Battle Luna

by Travis S. Taylor

  “What?” KC muttered. “Oh. ’Cause it’s frangible rock. Look at it cross-eyed and it comes right down on you. Hate that.”

  “Don’t blame you,” Pappy said, studying the ridge and the surrounding terrain. Waffle Ridge ran all the way along their current right flank, passing within ten meters of Morgan’s foxhole. It was just as steep there as it was by the Dunsland, but he could see a couple of potential hop spots that might get him to the top.

  It would be tricky. It would also possibly get him shot, unless the Ueys were trying to be reasonable. But right now, it was all he had. “Okay,” he said, crouching down and picking up one of KC’s spare oxy tanks. “Morgan, get one of your oxy tanks and point the valve toward the Dunsland. When I give the word, crank it open and try to blow as much dust off the ground as you can. I’ll do the same over here.” Somehow, he added silently to himself as he looked around the foxhole. He could hardly hold the tank while he was scrambling madly to get over Waffle Ridge.

  “What are you going to do?” Morgan asked.

  “They won’t send the MASH truck until the Uey tank’s been disabled,” Pappy said. “So I’m going to.”

  “How?”

  “You just concentrate on making as much dust in front of us as you can,” Pappy said, looking back at the catapult. The contraptions were heavy and unwieldly, and it had taken all three of them to get them into the foxholes in the first place. But if he could get it up onto the rim and brace it . . .

  “I’ll do that,” KC wheezed.

  And to Pappy’s amazement, the other levered himself up off the foxhole floor. He took a moment to balance himself, then gestured to the tank in Pappy’s hands. “Get it up there,” he said, “and I’ll hold it.”

  “You sure?” Pappy asked.

  “Beats waiting forever for the bus,” KC said. “Get going before they start moving again.”

  “Okay,” Pappy said. He manhandled the tank up onto the rim and pointed the nozzle toward the ground in front of them. There was a dust-filled depression five meters out that should do the trick. “Morgan?”

  “Ready,” she said. “Be careful.”

  “I will.” Pappy helped KC into position, then ducked down again and grabbed another oxy tank and the cutting torch from KC’s catapult-repair equipment. “On three,” he said, standing upright again and peering toward the Dunsland. Of all the soldiers, only the machine gunner seemed to have his full attention pointed in their direction. “One, two, three.” He twisted the valve wide open.

  He’d expected the escaping gas to blow the dust into a fine mist. Instead, the whole puddle exploded into a roiling tornado-like swirl of powder and rock chips. Pappy bounded out of the foxhole, the spare oxy tank cradled in his arms, and set off in short, quick hops toward the ridge. He passed his foxhole, briefly coming into a partial clear, then disappeared behind another dust cloud as he bounced behind Morgan’s position. She was doing an even better job than KC, systematically sweeping her oxy tank back and forth to create an entire wall of dust that reached from the edge of Pappy’s own foxhole all the way to Waffle Ridge. Pappy reached the ridge, bent his knees, and leaped as high up along the side as he could, landing on a slab of rock jutting out from the rest of the slope.

  And flailed for balance as the slab promptly broke off beneath him.

  Frangible, KC had said. Damn rotten balsa wood, he might have warned.

  The first casualty was Pappy’s left knee—the one on his bad leg, naturally—as it banged against the remains of the ledge hard enough to be felt through the suit. The second casualty was the oxy tank, which went flying as Pappy scrambled for handholds. He managed to hang onto the cutting torch as he regained his balance, found another even more marginal bit of footing, and leaped again. Two more jumps from equally fragile footholds and he was finally at the top.

  He caught a slender spire and redirected himself over the sharp-edged crest. The footing on the other side was even more treacherous, and this time the torch also went flying as he grabbed at everything available in an effort to slow himself down. He succeeded, mostly, and landed on the ground with a jolt. For a moment he crouched there, wincing at the sharp pain in his knee and watching for signs that the Ueys might have spotted him. He had no idea how high Morgan’s dust cloud had gone, but there was a fair chance he’d come out of its protection before he cleared the crest.

  But whether they’d spotted him or not, he still had the initiative. Retrieving the torch, he got back to his feet and started hopping toward the Ueys.

  He’d made note of the distinct rock pattern at the top of the ridge beside the tank, and while rock patterns didn’t always look the same from different angles this one was unique enough to show when he arrived. Unlike the spot by the foxholes, the slope here was somewhat gentler, and he was able to climb it with a minimum of trouble and no false steps. He reached the crest and eased his helmet over for a look.

  It was quickly apparent that the Ueys hadn’t caught his mountain goat act. The scene was exactly as he’d left it, with two trios of shieldbearers standing guard against anything thrown from the Loonie side of the arena, two machine gunners in their cages—apparently the one had managed to get his Kord cleaned enough to function again, or else had had a spare—and the rest of the team working at getting the monofil out of the front axles.

  He felt his lip twist as that first bit belatedly registered. Two trios of shieldbearers. There had been only one such team when he’d set off a few minutes ago.

  And that was going to pretty much ruin his plan of throwing two vac cement bombs in rapid succession. If the Ueys were on their toes, two teams meant they’d be able to intercept both of them.

  Still, if Pappy did his job here, the bombs might not be necessary. He eased his head up far enough to see the tank’s rear axles, noted the corresponding spot below him on the ridge, and lowered himself out of view. Moving as quickly as he could, he worked his way sideways to that place.

  As he’d already discovered to his detriment, the ridge was largely composed of loose and breakable rock. About a meter below the crest he found a conveniently placed indentation. It wasn’t quite big enough, but by extending his air hose to its fullest length he was able to use the bottom of his oxy tank to hammer out enough rock to make the hole big enough for what he needed.

  On Earth he would never have gotten away with something like that—the racket of metal on rock would have brought the enemy down on him in double-quick time. But here, in the near vacuum of Luna, the Ueys on the far side of the ridge wouldn’t hear a thing.

  And best of all, odds were that that potential weakness hadn’t even occurred to them. Maybe there was something to KC’s Winter War analogy, after all.

  Of course, like everything else in warfare, Luna’s vacuum was a two-edged sword. Now that Pappy had silently gouged out his hole, he needed something to fill it with. And with the loss of his extra oxygen tank, there was only one option.

  According to the specs, a modern spacesuit held enough air on its own to keep its wearer alive for ten minutes if heavily active and half an hour if completely passive. Pappy wasn’t sure exactly where in that range he would end up, but probably dangerously close to the front. Taking a few deep breaths, he jammed the tank into the hole in the rock, wedged the torch underneath it and locked it on, and unfastened the hose. Then, with the ominous sense of a timer counting down in his head, he bounced his way down to ground level and headed back toward the Loonie foxholes.

  Every couple of hops he glanced back to see what was happening with his pressure bomb. On the fourth such glance, he saw the oxy tank explode, blowing the top of the ridge into a vertical avalanche and raining slow-falling rocks across the whole area.

  Probably none of them would be close enough to give Pappy any trouble. Just the same, he turned his attention forward again and picked up his pace. Flying rocks or furious Ueys aside, his air was still running out.

  The spot where he’d first crossed the ridge, at least, was obvious from t
he scattering of freshly broken rock at the base. He took a moment to visually pick out his route, and started up.

  Luck, recent experience, and the fact that he now had both hands free combined to get him up the rock wall without falling. He peered over the top, confirmed that the ground below him was clear, and started down.

  And lost his balance completely as the top of the ridge beside him splintered in a spattering of gunfire.

  He tried to catch himself as he toppled toward the ground, or at least slow his fall. But the useful handholds were few and far between, and in the end his efforts didn’t make much difference in his impact speed. But he did at least manage to turn himself upright, enabling himself to land on his feet instead of his side or back.

  Which turned out not to be much of a gain. His bad left leg, freshly stressed by the earlier thump against his knee, collapsed under him as he hit the ground, sending him toppling into a bouncing impact on his left side.

  He had rolled over onto his stomach and was starting to push himself back to his feet when another burst of chips blasted from the ground just in front of him. He dropped back to the ground, spun around onto his right side, and looked behind him.

  Just in time to see the soldier who’d apparently followed him back from the Dunsland topple backward off the ridge, his flailing gun the last thing to disappear from sight. Pappy rolled back onto his stomach and again started to push himself back up.

  And once again dropped flat as a second explosion of rock chips erupted from the ground in front of him.

  Damn, damn, double damn. Pappy pressed himself as close to the ground as he could, cursing as another bunch of chips and dust popped from the ground along his path. He’d assumed from the Ueys’ previous behavior that they had orders either to go easy on the Loonies or to conserve ammo; maybe both. Clearly, those orders had now gone by the boards. Whatever his oxy-tank bomb had done, it had apparently made a nice mess of things.

  Another burst of chips. Still, at least they weren’t mad enough to open up with full-auto. The machine gunner chipping away at the lunar landscape was limiting his attacks to single shots and three-shot bursts.

  Pappy frowned. Unless the gunner wasn’t mad at all. Unless this was part of a deliberate, carefully coordinated strategy.

  But to what end? He had Pappy pinned down, but that still left KC and Morgan free and clear. Granted, aside from two more cement bombs the Loonies didn’t have any real weaponry, but the Ueys didn’t necessarily know that.

  Unless . . .

  Carefully, Pappy eased up onto his left side and looked back over his shoulder at the spot where the Uey had opened fire before losing his balance and falling backward. Eyeballing the vector for his fire . . .

  Pappy hissed between his teeth. From that vantage point, not only could the soldier pin down Pappy, but he also had a clear shot into Morgan’s foxhole. There should be enough space along the side for her to be safe from direct fire, but there would be no way she could make any countermoves from that position. Both of them would be sitting ducks.

  And the remaining member of their group, KC, was already injured and half out of action. A little more judicious gunfire from their two gunners, and the Ueys would be able to clear the Dunsland and roll into Hadley Dome at their leisure, with their three opponents unable to do anything but watch helplessly as they drove past.

  Or rather, two of them would watch helplessly. Pappy himself would be long dead. He wondered if the soldier on the ridge had noticed his lack of oxy tank before losing his footing. Or, if he’d noticed, if he cared.

  Mentally, Pappy shook his head. Irrelevant. What was relevant was that he was about to die, and Morgan was about to come under attack, and without a direct-line cable there was no way he could communicate with her or otherwise make plans without the Ueys having a front-row eavesdropping seat.

  Another shot, well wide of the mark. Still, Pappy couldn’t stay here forever. He started moving forward, noting with distant annoyance that the standard SAS elbow-and-knee crawl didn’t work nearly as well in lunar gravity, where it had a distinct tendency to make him bounce. He got about a meter when there was another shot, this one a triple, just in front of him.

  And with that, there was no longer a choice. A shot that close strongly suggested the Ueys were losing patience; and if it was a choice between getting shot and suffocating, he might as well go with the shot. Lunging up to his feet, keeping his attention on the machine gunners on the Dunsland, he leaned forward and bounded toward Morgan’s foxhole.

  Out of the corner of his eye he spotted something moving in his direction from Morgan’s direction. Reflexively, he dodged sideways, fighting to keep from losing his balance as he snapped his attention back that way.

  It was a cable—a comm cable—snaking gracefully toward him. He grabbed it, his eyes tracking it back to Morgan’s foxhole. She was standing mostly upright, her helmet partially exposed, either oblivious to the machine gunners or else ignoring them, her faceplate turned toward Pappy, her paintball gun gripped in her hand but pointed toward the sky. Pappy gave another bounce, fumbling the comm cable jack into his suit—

  “Get down!” she snapped.

  It was the first time Pappy had ever heard Morgan use that tone. But he knew how to respond to it. Even as he bent his knees for his next hop he froze his legs in place, letting himself topple to the ground onto his outstretched hands.

  Or tried to. To his consternation, his elbows buckled unexpectedly under the impact, dropping him flat on his face and stomach. He blinked with disbelief . . .

  And suddenly realized he was gasping for breath, his lungs burning, his muscles twitching as he rushed toward the limit of his air supply. Something flew out of the foxhole ahead, arcing over his head. He grabbed for a rocky protuberance, but discovered his fingers wouldn’t close solidly around it. There was another motion in front of him, something bigger this time, but he couldn’t tell what it was through the sudden sparkling glitter sprinkling across his vision.

  A shadow passed over the rock he was trying to grab, plunging it into darkness. The darkness and the sparkling made it nearly impossible to see, but he couldn’t remember why he wanted it in the first place. He tried again anyway, forcing his fingers to close . . .

  Without warning, a flood of cool air washed over him.

  He inhaled deeply, aware that he was panting again, only this time actually clearing out his lungs. The sparkling in his vision faded away, the pounding in his ears diminished—

  “—Pappy?”

  “Yeah,” he managed. His voice sounded like something coming from a frog pond. “Yeah.”

  “Come on.” Someone—the big shadow from earlier—Morgan?—grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the nearby foxhole. Pappy pressed a hand against the ground, trying to help by pushing himself along as he felt strength starting to flow back into the weakened muscles.

  And then, abruptly, he remembered.

  He twisted half over, nearly breaking Morgan’s grip on his arm in the process, and looked behind him. The Uey soldier who’d followed him must surely have recovered from his fall and scaled the ridge again.

  He had. He was there now, along with a companion who hadn’t shown himself earlier. Both of them were leaning half over the crest, their long-barreled pistols gripped in their hands.

  Both of them glued solidly to each other and the rock of the ridge by a cake-frosting spatter of glistening white from a vac cement bomb. Which, Pappy realized now, must have been the smaller shadow that had passed over him while he was suffocating.

  And then he and Morgan were at the edge of the foxhole, and Morgan was shoving him over the rim. Pappy managed to catch the edge with one hand and turn himself around to land on his feet. Morgan was right behind him.

  He’d just dropped below the level of the surface when another burst of gunfire spattered across the ground and ricocheted off the foxhole’s rear wall.

  “You okay?” Morgan asked, breathing a little heavily herself. “What
the hell were you thinking?”

  “I needed to slow them down,” Pappy said. His breathing was nearly back to normal now. Amazing what a fresh oxy tank could do for a man. “Did it work?”

  “If you mean did it drop a pile of rocks against the back of the Dunsland, yes, it worked great,” Morgan said, a little sourly. “If you mean did it make the Ueys mad, oh yeah, definitely. If you mean did it immobilize the Dunsland, no, it didn’t. It looks like a bunch of the rock landed on both sides of the left rear wheel, but they’re already working on clearing it away.”

  “Yeah.” Pappy gave himself another couple of lungsful of air, then eased his head carefully up over the edge of the foxhole. He confirmed that the two men on the ridge were still safely cemented in place, then turned his attention to the Dunsland.

  For all the anger Morgan had referenced, the Ueys still had their priorities in place. Much as they would probably love to send another team to perforate Pappy’s team in their foxholes, the important part was to get the Dunsland free to roll into Hadley and grab this Mimic thing nobody wanted to talk about.

  His radio crackled. “Hello, Hadley Dome Defense Commander,” an accented voice came in his ear. “This is Colonel Chakarvarti of the United Earth Command. Please respond.”

  Pappy looked at Morgan. “Is he talking to us?”

  “He must be trying to reach Lieutenant Sassou,” Morgan said doubtfully. “I don’t know if he’s listening to radios right now, though.”

  Pappy thought back to his brief conversation with the man at Hadley Control. “Or if anyone else is, either.”

  “Hadley Defense Commander?” Chakarvarti prompted.

  Pappy gazed out at the Dunsland and the soldiers working like busy little ants around it. With Morgan having used her cement bomb to pin down two of the Ueys—quite literally—they had only one bomb left, which was currently lying twenty meters away in Pappy’s foxhole. Aside from that they had cable, cutting torches, oxy tanks, and paintball guns.

  And that was it. No real weapons, and no defenses beyond a couple more of the monofil traps that had briefly derailed the Uey advance. Within an hour or two, unless Pappy could pull something out of his hat, the enemy would be rolling unopposed into Hadley.