In the cave, Maddox couldn’t believe it. Here they had been trying to time everything precisely and the stupid mechanism had failed, igniting too soon.

  He checked his suit. The rock walls had protected him from any EMP. He marched out of the cave and thrust up with all his exoskeleton power. He hoped Dravek was doing the same. Maddox activated his thrusters, setting them at full max.

  The hydrogen particles poured out and he lifted from the surface of the ice moon. Thinking about the moon's escape velocity, he laughed. Maddox was easily going to reach it, that and more. He shot up directly at the Gnostic vessel.

  How long would the enemy sensors remain off? Even as Maddox wondered that, several spaceship missiles and guns began to fire at where the plasma yet burned.

  As the shells and missiles descended, it was interesting to Maddox that no laser burned at the spot. That was probably for a good reason. Maybe the laser optics were malfunctioning due to the blast.

  Maddox looked up. His visor was blurry. He continued up just the same, flying like some superhero of old in an iron suit.

  Would he reach the vessel before it left? Would it flee suddenly at maximum speed? He didn’t think so. The way the Gnostics had been acting so far, he thought they’d be angry and ready to kill. They were killers and extortionists. They did not like to run if they didn’t have to. If they knew there were only two of them, even with their special suits, he didn’t think they would run.

  Maddox continued upward, having already reached ten kilometers. Now was a time of decision. If he ascended too fast, he wouldn’t have enough thrust to slow down in time. He’d zoom right past the Gnostic ship.

  Maddox looked around but couldn’t spy Dravek. Maddox slowed his ascent, using his thrusters.

  Soon, he recalculated. He was off, would miss the ship. He adjusted. Then he saw Dravek.

  Would the enemy sensors recover soon enough?

  Maddox reached twenty kilometers from the surface. He was still going up, heading now for the pirate ship. It hadn’t moved. The skimmers hadn’t launched. This was crazy. This was daring. But sometimes a bold, mad act was better than being cautious and careful and thinking everything through. Sometimes the mad action succeeded because no one expected such futility.

  Thirty kilometers and rising—Maddox was elated. He checked again and saw that Dravek was on course. Oh, this was sweet. It might work after all. Wouldn’t the Gnostics be surprised later that they’d picked up military parasites?

  At forty kilometers, Maddox slowed his ascent more. He kept his weapons ready. Did he think he could take down the pirate ship? Well, maybe he could. He slowed and slowed more as he neared. A strut filled his vision. He searched it, remembering what Dravek had told him. There would be sensors on some of them.

  He neared, selected his spot and activated full magnetic-clamp power. He stuck the strut and his teeth jarred together in his mouth. He wondered for a second if he’d cracked a tooth and felt with his tongue. He was dizzy and could hardly think.

  Maddox realized he must have passed out for a few seconds or maybe minutes. The Gnostic ship was moving away and gaining height. Maddox looked around and didn’t spot Dravek. Had the man made it? Was the clone hidden somewhere on a girder that he couldn’t see? Neither of them dared to use their short-range communications.

  Maddox at least had made it. He didn’t see Dravek higher up. He didn’t see him down lower as a burnt crisp.

  “It worked,” Maddox said. “It worked. We did it. We’re going to reach the moon base, if nothing else.”

  With that, Maddox closed his eyes and waited for the next development.

  -16-

  The Gnostic ship had been traveling three hundred kilometers above the moon’s surface and now began to descend. Maddox, who had been magnetized to a ship strut the entire time, used a zoom function on the mining camp. It was sixty kilometers away.

  Maddox counted four free-trader ships parked beside great heaps of equipment and six more skimmers. One of the trader ships had landed upright like an old-style rocket. The rest were upgraded shuttles, the largest four times the size of their shuttle. Interestingly, Maddox didn’t see their shuttle.

  There were far more buildings than he’d expected from Dravek’s explanation earlier. Most were grouped together, large bubble structures. Had the Gnostics put up more buildings lately? Did that indicate they planned to stay here longer?

  Most of the bubble structures were in what appeared to be a dry seabed. The surface of the dry seabed glittered with mica rocks and water ice. The higher terrain around the seabed was mostly darker rock. There were openings some ways from the buildings, the openings heading straight into cliffs. Those must be the mine entrances.

  The weird thing was a vast sea near the dry seabed. The sea had waves rippling in the wind. That would be liquid methane and ethane. Some of the banks between the sea and dry seabed looked to have been reinforced. Could one theoretically blow the dikes? If successful, the Methane Sea would surely rush into the dry seabed, destroying all the material and killing any people caught down there.

  The fissionable materials must be extraordinary to justify mining in such a precarious location.

  So absorbed did Maddox become with the sea and dry seabed that he only happened to look up and—he noticed something even weirder. He ceased using zoom and studied the strut-girder ship. A chill of terror blossomed in his chest. A section of nearby strut appeared to shimmer and move as if it were alive. Was the ship alive then, composed of alien nanotech? Or was this a camouflaged alien about to attack?

  A second later, the answer came to him. Maddox grunted as the terror drained away. The strange movement was camouflage equipment, Leviathan tech. Dravek moved toward him from where he’d been.

  Dravek didn’t use the short-range communication because they were on the Gnostic ship. The possibility the enemy might pick up the comm-chatter would be high.

  Maddox waited, therefore. He assumed Dravek had seen him. As he waited, the Gnostic ship traveled twenty kilometers closer to the mining camp as they continued to descend.

  Soon, Dravek clunked his helmet against Maddox’s helmet.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Maddox heard it as a distant tinny voice. Dravek hadn’t used the short-range comm. Instead, the clone must have been counting on the vibrations of his voice passing through one helmet mass to the next. It was like listening to a man shout from the other side of a wall.

  “I can hear you,” Maddox shouted.

  “Good. I’ve located the main life-support pod.” Dravek pointed with a gloved finger. “That one over there.”

  “I agree. That’s the main pod, but there’s a second one.”

  Dravek twisted around in his suit to stare visor to visor at Maddox.

  Maddox clucked his helmet against the other helmet. “That pod,” Maddox said, pointing.

  “Right,” Dravek said. “We need to take them both out, meaning kill all the Gnostics in them. Afterward, we can enter the main pod in our suits and take control of the ship.”

  “It’s too late for that. We’re almost to the mine.”

  “It’s not too late if we act immediately. We’ll have high ground and will likely kill the main Gnostics. Surprise will freeze the others long enough for us to leave with the ship. We’ll have drones and the ship’s weapons. I suggest we use our sleeve guns to shatter the pods, making them uninhabitable, and if necessary, use the missile launchers if any complications arise.”

  Maddox took a moment to think about how wise this was. It was risky and murderous. The Gnostics were pirates, though, killers by trade. Risk—he wasn’t going to make it home any other way.

  “Yes,” Maddox said. “I’ll take out the closer pod.”

  “Excellent. Let’s proceed at once.”

  Maddox shifted on the strut and raised an armored arm, targeting a life-support pod with the heavy caliber sleeve-gun. A moment of qualm struck him. The Gnostics were pirates, had captured others and likely forced them to mine hard radioactive uranium and thorium ore. Possibly, that had meant a slow death sentence for those involved. Just as possibly, the Gnostics would capture them and force them to do likewise. If Maddox waited for them to strike first, he would lose.

  Therefore, by the rules of military engagement—Maddox opened fire with his sleeve gun. The shells smashed against the armored pod. Unfortunately, the armor plating was tougher than he’d realized. Maybe he could continue hammering the same spot, but there were no guarantees the shells would break through.

  Maddox brought up the launcher and fired eight micro missiles. There was no time to screw around. The missiles slammed into the armored pod and blasted an opening. Once more, Maddox used his sleeve gun, firing through the rent bulkhead. The shells would ricochet inside, acting like fragmentation devices and killing any survivors. There was no sense playing nice now.

  Dravek was doing likewise to the other pod.

  By this time, the Gnostic ship had come down almost the entire distance from space. The firing had taken longer than Maddox had expected. The heavily armored pod bulkheads had made the difference.

  Surely, the surviving Gnostics in the base would use encampment guns or other systems on the ship.

  Already, three skimmers were lofting. That was amazingly fast reaction time.

  Maddox looked over at Dravek. The clone had successfully opened the other pod to space.

  “Skimmers are lifting,” Maddox said, using the short-range comm. Communication interception hardly mattered now.

  “It’s worse than that,” Dravek said. “My helmet scanner has detected anti-space missiles target locking onto our ship.”

  “That means the plan failed.”

  “Obviously,” Dravek said. “We need to switch to plan B.”

  “Which is?”

  “Jump,” Dravek said.

  “That’s it?”

  “No. We keep free and try to blow one of the dikes holding back the Methane Sea.”

  “What?”

  “That’s our threat. We use it to bargain, trade the surviving Gnostics for a ship.”

  That was as good a plan as any now. The key was keeping mobile, free. Maddox unlatched his magnetic clamps. Then, he used the suit’s exoskeleton strength and leapt away from the vessel of girders, struts and shattered life-support pods. Dravek did the same thing. They both started to descend in a long curve away from the ship.

  Even as that happened, several docked ship-drones began to blink their green nosecone lights. That indicated they had become live.

  “Do you see the drones?” Dravek said. “Who’s activating them? The ship personnel should all be dead.”

  For an answer to the first question, Maddox used his missile launcher, targeting and launching. He destroyed one drone after another, eliminating them even as he and the pirate ship descended.

  The ship thrusters were still whole, its fuel compartments fine. The life-support pods were in shambles and drones were exploding. The Gnostic ship shouldn’t be servable for quite some time. Who caused it to descend so smoothly then? Perhaps it followed its last inputs. But who had been launching the drones? A ground operator?

  As if to make the situation even weirder, the ship began to rotate as if searching for them. Each commando still wore camouflage gear, likely making him hard to detect.

  Maddox wasn’t using the thruster pack. His leap should take him well beyond camp. He hoped to absorb landing impact through his suit’s toughness. Dravek had probably reasoned the same.

  Maddox shrugged inwardly. The enemy ship possessed guns and missiles. He couldn’t let it kill him on the slight chance the detectors would break through his chameleon equipment.

  Maddox used his remaining micro missiles to obliterate enemy offensive systems from close range. Dravek was doing the same thing.

  Now, however, skimmers and launched moon-base drones were spaceborne and heading for him.

  Maddox couldn’t decide if he should continue to drop, release some hydrogen fuel tanks or target one of the nearing drones.

  A stealth skimmer that had snuck up from behind changed the equation for him. It beamed Maddox. The beam didn’t burn the suit. Instead, it shorted once system after another. One of the systems shorted was Maddox’s neural flashes in his mind. In other words, the strange beam caused Maddox to lose consciousness, instantly taking him out of the fight.

  -17-

  Pain jolted against Maddox’s neck and forced him to awareness. A second jolt switched him from grogginess to hyper-alertness.

  It appeared that he was in a cramped medical room. There were whispering machines and bubbling machines to the side. Several tubes had been inserted into his arms from them. He was upright on a board with straps against his chest, midsection, legs and arms. Just above his head was a strange metal helmet with many wires and glass tubes on the outside. He didn’t understand its function but found the helmet and its near position daunting.

  He sensed a cold disc the size of a quarter upon his neck. The pain had radiated from it.

  He grew aware of a woman standing before him. That was creepy. Had she been there the entire time?

  The woman was tall, although not as tall as Maddox. She was lean with the subtle hints of curves and wore rings with large gems on her slender fingers. She wore a gray uniform, had a long, lean face and wore a square leather hat. This was the same woman that had hailed the shuttle earlier, demanding their surrender. The hat—

  Maddox finally noticed that the top of the hat was oddly out of shape to the left. Maddox didn’t know why, unless the woman had some kind of cancerous growth on that part of her head. The woman’s features were waxy and odd—emotionless. There was something distinctly unsettling about the eyes. They stared at and seemingly through Maddox.

  “You are awake,” the woman said in a cold, detached manner.

  Maddox assumed the woman was the Gnostic leader. Maddox cleared his throat several times. “Yes, I’m awake. What’s this on my neck?”

  “I am here to question you,” the woman said in the same toneless way. “You are not here to question me. If you need further instruction in this, this will be the way I do it.”

  Pain once more lanced through Maddox’s neck. He saw that in one of the woman’s ringed hands was a small control device with a button. The thumb had pressed down on the button. Clearly, the device was connected to the pain-inducer attached to his neck.

  “I understand,” Maddox said hoarsely.

  “I thought you might. Why did you and the other…Is he your brother?”

  “No. He is not my brother.”

  “You are two distinct entities and yet you are strangely alike even to DNA samples.”

  “Yes,” Maddox said.

  “Can you clarify as to why you two are the same?”

  “I call that a coincidence.”

  With no change of expression, the woman cocked her head. “Are you trying to be deceitful or are you trying to resist the question?”

  Maddox thought the questions odd. The woman seemed robotic—instant revulsion swept through Maddox. He was reminded of Kregen when a computer entity had been forced into a man’s brain.

  “I do not wish to receive more pain,” Maddox said, working to keep his voice even. His skin crawled with greater revulsion. “I, uh, merely ask to better understand how to answer you. Are you the leader of the pirates?”

  “Pirates?” the woman said. “Who are these pirates of which you speak?”

  “I mean you Gnostics?”

  “Ah, you are mistaken. But I understand why this must be so. You know of this form.” The free hand of the woman indicated herself.

  “I know you’re a Gnostic,” Maddox said.

  “The form is a Gnostic. Yes, Barbelon was her last designation. You may call her Barbelon if you wish.”

  “I may call her Barbelon, but not you?”

  Jolting pain was Maddox’s answer. Through it, came the woman’s emotionless, droning voice.

  “I told you not to ask questions and yet now you continue to do so. My one display of clemency has surely brought this about. Therefore, I will continue with severity instead, as that seems to bring clearer results. We shall proceed with the questions. Why do you and the other who looks like you have such immediate DNA?”

  “He’s my clone,” Maddox said, deciding dissembling would be useless.

  “That coincides with what the other said, verifying his statement. Who cloned you?”

  “Scientists of the Sovereign Hierarchy of Leviathan,” Maddox said.

  Barbelon’s left cheek twitched and the head cocked in the other direction. “This the other did not designate, but you designate Leviathan. Yes, that corresponds to various facts I have learned. You possessed high-tech Leviathan commando gear. However, you entered the star system in a shuttle from a non-Leviathan spaceliner. That does not compute with the other facts. What is going on here?”

  Maddox worked to compose himself. “Captain Barbelon—”

  “I am not a captain. The last designation of this form,” again the woman made a gesture to indicate the body, “This is the housing of Barbelon or her who was known as Barbelon.”

  “I see. Thank you, Barbelon. I appreciate you telling me who you are.”

  “That is an incorrect statement. Further, I believe you are attempting to use verbal stratagems to gain information from me. I am in the command position. Would you not agree with that?”

  “I would agree. You have captured me.”

  “I have, even after you destroyed the inhabitable pods of my largest vessel. Why did you do that?”

  “For this reason: because you have captured us. We thought you were going to do horrendous things to us, and we hoped to forestall the occurrence by remaining free.”

  “Did the two of you believe you could overcome the mining facility?”

  “We were going to try.”

  “That is vainglorious and absurd. The computed possibility of your achieving that was of such a low probability that I think you are instead saboteurs. It is either that or you are both insane individuals engaging in wanton destruction.”