The Luna Deception by Felix R. Savage Page B

of cots. Dr. Miller shrieked, “ASSISTANT COMMAND: Stop! Stop! Oh, why won’t he stop?”
    Mendoza popped up between the cots. The bot plunged at him. One of its hands held a syringe, the other a scalpel. Mendoza dropped flat on his back and kicked up. Had his opponent been human, the kick would have connected with his groin. As it was, it boosted the bot headfirst into the wall.
    Mendoza grabbed his pack and fumbled in it for his pistol.
    The bot picked itself up and ran at him between the cots. Mendoza sprinted for the door.
    Fr. Lynch stood there, holding the crucifix from his pack. “Go,” he shouted. Stepping past Mendoza, wielding the crucifix like a sword, he stabbed the bot in the face. The crucifix broke, but the bot staggered. Fr. Lynch leapt backwards out of the door and slammed it.
    Everyone else stood at the end of the corridor, staring.
    The bot hammered on the door. Fr. Lynch struggled to hold it shut. “Doesn’t this flipping door lock?” he yelled. The laborers shook their heads: no.
    Mendoza finally found his pistol at the bottom of his rucksack. “Stand back, Father!”
    Fr. Lynch lost the battle for the door. Bots tended to be low-mass, but they were inhumanly strong. Fr. Lynch stumbled back. The bot charged out.
    Mendoza fired. He held the trigger button down. The nearly-simultaneous flashes appeared to merge into a single bolt that lit up the corridor like lightning. The bot had a charred crater in its face, but it kept coming. Mendoza remembered: Aim for the batteries. He sighted on the middle of the bot’s shirt. Fired, using up the last ergs of juice in the pistol’s supercapacitor.
    The bot’s momentum carried it into the opposite wall of the corridor. It tumbled onto its back, paralyzed, smoking.
    At the end of the corridor, the onlookers peeled aside with cries of alarm. Another bot skidded between them. It was the one Mendoza had seen harvesting mulberry leaves, or an identical unit. It waved its secateurs menacingly.
    “Run,” Fr. Lynch said.
    They sprinted through the residential hab, out into an area cluttered with skips, sorters, and processing equipment. A couple of the skips came to life and hurtled at them, potatoes falling over their sides.
    A ramp led into a hole in the ground. They ran down it, amid rolling and bouncing potatoes, onto a railway platform. This was no commuter rail station. Large cargo containers waited in a line on narrow-gauge tracks. Simon stood at the far end of the platform, waving.
    “Got everything ready, Father.”
    “Thanks, Simon.”
    “You’ll be going too, will you?”
    “Yes, I think I’d better.”
    Simon gave Mendoza a sour look, as if this were all his fault. “Put your EVA suit on,” he snapped.
    The skips seemed to have lost their way. They ran aimlessly across the platform, banging into the cargo containers and the wall, until each of them in turn fell between the containers onto the track.
    “No cameras down here,” Simon said. “So the fuckers can’t see you.”
    Mendoza stripped—this was no time for modesty—and struggled into his Star Force surplus suit. It was at this point he remembered about his feet. He forced them into the hated boots without stopping to inspect any further damage he may have done by running barefoot through the farm.
    “Guess this is it,” Simon said. “You be careful, Father. We want to see you back here again.”
    “I hope you will.” Fr. Lynch hugged the old man. “Make sure you go to confession the next time Father Tang comes. It doesn’t matter if he can’t speak English. The sacrament is still valid.” He put on his helmet. So did Mendoza.
    The cargo container hinged open. They climbed in on top of vacuum-packed sacks of potatoes. By slinging sacks out onto the platform, they made a cavity just large enough for the two of them to sit in, knees drawn up.
    Simon gestured for them to keep their heads down. The container sealed itself, locking them in darkness, and started to