by Paul Dayton
Some on the bridge laughed, but Hollander continued, “Please inform our New World Leader that I would be happy to meet him. We just have to take care of a small matter first.”
Hollander took one last look at the blue orb that was working its way past the top of the screen, and said to Bishop, “Shall we go? Comm, tell Jack to meet us in the Captain’s dining room.”
Jack wolfed down the top grade food served to her superiors as she listened to Bishop and Hollander. “It sounds somewhat suicidal,” Jack said after a long pause. “I mean, I’m game, it’s just that I’m not used to having my Captain send me on a suicidal mission.”
“Really? We do it to you all the time!” Bishop said with a smirk on his face. Getting serious, he added, “We actually don’t believe it is, Jack, and we’ve carefully worked out the possibilities. After all, you’re as close a daughter to me as I’ll ever have, and I…”
“I know, Captain Bishop. I was only kidding,” Jack interrupted.
“The fact is,” Hollander said, interrupting Bishop, “…that there are thousands of people on this base who are familiar with its operation. The majority can very well be civilians who had nothing to do with the scout’s destruction. That’s why we need your particular brand of service.”
“Of course, Commander. When do I leave?”
“We’ll let them squirm a bit. By now they must have tried to contact us, and soon we’ll be doing things that will make them very uncomfortable. Once they’ve tried to communicate a few times, we’ll send you down.”
‘Good’ Jack thought. It gave her time to wolf down the rest of the food. “Don’t bother dropping me on the surface, I’ll go down in my drop suit. It’ll impress the hell out of them,” she said between mouthfuls.
***
Jack thought over the events of the past few hours. She had been on the bridge for all the recent events, which allowed her to study Hirohito’s reactions. His voice over the comm sounded definitely panicky earlier as the convoy positioned itself in orbit around the base. After a few more attempts at communication from China Lunar, Hollander had sent Captain Bishop’s First Officer to communicate with the base as an added insult, saying that he was busy with more important things. In the meantime, some of them had approached the fusion device, and its targeting defense systems were activated, quickly obliterating two of the closer ones.
Their approach activated the unit’s second set of commands, and it immediately started burrowing. In a few seconds had reached the preset operational depth of 200 meters.
Commander Hirohito tried desperately to communicate again, but Jack could clearly see he still sounded arrogant.
“Sounds a little nervous,” Hollander commented.
“He should be shitting his pants.” Bishop added. They ignored the communication request, and Bishop simply said, “Our representative will be arriving shortly to inform you of your terms of surrender.” There was no more communication after that, and Jack left to get ready.
She was now looking out of the jump hole at the target area, allowing her suit comp to lock on. With one final breath, she let herself go and dropped through the opening.
Unlike her last jump, the moon had no atmosphere to slow her down and heat her suit up. Her suit automatically adjusted its course as it dropped, slowing itself down with thrusters and powering itself to the target. Within minutes, the ‘One Kilometer’ marker was displayed on the interior of her Maxon 4 visor and seconds later the two second warning word ‘LANDFALL’ flashed. Once she hit the surface, a cloud of lunar dust burst up and temporarily clouded her view.
She already knew there was no one near her. The closest object was a lunar vehicle approaching far in the distance, and her suit comp had already locked on it as they descended. A grey triangle was now superimposed on her visor, marking the location of the lunar vehicle as it approaching.
She ran to meet it and waited until it stopped. Without saying a word she tried to get in but the vehicle was too small, so she told them to lead the way. Surprised, they started moving while she easily kept up. The vehicle sped up, and Jack easily kept pace. They sped up again, and Jack’s suit changed its stride from a run to a jump, which easily allowed her to overtake the vehicle. It sped up again as it passed Jack, and she could see the occupants being tossed about as the vehicle was no longer able to absorb the bumps from the uneven ground. She quickened her jumps and laughed as the occupants barely kept themselves in their seats.
Her suit computer said they were traveling fifty-four kilometers per hour, and her display zeroed in on a faint object directly ahead. Once she amplified the view, she could see a pair of blast-doors under an overhang, and for fun she quickened her pace until she was traveling over one hundred kilometers per hour. Reaching the doors, she stopped and waited for the vehicle to arrive. Once they did, the guards punched in a code on their console and the doors opened, allowing Jack and the vehicle to move on into an air-lock.
The guards were not at all amused with her abilities, and one of them had a weapon pointed at her. The other noticed it and swatted the first soldier on the side of the helmet. He quickly put his weapon back in the holster.
Once the airlock cycled, they removed their helmets and motioned for her to do the same. It was obvious they had never seen a Maxon before. The back of the suit split open and Jack emerged, clad only in a halter top, shorts and light shoes. The only equipment she carried was on her wrist, a communication pad about 3 centimeters wide. The suit closed back up and stood there motionless as the men gawked, first at Jack’s tall, lithe body and then at the suit. Jack looked in turn at them, noting the round, short and squat body shape they had. Their antiquated space suits looked well filled and tight in places, but too long for their short frames. She was certain that they didn’t top 1.2 meters in height.
Seeing that they were too stunned to speak, she casually walked up to them and the one soldier quickly pulled his sidearm out again. Jack stopped, smiled and said, “What are you going to do, shoot me?” and waited for a response.
“You think we cannot?” The one that appeared to be in command said.
“Not if you want to live…” she raised her arm to display a communicator pad.
“This is my communicator. If I don’t reset the timer on the neutron bomb every five minutes, it will explode, killing everyone on this base.”
“I do not believe you! It will kill you too!” the officer said arrogantly, trying to hide his nervousness.
“Fine. I can’t wait until your superior officer finds out you’re making his decisions. If he ever does, that is…” Jack went back and found a guard chair to sit on near the air-lock door. “Let me know when you decide to call your commander. I’ve had a busy day attacking Pluto Deep Space Base and I need a rest. By the way…” Jack looked at her watch, “you have three minutes twenty seconds,” she said and she promptly closed her eyes.
“What kind of respect is this!” the same officer yelled and Jack reopened her eyes just in time to see him start to swing his pulse rifle butt. In one fluid motion she got up and her left arm moved lightening quick as she nudged the weapon out of the way while grabbing on to its stock. Her right arm shot out and gave the soldier a sharp jab to the throat. As he fell, she yanked the rifle out of his hands and in one move turned and aimed it at the other surprised soldier, who was too slow in reacting. He was trying to decide whether he should go for his rifle or not, and she simply said, “No.”
The bug eyed soldier was gasping and holding his throat, and she sat down again and gave the soldier a hard kick, shoving him to the other side of the corridor. After casually looking at her watch, she said, “You have two minutes fifty seconds to bring your commander to me,” and she closed her eyes once again.
The soldiers didn’t realize that her suit comp was informing her of their every move through her combat communicator as it stood there. “Lingering…Indecisive, weapon down, confused…” the suit was saying, until she finally yelled, “GO!” and the soldier to
re off down the corridor as fast as he could.
It made no difference. Commander Horihito, the commanding officer on duty and the one responsible for this mess was around the corner watching every move on the security camera they had set up. He stepped out in front of the panicky soldier and rammed his fist into the soldier’s nose just as he turned the corner, dropping him instantly to the floor. If the Emperor had seen this event, the Commander was sure he would have been demoted, if not worse. Far worse had happened to others for lesser reasons. His predecessor had been ejected through an air lock in an unrepairable, leaking space suit for having delivered a lukewarm dinner. After being pumped full of awareness and oxygenation drugs, he had spent hours dying a very slow and excruciating death.
The Commander gathered his thoughts and then slowly walked around the corner to face his enemy.
Jack was informed by her suit comp that a group of people were approaching her, but she continued to feign sleep until it was obvious she could hear their footsteps. She stretched, yawned and slowly got up as the Commander reached her, and then looked at her watch.
Reaching for her wrist comm, she quickly punched in an eight digit code in full view of the Commander and said the word ‘Jack’ into it, and the countdown reset itself. She looked down at the short and stubby Commander squarely in the eye and said, “My name is Jack.”
“I am Commander Hirohito,” the Commander replied.
Jack felt like laughing but kept it under control. The group looked like duplicates of the first two soldiers, short, squat, with fat fingers and appendages. On closer inspection, it didn’t appear as if they were fat, but rather that their body mass had evenly distributed itself around the body. They also somewhat resembled each other in appearance, the same pallor, similar facial features and so on. Jack knew that an estimated number of five thousand was far too little a group for successful breeding, and the results were obvious now.
“You are aware that the Neutron Fusion bomb is on a timer that is linked to me?”
“Yes. What do you want?” the Commander replied annoyed.
“I want to go somewhere comfortable where we can discuss your terms of surrender,” Jack said with a casual tone.
The Commander laughed heartily and finally said, “Your people send one person, and a woman at that, to discuss surrendering?” His tone got menacing as he added, “This is an insult to me, and to the Emperor.”
“One person is enough. AND EXPENDABLE. As to my being a woman, you will see soon enough whether this is important or not. For now, I’m simply here to provide instructions for you. The instructions are that you have two choices. Choice number 1: If you don’t cooperate, my ships will leave. The device’s battery that keeps the primary fuse from tripping is limited, and when the power has run to a preset level it will go off, and my ships will come back to clean up the dead bodies.”
Jack could see the Commander’s temper boiling under the surface. “And number 2?” he finally said.
“That’s what I want to discuss, and I assure you it’s one you can live with.”
The Commander thought for a moment and grudgingly said, “Very well. What about that?” he added pointing to the suit.
Jack looked over and said, “It’s fine where it is, but if it’s in your way you can move it.”
The Commander said something in a language Jack didn’t understand, and two soldiers went ahead to try to move the suit. They came up to the towering suit and grabbed it by the legs, but the suit didn’t budge. They tried shoving the suit over with no success, and out of anger one of them walked back and then rammed himself into it. He grunted as his body hit the suit hard, but it stayed immovable. Jack looked at Commander Hirohito and said, “The armored suit is heavy. The only way to move it is with a crane, or by my going inside it. Would you want that?” Jack didn’t tell him internal gyros were keeping it stabilized and the boots had magnetically locked into the floor.
The Commander didn’t like the idea of her going inside, and so he gave another command and the soldiers desisted. Turning to her, he said, “Follow me.”
“Oh, one more thing. Although it’s dumb, the suit has a self defense mechanism, so tell your soldiers not to do anything stupid.”
As they walked, Jack noticed that most of the cameras had been removed off the corridor walls. The lights didn’t turn on and off automatically either, leaving the job to the soldiers.
Once they arrived at a central corridor, they reached another security nexus, this one manned by four guards as short and stubby as the group she was with. She stopped and told the Commander, “Time for another delay,” and typed in a different code and said another word. The Commander’s eyebrows raised up and he said, “You have a different word every time?”
Jack pretended not to hear and instead raised her voice and said, “Base Computer!” but nothing happened. “Why doesn’t your base computer respond?” she asked.
“It’s busy,” Hirohito said with a sarcastic smile.
Passing by the security station Jack could see the four guards behind a barrier of sorts. She spied gun ports on the barrier, but she was far more interested in their reaction to Hirohito. They snapped to attention as he looked at them, and she could see fear in their eyes. As they passed, she looked back to see them gawking at her with the same surprised look on their face that the first two had.
Hirohito quickly ushered her down the corridor towards the central elevators. They turned left at the elevator junction and travelled down another hallway and up to an unmarked room. Inside the large space was a desk, chairs and several cabinets filled with what she guessed was old disks. On one of the desks sat an old computer, shut down, and from the ceiling hung a high powered LED light with a large reflector surrounding it. The room appeared as if it had not been used recently, and a thin layer of dust covered everything. Hirohito pulled a chair into the middle of the room, and after telling her to sit he asked sarcastically, “What is it you want to say?”
Jack looked around, placing the position of every soldier in her mind. After sitting down she casually looked at her wrist computer and unnoticeably touched a button, activating her Maxon. She looked up at the Commander and shook her head. “This is it?” Jack said with disdain. “I am to explain the terms to YOU?”
“I am authorized to represent the Emperor,” he said with pride, and then added, “You would do well to learn some respect.”
“Or what?” she asked but didn’t finish. He did a backhand that struck her hard across her cheek. His senseless move caught her off guard at first, but only for a second. One of the commander’s guards behind her laughed and as he did so she jumped back against the chair toward the light switch in the room, automatically adjusting her eyes to infrared. She had guessed correctly that these humans had gotten used to the weak lunar gravity, but she hadn’t.
Her jump put her between the soldiers behind her, and as her leg came up, her foot caught the short commander solidly under the chin. Hitting the wall behind her, she turned off the lights in one fluid motion. The four surprised soldiers were now in front of her. Two fell to their knees with quick jabs to their throats after they had turned, and the other two felt their knees give out as she broke them with solidly planted kicks. After dropping down to avoid weapons fire, Jack took the sidearms of the four soldiers as they writhed on the ground holding their knees or gasping for air.
The commander was hugging the wall and grunting into his communicator between tortured breaths. He was obviously in pain as he held his jaw, but Jack put him aside as she looked for the last two soldiers in the group. She spotted the first one almost immediately as he held up his weapon from behind a desk, but he was completely blind in the darkness and couldn’t shoot. The second soldier had dropped down and crouched behind a cabinet, but he was slowly and carefully making his way to the front of the room where the light switch was. He eventually met up with Hirohito, who motioned him to stay put. He leaned up to the soldier and whispered something in his ear, and the
soldier immediately grabbed his gun.
Jack could see that he was getting ready for something, and she guessed that they were waiting on the group of soldiers that were guarding the hallway outside, but they had already been neutralized by her Maxon.
Knowing she could handle these last few men, she pressed another button activating the suit’s secondary objective. She smiled as she imagined the look on the guards’ faces when they were confronted with the Maxon.
Taking one last look at Hirohito and the soldier squatting next to him, she jumped across the room towards them, landing on both their weapons and hitting them hard over the heads with the weapons she had in her hands. The last soldier heard the commotion but couldn’t see anything. Hirohito struggled, but she struck him again twice more with all her strength, and he slumped against the wall unconscious. She moved on the last soldier, taking the weapon from him and smacking him over the head at the same time. Grabbing him by the neck, she threw him towards the light switch, and as he fell the lights turned on.
“Do you have a restraint room on this floor?” No one answered, but the soldier near Hirohito seemed ready to do something. Jack pretended not to notice as his muscles tensed, and she asked again, “I’m only going to say this one…”
The soldier suddenly raised a side-arm he had hidden and Jack quickly shot him in the shoulder. He jerked hard as he felt the bullet rip through the muscles holding his AC joint together and let out a cry as his weapon fell to the side.
“…more time. Is there a jail, containment cell, or restraint room on this floor?”
Still no one answered, so she picked up the soldier next to her with the smashed knee, stomped on his lower leg and pulled the rest of him up with all her strength. He screamed in pain as her timer went off, reminding her that it was time to reset the neutron bomb. She let him slump on the floor as he writhed in pain and quickly reset the timer.