America One: War of the Worlds

by T I WADE

  “The whole door retracts into the rock of the mountain. The door was completely protected when the explosions occurred,” added Max.

  “They certainly work hard to make their bases livable,” stated Joey, one of Max’s men.

  For two hours they rested and ate and drank what little they had while their suits recharged. Sitting in the low tunnel in the blue shield they saw nothing, no movement whatsoever.

  “We have 8 hours of suit time before we need resupply,” stated Max to VIN up in the mother ship once they connected their helmets.

  “There must be food and water somewhere in the base,” replied VIN. “Check the storage units usually behind the wall opposite the entrance to the globe room. You have air to breathe. The shuttles will be up here in ten hours. I cannot let them return individually until we have found the other enemy fighters. Max, you either turn back now for Mattville, or head forward and survive on what you can find in their base. We have never known them to be armed with hand weapons. We were very shocked to find out the hard way that they had Masers on their ships. Shoot first if attacked, but I think you’ll find a bunch of very scared Matts down here, and you have my son to talk to them telepathically, over.”

  “How is the boss?” Max asked.

  “Doing OK. He is still beating himself up about the loss of crew, but casualties were going to happen sometime. We at Astermine have had it too good for too long, and he didn’t do very well with the loss of life during the first attack either. The boss is not a soldier, just a CEO who is not use to battle fatalities. Max, make your decision and let me know, over.”

  Max looked at the others, who all nodded to go forward, and replied.

  “We are going in VIN.”

  “OK, well done. Just remember to leave a few minutes of charge in your suits in case we have to fly in to pick you guys up. I would suggest you open the cavern door again so we can get in to rescue you. You don’t have time on your side, and we are heading out of range in a few minutes. Good luck, out.”

  Max signed off and they readied themselves to go door to door. The hand lasers were checked by firing a short burst at the roof of the cavern, then they opened the large door.

  “You hear any chatter with your helmet on?” Max asked Mars Noble.

  “Negative, very quiet on the telepathic airwaves. My helmet wouldn’t stop any thoughts,” Mars replied.

  Carefully they entered the blue shielded tunnel on the other side of the cavern one by one, and as VIN had taught them, at least ten steps apart when they walked across the empty cavern floor and through the tunnel. It was nearly impossible to run in a spacesuit. Mars and Max went first. The rest waited for orders.

  They exited the shield at the end of the tunnel and the inside of the Matt base looked the same as all the others, and the doors were all closed.

  “There is the globe room door. That will lead us to the command center. Maybe we can see the other base in the command center,” suggested Mars. “My dad told me that on DX2017 or in one of the bases I can’t remember which, he saw a camera showing him the outside. It worked for a while then went dead.”

  “I wonder why the Matts have these blue shields activated inside their base?” Mars asked seconds before he was about to open the door to the globe room.

  “I think that they must have had to use them when the first explosion occurred,” replied Max. “I’ve had much time analyzing the outlay of Mattville, and how these guys built anything in space without real spacesuits. They built everything in the vacuum of space while inside these shields”.

  “That’s right! Thanks Max,” exclaimed Mars. “Something I have been wondering about for years just clicked. They couldn’t have built anything without these shields.”

  “Then that’s why they went for our shields every time they attacked,” added Vitalily.

  “But how did SB-I destroy the cavern shield? They used Masers to destroy ours, and we know that our laser beams just increase the energy of the shield. They don’t destroy it?” Mars asked.

  “I think that SB-I was so close, that the energy blast and the explosion of the enemy ship exiting was too much for the shield,” replied Max. “Captain Pete reckons that the shield can take several energy blasts from hundreds, or thousands of miles away, but not from point blank range. That’s why the Matts don’t fly with their shields extended. They know the limitations of the shields. We are still learning those limitations.”

  “Then how did Mattville explode?” Mars asked.

  “I think the shield wasn’t extended at the time, the cavern open and SB-I’s laser blast went right in and the exploding energy inside the cavern caused a lightning bolt of pure energy to fizzle down into the lower levels, or caught several fully fueled ships about to take off, and the explosion from those ships blew up the power plants. Now open the door Mars and let us see what’s inside?”

  Mars pressed the panel, and the door to the globe room opened. Inside there was no blue shield, and the room was empty of people. The globes, the same ones in Mattville were there, and so were the tiny light depicting the reinforcements on their way from Ceres.

  The command room was also empty, and the door to the cryogenic chambers found in the other bases didn’t exist. There was no door panel.

  “Nobody would have been hurt in here, and the air is good” stated Mars looking at his suit readouts on his arm.

  “They must have run for cover,” Max replied.

  “There is still no chatter in my head, not even a whisper.” added Mars.

  They headed back out and back into the main base. There were the usual three doors to the storage rooms, and they were opened one by one.

  Again there was nobody in the rooms, and in two of the three rooms there was ample growth of vegetation inside a blue shield. It looked exactly like the inside of one of their shields back at the Retreat.

  The third room had vats of water, fruit and vegetables. There were oranges, bananas, apples, and several types of berries grown in the other two rooms. The usual massive vats of water were nearly empty, and Mars told Max that he bet that the vats held the water from Mattville, and that the base was running out of the precious liquid.

  They had been in several bases and they all knew exactly where the stairs was down to the lower level. What interested Mars was that the room had the usual stairs up to the second level above the command room, and he suggested to up and clear the area before they head down.

  “VIN to Max, VIN to Max, a report please,” stated VIN gain coming over the horizon.

  “We’ve checked the globe room and command center. Both empty but the globes are there. We have found food production under two blue shields, supplies of fruit, and we have found water so we can survive in here for a while. We are checking up the stairs before heading down, over.”

  “Max, good idea. Report what you find.”

  There were two door panels on the upper floor, Mars pressed the first one, the others had hand lasers at the ready, and as they did at each door, protected themselves stepping back behind the sides of the door as it opened.

  “How many rooms empty of people are we going to find?’ Mars asked Max as they entered the room.

  This room was again a storage room, and the crew realized that they had hit the jackpot. Instead of people, there were dozens of black boxes on shelves.

  “Dad, you are not going to believe this?” Mars asked his father.

  “Go on, son,” Mars replied.

  “Twenty…22…28…32 black boxes, 32 blue shields. This first room is full of boxes of blue shields.”

  “Wow!” was all VIN could say.

  The second room had other different types of what looked like electrical supplies. Most of the items nobody had ever seen before.

  “Any weapons, or weapon-type looking electronics?” VIN asked.

  “Negative, but I think we have a decade or two of new inventions, whatever these things are,” replied Max. “I wish we had found some of this stuff in Mattville. We could
have pulled it apart by now.”

  “It looks like the shuttles have to return ASAP,” VIN replied and asked them to clear the rest of the base. “Remember guys, check the toilet, and sometimes there is a rear area behind the food stores,”

  The toilet was empty. Mars asked Max to help him remove his helmet, sniffed the air and had Max screw his helmet back on. This toilet had been recently used.

  The rear area certainly wasn’t empty. There was a pile of black soil in a large mound, and seven large 15-foot tall cubed square supplies of something covered over with some sort of cloth. Mars and Max pulled the first two cloths away and gasped. They were looking at mountains of tons of silver metal, each square block was perfect ingots of metal about a foot cubed. They could see the edges of the cubes piled up

  They pulled all the covers off and each was the same underneath, except the colors varied between light silver, and dark greyish metals colors.

  “Dad, what is 15 times 15 times 15?” Mars asked.

  “Three thousand three hundred and seventy-five, why?”

  “Times that by seven, Dad,” Mars asked.

  “What have you found, son? The number is 23,625.”

  “One foot cubed ingots of what looks like pure refined Rare earth metals, 23625 ingots in total,” Mars replied.

  He got no answer for several seconds.

  “Mars, try to pick one up,” asked Igor from high above.

  “Can’t” replied Mars “the top of the square block is too high. Igor you do the math on a lump of metal a foot cubed.”

  Max and the others smiled and headed for where they knew would be a door in the floor to a lower level. Max pushed the red glowing panel, and backed away as the door opened. Nothing happened once the door slid open, but the open hole to the lower level was large, far larger than any door in any of the other bases.

  Max and Mars both peered down and saw a staircase heading down, a double width staircase, and there was light down there.

  Slowly and carefully, and one by one Max and Mars headed down the stairs telling Joey and the others to keep guard above in case somebody wanted to trap them down there.

  Mars and Max entered into the biggest underground cavern they had ever seen. It was the mine of the Matts.

  It was massive, far bigger than the spaceship caverns, far bigger than the underground sea. They could just see the rear of the cavern about 150 yards away.

  There were a hundred stairs down to the cavern floor, and they found downed tools and machinery as if the mining crew had left in a hurry.

  “They have been mining in here for decades, I reckon centuries,” stated Max, totally shocked at what he was seeing.

  “Look at that yellow vein down that wall!” stated Mars looking at the right-hand sidewall of the cavern.

  “VIN, can you hear me?” Max asked.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Joey from above. “They are about to head over the horizon again. I can relay what you want to say Max.”

  “Tell VIN, that we have just found the mother lode of mines. There is a vein of what looks like nearly pure gold on one wall. It is about 100 yards wide, a 100 feet high, and looks so nice I want to take a bite out of it, it’s so yellow.”

  Mars and Max counted the dropped tools. Hammers, mining roots, there was even a square smoking machine of some sort that was making a pure gold ingot. Somebody had turned it off before they had left.

  “I didn’t see any gold ingots up there,” remarked Max.

  “Me neither,” replied Mars. “I’ve counted the tools. I think there were at least a hundred people working down here. Where are they?” He looked around and found what he was looking for—a red door panel. There was a panel directly under the stairs they had walked down.

  “Vitalily, please come down,” ordered Max. “Joey, Pete, Mike, you protect the door. Vitalily, we have a door to open down here.”

  If they had thought they had found treasure, what was behind the door shocked them to their cores.

  Mars pressed he panel once Vitalily was with them and the lights in a second massive cavern blinked on, and showing them more gold ingots that they had ever seen. Even compared to the gold they had found at the Pig’s Snout, this was utterly unbelievable.

  The three men looked and said nothing for a whole minute.

  “You guys OK down there?” asked Joey worried.

  “I think so. Where is everybody?” replied Mars weakly. “Max, I was there when we opened the Pig’s Snout and saw the gold chests, thousands of them. This is at least a hundred times more, a thousand times more. We couldn’t take all this in our lifetimes, even our children’s lifetimes.”

  The new cavern was not as high as the mine, but was at least a few hundred feet across and the same wide. Again there were foot-cubed ingots, just like they had seen in the machine. The gold ingots were in square piles of 15 wide, long and high with corridors around each cube.

  Mars and Max went around the walls looking for any doors, and counting the rows at the same time.

  “No doors my side,” stated Mars.

  “I’ve found one, a big one” replied Max.

  “Fifteen lines of fifteen square piles of gold,” added Mars. “I think you are right, but each pile is perfect. There must be more.” He reached Max without finding a red panel, and Max pushed the panel to see lights blink on in the new room.

  This cavern was smaller, about half the size of the last one, and only a quarter full of gold, and this time there were more piles of the silver metals, the same amount as they had found upstairs.

  The shock was wearing off and they counted other 14 piles of gold, another one was been built and several unfinished built piles of the silver metals.

  “I think we can retire for a while with all this,” stated Max sitting down on a sort of chair by the door. He was still trying to take this all in.

  Then they remembered that time was not on their side, and there were no more doors down here, at least no red door panels. The three men checked carefully, not finding a door in either of the storage warehouses, and returned to the mine.

  It took all three of them 30 minutes going along all the walls in the base looking for any signs of a door. Then they looked at every inch of the floor and ended up in the area the ingot smelter was.

  “No doors,” stated Mars seeing a brand new cooling block of gold on a trolley. He wanted to pick it up and even in the light Martian gravity, he had to work hard to lift it.

  “No doors,” added Vitalily and Max together.

  “Time is running guys,” remarked Joey from above.

  “I’ll carry this up,” Mars stated. “Max try and remember the numbers of piles, let’s check out the upstairs. There must be a door somewhere.”

  If there was a door, there wasn’t a Panel to go with it, and they ran out of time trying to find one.

  Chapter 18

  War of the Worlds–Act Three

  “What do you think, Max?” VIN asked his crew after America Two came over the horizon.

  “We have thirty minutes left in our suits. With one more recharge, at worst we could get back up the tunnel, reach the train and get back to Mattville. Or you come and pick us up, and we can have all the black boxes, the electronics, and a few of the silver and gold ingots ready to be picked up. The black boxes are worth it by themselves,” replied Max.

  “We could shut the black boxes in the tunnels down, and leave the front door open,” added Mars. “Nobody is going to come visiting if there is no atmosphere, today or forever.”

  “Max, crap! We have three bogeys on radar!” shouted VIN. “Incoming, two miles east of you at 5,000 feet.”

  “The outer door is closed, Dad,” replied Mars as he turned and suddenly saw the large outer door begin to open. “Was closed,” Mars added. “Dad, the door is opening. I think we’ll have company soon.”

  “Take cover,” ordered VIN. “Stay hidden in the blue shields. We can shoot them down from up here, but I want to see what they do first. Mayb
e they want to talk. I believe we now have the coordinates of their other door. It is a mile east of you, a second vertical door inside the next mountain to you, Max.”

  “They can’t get out of their ships, Dad, there is no atmosphere in here for them, over.”

  “I don’t think they want to get out, son. I think they know you are in there, and they might arrive firing into the cavern.” If they shoot, shoot back. If they want to talk, Mars, talk back. They must know we can communicate telepathically. Your hand lasers will damage them. Max, Vitalily, remember your lasers aren’t as powerful as the ones Mars’ robots had, but you could still damage their ships.

  As the five men scrambled across the large cavern to the exit tunnel as fast as their spacesuits would let them, the door continued to open. The spaceships were fast and the first ship entered the cavern just as the door fully opened. Mars was still carrying his gold, and gently slipped through into the blue shield as the fighter hovered in and began turning to face the other direction—towards the blue shield on the command center side of the cavern.

  Suddenly it fired and the blast rocked the shield they were in.

  Max and the crew got down on the floor and wiggled their head and shoulders through the shield wall as a second fighter entered the large cavern. It turned towards them, as the first fighter spewed Maser beam down into the tunnel, the other side of the cavern.

  “Fire at both!” shouted Max and all five lasers erupted at the same time as the spacecraft’s forward pilot looked at them straight in the eyes. Mars could see the Matt pilot staring straight at him as he pulled his trigger and the spacecraft suddenly exploded in a blast of bright blue light.

  The men’s bodies were literally forced back into the shield by the blast that wobbled the shield wall like jelly. Then a second explosion rocked them again and the light in the cavern, and their shield was so bright that they all closed their eyes from the intense light.

  Mars opened his eyes. He checked for pain. He didn’t have any. The shield was still around them and he saw another blast light up the cavern from outside, and the door began to close.