by Bobby Adair
“Brice,” I say, “You have another C4?”
He smiles. “Two.”
I look at the others. “Grav tight. Things are about to get exciting.”
I jump and fly to the airlock’s massive door in a flash. I heave to pull the heavy door open and squeeze inside as soon as the gap is wide enough. Brice tries to push in after me. “No,” I tell him. “I’ll put two charges on the outside door. You put your charges on these two. I’ll see you on the other side.”
“What?” he looks at me like I’ve gone suicide crazy. “On the other side?”
“On the other side of the hangar. I’m headed out there.” I look myself up and down. I’m caked in blood and moon dust. No orange color is visible on my suit. “You’ll know when to detonate.”
Chapter 49
The airlock, large enough to handle sixty Trogs at a time, cycles faster than expected. But then again, emptying an airlock to vacuum always seems to go faster than filling it with atmosphere.
As soon as the pressure reaches vacuum, the outer door automatically swings open.
Filling my head with the most Trog-sounding thoughts I can copy from my time spent in the company of Prolific Man Killer and his captains, I walk fast without looking around. I’m headed toward the nearest lift I see.
I feel Trog eyes on me, and I feel suspicion in their thoughts as telepathic questions come at me. Who are you? What’s your clan? Why are you alone? What’s wrong with you?
And they’re coming. I feel them, so I look up.
Twenty or thirty, not a dozen meters away, are starting to move toward me. Through the grime, they can see the magazines mounted on my chest, the pistol in its holster, the railgun I’m trying to keep hidden behind my body.
Shit!
The grav lift I’m heading for is still forty meters away.
I can make it if I fly. I think.
A pain hits me, ripping right through my thoughts, and grating on every nerve. I stumble, but catch myself, as I see every Trog head in the hangar bay turn as one, all of them looking at the glass windows to the staging area.
Phil!
It’s him and his Gray distress call.
I jump and max grav toward the lift.
Out in the hangar, I know my grav pulse caught the attention of more Trogs than I care to guess.
Thankfully, the cockpit door on the grav lift is open, and as I reach it, I swing around feet-first and slip right into the seat. I skip the seatbelt and swing the door shut instead. Setting my suit grav to keep my ass pinned to the seat, I flip the switch to power up the lift, and thank God the reactor was kept purring while waiting to load up and lift off.
I raise the lift off the ground by a meter and look back toward the airlock. I shove the power lever to max grav as I tilt the lift hard to port to race across the hangar’s vast open space, right at the Trogs who’d been casting their suspicious eyes at me. Defensive grav fields plume bright as I plow into them, sending their bodies flying in every direction. That’s when the airlock charges blow, and airborne bodies are swept up through open doors and into space.
I cut a hard right and slam my grav lift into another lift, half-full of Trogs who are too stunned to do anything but watch the collision crush the shipping container around them.
I don’t stop, instead powering on through, shoving the lift out of the way as I bump into two more before the floor clears in front of me, except for forty or fifty Trogs with boot grav locked to the floor to avoid being thrown around by the air rushing out of the inner tunnels and through the broken airlock.
I plow through them, maiming and killing, as I race through to bump my way down a row of grav lifts just starting to lift off to escape the mayhem. The first one accelerates hard to move out of my way as I clip its drive array, throwing it off-kilter, as it smashes into one of the open hangar doors. Ramming my way through three more collisions, my shipping container is coming apart and pieces are falling off with every bump.
“Brice,” I call over the comm. “Can you hear me?”
“You’re crazy,” he tells me.
“Now’s your chance,” I reply.
“Already working it,” he says.
I come around to work my way down the other side of the hangar and see Brice and all the others at the far end. With suit grav to keep them glued to the ground, they're trudging through the wind rushing out of the airlock and trying to cross the hangar. "I can keep these bastards busy until you make it past."
“They will figure out how to take you down,” says Brice. “Don’t push your luck.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I tell him, as my lift reels from slamming broadside into one that powered down and slid across the floor.
A handful of brave Trogs take advantage of my loss of speed to jump onto my left, looking for handholds, as I accelerate toward a wall to scrape them off.
The impact is hard on my machine, and the controls start to get splashy. I lose two of my hitchhikers.
“We’re moving faster now that we’re avoiding the wind,” Brice calls to me.
“ETA?” I ask, as I slam another lift and kill another of my riders. I accelerate hard for the roof and mash the two above my cockpit.
“A minute,” Brice tells me.
“I’ll meet you there.”
Chapter 50
I’ve ditched my demolished lift, and I’m flying at a reckless speed through the destruction on the hangar floor, tossing my hand grenades out behind me.
I spy the cavernous loading dock and rip through in a flash, cutting hard as the floor opens up below me, exposing a shaft punched through the rock, forty meters in diameter and a thousand feet deep. Dim lights illuminate spots on the wall at semi-regular intervals all the way down. They mark the landings outside the airlocks at each level. My feet tingle as I look down a shaft and the natural fear of falling momentarily grips me. Still, I angle toward the bottom and power into the hole.
A hundred feet below me, I see my crew, descending rapidly, staying in the shadows close to the wall.
“Brice,” I call.
“You made it.” He sounds genuinely surprised.
I accelerate to catch up with them.
Lenox congratulates me on pulling off another death-defying feat. Silva won't comment on it. Frank says I'm fuckin’ crazy.
“Let’s pick up the pace,” I say and push the speed down. “Frank, let us know which airlock we need to exit through.”
Brice spins over onto his back and aims his rifle back up the shaft. “In case anybody saw you come this way.”
I roll on my back as well. Our most likely source of danger is from above.
“I feel them,” says Phil, as he stares at one of the airlocks we’re passing.
“That’s five hundred,” says Frank.
“They’re in there,” says Phil. “They’re frightened.”
“The Grays?” I ask. “Was it the nuke that frightened them?”
“They felt it,” says Phil. “Though they were protected by five hundred feet of rock, they were closer to the blast than we were.”
“Have they recovered yet?” I ask, as we sink deeper.
“Some,” he says. “Not all.”
“Do you feel the Grays down below?” I ask.
“Yes,” answers Phil. “They fared better, but not well.”
“Almost there,” says Frank.
We start to slow.
“Phil, how many Grays are down here?” I ask. “Can you tell?”
“Thousands,” he says. “Maybe half the Grays in the system. The heads of the big clans.”
No doubt in my mind. “This is where we need to be.”
Frank guides us to an airlock landing, and we all step out of the shaft on the stone floor and wait for the lock to cycle.
“Anything beyond this airlock we need to worry about?” I’m looking at Frank and Skip.
Frank shakes his head.
“No milit
ary down this deep,” says Skip. “Leastways, no SDF ever came down here.”
“The corridor is empty,” says Phil.
The airlock door pops open, and we all pile in.
Brice pulls the door shut and Lenox hits the button to cycle it full of atmosphere.
I look at my d-pad to check the time.
Up on the surface, Clark has divvied his people into four squads. They’ve each taken a nuke, and they’re spread out as evenly as they can over the area where all the planet-killer batteries are nested. Each team has a particular railgun in a particular battery selected. At a time of Clark’s choosing, one Marine in each squad will slide down the barrel of one of the railguns and spike it with as much C4 as they have. Once the squad is clear, they’ll blow the charge, destroying the base of the gun, and hopefully killing every Trog in the bunker below. That’s when the squad will come back and slide their bomb down the open railgun tube where it’ll drop fifteen or twenty meters into wreckage below. That’s where each bomb will sit until it goes off. My orders for Clark were to drop the bombs down the tubes just three minutes before detonation. I figured the three minutes would give his squads just enough time to move to a safe position while minimizing the time any live Trogs below had to figure out that the bomb is a danger, and then do something about it.
Back on earth, if Blair’s insurgents didn’t nuke Pyongyang when our first bomb blew up here, then they’ll do it when the rest explode. From there, it’s a crapshoot as to whether her coup will work.
On the battle stations, if the workers rose up to fight with us, then there weren’t enough Trogs on the stations to stand against them, and they’re all in our hands. If the workers didn’t rise up, then I don’t want to think about how badly it went. Our whole army could be dead already.
Unfortunately, all of those things are out of my hands. All I can do is accomplish my mission.
We’ve gone seven hundred meters down a straight, poorly lit hallway when Frank stops us, spends a moment examining the map on his d-pad, and says, “This is it. This is the most central place between Upper and Lower Eden. You put that bomb here, and nothing will survive.” He spreads his hands in an expansive gesture over his head. “This whole part of the moon has been drilled with so many tunnels, caverns, and shafts, it’ll all collapse. Nothing will survive down here.”
I look up and down the hall. “Is there a closet or something nearby? I don’t want to drop this thing here in the hall where anybody might notice it.”
“A tool room.” Frank points. “Twenty meters that way.”
“We need to make this quick,” says Brice. “The clock is running down.”
“Follow Frank,” I tell him. “Put the nuke inside.” I grab Skip by the arm. “Stay with me. I have questions.”
“About?” he asks, as the others hurry the bomb down the hall.
“I need to radio out before the bombs detonate.”
Skip is already shaking his head.
“I mentioned the MSS radio room to Frank. He doesn’t think we have time to get there, make a call, and then get out alive.”
Skip is still shaking his head. “Even if every corridor and vertical shaft between here and there was clear, you probably couldn’t make it.”
“You’ve seen how fast I can fly through these halls.”
“I’m taking that into account.”
I curse under my breath. “What about the SDF? Do they have any radio equipment? Anything they used for coordinating the moon’s defenses, for communicating with the fleet when we had one?”
Skip is nodding. “It’s not close.”
“That’s okay,” I tell him with a smile. “We’re not staying in the area anyway.”
Chapter 51
Given the few minutes left on the clock, we don’t have time for subtleties. Once we clear the airlock to move back into the utility shaft, I tell them, “Max grav up, cut the corner as fast as you dare to get into the hangar, and then pray to God the roof doors are still open.”
“If they’re not?” asks Skip.
“Like you said before, we don’t have a lot of time.”
“Keep on eye on each other,” I tell them. “We’ll max grav as far as we can get before the detonations and gather up somewhere outside. Go.”
Everybody jumps off.
“Lenox, Silva,” I tell them, “take the lead, show us how it’s done.”
I comm Brice privately. “Stay with them. I’ll hang back with Frank and Skip.”
“Don’t,” says Brice. He’s pragmatic. He’s already seen how rusty Frank and Skip are at flying in their suits.
“I’ll make sure they go fast.”
In seconds, Silva, Lenox, Brice, and Phil are already more than a hundred feet above us.
I open a link to Frank and Skip. “You guys need to fly like your lives depend on it.”
Frank says, “I’m not used to this kind of—”
“Frank,” I say as I come in close to him, “grab onto me. Clip your belt carabiners to mine. Skip, you do the same. Do it quick.”
It's not dignified, but they do it, and we accelerate as one clumsy clump.
"Don't let go," I tell them. "If you fall off, I'm not coming back for you."
Several hundred feet above us, the other four have already made the turn into the hangar.
“Is it clear?” I ask over the comm.
“Trogs everywhere,” says Brice through raging static. “We made it out. Be careful.”
“Oh, shit!” hollers Lenox.
“Lenox?” I call, but I hear only static and garbled voices. “Lenox, can you hear me?” No response I can understand. “Silva? Phil?”
I point my railgun out ahead of me. “You hear that?” I ask Frank and Skip.
“Yep.”
Coming to the top of the shaft, I slow for the turn, not wanting to lose one of them to momentum, as I burn hard g’s cutting through the loading dock to get into the hangar. Brice wasn’t lying, Trogs are everywhere, and plenty of them are carrying railguns, which they shoot at us as I spray wildly with every round that’ll fire out of my magazine while accelerating through the open hangar doors above.
Once I’m out in the enveloping dust, I see trails blown through where Brice and the others have already flown. I pile on the g’s to catch up. “Can anyone hear me?
I see eight or nine blue grav halos up ahead, and know immediately they’re not right. Trogs—Trogs pushing hard g’s to catch my crew. In a way, it’s a relief, because it tells me my crew is alive. At the same time, my protective instincts redline and I amp up my grav to catch them, but something else isn’t right, and it’s not right in a big way. The bug in my head is trying to figure out what it is.
“Holy shit!” hollers Frank. “Look!”
I barrel roll while I accelerate for a full look at the sky above us. How do I know that’s where I need to look? Hell, I don't know. The bug? Intuition? Something in the way Frank said it?
Doesn’t matter. What I see scares the bejesus out of me.
Cruisers.
The Trogs recalled their fleet. And so fast.
Seven. Nine. No, twelve. Two squadrons of the behemoths.
Shit!
Three are settling in overhead, looming as large as colliding planets. They’re coming in close to protect the base from further attack. The other cruisers are arraying themselves above. Way too near.
For them.
Rolling over so I can see the Trogs ahead of me again, I tell Frank, “They’re not going to like it when those nukes blow.”
“You see those guys?” yells Skip. “Up ahead?”
“I got ‘em.” I keep pushing the g’s and risk everything by overdriving my plates.
The distance between us quickly shrinks.
I get in close to the nearest trio of Trogs, swinging a little to my right so I can fire at an angle. I pull my trigger and rip through thirty of forty rounds.”
One Trog rips
apart as the other two tumble toward the ground.
I don’t bother to look and see if they’re dead as we zip past—I scored enough hits that it won’t matter. What my railgun slugs didn’t do, the vacuum will finish.
The other Trogs are looking back at me now and taking evasive action.
What they don’t know is that only makes my job easier. I’m not going to fire straight down our axis of retreat—any rounds that miss might hit my comrades further on. But once the Trogs swing off to one side or the other, I unload on them.
It goes quickly.
Four more chasers go down before the others swing wide to get away from me, giving up.
I amp down on the power flowing through my grav plates, knowing I just tumbled one more roll of the dice.
“They’re going back,” says Frank, as he watches the Trogs fall way behind us.
“Can we unclip now?” asks Skip.
“If you can keep up,” I tell him as I balance my suit’s power between speed and defensive grav to protect us from all the crap we’re flying through. “How are we doing for time?”
“Just passed thirty seconds,” says Frank.
“How far away are we?” I ask, knowing I have no more power to push, and no more luck to press.
“Nearly twenty klicks,” says Skip. “I recognize the ground station we just passed.”
I drop to a lower altitude and slow down. "We've got to make sure we're below the horizon when they blow," I explain to them. I comm to the others, “Brice, Silva?”
Nothing.
“Lenox, Phil?” I call.
Static.
“Did they make it?” asks Frank.
Recalling how difficult communications were through the static of all the charged dust particles around the Potato all that time ago, I tell him, “Yeah, we just don’t have much range with suit radios in this shit.”
Though we’d been expecting it, it’s still a surprise when it happens. A strobe of ultra-bright flashes illuminate every speck of dust in the sky above, leaving us in a stark shadow below.
At the same time, it feels like a fusion bomb is exploding inside my head. Colors mix in a kaleidoscope of gravity and light. I can’t tell up from down, in from out, alive from dead, and then everything snaps to black.