by Karen Bao
The song infects me. It takes root in my heart and wraps around my vocal cords. I feel as if I’ve never used them before.
“Only here is mankind free,” I sing, shyly and out of tune. At last, the words don’t stick in my throat like a lie. “Only here is mankind free.”
THE BASE’S ALARM SYSTEM SHRIEKS AT 06:00. It doesn’t bother me at first, since it’s less jarring than the human screams that have constituted the background noise of all my dreams since this war started.
But when I wake, and then pinch my inner elbow to make sure I’m really awake, the digitized panic doesn’t stop. Leaping out of bed, I grab my sister first, my weapons belt and helmet next. Out of habit, I’ve slept in uniform, leaving one less task to check off the list in emergency gear-ups.
Anka and I each grab one of Cygnus’s hands and pull him from the apartment, out into a whirlpool of bodies. My brother clenches his eyes shut, but his ears are wide open.
“To the bunker!” Anka shouts, gesturing wildly to our right. “Remember the drill we did?”
Anka all but sprints down the hallway, taking right and left turns as if she’s practiced her flight dozens of times. Pride surges within me as panicking people form a V behind us like a gaggle of migrating geese.
On the sides of the Dugout’s largest hallway, narrow slits have opened. “Evacuate to the deep bunker as per Emergency Procedure Two,” booms Asterion’s voice from the base-wide audio system. “Enemy foot soldiers have been detected entering the metro tunnel connecting Bases I and II. They may be attempting an invasion. I repeat, evacuate to the underground bunker.”
I’d feared as much. Both the metro tunnel opening and the bunker are underground; they’re on opposite sides of the base, the former at the north end of the main hallway and the latter at the south, beneath a shield volcano. I can’t be both places at once.
As we run down the main hallway, we narrowly avoid crashing into Atlas Phi, his expression wavering between worry and grief, and the twins, dressed in their faded secondhand battle gear.
“Where do we go?” Atlas asks none of us in particular, his eyes darting from one face to another. “What do we do?”
“Come on.” Anka leads us toward a cavernous hole in the wall, which used to be screened by blank white panels. Now a steady rush of civilians pours inside. “It’s not so complicated. You and me and Cygnus are going in there, Mr. Atlas. Phaet and Umbriel and Ariel will go out to fight.”
“About time we put that training to use, right?” Umbriel says, tone full of sarcasm. “Getting to nail a couple clueless Committee puppets in the name of ‘freedom.’” There’s resentment in his booming voice, and for a moment, I worry that he can’t be trusted in the field.
“Training . . .” Ariel shivers even as sweat trickles from his temples. “Something I should’ve done more of.” Then he looks at Wes and me, his eyebrows raised in worry. “Is Alex feeling okay enough to come?”
“He has no choice,” I say.
The twins’ father turns to me and puts his hands on my shoulders. Once a tower of a man, he seems so much smaller now. He’s all but leaning on me for support. “My boys . . . I never wanted them to fight for a living, and now they’re fighting for their lives. For all our lives. Please, Phaet, bring them home.”
“I’m an officer, not a bodyguard,” I say. “But I will try.”
I can’t look Atlas in the eye as he steps back from me, sick with concern, and files forward. Cygnus stares at the twins’ father as he goes, taking in the hordes of people entering the narrow spiral staircase that leads endless stories downward into the bunker.
“I can’t. Go down there, I mean. No one can make me crowd in with all those people.” He talks faster and faster, eyes shifting left to right. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I thought I could but it’s not going to happen.”
Terrified that his ghosts are coming back to haunt him—even though his life is in danger, because his life is in danger—I hold both his hands, squeezing them hard, and try to fix his panicked gaze with mine. “You will go to safety, Cygnus. You have to. The next time I see you, it’ll be deeper underground, okay?”
Cygnus gulps, shaking his head.
Anka’s face spasms with worry, but the expression is soon replaced with determination. “I’ve got this, Phaet.” She grabs Cygnus’s wrist with both hands. “See you soon.”
With a sinking heart, I watch her lead Cygnus down into darkness.
* * *
The metro tunnel is one of the Moon’s greatest architectural feats, one that schoolchildren learned about early and dreamt of seeing one day. Constructed out of a hollow lunar lava tube, it contains six defunct passenger trams: three on the tunnel floor and three suspended from the ceiling, an arrangement made possible by the minimal lunar gravity. The space in the middle is wide enough for a Pygmette to pass through, but too narrow for an invasion by ship.
Now that the trams aren’t running, it’s pitch-black inside, and we’ve chosen not to use our helmets’ headlamps to avoid giving away our location. Instead, we rely on infrared vision: anything with a human body temperature appears on our viewscreens as a bright red spot.
“Prepare to engage infantry,” warns Yinha’s voice in my headset.
A red mass of soldiers in pressure suits picks their way toward us, clambering over and between the boulders in their path. In this territorial tug-of-war, every square meter will count. If we can push the enemy back far enough, Dovetail might be able to switch from defense to offense and infiltrate Base I. If we lose ground, Committee-aligned forces will swarm the Dugout and take control of everything and everyone I have left.
“This way.” Wes points to a defunct tram to our right. “Let’s take cover.”
Crouching behind the car, ballistic shield protecting my open side, I peek my head out periodically, aiming Downers at the oncoming soldiers. Wes hoists himself onto a ledge near my head and uses a Batterer gun to try to puncture their pressure suits with metal bullets, which are denser and cheaper than the carbon-fiber Lunar ones. Alex does the same to my left. Four green Dovetailers—Umbriel and Ariel among them—cluster behind me and the Odans, also wielding our allies’ weapons. Yinha’s commanded us not to fire lasers for the same reason we’ve avoided headlamps: to keep our location secret.
Small groups of Dovetailers and Batterers are scattered across the area, ducked behind tramcars and boulders. Many tug at their pressure suits between shots; made of the same self-repairing carbon fiber as the Militia’s, these suits are all that separate our bodies from the near-vacuum outside. In our haste to prepare back in Defense, we didn’t have time to do proper fittings before venturing into the tunnel.
Our bodies are all that stand between the enemy soldiers and the Dugout—we must repel them from the two old airlock gates that separate the tunnel from our territory’s main hallway. If they breach those, it’s a matter of time before they run down the hallway and descend into the bunker.
We have to push forward.
“All clear!” I shout into my headset, and break cover, shield covering my vitals.
“Advance to the next car down.” Wes moves to the front of our unit, leading us on a slightly rightward trajectory. “That way!”
Our unit runs to the rear of the next car, trying to adjust our movements for moon-grav. One new Dovetail soldier pushes off the ground, soars a meter and a half upward, and gets sprayed by a combination of lasers and bullets, her suit’s self-repairing function too slow to save her. Tattered and unmoving, her body drifts down to slump, lifeless, against the ground. In my headset, I hear Ariel’s gasp and another recruit’s muffled sobs.
“Leave her!” I bark, hating the callousness of my own voice. “Push on!”
We’ve reached the end of the passenger tram whose cars we’ve used as cover. From here, boulders will be the only shelter. Twenty meters separate us from the first enemy soldiers,
who are positioned to attack a group of Dovetailers to our right. How did they advance so quickly?
I get my answer fast as one soldier glides toward us, trailing a cloud of gas from a cylinder strapped to his back. Three others follow in close order. Not all of the soldiers wear the cylinders—this frontmost unit, of about twenty, seems to be a specialized one.
“Pacifian propulsion packs,” Wes says, sounding unsurprised. Long ago, Earthbound astronauts used the devices to aid mobility in space. On special occasions, Militia uses a variant: smaller modular propulsion units strapped to the arms and legs. Crouching to the side, I take another look at the soldier’s pressure suit, which is bulkier and less reflective than the ones I’m used to. His comrades look similar. Wes is right: these suits must come from Earth.
“Come on, let’s put an end to their flying about.” He leads us rightward. A nearby unit of amateur Dovetail fighters seeks shelter behind him; Alex, Umbriel, and Ariel follow, seemingly eager to protect the jerkily moving new recruits.
“Wes!” I call out, keeping up with my team. He should know better than to move without my orders—now we all have to follow him to cover his back.
The tram tunnel’s lights flick on, and though they’re not bright, we can finally see our enemies. I switch off my helmet’s infrared vision, cursing under my breath. I must put off dealing with Wes’s strange behavior until after we get our bearings.
“These soldiers are either carrying Lazies or wearing Militia suits,” Alex hisses. “Not both. Committee must’ve saved the better equipment for their soldiers. These are Pacifians.”
Pacifians—fighting outdoors on lunar terrain? The Committee must’ve known this mission would have a high fatality rate and sent their allies instead of their own, more valuable Militia troops. Since the Pacifians brought less advanced equipment and lack space-deployed weapons of mass destruction, they have no choice but to obey their more powerful ally. I almost pity them, doing their side’s dirty work. But that won’t stop me from destroying them. Experience has shown me that if it means protecting Dovetailers, I will commit crimes for which I’ll never forgive myself.
Not that hurting them is easy. Wes has positioned us directly in front of the gliding Pacifian unit, and we only manage to take down a few before they’re upon us. The last two turn off their propulsion packs when they’re above our heads and fire bullets downward as they descend. I manage to roll under a ledge, and Wes and Alex throw themselves to the side to evade the shots. But bullets hit another member of our unit, and he crumples slowly, until his body hugs the ground.
He was my responsibility. As leader, I needed to keep him safe. Him—and the other soldier who perished a minute ago.
The Pacifians continues to approach; the lead soldier is a tall man who creeps along like a fast-growing vine. Before I realize he’s gotten so close, he descends on me, one gloved hand swinging a pickax at my helmet. I grab his wrist before he can smash the polymer standing between me and the lethal vacuum. When light from my headlamp shines through his visor and illuminates his face, I see two flashes of green.
The familiar sight poisons me with fear.
I let loose a silent, furious scream, lunging for the pickax. We wrestle to control it, but with my lighter body and limited mobility, I know I won’t last long. When I swing the butt of my weapon around to bat him away, he delivers a hook kick to my head, sending me flying. My body arcs in a wide parabola, and I wrench the shield into place to catch the bullets fired at me.
I land on all fours, rocks bruising my shins, and holler into my headset, “It’s Lazarus! Don’t engage at close range—we take him down together!”
Wes knocks the head of the solder he’s fighting into a boulder, splitting his helmet so that the vacuum sucks out the air inside. Opponent defeated, he turns, clenching and unclenching his fists. He’s acting as if he hasn’t heard my commands. He watches Lazarus, and Lazarus watches him. I wish I could reel my words back in. From Wes’s body language, I know he’s abandoned our cause in favor of a more personal one.
Lazarus crosses his arms.
Wes points at him accusingly, threatening him more with that raised finger than he ever could with words. But I know that he’s not here to threaten. He’s here to destroy.
WES SPRINGS FORWARD, HURLING A HAND-SIZED metal disk at his foe. Lazarus ducks so that it sails over his head.
“Don’t!” Alex hollers. He lurches in Wes’s direction—I almost run after Wes myself—but then Alex remembers that he must stay with our unit, which is still under attack. “That devil’s got a plan. If you—”
Snap! I look up, to where a crack is darting across the ceiling. A torso-sized rock above Alex’s head jiggles loose and begins to fall. Throwing myself forward, I tackle him so that we roll out of its trajectory. Thankfully, we land among Dovetail soldiers, not Pacifian ones.
The boulder makes impact mere centimeters beyond my toes, and the tunnel shivers. Could it be a moonquake? On either side, Dovetailers pull Alex and me to our feet. Or worse? Whatever is going on, the shifting landscape could kill us without warning.
“Lazarus—isn’t here—for me,” Wes grunts between the blows he’s exchanging with his adversary. “I’m here—for him.”
Of course he would try this—why didn’t I know? Why did I listen to him when he led us to Lazarus’s unit? The rest of us could try to stop him, but more Pacifian troops have reached the clearing, and they cluster around Alex, the Phi twins, and me like ants around rotting fruit. Behind us, other Dovetailers are using laser weapons against the Pacifians, and I decide it’s time we do the same.
“Circle up!” I call to the three boys, the only members of my team that are alive and still under my control. We scramble to our feet and form a ring with our backs in the center.
“I can’t . . .” Umbriel is saying. “I can’t shoot them . . .”
I switch to my Lazy and fire a beam in a wide arc to blind the enemy. The other three do the same.
The barrage of violet light makes some Pacifians twist to the side and burns through the weak spots on their pressure suits. Umbriel screams, horrified. One soldier tries to cover a hole I’ve made over his chest, but the suit’s polymer doesn’t have a self-repairing mechanism. He gasps once, twice, and then keels over, suffocated by the vacuum surrounding us.
The tunnel spins, the familiar guilt seizes me, and I try to think myself out of it. He’s Pacifian. If he’d lived, he would’ve done in one of the twins. He would’ve stormed the Dugout and gone after your family.
The black mass of Pacifian troops advances farther. My team is still split. An adrenaline rush from that fact alone spurs me to put the immediate past behind me.
Inside the tramcar, Wes and Lazarus dart from side to side, leaping over the seats, at once pursuing and fleeing from each other.
“Get out of there, Wes!” I call, catching two bullets with my ballistic shield. “We can’t help you—”
A grenade sails over my head, narrowly missing. Ariel, who’s shadowed me out of both fear and loyalty, is at my back. Shouting, he dives under the tramcar to dodge the projectile.
“Umbriel! You and me—advance together!” I holler.
But Umbriel runs to take cover behind a boulder, letting loose a string of panicked words that rattle through our headsets. “Sorry, Phaet. I . . . It’s not right. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” There’s a dead soldier next to Umbriel, a gun shoved through his gut, and he can’t look away.
Swearing, I scan the scene for a way I can help.
A tramcar window shatters, and Wes jumps out. But Lazarus follows and kicks him before he can regain his balance. Wes’s helmet clangs hard against the tunnel wall, and he slumps to the ground. I watch, numb with fear; I hear static coming from his feed and then—nothing. His body has gone death-still.
If Umbriel hadn’t . . . No, I can’t afford to resent my best friend’s insubord
ination until we’re all safe again.
Wes will get up, I tell myself as one of Lazarus’s underlings tries to stab me with a bayonet. He always gets up.
As Lazarus lifts the pickax to strike Wes’s helmet, something shiny swipes at his calf. Wes gets to his feet, pressing one hand to his abdomen.
Lazarus looks down at Ariel, crawling out from underneath the car, dagger in hand. Lazarus laughs, teeth flashing white underneath his visor, and the sight unnerves me all the more because no voice accompanies it.
The mismatch startles me: a Sanctuarist-trained warrior, standing tall, against a green Dovetail recruit sprawled on the ground. I struggle to reach Ariel, but bodies, Dovetail and Pacifian alike, bar my way. More of our troops have penetrated this area of the tunnel. Several units have even advanced past us. They’re hoping to reach Base I, and they might succeed. But to me, infiltrating Base I wouldn’t constitute a victory unless my unit—all of it—pulls through this battle.
My headset buzzes; a Batterer leader is trying to communicate with me. “Turn back!” he yells. I blink, confused: why should our forces give up this opportunity? “Committee ships above the tunnel, loaded with explosives.”
The Dovetailers ahead of us stop in their tracks. Behind me, Wes engages Lazarus and two Pacifians in an attempt to defend Ariel; Alex stands near him, as if unsure how to help; Umbriel cowers under a ledge, muttering to himself, shell-shocked and utterly useless.
I think of the falling boulder, and even though I refuse to believe it, I know what the Committee forces have come to do.
We have to evacuate the tunnel. My unit is nearer to Base I than Base II, but we can’t run toward the former. Once we’re in their midst, the Pacifians will make us prisoners, not conquerors.