I pulled out my gun from where I'd stashed it beneath my seat, then followed Logan and Nicole as they joined the line of Rangers exiting the Pegasus. We tramped down the ramp and stood within the glow of the spacecraft's floodlights. I asked Arthur to switch on my helmet lamp, then paused to look around.
Cabeus was smaller than Ptolemaeus, about sixty-one miles in diameter, but much deeper, surrounded by sheer walls two and half miles high. At this latitude, the crater's depth was significant; sunlight never reached its floor, so its power supply came entirely from a fusion tokamok near the dome-shaped distillation facility. The rest of the station was a collection of modules and sheds, visible only by the wan illumination of red and blue beacons set up around its perimeter.
Nothing moved. We were the only people here.
"Okay, look sharp." Mikel bunny-hopped away from the Pegasus until he stopped to face the rest of the squad. "We've got only a little while before the Marines show up, and we need to be ready and in position when they arrive. Is everyone locked and loaded?"
I checked my carbine, making sure that its ammo drum was firmly attached. "Yes, sir," I replied, joining the chorus from those around me.
"Good. Excellent." Mikel pointed to the mule that had followed us from the Pegasus. "There's more ammo over there. Everyone take two spare drums and carry them with you. It's also carrying spare air tanks, which will be distributed once the fire teams have taken their positions. Now, we need to...Rogers, what do you think you're doing?"
Turning around, I looked back at the Pegasus. Gordie had opened the cockpit hatch and was climbing down from the transport, his copilot right behind him. "Coming to join you guys, that's what," he said.
"Like hell you are!" Mikel sounded angry. "Get back in that thing and..."
"And do what? Be a couple of sitting ducks?" Gordie bounded toward us. "Sam and I talked it over, and we want to be in on this. Fourteen is better than twelve, don't you think?"
He had a point. If he and Sam remained in the Pegasus, they'd be nothing more than targets if the Marines decided to take out the transport. And if there was a firefight, we could use all the help we could get. But neither of them were wearing Ranger moonsuits; instead they wore standard-issue skinsuits that offered zero protection in a combat situation.
"Sorry, but no," Mikel said. "I want you to take the Pegasus over to the other side of the crater, turn off the lights, and await further orders. I don't want to give the Marines an easy target, and we're going to need to keep the transport safe until we're ready to pull out."
Gordie grumbled something under his breath that I didn't quite catch, but he didn't argue with the squad leader. Mikel turned to the rest of us. "All right, then...here's the plan," he said, then bent down to scratch a diagram in the grey dust at his feet. "I want six fire teams, two people each, spread out in a semicircle around the station. We'll keep the station at our backs, and count on the crater wall to provide protection at our rear."
"What if they come at us from that direction?" Logan asked.
"They won't." Mikel pointed toward the distillation facility and the crater wall looming above it. "They'll most likely land here, where we're standing, and advance on the station from this direction. The top of the wall is too far away to give them much advantage...and if they do decide to use it, we can redeploy our teams to cover the rear."
"We hope." This from Toji Kanaku, another Ranger First Class.
Mikel ignored him. "We'll use the station as our base of operations," he went on. "We'll eat, sleep, and recharge our packs in there. Between now and then, I want to build up our defenses. That means finding whatever we can use...robots, empty tanks, anything we can get our hands on...and placing them so that they can provide protection for us. We'll send the mule around to distribute the spare air tanks once we've established our firing positions."
"We're going to try to ambush them?" Nicole asked.
"No. We're going to make it as hard as possible for them to know where we are or how many people we have. If they believe we got them outnumbered, maybe they'll think twice about trying to take the station. With luck, we may even be able to talk them down."
That sounded a little too much like wishful thinking. I didn't say so, but instead asked a question. "What if we're outnumbered and they get us boxed in? What then?"
"If that happens, we'll fall back to the operations center. There's an airlock on the west side. If I call for retreat, go there as fast as you can. We can hole up inside and wait them out...."
"Or they can wait us out," Gordie murmured.
"We have approximately fifteen hours to get ready," Mikel continued, "so use your time wisely. Nap and eat in shifts when you're in the station. At 0700, fourteen hours from now, I want everyone in their suits and on the firing line. Once everyone is in position, switch off your helmet lamps and observe radio silence unless it's absolutely necessary. Any questions?"
"Just one," Gordie said. "Do you seriously believe US Marines will back down from a fight just because we bluff them into thinking they're outnumbered?"
This time, Mikel didn't ignore him. "I don't...but I'm under orders to avoid a fight if at all possible." He paused. "Look, I realize that the Americans among you aren't eager to engage our own people. But you have to remember that you're defending this place from an enemy that would use it to force Apollo to surrender. We can't let that happen. So I'm going to try to reason with them, if and when they land here, but I'm going to do that with my finger on the trigger, and I expect everyone here to back me up. Can you do that for me?"
Everyone murmured in the affirmative. "All right, then," Mikel said. "Let's get to work."
The next thirteen hours were among the busiest of my life. Cabeus Station was never meant to be a fortress, but we did our best to turn it into one.
The first thing we did was enter its seldom-visited operations center, a pair of pressurized modules adjacent to the furnace dome, and shut down all the mining equipment except for the robots, which we reverted to local control. The robots were huge, flat-bed tractors with barrel-shaped horizontal drills mounted on one end and cylindrical collection tanks at the other; there were six in all, scattered across the crater floor. One of the Rangers had been to Cabeus before and knew how to operate them, so Mikel put him in charge of moving the 'bots until they were repositioned in a semicircular ring around the dome.
The robots were big enough for two people to easily hide behind, but they were only part of the barrier we set up. There were also several empty tanks stacked nearby, insulated cylinders with a 200 gallon capacity each. We rolled them into place between the robots, then added stuff we found in a storage shed--replacement bulkhead panels, spare rolls of electrical cable, an old airlock hatch that had been discarded--and lugged them over to the fortifications. By the time we were through, we'd built a makeshift stockade that, while not solid, would provide some measure of protection.
Greg pointed out that we might be able to use the crater's perpetual night to our advantage, so Mikel had him enter the operations center and shut down the beacons. Once this was done, the crater was plunged into darkness. Our carbines were equipped with ultraviolet night-vision rangefinders and our helmet faceplates could be filtered to see the same, so we'd be able to make out one another in the dark; nonetheless, we'd have to be careful not to accidentally target each other during a firefight.
The operations module was small, but at least it had its own airlock and ready-room, and adjacent to them was a bunkhouse with a few collapsible cots and a small galley. It was meant to be used by the maintenance crews that periodically visited the station; there wasn't enough room for all of us at once, but we were able to visit it four at a time. I took the second shift, once I was done shoving water tanks into place. It was a relief to climb out of my suit for a few hours and get a bite to eat, but I can't say that I slept well. I stared at the ceiling for a long time, and it felt as if I'd just closed my eyes for a few minutes when another Ranger shook me awake and told me that it was his turn to nap. I chugged a cup of coffee, visited the toilet, then climbed back into my suit.
Gordie and Sam stayed at the station for as long as they could, working alongside the Rangers, but twelve hours after we arrived at Cabeus, they reluctantly climbed back into the Pegasus and lifted off. I watched the transport as it rose from the landing pad, its formation lights the sole source of illumination within the crater. It ascended to about 500 feet, then turned south and headed for the other side of the crater. I knew Gordie didn't want to leave; if he could have, he would've rigged the Pegasus with mortar rockets and provided air support. But the transports were never meant to be gunships, and his craft would've been an easy target for any Marine with an RPG and a good eye.
After that, there was nothing left to do but take our positions.
I was partnered with Greg, and we'd put ourselves behind a mining robot. Mikel and Toji hid behind a water tank about fifty feet away to our left; Logan and Nicole were concealed behind another robot about forty feet to our right. There was an extra oxygen tank on the ground between Greg and me, along with four ammo drums. The other six Rangers were in pairs to either side of us. When I switched on my night-vision, I could make out the others as vague, green-hued silhouettes, featureless and ghostly.
Mikel had us sound off, answering verbally and raising our hands when he called each of our names, so that we'd all know where everyone was. Then we went radio silent, continuing to monitor all channels but using Channel Three only if necessary. That may have been the most tense time of all: standing in the pitch darkness, barely able to see anything at all, not hearing much except the hiss of respirators, watching the starlit sky above Cabeus and wondering when...and even if...the Marines would land.
We waited. And waited. And waited.
And just as I was beginning to seriously wonder whether the Chief had made a serious mistake by sending us down here, that was when they came.
I happened to be looking up at the sky when I spotted a bright point of light moving among the stars. At first I thought it was a satellite, until I realized that it was going in the wrong direction, from north to south, away from the equator.
I reached over to Greg, prodded his elbow. Within the dim backglow of his helmet visor, I could see his face; he nodded, yes, he'd seen it, too. We watched as the light disappeared beyond the south crater wall, only to reappear a few seconds later, brighter this time and lower to the ground. As it came closer, the light quickly assumed shape, becoming a tiny, comet-like flare that waxed and waned. Engine exhaust. A spacecraft coming in for a landing.
The vessel slowed as it approached us, RCRs winking every now and then, until it was hovering a couple of thousand feet above the crater. Then it slowly began to descend. It was blacked-out save for its cockpit lights and exhaust flare, but it soon became apparent that it was a ferry much like the one that had rendezvoused with the LTV that had brought me from Earth. Although I couldn't see it clearly, it didn't look quite the same; instead of passenger modules, it appeared to be carrying six upright cylinders, mounted in a ring around its control turret.
The ferry didn't use the landing pad. It came down about a mile away from the station, closer to the crater's center. We couldn't hear anything, of course, but we knew that it had landed when its exhaust flare abruptly vanished, a sign that the pilot had cut its main engine.
All we could see was the distant glow of its cockpit lights, then those disappeared as well.
Mikel's voice came over the comlink: "Stand by."
That was all he said, and it was an unnecessary order. Everyone had seen the ferry land, and I had little doubt that the others had figured out the same thing that I had. The pilot had put his craft down at that distance to give his passengers a chance to disembark before being fired upon. This could only mean one thing: they were expecting the station to be defended.
The Marines had landed. And they were looking for trouble.
"Ready carbine, Arthur," I said, keeping my voice low. I didn't need to whisper; it just seemed right. "Activate UV targeting system."
"Yes, Jamey." A green bar appeared across the top of the faceplate; it was marked twenty at its left margin, the number of rounds I had in reserve. I raised my carbine and pointed it the direction of the freighter, and the translucent red crosshairs of the virtual gunsight appeared in the center of my faceplate.
The night-vision didn't show me anything except an indistinct black object approximately a mile away, a few tiny dots moving around it. As I watched, though, the dots began to move toward us...and then they began to hop, leaping up into the air and coming down again a few dozen yards closer than they'd been before, like fleas travelling across a black dog's fur.
What was this? I could bunny-hop, too, of course, but never so high or so far. As the fleas came closer, I saw that there were only six. We had them outnumbered by two-to-one...yet there was something in the way that they moved that made me shiver.
Within minutes, the six figures crossed the distance between the freighter and the station. As they crossed the landing pad, we got our first good look at our enemy. When I saw what they were wearing, I suddenly realized that numerical superiority didn't matter.
They were wearing Cyclops suits.
Any kid who'd ever played a war game on his pad knew what they were: powered armor for space combat, a military spin-off of the EVA gear originally designed for the International Jupiter Expedition. The suits were over seven feet tall and resembled eggs that had sprouted arms and legs; no helmets or faceplates, but instead a smooth, round carapace with a periscope jutting from the top hatch. Each Cyclops had its own rocket-pack, enabling the soldier who wore--or rather, drove--the suit to jump as much as a hundred feet in lunar gravity. Even their weapons were different: shoulder-mounted carbines, looking like fat sausages, positioned on a swivel beside the periscope.
I fought a sudden urge to pee in my suit. Perhaps we should have expected that the Marines would be wearing powered armor, but we didn't, and that was our mistake. This was the enemy, and he'd come to kick our ass.
The Cyclops team came to a halt just past the landing pad: six giants, facing a barricade hastily built by a handful of pygmies. They didn't come any closer, though. A few seconds went by, then I heard an unfamiliar voice in my headphones:
"Cabeus Station, do you copy? Over." A pause, just long enough for me to glance at my heads-up display and see that the speaker was using Channel One. "Cabeus Station, this is Liberty Force One. Respond at once. Over."
Mikel came over the comlink. "Liberty Force One, this is Apollo Lunar Search and Rescue. You're intruding on a facility operated and protected by the International Space Coalition. Please return to your craft at once."
Another pause, then the voice returned. "Apollo SAR, we're here to take possession of this station in the name of the United States of America. Surrender immediately."
A short beep, then Mikel spoke to us on Channel Three: "I'm going to try to negotiate." He switched back to Channel One: "I'm sorry, but we don't recognize the authority of the United States to take control of this station. I should also warn you that you're greatly outnumbered. Any attempt to take this facility by force would be a grave error. Again, return to your craft and once and leave." He paused, then added, "This is your final warning."
For a few moments, there was no response. I slowly raised my carbine, braced it against the robot's upper platform, and took aim upon the nearest Cyclops. As the red crosshairs was painted on the center of the suit, I noticed that it was stenciled with a cartoon figure of a penguin wearing a top-hat and carrying a walking stick. But no American flag. Odd...
"Okay, I understand." When the Cyclops team leader spoke again, his tone a little less formal. "Look, maybe we ought to talk this over before anyone gets hurt. Would you be willing to discuss this?"
"Yes, I believe that can be done," Mikel said.
I may have been wearing a moonsuit, but that didn't stop me from smelling a rat. "Don't trust him, Mikel," I blurted out. "He's up to something."
"Stand down, Ranger. If they want to talk, then it's in our best interest to do so." Mikel hesitated. "Look sharp. I'm going out there." Then he switched back to Channel One: "Coming out to speak with you, Liberty One."
"Sure. Ready when you are." The Cyclops leader sounded positively avuncular.
Don't do it, I thought, but Mikel was already emerging from cover. Gun pointed at the ground, he stepped out from behind the water tank where he and Toji had hidden.
Walking slowly, careful not to seem menacing, he approached the row of Cyclops soldiers waiting for him.
He was about halfway there when the one in the middle shot him.
There was no gunshot, no muzzle flash. I heard a thin, ragged crack through the comlink as the Cyclops's machine gun shattered Mikel's faceplate. Tiny shards of glass sprayed outward from his helmet, carried by the abrupt decompression of his moonsuit. Mikel collapsed, hitting the ground face-first, raising a small cloud of dust. They had never intended to negotiate.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then Greg screamed "Fire!" and all hell broke loose.
My gun was already trained on the Cyclops nearest me. I aimed at the stupid penguin in the middle of his chest and curled the index finger of my right hand, but my target was no longer there. Penguin had fired his rocket pack; his leap carried him up and away before my bullets could reach him.
"Arthur!" I yelled. "Track and lock onto target!"
"Which one, Jamey?" As always, Arthur's voice was calm and unruffled.
Looking up, I saw Penguin a dozen feet or so above the ground, just starting to come down again. I jerked my carbine toward him. "That one!"
I fixed my red crosshairs fixed upon Penguin, but they had barely flashed to indicate that I had a lock-on when the Cyclops suddenly changed position. Penguin had used his rockets again to get out from under my sights before I had a chance to fire. He came down about forty feet away, then lunged to the left when I tried to track him.
"Damn it!" Greg shouted. "They've got countermeasures!"
I didn't have time to ask what he meant by that. Penguin had evaded me, but when I started to step out from behind the mining robot, a bullet clipped the platform fender, forcing me back under cover. The shot had come from another Cyclops; I caught a glimpse of a happy-looking raven on its chest as I ducked behind the 'bot again.
"Fire at will!" Mahmoud cried, sounding like he was on the verge of panic. "Fire at will! Pick someone and...ah!"
I couldn't tell whether or not he'd been hit, nor did I really care. Just then, I had problems of my own. Penguin was coming at Greg and me, bouncing from one foot to another, dodging left and right as he closed the distance between us. My crosshairs were useless; every time I had him in my sights, he'd dance away, almost as if he knew...
Right. Of course he did. I suddenly realized what Greg meant. The Cyclops suits were equipped with electronic countermeasures which would detect a lock-on by our carbines' targeting systems. All Penguin had to do was move when he heard the warning and my bullets would never find him.
"Arthur! Disengage targeting system! Go to manual!"
"Jamey, are you sure you...?"
"Yes! Do it!"
The crosshairs vanished; I was now on manual fire control, dependent on nothing more than my own two eyes. Penguin was less than ten yards away. He stopped moving, and the sausage-like machine gun on his shoulder swiveled toward me. By then, though, I'd raised my gun and was using a small knob at the end of its barrel as an improvised sight. When Penguin didn't jump away again, I curled my forefinger around the trigger and kept it there.
Penguin staggered backward beneath my salvo. I couldn't tell whether my bullets had fully penetrated his thick armor, but I must have hit something vital because his gun suddenly tilted upward. All I knew was that he couldn't run from me, nor could he retaliate. Screaming in rage, I kept firing, and suddenly a white jet of mist spewed from the center of his top hatch. Penguin didn't fall, but his arms went limp at his sides as he sagged upon his thick legs. Even if the man inside the armor wasn't dead, it didn't look as if he was going to give me any more trouble.
"Got one!" I shouted, then I looked around to see that Greg was no longer beside me. He was crouched at the other end of the robot, firing at Raven as he tried to come at us from around the 'bot. "Greg! Switch off your...!"
"I know! I know!" His gun swept back and forth as he sought to get a lock on his target. "Get this guy off me!"
The Cyclops team had broken formation. Raven was the nearest, now that Penguin was down, and he was using his rockets to dodge Greg's bullets. I pointed my carbine at him and squeezed the trigger, but I got off only a couple of shots before my weapon abruptly went dead.
"You are out of ammunition, Jamey," Arthur said.
Until then, I hadn't realized that I used up an entire ammo drum taking down Penguin. Swearing, I bolted for the spare drums. They lay on the ground beside the robot's treads, but I'd barely bent over to grab one when something slammed into my back.
For a horrifying second, I thought I'd been struck by a bullet. Then a piece of the robot's high-gain antenna fell next to me, and I realized what had happened. Raven had hit the 'bot by mistake, clipping off its antenna. That meant that Raven was trying to get me, too. Sure enough, when I tried to reach for the ammo drum, bullets pocked the grey dust beside the drum, forcing me to yank back my hand.
"Can't help you, Greg!" I shouted, kneeling beside the robot to use it a shield. "You've gotta...!"
"Aw, damn it!" he snarled, and then he bolted out from behind the 'bot. "Somebody cover me!"
From where I was crouched, I couldn't tell what was happening to him. But I could see everything else that was going on. The Cyclops team were coming at us from all sides, the five remaining soldiers doing their best to break through the barricades. Logan and Nicole were fighting back to back, each covering the other's rear, while Toji tried to keep the water tank between him and a Cyclops emblazoned with a bald eagle. Farther away, other Rangers fired, ran, ducked, or did whatever else they could to stay alive.
The battle was fought in almost total silence. No gunfire, no ricochets, no explosions. The only thing I heard where the voices of my friends. For a second or two, I had a sense of being disconnected from reality; the helmet faceplate between me and everything else made it seem as if I was simply watching a vid with its volume turned down low.
"Jamey! Where the hell are you?"
Greg's voice snapped me out of it. I reached again for the ammo drum and this time was able to grab it. I ejected the spent drum, slapped the new one into place, and charged out from behind the robot.
Raven saw me coming. His shoulder gun swiveled in my direction, but I fired before he did. My aim wasn't good, but my shots distracted him from Greg and forced him to jump away. Greg and I concentrated our fire on him, and although the Cyclops was in midair, one of us managed to hit his rocket pack. A lucky shot. Liquid oxygen spewed from its fuel tank as a crystalline shower that froze instantly. Raven fell to the ground; something must have gone seriously wrong with his armor, because its hatch sprang open and a figure in a skinsuit began to scramble out.
Two Cyclops down. I didn't have time to savor our victory, though. Four more Cyclops were still active. I glanced at Greg. "Are you okay?"
"Fine. Thanks for..."
"Logan!"
That was Nicole. I turned about just in time to see Logan fall backward from the robot the two of them were using for cover. Eagle had broken off his attack on Toji and was now hovering about ten feet above the 'bot. Logan lay on his side, left hand groping at his suit's chest plate. Through my headset, I could make out his voice: "Nicole...I...I..."
"Hold on!" Ignoring the Cyclops leader, Nicole rushed toward him.
Eagle wasn't about to give her a chance to tend to a wounded comrade. Settling to the ground behind Nicole, the Cyclops stamped toward her and Logan, his gun pivoting about to lock on them.
"Nicole!" I yelled as I bolted toward them. "Get out of...!"
All of a sudden, Eagle seemed to forget about my friends. He stopped and turned around, and in that instant, a white shaft beam of light lanced down from above, capturing him in its glare. Eagle's machine gun turned toward its source, but before the Cyclops could fire, it seemed as if a windstorm came out of nowhere to sweep a cloud of regolith upon him.
"Eat my dust!" Gordie yelled.
As Eagle staggered back, I glanced up to see the Pegasus descending upon Cabeus Station. The transport might be unarmed, but Gordie was far from helpless; he was using the VTOLs to whip up a dust storm. Blinded by the swirling regolith, his periscope and targeting systems disabled, Eagle lurched away from Logan and Nicole.
"Take him out!" Gordie shouted.
Greg and I raced toward Eagle, but before we could get to him, another Cyclops turned its carbine upon us. I heard Greg cry out, but I didn't stop running until I reached the 'bot. Putting it between me and the second Cyclops, I crouched and aimed at Eagle. But my gun alone wasn't enough to drop him; my bullets bounced off his armor, and all they did was let him know that he was under attack.
Eagle turned toward me, and I barely had time to duck back behind the robot before his machine gun chipped paint from its side. I swore and scrambled backward, and in that second realized that the scene had become dark again.
Gordie was no longer covering me. The Pegasus had moved to another part of the battle, providing air support for the other Rangers. That meant I was exposed, though...and with Mikel dead, both Logan and Greg down, and Toji nowhere to be seen, that left only Nicole and me to defend ourselves against two Cyclops.
"Die, you bastard!" Nicole screamed, and I looked around to see that she'd returned to her feet. Logan lay still upon the ground and she stood above him to opened fire upon Eagle. "Die! Die!"
Eagle turned toward her. Now was my chance. I leaped out from behind the robot, took aim at the Cyclops's vulnerable point, the rocket pack on his back. This time, I didn't miss; my bullets ruptured its fuel tank and Eagle fell back from Nicole, arms flailing about.
Eagle was down, or at least no longer a threat. I was about to rush forward to help Logan when there was a bright flash to my left. The explosion pitched me off my feet; I sailed several yards, came down hard on my right side. There was a violent pain as my arm twisted in an awkward direction, and I yelped as warning lights flashed on my heads-up display.
"Jamey, you've lost your carbine," Arthur said, still irritatingly calm.
He was right. I no longer had my gun. Where it had fallen, I didn't know. But it wasn't in my hands anymore.
Hissing between my teeth, I rolled over to try to get up. I knew what had happened. In the heat of the moment, I'd forgotten the Cyclops that had attacked Greg and me.
He stood only a dozen feet away, looming above me like an avenging golem. His first shot had missed me and hit the robot instead, causing a fuel cell to explode. But now that I was on the ground, unarmed and helpless, he had a clear shot.
He marched closer, his machine gun tilting toward me. He wanted point-blank range to finish me off. As he approached, I made out the emblem on his chest: a goose, cross-eyed and with a long red tongue hanging out of its bill. What kind of a jerk would put that on his suit? I wondered, even as I realized that this would probably be the last thing I'd ever see.
"Jamey!" Nicole yelled. "Duck!"
"Duck?" In my last moment of life, I was giddy with fear. "Who cares about Duck? It's Goose who's going to..."
And then Goose exploded.
One moment, he was there. The next, he was a ball of fire, a thing that silently detonated where he once stood. I managed to put my head down and cover my faceplate with my left arm before twisted pieces of Cyclops armor rained down around me. Something hit the top of my helmet, stunning me for a moment; when I looked up again, I saw that it was a severed arm, frozen blood turning black at the twisted edges of an armored sleeve.
I stared at the arm in disbelief, but I didn't have time to wonder what had just happened to its former owner because a new voice came through my headphones: "American military forces, cease fire and surrender!"
What the hell? Crawling to my hands and knees, I looked around to see the bright beams of helmet lamps. Figures in moonsuits were advancing toward us from just beyond the landing pad. It was hard to tell just then how many there were, but there seemed to be a dozen or more.
A sudden flash of light from their midst, then something shot overhead. I barely recognized it as a mortar rocket before it exploded several hundred feet away. Another Cyclops had met Goose's fate.
"This is your last warning! Surrender at once or be annihilated!"
It seemed as if everything went still. But not silent; I could hear Nicole saying Logan's name over and over, her voice harsh and choked with tears. I clambered to my feet and started toward them, then realized that I might draw fire from our rescuers, whoever they were. But I couldn't leave her and Logan alone, so I paused to switch on my helmet lamp, hoping that its light would distinguish me from a Cyclops, and bounced over to their side.
Logan lay where he'd fallen. As soon I got near, I saw where a bullet had punched through his moonsuit. Nicole was crouched over him, her hands on his shoulders. She was trying to shake him awake, but when the beam from my helmet touched his face, I saw that his eyes were closed and his mouth was sagging open.
Bending down beside her, I shoved Nicole aside and ran a diagnostic cord to Logan's suit. "Download biofeedback, Arthur!" I snapped, and a moment later Logan's suit was linked to mine, his vital signs appearing upon my heads-up display.
It took a second for me to realize the significance of all those flat red lines. I was still staring at them in disbelief when a voice came through my headphones.
"Who's in charge here? Who is your commanding officer?"
I didn't look up. "I dunno...someone, I guess."
"Is that person dead?" I dully recognized the voice as being the same one which had demanded the Cyclops team's surrender.
Unwilling to answer that question, I raised my eyes. A figure in a moonsuit that looked a bit different than mine stood a few feet away, a heavy-looking rifle cradled in his hands. Until then, I'd somehow assumed that our rescuers were other Rangers, so it took a moment for me to recognize the emblem on the front of his suit--a red star against a green background--for what it was.
The flag of the Pacific Socialist Union.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Colonel Thahn Kim, commander of the People's Lunar Defense Force." A not-unkind face regarded me with sympathy from behind a faceplate. "Was that a friend of yours?"
I started to reply, but something got stuck in my throat and I had to fight to keep from throwing up. So I just nodded, even though it was unlikely that Col. Thahn would see the movement of my head. Yet apparently he did, because he lowered his gun and lay a hand upon my shoulder.
"I'm sorry. If we had arrived sooner, we may have been able to save him." He hesitated. "Would you tell me your names, please?"
For a moment or two, I was tempted to tell him to...well, I don't know what I wanted him to do, just that I didn't care to answer any questions from him. But we were in a combat situation, and this was the man who'd just saved my life. I needed to put my grief on hold and deal with matters at hand.
"Jamey Barlowe, Ranger Second Class." I looked over at Nicole. "This is Nicole Doyle, also Ranger Second Class." Nicole didn't respond; she barely seemed to notice either of us. "You...you're from Moon Dragon, aren't you?"
A dumb question with an obvious answer, but Thahn didn't seem to care. "Yes, but we didn't come from there. When it became apparent that the Americans were sending a military force to the Moon, my team was dispatched to Scott Crater to protect our ice mining facility. And when we saw that they were invading your station instead, I decided to...shall we say, intervene? Just in case there was need for us to back up your own defense force."
Col. Thahn spoke English very well, with hardly any accent; perhaps he'd been educated in the United States before the PSU cut its ties with the west. Although I was exhausted to my very bones, I stood up to face him. "I'm glad you did. I..." I took a deep breath. "You saved my life. Hers, too. Thank you."
"You're welcome, Ranger Barlowe. As I said, I'm sorry that we didn't arrive earlier." He pointed in the direction of the landing pad, and for the first time I noticed the squat form of a long-range transport that faintly resembled a Pegasus. It had touched down not far from the ferry that had brought the Cyclops team; I figured that it must have landed while I wasn't looking. "Now, again...who is your commanding officer?"
I let out my breath. "Mikel Borakov...but he's dead. They shot him when he went out to negotiate a cease-fire. The second-in-command was Greg Thomas, but..." I shook my head. "I don't know what happened to him. He was with me, but he...he..."
"I see. Just a moment please." He stopped talking to me, but I could see his lips moving. Apparently he'd switched to another channel and was speaking with someone else from his team. A few seconds went by, then his voice returned. "My men have located another survivor, Mahmoud Chawla. Is he superior to you in rank?"
"Yes, he is." It took a moment for what Thahn just said to sink in. "Another survivor? How...how many are there?"
"Counting him, Ranger Doyle, and yourself...only six. And two of them are wounded." Col. Thahn paused again to ask another question in his own language. "That doesn't include the pilot and copilot of your transport," he added after a moment. "It's amazing that they survived as well. What they did was very brave, but very foolhardy."
I wasn't even thinking about Gordie and Sam. What the colonel had just told me caused my legs to go weak. Half of my Ranger team was dead. Greg was probably gone, and I had little doubt that Toji was, too. And Logan, my best friend...
"We've captured three members of the force that attacked you," Thahn went on. "Including their leader."
He gestured behind me, and I turned to see another PSU soldier standing guard over a figure in a skinsuit who lay face-down on the ground, arms spread out before him. His Cyclops suit rested nearby, its hatch open; when I saw it, I realized that the man on the ground was Eagle. The guy who'd murdered Mikel in cold blood, and probably killed Logan, too.
"My people have ordered the others to climb out of their suits as well," Thahn said. "If you wish, you can be present while I interrogate them."
"Yes," I said, "I'd like that very much."
Three PSU soldiers escorted the prisoners into the station, where they stood watch over the remaining members of Liberty One. The hab modules were too small for everyone to crowd inside, so once Gordie landed the Pegasus at the station again, the two wounded Rangers were carried into the transport; once it was pressurized, they received medical treatment from another survivor.
While this was going on, Mahmoud, Nicole, and I went about the grim business of recovering our dead. As I suspected, Greg had been killed; his suit had been punctured by a bullet and he'd decompressed before he could seal the hole. Toji hadn't made it, either. They were among the bodies we dragged over to the Pegasus and laid out in a row. There was no choice but to leave them in their suits; their corpses would have been mutilated by the airless cold, and we wanted to bring them back to Apollo.
Nicole said nothing while we performed that awful duty. She remained quiet the entire time. Yet when it was done and Mahmoud turned to go into the station, she chose to remain with Logan's body. I lay a hand on her shoulder and she responded with a nod, but her eyes never left Logan.
I was numb. It felt as if, only a few minutes ago, he and I had been talking about our home town swim team. Now he lay before me, and all I could see of him was his face, tinted by the glass of his helmet faceplate. His death was unreal, an abstract fact that I hadn't quite absorbed. My best friend was dead? No, that wasn't true. This was just some guy in a moonsuit. Logan was somewhere else. Any minute now, he'd be back...
"Jamey?" Mahmoud's voice was low. "Do you want to come with me? To interrogate the prisoners?"
"Yeah...sure." There was little I could say or do for Nicole. There wasn't even much I could do for myself. So I left her with Logan and followed Mahmoud to the airlock.
The three Cyclops soldiers were seated in a row on the ready-room floor. Their helmets had been removed, but they still wore their skinsuits. The PSU soldiers standing above them had taken turns removing their moonsuits; when Mahmoud and I cycled through, we found them standing guard over the prisoners, each with a rifle aimed at their heads. The Cyclops team was quiet when we came in, but Col. Thahn had already begun their interrogation, and it was obvious that they were scared.
Thahn was younger than I thought he'd be. Although he was probably only in his midtwenties, he had the no-nonsense look of a military professional. I was glad that I was his friend, at least until he proved otherwise. Two of the Liberty One guys were about the same age as Thahn, while the one in the middle was in his early fifties, heavy-set and with a handle-bar mustache. They all had cold, predatory eyes. I was in the company of killers.
Thahn pointed to the two younger men. "Those are Raven and Sparrow, and this one--" he meant the man in the middle, "is Eagle, their leader. They won't give us their names, only their team designations."
"Figures," I said. "Marines are tough guys. They won't talk."
Eagle said nothing, but his lips compressed into a contemptuous sneer. "You're mistaken, Mr. Barlowe," Thahn said. "They're not Marines. In fact, I don't believe they belong to any American armed service." He paused. "And they will talk."
"Not Marines?" Mahmoud was startled. "How do you...?"
"There is no American military insignia on their armor," Thahn said. I nodded, remembering that I had noticed the same thing when the Cyclops team approached the station. "In fact, there's no identification of any sort. When my team accessed Eagle's suit computer, we discovered that its memory was scrubbed just before he was captured. We're still checking the other suits, but I imagine we'll find that they did likewise." He regarded Eagle with merciless eyes. "You're trying to cover your tracks, but I assure you that it won't work."
"So if they aren't Marines," I asked, "then who are they?"
"That's what we will find out." Thahn's gaze never moved from Eagle. "Speak. Tell us who you work for...now."
Eagle stared back at him. "Go to hell."
Thahn looked at one of his men and quietly nodded. The soldier walked forward, grabbed Sparrow by his arm, and roughly yanked him to his feet. "Take him to the airlock," Thahn said, "and throw him out."
Sparrow squawked, tried to pull away. The PSU soldier slammed the butt of his rifle into his stomach, and when he doubled over, grabbed his suit's neck ring and began to drag him across the room.
I don't know whether Thahn was bluffing or not; either way, he was very persuasive. Eagle let out his breath and closed his eyes in resignation. "Okay...stop," he murmured. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know."
"Wise decision." Thahn nodded again to his soldier, and Sparrow was thrown back against the wall beside Eagle and Raven. "Where are you from? Who sent you here?"
"Ball North IU."
"Ball North?" Thahn shook his head. "I've never heard of this."
"I have." Mahmoud's eyes were wide with astonishment. "Independent military contractors. They'll hire out to anyone who will pay them. Covert missions, black ops...the sort of stuff governments want to get done, but don't necessarily want to do themselves."
"What does IU mean?" I asked.
"'Independent Underwriters'...or 'International Undertakers,' if you believe what's been written about them." Mahmoud let out his breath. "Really nasty outfit. There's no job too dirty, if the money is right."
"Mercenaries." Thahn's tone was icy. "Where did you get your equipment? Cyclops armor is too sophisticated for such as you."
Eagle went silent, but Raven spoke up. "From the same people who hired us...the US government." He glanced warily at the airlock; he was obviously afraid that he'd go through it without a helmet if he didn't confess. "They supplied us with the suits, trained us how to use them, provided us with transportation."
"And your mission?"
"Take this station, kill everyone who got in our way." Raven looked down at the floor. "We were told not to leave anyone alive."
I felt a chill colder than the crater outside. Just then, I wanted to pitch all three of these guys out the airlock. "Why did the American government hire you?" Thahn asked. "Why didn't they simply send their own troops instead?"
"I don't know," Eagle said. "Maybe they couldn't get the Marines to attack a base where they knew there would be American civilians. Or maybe they just wanted deniability." He shrugged. "No one told us...not me or my men, at least...and I didn't ask."
"How many more of your people were sent here?"
Eagle stared at him. "You don't know?" When Thahn didn't answer, he glanced at Raven and Sparrow, then shook his head. "Sorry, pal. I don't rat out my comrades."
Thahn was quiet for a few moments. I thought he was going to give his men the order to blow out Eagle, Sparrow, and Raven, but instead he turned to Mahmoud. "Have you been in communication with Apollo since you've been here?"
"No. We've been observing strict radio silence, so..." Mahmoud stopped. His face went pale, and without another word he bolted from the ready-room, nearly colliding with the colonel in his haste to reach the adjacent control room.
"I don't understand," I said. "If there are others like them here, then why haven't they attacked us?"
Once again, a cold smile appeared on Eagle's face. It vanished when he met Thahn's gaze; he quickly looked away, but the colonel was no longer paying attention to them. "The attack on this station may have been only one part of their operation," Thahn said to me. "They may have had another objective as well."
"Another objective?" I stared back at him. "What other objective could they...?"
My voice trailed off. Thahn didn't reply, nor did he need to. The answer was obvious.
Eagle's words were still sinking in when Mahmoud reappeared in the control room door. "Get your gear, Jamey," he said as he headed for the airlock. "We're pulling out right now."
I stared at him. "Is it Apollo? Did you get in touch with them?"
"I just tried...and there was no answer."
As soon as I saw Apollo, I knew a lot of people had died there.
"Oh, my God." Nicole was sitting beside me in the Pegasus. She had been quiet during most of the flight from Cabeus; at one point I'd put my arm around her and let her cry against my shoulder. Now she was staring past me out the porthole beside us, and both of us stunned by what lay below.
At first glimpse it seemed as if Apollo was undamaged. As the Pegasus flew in low over Ptolemaeus, it became evident that this was only an illusion. Something had ripped through the northwest side of Apollo's crater dome, leaving a long, jagged tear that extended from the crater wall almost halfway to the sun window. An explosion, no doubt caused by a missile. Yet it couldn't have been a direct hit; otherwise Apollo would have been obliterated. So where did they come from...?
Then I looked away from the dome and felt my heart stop. Where Ag Dome 2 once lay, there was only a big, black hole surrounded by debris. The blast had badly damaged the dome, but it had completely destroyed one of the colony's farms.
The one where Melissa worked.
"Put it down, Gordie." My mouth was dry. "Put it down and let me get out."
"Can't do that, Jamey." His voice came to my headset from the cockpit. "I've been instructed to land near the industrial park. The landing fields aren't safe, and..."
"I mean it, man. Put it down now!" I was already reaching beneath the seat for my helmet. "I need to get to Ag Dome 2. My sister was there. She..."
"Jamey...stop." Nicole's voice was quiet but insistent. "You know he can't let you get out on your own. We'd have to depressurize the whole module."
She was right. After the Pegasus lifted off from Cabeus, Gordie had repressurized the passenger module so that we could remove the injured Rangers from their suits and tend to their wounds. They lay upon stretchers on the module floor; a blood bag was suspended above one of them, and the other guy was so heavily bandaged that he could barely move. Getting them back into their moonsuits was out of the question; we would have to wait until a bus came to pick us up, so that we could carry them straight to Apollo General.
Once again, my gaze involuntarily turned toward the tarp-covered forms that lay in the back of the module. Logan, Mikel, Greg, Toji, the two other Rangers who'd perished at Cabeus...they were all back there, silent fellow travelers. Gordie had wanted to leave the bodies at Cabeus, if only temporarily, saying that we didn't have time to load them into the Pegasus. Nicole wouldn't have it, though; we'd take our fallen comrades back to Apollo, not leave them with the Ball North mercenaries who'd killed them. Colonel Thahn had volunteered to take custody of Eagle, Sparrow, and Raven until someone at Apollo figured out what to do about them; it didn't seem right to leave behind six dead Rangers, too.
"Yeah...okay, sure." Tearing my gaze away from the bodies, I looked over at Mahmoud. "Anything more from MainOps?"
Mahmoud was huddled over the shortwave transceiver, its headset clasped against his ear. "Only what Gordie just said," he replied, shaking his head. "The landing fields aren't safe, so we're to land east of the park and wait for a bus to pick us up."
I nodded. The shortwave had become our sole link with Apollo, and even then we hadn't been able to use it until we were within a few hundred miles of Ptolemaeus. Under interrogation, Eagle had reluctantly told us that Ball North's strategy had included taking out the ISC lunar communications satellite, thus severing Apollo's long-range radio link with anyone who might be at Cabeus. This would happen just before Liberty Two, Ball North's second Cyclops team, attacked Apollo, which was timed to be simultaneous with the assault on Cabeus Station.
Fortunately, we still had the emergency transceiver as a backup. Whoever was handling communication at the Main Operations Center wasn't telling us very much, though. They were probably worried that our transmissions were being monitored. If so, that could only mean one thing: there were enemy forces on the ground, and they were still capable of doing us harm.
The Pegasus banked left as Gordie made a port turn. Through the window, I saw Apollo pass beneath us, and noticed that sun window had gone dark. Apparently the reflector ring had been knocked out, leaving the solarium--whatever remained of it--in darkness. Then there was a rumble as the VTOLs kicked in, and a vibration passed through the hull as the transport made its final approach.
We had a rough landing. Gordie came in fast, and the Pegasus slammed down on its landing gear so hard that Hans Geller, the unhurt Ranger tending to the wounded, swore at him through the comlink. The ceiling lights flickered and went dark, replaced a second later by the amber glow of the emergency lamps. A moment later, the steady hiss of the air vents suddenly ceased as well.
"Killing all power until the bus gets here," Gordie said. "Don't want to give their mortars something to lock onto." Then there was a click as the comlink went silent; he wasn't taking chances with the radio either.
Gazing through the windows, I could see the clustered domes of the industrial park. Its floodlights had been turned off, and nothing moved near it. On the other side of the Pegasus, Apollo loomed as a vast, dark wall, its outer windows blacked out. Over the past few months, I'd become accustomed to the constant bustle of men and machines around the crater. Now it was as if I was looking at a dead city, lifeless and abandoned, populated only by ghosts.
I was just beginning to get spooked when I spotted a bus approaching us from Loop Road. Bouncing upon its tandem wheels, it came toward us faster than I'd ever seen a lunar ground vehicle move before. Just behind it was an open-top rover, with two Rangers carrying carbines hunched behind the driver. Once the two vehicles were within ten yard of the Pegasus, the bus fishtailed around until its rear was pointed toward the transport. As it began to back toward us, the rover came to a halt. The Rangers jumped out of the back and trotted alongside the bus, carbines raised and ready to fire.
A hard jolt as the bus connected with the Pegasus's port side, and barely ten seconds later the hatch sprang open. The last person I'd expected to see was Mr. Garcia, yet that was who was standing on the other side. The Chief wore a skinsuit, its helmet faceplate open, and he was in no mood for small talk.
"C'mon, c'mon...move it!" he snapped. "Hustle!"
Nicole and I didn't bother to pick up our helmets or carbines. Instead, each of us took one end of a stretcher and carried a wounded Ranger aboard the bus, with Mahmoud and Hans bringing out the second stretcher. Once the wounded were aboard, the Chief told Nicole and me to go back and fetch our helmets and guns. She and I grabbed our gear as fast as we could; as soon as we returned, Mr. Garcia slammed the hatch behind us.
"Get us out of here!" he yelled to the driver. "Go west on Loop Road. That'll keep the crater between us and the snipers."
The driver was Ed Tolley, the guy who'd picked me when I first landed on the Moon. He put the bus in gear, and we barely had time to take our seats before it sped away from the Pegasus, bouncing across rocks and craters as it made a beeline for the road. I was about to tell him to stop and wait for Gordie and Sam, but then I glanced through a window and saw them climbing into the back of a rover along with the Rangers.
"We're going to have to take the long way back," the Chief explained. "The bad guys have taken up positions in the hills east of town so they can take potshots at anything coming out of the garage. We managed to catch them by surprise when we left, but now that they know we're here, I doubt we'll be so lucky going back." He pointed to our helmets. "Put 'em on. If we draw fire, you'll need to close your helmets if the bus collects a bullet."
I picked up my helmet and shoved my head into it. "What about them?" I asked, looking at the two wounded Rangers. We'd left their moonsuits aboard the Pegasus.
"They're just going to have to take their chances." Mr. Garcia caught the look on Nicole's face and shook his head. "Sorry, but that's just the way it is. We can't stop to..."
"I know that, sir," she said. "But we also left behind the...the people we lost, I mean. They're still in the transport."
"I'm aware of that, and I'm sorry to have to leave them there, but there's nothing we can do for them just now. Bringing them aboard would have cost us time, and the snipers might have drawn a bead on this bus if it had remained there any longer." He gave her hand a brief squeeze. "When this is over, I'll send someone out back here to get them...I promise."
"All right," she said, staring him straight in the eye. "So long as you pick me."
"Fair enough." The Chief turned to Mahmoud. "All right, Mr. Chawla...let's hear your report. What happened down there, and why did you return?"
As quickly as he could, Mahmoud told him about the battle at Cabeus. He skipped a few details for the sake of brevity, but the gist of it was there. The Chief listened carefully, asking questions every now and then but otherwise remaining quiet. When Mahmoud got to the part of the story where PSU soldiers from Moon Dragon came to our rescue, the chief's eyebrows lifted in surprise. Then Mahmoud told him that the enemy wasn't the US Marines but rather Ball North mercenaries, and Mr. Garcia stared at him in disbelief.
"I'll be damned. I would've never thought she'd stoop that low." He sighed and shook his head. "That colonel...Thahn, did you say his name was?...was probably right. President Shapar probably gave the order to send private soldiers. That way, her administration would have plausible deniability if there were civilian casualties and put the blame on...well, who knows?"
"Yes, sir," Mahmoud said, "but Colonel Thahn also raised another possibility...that Ball North was hired because the Marines refused to take on this particular mission."
"Marines refusing a direct order from their commander in chief?" The Chief gave him a skeptical look. "I rather doubt that...but if it's true, then Shapar could be in serious trouble." A grim smile. "We can only hope that your friend is right."
By then, the bus had made the turn on Loop Road that brought us within sight of the remains of Ag Dome 2. I stared at the blackened hole that had once been the farm; on the other side of the bus, the others were gazing at the massive rip in the lower part of Apollo's dome.
"What happened?" I asked.
"The first wave of the attack came from space," Mr. Garcia said. "The Duke was outfitted with a missile launcher. Just before it landed, it fired six missiles at us. Fortunately, none of them were nuclear-tipped...I guess Lina Shapar wants Apollo intact, more or less...and when we saw them coming, we had just enough time to sound the evacuation alarm."
"But didn't the Blitzgewehr...?"
"The Blitzgewehr managed to take out four of the missiles before they hit. But it couldn't track all six at once, so two got through. The fifth missile destroyed the Blitzgewehr, and the sixth destroyed Ag Dome 2." The Chief pointed to the remains of the ag dome. "When it hit the farm, some of the debris ripped through the solarium ceiling. We were lucky, though. Almost everyone made it to the shelter, so there were few casualties. But we still lost some people..."
"Sir...what about my sister Melissa?" I tried not to stammer, but wasn't very successful. "She...she worked in Ag Dome 2. Was she...I mean, did she...?"
"She managed to get out. Your sister is safe and sound. But..." Mr. Garcia hesitated. "We lost one of our friends. I'm sorry."
I stared at him. "Who?"
"Eddie Hernandez," he said quietly. "He was in the farm when the missile hit."