As the capsule hurtled us through the tunnel, I stared at my QComm screen in silence, watching video feeds of the final moments of the Last Battle of Moon Base Alpha.
There were still a few scattered ATHIDs duking it out with alien Spider Fighter drones up on the surface, while a lone Sentinel grappled with a Basilisk in a fire-scorched crater nearby. A handful of Glaive Fighters were still dive-bombing the base, now completely unopposed by EDA forces, hammering it mercilessly until nothing remained.
We were watching all of this happen on our tiny QComm display screens, as if it were some televised event occurring far away, when a massive tremor shook our escape capsule. A second later, the roof of the tunnel ahead of us collapsed and artificial light poured in from above, as if a bank of stadium floodlights had powered on.
It was a Basilisk—sort of a giant metal praying mantis with enormous scythe-like blades in place of its front legs, along with an extra pair of clawed, telescoping robotic hands, and twin plasma cannons standing in for its mandibles.
One of its massive metal arms snaked into the tunnel, barely missing us as we passed beneath it, bringing its fist down like a wrecking ball, smashing the length of track our capsule had passed over a split second earlier.
A pack of eight-legged Spider Fighter drones detached from the Basilisk and began to skitter toward our capsule as yet more Spider Fighters poured into the tunnel behind them. The capsule continued to accelerate, moving just fast enough to stay ahead of the giant metal claws as the Basilisk struck again and again, tearing into the lunar surface and destroying the tunnel piece by piece just behind us.
Another tremor shook the tunnel ahead as the Basilisk power-leaped to catch up with us. At the same time, its right arm telescoped forward, and its clawed hand smashed through the capsule’s rear porthole. My father slammed on the brakes as the interior of the capsule depressurized, and our helmets switched on automatically to supply us with oxygen. Graham spun around to fire at the flailing Basilisk claw with his QComm laser just before it lashed out and closed its massive metal fingers around him.
Before Graham even had time to scream, the alien drone crushed the life out of him, right there in front of us. Then it yanked his lifeless body outside, through the smashed porthole, and hurled it against the tunnel wall like a rag doll.
Debbie let out an earsplitting scream over the comm just as the Basilisk reached back toward Whoadie. Chén moved to try to block its path, while my father fired at it with his QComm laser.
The Basilisk’s other arm smashed through another porthole behind me, but Whoadie yanked me clear of it just in the nick of time. The remaining five of us retreated to the front of the capsule, out of its reach. It flailed its insect-like arms for a few seconds, then suddenly retracted both of them before standing upright, towering over our damaged, depressurized capsule. My father jammed the throttle forward, to try and get us moving along the track again, but I could already see he didn’t have enough time to get us clear.
The Basilisk raised one of its massive clawed feet, preparing to crush us.
This was it. There was nothing we could do. We were going to die.
But then, just as the foot descended, a Sentinel tackled the Basilisk to the cratered surface. The two drones grappled with each other up on the surface, beyond the lip of the gaping hole above us, in eerie silence. There was a volley of laser and rocket fire between them, a blinding white explosion, and then more silence.
A few seconds later, when the smoke cleared and the lunar dust settled, the massive humanoid face of the Earth Defense Alliance Sentinel swung into view, blotting out the black sky. Then a voice crackled over the comm channel.
“Told you I had your back, Lightman,” I heard Lex say.
“Th-th-thanks, Lex,” I stuttered, my voice cracking over the QComm. “Thank you. You saved our asses. I owe you one.”
“You bet you do,” she replied. Her Sentinel reached out toward our exposed escape capsule with one of its massive hands, and I had a sudden moment of panic. But she used both of her mech’s hands to delicately lift our escape pod up out of the rubble, then place us back into the tunnel just beyond the section destroyed by the Basilisk.
After she set us down, Lex waved goodbye with a massive hand.
“Everyone here at Sapphire Station has already been reassigned to drones back on Earth,” Lex said over the comm. “I stuck around to see if you guys needed any help, but Shanghai is getting totally hammered. I have to roll!” There was a whine of servos as she stood her Sentinel perfectly upright. “Good luck!”
Her Sentinel powered itself down and fell dormant, like a giant metal puppet abandoned by its puppeteer.
“Who was that?” Whoadie asked.