The driver jerked the wheel again, turning away from the oncoming rounds, but it wasn’t enough. A line of erupting powder and rock caught him, slamming into the rear and side of the quad, ripping through the chassis. His body spasmed as my fire found him. The quad swerved right, then left, losing control. The front bumper guard smacked into a knee-high rock, lifting the back end off the ground and sending the quad flipping end over end. Still strapped to the chair, the driver’s lifeless body flopped around inside the roll-cage.
It landed nose-first and sent up a cloud of dirt and debris, coming to rest on its side, wheels still spinning.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
Sparks sprayed up from the rover’s armored cab in front of me, pulling my attention away from the destroyed quad. The second Earther was still coming on, firing his own pistol, trying to take me out. I cursed, mentally kicking myself for losing focus, and scrambled to get the Kord on target.
I pressed the firing stud before I even had the weapon lined up. The first rounds hit to the right of the quad and twenty feet ahead. Another spray of sparks erupted off the side of the rover, shooting up in front of it and vanishing almost immediately.
“Come on! Come on!” I shouted. The sights were almost lined up—the gun clicked, going silent. Almost without thinking, I jerked the charging handle back, trying to clear the malfunction but nothing happened when I pulled the trigger. I flinched as sparks sprayed, frantically looking for why the gun had stopped firing. Then I saw it. The belt that had been feeding up from the ammo box mounted underneath the Kord was gone. I was out of ammo.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I growled, ducking sideways, keeping the Kord between me and the oncoming quad. I drew my pistol, knowing it probably wasn’t going to make any difference, and out of the corner of my eye Lang’s quad came into view.
Her wordless warcry echoed over the radio as her quad cut across the landscape, closing on the Earther. I realized what she was planning on doing right before she did it, but didn’t have enough time to warn her off. Even if I had, I doubted my words would’ve stopped her.
Lang’s quad slammed into the side of the Earther’s, the impact launching both vehicles into the air. Lang’s rose above the other, flipping forward, debris from both vehicles filling the surrounding air. The Earther’s landed first, its side digging a deep gouge out of the ground before rolling another ten feet, coming to rest upside down.
Lang’s back end slammed down hard. The quad fell forward, landing on all four tires, bouncing several times before twisting and rolling to its side and skidding to a stop.
“Lang?” I shouted. “Lang, can you hear me?”
She didn’t answer.
The rover jerked under me, quickly swerving right, then back left. I stumbled into the railing, grunting, straining to stay on my feet. They were trying to shake me off. I shoved the pistol back into its holster and pulled myself forward, ready to finish this.
EIGHT
The rover lurched again as I reached the forward rail. I held tight, shaking my head, silently cursing them. Carefully, I swung one leg over the rail, then the other. I dropped to the cab’s roof and pulled myself forward until I could reach over the edge and grab the handle. Through the window, I could see the driver and passenger pointing, their helmets moving as if they were caught up in a heated debate.
I craned my neck forward and located the steps below the door. I held my breath, pulled the handle and threw open the door. Holding onto the frame with one hand, I slid over the edge and swung my feet down, hitting the step hard and drawing my pistol in the same movement.
I leveled it at the driver’s helmet. “Stop.”
The driver hesitated for a minute, obviously conflicted. The passenger’s arm moved, and though I couldn’t see what he was reaching for it was obvious, he was going for some kind of weapon.
“Don’t!” I barked, “Not worth it. Put your hands on the dash.”
Slowly, the passenger complied and I angled the gun back to the driver. “Now, stop this rover. Don’t do anything stupid.”
The driver nodded, the outline of his face visible through his darkened visor, then slowed to a stop.
“Turn it off,” I said. After he’d gone through the rover’s shutdown sequence, I stepped backward off the side step, then beckoned them to follow. “Guns stay in the cab.”
I watched them disengage their five-point harnesses and slowly pull their pistols from the holsters on their thighs and toss them on the floorboard. The driver climbed out and I told him to get his hands up as the passenger slid across the bench seat.
“You don’t have any idea what you’re doing. Do you?” the driver asked.
“Move,” I said, ignoring his question.
“Do your bosses have any idea the danger they’re putting us in messing around with that thing?” the passenger asked. He followed the driver away from the rover, his hands up.
There’d been a time when knowing exactly what the Mimic was, and what it did, would’ve been extremely interesting. But right at that very moment, I couldn’t have cared less. The only thing I knew for sure was that people like these men were willing to kill and steal for it. I wondered if the aliens that had built the damn thing had been as willing to destroy themselves over it as we were.
What if that’s why they’d gone to so much trouble to hide it?
“Sit,” I told the Earthers. I glanced at Lang’s wrecked quad, but there still wasn’t any sign of her. I toggled my radio. “Lang, you there? Can you hear me?”
The only response I got was static.
“Boyd, you there?”
“Yeah, boss, I’m here.”
“The rover’s out of commission. You’re clear.”
“Roger that,” Boyd said. “We’ll come back and get you.”
“No. Get the cargo to Swigert. That’s priority number one. Once you get it off-loaded, grab a couple more guys and come back and get us. I’ve got two prisoners we’re going to need escort.”
There was silence for a moment, then Boyd said, “Okay, boss. Don’t do anything stupid until I get back, all right?”
“Hey,” I said, “it’s me.”
“Exactly.”
I found some spare wire in a supply cabinet and made the driver tie up the passenger, then tied the driver’s hands behind his back. With their ankles tied, sitting back to back, I finally took a breath. They weren’t going anywhere, and with no signs of any reinforcements, it appeared as though our little adventure was drawing to a close. I disabled their suits’ comm units and made sure they had plenty of O2 left in their tanks.
I gave Lang’s wreck another look, then nodded at my two captives. “You boys don’t wander off now, ya hear?”
They didn’t respond.
I reached the Earther’s upside-down quad first, the driver hanging from the harness. Lang’s quad was twenty feet away, on its side, and it was empty. I walked around the vehicle until I found some tracks that appeared to be someone crawling away and followed them to a boulder some fifteen feet away.
Lang was sitting with her back against the boulder on the far side, legs out in front of her. I knelt down and pushed up the mirrored visor of her helmet. “Lang?”
Her eyes flittered open, and a weak smile spread across her face. “Damn, you’re ugly.”
I let out a relieved breath. “Holy shit, you’re okay.”
She winced. “I guess. I’m pretty sure my leg’s broken and I had to patch my suit. Lost a bit of O2 in the process.”
The gauge on her wrist showed her tank only had about twenty percent remaining. I took her hand and stood. “Come on, let’s get you out of here. There’s spare tanks on the rover.”
She let out a pained gasp as I helped her to her feet. “Jesus, boss, easy.”
“Sorry,” I said, draping her arm over my shoulders. “We’ll go slow.”
The walk back to the rover took about ten minutes, and we had to stop several times to let her rest and check the seal
s on the patches. The two soldiers were in the process of scooting closer to the rover, but froze as we approached.
I put my free hand on my pistol. “I thought we’d discussed this.”
The soldiers didn’t answer, but I hadn’t expected a response. Their shoulders slumped, and they leaned back against each other, resigning themselves to their fate. I found a replacement for Lang’s O2 tank, then sat down next to her and waited.
An hour later, Boyd arrived with six more security guys and the flatbed, now empty. We loaded the Earthers, securing them to the front of the bed with the same straps that had held the container they’d been after. It took four of us to lift Lang onto the bed and I took a seat next to her for the ride back. Boyd followed in the rover.
We pulled into Swigert’s garage, met by more security and Reynolds. They helped haul the Earthers down and escorted them off for debriefing with Swigert’s brass. A medical team loaded Lang onto a gurney and wheeled her off to the clinic.
I pulled off my gloves and helmet and ran a hand through my damp hair. Twenty feet away, the hard-plastic case sat facing away from me, the lip open. A handful of security officers stood around it, rubbing their hands together and grinning, making jokes and laughing.
I made my way to the front of the case, stepping up to it as the others backed away, giving me room. “Holy shit.”
Inside were ten rows of identical matte-black rifles, stacked six deep, next to what looked like boxes of ammunition. Each box had the number “1,000” stenciled on the side in black lettering.
“Those would’ve been handy an hour ago,” I said as Reynolds walked up.
“Nice, huh?” she asked, crossing her arms and grinning.
I picked up one of the rifles, feeling the weight, then pulled the stock into my shoulder and looked down the sights. It felt nice.
Boyd selected his own from the case. “All right, so we’ve got some guns, what are we supposed to do now?”
I pulled the trigger; there was an audible click. “Earth wants a fight. I say it’s time we give them one.”
The Battle of North Dome
The Battle of North Dome
by Travis S. Taylor
“But why is this spot so important to them, Colonel?” Sergeant Reese Helms looked nervously across the vast gray landscape and the jagged edge of the meteor crater surrounding the research facility just outside of the North Dome of Aldrinville they had been dispatched to take and hold. The sergeant had been in scrapes on Earth before, but back home if you got shot up your blood didn’t boil out and freeze at the same time. Fighting on the Moon, there was just something about it he didn’t like.
No, there was everything about it he didn’t like. Reese had signed on for the mission for the extra hazard pay and a trip to the Moon. He’d never in his wildest dreams imagined that he’d actually have to go into combat there. After all, who in their right minds would attack a research facility four hundred thousand kilometers away from anywhere, and to what end? But that had been over ten months ago—before the first skirmishes at Luna 8, then Luna City, the battle of Rinehart Dome, the Surrender at Hadley Dome, and most recently at Swigert Dome.
“Sergeant Helms,” Colonel Marissa Suarez growled. She showed her full smile, like an alpha lion staring down his pride to show them who the boss was and to quit bothering them with stupid questions. “Who knows what this is all about? I don’t. The whys and the what-fors—well, Sergeant, that ain’t none of our business. Our business is to carry out the orders of the people who were elected and who are our bosses. Their orders were to take this facility at all costs and to the last soldier if that is what it took. It is our job to do just that.”
“Uh, yes sir.” Helms didn’t like the answer. He didn’t like anything about the predicament but there was absolutely nothing he could do to change the situation. His best move would be to follow the colonel’s plan and hope he’d come out alive on the back side of it all.
“Helms!” Master Gunnery Sergeant Kelly Vors shouted over the comm net. “Get your butt over here and leave the colonel alone. Your squad is spread out so thin you could fly a shuttle between sentries and they’d never know it.”
“On my way, Gunny!” Helms turned to Suarez and took in her larger-than-life appearance once more. She was legendary for her work in the Northern African skirmishes and had the scars and tattoos to back up the reputation. “Uh, thank you, Colonel. I needed to deliver this to you.”
“What is it, Sergeant?” Suarez took the small data stick from him and studied it only briefly. She was too busy watching the radar showing the orbital insertion path of the incoming ship to worry about anything else.
“I don’t know, ma’am. Alls I know is that General McMillis told me to get it to you ASAP, ma’am. So that’s what I did. Now, uh, ma’am, I need to get back to my squad.”
“Very well, Helms.” Suarez took the stick and inserted into her wrist slot on her left hand. “And Sergeant Helms . . .”
“Ma’am?”
“Stay frosty and keep your eyes peeled. I’m counting on you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Suarez tapped at the data panel on her forearm until the information in the stick popped up on her visor. At first it just looked like maps and troop movements until the deck of cards started overlaying on the map. And right at the top within three hundred kilometers of her current location was the Ace of Spades, Mayor Alton Hamilton. About a hundred kilometers to the northeast was King of Spades, Nathaniel Ray. The Queen of Spades, General Tamika Jones, was somewhere south of the West Dome about fifty kilometers. A few of the lesser cards showed up in almost every direction within a couple hundred kilometers of General McMillis’s Major Attack Battalion. There were enough UNE forces right here concentrated with over four companies of more than one hundred soldiers each. If the data on this memory stick was right, the general could capture the Loonie Revolutionaries in one fell swoop and end this war before it got even further out of hand—if the data was real.
“Marissa, its Mac.” Her officer’s net buzzed in her ear.
“Yes, General? I thought I’d be hearing from you.” Suarez tapped her forearm, pulling up a video window in her visor to see the general’s face appear there. “Where’d we get this memory stick?”
“Apparently, we got this from a contact in the US State Department. I think we have a sympathizer in Aldrinville. According to intel reports this is real-time data. These are the hidey-hole whereabouts of the Loonies’ top military leaders.”
“If it’s true, I say we go for the Ace of Spades to our west.”
“I think that would take too long, Marissa. But we have Aldrinville surrounded and could take it. I think that would draw out all the top cards. I mean, this is their home.” McMillis transmitted a map to Suarez’s visor showing her an attack plan. “If we pull in Alpha and Delta Companies up to the North Dome. Simultaneously you take Bravo and Charlie in eastward from your present position and break in through the southeast wall and we sack the city. Then the top cards will come running with their paintball guns and glue pots a-blazing. But we’re ready for that nonsense now. This won’t be like Hadley or Luna City. We’ll decimate them like at Cernan Dome.”
“Right sir, solid plan. We could take the city and then root them out from there. If they try to run over the surface, the blockade can swoop down and hammer them.” Suarez liked the plan. She was getting tired of being on the Moon anyway. The UNE forces should have swept across the colonies months prior and put the Loonies in their places. “What’s our timeline?”
“No time like the present, Colonel Suarez. The Loonie volunteers are so spread out it will take them hours to days to respond to us taking Aldrinville. We start with the North Dome and we’ll use that as our forward operating base. March your troops now. I want to make a push into the dome by morning. That enough time for you?” McMillis asked rhetorically.
“More than enough, General. We’re moving out now!”
“Good hunting, Marissa.�
�
“You too, sir.”
“Are we sure they’re on the move?”
“Yes, General Jones.” The young volunteer stood at attention waiting for further orders. Tami rose from her chair and saluted the young woman then handed her a memory stick.
“Carry on. Send in First Sergeant Meeks and get this to Nathaniel as soon as possible. He’s expecting it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Tami stood at the window in her makeshift quarters and stared out at the edge of what would hopefully be the next big dome excavation project for Aldrinville. No work had yet to be done on the southernmost natural volcanic dome structures but since Hamilton’s A-team had figured out about the alien transport system a second, third, and then a fourth alien habitat had been found. The South Dome would one day be just as big as any other of Aldrinville’s projects, especially since there were three major alien habitat rooms with more artifacts to be studied a few hundred meters below the interior caldera.
Tami watched as her army of volunteers made busy like ants on a mound moving about on a warm day on Earth. She just hoped that her ants would be able to hold out against the larger army of ants that were on their way.
“You sent for me, General?” First Sergeant Shawn Meeks entered her quarters at attention.
“Take it easy, Shawn.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Meeks allowed for a slight bend in his knees. Tami laughed out loud.
“That ain’t easy,” she scolded him. “Sit down.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And enough with the ‘ma’am’ stuff.” She sat down behind her desk and sighed. “How many volunteers we got? Seventy? Eighty?”
“Current count is eighty-seven very raw volunteers. General McMillis is marching into the North Dome as we speak with over two hundred Earth-trained mercs.” Meeks waited for that to sink in on Tami. She understood what he was telling her. “It could be very bad, Tami.”
Battle Luna Page 28