Eagle Station

Lavrentyev swallowed hard. “Yes, Marshal. I understand.” Yes, he and the other Russian cosmonauts were trained to pilot the base’s three Kibernetischeskiye Lunnyye Voyennyye Mashiny, its Cybernetic Lunar War Machines. But never in his worst nightmares had he ever imagined they would have to use them in actual combat. Up to now, their KLVMs had functioned primarily as heavy construction equipment — accomplishing tasks that would have been impossible for any cosmonaut in a conventional space suit. Even knowing that it was easier to defend than to attack, especially across the long, barren slopes below the crater rim, he found the prospect of actually going head-to-head with piloted American combat robots deeply unsettling.

Northeast of Engel’gardt Crater

Several Hours Later

Brad dug in to the loose scree piled just below the rim of a minor crater and cautiously pulled himself up the slope. Grains of soil and small rocks slid soundlessly downhill behind his CLAD. A hundred yards to his right, Nadia’s robot toiled up the same steep hillside.

One of the eerier effects of piloting a robot through a neural link was that you soon lost all distracting awareness of self. Within a matter of moments, you were no longer cognizant that you were directing a machine from inside its cockpit. Instead, you essentially wore the large cybernetic device as if it were a second skin — controlling its limbs, systems, and sensors as easily and unconsciously as if they were your own from birth.

A few feet below the crest of the rise, Brad halted in place and crouched down. So did Nadia. For most of their long approach march from the Xeus, they had been able to cover ground quickly, gliding and bounding at speeds of up to forty miles an hour across stretches where the going was firm. But now that they were almost within striking distance of the Sino-Russian base, it was time to exercise considerably more caution.

While the oblique photos taken by the S-29B’s cameras during its first orbit hadn’t revealed the precise types of weapons the enemy’s own war machines carried, it was a safe bet that they included 25mm or 30mm rifled autocannons with armor-piercing ammunition. Since the moon was airless, only its weak gravity would act on any projectile. In practical terms, that meant weapon ranges were effectively limited only by lines of sight. On the other hand, it also meant nobody on either side was likely to be blasting away on full automatic — spraying hundreds of rounds per minute downrange. Without an atmosphere, it was far more difficult to radiate away the heat generated by high rates of fire. Experiments at Sky Masters Space Exploration, Research, and Development Lab had shown that the best way to avoid a weapons jam in combat on the lunar surface was to revert to semiautomatic shooting, where a trigger pull would fire just one round at a time.

The enemy’s robots might also be equipped with some kind of man-portable, guided missiles — but that was less likely. Without an atmosphere, aerodynamic control vanes or fins were useless, so only missiles with vanes to deflect their own rocket thrust would be able to track and hit moving targets. An even bigger problem was that the moon’s extreme temperature swings would rapidly drain the batteries needed to power any missile’s electronic components and cool its infrared seeker. After a few minutes outside on the lunar surface, any unprotected missile would probably be inoperable.

Kind of ironic, Brad thought. Come to the moon to fight a war and find yourself mostly facing weapons that were developed decades before. Then again, any large, armor-piercing round was a serious threat. In this brutal environment, a single significant hull breach could mean death.

He opened a very low-powered radio link to Nadia’s robot. Passive sensors might alert the Russians to the fact that their enemies were communicating. But since their transmissions were automatically encrypted and compressed to millisecond bursts, the odds were against anyone getting an accurate fix on them. “I’m going to take a quick look,” he said. “Hold your position.”

“Copy that, Wolf Two,” she answered. She swung the weapons and equipment pack off her back and pulled out her electromagnetic rail gun.

He felt a smile cross his face. Power constraints limited the Sky Masters — designed rail guns to just one shot each, but they were definitely the most lethal weapons in their arsenal — able to hurl small, superdense metal projectiles across enormous distances at Mach 5. Clearly, Nadia wanted to be able to reach out and kill someone if he drew enemy fire.