Artemis

Then they called the EVA masters. I don’t know exactly how the conversation went, but I assume it was something like this:

Sanchez controllers: “Hey! Why are you fucking with our harvester?!”

EVA masters: “We’re

not.”

Sanchez: “Well, someone is.”

EVA masters: “We’ll go kick their ass. Not because we care about you, but because we want to continue our stranglehold monopoly on EVAs. Also, we’re a bunch of assholes.”

So right now, the EVA masters were forming a posse to drag me back to Artemis. After that would come beatings, deportation, gravity sickness in Riyadh, and things generally going downhill from there.

I stopped to think about this new situation. There was no way I’d get back into town before an angry mob of EVA masters came out looking for me. So there was no point in aborting. May as well finish the job before the epic game of lunar hide-and-seek began.

The posse would use a freight rover for fast travel. They can go ten kilometers per hour. The uphill climb would slow them a bit. Call it six kilometers per hour. I had a half hour before they arrived.

Subtlety time was over. My plan to make shit happen after I got home was gone. Sanchez would recall all the harvesters for inspection. Mechanics would then go over each one with a fine-toothed comb and undo my hard work.

I had to permanently destroy all four harvesters within the next thirty minutes. On the plus side, Sanchez’s controllers had been kind enough to put them all next to me.

Okay, first things first. I grabbed a pair of wire cutters from my duffel, leapt onto the harvester that spotted me, and clambered to the top. The primary and secondary comm systems were both mounted to the highest point of the cab for maximum range. The harvester (now under human control no doubt) shimmied forward and back—probably trying to shake me off. But harvesters just aren’t very fast. I kept my balance easily and made short work of all four antennas. They were a little thicker than the wire cutters were designed for, but I got it done. It stopped dead as soon as the fourth antenna dropped. Harvesters are programmed to sit idle if they lose connection. You wouldn’t want your harvester wandering around on its own, right?

I leapt directly to the roof of the next harvester over—the one I’d just meticulously turned into a time bomb. All that work for nothing. Sigh.

Snip, snip, snip, snip!

The other two harvesters backed away.

“Oh, no you don’t!” I said. I leapt from the roof and hit the ground running. I caught up with ease.

I climbed to the top of my third victim and got to snipping. Like its brethren, it stopped dead as soon as the last antenna was gone.

I had a bit of a run to catch up to the last one, but I got there soon enough. I snipped three of the antennas and was just about to get the fourth when my left side exploded with pain and I flew through the air. Well, not “air.” Vacuum. You know what I mean.

I smacked into the ground and rolled.

“Whu?” I said. It took me a second, but I realized what happened. Those asswipes at Sanchez had made the harvester smack me with its front-loader scoop!

Sons of bitches! That could have ruptured my suit! Sure, I was trashing their property but you don’t kill someone for that, do you?!

Oh, it was on.

The harvester dropped its scoop halfway down and rolled toward me.

I got to my feet, ran in front of the main camera, and flipped it my middle finger. Then I bashed it with the cutters in my other hand. No more visual data for you, assholes.

“Whoever you are, we know you’re out there,” I heard over the main EVA channel. It was Bob Lewis. Dammit! Of course the guild would send their most skilled member to lead the posse. “Don’t make this hard. If we have to physically restrain you, risking our safety, we’ll make you pay for it.”

He had a point. Contrary to space movies, fighting in an EVA suit is monumentally dangerous. I had no intention of doing that. If they caught up to me I’d just surrender. This had become a game of tag.

One problem at a time. I still had Killdozer to deal with. Without the front camera, it flailed around trying to find me. The wheels might not move fast, but the raw power behind that scoop could really whip it back and forth.

The scoop slammed to the ground a meter to my left. Pretty good guess, but not good enough. I hopped into the scoop and crouched down. I was taking a gamble here. The scoop had very accurate weight sensors and my mass would surely be detectable. I hoped the controller wasn’t paying enough attention.

The scoop reared up again, and when it did I leapt. Between my leap and the scoop’s upward motion, I went way the hell higher than I’d intended.

“Well, shit,” I said as I reached the top of the arc. I think I was about ten meters off the ground, but I’ll never know for sure. I do know that when I landed on the harvester’s roof I damn near broke my legs.