Jasleen and her security team reached the corridor that led into the command blister. It had been fortified with crumpled storage lockers and random equipment hauled out and spackled together with some of the silver-black goo. Seven men, their faces oily black mirrors, stood at attention, assault weapons at the ready.

“Everyone behind me,” Jasleen ordered. “I’ll draw their fire. When they run out of ammo take ’em out.”

“With pleasure,” said Briggs as the three huddled closely behind her.

Jasleen charged the fortifications like a linebacker, bullets striking her combat armor’s impregnable carapace like rain on a tin roof. She knew she was safe inside, but Jasleen instinctively flinched as the bullets spanged off the armor’s domed head and nanocarbon-plated chest.

One by one the invaders started to reload. Briggs, Taylor, and Villalobos flowed out from behind Jasleen like a wave, taking careful aim and firing expert kill shots that dropped them one by one. Jasleen took out the remaining four with selective railgun bursts, the high-caliber gauss rounds exploding them before they fell.

“Jesus,” said Villalobos. “Wasn’t that thing designed to take out tanks?”

“Yes,” said Jasleen with a casual air that frightened even her. Remembering Morrison, she told them, “Pick up those weapons and get them secured. I don’t want to have to do this again in five minutes if these things get back up.”

“Get back up?” said Taylor with a look of disgust. “Can they do that?”

“What the hell is that stuff?” Briggs said, pointing the barrel of his weapon at a wad of goop.

“Don’t get any of it on you,” said Taylor.

“We’ll probably have to sit in quarantine when this is over,” said Jasleen. “Bring a crossword puzzle or something.”

They tackled the pressure door next, Jasleen punching it with an armored fist, wrenching it from its hinges. It fell to the floor with a resounding clang.

The shots began almost immediately. Jasleen entered the room—she had to duck and squeeze in sideways because of the armor—and told her HUD to do a threat analysis. Her armor flagged each hostile, six in all, and took them all out with a well-placed tungsten spike from the railgun, each one a kill shot designed to obliterate as much brain tissue as possible. It was over as quickly as it had begun.

Jasleen looked about the small space, feeling like a giant inside a dollhouse. The frightened personnel stared up at her as if she were the next threat to their existence, and she half expected them to start shooting at her.

“It’s all right,” she said, the suit’s speakers making her sound too alien. “I’m Chief Badwani. Who’s the ranking officer?”

“Here.”

From the far corner of the room, a familiar woman raised her hand. “Lieutenant Romeo,” Jasleen said, relieved. “It’s good to see you. Where’s Commander Teague?”

“Dr. Leneski took him. What’s going on?”

Jasleen couldn’t figure out how to make the armor shrug, so she settled for shaking her head. The big dome covering her skull moved from side to side with a whir of servos. “I don’t know. What’s the sitrep?”

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“I’ve got some injured people,” said Romeo. “Dr. Cole is taking care of them as best she can. But we’re still on emergency power, and the comms are still down.”

“Not anymore,” said a young man huddled behind a workstation. Lights from his screen flickered across his face, making him look deathly pale. Or maybe he already looked like that. Jasleen couldn’t tell.

Romeo went to his station. “Are you sure, Mr. Lucas?”

“Yes. And I should have the feed restored momentarily. The CME didn’t take it out. Our new friends did.”

“That’s excellent,” said Jasleen. “What about the rest of the invaders?”

“They’re guarding the people in Aldrin Dome,” said Taylor as he and the other two security members joined Jasleen. “At least they were the last time we had visual contact.”

“He’s right,” said Lucas, tapping at his screen. “I’ve got camera footage from five minutes ago. They’re all in there all right. At least everyone the invaders could find and herd in there.”

“Do you see Mira Oswald?” asked Jasleen.

Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know who that is. I could run facial recognition, match it with the personnel database.”

“No,” said Jasleen. “That’s all right.” She’d have to worry about her wife later. Right now she had more pressing matters.

“So it was Leneski behind all of this,” said Romeo. “The whole time?”

“It would appear so. And you said he’s taken the commander?”

“Yes. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go get him,” said Jasleen. “And then Dr. Leneski is going to straighten this whole thing out.”

To Briggs, she said, “You’re in charge until I get back. Coordinate with everyone who will respond. Get them to report to the mall and set up a perimeter. Seal Command and don’t let anyone in.” She paused, then said, “I’ll be right back.”

Jasleen exited Command and jogged back toward the cargo bay. Because of her armor, she’d have to use the larger airlock there. The servos in the armor’s legs pumped, amplifying her own movements. On flat open ground, in one g, the armor could reach speeds up to thirty-five miles per hour. She didn’t want to do that here, but she got moving at a good, steady pace. Leneski and Teague had a head start on her, and she wanted to make up the time.

Sometime during her journey, the feed came back online, the no feed error message in her HUD going away as the armor latched onto it. Sometime after that, her helmet display lit up with notifications from her slate, which had automatically synced to the armor. She had a frightened voice message from Mara, informing her that she was holed up in the hydroponics bay behind a sealed pressure door. She replied, “Good. Stay there. I’ll come get you as soon as I can.”

Mara pinged her almost immediately, no doubt full of questions Jasleen didn’t know the answers to. She didn’t answer. She had to stay focused on the task at hand. It was enough, for now, to know that her wife was all right.

She entered the cargo hold, her armor resembling a giant black beetle under the emergency lights. She found the airlock, cycled it open, and stepped inside. She waited for the pressure to equalize, then the outer door opened.

And she was standing once again on the surface of the Moon.

She jogged out onto the ashen landscape, the heavy armor’s enormous feet sinking two inches into the gray regolith. She kept moving, kicking up dust. The storm-ravaged Earth was a blue-gray ball on the horizon. She called up the Proteus map stored on her slate and told the armor to overlay it on her HUD over the surrounding surface structures. This is where Leneski had taken Teague. She was sure of it.

She had been running steady for several minutes. She was panting, and she could feel a fine sheen of sweat condense on her face. On Earth, such exertion would have been impossible, even for her, but on the Moon, inside this armor, she felt like a superhero running to save the day. But would she be able to make it back the same way, with Teague and Leneski in tow? She slowed as she realized the answer was probably not.

She tongued the radio. “Rick Casey, do you copy?”

Nothing but the sound of static, and probably more than a few million magnetized solar particles, greeted her. “Casey, do you read?”

“This is Casey. Thank Pete. I thought I was all alone out here. Who is this?”

Jasleen smiled and identified herself. “What’s your twenty?”

“I’ve been circling the base in my ship for an hour. These things attacked me. What the hell’s going on down there? I can’t raise anybody.”

“Long story. I’m going to need a pickup in a few. Think you can handle that?”

“If it’ll fly, I can fly her.”

“Good. The feed is back up. Lock onto my slate and come on.”

“You got it.”