She pointed to the floor. “Directions in ultraviolet, lines that lead to different points. I can read a little Arvani.”
We leapfrogged sloppily and quickly down the corridor, grateful for no surprises but still jumpy in the low red lighting.
Several turns later and a floor below, Amira triggered a set of doors. “Here we go.”
Floor-to-ceiling displays cascaded information, including outside views of the launcher. “I thought there’d be something in here,” I said.
“Shit’s automated,” Amira said. “This room’s for troubleshooting and maintenance. Watch the doors.”
I set up next to them, glancing back at her as she walked to one of the displays and put her palm out. Blue light danced across her arm. “The clock just started,” she said. “The ghost knows we are here.”
Her fingers began to twitch as she manipulated glyphs in the air.
“Does it know what you’re doing?”
“Shhhh. It thinks we’re trying to signal out. The jamming just kicked way up.”
She went back to work. I kept quiet. But there was a new noise. I amplified it. A sound like metal hail against the outer door.
Crickets trying to get in.
I had to assume she’d locked them out. How many had piled up out there, redirected by the ghost to come knocking?
I swallowed. What else might come join them at the door as I waited.
“I found Efua and the others,” Ken said. I could hear in his voice what he was seeing, by the way it cracked slightly and in the soft tone.
“I’m sorry, man.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
“Amira?” Ken asked sadly.
A long pause. “They’re dead?” Amira asked.
“Yes.”
She sounded as shattered as Ken did. “I can’t do it.”
“What do you mean?” Ken and I asked her as one.
“The mountain in the center of that crater the base is in. It’s in the way. I can’t take out the ship, or them, or the base. I guess I could shoot at the top of the ridge and hope something gets through, but I doubt it. And it’ll warn them. They’ll have time to move. And I can’t aim the launcher higher, like artillery. And that wouldn’t work anyway; the moon’s gravity is too weak. No matter where you point that fucker, the payload’s going to orbit. I’m so sorry, guys. We can’t turn it and shoot.”
I wanted to slide down, my legs felt so suddenly weak. Out on the other side of the door, the sound of the metallic hail slowly grew louder and more insistent.
27
I looked at the screen that Amira waved into existence. It showed the mass of rock in our way. Not something any of us had thought about: topography. And I’d assumed she could have fired over anything. But the gravity was too weak on the moon. Things fired at great speed took a while to curve downward.
Ken made a strangled, frustrated sound. I couldn’t blame him.
“We need to get out of here,” Amira said.
“No.” I held up a hand. “No. We need to brainstorm. We need to slow down. All three of us. There has to be an answer here.”
“Damn it,” Amira snapped. “Let go of it. We’re not going to be heroes. We’re not going to save the day. Even if this had worked, we were probably going to die like Efua, trapped in a corridor somewhere. Let’s find a place to buy more time, Devlin.”
“Take a breath,” I said. “You’re tired, we’ve fought these things since we broke into the base. We’re still alive, but we’re running on adrenaline and will. Let’s not make a mistake now, when we’ve come so far. Come on, let’s just stop. We have a launcher—”
“Fire a series of them,” Ken suggested. “First one blows up the hilltop. The next one comes through.”
“I thought about that,” Amira said wearily. “First explosion alerts them. They move.”
“Not necessarily,” Ken replied.
“No, but I also don’t know for sure if the hilltop will break away. It’s soft. It might just create a hell of a dust cloud and that’s it. I can’t model what’s going to happen without more time and computing. We’re not going to get that. So that’s two unknowns.”
Small dents were being hammered into the door. A single feeler rammed its way through the gap between the doors, trying to pry them open. I broke it off and stomped on it.
“We have a device that can launch anything we want into orbit,” I said. “What else can we do? Launch ourselves? Can you slow it down so we’re not instant toothpaste?”
“Wait,” Amira said. “Wait a second.”
I had a vision of us in armor, in orbit, beaming a weak SOS to anyone who could hear us. “Or maybe we could put an emergency signal on repeat on a suit and put that into orbit,” Ken said. “We don’t have to load ourselves. We . . . have extra armor here.”
“No. Shut up.” Amira had her hands up behind her neck. “Orbit. It’s about orbit.” She was thinking. But we were all so tired.
“What?” A series of loud pops against the doors made me jump. Something fizzled outside. What the hell were the crickets doing out there?
“Orbit.” Amira’s fingers danced again. She stood in front of the lights and glyphs like a conductor. Lines flowered out from a central point in the air. “Fucking orbit!”
“This is good, right?” Ken asked. “You have an idea?”
“I hate to say it, but Devlin’s right. I was too tired to see it. We’re still going to shell the fuck out of that Conglomerate ship.” Amira sounded excited.
“How?”
“We’re not going to fire right at them, we’re going to come at them from behind,” Amira said. “The capsules will fire into orbit, all around the moon, and then hit from the other direction. Each capsule contains a ton of ore, and it’s going to be moving fast. Each shot will be a slightly different angle, so when it comes back around, it’s going to saturate the area. And all at the same fucking time, too.”
“Will the ship have time to get away?” I asked. “If the shots come in from orbit.”
“Not if I come in low, just above the surface. The moon is very round, it’s smaller. I can use topography maps, the first rounds can come in right over the hills. The ship will have seconds to react at the speeds I’m planning.”
“I like this,” Ken said. “How long will it take to do this?”
“Not long. First capsule just got fired, and it looks good. Just keep those crickets out of the room and I’ll start. But we’ll need to stay in here until the capsules hit,” Amira said.
“Why?”
“The capsules can maneuver. Small adjustments, but if the Conglomeration figure out what we did, they could alter the commands, shift where the rounds hit to somewhere else nearby. If we hold the room, there’s a better chance.”
I looked at the door. Another small leg had wiggled through and was waving about. I crushed it. “It’s going to be dicey.”
“All we have to do is last until the capsules come back around. Two hours.”
“Two hours.” I shook my head. Stay alive for two hours.
More dents appeared in the door.
Maybe.
“Oh . . . ,” Amira breathed. “That’s not good.”
“What?”
She waved one of the images through the air toward me. “Trolls.”
Two of them softly trudged through the dirt on the other side of the ridge, a mile away and closing. Crickets loped along with them, some riding on the large, irregular feet.
Farther back, three raptors arced through the lunar night in a triangular formation.
“Reinforcements,” I told Ken. “The two trolls. Three raptors. More crickets.”
“And the ghost is out there somewhere,” Amira said. “I can feel it. Probing. Trying to figure out what I’m up to.”
I looked around the room. “When I leave
the room, you hide in the floor panels. Crickets can’t see you, or they’ll report back there’s still someone in here. They have to think it’s just me and Ken that’ll be running around outside.”
“It’s too dangerous out there,” Amira said. “The ghost—”
“Don’t use that electromagnetic pulse cannon unless you have to, if you’re holding the room. We want to get as much time keeping them guessing as we can,” I continued.
“I won’t stay in here.” Amira raised her hands.
“You have to,” I pleaded. “You’re systems. You have to make it through this. You have to make sure these fuckers get the hammer dropped on them.”
“Fuck!” Amira shouted.
She was right. Running would feel better than hiding and waiting. It was not her style to hole up in the shadows. But she needed this room. “I’m so sorry. We need to hold the room. We need to pull them away.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I can power down the suit, hide under the cable runs. I should be able to sneak into the system here and there, keep monitoring things. I’ll keep the EPC, if I have to, last ditch, hold the room. Damn it, you two give them a hell of a chase, okay? And we meet up afterward.”
“You two are stuck with me for a long while yet.” I helped her rip the flooring up. She crawled in, digging down between thick conduit and cables, then I handed her the EPC.
I pushed the floor back down, making sure the panels fit right in and didn’t look disturbed.
Crossing my fingers mentally, I approached the doors.
“Be careful,” Amira said. “Tell me when to open them.”
“Yeah. Careful,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Open.”
The doors jerked open and crickets poured over each other to get inside at me. I opened fire and leapt through into the boiling mass, yanking clutching limbs free and swearing.
28
I slid around a corner, a wave of crickets nipping at my heels.
“Duck,” Ken growled. He stepped around the next corner and raised an MP9 in each hand. I slid, and he opened fire. The chattering sounded distant through my helmet, but I could feel cricket bits and pieces pinging against my armor.
Ken dropped the submachine guns to swap to a handgun as he jumped over me and started smashing remaining crickets against the wall.
They swirled around, keeping away from him, then changed direction and scuttled away in full retreat.
I stood up as Ken limped back my way.
“Now to get outside,” he said to me. “And lead them all away. Amira, are you still hidden?”
“Yeah.” It was a curt, chopped off “yeah.” “Want me to take a look at how close your guests are?”
“Take no risks,” Ken said.
Ken and I got into the airlock. We stood on either side of the scorched body of the raptor. Three more of those things were coming for the two of us, I thought. And one almost killed the three of us. “What about your leg?” I asked. “I cut through, didn’t I?”
“There was sealant both for my leg, and to secure integrity,” Ken said. “It should be fine.”
“Should be?”
“Yes.” Ken pumped the manual lever, and the door leading back to the corridor shuddered shut.
“Because now’s the time for you to turn back,” I said.
“Why would I turn back?” Ken asked, incredulous.
“So you don’t die out there on the lunar surface when that outer door opens.”
Ken stepped forward with a thud and pumped the outward manual lever. “We’re hoping they haven’t noticed there were three of us, and Amira makes sure to destroy their ship, and many of them. As for you and me . . .” The outer door slid open with a rush of air.
We leapt out, weapons up. But nothing shot back at us. No giant feet stomped us out of existence.
“They’re still coming,” I said, relieved.
Ken bounded up the latticework alongside the giant barrel. “Come on,” he urged.
We hopped and bounced our way up, huffing and puffing until we reached the rim and stopped to look back.
“How’s the leg?” I asked.
“The seal holds,” Ken replied. We stood on the rock, watching the other side. Waiting.
“Shit, this is intolerable,” I said. “My hands are shaking. Just standing here. Jumpy.”
“My father fought in the Pacification,” Ken said. “He said a lot of war is just standing, waiting for the sudden action that might mean your death.”
I guessed Ken’s father hadn’t been fighting the Accordance. But I didn’t say anything, just kept looking at the ridge.
“There.” The two trolls crested the other side and paused.
Ken reached back, then flung a grenade that had been stuck to his lower back. It arced accurately over the length of the barrel, across the crater to the other side, and skittered across near the trolls’ feet.
Their large heads swiveled our way as the grenade exploded, charring the lattice but not them. One of the wormhole cannons snapped up. Ken and I both leapt away. The rock where we’d stood shivered as it was stripped clean of dirt, then a large chunk ripped free and flew away.
“That got their attention.” I hopped around boulders. “Should we split up?”
“No. But be silent. This is now a marathon.” Ken sailed away with a giant leap.
I followed.
We fell into a rhythm, an awkward-looking set of jumps alternating leg to leg, assisted by the armor. Occasionally Ken would accidentally key the channel, and I’d hear him grunt in pain as he landed on his left leg and jumped.
I didn’t say anything.
We ate up several miles this way, sometimes pausing when one or the other fumbled and wiped out in the dirt. The adaptive camouflage didn’t do too much good with this much movement, but after forty minutes on the run we were gray, dirty messes that had to be hard to spot from a distance.
Problem was, the trolls weren’t that far in the distance. They were gaining. Every minute they loomed even closer, and the raptors were just behind them.
“When do we make our stand?” I asked, scanning for good terrain. Some rabbiting, turning around, maybe we could get our hands on one of the raptors.
Maybe.
“I see a lot of jagged hills to the north,” Ken said. “Lets—” A blur struck him right at the apex of his jump. He tumbled end over end with it, grappling as they rolled.
I swerved toward them, trying not to look behind us. The trolls would get within wormhole cannon range in twenty seconds easy. I keyed the welder on, lighting up the gray lunar surface with its pure light, tossing shadows everywhere.
Every ounce of me strained as I leapt from a boulder, arrowing right at Ken. I aimed the tip of energy right at the blur, despite not being able to even understand what I was seeing.
“What’s happening?” Amira asked. “Is it the ghost?”
At the last second the slippery nothingness twitched. I struck it hard enough to knock Ken loose and started trying to stab it with the welder. It had penetrated raptor armor; maybe it would cut through this. “Run, Ken!” I could feel the ground underneath me shake.
“Guys?”
The nothingness had my wrists. I struggled to pivot the welder, but my wrists were pushed back, and then farther back, until something tore and popped and I couldn’t hold the welder anymore.
The welder dropped to the ground and spat dust until something turned it off.
I lay pinned to the ground, looking right through whatever held me there, to the darkness far above. I waited for the killing shot, or blow, but nothing happened. The blur picked me up, and then, slowly, began to walk.
The camouflage on the ghost worked similarly to the Accordance’s: It was bending light around itself to replicate whatever was on the other side. This close, I could see the effect shift
ing in real time. Accordance armor required you to stay still, but this armor adjusted in time to keep the effect going. And even at six inches away, all I could tell was that the ghost was bipedal.
Whatever was underneath, I still couldn’t see.
“Ken?” Amira asked.
“I’m sorry,” Ken said. “He saved me from the ghost. But now . . .”
“I’m not dead yet,” I said, and then, utterly perplexed, I added, “It’s carrying me. Tell my parents—”
“I’m going to come for you!” Ken interrupted.
“No!” I twisted around to look. “The trolls are following me and the ghost, but the raptors are still out looking for you. Wherever you’re hidden, just stay put. We’re keeping them out of Amira’s way still, there’s nothing you can do for me.”
“But I can,” Amira said. “You’re far enough downrange of the launcher that I might be able to fire on you. I could get the capsules to start maneuvering right out of the barrel to arc down at you and hit the trolls.”
“No,” I said firmly. “That will warn them that we have control of the launcher. No, let it take me.”
“Damn it,” Amira snapped. “Listen, give me access to your suit. Just think permission my way, I want in.”
“What will that accomplish?”
“Just do it. I’ve been thinking about the ghost. The Conglomeration, they’re thinking creatures. They use machines. And that has to mean similarities. They have assembly language, or ones and zeroes, or something. Input-output ports.”
“Can you explain that in plain English?” Ken asked.
“There are maybe even similarities in technology,” Amira continued, and then paused. “Ken, I’m going to use his suit to probe the area around him using our encrypted connection. Thankfully it’s impossible for them to tell we’re talking over quantum networks.”
“Okay, Amira,” I said. And willed the permission over my neural connection.
“What do you think you can do?” Ken asked.
Hopefully she would learn something about our enemy, I thought. I looked over at the massive, rock-armored feet of the trolls.
And maybe she could figure out why they were taking me alive.
The Darkside War Page 17
