by Karen Bao
“THIS IS A LUNATIC MOVE,” NASH MUTTERS, but in spite of her doubts she punches buttons to ready our net. Measuring four by four meters, the carbon-fiber web was designed to catch and discard meteoroids that wandered too close to the base. Repurposing it for an attack shouldn’t be much of a stretch.
We match the satellite’s speed, and then gain on it. “We’re going to catch the LRI and smash it into Base I Defense,” I say. “The kinetic energy should be enough to—”
A voice message from Rose interrupts me. “No success trying to hack our way into the hangar. They’ve put too many layers of protection around the controls.”
“Rosie,” Yinha says. It’s the second time she’s used the nickname. “It’s okay. You tried. Our turn now—we’ve got this.”
Do we? I grip the Destroyer’s controls hard, trying to hold my hands steady lest my friends see me shaking. Yinha accelerates until she’s hurtling alongside the satellite—and then pounces. The Pygmette latches on with a lurch. We don’t hear the clang, but I wince anyway. The impact had to hurt.
“Ah!” Yinha screeches. She fires the Pygmette’s front thrusters, slowing herself and the satellite down.
I pull our Destroyer ahead of her and turn it around to face backward. My teammates have our net at the ready, dangling on the metal repair arms below our ship.
“Accelerating . . . now!” I fire the front thrusters.
The Pygmette and LRI smash into the net, throwing us forward. Making use of the momentum, I take us in a wide circle until we’re facing Base I. Then I push the ship baseward at ninety-four meters per second.
Several kilometers from our destination, I slam on the backward thrusters, throwing Yinha and the LRI. The satellite barrels toward the lunar surface, Yinha’s ship glued to it like a tick. It rotates in a corkscrew motion that makes me nauseated even from here. For one moment, I let myself be grateful that she, not I, is in that Pygmette.
“Aim for Defense!” I call to her via headset as we follow behind. It’s more to soothe myself than to direct her. If she can’t do this, no other pilot ever could.
Silence from Yinha’s end. As she adjusts her aim, helium exhaust trails out of pipes on her ship’s rear, front, and sides.
Less than a kilometer away from the base, she unlatches her Pygmette from the satellite. The LRI picks up speed, drawn by the Moon’s gravity and the grav-magnets on Base I. No air resistance slows it down.
Kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity . . .
With the energy of a small bomb, the LRI smashes into the Base I hangar’s ceiling. Metal chunks fly; sizzling gas jets out of the puncture wound. Twisted broken ships glint somewhere in the cloud of debris.
“Look at that gritstorm . . .” Yinha breathes into her mouthpiece.
“Looking isn’t enough,” Alex says.
Before the dust settles, we dive in.
* * *
Dovetail ships swoop into the destroyed hangar. Carcasses of Committee ships cringe against the walls, pieces of ceiling embedded in their hulls; on all sides, pressure-suited Militia flee the area. Because we blew apart the airlock, gas is leaking out of the hangar and into space. If we leave our ships and our pressure suits sustain enough damage, the vacuum will kill us.
The loyalists know this too. They’re flying or running haphazardly through the hangar doors, into Defense’s interior. Those doors won’t be open for much longer.
“Follow them!” I call to Dovetail. “To the Defense lobby!”
Heeding my orders, our side’s ships fly over the fleeing loyalists’ heads and through the hangar doors as they close. Enemy projectiles hit us from the front. When the doors are nearly shut, the last Dovetail ship, an Omnibus, rams into them, puncturing a hole as it joins us.
But again, the Committee’s ready: a solid metal gate descends from above, sealing off the hangar in front of us.
Dovetail taxis into the lobby to unload. As we exit our ships, we duck under the wings or behind the fuselages for shelter. The place is a fracas of shouts, laser fire, and screeching alarms. The faceted ceiling once displayed hundreds of military leaders’ photographs. Now several panels have crashed to the floor, and soldiers of both sides trample over them. Decorative black and silver ribbons, slashed and torn, hang from the rafters. No battle manual would advise unloading in such chaos, but this won’t be the first time my team has defied convention.
Per the plan we agreed upon, Yinha steers her ship back outside to facilitate the Batterer charge instead of disembarking like the majority of Dovetail’s troops. “I’ll contact you if there’s very good news or very bad news,” she says, and hangs up with a click. I watch her go, worry creeping into my heart.
Do what you promised to do. Wes, Alex, and I unbuckle the straps securing us to our seats, preparing to separate from Nash and Chitra and carry out the next part of our task. Alex climbs the ladder to the hatch first; Wes steadies him with one hand so he can open it.
“Hey, Stripes.” Nash fixes her deep brown eyes on my face, looking as serious as I’ve ever seen her. Chitra watches our every move, beads of nervous sweat pooling on her forehead. “Make those five grit-bags hurt. I don’t care how you do it. Make them wish they’d done something with their lives besides ruin ours.”
She doesn’t say good-bye. Maybe she’s afraid that if she does, she’ll never say hello again.
Alex exits the ship, and as Wes pulls himself out, he reaches a hand back to help me up the ladder. When my head emerges, the sounds and sights and smells of battle assault my senses. Violet lasers, bullets, and grenades, flying through the air and burning everything and everyone they touch. My eyes smart, my inner ears throb, and my nose and throat sting. I drop to ground level, where Committee troops have already surrounded Alex and Wes. Keeping his back against the ship, Alex slams his armored elbow into a Militia soldier’s solar plexus. Wes runs forward to club another’s head before the man can attack Alex from the side. We gather together, backs to one another. Slowly, painfully, we fight our way toward the Defense exit.
“I’ll open up a path for you guys!” Nash seems to have taken the Destroyer’s pilot seat. The hull sheds its outer shell and the wings fold in as she switches to its indoor combat settings; she takes a zigzagging path above the Militia’s heads to avoid their lasers, several other ships trailing behind. Our ship’s wing weapons fire shots at the enemy’s foot soldiers, opening up pockets of space on either side of us.
We have to push through this. The sooner we force the Committee to negotiate, the sooner this will all end. If we fail, the Batterer team will have to get to them or die trying.
Fighting off enemies as we go, Wes, Alex, and I exit Defense. The expansive Main Lane—Base I’s primary thoroughfare, now clogged with gray-suited Pacifians—stretches out before us. Instead of fighting our way through to Governance, where the Committee is stationed, we turn down a smaller side hallway that our side has already captured. At its entrance, Dovetail units fend off Militia forces. As the rovers arrive, Batterer soldiers come rushing in to help them hold down the territory.
They’re all covering for us, clearing out the route we’ll take toward the Committee. We have to keep going, have to succeed, or risk wasting their efforts.
Farther down, the hallway grows emptier. Dovetail troops are stationed every few meters. Windows to the dark outside are spaced evenly along the walls, and more black and silver ribbons crisscross the ceiling.
About thirty meters in, we receive an update from Chitra, who is still in Defense with Nash. “Seven Batterer rovers have entered the hangar,” Chitra says. “Fourteen more are still out there.”
We began with twenty-two rovers. “Casualties?” I whisper, my anxious steps punctuating my voice.
A brief silence, and then Nash speaks. “One rover got blown up outside the hangar. There were eighty-four troops in there. Things look bad, Phaet.”
&nb
sp; Fighting back nausea, I run onward with my team. There are no friendly soldiers holding down this territory; we’re treading on enemy ground.
Fifty meters down the hallway, near its terminus, we find what we were looking for: a low metal grate separating the hall from a ventilation tunnel. Alex and I guard Wes’s back as he melts the edges of the grate with a continuous violet beam from his Lazy. As a cluster of gray-suited Pacifian foot soldiers turns the corner and sprints down the hallway, Wes kicks in the grate. Because the grav-magnets above our heads attract metal, it sticks to the ventilation tunnel’s roof.
“Come on!” Wes helps Alex crawl inside, and I follow. Wes wrenches the grate from the roof, lines up the glowing orange edges with the edges of the hole, and holds it there while the material welds itself back together.
Before the Pacifians can shoot him through the grate’s openings, I reach over Wes’s shoulder, tranquilizer in hand, and plug them in the neck with Downers. One, two, three, four Pacifians collapse, unconscious.
Once the grate has cooled and looks solid again, we take off, crawling through the tunnel. By the time more Pacifians arrive, we’re ten meters closer to the Committee stronghold. We move silently, breathing through our noses to avoid making noise. Two rights, a left, and a right take us underneath the Governance Department.
There’s a massive opening, a vertical shaft tens of meters in diameter with whirring carbon dioxide–oxygen filters stacked in the center. Walls plated with steel, it stretches upward for hundreds of meters; I can’t make out where it ends.
“Holy Father of . . .” Alex swears, peering out of the tunnel and tilting his head back.
This is it. The highest tower on Base I, topped by the Committee’s conference room, where they nearly drowned Umbriel and me last year. “Can’t wait to see my old friends again,” I mutter.
“Then what’re we dallying for?” Alex steps out of the tunnel and onto a balcony that rings the shaft’s circumference. A narrow bridge leads to the air filter column.
Cautiously, Wes and I follow. My knees seem to lock with each step—the Committee must have at least an inkling that we’ve gotten this far.
“I don’t feel so good about this,” Wes says before he steps out.
“Our friends out there don’t feel so good about fighting off loyalists while you make up your mind,” Alex says. “Come on, Carlyle.”
Wes nods and crawls out of the tunnel. But the instant both his feet touch the balcony, a force from above slams us down to the floor. I’d scream if the impact hadn’t knocked all the wind out of me.
Someone has quadrupled or quintupled the current through the electromagnets in the ceiling, increasing the “gravity” of the vertical shaft. The magnets repel the water in my body, gluing my limbs down, almost nailing my chin onto the ground. I can barely lift my fingers. My skull threatens to cave under the pressure. My companions’ outlines swim in my vision; their shouts and groans echo in my ears.
Then the barrage begins.
THE PRESSURE SEEMS TO CRUSH EVERYTHING in my head out of existence. Forcing thoughts through the morass is nearly impossible. A laser misses my shoulder but superheats the air through which it passes; my skin burns. There must be soldiers above us, but due to the immense gravity, we can’t even lift ourselves off the floor. Their blasts are reflected by the steel grates and fans above us, so that the whole shaft glows violet. Who knows when they’ll hit us?
Steel. There’s a sizeable horizontal strut a meter or so above me, meant to support a fan higher up. I move only my eyeballs to check for Wes and Alex. Wes digs his fingers into his scalp, and Alex retreats into the ventilation tunnel from which we came. Gravity seems normal there, but Wes and I are too far out to make it back.
I wrench my jaws apart and fight the lung-crushing pressure in order to speak. “Wes—Lazy. Burn.”
“Right,” he chokes out.
Lifting my Lazy requires every muscle fiber in my arm—it seems to weigh more than a human being. I dig my elbow into the floor and fire a steady stream at a point on the steel bar until it glows red. Then I force my wrist to bend, adjusting my aim, slicing the metal as if the laser were a knife. Wes does the same at another point about two meters down the strut.
As the metal melts, the magnets attract the ferromagnetic material. It rattles, straining against the slivers of steel that still connect it to the rest of the strut.
“Now!” I shout.
Grabbing Wes’s hand, I heave myself toward the ventilation tunnel. We progress a centimeter at a time. Above our heads, the metal segment wrenches loose and accelerates to a lethal speed. As it pulverizes the spinning fan in its path, crashes and clangs fill the vertical ventilation shaft. Fan blades, loose screws, and gigantic grates shoot up, accelerating toward the ceiling, toward the exposed electromagnets above. Then they strike, slicing through wires, truncating the current that powers the grav-magnets.
Zap! The ceiling flashes white, blinding us. For a second, it’s as if we’ve brought lightning to the Moon. Then the immense pressure lifts, and I feel as if I could rise like a cloud. I spread my limbs out to enjoy the sensation of moon-grav, and laugh. Gathering our legs under us like springs, Wes and I push off from the floor and soar the last two meters into the tunnel’s shelter. Moon-grav pulls us gently down.
But even in moon-grav, one-sixth as strong as the default base setting, falling metal lands hard. Pygmette-sized solenoids tumble past us, and keep on falling to the shaft floor dozens of meters below, accompanied by the scrape of fan blades, the jingle of nuts and bolts.
After the dust settles, I peek upward into the vertical shaft. Instead of a network of balconies and guardrails, I see only sheets of crooked metal. The air filtration column leans against the opposite wall of the cylindrical shaft.
A wave of satisfaction inundates my body. I’ve destroyed part of my enemies’ lair, imposed a real physical threat upon them. Maybe even cut off some of their oxygen supply.
“So much for a silent entrance, Dove Girl,” Alex remarks.
I smile grimly, proud of what we’ve accomplished but dreading what will come. They definitely know we’ve made it this far.
But who is “they”? Jupiter could be stationed above us, or his father, the General. Or if the universe decided to be unusually cruel, Lazarus.
“Phaet’s changed her style,” Wes agrees.
Our first few steps into the ventilation shaft are more like leaps. Wes volunteers to climb first. He jumps five meters into the air and attaches himself to the underside of the tilting central air filtration column like a spider. His fingers grip the handholds carved into its side, which once functioned as a ladder for maintenance workers.
“Come on, Phaet,” he calls. “Like the climbing wall in the trainee gym.”
I manage to jump even higher than him. Soon, Alex joins the climb, and the three of us scurry upward.
Another zap! The Committee’s soldiers, still shooting at us from above. Fortunately, the gigantic toppled pillar blocks their Electro-stun pellets, diffusing the electricity, and the insulating material in our gloves and boots prevents us from receiving shocks. I climb faster, propelled by a simmering desire for revenge, and conquer floor after floor.
Near the tower’s zenith, I grab a dagger from my boot and tuck it into my sleeve. The cool carbon blade taps against my skin, comforting me. I’ve used this trick since my trainee days, and the weapon feels like part of my arm now.
“Everybody stand back—Beaters, that means you!” Wes pulls the pin of a homemade grenade and tosses it over the lip of the highest balcony. In the aftermath of the tooth-rattling explosion, he vaults over the guardrail, a Lazy in one hand, and Alex and I scramble after.
A line of five helmeted soldiers faces us, barring the tunnel that presumably leads to the Committee’s conference room. Their leader steps forward: a tall curvy female wearing a CORPORAL badge. She fires a
violet warning shot into the wall, then lifts her visor to reveal pale, bloodless skin and electric eyes the same color as the lasers from her gun. Showing us her face is its own intimidation tactic.
“Rebel fools,” Cressida Psi says. A smile parts her livid red lips. “I can arrest you quickly, or kill you slowly. Which one do you choose?”
SHE ABUSED MY MOTHER, BEAT MY SISTER . . . My mind plays back scenes from my family’s old apartment, from Base IV Shelter. Lips tight, shoulders hunched, I glare at Cressida through my visor as if that alone could take her down.
Alex rushes Cressida while Wes circles around her from behind. I move to join them, but a laser blast narrowly misses my left leg. One of Cressida’s soldiers—a wobbly-kneed private—advances on me. I charge him; he fires again, and I scrunch my fists so that my uniform’s mirrors deflect the shot, which burns into his ballistic shield. He stumbles back, hands over his face. I lunge and grab him behind the knees. Aided by the low gravity, I swing him in a semicircle and toss him off the balcony, into the ventilation shaft. He reaches out in vain to slow his fall, but within moments, his body lands hard on the shaft’s floor. And he doesn’t move.
With every heartbeat, I hate what I’ve done more and more. Did it have to end that way? I wonder, arms and legs frozen with horror. Did I have no other choice?
“Phaet, look out!” Alex shouts.
Another private rushes me, scimitar in hand, her too-big helmet hastily fastened. Determined to be gentler this time, I sidestep her and rip off her helmet to reveal a narrow face with wide-set, fearful eyes. I punch her in the jaw, disrupting a nerve and knocking her out. When she wakes up, she’ll hurt so badly that she won’t be able to scream, but at least she’ll be alive.
Still feeling queasy, I sprint across the balcony to where Alex fights Cressida and another soldier. Alex is armed with a long piece of handrail, and he’s taken off his helmet for better visibility. He spins the pole in both hands, landing blows whenever his opponents try to rush him. I watch for a lull in his motion so that I can throw my dagger. But nothing opens up.