28

I slid around a corner, a wave of crickets nipping at my heels.

“Duck,” Ken growled. He stepped around the next corner and raised an MP9 in each hand. I slid, and he opened fire. The chattering sounded distant through my helmet, but I could feel cricket bits and pieces pinging against my armor.

Ken dropped the submachine guns to swap to a handgun as he jumped over me and started smashing remaining crickets against the wall.

They swirled around, keeping away from him, then changed direction and scuttled away in full retreat.

I stood up as Ken limped back my way.

“Now to get outside,” he said to me. “And lead them all away. Amira, are you still hidden?”

“Yeah.” It was a curt, chopped off “yeah.” “Want me to take a look at how close your guests are?”

“Take no risks,” Ken said.

Ken and I got into the airlock. We stood on either side of the scorched body of the raptor. Three more of those things were coming for the two of us, I thought. And one almost killed the three of us. “What about your leg?” I asked. “I cut through, didn’t I?”

“There was sealant both for my leg, and to secure integrity,” Ken said. “It should be fine.”

“Should be?”

“Yes.” Ken pumped the manual lever, and the door leading back to the corridor shuddered shut.

“Because now’s the time for you to turn back,” I said.

“Why would I turn back?” Ken asked, incredulous.

“So you don’t die out there on the lunar surface when that outer door opens.”

Ken stepped forward with a thud and pumped the outward manual lever. “We’re hoping they haven’t noticed there were three of us, and Amira makes sure to destroy their ship, and many of them. As for you and me . . .” The outer door slid open with a rush of air.

We leapt out, weapons up. But nothing shot back at us. No giant feet stomped us out of existence.

“They’re still coming,” I said, relieved.

Ken bounded up the latticework alongside the giant barrel. “Come on,” he urged.

We hopped and bounced our way up, huffing and puffing until we reached the rim and stopped to look back.

“How’s the leg?” I asked.

“The seal holds,” Ken replied. We stood on the rock, watching the other side. Waiting.

“Shit, this is intolerable,” I said. “My hands are shaking. Just standing here. Jumpy.”

“My father fought in the Pacification,” Ken said. “He said a lot of war is just standing, waiting for the sudden action that might mean your death.”

I guessed Ken’s father hadn’t been fighting the Accordance. But I didn’t say anything, just kept looking at the ridge.

“There.” The two trolls crested the other side and paused.

Ken reached back, then flung a grenade that had been stuck to his lower back. It arced accurately over the length of the barrel, across the crater to the other side, and skittered across near the trolls’ feet.

Their large heads swiveled our way as the grenade exploded, charring the lattice but not them. One of the wormhole cannons snapped up. Ken and I both leapt away. The rock where we’d stood shivered as it was stripped clean of dirt, then a large chunk ripped free and flew away.

“That got their attention.” I hopped around boulders. “Should we split up?”

“No. But be silent. This is now a marathon.” Ken sailed away with a giant leap.

I followed.

We fell into a rhythm, an awkward-looking set of jumps alternating leg to leg, assisted by the armor. Occasionally Ken would accidentally key the channel, and I’d hear him grunt in pain as he landed on his left leg and jumped.

I didn’t say anything.

We ate up several miles this way, sometimes pausing when one or the other fumbled and wiped out in the dirt. The adaptive camouflage didn’t do too much good with this much movement, but after forty minutes on the run we were gray, dirty messes that had to be hard to spot from a distance.

Problem was, the trolls weren’t that far in the distance. They were gaining. Every minute they loomed even closer, and the raptors were just behind them.

“When do we make our stand?” I asked, scanning for good terrain. Some rabbiting, turning around, maybe we could get our hands on one of the raptors.

Maybe.

“I see a lot of jagged hills to the north,” Ken said. “Lets—” A blur struck him right at the apex of his jump. He tumbled end over end with it, grappling as they rolled.

I swerved toward them, trying not to look behind us. The trolls would get within wormhole cannon range in twenty seconds easy. I keyed the welder on, lighting up the gray lunar surface with its pure light, tossing shadows everywhere.

Every ounce of me strained as I leapt from a boulder, arrowing right at Ken. I aimed the tip of energy right at the blur, despite not being able to even understand what I was seeing.

“What’s happening?” Amira asked. “Is it the ghost?”

At the last second the slippery nothingness twitched. I struck it hard enough to knock Ken loose and started trying to stab it with the welder. It had penetrated raptor armor; maybe it would cut through this. “Run, Ken!” I could feel the ground underneath me shake.

“Guys?”

The nothingness had my wrists. I struggled to pivot the welder, but my wrists were pushed back, and then farther back, until something tore and popped and I couldn’t hold the welder anymore.

The welder dropped to the ground and spat dust until something turned it off.

I lay pinned to the ground, looking right through whatever held me there, to the darkness far above. I waited for the killing shot, or blow, but nothing happened. The blur picked me up, and then, slowly, began to walk.

The camouflage on the ghost worked similarly to the Accordance’s: It was bending light around itself to replicate whatever was on the other side. This close, I could see the effect shifting in real time. Accordance armor required you to stay still, but this armor adjusted in time to keep the effect going. And even at six inches away, all I could tell was that the ghost was bipedal.

Whatever was underneath, I still couldn’t see.

“Ken?” Amira asked.

“I’m sorry,” Ken said. “He saved me from the ghost. But now . . .”

“I’m not dead yet,” I said, and then, utterly perplexed, I added, “It’s carrying me. Tell my parents—”

“I’m going to come for you!” Ken interrupted.

“No!” I twisted around to look. “The trolls are following me and the ghost, but the raptors are still out looking for you. Wherever you’re hidden, just stay put. We’re keeping them out of Amira’s way still, there’s nothing you can do for me.”

“But I can,” Amira said. “You’re far enough downrange of the launcher that I might be able to fire on you. I could get the capsules to start maneuvering right out of the barrel to arc down at you and hit the trolls.”

“No,” I said firmly. “That will warn them that we have control of the launcher. No, let it take me.”

“Damn it,” Amira snapped. “Listen, give me access to your suit. Just think permission my way, I want in.”

“What will that accomplish?”

“Just do it. I’ve been thinking about the ghost. The Conglom­eration, they’re thinking creatures. They use machines. And that has to mean similarities. They have assembly language, or ones and zeroes, or something. Input-output ports.”

“Can you explain that in plain English?” Ken asked.

“There are maybe even similarities in technology,” Amira continued, and then paused. “Ken, I’m going to use his suit to probe the area around him using our encrypted connection. Thankfully it’s impossible for them to tell we’re talking over quantum networks.”

“Okay, Amira,” I said. And willed the permission over my neural connection.

“What do you think you can do?” Ken asked.

Hopefully she would learn something about our enemy, I thought. I looked over at the massive, rock-armored feet of the trolls.

And maybe she could figure out why they were taking me alive.