice” responded. “Who are you?” Ignoring Ken’s command, the familiar vision of Commander Zeus rose out of the water in full armor.
“Commander, we’re survivors. We came to rescue you.”
Zeus paused on the edge of the waterline and swiveled to regard us. The alien instructor took an extra moment to regard Boris’s sizzling weapon. “Well, good. We were taken by surprise and with no weapons. My options have been limited. Do you have any plans for what you are going to do next?”
We all looked at each other. “Rescue you, Commander,” I said. “And find out if it’s just this base under attack, or if everything is. We escaped th
e Conglomerate attack, along with some others. They have headed for the mining launch facility. We were hoping, at the least, you would know where to find better weapons. Or what we should do next.”
“I see.” Zeus rotated around quickly and regarded the dead raptor. “This is the spear tip of a Conglomerate attack force. A special swarm, tasked with gaining ground and holding it secretly. They’re mopping up anything left alive now. After that will come other cities on the moon in a rapid sequence, directed from this one. Once consolidated, jamming anything in this moon’s orbit, they will use the shadow of your moon’s orbit to assemble the attack on your world. They likely feel this is less of a waste than a large fleet attack.”
“So Earth isn’t under attack?” Ken asked. He sounded relieved. Much like me. I was slumping forward, a heavy weight sliding right off my back. I hadn’t even realized I was holding that fear so tightly.
“No,” Zeus said. “But it will be. If you don’t help me. We’re going to trigger a self-destruct sequence, maybe take that ship with the base. Together, we can hurt them back. And we’re going to send out a distress call that can punch through that jamming.”
Fuck. Yeah. I grinned widely. Boris gave me a thumbs-up.
As we moved, Ken paused. “What about the bodies of the other Arvani?” he asked. “Is there anything we should do for them?”
Zeus snorted. “They were lower order Gaskation. Never the best of warriors. Leave them where they lie.”
I glanced at Amira.
“A bit cold,” she said on the arm’s private, encrypted network.
“He’s a bastard,” I said. “But he’s our bastard now.”
We followed Zeus to the airlock, buoyed and ready to follow orders. And relieved to have someone who knew what was going on to lead us.
24
We all paused in front of the airlock. I took a deep breath. Once more back outside, across the surface in the open.
But Zeus stopped us.
“Down,” he said. “There are tunnels.” Zeus scuttled across the sand to one of the small wading pools. Spiral stairs on the other side led down into dimly lit, gray tunnels carved smoothly out of the lunar rock. How far down had they dug? The gravity plating had to be under us, and there were grates and more subsystems handling air and water systems.
The Darkside War Page 14
