595 ran forward, stepped onto a low slab of rubble and jumped. Her EVA harness jets activated, and she flew across the ruined temple, arms windmilling. She palmed off one of the standing pillars and landed awkwardly by the spectrometer, one hand resting on the ground. She quickly checked it; dead.  

She straightened up and stared out of the doors, through showers of brick dust towards the rig. The mountain had receded dramatically since they’d gone inside, and it now hung precariously on the edge, one side of wheels up in the air.

As they watched, another ear-splitting boom shook the mountain. Rocks fell from the peaks off to their left, and a big crack appeared between the top face of the cube and everything else. The rig dropped about ten metres as the shelf of rock it clung to came loose, then carried on slipping down the mountain.

“Freyr, can you re-” 595 started urgently calling in, when the cables attached to her snapped taut, pulling the agent off her feet, down the temple steps and through the snow of the plinth, now flashing blue. “Argh!” 595 grunted, struggling to get the transit station off her back.

[hr]”Not yet! The ground team is out there!” Freyr shouted from inside the cockpit. She slipped into the pilot’s seat and wrestled with the controls. “If we’re being sapped, so are they! Someone [b]please[/b] give me everything we’ve got to the anti-grav thrusters!”

[hr]The rig’s sonic countermeasures had ceased, which meant the swarm above them was regaining its coherence. They saw an isolated, tasty morsel sliding out of the temple, and swooped in for the attack with a deathly screeching.