Ally looked concerned by that claim. “How broad?”
The cockpit began trembling as Matt ran his hand over the brailed control dash. Suddenly, a hologram of planets, moons, and a giant star exploded to life in front of them with a brilliant flash. At that same moment, the viewport band around the cockpit depolarized. Matt now had a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view of the outside hangar.
Ally’s eyes twinkled with awe at the display of strange planets and a star she did not recognize. “I don’t think that’s our solar system.”
Matt swiped the hologram and another one appeared. Rotating on the same orbital plane around a yellow sun were nine planets, including a familiar blue orb. “Here we are. So… we only need to go…” Matt zoomed in on Earth to reveal a tiny grey dot orbiting nearby. He tapped it with a finger and a course was instantly plotted. The Pony began to hover off the ground, its landing struts still anchored to the damaged berth. Matt could not risk breaking free of it without compromising the integrity of the ship’s hull. Rossiter had to find a way to free them. He peered through the viewport to see Rossiter still out there, fiddling with the console like a madman conducting a symphony. The walls and ceiling were starting to collapse all around him. “Come on, come on…” Matt whispered. “You can do it.”
Suddenly, the craft’s hull was battered by a massive falling boulder. The blow was not powerful enough to knock them free of the berthing clamps, but it did knock the ship of its axis, causing Ally to lose her balance. “Shit! What’s he doing out there?”
Matt tilted the steering horn enough to correct the craft’s propulsion engines with more downward thrust, careful not to snap the berthing clamps prematurely.
Then a beam of sunlight, almost as if there was a magnifying lens at the top of the hangar’s ceiling, struck their eyes. Both Matt and Ally squinted from the harsh burst of light. The ceiling was cracking open like the shell of an egg and daylight was starting to flood into the interior.
Another heavy jolt.
Followed by another.
Suddenly, Matt felt the ship rise higher. The two berthing clamps had sheared off and fallen away. They were free.
He peered back out the viewport, hoping to see Rossiter still standing there through the swirling dust, but the area had disappeared completely, buried under smoke and rubble. Everything began shaking and vibrating harder now as a horrible roar filled their ears. It was the sound of crashing stone and screaming steel. Matt did not even warn Ally. He just yanked the steering horn down and sent the craft surging upward like a launched missile.
Gripping the horn, Matt leaned back in the circular brace and the entire platform tilted upward as if on a gimbal. As he did so, the holographic console also moved with him, matching his angle. He spotted a fissure in the hangar’s domed ceiling and targeted it. When his thumbs found the small trigger indents on the steering horn, he pressed them and the coilguns underneath the craft vomited hot plasma.
The deafening thunderclap caused Ally to instinctively duck and cover her ears, bracing for a colossal impact as Matt continued firing on the hangar’s ceiling while rocketing towards it. The salvo cut through solid limestone and steel like they were made of whipped cream. He yanked the steering horn down again and the craft vaulted up at a steeper angle.
When the craft burst through the collapsing hangar, it rapidly kept climbing into the morning sky, its rattlesnake engines chittering as it disappeared into a blanket of clouds.
On the mountain below, fire and smoke belched as the last remaining pillar of the ancient monastery collapsed into its own footprint, disappearing into a massive crater of rubble and ruin.
Twenty-Nine
The rattlesnake chittering underneath them turned into a thunderous roar as Matt and Ally punched through a canopy of silky clouds.
On either side of her peripheral, Ally could see the blue haze sliding to black as they breached the final frontier of Earth’s gaseous envelope. It had been less than three minutes since they had climbed into the craft and taken off. They were now searing through the vacuum, headed towards the Moon.
The Death Pony’s navigational systems had already accounted for any nearby orbiting satellites that might have posed a hazard to their flight path, but the strain on Matt’s face was mostly due to his concerns about landing. The last time he attempted one in a Death Pony he barely came out unscathed. He continued to guide the craft along the animated waypoint that the console had projected into his retinas, silently praying some type of auto-docking sequence would trigger once they drew closer to Cromwell’s base.
He swung around to check on Ally. “Still with me back there?”
Ally was crouched against the back wall of the cockpit, her eyes filled with a mix of paralyzing fear and absolute wonder. There was nothing but space in front of her. With Earth already far behind, they were now sailing on an endlessly dark and lonely sea. It was both humbling and frightening. “I can’t believe I’m in space… holy shit…”
Matt was also overwhelmed by the view. He had been up here numerous times, both on deployment and the return trip home, but he still had to force himself to calmly refocus. His eyes ticked rapidly over the stream of unintelligible data being presented to him in real-time. Everything on the flight console appeared to be nominal. There were no red flashing glyphs and no bleating alarms. At least for the time being. He knew that could change any second as they were speeding towards the unknown with nothing more than a clutch of hope. He pivoted his eyes to the object that now filled three-quarters of the craft’s viewport. It was their first close view of the Moon’s barren and foreboding surface. “Helluva way to spend some time together, huh?”
Ally’s eyes were also glued to the Moon as it came into focus with stark clarity. “Look at that,” she whispered, completely awestruck.
It was getting larger and larger in the viewport by the second, its crater-pocked surface revealing the eons of cosmic violence it had endured. It was no longer a distant image in their viewport, but now a full-scale planetary body.
Matt kept his eyes on the display in front of him, unable to read any of the information. Pushing through the fatigue, he was now running on nothing but adrenaline. “I’d say we’re about one-hundred-and-ninety clicks out, give or take.”
Ally continued to watch the Moon draw closer, rising to meet them. “What do you think our rate of speed is?”
“I shudder to think.” Holding his pre-ordained trajectory, Matt brought the pony down low over the Moon’s surface. The seemingly endless grey landscape of ancient impact craters, basins, and shattered massifs streaked by underneath them in a dizzying blur. It was disorientating to stare at it for too long, so he focused on the desolate view in front of them. The sun was shining like God’s spotlight, yet the crater-pocked horizon was met with a jet-black deepness that almost looked tangible. There were also no visible stars due to the surface glares of both the Moon and the Earth. Matt was certainly no military pilot, but he was able to keep the craft steady and smooth, following the vectored waypoints whenever the craft informed him to alter their trajectory slightly. But as the craft swung around to meet the far side of the Moon, the cockpit suddenly dimmed. All of Matt’s readouts and console data vanished in a blink.
“What just happened?” asked Ally, concern now riddled across her face.
“I—I don’t know…” The color had drained from Matt as the craft began to perform maneuvers out of his control. He let go of the steering horn and the pony autonomously rotated upside down, repositioning itself as it banked into a new orbit. Blinking away vertigo, Matt realized what was happening and breathed a much-welcomed sigh of relief. “I think it’s performing its own orbital insertion maneuver.” He swung around to Ally. “We must be getting close.”
Ally nodded, her eyes swimming against the sudden jolt of dizziness. Outside, what was just upside down was now right side up.
As the Death Pony crested the rim of an enormous crater, it plunged into the mouth of it, threading
along a vast canyon of artificial piping that stretched from one end to the other. The craft skimmed gracefully over it until it ascended. As it did so, Matt’s eyes wandered over the inhospitable surface. There was nothing to tame his focus until his eyes locked onto the adjacent rim of the crater.
Out there, a coral reef of machinery began to take form. There was an array of strange-looking dishes and small ventilation towers set against the endless expanse. And perched neatly in the center was a dome-shaped structure: Cromwell’s lunar base.
Like all Wraith architecture, it appeared brutalist and imposing, yet also highly functional. If anything, a testament to his technological superiority over mankind. Humans may have walked on the Moon, but Cromwell had made it his Dominion. It was his secret Empire, hidden from Earth and all its technological curiosities.
The cockpit grew deathly quiet as Matt and Ally stared anxiously at their impending destination. All they could do now was wait until the ship docked. The craft glided towards a triangular-shaped hangar door. The center retracted like a small iris, just wide enough for the pony to slip through the invisible forcefield that kept the base’s pressure and oxygen levels intact.
Matt and Ally kept their balance as the craft jolted slightly before touching down. Once it was connected to its berthing clamps, they shared a tense look and readied themselves to disembark. “Stay close to me,” Matt said, unlatching the cockpit’s hatch. A tiny blast of gas hissed as a small ladder unspooled in front of him. It looked like a vertebral column with steps. As Matt began to climb the bony rungs, Ally stood behind him, brandishing the fist-gun she had acquired from the dead Infiltrator.
Matt popped the hatch open and gingerly peered out to survey the hangar. The air was humid and carried the distinct aroma of spent gunpowder. He knew that was lunar dust and rock that had been trapped inside during the construction of this base. The support pillars appeared to have been carved from it. The base itself was cavernous and earthen, like the inside of a wasp nest, with distant floodlights that created long shadows everywhere. Massive support pillars crisscrossed their way to each corner of the hangar, each one surrounded by slabs of heavy machinery. Their mirror-black surfaces rippled in constant motion, and the thick piping underneath them groaned as if straining to contain some immense, unseen power coursing through them. These monstrosities were reminiscent of the machines Matt and Ally had encountered underneath the monastery, only much larger. In addition to these strange machines, an unfathomable network of wires strangled every curved wall of the hangar, like runaway vines. From what Matt could tell, these were all somehow connected to the Moon’s inner mantle. The core below was hot enough to melt lead, but not hot enough to warm the lunar surface. It did, however, produce enough energy to power this entire base and run its filtration systems. As a species, the Wraith were very resourceful, and much like humans, their Geoengineering technology was somewhat parasitic – especially when it came to harnessing energy.
Matt swung his Reaper-rifle around and sighted down to the opposite end of the hangar.
A large Wraith ship was being primed by dozens of mysterious astronauts, clad in black spacesuits, and strange golden helmets with mirrored visors. Matt recalled the dark and brooding ship as a Cutlass Interceptor. Built for speed and distance, they were specifically used by the Wraith for long-range bombing raids throughout the invasion of Earth.
As he hung out of the cockpit hatch in silence, the astronauts carried on working, seemingly unaware of their presence, and the Death Pony that had just landed in their midst. This suggested to Matt they were Zograf monks who had been enhanced – sent up here to begin prepping Cromwell’s attack. Some of these monks were also arming the ship by hydraulically loading gigantic, urn-shaped missiles into its belly using mechanized exoframes. But before each missile was loaded, a smaller device with a metal rod was carefully injected into the warhead. These smaller devices were also filled with a clear liquid of some kind.
The virus primer.
It had to be, Matt thought. They’re rearming the stockpile with Rossiter’s tweaked strain of the Scourge.
He had glimpsed these exoskeletal walking machines numerous times on Epsilon. They were at least four meters tall, and aside from their huge pincer-shaped hands, also housed two rotary cannons that fired electromagnetically propelled javelins of molten plasma. In the vacuum of space, each projectile would instantly snap freeze to form something akin to a lightning rod that could penetrate the hardest of known minerals. While the Wraith once utilized these machines for heavy labor and engineering work, since the invasion, combat was now their primary purpose.
Matt stealthily climbed out onto the pony’s hull and slid off it. But as Ally began to climb out of the cockpit, he signaled for her to move quietly. If one of those monks decided to fire on them, it would all be over. Not that Ally needed any reminding, but she got the message and slithered down the hull on her butt, hitting the ground softly.
Crouched together underneath the hull, they waited a few moments more, watching each missile being individually primed and fed into the ship’s bomb delivery bay by a monk driving an exoframe. Being this close to it all, the extent of Cromwell’s efforts was mind-numbingly impossible to comprehend. He had manufactured biological death on a planetary scale, and then, using certain methods Rossiter had helped to pioneer in his younger days, genetically tweaked the strain to ensure its aggressive transmission rates could easily infect every man, woman, and child on Earth. From the ashes of human civilization, Cromwell would take what remained of the species and mold them into a bloodthirsty legion of monsters only he could command. The more they watched missiles being loaded, the enormity of what they were looking at began to paralyze them. They were witnessing the catalyst that would shape Earth’s dark future.
Ally’s future.
When the monk driving the exoframe trudged off to retrieve another missile, Matt gave the signal to move. They kept low, sliding through the shadows of the hangar, taking cover behind a large supply crate.
Ally grimly surveyed the massive stockpiles lining the walls. Hundreds-and-hundreds of enormous missiles stretched up to the hangar ceiling as far as the eye could see. “That’s a lot of missiles,” she whispered.
Matt followed her gaze up the domed ceiling. “Looks like we caught them just in time. There’s still a lot to go before they’ve all been rearmed.”
Eyes still on the ceiling, Ally scoffed. “And exactly how are we going to get the rest of those missiles loaded before they add the primer?”
Matt looked out across the hangar to spy a row of vacant exoframe’s hanging from metal racks. He studied the one nearest to them. The ribbed cage and armored limbs made it look like open invitations to try on some type of alien straitjacket. He turned back to Ally. “You think you could sneak onto that ship and get her engines ready?”
“Why?”
“I’m gonna steal one of those suits and start loading the missiles that haven’t been rearmed with the primer.”
“You see how many there are? I don’t really wanna be stuck up here for the next three months.”
“We only need enough to take out Wraith command before they get their fleets into orbit. I’ve seen the projection models Rossiter worked on. Trust me, once the virus begins to spread, it’ll go through their ranks like wildfire.”
“How many missiles are enough?”
“For a concentrated drop? Twenty. Maybe a few more.”
“I thought this attack would take hundreds, if not thousands.”
“Sure, by USC standards it would. But look at the size of those things. One of those missiles could wipe out the entire Southern Hemisphere of Earth. Considering Epsilon is a much smaller and denser world, we only need a handful to begin the chain reaction. The real trick is detonating them over the Capitol.”
“That’s assuming we can even make it to Epsilon in one piece. That’s also assuming you can load those missiles without causing any attention.”
“I’ll caus
e a diversion.”
“Then what?”
“We load the ship up and make the jump to 2048. Once we reach Epsilon, I can get us close to the Capitol. All we need to do then is launch the payload and make our final jump home before they detonate.”
“On the eve of a mass invasion, you think the Wraith is going to let an undocumented ship enter their atmosphere?”
“By that stage, we’ll be moving faster than a comet. They’ll be taken by surprise – won’t even know what hit ‘em.”
Thinking he had lost his mind, Ally stared at her father with complete bewilderment. “You’re making this up as you go, aren’t you?”
Matt met her eyes and blew out a defeated sigh. “Totally.”
Ally’s head dropped, crestfallen. “Dad, this isn’t going to work.”
“It will. We’ve made this far, Al.”
Ally looked at him again. “At what cost?”
Before Matt could answer her, a concussive blast of white-hot energy struck the ground, pin-wheeling them both violently through the air.
Matt hit the ground first and skidded on his back, fighting through the shock to stay low as more electromagnetic javelins sunk into their position. Taking the brunt of the impact, Ally was thrown sideways into a support strut before bouncing past Matt and slamming into another large supply crate. As a small mountain of heavy crates toppled onto her, Matt screamed. “Ally!” When he scurried towards her lifeless body, another shower of javelins cut the air, muting his advance.
Hearing a chittering mechanical hiss, Matt spun around to see an exoframe lurching towards them – its spindly armored legs thudding against the epoxy-like surface of the hangar. Matt’s eyes narrowed on the sinister-looking driver. It was not a monk, but an all-too-familiar face, nonetheless.
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