One of the falling soldiers fires his rail-carbine at me, and the shot goes wild, sending him spinning. It takes a lot of training to fire recoil weapons in zero-G. Most Terran soldiers don’t get that training. I did. If I go, I’m going out fighting. My targeting radar locks them up, and I wait until my rotation takes my field of fire clear of the tower.
The rail-pistol makes a low buzz through my arm and sends Terran warriors spinning from the hail of darts. The burst emptied my pistol and sends me drifting away from them. A warning buzz from my radar tells me of an upcoming collision.
An armored hand grabs me from behind in a lock, and the other gauntlet holds a silent power blade. I grab the arm with the blade and try to break the grip. He’s a boosted Terran in a powered exoskeleton, and I’m matching him strength-for-strength.
The world goes instantly dark as we fall below the crater ridge; now, the only light comes from the stars above and the city below, changing places as we spin toward the Lunar surface.
We struggle and then I break the hold. I strip the knife and get a punch in the chest from the power armor. It’s like being hit with a truck. He must have broken several ribs and driven the shards of my armor into my chest. I try to breathe and only choke on blood. The monster begins to break loose as I convulse.
The Special Security soldier is spinning, but then he throws the one thing that will work, an SPG.
Everything slows even more as the monster burns in my blood. Blood boils from my chest wound. My opponent tumbles helplessly. The SPG flashes with tiny jets of blue fire as it begins to seek me out. The lights from the hard moon rush up to meet us.
A flash of light. Then, darkness.
* * * * *
Part Ten: Hard Moon
Chapter 72
I don’t expect to wake up.
The darkness is comforting, cold, and complete. I think I’ll stay here for a while, see what happens. Something is bothering me, though, like a needle in my brain. It’s probably not important.
What about the hospital?
Hospital? What hospital? It’s probably not important.
What about the people who are going to die? The ones I was supposed to save?
I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to go back up there to the light. There is a universe of pain waiting for me, but if I stay down here, I can’t feel it.
They are going to blow up the hospital. It could go any minute now. And…if I die here, then I’ll have let them beat me.
No.
I force my way up from the blackness, toward life, thought, and pain once more. Agony. Red light. Suffocation. I can’t breathe. Cold. So much cold. Is this Hell?
Wherever I am, the monster is with me. So, it could be Hell.
My eyes stick, they won’t open. All I can see is faint, red light. Am I blind? Do I have eyes?
When I try to move, pain shoots like fire through me. I want to scream, but I cannot force out any breath. Still, I move some. Next time, I’ll move more. Focusing, I manage to slide my arm over the awful, cold ground. The cold burns like fire.
My eyes finally open. Light. Pain. Instead of a dim, red light I see a dim, gray blur. I slowly blink again, and the world comes slowly into focus.
Dark gray dust and rubble form a vertical wall that stretches off in the distance. I’m lying on my side, looking at the ground. Everything is stark, absolute black or gray. In the distance, buildings shining with light rise.
I’m lying exposed on the surface of the moon.
Pain flares as I sit up. I hold up my hands, and my gloves are torn. Underneath, my skin looks grayish and rough. I run my hands over my face. My mask is gone. My face feels hard and cold, like another mask. My eyes…something is covering my eyes. I want to scream, but no breath comes out.
What the hell am I?
* * * * *
Chapter 73
The monster won’t let me die. It repaired my body and adapted me to this desolation. My conscience won’t let me die. It woke me up to save those people and to begin to make good on my past.
The monster adapts; it wants to live. It saved my life after the fall, but it doesn’t know what to do next. For that, it needs my brain in working order. So, I’m back.
The grayish stuff covering my skin is kind of like the disguise the monster made back in the cave, but tougher. There is also some kind of membrane over my nose and mouth, holding my breath in, saving my life…and slowly suffocating me. My blood should be boiling from the bends and erupting from my eyes, nose, and lungs, then crystallizing into ice, so this is better. I can’t stay like this forever, though. I’ll need oxygen, and soon.
My gear is wrecked. I hit hard enough to make a man-shaped crater in the regolith. My armor is torn, and my helmet and mask are shattered. My laser shattered, but my railgun looks usable.
Air.
The black, armored forms lying scattered around me are still. They are likely dead. The velocity of the impact wouldn’t hurt a hardsuit, but there would be no way to distribute or redirect the force, so the fall likely broke every bone in their bodies.
But they have air.
The one next to me looks undamaged. When I turn it over, it’s limp. No holes or cracks in the armor.
This code breaker is broken. So is this one. This one looks like it will work. Looks like about a third of my computer array isn’t crushed. You gotta love Lunar tech. I plug the code breaker into the hardsuit and hope Sharron is still there.
Air…NOW.
I can’t wait. I’ve had to shuck a hardsuit in total darkness, in the Antarctic, and underwater. Never in hard vacuum before. Remove the emergency latches and swing open the chest and back sections. Air puffs out and then ice crystallizes, falling to the dust. The man inside doesn’t move. He is completely loose as I pull him out of the armor, like human jelly. More air puffs out as I peel him out of the suit.
The man from the suit is a giant bruise, completely purple and red, with eyes that are pools of blood. He seems to have no bones at all—as I move him, his head deflates like a sack. Did this happen to me? Is this what the monster rebuilt me from?
AIR!
No time. I shuck the rest of my armor and slide on the undersuit. It adjusts to my form.
Spots are flashing in front of my eyes, and my vision is going dark. My sense of touch is fading as I go blind; all I feel is the cold.
It doesn’t matter. I know what to do. Insert legs and arms, lever plates together, put on helmet. Wait for initialization.
Waiting…
Did Sharron get downloaded into this rig? If not, I’ll suffocate soon.
Gas hisses into the armor. The membranes around my mouth and nose dissolve. Beautiful, glorious air. I don’t care that a man died in this suit. I don’t care that Terra is hunting me. I can breathe again, and it’s wonderful.
Sensors and readouts come on in my armor. Full telescopic and spectroscopic vision, radar, lidar, targeting, and ECM. The nuclear power source is good for years and will recycle my breathable atmosphere for almost that long. I’m so dehydrated, I think I drink half of the stored nutrient fluid. That gets recycled too. I don’t want to think about it. Power readouts are good; with the exoskeleton I’ll be even more freakishly strong.
Sharron appears on my visor. “What ARE you?!?”
“Right back at you.” No ghost is as good as Sharron. She’s something else—maybe some kind of Lunar military or intelligence technology.
But there is no time. Three spacecraft are launching from the top of the tower.
* * * * *
Chapter 74
A quick scan from the logistics computer indicates which rail-carbines are still functional and loaded and the location of undamaged magazines. The weapons tell me I have the appropriate codes. I pick up the nearest undamaged carbine and initialize it.
The RC-240 is the standard light weapon of the State of Terra military and para-military forces. I know it cold. The weapon has its own integrated radar, lidar, ECM, and sp
ectroscopic and telescopic sights, complete with a combat computer that integrates with my computers. The rate of fire and recoil are so high, you need to be boosted or in an exoskeleton to fire the thing, but you can also set it up on an automated tripod. The thousand dart drum magazine is almost full. I’ll grab more magazines in a few seconds.
The spacecraft are sending increasingly urgent signals for me to respond and identify myself. I’m done playing secret agent. These guys are Terran space-deployment forces, and if they catch me, I’m worse than dead. When I light them up with my targeting radar, a wealth of info floods my visor. I skim it for the important stuff.
GV-20s. Moon-hoppers—small, short-range, thin-skinned vehicles that carry up to 20 people and their gear. Pulse ion propulsion. Weapons mounts detected. Targeting radar detected. ECM detected. Sharron is working on scrambling their scans and communications, buying me precious seconds.
On their current trajectory, if they lose power, they won’t hit any habitats. Good enough. I select full auto and open up with three long bursts, emptying the drum magazine into them.
The first burst cuts through the front cabin. Gas and fluids erupt from hundreds of holes, and the vehicle goes out of control before powering down. The second burst cuts through the next ship’s engine housing, which explodes in a silent detonation of blue light and white sparks. The third burst chews off the front of the last ship, decompressing it in a starburst pattern of fog and flying bodies. Targeting radar indicates the wreckage and bodies will hit the regolith at over two thousand KPH.
Next time, it won’t be so easy. Those weren’t real military vehicles. If they had been, I wouldn’t be here anymore.
Time to reload. The logistics computer tells me the location of nearby magazines and SPGs. I switch magazines and grab a belt of SPGs.
The tumbling wreckage from the GV-20s falls to Luna. There are a few flashes from secondary explosions, and star-like patterns of lunar dust rise from the impacts, then quickly fall back to the crater floor without leaving any clouds of dust or smoke. Everyone on Shackleton probably felt that.
Time to go. This area is going to be the hottest place on Luna in a minute. Meteorite tracking, security, and defense systems are lighting up all over the moon from this fight. Terran forces will be boiling out of the Tower, looking for a fight. Lunar police, and even military forces, are all going on alert. I need to be elsewhere, fast.
* * * * *
Chapter 75
I take cover in one of the nearby craters, then start making my way between the stark, perfect shadows cast by the few lights on the surface. Long, low leaps cover tremendous distance. Most of Shackleton is underground, so I’ll be able to move and fight without running into civilians.
Time is against me. Once they have everything and everyone they want out of the hospital, they’ll blow it. Should I send out a call, alerting the hospital to evacuate? No. They would just blow the place early. I’ve got to get there and deal with it myself. I don’t dare go there directly. If the Terrans know why and where I’m going, they’ll blow up the hospital early. The only ones who know where I’m going are Doc Veridian (dead) and the computer Sharron broke into (lying in a broken wreck along with the desk over to my left). So, I must make my way into the hospital, without letting the Terrans know I’m going there, while Terran and Lunar security spread out over Shackleton, searching for me.
Time to disappear.
The outer coating of the hardsuit is a dead, almost featureless, black that seems to disappear in the eternal night of the crater floor. It’s also a radar-absorbent coating.
When I turn on the stealth systems, it gets even better. Active camouflage on the surface passively scans the terrain around me and creates a pattern on my armor that matches it and breaks up my shape to observers. Rather than simply absorbing radar, small amounts of scatter are allowed, and mild emissions are transmitted, to create passive interference and to allow me to blend in with the regolith around me, rather than appearing as a radar hole. Sharron is a better computer than the enemy have, so I let her handle the calculations of stealth and countermeasures, giving me an edge over the computers looking for me.
I’m leaving tracks in the regolith, but the entire surface is covered with tracks from people or vehicles, so that won’t be a problem.
Heat is the real enemy. This crater is freezing cold, and IR travels forever. Anything I touch will leave an easily detectable glow. I turn on the internal heat-sinks, and that solves the problem. For now, the insulation on the armor is near perfect, I’m a black hole in IR. Eventually, though, those heat-sinks are going to reach capacity, and I’ll have the choice of glowing like a target or slow-cooking to death.
The perfect Lunar silence is broken by calls of alarm, emergency transmissions, police dispatches, and calls for civilians to get below the surface. Luna is waking up.
How far are the Terrans willing to go? Dumb question; they already had an open firefight in the middle of Shackleton and are about to blow up a hospital. Answer: pretty damn far. I bet they will be sending Special Security in hardsuits after me and are going to break out the combat remotes and jump rigs for pursuit.
Will they risk war? I don’t know. If they bust out the actual space fighters and assault battloids, or they use their orbital network for support, it’ll mean war between Terra and Luna again. I don’t think they want to risk that, but I can’t be sure. If the Lunars discover they blew up the hospital, it will mean unrestricted war between two planetary powers armed with antimatter.
I get Lunars; most Terrans don’t. Sure, they seem like nice, laid back, calm, orderly, industrious people who go out of their way to avoid causing problems. Compared to Terrans, they seem easy to push around. But they grew up in a hostile, unforgiving environment where one mistake means the death of everyone. When there is a serious threat, they will all come together to deal with it. No matter the cost. If the State of Terra threatens their habitats, they will go to war, even outnumbered, even outgunned, even if it means antimatter planet-busters going off. I don’t think the Terrans actually get that; they’re too used to pushing people around to recognize real backbone when they see it. Luna is harder than it looks.
I need to stop the bombing, not just to save the innocents inside, but to stop interplanetary war. No pressure.
Terran targeting radars light up at ground level, probably a squad of Terran ground forces. I’m also getting scanning signals drifting along, high above the surface. Those would be the combat remotes. They’re not little security bots, but full-fledged war robots, built to survive and win in the hell of a battlefield.
I know who is going to deploy first. Terran paranoia probably means they have combat teams on standby, while the Lunars are still suiting up. Still, they’ll be along soon enough.
Judging by the pattern of active scans, the Terrans are spreading out in a search pattern, covering Shackleton by ground and space. They don’t care that I, and the rest of Luna, see them; they want me dead quickly and to hell with the consequences.
I’m not going to be able to hide from this kind of search for long. Those remotes will drop networked sensor array clusters all over the crater floor. Any movement of any kind or any access to any of the sensors or clusters will trigger an alarm. Already, my path to the hospital is cut off. If I lay low and wait for them to pass, I’ll be surrounded by sensor networks while reinforcements arrive.
A warning chime sounds and makes the decision for me; my internal heat-sinks are at capacity, and I’ll soon be overheating. It’s already getting uncomfortably warm.
Time to fight.
* * * * *
Chapter 76
The combat remotes will have to go first.
As I glide down a ditch in the shadow of a pipeline, I leave a trail of countermeasures SPGs. They lay behind me, waiting for orders. Once everything starts, it will all happen fast.
Radar pulses. One of the remotes is about to crest a nearby ridge. Even my stealth systems cannot hide me fr
om a direct scan at short range from a full combat remote. A map of all the remotes pops up on my visor; their scans are giving them away. I lock their targeting information into some of my SPGs.
The combat remote floats over the ridge. It’s a dead black, armored, crab-like thing about the size of a dog, bristling with weapon mounts and sensors and hovering on jets of needle-thin, blue fire.
Everything happens at once. My countermeasures SPGs take off in a loose line, shedding chaff, carbon fiber, diamond refractive dust, and flares, and emitting ECM jamming and decoy signals, while moving in evasive patterns. My armor lights up too, shedding the same kinds of chaff, flares, dust, and ECM signals. Sharron is running the whole thing, giving me an edge in electronic warfare over the Terran computers.
I’m already firing as the combat remote turns to face me. I lay in with a full stream of armor-piercing darts at point blank range. It tumbles, sparking, as reactive and ablative armors are flayed off, then the machine disintegrates into glowing, hot shrapnel, spiraling slowly to the regolith.
No time to watch that, though. I get back under cover as the hail of rail and laser fire from the remotes sweeps the area where I used to be. The countermeasures clouds above me shine with diffused laser light, and sprays of molten glass and great plumes of dust fly up from the ridge sides. I slide and crawl underneath, making my way back down the line to my next firing position.
With the countermeasures clouds still above me, I target and fire on the next remote. This one is point blank at only a hundred meters away, so my carbine chews it into a spray of wreckage. I target all my remaining SPGs on the two most distant remotes and let fly as I dive for cover.
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