20

The doors jerked up, a slight gap of light appearing before they seized. Amira had her eyes closed, concentrating as she fought to keep the doors from opening. Electrical smoke from burning motors in the doors wafted around us.

A pair of sticklike pincers reached under the door, trying to pull it up.

I stomped them, snapping the limbs clean off.

It was like kicking a beehive. Suddenly the entire gap filled with metal lobster-sized bodies thrashing to get through the gap and into the room.

“They know we’re here,” Amira grunted.

I aimed the machine gun low and fired along the floor. Pieces of cricket flew off and clattered to the floor with each shot.

“Save the ammo for something bigger!” Ken shouted from the back of the room.

I kept stomping. The door lurched farther open. I grabbed a cricket out of the air with my right hand and slapped it into a wall. It burst into parts and rained to the floor. One of the legs twitched and tried to jam a knifelike tip down into my ankle. I leapt back away and shot it.

Crickets zoomed around the room, bursting past us, seeking to stab anything they could. But everyone had armored up.

Cricket bodies were slammed against walls, pulverized under boots, or just thrown aside as we spilled out into the corridor. “Amira?” I shouted.

“This way.”

We retreated from the swarm of metal insects falling over themselves to get at us. I followed Amira, crushing crickets underfoot. How far away was the breach that would get us outside onto the lunar surface? Because then we could really open up and run.

“Stop!” Amira shouted. “Raptors. Backup is coming.”

“How many?” Ken asked.

“Four.”

No way could we face four raptors.

“Back the way we came,” Ken said.

“But . . . ,” someone objected.

“He’s right!” I shouted. “Come on.”

We charged into the boiling mess of crickets, flailing and destroying as many as we could as we ran on. We skidded to a halt at another junction. Amira raised a hand.

More crickets scuttled toward us, some of them bouncing off the walls with eagerness. Why were we stopped?

Then I felt it: a thud in the floor under my boots.

“Troll?” I asked.

Amira turned toward me. Through the helmet I could see her face had gone pale. She nodded.

“Raptors to the back, troll ahead,” I said out loud.

“I told you we should have gotten those fucking explosives,” Boris said. “Take them with us.”

I leaned against the wall, feeling each vibration of the troll approaching us. “We can’t get to the breach,” Amira said. “We’re going to have to see if we can outrun them on the training grounds, it’s the only direction left.”

“That’s something.” I started backing down that corridor.

“It’s just buying time,” she said.

“You told me time gives us options.” I was thinking.

“Troll or raptor, not much of an option.”

“No, but we have something they’re not expecting,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“You. The facility is still powering up the variable gravity. Can you access it?”

“I think so,” Amira said. “You want me to use the field against them?”

“Captain Calamari did it against us. Should be just as annoying, don’t you think?”

Amira started to jog faster. “Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know how long it will take, though. Ken, take this MP9.”

“We’re going deeper into the base,” I called out. “Cover Amira as best you can, give her space. If you want to get out of here alive, you’ll make sure nothing touches her.”

+  +  +  +

We burst out of the bay leading onto the center grounds and scattered without thinking. We’d been doing drills on the training field enough that it was instinct.

Only this time it wasn’t a fellow squad coming at us, but real Conglomerate enemies.

“Keep moving,” I said. “We have to buy Amira time.”

“This better work,” Ken grumbled.

Crickets tumbled out after us, some of them unfolding translucent wings and taking to the air. Then came the loping raptors.

I circled around the rim of a crater to get something between us as long lances of focused energy stabbed at us from the raptor’s rifles, exploding dirt whenever they hit the ground.

Gunfire answered them. Ken perched on the lip of a boulder, sniping at them. He’d pulled the gun’s shoulder stock out and unfolded the forward grip for better aim. The aliens scattered as well, hunting for cover as more accurate fire struck them.

The cap over the grounds had been punctured and melted, so there was no atmosphere. But Amira stood behind us and raised her gauntleted hands. “I’m into the training system’s weather control. I think this will only hit them,” she muttered to us. “But just in case, hunker down.”

Fist-sized hail flung itself out of the sky on the other half of the course. Crickets circling overhead fell, wings suddenly punctured. The raptors huddled, distracted by the pelting chaos.

Without eyes in the sky, with the raptors knocked back, we took the chance to rearrange ourselves, finding the best spots on the course. Spots well-known to us.

One of the raptors broke cover and jumped into the air, looking for us. Amira waved a hand and the raptor twisted. It came right back down to the ground, faster than it had anticipated. It struggled to get to its feet, fighting the suddenly heavy gravity.

Ken fired three quick bursts at it. It reeled back and fell over a ledge, then slid down into the middle of a crater.

“One less raptor to worry about,” he said.

But none of us were paying attention. We were all looking at the rocky creature stooping out from under the bay door and stepping into our arena.

The troll seemed to keep unfolding, getting taller and taller. It took slow, deliberate steps forward.

“I’ve got gravity cranked all the way up,” Amira said. “Overrides and all.”

“Can you imagine the world that thing came from?” Ken whispered, somewhat awed.

I didn’t want to.

“Anyone see something behind the troll?” Amira asked. “There’s something there, right?” Her voice sounded strained. She staggered and fell back. I moved closer to her, leaving cover.

“Amira, what’s wrong?” I moved around to look into her visor. She glanced over at me, and I saw blood run down her upper lip. Like it had when the electromagnetic pulse fried the computer chips and her unhardened nano-ink. “Shit. Amira!”

“Look at the troll!” she snapped. “Do you see something near it? I can feel it, all over the network. It’s attacking me.”

I looked again. Yes, something: a blur moving alongside the legs.

“Yeah. I thought something was in my eye, or on the helmet,” Boris said.

“Ghost,” Amira said softly. “It’s a ghost.” Almost too soft to hear.

“Fuck,” I said. That’s all we needed, the alien that caused all the other aliens to go berserker.

Amira’s voice firmed up. “I think I can still work around it. It’s everywhere, but I can . . . here we go, get ready to run.”

Yellow mists rose from the ground. They swirled around the troll and the raptors and rose quickly. Other gases mixed in, and the entire dome thickened with them.

“Smoke screen. And they’re slowed down. Now we run,” Amira said.

Ken and Boris hung back to cover us as we bounced to the other side. A big leap with our assisted legs got us onto the scaffolding twenty feet over the grounds. Some awkward climbing and we broke out of the facility.

Another great leap for us, and we were on the lunar surface, bounding for safety in the shadows of the jagged hills and craters around the base.

“Faster!” I shouted at everyone. Over by the Arvani quarters the Conglomerate starship was pulling up its tendrils with surprising swiftness for something its size. Whatever it was.

It began to drift our way.

“I think it’s coming for us,” I said, just before thick beams of energy lit up the lunar night like searching spotlights, dancing around the battered gray rocks we were trying to hide behind.