by B. V. Larson
“I see… Did this summons come a few minutes after she found out my mission failed and I was buried in rock?”
Graves squirmed, just a little. “It might appear that way. But I’m sure Tribune Turov had good reasons—”
“—I’m sure she had excellent reasons, sir. The very best. Now then, when can I expect to enjoy another jaunt into the blue?”
Graves worked his tapper for a full minute before answering. “Tonight. Report back to the casting couch at around ten p.m. They’ll be ready for you then.”
I stood up, and so did Graves. With a startled glance at Graves, the rest of the lounging, primus-ranked officers did the same.
Graves saluted me sternly. “Thank you for your service McGill… in advance.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
I left them then, and they fell back to jawing about budgets and security. They didn’t seem to care much if I lived or died—but at least Graves knew what he was asking me to do.
-11-
Since I had a few hours left to live, I hunted down the adjunct bio named Dawn who’d revived me. She seemed surprised at first, but soon she was smiling. I talked her up then down again, and she finally let me take her to the only dive bar on the base.
“You like this stuff?” she asked, sipping her rocket fuel dubiously.
“It grows on you.”
We talked, and we laughed, but we didn’t have time for much else. Right about when I might have made a move, my tapper went off. The unwelcome craggy face of Primus Graves stared up at me from my forearm.
“The schedule has been updated, McGill. You’re launching at 2100 hours. Get downstairs half an hour early to suit-up.”
“What’s the hurry, sir?”
“Central wants answers. We’ve got to get a valid report from the depths of that hellhole before morning.”
“In that case, I’m your man!”
Looking up, I saw disappointment on Dawn’s pretty face. I reached out a big gloved paw and put it over her tiny hand.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back before you know it. We’ll have breakfast—or lunch, maybe.”
Her mouth smiled, but it flickered out. “Are you really going to smash yourself into Moon rocks again? That seems unfair. Can’t they get another victim?”
“Don’t even talk like that, girl. I don’t want anyone else stealing my glory. Whatever is lurking under our feet right now, I want to see it first.”
She laughed, and she kissed me.
Damn. I was really going to be missing out. I sure hoped I didn’t get myself permed before I could find my way back to her.
Marching down to the casting chamber, I whistled a happy tune. Floramel was down there waiting, and Etta too. They both looked like pissed cats. Their arms were crossed and their chins lowered.
“Uh…” I said. “Is it time for me to plug in?”
“No,” Floramel said. “It’s time for your daughter to stop being an obstructionist.”
“The circuits aren’t clean. They aren’t tested. We brought them up here in a hurry, fired a man off and killed him.”
“He’s right here, Etta. He’s unharmed and ready to go again.”
“My father’s sanity notwithstanding, the system isn’t… isn’t… it’s not safe yet. I have to run a full diagnostic, and that will take well into the morning. So—”
Floramel shook her head. “That’s not how events are going to proceed. Etta, you are relieved of your duties until further notice. Now, exit the lab before I call for security.”
“Whoa!” I said, stepping forward. “Ladies, ladies… let’s not forget ourselves.”
“We almost permed you last time, Dad,” Etta said. “You don’t want to know how close it was.”
I heard a dangerous note in her voice. Only a father of a girl like Etta would recognize it. By Earth standards, she wasn’t entirely right in the head. In fact, she’d already killed her boss Floramel once in the past. No one knew about that, but the truth worried me sometimes, late at night.
Sure, sure, I was a stone-cold killer myself. I’d killed all sorts of people—most of whom needed a good killing on a regular basis. But even a man like me doesn’t want to see that kind of behavior in his own daughter. Somehow, I wanted her to be different than me.
My mind fast-forwarded through the tense words the two women were still spitting at each other. They were like alley-cats getting ready to throw down on the spot. I didn’t think Floramel had any idea what she was getting into. Sure, she was technically in authority—but that didn’t mean squat to any McGill when push came to shove.
“Hold on, hold on,” I said. “I’ve got a solution that will please everyone.”
Floramel glanced at me. “What’s that?”
“This time, how about we don’t try to cast me into the sphere through those stardust walls. Instead, you can airmail me to that other site, where you found the Mogwa graveyard.”
They both blinked at me.
“Have you got approval for this change?”
I nodded. “Graves okayed it just a few hours ago.”
They both looked dubious, but at least the yellow light of murder was fading in Etta’s eyes.
“That wouldn’t be as dangerous, would it?” I pressed. “See, if you send me to that relatively shallow destination, we’ll be testing the equipment and making sure it’s working. If the strange properties of this big ball we’re all standing on are the cause of the trouble, we’ll know it when things go right this time out.”
“Going to the Mogwa ship wasn’t even suggested in the briefing I attended earlier today,” Floramel complained.
“Don’t worry about that. Just check, I have approval from Graves.”
I flicked the last few minutes of my conversation on the observation deck from my tapper to hers. She listened to it, then she looked up, surprised.
“I… I guess that changes things.”
“Yes,” Etta said, stepping closer to us both. “It’s a great idea. I’ll get the time I need to run diagnostics, and even if the machine does glitch—we’ll be able to recover you. There’s no reason to think the casting device won’t get a good lock on your signal inside the Mogwa ship. It’s only a few hundred meters down, and the rock is quite normal. You could go there safely with a teleport suit if you had to.”
“There, see?” I asked, throwing my arms wide. “No need to fret! Let’s get started.”
I walked up to the device and began screwing with the straps and things. I whistled a cheerful tune while I did it.
Both the women watched me, then eyed one another stiffly for another minute or so. But soon they began moving and cooperating again. There was a frosty chill in the air, but at least I no longer believed Etta was plotting her next murder.
Floramel left eventually, and Etta slid a helmet over my head. It had more wires attached to it than an old-fashioned Christmas tree.
“You still don’t have to do this, Dad,” she complained.
“I surely do! Not only am I following orders, I want to go. Aren’t you curious to find out what’s really down there?”
She sighed and hooked me up. About twenty minutes later, Floramel came back and the two women watched me light up inside. My guts turned into a ball of plasma—or whatever the hell happened to a man when that infernal machine fired up—and I vanished into nothingness.
-12-
I have to admit, when I opened my squinched-shut eyes and realized I wasn’t being shat out of a revival machine again, I was kind of surprised.
My breathing was loud in my ears. That’s a normal thing in a spacesuit, but it seemed magnified. I realized after a second that the effect was due to the utter silence around me. I was in an underground tomb, after all.
Flipping on my suit lights, which I’d neglected to do before I jumped, I saw two pillars of bright light shine out of my chest plate.
Dust. Swirling gray dust, and darkness. A few odd shapes lo
omed.
I turned on more lights—every light I had, to be honest. I hadn’t been down in the guts of the Moon for more than thirty seconds, but I was already feeling a little creeped out.
Turning this way and that, I bumped my helmet into something. It was the roof. Reaching up a gloved hand, I ran it over a smooth, curved surface. It looked like metal, but it was burnished with dark stains.
Had a fire stained the roof with black soot long ago? It seemed that it had.
Looking down at the strapped-in dead aliens, I did a slow scan, taking in everything. All around me were dusty, ash-covered lumps. The lumps were big, maybe the size of a small man or a large dog. I took a step to the nearest and brushed off the drifting gray stuff.
It really was ash, mostly. Underneath, I found a burnt body. The alien was a Mogwa, I could tell that in an instant.
Moving from mound to mound, I confirmed a dozen of them—then guessed there were a few hundred more in the chamber. They were all Mogwa troops. Some were burned, others intact. Either way, they were all long, long dead.
“What happened here?” I asked aloud. “And how did you poor boys manage to get yourselves buried in the crust of our Moon?”
The dead rarely answer our questions, and it was the same with these guys. They lay mute in their ash heaps. It was up to me to determine their fate.
“I’m assuming you ladies up at the base can hear me,” I said as I walked around. “I’ll give you a running report on what I find down here.”
“We can hear you, McGill,” Floramel’s voice buzzed in my earpiece.
I almost jumped out of my skin. “Wow! That’s new tech!”
“Just an improvement,” she said. “The casting device holds a pathway open to your location after transmission. After years of experimentation, we’ve managed to make the communication link go both ways.”
“Makes sense…” I said, relieved to know they could hear me. It made my survival much more likely. “Anyways, I’m walking among Mogwa soldiers. Dead ones. They’re buried in ash. The strange thing is the roof of this ship—I’m assuming it’s a ship, or a capsule of some kind—is curved and scorched. It seems like there’s a big crease or dent down the middle of it.”
“Try finding an exit.”
I searched for maybe three long minutes. At last, I found a hatch I could open. Crawling out, I discovered a shocking thing: the Mogwa ship was lodged in the mouth of the Skay. It had been partially crushed, probably during an invasion attempt. The hatch I’d chosen led out to the vast, hollow interior.
I slid off the Mogwa ship’s dented hull and stood next to it. Looking around, I realized I had to be walking around on the interior hull of the Skay.
The place was dark—really dark. It was near total blackness for dozens of kilometers. That, more than anything else, indicated to me that this Skay was well and truly dead.
“It’s confirmed,” I said. “This is a Skay, it has to be. I’m walking inverted—meaning the gravity is enough from the hull of the alien vessel to keep me adhered to it.”
“So odd…” Etta said, speaking up for the first time. “It’s strange to think our Moon has been a dead enemy wreck all these years. Imagine all the star-struck lovers who’ve looked up at the Moon and felt romantic. What a shock this will be when they find out.”
“They aren’t going to find out,” Floramel said sharply. “Not unless Central wants them to.”
The women finally fell quiet after that, so I had a look around.
“This Mogwa ship is kind of like a lifter, but somewhat smaller. It might hold three hundred soldiers, not a thousand like one of our landing vessels.”
“Forget the ship. Look around at the Skay. Is there any sign that some of its subsystems could still be operational?”
“Uh… I doubt it. This thing has been buried here for thousands of years. Maybe millions.”
“So far, our analysis places it at around ten to thirty thousand years of age.”
“Thirty thousand, huh? Back far enough that we would have forgotten... Has it always been our Moon, or did this Skay crash into an older natural satellite, or what?”
“It seems likely that it did collide with Earth’s original Moon, making it larger. The material from that smaller body has encrusted the Skay and perhaps other strikes from various asteroids and comets over time—”
“Wait a minute,” I complained. “I thought our Moon was billions of years old. Scientists have always said that.”
“Well…” Floramel said, hesitating.
“Dad,” Etta said, “you should know by now that scientists always make up theories based on observable data, but it’s largely guesswork. Not long ago, some of the best minds on Earth were convinced that the Moon would be so thickly covered in dust that the Apollo landers would sink into it like quicksand and vanish.”
“Ha ha!”
Floramel cleared her throat, clearly unhappy with this turn of the conversation. “Let me point out that the clock is ticking, James. Also, I might add that Earth scientists aren’t fools. Rocks returned to Earth were correctly dated to a billion years or so back—it was only the composition and original size of the Moon that was incorrectly calculated.”
“I’ll say,” I said, and I checked my chronometer. I’d wasted a good eight minutes climbing around and yakking. “I’ll have to find a convenient place to die soon…”
“No you don’t—not yet,” Etta said quickly. “We’ve updated our tech in that department, too. You’ve got at least half an hour.”
I whooped. This version of McGill had some juice left in him.
Using some boot-jets I’d brought with me, I soared up into the dark heart of the Skay and did some pinging. There wasn’t much light, and my suit lights couldn’t shine for thousands of meters. But I did have some basic LIDAR gear that gave me a few pings of information.
“There’s a large structure ahead, a few kilometers from the landing spot where we found the Mogwa ship. I’m going to go check that out.”
After several minutes of skimming over the pitch-black surface, I came to a battlefield. There were Mogwa invaders and Skay defenders everywhere. Thousands of them were locked forever in violent embraces. The Skay creatures were similar to those I’d seen before back on Armor World, but with a flavor of their own.
These things resembled big bears with metal claws and cameras for eyes. They were constructs of flesh and metal, I knew. Every Skay created cyborgs designed to be as deadly as possible. Every individual Skay seemed to have its own version of such defensive creatures, unique to their own interior worlds.
“Looks like this was a full-scale invasion,” I told the girls. “The Mogwa must have cracked open the Skay and gotten in somehow. They tried to storm the Skay’s organs with ground troops—but I guess they failed to escape when it died around them.”
“Yes…” Floramel answered, “the carnage looks terrific. Any signs of life?”
I snorted. “You just told me it’s been thirty thousand years.”
“Right, but machines like the Skay don’t die easily.”
Troubled, I soared onward over the battlefield. It was a strange, eerie sight to behold. A vast struggle with all the bodies still here, frozen in time and vacuum. They hadn’t even rotted in many cases. The lack of air and the low temperatures had kept them looking fresh.
To my surprise, something came at me out of the hanging gloom. It looked like a wall at first—a vast wall of stacked grit. I hit the brakes hard, but almost slammed into it.
“Holy shit! I almost offed myself!”
“Careful, Daddy.”
I skirted the wall for a bit, getting an inkling of what it was. Soon, I was certain.
“I’ve seen this kind of thing before. It’s a Skay cooling tower.”
“A what?” Floramel asked.
I described it to her, and she seemed intrigued. “You say you once did battle with a Skay inside such a cooling tower?”
“That’s right.”
�
��Why haven’t I read that in a report?”
“It must be classified, or something.”
Floramel snorted in irritation. The truth was, she had a high-level security clearance, but it didn’t quite reach far enough to be privy to the secrets of the Skay.
Working from memory, I searched around the base of the tower. Soon, I found a crumpled hole. It was half caved-in due to the efforts of the Mogwa soldiers I’d been gliding above, but after climbing over them into a tunnel, I managed to get inside the tower.
Memories came flooding back as I slogged up and up through the spiraling tunnels. I felt puffs of air hit my spacesuit now and then—the Skay still held an atmosphere of sorts—but I kept on climbing.
“…McGill… interference… probably should… back soon.”
“Uh…” I said, taking what I could from Floramel’s transmission. “I’ll kill myself real soon, I swear. I just want to see the CPU again.”
“…doubtful… time allows… signal strength low.”
“That’s right, I’m doing just fine. Hold onto your panties, I’m almost there.”
Soon, I came out into a wide open area. It was the center of the heat pipe that I’d been climbing through. I’d only seen such a place once before, and I hadn’t made it out of that situation alive, either.
Down below me there wasn’t any hot breath coming up in the way of a greeting. I’d been broadcasting, too, trying to get the Skay to wake up and talk to me. It hadn’t made a peep so far.
The air was cold. I could feel it through my suit.
“Ah well. This thing is well and truly dead.”
I opened my faceplate then. A frosty breath puffed down into my suit—or maybe the heat all left my suit, flowing out and mixing with the ancient frozen gasses of thirty thousand years past.
I’d braced myself for a big stink—but it didn’t come. All the bodies were still here, frozen in time and vacuum. They hadn’t even rotted in many cases. The lack of air and the low temperatures had kept them looking fresh. The centuries had changed the odor of the battlefield outside to a dead, neutral scent.