Through the melee, the Tyche slipped, a goddess wearing a shadow gown. Off to starboard, an explosion of light and heat as an Ezeroc ship impacted with a human fighter. Bright, bright light as the Lucidity vented atmosphere and people and nuclear fire into the void as a rock the size of a building slammed her through the center. Her running lights dark, she drifted. The Confidence raged back, and a handful of Ezeroc fighters ceased to be as nuclear warheads detonated in their midst.
And yet, the Goddess of Luck slipped on, thanks to the efforts of the espers aboard, the control of the reactor by a savvy Engineer, and the gentle hands of a skilled Helm. She made the landing soft and easy, surface dust billowing out as she settled skids on the crust. Three souls stepped out. The Intelligencers remained on the ship, splitting their focus. They kept both those on Tyche and the departed crew hidden.
All hands were still alive, while humans in their thousands died behind her. The Tyche might be lucky, but again she fought against Chronos, and time wasn’t on her side.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE OPENING IN the moon was unmistakable. Grace’s breathing hissed inside her suit as she panted with exertion, helping Kohl and Nate hustle the sled across the surface towards the hole. Or she was panting in fear — that was more likely, as Kohl with his bulky power armor was doing all the hard work. Nate had a hand on the sled, and Grace had two, but they were more keeping the thing company than doing anything useful. The hole was their destination: unmistakable because it looked like an anthill of epic scale, and also because of the Ezeroc around the rim.
Okay, so they don’t need an atmosphere. That is inconvenient for us, fighting inside spacesuits while they moonwalk.
The bugs noticed them, turning eyes on at approach. Starting a scuttle down the side of the mound of moon rock and dust. And then they stopped as the Tyche blasted overhead, PDCs hammering at the earth. El’s voice came over the comm: “You guys need to hustle.” From over the horizon behind them, Ezeroc ships — hunks of rock that looked like accreted hunks of crystals and stone — approached. The Tyche banked, gave a salvo of PDC and maser fire, then blasted off into space, drawing the Ezeroc away.
“Well, there goes our ride,” said Nate.
Grace laughed, because she knew as well as he did: they wouldn’t need a ride. They wouldn’t ever get off this rock. The realization of it made her giddy. She picked up love/protect/humor from Nate, and confusion/protect/determination from Kohl. Both were good enough. Both were here, with her. She had a real family, which meant she could die knowing what that felt like.
The sled was heavy under Earth gravity but the moon’s paltry mass made it feel lighter. They were jogging in great bounds along the bumpy terrain, dust rising in their wake. Grace thought, In all my wildest dreams, I would not have thought I would run along the surface of the moon. They reached the lip of the anthill, looking into the maw. It was mostly dark down there, but odd organic illumination marked a path. The Ezeroc might not need air, but they needed — or wanted — light. Good to know for next time, not that there would be a next time.
Grace did a last check at the top of the rim. Nate, in his black suit, Emperor’s insignia on the shoulder, sword on his back, one hand reaching up to draw it in the silence of space. Carrying the last piece of his friend to his grave. The metal was black and hungry. His other hand held a blaster, low, ready. Grace looked to Kohl, the big man unshucking his plasma cannon from the back of his power armor. The armor was like Kohl: rough and ready. It wasn’t pretty; it had never promised to be pretty, but did the dark and dirty work no one else wanted to. That plasma cannon promised great things, but Kohl also carried — small, innocuous almost — a maser, given to him by a new friend he never knew he needed. And finally, Grace checked herself. A borrowed suit from the Tyche, but hers now. She was welcome on the ship, one of its crew. No one would throw her off, try and expose her, give her up for coin. They’d given her their colors as a show of faith. Her Republic sword was unfamiliar but strong. The edge was straight, not curved, but sharp enough to get the job done a hundred times or more. It carried a nano edge, spun molecules woven in space. It would never blunt. Grace wasn’t sure if it would break, but she knew one thing: the blade would break before she did.
Breathing calm once more, she pointed with her blade into the pit. “We going in or what?”
Kohl laughed. “This is it, isn’t it? Us, against the might of an alien empire.”
“I reckon so,” said Nate.
“I wouldn’t be here with anyone else,” said Grace. “I wouldn’t choose anyone else.”
“Me neither, Gracie.”
“Asshole.”
Nate flashed them both a grin, then set off down into the pit. His strides were big and loping, sword and blaster ready. Leading, because that’s what leaders did. They didn’t command from the back, or hide inside metal hulls. They did what needed to be done. She looked at Kohl, who gave a holler as he put a boot against the side of the sled. A shove of servos and the sled went down into the pit. Kohl then made his power armor jump after Nate. She watched it scribe an arc through the airless void, running lights casting back the shadows. She swallowed.
Then she followed.
• • •
The sled was running wild, out of control, down the tunnels they found. There were junctions aplenty, but each time the sled found a junction it always seemed to choose the hole that went deeper. Down, into the core of the moon. The rocky walls were white and chalky, the sled’s tires kicking up dust as they passed. Grace didn’t have time to marvel at the tunnels built into the moon — all done silently, while Earth slumbered below. She was loping along at the rear, Nate still charging ahead after the sled, Kohl lumbering after, his power armor’s lights a beacon. A challenge.
There weren’t a plethora of guard drones, none they’d seen so far anyway. That gave a few options.
Option 1: there were no guards, because who would attack a hive on the moon they didn’t know existed? This was the optimistic option, but the least likely in Grace’s estimation.
Option 2: the guards were piloting the ships in space as the battle raged in space. That was the likely scenario, but it didn’t preclude…
Option 3: there were guards here, waiting. Hiding. Reduced in number, ready to leap out at the unwary. They knew the terrain. They knew how to get in and out.
Grace’s HUD kept track of their twists and turns, the distance from the surface they were scrambling away from. She didn’t know if she should feel safer down here or up there. Up there, a battle raged, massive forces leveraged against each other. A single human could be turned into stray atoms almost accidentally. Down here, there were aliens, and they were hungry for humans in general, and Grace in particular.
So, okay. Down here was worse. But she had to see it through. She had to send a message to these fuckers. Hunt Grace Gushiken, and Grace will hunt you back. And she wasn’t alone. Not anymore. Her eyes flicked to Nate’s back.
Together.
• • •
“Tyche, this is the captain,” said Nate. Grace heard his voice on the comm, but no response. “Torrington, please come in.”
Nothing. Either everyone out there was dead, or a kilometer of moon rock was an effective insulator.
The sled rested against a turn in the tunnel. Grace’s suit told her there was still no atmosphere, but also told her the surface of the moon under her feet was warm. Like there was a power source here. What it was made of didn’t bear thinking about. They had three directions they could choose. Back the way they came (nope), left (maybe), or right (also maybe).
“Well, we’re on our own,” said Nate.
“That ain’t the worst part, Cap,” said Kohl. He swiveled in place, looking down the left tunnel first, then the right. “Means we can’t remote detonate.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” said Nate. “It’s what countdown timers were made for. What I’m worried about is which way to go.”
Grace’s arm shot out l
ike it was pulled by strings. “That way,” she said, pointing right.
“How do you know?” said Kohl.
Grace looked at him. “You can’t hear them?”
“Hear who, Gracie?”
“Asshole,” she muttered, then looked at Nate. “You?”
“No,” he said, turning to Kohl. “The way I think it works is that if you’re some kind of esper, you get switched to receive mode by default. They can hear these fuckers.”
Grace.
“Definitely that way,” said Grace. “They know I’m here. Amedea and Chad are doing their best, but…”
“Fucken’ awesome,” said Kohl. He hefted his plasma cannon. “Do they know I’m here too?”
“I don’t think they care,” said Grace.
“Oh,” said Kohl. “Imma make ’em care.”
• • •
The tunnel widened into a chamber. Grace’s HUD had a map of the route they’d traversed in the top right of her field of view. A long way back to the surface, at least a klick. An unknown distance to go, although—
Grace! Grace! Come! Grace!
—she figured on them being close enough to kiss now. The chamber was long, more of a wider tunnel, the walls still chalky and white, but pockmarked with holes. Those holes were of various sizes, some small as her fist, a few large enough to drive a loader through. The chamber was otherwise empty, the aperture at the other end leading into a soft organic bloom of green light.
Grace! Together!
I am only together with one other person, she thought, her eyes flicking to Nate. I only want to be together with that man.
Then he must die.
“Nate,” said Grace. He was ahead of her and Kohl, about midway down the chamber’s length. His blaster and sword were ready, but he wasn’t looking up. “Nate—”
An Ezeroc drone scuttled out of one hole in the walls, then leapt at Nate. Plasma fire from Kohl’s cannon followed it through the space, bright and silent. The flashes were enough to make Nate turn, to get his sword up as the creature landed on him. Its claws were raised high, ready to strike.
Three more entered the chamber through other holes, one scuttling low, the other two leaping. One leaper went for Kohl, the big man saying something that sounded like about Goddamn time as he lit the space with plasma flashes. One leaper came for Grace, and she raised her sword to meet it. There would be no smooth dance here, the low gravity of the moon putting off her usual fluidity of motion. She waited for the thing, watching it come closer, thinking while I’m waiting here for this to land, Nate will die. As it got closer, traversing the distance in less than a second — a very long second — she had time to think, is this sword going to be enough against those teeth? I do not know this sword, and it does not know me. And then the Ezeroc was on her, and then it was past her, the two halves of it spraying entrails into vacuum. She didn’t remember swinging. Grace didn’t remember the strike. She was focused on Nate, and she held her sword low as she bounded across the chamber.
The creature Kohl was firing at jumped and skipped around the walls, big plasma blasts tearing chunks out of the moon rock. She could hear him yelling over the comm, a long yell that was a stretched out motherfuuuuuuuckerrrrr. Grace had to get past that rain of plasma to get to Nate. She had to get to Nate before the Ezeroc sliced him open like a Thanksgiving turkey. The Ezeroc Kohl was firing at zipped through the space too close to her, and she sliced one of its legs off without thinking, innards boiling in vacuum as she moved on. She forgot about the plasma, forgot about Kohl, and she even forgot about the one that had been scuttling across the floor until it reared in front of her. Grace had been so focused on her destination she’d forgotten about it — her instructors would have berated her for it. You must never lose focus in the battle. The battle will be what it will be. And here, she’d die, because she’d lost focus.
A wild swing from her sword missed, and the Ezeroc’s maw opened. It reached towards her with those leading claws.
And then it exploded in a shower of steaming meat as Kohl blew it to pieces. Grace blinked, realized that blinking was costing her time, and turned back towards Nate.
She’d never make it in time.
She needn’t have worried. Nathan Chevell might have been — in his own mind, not hers — a useless cripple. But he was still the captain of a starship with a crew to protect. He still wore the Emperor’s Black, and held the Emperor’s last gift. Nate was twisting under the Ezeroc, its claws flashing down to impact the ground where his helmet was, each time missing by a whisker. Nate got his blaster up, and plasma tore chunks out of the underside of the insect. It reared back, giving him time to roll up on one knee. His left hand held his sword, and even though — again, in his own mind — he couldn’t use it worth a damn, he still lunged forward, skewering the Ezeroc on the end of the black blade.
Panting filled the comm channel, then Kohl’s voice came through loud and clear. “Gracie, I’ll have to claim at least partial credit for that one you sliced the legs off.”
She turned. “How you figure, Kohl?” A giggle escaped her lips, and she wanted to clamp a hand over her mouth. Difficult, that, with a helmet on.
“I set it up for you.”
She let the laugh out, leaning on her sword. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
Nate swung his blade, bits of Ezeroc frozen to it. “Well, that was intense.”
Grace! Grace! Grace!
She stopped laughing. “It’ll get more intense.” She took a step backward from the end of the chamber, then another. “A lot more.”
Through the aperture at the end came a massive crab. The biggest she’d ever seen, hard armor plates covering it. Its clawed limbs pulled it over the ground. Grace took another step back. “We need to distract it. Get the bomb into the chamber beyond. That’s where the Queen is.”
“Good idea,” said Nate. “I’ll draw it this way—”
“All y’all need to hold up,” said Kohl. He walked toward the Ezeroc, plasma cannon held in front on the mounts of his power armor. “Hey. Ugly. You want a piece?”
The Ezeroc charged.
Kohl’s plasma cannon streamed fire, the impacts of each bolt hammering the outside of the Ezeroc’s shell. That shell cracked, buckled, pieces chipping off to turn towards the ground. Kohl kept firing, stepping forward as he did, human power armor standing against Ezeroc organic might. Nate was firing too, his blaster chipping away at the thing. Didn’t matter if he was helping or hurting.
They were buying Grace time.
She grabbed the sled, heaving at it. Grace ran past the Ezeroc, its armor now glowing with heat in places, and into the chamber beyond.
• • •
The gloom here was thrown back by flashes of light from the melee in the entrance chamber. Here, pods of humans — sealed against vacuum — littered the floor and walls. Hundreds of them. Grace wondered how they got them up here. Unnoticed, under the eyes of the Republic. Then she thought of the man in black, or the men in black, and wondered how the Ezeroc hadn’t eaten them all already. The room was huge, a massive cavern buried deep below the moon’s surface. They had been busy little insects, working with a will to protect their Queen against the eyes and weapons of humans. Only suicidal humans would ever make it this far. Humans who cared more about their race than themselves. And there were few of those. The Queen herself was far away from Grace, against the far wall. Huge, the biggest of her kind that Grace had ever seen. Larger than the infant version she’d seen on Absalom Delta, or the mature one they’d found on Earth. This one was old, and powerful, and used to winning.
The Queen’s voice was loud in Grace’s mind. It was like a hammer, battering at her will. Wanting to make her become one of them. She’d fallen once before. Grace had almost fallen a second time.
She wouldn’t fall a third.
“Go,” she said, through clenched teeth, “fuck yourself.”
The sled was too heavy to move over the pods, but it didn’t matter. The Queen lo
oked down at her from its position far away. Too far away to touch Grace with those claws. But not anywhere near far enough away to avoid death by nuclear fire. Grace turned to the nuke, flipping open its console. It was designed to be easy to use, troops with boots on the ground, a hail of withering fire all around them, able to set it off without mistake. The controls were simple.
Her fingers rested — briefly, but the temptation was strong — over the DETONATE switch’s cover. It was red, locked in place, designed in a way that said if you flick back the lock, you know what you’re doing. That would end it all, without doubt. But she thought about Nate, and thought, no.
She clicked on the timer display. How long would it take them to reach the surface? Get up, and out? It was a kilometer. She could run a kilometer in five minutes. Nate, with his leg? Maybe the same, if Kohl was there with his power armor to help. Five minutes, and then they would die on the dark side of the moon.
Six minutes, then. She set the timer, locked it in place, and ran.
CHAPTER THIRTY
NATE KEPT HIS fire on the Ezeroc crab. He knew Kohl’s cannon was doing all the real work here, but two sources of plasma fire would confuse it. It meant if it came at them, there was a fifty/fifty chance it’d take Nate first, buying the big man time to … buy Grace more time.
Grace burst from the aperture of the chamber. She used the moon’s low gravity to bound up one wall and around the Ezeroc. He caught sight of her face through her visor, eyes wide, but not panicked or scared. Grace looked focused.
The Ezeroc crab took a swipe at her, its limb glowing with heat. Nate figured it’d be on fire if there was an atmosphere to help with that. As it was, the shot was clumsy, missing by an easy margin. She landed close to them, glanced over her shoulder at the creature, and said, “Run.”
Kohl snorted over the comm. “Hell no, Gracie. Job’s not done.” He fished his maser out, letting the plasma cannon rest on its mounts. He pointed the maser at the crab, saying, “Yo. This one’s from a friend of mine.” He squeezed the maser’s trigger. The Ezeroc seemed to be recovering from the barrage of plasma, took a step towards them, then stopped. It turned around, and Nate could feel the rumble of those big legs through his boots. It seemed confused, mandibles clacking, then one of its big arms popped off in a spray of steam and fluids. Loopy streams of innards vented from its carapace to boil away in the vacuum. Then one of the chest pieces popped open in a shower of gore, and it stumbled to the ground.
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