Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 705
Armiger felt a trembling in the electric fields that
interpenetrated the mountains. He looked up. The vagabond
moons were rising again. Sheet lightning played over their
vast curved sides.
"How do you feel?" he asked Galas. She nodded, and
levered herself to her feet. He had spent some minutes
preparing a concoction of complex molecules and nanotech,
and now he handed her the pills he had distilled it down to.
She looked at them doubtfully, but when he pointed to the
rising moons, she dutifully tossed them back and swallowed.
Then she began to slowly climb the stairs, swinging her legs
wide with every step.
He looked back at the foothills. It was some testament to
how exhausted Galas was that she had not spent any time
looking at the view. The vagabond moons rose to fully half the
height of the Titans' Gates when on the ground; although the
nearest one was at least eight kilometers away it eclipsed a
good twenty degrees of the sky. The sun was getting low on
the horizon, and the shadow of the Gates fell across the moon,
dividing it into two halves, grey below and rose colored above.
Beyond it and the two companions that had landed, nine more
moons clustered high in the stratosphere, where they shone in
full sunlight.
The stairs that they had to climb were also in shadow.
This wasn't much of a problem for Armiger, who could see in
the dark, but Galas was going to have difficulty. "We must
hurry," he said.
He could sense his mecha growing in the valley below.
The Winds could probably perceive it by now too, and he had
no doubt they would react violently to his decoys. An assault
by the Winds on the valley could buy them valuable time.