Luna Base was a hive of activity, a relentless machine of refitting ships, cannibalizing parts, and training pilots and astro-gators. Equipment shipments to Mars and Charon moved in a constant stream. Eight thousand five hundred people labored in three shifts around the clock. The commercial sector had pledged a third of its resources to clothing, ships, and armament for the service.

  But armament remained the UW’s greatest weakness. There had been no wars in living memory, and few weapons existed. The stun guns carried by the UWMPs were designed as humane deterrents, not instruments of war. Technicians and specialists scrambled to adapt energy tools—originally built for digging, cutting, and heating—into makeshift weapons. Mass drivers were repurposed for planetary defense, but ammunition was limited to rock, frozen gases, or a handful of scarce explosives. The modified digging beams, tuned to the green spectrum band, worked well enough on nickel-iron asteroids and standard targets, but they still couldn’t replicate the sphere’s eerie ability to mend itself when damaged.

  Carlin had no way of knowing how long it would take to locate the hoppers inside the sphere, so he devised three desperate contingency plans. The first hinged on his theory about the green spectrum band being correct. If his green ship remained undetected until it was close to the sphere, he planned to cut two entry points simultaneously—using one to enter and the other as a distraction. Once inside, he would locate the hoppers, attach them to his vessel, and escape the same way: two cuts, one exit.

  Dr. Hopewell had proven invaluable to Russell, coming through in more ways than one. Russell’s ship would now carry two dozen remote-guided drones, each equipped with a small rocket engine. These drones could anchor themselves to the cut sections of the sphere, ferrying them into space before the structure had a chance to heal. Hopewell reasoned that if material were removed entirely, the sphere wouldn’t be able to repair itself as quickly.

  Debra Hilds had cycled through every possible emotion—despair, denial—but in the end, none of it mattered. Survival demanded action.

  Hopper Two, visible through its feeble red-lit windows, was dying. It had done most of the work getting inside the sphere, and now its life support was failing. With both ships trapped and immobile, Hilds had maintained radio contact but knew they were out of time. Desperate measures were the only option.

  She gathered Sam, Tony, and Greg in the cramped crew compartment. Their faces were shadowed by the dim emergency lights, exhaustion written in every crease.

  “Alright,” she said, crossing her arms. “We’re not sitting here waiting to suffocate. We’re getting out.”

  Tony let out a sharp breath. “Deb, we’ve got nothing. Hopper Two’s dead in the water. We can’t even tow ourselves.”

  “That’s not true,” she countered. “We have cables. We have torches. We have brains. And we’re gonna use all of them.”

  Greg ran a hand over his face. “Even if we transfer supplies, that just buys us time. We need an actual escape plan.”

  Debra nodded. “We cut through.”

  Sam frowned. “Cut through what?”

  “The columns.” She pointed toward the walls as if she could see through them. “We’ve already figured out they’re hollow—except for the dish’s stalk. If we cut into one, we can push Hopper Three inside, seal ourselves in, and then cut through the outer shell. We blow the roof, ride the blast, and we’re free.”

  Silence.

  Then Tony laughed dryly. “That’s insane.”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Debra insisted. “We don’t have thrusters, but we do have air capsules on Hopper Two. We can use those to push us inward. Once inside, we seal the hatch, carve our way out, and then use seismic charges for a secondary push.”

  Sam rubbed the back of his neck, considering. “If we detonate them right, we might get the force we need.”

  “We will,” Debra said firmly. “And it’s not like we have a better option.”

  Greg exhaled slowly. “Twelve hours of outside work. We’d have to cut into the column, set up the charges, move supplies…”

  “Maybe a little more,” Debra admitted. “But we can do it.”

  Sam finally nodded. “I’m in.”

  Tony hesitated, looking at each of them before sighing. “Four for, none against,” he muttered. “Hell. Let’s do it.”

  That evening, Debra and Sam began running the cables while Tony and Greg converted the handheld oxygen and acetylene torches into hose-fed units, discarding their depleted cartridge tanks.

  Outside the ship, it was pure darkness.

  They had chosen not to use their suit lights to preserve power—each minute counted. More importantly, they didn’t want to draw attention. The sphere had remained passive until it had been “poked” before. They weren’t about to risk provoking it now.

  Guided only by radio, Hilds met Sam Kohn halfway between the hoppers, locked the cables together, and secured them. One hour and twenty minutes had passed.

  On the return trip, she followed the cable blindly, floating in the void. She could hear Sam breathing over comms, but she couldn’t see him. Occasionally, she bumped into him, a reminder of how fragile their connection was in the darkness. The process had seemed easier when they were joining the cables—take a few steps, call for Sam to speak, watch the signal strength indicator in her visor, pan her helmet until the signal was strongest, then step off again.

  Stolen story; please report.

  But now, weightless and silent, the journey back was far more unnerving.

  Just as she was about to break the silence—say anything just to hear a voice—she saw them. Dim red triangles glowing in the blackness. Hopper Two’s windows.

  For the next ten hours, they shuttled supplies back and forth, preparing for their escape.

  Debra was beyond fatigue now—she was numb. The feel of the cable beneath her thick glove felt unreal, the pain in her shoulders and wrists from hauling the load was maddening. Hand over hand, she and her team strained, starting and stopping their cargo—nearly eight hundred pounds per person—requiring relentless stamina. Weightlessness did nothing to change mass; inertia still had to be overcome.

  By 11:00 hours, Hilds and her team were finally ready. They left behind a partially emptied gas canister, strapped to number two, along with ten seismic five-ton charges affixed to its upper half. After finishing the cut into the nearest column by number three, they used the remote valves on the tanks to jet the hopper into the column and began welding the slug back into the wall.

  Number three ascended to the shell end of the shaft, cutting six barely separated crescents into the metal, drilling six core holes between them, and planting six ten-ton charges. It then descended back toward the bottom, detached its crew section from the ‘work horse’ lower half, and returned halfway up the shaft. The crew sealed the blast shields over the viewports.

  As a diversion—just in case anyone was watching—Hilds had rigged number two to fly a short distance via the gas canister and explode on contact with any solid structure. She keyed the remote valve and waited. Ten seconds passed.

  Then, the explosion hit.

  Number three and the column it was inside shook violently. She detonated the roof charges, counted to fifteen, and fired the remaining explosives in the lower hopper section. A ball of red-yellow light surged upward, chasing them as the blast expanded from below. The explosion, equivalent to five thousand pounds of TNT, blew the lid off the tube, hurling the upper hopper module skyward.

  Her eyes darted upward. Above them, a chunk of nickel-iron was moving—but was it moving faster than they were? If so, they were safe. If not, they were about to collide. Just as doubt crept in, her breath caught.

  Floating ten inches from her right hand was a blue sphere, and it was speaking.

  "Do not fear. Escape is our shared purpose. Continue."

  She stiffened. "What are you?"

  "Friendly," the sphere replied. "I will help you escape. Please continue, or your race will be destroyed in the same manner your captors have always killed their rivals."

  Hilds didn’t waste time debating. As the hopper’s instruments flickered back to life, she cycled the small hydrogen-oxygen rockets, increasing speed and angling the ship toward the system’s core.

  At that moment, Russell Carlin’s ship, the newly christened Avenger, came into visual range of the sphere and hopper number three. As soon as Carlin’s first officer confirmed the craft was an ore hopper—its upper section only—Russ altered course to intercept. The sphere, seemingly uninterested, continued toward Mars, slowly fusing shut the blast hole she had made.

  Russ couldn’t believe his luck. Had they arrived five minutes later, they would have missed the escape entirely. The Avenger came alongside, dwarfing the battered hopper. The scale difference was striking. She immediately opened the communications channel and waited.

  Russell’s response was instant. “Prepare to come aboard.”

  As soon as the transmission ended, Russell felt his pulse hammering in his ears. He knew survivors were on that hopper, but when his first officer confirmed the name—his breath caught. Debra. Alive. Relief crashed over him, sudden and overwhelming, his vision momentarily blurring with the force of it. He clenched his jaw, steadying himself, but his hands trembled as he gripped the armrest. He hadn’t dared to hope.

  When she stepped onto the Avenger’s deck, swaying unsteadily, Russell felt his chest tighten. Before he could speak, she collapsed.

  "Debra!" he surged forward, but the medics reached her first, easing her onto a stretcher. He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling shakily. She was safe. She was here. That was all that mattered.

  Medics rushed her to the clinic.

  Russ wasted no time. He contacted UW Headquarters via Luna Base, relaying the situation. The Security Council voted swiftly—Carlin was cleared to engage. He could test his ship and weaponry against the sphere without concern for Hilds or her team.

  The sphere, still ignoring them, continued its slow march toward Mars.

  Russ turned to his crew. “Battle stations.”

  His first officer manned the laser gunnery controls in the command center. The two ensigns flanking him prepped the ship’s mass cannons—four mass drivers designed for synchronized or salvo fire. Half of the Terra Twin’s old crew had joined him, thanks to Jeff’s recommendation, and now, the moment of reckoning had arrived.

  Russ gave the order.

  A green beam of several million-candle power lanced from the ship’s top-center, carving a glowing thirty-meter circle into the sphere’s side. Three more beams from below, right, and left followed, slicing into the alien alloy, vaporizing it on contact.

  Russ nodded to his mass gunners. “Fire.”

  The first salvo of bombs struck. The ice bombs worked perfectly—each held a core of solid oxygen encased in explosives, insulated by an outer hydrogen ice layer within a honeycombed steel shell. The Murchison detonators, originally mining devices, triggered the explosions, igniting the gases inside. Hexagon-shaped steel fragments, each weighing sixty to seventy kilos, tore through the sphere. The cut sections were blasted apart, some disintegrating entirely. The sphere attempted to fuse itself shut, but the green beams halted the process.

  Switching to rock ammunition, the gunners fired two-to-four-ton boulders at high velocity. The sphere struggled, attempting to incorporate the rock into its structure, but the material was too brittle. Holes widened. Gaps remained exposed.

  Slowly, the sphere began to rotate.

  Russ had expected this. As the dish weapon on its edge came into view, he shouted, “All weapons—target and fire at will!”

  Thirty-two boulders, eight bombs, and forty million-candle power of collimated green light slammed into the sphere’s external weapon. The dish shattered under the onslaught, reduced to twisted wreckage.

  As Russ called for a rearm and reload, his eyes locked onto something eerie—through the gaping wounds in the sphere, a pale white glow flickered to life. Faint at first. Growing stronger.

  Something inside was waking up.