26

Crickets swarmed around the pilings, a mechanized cloud of snapping pincers and needle-sharp maws. The launcher itself dwarfed us all. It sat inside a low-lying crater, the breech down at the center and the tip propped up by the ridge a mile away. Accordance engineers had then covered the entire crater in superstructural, organic latticework that created a perfect bowl for the barrel to rest in.

The mile-long barrel could be moved, just as Zeus had said. The lattice below it had gears and pistons the size of buildings under the pilings. A typical Accordance structure: fragile ­looking, giant, and carved quickly out of a landscape.

“Where are the tunnels to the mines?” Ken asked. “Efua? Can you tell us?”

“She’s been quiet for the last forty minutes,” Amira said.

“Efua!” Ken repeated.

“She’ll answer us if she can,” I said.

“Let’s try the base of the launcher,” Amira said. “There’s probably another way in. They’d want to be able to drive things in, but we’ll have to walk all the way around the rim of the crater to find it. They have to have something near all that equipment that needs maintaining, though.”

“Also, that’s where the crickets are swarming from,” I agreed. The moving cloud hadn’t spotted us peeking down from the ridge at them yet. A small part of me suggested that it would be a good idea to turn and run before they did, that I could still live through this by running.

But where?

“We have to be quick; they could just cluster and overwhelm us.” Amira sounded annoyed by the idea, like it was a tactic beneath her.

“Keep them away from your helmet,” Ken said. “Don’t waste too much of your ammunition. And watch for the raptor. I haven’t spotted it yet, have any of you?”

A child-sized cricket scuttled up from under the latticework and leapt into the air. Amira fired once with a handgun, hitting it in the center and scattering pieces, which rained slowly down around us.

The boiling mass at the center of the crater stopped swirling around the mass driver’s infrastructure and swirled in our direction.

“Let’s go!” I shouted, leaping over the ridge and onto the lattice toward the swarm. “Amira, keep behind us.”

“Oh, bullshit,” she snapped, angry. I looked up as she leapt over me toward the oncoming rush.

“You’re the only one that can program the damn thing!” I shouted.

“Then keep up.” Amira jumped again, high and visible to the cricket swarm. They adjusted en masse, shifting to anticipate where she would land.

“Amira!”

At the apex of her jump she swapped from handgun to the EPC-1 device with all the energy blisters she’d slung on her back. And didn’t fire.

It had been a ridiculously tall jump, with not much forward progress. Crickets boiled underneath her, climbing over each other’s metallic jointed bodies with artificial eagerness to look upward at her. Jaws snapped, legs readied to stab at her.

Ken changed course, headed toward the growing mountain of crickets. “Get back,” Amira snapped as she plummeted down at them.

She triggered the device she held casually at her hip. The energy blisters glowed, the cabling lit up, sparked, and a ring of energy spat from the tip. Everything in my suit dimmed slightly at the same time, and my movements stuttered.

Crickets of various sizes and shapes fizzled and spat, then fell still. Amira plunged into their bodies and slid down a hill of twitching legs. “They’re not the only ones who can use electromagnetic pulses,” she said triumphantly. “Electronic Pulse Cannon, model 1, for the win. Come on!”

We changed course, zigging and zagging our way down the slope so that crickets could gather and clump for Amira. After two more bursts, and two more piles of twitching crickets, we hit the base.

“So many,” I muttered.

“At least we haven’t encountered any drivers,” Amira said. Just the test ones in training could scatter us.

“Don’t jinx us like that.” I didn’t even want to think of the things jamming their tails into my spine to take me over.

“There’s an airlock, and a ramp,” Ken said, veering off.

“Right behind you,” Amira said.

I came up behind them, making sure something didn’t get us while we entered. Amira hopped around, looking for manual overrides.

Three cat-sized crickets, one of them dragging broken legs behind it, leapt over the ramp’s edge at us. I shot them down with a few silent, quick bursts of my MP9, then crushed the remains with my heel.

“Okay,” Amira said. “We’re in.”

We piled into the airlock and Amira shut it behind us. Moments later things clattered against it, trying to break through and get to us.

We stood in the space between the two doors for a moment, catching our breath.

Then Amira grabbed a lever and pumped it several times to charge the inner door. “You ready for this?” she asked.

I raised my MP9. “Yes.”

I was lying. Anything on the other side knew something was about to come through.

Ken stepped up next to me. “Ready,” he said.

Amira pushed the lever back into the wall and the door clunked, then jerked open. A white-hot bolt of lightning blew my vision out as it snapped through the open space and hit Ken. He opened fire even as he flew back, knocked into the outer door.

I stepped forward, firing wildly. Amira’s weapon fired, my steps stuttered, and fuzzy static filled my ears. “Got the energy rifle,” she said.

The snap of electricity stopped, my helmet visor faded, and my sight returned just in time for me to see a raptor in midleap, tossing its now-ruined weapon to the side.

“Raptor!” Ken shouted, a moment too late.

“Oh—” It struck me, knocking me right back into the airlock. “Shit!”

The thwack of bullets filled the airlock: Amira, on the raptor’s back, firing point-blank at its long neck with her handgun. It let go of me and slammed up against the airlock, trying to shake her loose.

Ken staggered to his feet as I fumbled with the welder. I’d seen Boris use it, but it was an alien tool designed for alien hands. For several agonizing seconds, I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on as we struggled in the airlock.

Then it lit up, the points converging on the pure point of light, and I swung it up into the tangle of Amira, Ken, and the raptor. I aimed for its chest, but Ken, wrestling with one of its hands, swept past me. The welder cut through his calf and he screamed.

“Shit.” I apologized as I slammed the torch into the raptor’s chest, not willing to risk also hitting Amira, who struggled on its shoulders, if I aimed for the neck.

Molten armor splashed back against me and covered my shielded wrists. I shoved forward, and the raptor staggered back. “Get away,” I warned Amira as I leaned in, feeling the welder bite through armor, then pop through.

Amira rolled away, and I pinned the alien to the wall and buried the weapon deeper with another shove. It stopped trying to claw at me. It slumped forward, pinned as the welder passed through the back of its armor and melted into the wall.

“I think you got it,” Amira said. “You can turn it off.”

I pulled my thumb off the button and the sizzling faded. I let go, leaving both the alien and the welder hanging from the wall, and turned around. “Ken!”

He stood on one leg, with an arm over Amira’s shoulder. “I’m okay,” he said, through audibly gritted teeth. I could see sweat dripping from his face through his helmet.

“Shit, man, I’m so fucking sorry.”

“You killed it.” He grimaced. “That is what matters. And the cut is not so bad. The suit is giving me painkillers and packing the wound with sealant. I can compensate. You can let me go. We must get control of the mass driver.”

He pulled away from Amira and wobbled on his own.

“I just need somewhere to patch in locally,” Amira said. She sounded tired. They were all running on fumes. Maybe even making mistakes at this point. Small ones, but how straight could you think when you hadn’t slept since the attack?

But we couldn’t slow anything down now.

“There will be more crickets in here,” Ken said. “Go with Amira so she can focus on the things she needs to do. I’ll search for Efua and the others.”

“Be careful.” I wanted to grab his forearm, but he nodded and limped down the corridor. I turned and grabbed the welder with both hands and yanked it. The raptor toppled to the floor.

“This way,” Amira said, stepping over it.

“How do you know?”

She pointed to the floor. “Directions in ultraviolet, lines that lead to different points. I can read a little Arvani.”

We leapfrogged sloppily and quickly down the corridor, grateful for no surprises but still jumpy in the low red lighting.

Several turns later and a floor below, Amira triggered a set of doors. “Here we go.”

Floor-to-ceiling displays cascaded information, including outside views of the launcher. “I thought there’d be something in here,” I said.

“Shit’s automated,” Amira said. “This room’s for troubleshooting and maintenance. Watch the doors.”

I set up next to them, glancing back at her as she walked to one of the displays and put her palm out. Blue light danced across her arm. “The clock just started,” she said. “The ghost knows we are here.”

Her fingers began to twitch as she manipulated glyphs in the air.

“Does it know what you’re doing?”

“Shhhh. It thinks we’re trying to signal out. The jamming just kicked way up.”

She went back to work. I kept quiet. But there was a new noise. I amplified it. A sound like metal hail against the outer door.

Crickets trying to get in.

I had to assume she’d locked them out. How many had piled up out there, redirected by the ghost to come knocking?

I swallowed. What else might come join them at the door as I waited.

“I found Efua and the others,” Ken said. I could hear in his voice what he was seeing, by the way it cracked slightly and in the soft tone.

“I’m sorry, man.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

“Amira?” Ken asked sadly.

A long pause. “They’re dead?” Amira asked.

“Yes.”

She sounded as shattered as Ken did. “I can’t do it.”

“What do you mean?” Ken and I asked her as one.

“The mountain in the center of that crater the base is in. It’s in the way. I can’t take out the ship, or them, or the base. I guess I could shoot at the top of the ridge and hope something gets through, but I doubt it. And it’ll warn them. They’ll have time to move. And I can’t aim the launcher higher, like artillery. And that wouldn’t work anyway; the moon’s gravity is too weak. No matter where you point that fucker, the payload’s going to orbit. I’m so sorry, guys. We can’t turn it and shoot.”

I wanted to slide down, my legs felt so suddenly weak. Out on the other side of the door, the sound of the metallic hail slowly grew louder and more insistent.