Eagle Station

Brad set his jaw. “Not happening.” He tossed his now-useless rail gun aside, and used the robot’s undamaged left arm to pull another weapon, a 25mm Bushmaster autocannon suitably modified for lunar combat, out of the pack slung across its back. “My ride’s taken a beating, but it’s operational.” More red and yellow warnings cascaded through his neural link as additional systems dropped off line. “Okay, mostly operational,” he corrected himself.

He checked his functioning sensors. There was still no sign of the other Russian war machines headed toward them, but this momentary lull wouldn’t last long. Even if the two remaining enemy pilots didn’t yet know their compatriot was dead, they’d figure it out soon enough. “The subtle approach just went to shit, so we’re down to one option—”

“We go in quick and dirty,” Nadia finished.

He nodded. “I’ll head left along this side of the rim wall. You move to the right, along the other side of this ridge. Use your camouflage systems to sneak through any kill zones you run into.”

“And you?”

“I’ll do the same,” Brad promised, mentally crossing his fingers behind his back. Even if he could still afford the power drain, a full third of his thermal tiles and chameleon plates were either damaged or destroyed. Both camouflage systems were basically reduced to just deadweight. When he charged toward the Sino-Russian base, he was going to be right out in the open — an easy mark for any enemy robot in position. That sucked, but right now their best chance to win this battle was to catch the enemy in a pincer move. If the Russians fixated on him and missed detecting Nadia, giving her a shot at them from behind, so much the better. After all, it doesn’t count as suicide if you’ve still got a chance to survive, he told himself.

Instinctively, her robot’s right hand came up and gently caressed the battle-scarred side of his own machine’s head. “Remember that I love you,” she said softly. Then she turned and headed upslope at a run — already fading from view as she activated her stealth systems.

Forty-Nine

Korolev Base Perimeter

That Same Time

“Sentinel Two, this is Sentinel Lead, do you copy?” Colonel Kirill Lavrentyev repeated. But there was still no reply over the secure channel he’d opened to Bezrukov. Only the faint hiss of static. His KLVM crouched lower, taking cover behind one of the abandoned Chang’e descent stages. Sweating inside the tight cockpit despite its cooling systems, he connected to Dmitry Yanin’s Sentinel Three. “Do you see any sign of Bezrukov’s robot?”

“Negative,” the younger officer reported from his own position near the southern edge of the base perimeter, more than a kilometer away. “Do you think his com systems have gone down?”

Lavrentyev bit down on a curse. “I think his whole damned robot is down, Captain. And that he’s dead. Because the Americans are here. Somewhere.” He shook his head in dismay. “Bezrukov was right. They must have circled around to hit us from behind.”

“Then what should we do now, Colonel?” Yanin asked.

Lavrentyev forced himself to think. Before joining the Russian Space Force as a military cosmonaut, he’d flown Su-27 fighters. He was not a foot soldier by training or inclination. Well, modern combat aircraft flew in fighting pairs, with each wingman protecting the other. Perhaps the same principle applied here. “Close up on my position, Yanin,” he directed. “I’ll cover you.”

“On my way,” the other man acknowledged.

Through his sensors, Lavrentyev saw the other KLVM sprinting toward him at high speed across the gray, powdery plateau. Yanin’s robot dodged from side to side and then dropped into cover behind the south side of a large Chinese Mă Luó spacecraft about a hundred meters behind him. Their three-meter-tall fusion power reactor sat near one of its landing legs.

From where they each crouched now — roughly halfway between the base’s habitat module and their chain of two radar emplacements and the plasma rail gun mount out near the edge of the rim wall — Lavrentyev and Yanin could cover most of the plateau. There were a few blind spots, mostly behind other landers, but their fields of fire covered most of Korolev’s key installations. Best of all, anyone who wanted to take a shot at them would have to come out into the open.

“Now what?” Yanin asked quietly.

“Now we wait,” Lavrentyev replied. “We’ll let the Americans come to us.”

“Sentinel Lead, this is Korolev Base,” Liu’s excited voice suddenly blared over the com circuit. “Small radar contact! Along the eastern crater rim, north-northeast of your current position!”