Artemis

After a moment of reflection on the wisdom of my plan, I reached over and snipped the remaining antenna. The harvester stopped thrashing instantly.

“Whew.” I’d temporarily disabled all four harvesters. Now to permanently disable them.

I started with the harvester that I’d already sabotaged. I climbed up the side as I had done before and opened the breaker box. I reached into my relay box and pawed at the alarm settings on the clock. I couldn’t press the buttons, of course. The clock was designed for use by human fingers, not ham-fisted EVA gloves.

Okay, if I couldn’t set the alarm time, I’d use a less subtle approach. I disconnected both alligator clips, yanked the relay out from between them, and cut the insulation off their cables. I tied the cables into a crude knot and reconnected the alligator clips to the battery poles.

Then I hauled ass.

By removing the relay, I’d created a new device known as a “wire.” The battery was shorted and was absolutely shitting heat.

I ran full-speed to the nearest boulder and slid behind it. Nothing happened right away. I peeked around the edge. Still nothing.

“Hmm,” I said. “Maybe I should—”

Then the harvester exploded. Like…exploded. Way the hell larger than I expected. Shrapnel flew in all directions. The blast forced the chassis into the ground so hard it bounced up, did a half flip, and landed on its roof.

I thought I was far enough from the explosion but no, not even close. Chunks of twisted metal bashed my boulder while smaller bits of wreckage rained from above.

“Oh, right,” I said. I’d forgotten to account for the other explosive in there: the hydrogen fuel-cell battery. All that hydrogen had met the oxygen at high temperature and they’d had a brief chat.

The rock shielded me from the initial blast, but it was useless against the debris that came down from above. I belly-crawled to one of the other harvesters while tufts of dust erupted around me. Reminder: There’s no air here. If something gets flung into the sky, it comes back down as fast as it was going when it left. It was raining bullets.

Through pure luck, I made it to the harvester and cowered under it for a while. I waited until the storm abated and crawled out to check my handiwork.

The victim harvester was totaled. Hell, you could barely tell it used to be a vehicle. The chassis was a wreck of twisted metal and a good 50 percent of the harvester was now evenly distributed across the collection zone. I checked the time. The whole process had taken ten minutes. Not bad, but I’d have to speed things up for the other three.

First, though, I picked through the wreckage, found a sheet of metal about two meters square, and dragged it to the far side of my Boulder of Protection. I leaned it against the edge to make a rudimentary shelter.

There. Technically I’d made a moon base. I sat in Fort Jasmine for a few minutes, converting my other relay cables to simple jumpers.

Then I got to work on the second harvester. At least this time there was no need for a hammock. The harvester wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Now that I had the hang of firing up a torch in a vacuum, things went much faster. Also, I didn’t bother marking the site first. I just did it from memory. Nothing quite like experience to speed your hand. I cut the hole, installed the valve, and filled the reservoir with air.

Then I shorted the battery, ran

to my metal plate, crawled under it, and waited. And this time, I didn’t look back like a moron.

I felt the explosion through the ground and readied myself for the “rain of terror.” Would the metal plate be thick enough?

Dents appeared in the plate. Scary as hell, but it protected me from the hail. I waited until the dents stopped and checked the ground nearby to see if the puffs of dust had stopped. It would have been better if I could just hear things. Vacuum’s refusal to convey sound is a real pain in the ass.

I crept out and nothing killed me, so everything seemed to be in order. I came around the rock to see another demolished harvester.

I checked the time on my arm readouts. Another ten minutes had passed. “Dammit!”

If the posse was efficient, they’d be on-site in another ten minutes. I still had two more harvesters to trash. If I left either of them operational, Sanchez Aluminum would still be able to get ore, still be able to make oxygen, and Trond would be keeping that million slugs.

The biggest time sink was when I had to run and hide from the debris. I knew what I had to do—I just didn’t like it. I’d have to blow the remaining two at the same time.

Please don’t quote that last sentence out of context.

I prepared each of the remaining harvesters for kaboominess. Both were now full of oxygen, their breaker boxes open, and my jumper cables dangling from their positive poles.

I laid all the welding equipment under one of the harvesters. Now that I was in a hurry, I wouldn’t be able to drag all that shit home with me. But I couldn’t leave stuff with BASHARA WELDING COMPANY written all over it for people to find.

Eh. A million slugs. I’d buy him new stuff. Better stuff.