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out of bed, her feet hitting the floor even before she knew she was awake. Something in the distance rumbled, sounding familiar, but alien. Dave sat up almost as fast as she had, bouncing high off the mattress as the first shockwave slammed through the Colony. It felt like an explosion, in the next room.
    “What the fuck was that?” he said, as the floor danced sideways under Viki’s feet, and she grabbed her desk to keep from falling.
    “I don’t know, but it can’t be good,” she said. The monitor on her desk slid back and forth, and Dave caught it as it fell slowly toward the floor. “It’s a quake.” She grabbed a coverall and ran toward the door, the floor of her apartment swaying. She careened off the jamb and out into the hallway, still struggling to get dressed as she stumbled out.
    Dave stopped to get into his clothes before he followed her. She was still running toward the Command Center, but he wondered if they’d have been smarter to have run for their spacesuits instead. He could see her ahead, still half naked but running steady now that she’d gotten her bottom half into the suit.
    One of the emergency airlocks had closed, and she was cycling through when he caught up to her. There was still pressure on the other side, so he followed her as soon as the door released. The ground had quit shaking. If they hadn’t lost any of the domes they’d be in good shape. She didn’t slow down as she hit the door to the Command Center, still some distance ahead of him. What he had in strength, she more than made up for in grace. He couldn’t match her speed because every time he tried to sprint, he ended up banging into the ceiling. It took a lot of practice to move like she did.
    He got to the upstairs operations deck several seconds behind her. She was already on the comlink listening to her crew chiefs reporting in.
    “No damage in Life Support.”
    “No damage in Robotic Processing.”
    “No damage in Hydroponics.”
    “No damage in Communication Control.”
    “Minor power disruption in the Processor Core, auxiliary power activated in 1.3 nanoseconds, PAPA function is unaffected.” The list went on and on.
    She relaxed as each station confirmed they were intact, and she realized they’d come through whatever it was unscathed. The only significant damage was to a cargo container in the return pile that had fallen off the stack and cracked open. Fortunately it was empty, so there was no lost cargo.
    Torri Capone, Sentinel’s only lunar geologist, waited till the damage reports had finished before she opened a link. “Hey boss,” she said, as her face appeared on the screen. “That measured 7.3 if you’re interested.”
    “I thought you’d said that the moon was geologically dead,” Viki said. “What the hell happened?”
    “I don’t know yet. It was a slow foreshock, and then a sudden single primary. After that, everything appeared to be echoes.” She fed the seismograph traces across the bottom of the screen. Dave stepped forward and looked at it.
    “Looks like an ELF from a nuke,” he said. “The military has a sensor array set up in New Mexico, where they listen for weapons tests. I’ve seen some of their reports, but never for anything this size.”
    “Elf?” Viki asked, looking confused.
    “E.L.F. Extreme Low Frequency,” Torri said, nodding. “Sub-harmonic sounds that pass through the Earth from a single-wave seismic event. Usually the result of a large explosion.”
    “Wanna bet on whether the Chinese just lit another one off?” Dave asked, stepping toward the window and looking over the top of the dirt ridges that covered the colony.
    “Uhm, that’s not right,” he said, pointing at what looked like a dust cloud rolling over the horizon.
    “What is it?” Viki asked, hearing a hissing sound like sandpaper dragging against the window.
    ***
     
    Unity Colony, Eastern Mare Frigoris:
     
    Other than Stormhaven’s Sentinel Colony, Unity was the most ambitious of the