The canvas was covered in weapon parts by this time, with all their Ghosts hovering above them, projecting blueprints and making suggestions. Jin had produced a small butane welding torch and was busy with the machine gun frame, holding a pair of dark glasses over his face. Madrid had a lot of parts arranged in the rough shape of a rifle and was arguing with Eris over the structural integrity of the steel when confronted with extreme cold.

"Most steel used in firearms has to cope with rapid temperature fluctuations, but we're talking about hundreds of degrees below zero. The whole frame will shatter. We might as well be filling the thing with liquid nitrogen."

"Perhaps that is the answer," Eris Morn said, picking up a tube that Madrid had intended as the barrel. "The steel must be tempered with additional elements for extra strength." She weighed it in her hands for a moment. Then she carried it toward the table with the Cryptoglyph. Madrid watched her go, frowning. Then he shook his head and turned back to Jayesh and Silvan. "This is tougher than it looks."

"Maybe she's onto something," Jayesh said. He picked up the lump of amber from where it nestled on a folded cloak. "Here, Silvan. Ask Omar how he wants this machine gun modified."

Silvan gazed through the orange crystal at the insect inside. Hello, Omar.

"Hey there, pretty lady," he replied at once. "I swear, you're so much easier on the eyes than a Hive witch."

"That's not much of a comparison," Silvan thought wryly. "They want to know how to build this gun."

"Excellent!" Omar replied. "Turn the amber so I can see what they have so far. I have some ideas. What's the Exo's name?"

"Valis-2, but he goes by Jin."

"Tell Jin to add about a pound of lightweave to the firing mechanism. I want it covered, understand? I'm going to pour my Light into every bullet, and it'll take crazy amounts of conductivity."

Silvan relayed this. Jin shut off his torch and listened, his mechanical face attentive. He picked up the firing mechanism, which had been detached from the rest of the frame, and held it up. "Give Omar a good look. I can't add too much thickness or the mechanism will jam. What do you think? Along here and here?"

Silvan translated as Omar and Jin discussed the intricacies of modifying the machine gun. Jin added a layer of lightweave wire, then they experimented with slotting the amber into the gun, itself. They tried inserting it like a magazine, then they tried mounting it to the forearm, like an extra sight. But this ruined the actual sights, so they tried installing it to the butt. This put it too far away from the firing mechanism. In the end, they decided to work it into the frame beneath the cover, just behind the feed tray. Jin cut a section out of the frame and fitted the amber into it. Then he lined the hole and the feed tray with lightweave wire to conduct Light straight into the ammunition. It was another two hours of work to fit the machine gun back together with the amber inside.

"Come with me for a test run, Silvan," Jin said, hefting the machine gun over his shoulder. "If this works, I need to ask Omar about it. If it doesn't work, the amber might crack and he'll be one dead bug."

"I heard that," Omar said to Silvan's mind. "Tell him it will totally work. This isn't the first weapon I've modded."

Silvan relayed this. Jin grinned, the lights in his mouth brightening. "It's not my first, either. All right, let's go blow up some rocks."

They walked away from the encampment and picked a spot about half a mile away. Jin set up a couple of rocks on a boulder against a hillside. Any stray bullets would hit the hill and not simply travel for miles in lunar gravity, possibly injuring or killing a friendly target. Jin raised the gun, gripping it by both handles, and fired.

Instead of a series of bullets, the weapon fired a burst of several all at once, encased in a pellet of Light. It reduced the target rocks to a puff of dust and punched a crater in the hillside. Jin held the gun and blinked, stunned. Then he grinned and fired again. Another Light slug impacted on the hillside.

"Can I try?" Silvan asked.

Jin passed her the gun. "It has a hefty kick, so brace yourself."

Silvan did, and absorbed the gun's jolt as it fired. She thought to Omar, "Are you doing that? Firing a ton of bullets at once?"

"Yep," came the reply. "Paracausal space magic, baby. I can fire bullets before they come down the belt. That'll put some holes in the Hive. And believe me, I want you to use this weapon to exterminate them for what they did to me." Omar's cheerful voice dropped to a growl.

Silvan passed the gun back to Jin. "He has serious power."

"I noticed," Jin replied. "What do we call this thing?"

Silvan consulted Omar. "He wants to call it the Badda-Boom Baby."

Jin laughed and patted the machine gun's barrel. "Descriptive, but I'd be laughed out of the Vanguard armory. I have to register this design and it needs a real name. Amber Bug Gun doesn't cut it."

"Hive murder death kill?" Silvan suggested.

In her head, Omar said, "Hive eater! Call it the Hive Eater!"

"But it will kill more than just Hive," Silvan said aloud. "It will work on any enemy."

"Xeno-something," said Jin. "That's a cool word. What word means destroyer or devourer?"

Silvan summoned Bramble. "Ideas?"

The Ghost flew in a happy circle. "I love naming guns! Okay, so, cool words. There's a medical term for viruses. Phage, meaning That which Devours. Xenophage? That which Devours Aliens?"

"I love it!" Omar shouted in Silvan's head. "I'm the Xenophage, now! Fear me, spawn of Crota!"

"He likes it," Silvan said, smiling.

"Great." Jin held out the machine gun. "You want it? You can talk to Omar, so you'd synchronize better with it. Might have to build up a little muscle if you use it a lot."

Silvan took the huge, heavy weapon and opened the cover to look at Omar. "Is it safe to put you in a Ghost's storage?" She looked at Bramble.

Bramble swept the gun with a scan beam. "I could carry him short term, but his Light will make it hard. He'll be like carrying a live wire inside me. It'd be better to stash him in the weapon locker on your ship."

"A locker?" Omar protested. "But I want to kill Hive. A few test-fires aren't what I want! Please, pretty lady. I need you to avenge me."

For some reason, Silvan's cheeks warmed. "My name is Silvan."

"Silvan," Omar replied, drawing out the syllables. "A pretty name for a pretty girl. Warlock, right? I always had a thing for warlocks."

"Are you hitting on me?"

"Sure I am. What's the harm? I'm a damn bug in amber."

Silvan gazed at the bug for a moment, then closed the cover. "All right. I'll try Xenophage out against Hive. It's not like they're hard to find out here."

Jin had climbed to the top of the hill and stood gazing across the Moon's landscape. Now he beckoned to Silvan. "Come look at this."

Silvan climbed up beside him. "What?"

"Look." Jin drew his finger across the ridge of a distant crater. "See the shadow?"

Silvan squinted. The mountains were dark at the tops and light at the bottom. It could have been a change in the geology. Or a shift in the light. Silvan glanced over her shoulder at the sun, which was closer to the horizon than she remembered. "Is it getting dark?"

"The Moon's changing phase," Jin said. "We're waning, the daylight part getting smaller. That's not what worries me. Can you see that canyon over there?"

Silvan saw it as a dark slash between two cliffs.

"Can you see inside it?" Jin asked.

"No," Silvan said. "My eyes aren't as good as an Exo's."

"That's why I asked," said Jin. "That canyon has a huge Hive ogre just inside the shadow. It's watching us. As the shadow gets longer, he's edging out. And there's more behind him."

Silvan peered at that canyon mouth as a thrill of fear rippled down her neck. "An ambush?"

"More like an invasion force," Jin said. "Probably hoping to attack the Guardians from behind. Once the moon goes completely dark, the Hive must come out and party. Come on, let's get back."

As they summoned their sparrows, a sound echoed across the plain, reverberating from the mountainsides. The roar of some huge creature. Silvan had last heard it in the catacombs.

"Is that Zulmak?" she asked, looking at Jin.

Jin leaped on his sparrow. "Yep. Hurry!" He shot away with a blast of his engine.

Silvan mounted her own sparrow and shot after him, Xenophage weighing heavily against her back. Enemies were behind and before them, and she was still worn from their last battle.

"Bramble," she thought, "shield my mind. I can't handle another psychic attack."

"I know," he replied. "I'll do my best, but I can't protect you when you go around probing enemies."

"I'm not doing that again for a while," she thought.

Unbidden, Omar's thought broke in. "You know, it's not good to try to out-psychic the Hive. They're terribly good at it. They breed for it, you know. Don't try to take them on that way, my girl."

"She's not your girl," Bramble snapped.

"I'm her weapon," said Omar, sounding pleased with himself. "So that makes her my girl. Too bad you can't be my Ghost, but nobody can ever replace Karsys."

Bramble's mood switched from possessive to apologetic at once. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Agah."

"So am I," Omar said softly. "She's the only one who could have put me back in my human body." His voice strengthened. "So anyway, Silvan's my girl as long as I'm her gun, hope there's no problem with that."

"No," said Bramble, so quietly that Silvan could barely hear him. "No problem."

A lump rose in Silvan's throat, so she didn't try to reply, even inside her head. She'd never been claimed by anyone before, even a gun. Its weight on her back was suddenly comforting.

As they drew into sight of the camp near Archer's Line, Silvan dragged her mind back to business. An army of Hive were swarming it, bombarding the shield with boomer shots. Several wizards were shrieking a song, goading their troops onward. And behind them walked the biggest Hive Knight Silvan had ever seen.

It didn't resemble a Knight so much as a hulking demon with a sword. It wore huge bone shoulder pauldrons that curved outward like horns. Its armor was covered in spikes, and a fierce glow of soulfire gleamed through the chunks in its armor. It was twenty feet tall. Silvan measured it against the normal-sized witches flying near it. Only ogres were supposed to grow that big. What in the world was this thing?

As they approached, other Guardians charged the Hive, cutting down thralls and acolytes with gunfire. Several brave souls attacked the huge Knight, Zulmak, lobbing grenades and firing rockets. These exploded against the Knight's hips and chest, blackening the bone armor. Zulmak roared, charged forward, and slashed with his sword-left, right, then slammed it into the ground. A shockwave of soulfire radiated outward from the point of impact. Guardians screamed as they fell. The thralls immediately swarmed them.

"I hope that wasn't Jayesh and Madrid," Silvan said through her teeth. "Get off them, you vermin!" She cranked the sparrow's accelerator. "Bram, can you fix sparrow damage?"

"To a point," he replied with a giggle. "I love abusing hardware."

Silvan plowed straight into the thralls tearing at the wounded Guardians. The balance bars on the nose cut through the bodies of several aliens, breaking the limbs and necks of several others that she ran over. Enraged, the thralls turned on her. Zulmak straightened, raising his sword.

"Oh yeah?" Silvan yelled, and summoned her Arc dawnblade. Lightning wings erupted from her shoulders, striking the surrounding aliens. Her sword rippling with blue bolts, she waded into the swarm, fighting aliens off the bodies of fallen Guardians. Only one was dead, but the rest were injured and bleeding, stunned from Zulmak's shockwave. Silvan cleared a breathing space, allowing them to regain their feet and let their Ghosts heal them.

"Nice work," Madrid said over the radio. "Heads up, Zulmak is coming for you."

Silvan turned just in time to block the knight's descending blade with her own. But his sword was the size of a tree trunk, the strength behind it was as powerful as a landslide. Silvan blocked the blow, but it broke both her arms and knocked her to the ground. For a second she stared at the pitted, veined surface of the bone blade, inches from her face. It sucked greedily at her Light, absorbing her lightning sword. When Zulmak lifted his sword away, Silvan's supercharge went with it, her lightning crackling over his blade for a moment. The three eyes fixed on her with vicious intent as Zulmak lifted his sword for another blow.

"Bramble!" Silvan thought, struggling to climb to her feet without using her arms. Healing Light poured over her, and her bones began to knit. But it wasn't fast enough. Zulmak was about to cut her in two.

Suddenly, in mid-swing, Zulmak flinched. A high-caliber slug punched into his bone helmet, cracking it. The sword went wide and struck the ground with a thud. Silvan looked around and saw Madrid kneeling behind a boulder, aiming his heavy sniper rifle. It was the one graded for Hive Ogres, Vex Minotaurs, and Cabal Centurions-she'd seen him use it before.

"Ahem," said Omar Agah in her head. "I can help, you know."

Silvan slung the heavy machine gun around in her barely-healed arms. "Let's give you a real test fire, then."

She aimed at Zulmak's injured head and fired. The pellet of Light and bullets tore half the helmet off and penetrated the carapace. Soulfire erupted from the wound. Zulmak roared and turned, protecting his face. Silvan's next shot hit his shoulder armor. She aimed lower, trying to hit his side, under his arm, but a regular-sized Hive knight jumped in the way, raising his bone shield. Xenophage's next shot shattered the shield and blew the Knight's head off. When a pack of thralls ran at Silvan, Xenophage's blasts passed straight through multiple bodies, shredding them.

"You are a beast!" she cried to Omar.

"Give 'em more!" he howled back, in an ecstasy of battle. "Kill them all! Kill the big one!"

Silvain rained blasts of Light and bullets into Zulmak's body until the Knight staggered, trying to shield itself. When a witch tried to intervene, a slug from Xenophage tore her in two.

"Silvan, get to cover!" Jayesh's voice said through the radio. "Something's happening, ten o'clock."

Silvan looked and saw three Hive witches in red bone armor flying in from the Hellmouth. The leader had a bone halo behind her head. Hashladun and her surviving sisters had arrived to assist Zulmak. As they approached, they began to sing.

Their voices were a horrible screech, as if Hive vocal chords were incapable of producing any other sounds. But there was an awful harmony to it, even as it set Silvan's teeth on edge. She ducked behind a rock as Zulmak reared up, saluting them with his sword. Then he spun and slashed at the Guardians.

Several Hunters had been sneaking closer, hoping to use their knives on the Knight. They were the unfortunate ones who caught the blade first. As they fell, dead or dying, Zulmak strode over them and waded into the other Guardians, hacking and slashing. The song of the witches seemed to be energizing him. Soulfire still burned from his wounds.

Silvan only had a few seconds. She could have fired at Zulmak again, but he was too strong. Instead, she aimed at the rearmost of Hashladun's sisters.

Xenophage tore through the witch's energy shield, punctured her armor, ripped through her insides, and continued for half a mile beyond her. The witch fell dead. The other two broke off their song to shriek in rage, hurling blasts of distilled hatred down upon Silvan.

"Bramble, transmat my sparrow over here!"

Her Ghost obeyed. The craft materialized behind the rock with her, its frame bent from its violence earlier. Silvan leaped on, gunned the engine, and rocketed out of hiding, aiming for the greater cover of a series of cliffs in the distance. One of the witch's blasts tore across her back, searing through her armor and opening her skin like a whiplash. The Moon's cold atmosphere burned into the wound.

Then Silvan was away, flying in a long half circle under cover of the cliffs, hoping to come up behind the attackers and flank them. As she went, Eris Morn's voice spoke over the radio. "All Guardians, fall back. Follow Archer's Line southeast. We cannot fight them, yet."

The radio broke into a clamor of protesting voices. But when Silvan broke out of cover, Guardians were fleeing the base camp in all directions. Most of the camp had vanished, speed-transmatted by everyone's Ghosts and carried off.

"Eris!" Silvan called. "Do you need a ride?"

"I have already evacuated," Eris Morn replied. "Look after yourself, Guardian."

Silvan steered into a wide circle, giving Bramble time to heal her back. She had a perfect view as Zulmak, the witches, and the lesser Hive stamped through the remains of the camp, tearing out the flooring, destroying any manmade object they could find, and defecating on the ground to defile it. The witches followed, circling the camp and chanting. The ground began to burn and blacken as they seared all remnants of Light out of the soil.

Silvan couldn't watch any more. "Bramble, set me a nav point for wherever the others went."

A marker appeared on her HUD, up in the hills to her left. She headed that way, following the old monorail line, disgusted to the depths of her soul.

"What happened?" Omar asked. "I can't see a thing from in here."

"The Hive destroyed our base camp," Silvan replied.

"Why'd you let them do that?" Omar demanded. "We had them on the ropes!"

"No we didn't," Silvan replied. "Hashladun and company showed up to energize the big guy. They were already too close to camp, and we couldn't risk them harming Eris."

Omar made a protesting noise, then sighed. "You're right. There's no point in winning if the defenseless die in the process. Still, though. Wasn't I awesome?"

"You were," Silvan assured him. "Now, I have to find the others."