Eagle Station

As if to prove his point, Liu broke into their circuit again. “Korolev Base to Sentinel Lead. We just picked up a new contact.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere inside the base,” the taikonaut told him. “Possibly over by Chang’e-Ten’s descent stage in the southwest corner of the plateau. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a lock before it faded out.”

Lavrentyev and Yanin both dropped prone. If there was another enemy combat machine on the loose, they wanted to present as small a target as possible. “We’ll move in your direction, Major,” he radioed. “Keep your eyes open.”

“Yes, sir,” Liu agreed. But then he snarled, “Tā mā de! Damn it! My radars just went down!”

Lavrentyev swiveled toward the radar emplacements along the crater wall. Both arrays were collapsing in slow motion. They’d obviously been hit several times each by armor-piercing and high-explosive rounds. He jumped to his feet and waved Yanin upright. “Let’s go, Captain,” he snapped. “We need to hunt this marauder down and destroy it, before it wrecks the whole fucking base around us!”

Together, the two Russian war robots darted south — still being careful to use every available piece of cover.

Nadia glided back behind the Chinese lander descent stage. She slid her autocannon back into her weapons pack and then reactivated her camouflage systems. Life-support capability down to twenty hours, her computer warned. At current settings, stealth systems will consume all available power in less than one hundred seconds.

Be silent, she thought curtly, dismissing the alarms. All she needed was enough time to finish this mission. After that, nothing else really mattered. Not now. Not since she had seen the icon representing Brad’s robot flare bright red and then vanish from her tactical display.

Inside the darkened cockpit, tears slid down Nadia’s face. Impatiently, she brushed them away with her hand, a motion eerily imitated by the robot she piloted. Grieve later, she told herself angrily, if there is a later. Her task now was to kill the men and machines who had just destroyed the man she loved.

Filled with renewed determination, she sprinted north across the plateau, heading for the rear of the enemy’s habitat module. On her display, blips appeared and disappeared as her thermal sensors picked up heat sources weaving in and out among the landed spacecraft. Very good, she thought coldly. Lured by her destruction of their radars, the Russian war machines were coming this way.

Nadia reached the corner of the habitat module and crouched down in the deep, dark shadow it cast. Through her link with the computer, she deactivated the thermal tiles and chameleon camouflage across her robot’s legs and lower torso. That would conserve at least some power while she lay in wait for those she’d marked as prey.

And then she saw the two Russian robots. Tall, with spindly arms and legs, and topped by eyeless spheres crowded with sensor antennas, they stalked into view — prowling across the dull gray lunar surface with menacing grace. They slowed and then stopped, their torsos and heads swiveling in different directions as they sought her out. They were approximately a hundred yards from her position, near one of the big Chinese cargo landers. They were very close to an upright three-meter-tall metal cylinder erected at the lander’s base. Conduits snaked away from the cylinder to different installations across the base perimeter. It glowed brightly in her thermal sensors. Data indicates that is probably the enemy fusion power plant, her computer told her helpfully.

“Tak, wiem,” she said softly. “Yes, I know.”

Slowly, Nadia eased her electromagnetic rail gun out of her pack. Powering it up would instantly reveal her position, so she needed to wait for precisely the right moment… aware all the while that her batteries and fuel cells were draining at a rapid pace.

The solution to the tactical problem she faced was simple on the surface, but remarkably complex in its execution. If the Russian robots hunting her had separated, she could have destroyed them one by one, from ambush. But these two were operating as a fighting pair, staying close to each other for mutual support. With any of the weapons available to her, she could destroy one of the two enemy machines… but that would give its partner ample time to kill her in turn. The question, then, was how to eliminate both of them with a single shot.