No one was speaking. Although this was not unusual for the Masama, Lance suspected they were not even communicating telepathically. They had been soundly, emphatically beaten. Reduced to less than half their original number. Forced to make an embarrassing hasty retreat from the moon base, running back to the safety of the shuttle to lick their wounds. They had never come up against an enemy such as this; never been defeated as comprehensively. Their high-tech weapons, strength, and speed were ineffective against the bio-mechanical black plastisol.

They had completed a thorough decontamination process to ensure no one had bought any plastisol back on the shuttle. Lance watched the remaining soldiers, moving around with their heads bowed, re-charging their weapons and examining their exo-skeletons. The wounded had used the onboard printer to create flesh patches which they were gently applying to their open wounds. Lance suspected they were trying to delay the inevitable debrief: the inquisition from Lago.

Lance knew Lago had watched the entire operation from his globe room, viewing the same feed Lance had orchestrated. His face appeared on the screen. He stayed silent. He did not look as enraged as Lance was expecting although his eyes were red with intensity.

“Any thoughts, comments or suggestions?” Lago asked in a surprisingly polite tone. “Did you learn anything as to how we might approach this adversary next time?”

Lance couldn't help himself. “Next time!” he spluttered. “Shouldn't we just nuke...”

“Shut up Lance, I want to hear from Goran,” Lago spat. He was being strangely calm and composed considering what had just happened. Goran was not to be hurried by anyone, he stayed silent.

“Well? Any ideas, Goran?”

Goran looked evenly at the screen. “This is your operation, Lago, we are your employees and it is your decision. Either we nuke the entire base and hope that destroys the black worms, or we go in there again.”

“Goran...Goran, I know all this. Tell me something constructive. Tell me something that will help me decide what I'm going to do with you. I could send you back in there and you may not survive.” Lago was leaning in close to the camera now, baring his teeth. “I was hoping you may have actually learned something from your excursion, or did thirteen of your finest Masama, thirteen of my employees die for nothing. Did you detect any weakness in our enemy? Did you discover a soft underbelly? Or did you just steam in there with your bunch of tooled up meatheads, cocky and overconfident, thinking you would destroy anything you came across.”

No reply. Lance suspected Goran's distracted look betrayed the fact he was conferring telepathically with the Masama.

“If I may...”

“I told you to shut up Lance!”

Goran held Lago’s malevolent gaze as the seconds passed in silence. Eventually, Lago could contain his boiling temper no longer and yelled into the screen. “You’ve had it too easy on Earth, when was the last time you had a real challenge? You finally come up against something you can't intimidate, and you run back and hide in my shuttle! I will not be nuking my base to save your cowardly hides. The base is worth a thousand times more than you and your mechanized morons. You figure out a way to deal with it and you stay there until my base is operational. I don’t care how you do it, just do it!” Flecks of spittle covered the screen as Lago cut the connection.

Lance was even more distraught after the tirade. He knew Lago had seen everything that had happened inside the base just as he had. He was not expecting Lago to be sympathetic and understanding in any way, but he had made it abundantly clear that restoring the moon base was more important than their lives.

If Goran felt under any pressure, he did not show it. He was as impassive and stony-faced as ever. The Masama all carried on with their weapons checks in silence although they were obviously communicating. Lance felt out of the loop as usual. He wondered if they were thinking mutinous, rebellious thoughts or if they were trying to come up with a solution. He watched the images of the disastrous mission again to see if he could pick up anything that might help them.

After a brief time, Goran turned his attention to Lance. “Can we manufacture more liquid nitrogen, enough to pump it into the base without having to go inside again?”

“We could make a liquid nitrogen generator, and hoses that could lock onto your weapons to connect to the base. But it would take time and we can’t distil liquid air - there is no air here. No problem back on Earth but here on the Moon...?” Lance shook his head.

Lance turned as one of the Masama came over; she was not as heavily augmented as the others. The steel teeth in her mouth looked more like a fashion statement than of any practical use although he knew better than to assume she was no less fearsome than the others.

“We could use liquid helium. We have plenty of the raw material right out there on the harvester and the means to get more if we need. We just need to compress the helium 3 into liquid. It is colder than liquid nitrogen. It will work.”

Lance stared at her, impressed and perturbed he hadn’t thought of it. “That has potential. But how can we compress it? We will have to print the equipment needed.”

“The helium needs to be reduced to twenty-six Kelvin or less. It's a hundred and eighty-five Kelvin outside now, we will need a specialized heat exchanger to cool it even further and turn it into a superfluid. Then we will need a helium pump to compress it into liquid and dewars for storage. Easier than making a generator from scratch.” She stared at Lance defiantly. “I know where to find the specs online.”

Lance again was lost for words; this Masama soldier was full of surprises. “Perhaps you had better stay here and help me, what should I call you?”

“If you must you can call me Odetta,” she said with a flashing metal sneer.

Lance felt better to be doing something constructive rather than helplessly watching screens or trying to deduce telepathic conversations and he could feel the mood was a little less dark among Goran and his Masama as they left the shuttle to get the helium 3 from the harvester. Odetta soon took over the search for helium pump specs and downloaded them to the 3D printer. She was small but fierce and knew exactly what she was doing assembling the helium pump.

“You've worked with cryogenic liquids before?” asked Lance hesitantly. None of the Masama encouraged conversation.

“Yes.” She gave him a sideways look. Lance thought she would leave him hanging but then she continued. “I used to work in a cryo lab in Mexico City. We would freeze rich old clients who did not want to die, who thought they deserved immortality.” She wrestled with the words; she had an awkward, clipped Spanish accent.

“I've heard of that happening.” Lance started to assemble the parts for the helium pump. “But I thought it was overly optimistic. The technology to bring people back to life after cryogenic freezing is centuries away, if at all. Seems like a futile hope.”

“The clients were selfish, lonely and senile. Mostly rich old men with an over-inflated sense of self-importance.”

Lance had never had such a lengthy conversation with a Masama. He was enjoying listening to her talk.

“They would leave instructions when they should be woken up. Some specific time or event but the entire process is a huge risk. Nothing has ever been successfully defrosted after cryogenic treatment without major cell damage. They were counting on the technology being available at some stage in the future. As you say, it could have been hundreds of years.”

“Sounds as if they were putting a lot of trust in you to keep them safely frozen. How much did you charge them?”

“The starting rate was fifty million; usually double that after insurances and extra expenses. They would appoint someone, often a family member to watch over them after they had been frozen. To make sure we wouldn't just take their money and put them in an incinerator instead of a freezer.”

“What happened to them? are they all still frozen in Mexico somewhere?”

This time Odetta game him a genuinely amused smile instead of a scornful sneer. She was strangely attractive. Lance shook his head to clear the thought. She watched him as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.

“The company directors never intended to look after the frozen corpses, they started disposing of the frozen bodies as soon as they thought they could get away with it.”

“What about the person supposed to be watching over them?” disposed of too?”

“They usually lost interest after a year or two. The family members would be always resentful the selfish old codger had squandered hundreds of millions in trying to extend his own life instead of leaving money to the children. They could usually be bought off immediately after their beloved Grandad had been frozen. The few who refused... well they couldn't be allowed to just walk out after turning down that proposal. They would end up in a hole somewhere with their frozen relative.”

“Can't say I am surprised. How did you end up becoming one of the Masama?”

“We had a client, typically old, rich, arrogant but terminal. In fact, he was a real piece of work. He had his own private nurse and he would make her wipe his ass after taking a shit which happened quite often as he was badly incontinent. He could easily wipe his own ass, he wasn't disabled, he just got off on her doing it. I hate to think what other duties she had to perform on the crusty old bastard. So, we froze him. There was a son or nephew appointed to look after him, but we paid him off almost immediately after the freezing process. He was quite happy to take the money and disappear.”

“Just another job then.”

“The company employed some scumbags to dispose of the bodies, but they didn't do a very good job of it and a few months later the remains of the old coot surfaced in a swamp somewhere. They had to check the dental records, but it turned out he was the father of one of the biggest drug lords in Mexico. A journalist tipped this drug lord off before the news spread and he sent in a small army of thugs to destroy the whole cryo operation. They tortured and killed the directors along with all the staff.” Odetta fell silent as she extracted a piece of the helium pump from the printer and handed it to Lance.

“But obviously not you? Did you escape somehow?”

“No, I was there.” She said and sighed as if she was getting bored with the story. “I was Mexican mixed martial arts champion for six years running, world champ twice. I took a few of those fat thugs down before they restrained me. I knew if they knocked me unconscious I could expect never to wake up again. But I did.”

“Wow, you must be some fighter. How come they didn't kill you though?”

“When I came to I was expecting to be raped and tortured to death, but it was Goran in charge of those thugs. He spared my life and gave me a choice: come and work for him or die. It didn't take me long to choose and I've been with him ever since.”

“I see,” said Lance, wondering just what the words 'with him' entailed. He decided not to pursue it any longer; any notion of romance with Odetta was ridiculous anyway.

They finished assembling the superfluid helium pump, complete with adaptors to connect with the helium capsules, the storage dewars and the hoses that would enable them to spray the liquid helium into the base from a distance. Soon Goran and the Masama arrived back from their harvesting.

“Did you get enough helium?” asked Lance.

Goran looked at Odetta for a moment, sharing a quick wordless exchange.

“Thirty capsules, should be sufficient.”

“Let's do it then.”

“You stay here.” Goran examined the helium pump. “Odetta can answer any technical questions.”

Lance was not going to argue. “I'm sure she can.”

Goran had underestimated the black plastisol in their first encounter. He knew he was to blame for the loss of life, but he didn’t feel any remorse. The connection he shared with his Masama linked them closely but when they died so quickly and brutally, he felt nothing. It was like losing a shoe or a piece of clothing. Annoying and diminishing but painless. This time he would be a bit more circumspect. Freeze and immobilize the plastisol from outside the base then go in and clean up. Goran was confident, but he knew there could be no more mistakes.

They took their equipment out onto the hull of the harvester where the capsules were stored, and soon were charging their weapons and filling the storage dewars. Their snakeskin body armour shimmered in the starlight as the Masama moved, and their helmets made them look even more robotic than usual. Everything seemed to be working; the helium 3 was being cooled and compressed into liquid helium, ready for use.

There was too much to carry over to the moon base, so they left all the equipment loaded on the flat top of the harvester. Goran went down into the wheelhouse and positioned himself in front of the controls after silently ordering the Masama to charge up. This was the command to begin ingesting secretions of the performance-enhancing drug cocktails they used in battle.

Goran brought the harvester to a grinding halt about thirty meters from the block four dome. The Masama arranged themselves in eight points around the outside of the central dome. The main airlock was still open, but no black worms could be seen. Goran had been researching the moon base domes. They had originally been made from a lightweight inflatable textile Sustainable Systems had bought with them in their ill-fated expedition decades ago. Since then the BPI technicians had reinforced the domes with fusion bonded epoxy, coating the outside of the domes with the tough insulating material. There were no entry points into the moon base apart from the airlocks and cable conduits. There was already evidence of the black plastisol in the cables, so Goran had decided on the risky approach of drilling directly through the walls into the base. He hoped they could do this and attach the hoses without aggravating the black worms within.

Goran watched, tensed and ready for action as Batac drilled the first hole into the central dome with a multi-gun drill application. With the main airlock still open, there would be a vacuum inside and no pressure differential. There was no reaction from inside the dome as the drilling commenced. Batac drilled through the dome wall within seconds and was not tempted to look through the hole. He quickly screwed in the hose fitting and stepped back. Goran and his soldiers watched from a safe distance.

There was no reaction from inside the dome, Goran ordered his Masama to start drilling more holes and attach the hoses. In a matter of minutes, they had completed the drilling and retreated about twelve meters, the maximum length of their hoses. They attached their liquid helium adaptors and began pumping the ultracold superfluid into the base

Goran had to remind himself Lago was monitoring them throughout this entire operation, watching the same camera feed Lance was monitoring. Although Lago had made it clear he had no interest in how they achieved their goal of eliminating the worms, Goran was sure he would be paying close attention. The fact he had not at any point chosen to intervene in their plans showed his tacit approval. Goran knew how valuable the moon base and its helium 3 was to Lago. He would be willing to sacrifice all the human resources at his disposal to save the base.

The Masama had taken almost ten minutes to exhaust most of the liquid helium. After each cartridge was used up they disconnected the hose from the moon base wall and plugged the hole with sealant before refilling their weapons from the storage dewars and moving to another part of the base exterior to repeat the process. Goran then told them to concentrate on the block four dome, making sure everything inside the dome would be coated with the helium spray. Then the green room, corridors, and bunk rooms. There was no discernible reaction from inside the moon base, at least nothing Goran could detect.

Finally, they gathered in front of the central dome airlock and used the last of the liquid helium to refill their weapons cartridges. Then they did a final weapons check, ensuring all the magazines were fully charged before they faced the open airlock door. They edged forward in formation, alert for any movement. Batac tentatively entered the airlock. They all scanned the ceiling and surrounds but focused mainly on the buckled inner airlock door. Once they were all inside the airlock and Goran was satisfied there was no threat, they positioned themselves to fire upon the inner door as Batac went to try to open it.

The door had buckled under the impact of the worms and was jammed open leaving a narrow gap. Batac wrestled with the wheel, the twisted door resisted. It opened a few centimetres before jamming against the frame. He gave up on the wheel, went to the edge of the door, planted a foot against the wall and tried to haul the door open with his exoskeleton powered arms, using himself as a human lever. His shoulder mounted guns were trained on the gap, but they had all seen how fast the black worms could move. His exoskeleton flexed with the effort and Goran could sense tremendous pressure building. Just when it looked as if the door was jammed permanently, it abruptly relented under the pressure and was wrenched open. Batac staggered backwards and they all tensed, ready to fire on anything that moved.

There was an intermittent bright white light flashing from inside the central dome. The strobe effect made it difficult to see any movement, but nothing rushed out and attacked them. The Masama all flicked on their powerful spotlights and inched forward.

There was a surreal scene inside the dome. The liquid helium had been sprayed in at high pressure, instantly freezing anything in the way. The black worms inside the dome had been frozen solid in twisting spiral shapes. Caught in the act of serpentine separation. A frozen cave with stalagmites and stalactites piercing the frosty atmosphere. Goran stopped in the middle of the dome and looked around. Huge black tentacles had been frozen into giant corkscrew shapes, dividing and tapering to a thin point at the top of their spirals as if frozen whilst trying to escape through the dome ceiling. The liquid helium had crystallized on the surface of the black worms giving them a fractalized, jagged, reflective surface which sparkled crazily in the spotlights and strobe lighting. The weird twisted and helical shapes looked like intricately carved ice sculptures, perfect sweeping circles of crystal with shades of the frozen blackness beneath.

They edged further into the central dome, weapons at the ready. There was still no sign of any movement, but Goran silently reminded his soldiers to stay alert. It seemed safe enough, so Goran ordered them to begin burning a path towards the block four corridor with the wide beam lasers, reducing the frozen plastisol to gritty black dust. Goran would try once again to disable the printer, thereby stopping the production of any more worms. They avoided the larger stalagmites of the frozen plastisol, burning a path of least resistance around the towering spirals.

The Masama constantly scanned their surrounds as they made their way to the corridor entrance, remembering their shambolic, rushed retreat last time. They all had sensors detecting motion, temperature, acoustic and atmosphere pressure linked to their cortex implants. Any slight change and they would react within milliseconds. But Goran knew their accelerated reactions had not helped them last time. No amount of cautious preparation, finely tuned sensors or heavy weaponry could hold off those worms if they were provoked. He hoped the liquid helium would keep the plastisol frozen and dormant long enough for them to destroy the HEMI OS.

They made it through the corridor into the block four dome without incident. The big printer housing was encased in ice crystals and Goran was relieved to see it had stopped printing, frozen in mid-production. This time the Masama headed for the main power insulator at the back of the printer OS. Marina's body, now frozen solid, was barely distinguishable among the icebound worms. A frozen hand reaching out was the only identifiable human feature. Two soldiers went to work on the main power cable with the wide beam laser, clearing the frozen black plastisol away until the large strands of superconductor cable were visible. Two more soldiers then stepped up with their gas-axes primed, burning blue flames ready to sever the cables. There was still no reaction from the frozen worms.

Lance was watching from the camera mounted on Goran's suit. The view violently flicked to the ceiling, there was a blur of motion and flashing fingers among black tentacles. The hyper-alert Masama all targeted their multi-guns on something just above Goran who let out a short sharp roar of pain as his camera cut out. Lance quickly shifted to the view from Odetta's camera. He saw the top half of the missing technician, a fleeting tentacled blur flashed across the screen. It must have been hiding somewhere high up in the ceiling. It had fallen on Goran’s head.

Lance had a momentary still image of the technician, its twisted upside-down and back to front head next to Goran's. Black eyes wide and black mouth impossibly elongated. It had wrapped a tentacle around Goran's neck and both of its thumbs were buried deep into Goran's eye sockets. Lance had this view for only a millisecond before all the Masama simultaneously blasted it across the room with their most accurate multi-gun applications. They had it cornered, its limbs and tentacles thrashing wildly as they followed up with the liquid helium spray. Lance had a close-up view of the thing squirming for a few seconds before being frozen solid in the icy blast. Its backwards face twisted in a surprisingly human look of pain and anguish.

Goran was crouched over, bleeding profusely from both eye sockets. His painkiller secretions would already be in action, cutting off the pain and limiting the damage. He had both hands over his eyes; there was blood, shreds of eyeball and tiny silver filaments dribbling out of his face and between his fingers. Odetta crouched with him, assessing the damage telepathically. The remaining Masama all had their lasers targeting the twisted frozen mass of what used to be the technician, reducing it into a pile of black dust.

“Odetta,” asked Lance anxiously, “how is he?”

“Luckily the thumbs did not penetrate too far. He has certain securities around his brain to protect from injuries such as this. Just the eyeballs and enhancements have been destroyed. It’s not serious; we can replace them with superior augmentation. It’s just a flesh wound,” she replied with no emotion.

The fleeting glimpse Lance had of Goran's face with the thrashing technician's thumbs buried into his eye sockets looked anything but a mere flesh wound, but Goran was tough and by now he would be numb with painkillers.

“He was lucky, that thing didn't seem to be electrically charged as the black worms were,” said Lance.

The Masama had reduced what had once been a quiet, peaceful vegetarian into a pile of black ash. Lance watched them conferring with each other momentarily before returning to the exposed cables with their gas-axes. Goran stood, his arm around Odetta keeping him steady. Gaping holes where his eyes used to be were bloody flesh tunnels. Gore was still oozing down his face and dripping onto his snakeskin armour like a messy pasta meal. Goran did not seem to notice or care, he stood there impassively until the Masama had severed the cables. Lance breathed a sigh of relief. At least now the rogue OS had no power and no access to the web it had been feeding on. Its modem had been physically cut; it had no batteries, it should be impossible for it to start printing the plastisol worms again.

One of the Masama fed the hunter-killer virus into the hard drive and this time there was no reaction. He ran some quick diagnostics and stood up nodding his head. It was dead. Lance was relieved he no longer had to think of it as a machine with a motive and a possible malevolent intelligence. It was just a big printer and they had turned it off.

Odetta and Goran had made their way back to the shuttle. Goran was lying sedated in the med-bay with antiseptic patches over his eyes. Although it would be possible to print temporary eyeballs for Goran and have them implanted, they would need to return to Earth to have the job done properly. Lance watched Odetta tend to Goran, she was practical and methodical. She did not display any more concern or sympathy than you would expect from a colleague. Lance wondered again about their relationship. Odetta turned and caught him staring at her.

Lance coughed quickly. “So, what now? What have you and the Masama decided to do?”

Lance had been inside the shuttle the entire time they had been on the Moon. He had been anxiously watching the screens. He was glad not to be needed for the two expeditions inside the moon base but still, he had felt completely useless watching from the safety of the shuttle. Now it was over he was jittery with nervous tension and jealous resentment for missing out on the telepathic communications the Masama shared. But mostly he wondered what Odetta was thinking.

“Goran has instructed them to remain inside the base and clean up. They have everything they need to achieve this. They have the means to create more liquid helium if required and we will leave behind the shuttle printers to make more weapons and ammunition. Once they destroy all the frozen plastisol they will repair the airlock then examine every area of the base for signs of contamination. We will leave them here and take the shuttle back to Earth.”

“But the plastisol has infiltrated the wiring, the life support; the base is riddled with it,” Lance pointed out.

“I never said it would be easy, but the OS is dead, the worms are all frozen and we have found an effective method of destroying them. It will take time, but they will return the base to normal.”

“Then they will be stuck here with no shuttle, although Lago will be anxious to get the base up and running again. I'm sure he will send another shuttle as soon as it’s operational.”

“I should make you stay there and help with the clean-up too.” Lago's piercing voice came through the comm speaker. Lance had forgotten he was listening to everything.

“But I suppose you are of some use to me back here.” His voice didn't carry the same weight when heard through a speaker. Lance wanted to give his superior an obscene gesture, but he knew Lago was watching as well as listening.