27

I looked at the screen that Amira waved into existence. It showed the mass of rock in our way. Not something any of us had thought about: topography. And I’d assumed she could have fired over anything. But the gravity was too weak on the moon. Things fired at great speed took a while to curve downward.

Ken made a strangled, frustrated sound. I couldn’t blame him.

“We need to get out of here,” Amira said.

“No.” I held up a hand. “No. We need to brainstorm. We need to slow down. All three of us. There has to be an answer here.”

“Damn it,” Amira snapped. “Let go of it. We’re not going to be heroes. We’re not going to save the day. Even if this had worked, we were probably going to die like Efua, trapped in a corridor somewhere. Let’s find a place to buy more time, Devlin.”

“Take a breath,” I said. “You’re tired, we’ve fought these things since we broke into the base. We’re still alive, but we’re running on adrenaline and will. Let’s not make a mistake now, when we’ve come so far. Come on, let’s just stop. We have a launcher—”

“Fire a series of them,” Ken suggested. “First one blows up the hilltop. The next one comes through.”

“I thought about that,” Amira said wearily. “First explosion alerts them. They move.”

“Not necessarily,” Ken replied.

“No, but I also don’t know for sure if the hilltop will break away. It’s soft. It might just create a hell of a dust cloud and that’s it. I can’t model what’s going to happen without more time and computing. We’re not going to get that. So that’s two unknowns.”

Small dents were being hammered into the door. A single feeler rammed its way through the gap between the doors, trying to pry them open. I broke it off and stomped on it.

“We have a device that can launch anything we want into orbit,” I said. “What else can we do? Launch ourselves? Can you slow it down so we’re not instant toothpaste?”

“Wait,” Amira said. “Wait a second.”

I had a vision of us in armor, in orbit, beaming a weak SOS to anyone who could hear us. “Or maybe we could put an emergency signal on repeat on a suit and put that into orbit,” Ken said. “We don’t have to load ourselves. We . . . have extra armor here.”

“No. Shut up.” Amira had her hands up behind her neck. “Orbit. It’s about orbit.” She was thinking. But we were all so tired.

“What?” A series of loud pops against the doors made me jump. Something fizzled outside. What the hell were the crickets doing out there?

“Orbit.” Amira’s fingers danced again. She stood in front of the lights and glyphs like a conductor. Lines flowered out from a central point in the air. “Fucking orbit!”

“This is good, right?” Ken asked. “You have an idea?”

“I hate to say it, but Devlin’s right. I was too tired to see it. We’re still going to shell the fuck out of that Conglomerate ship.” Amira sounded excited.

“How?”

“We’re not going to fire right at them, we’re going to come at them from behind,” Amira said. “The capsules will fire into orbit, all around the moon, and then hit from the other direction. Each capsule contains a ton of ore, and it’s going to be moving fast. Each shot will be a slightly different angle, so when it comes back around, it’s going to saturate the area. And all at the same fucking time, too.”

“Will the ship have time to get away?” I asked. “If the shots come in from orbit.”

“Not if I come in low, just above the surface. The moon is very round, it’s smaller. I can use topography maps, the first rounds can come in right over the hills. The ship will have seconds to react at the speeds I’m planning.”

“I like this,” Ken said. “How long will it take to do this?”

“Not long. First capsule just got fired, and it looks good. Just keep those crickets out of the room and I’ll start. But we’ll need to stay in here until the capsules hit,” Amira said.

“Why?”

“The capsules can maneuver. Small adjustments, but if the Conglomeration figure out what we did, they could alter the commands, shift where the rounds hit to somewhere else nearby. If we hold the room, there’s a better chance.”

I looked at the door. Another small leg had wiggled through and was waving about. I crushed it. “It’s going to be dicey.”

“All we have to do is last until the capsules come back around. Two hours.”

“Two hours.” I shook my head. Stay alive for two hours.

More dents appeared in the door.

Maybe.

“Oh . . . ,” Amira breathed. “That’s not good.”

“What?”

She waved one of the images through the air toward me. “Trolls.”

Two of them softly trudged through the dirt on the other side of the ridge, a mile away and closing. Crickets loped along with them, some riding on the large, irregular feet.

Farther back, three raptors arced through the lunar night in a triangular formation.

“Reinforcements,” I told Ken. “The two trolls. Three raptors. More crickets.”

“And the ghost is out there somewhere,” Amira said. “I can feel it. Probing. Trying to figure out what I’m up to.”

I looked around the room. “When I leave the room, you hide in the floor panels. Crickets can’t see you, or they’ll report back there’s still someone in here. They have to think it’s just me and Ken that’ll be running around outside.”

“It’s too dangerous out there,” Amira said. “The ghost—”

“Don’t use that electromagnetic pulse cannon unless you have to, if you’re holding the room. We want to get as much time keeping them guessing as we can,” I continued.

“I won’t stay in here.” Amira raised her hands.

“You have to,” I pleaded. “You’re systems. You have to make it through this. You have to make sure these fuckers get the hammer dropped on them.”

“Fuck!” Amira shouted.

She was right. Running would feel better than hiding and waiting. It was not her style to hole up in the shadows. But she needed this room. “I’m so sorry. We need to hold the room. We need to pull them away.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I can power down the suit, hide under the cable runs. I should be able to sneak into the system here and there, keep monitoring things. I’ll keep the EPC, if I have to, last ditch, hold the room. Damn it, you two give them a hell of a chase, okay? And we meet up afterward.”

“You two are stuck with me for a long while yet.” I helped her rip the flooring up. She crawled in, digging down between thick conduit and cables, then I handed her the EPC.

I pushed the floor back down, making sure the panels fit right in and didn’t look disturbed.

Crossing my fingers mentally, I approached the doors.

“Be careful,” Amira said. “Tell me when to open them.”

“Yeah. Careful,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Open.”

The doors jerked open and crickets poured over each other to get inside at me. I opened fire and leapt through into the boiling mass, yanking clutching limbs free and swearing.