Rebel Moon

by Bruce Bethke

  "Hey, guys, check this out!" He leaped up onto the ledge and examined the leftmost panel closely. Something didn't look right about it, and he pressed one of the buttons. Sure enough, the false panel slid upward to reveal a small arms cache containing a plasma gun and some ammo. He checked the charge on the plasgun and, seeing that it was full, tossed the extra canister to Jeff as he attached the gun supports to his utility belt.

  "Man, these things are heavier than they look!" Jeff said, catching the canister.

  "There's more!" Bunny said, stepping back and pointing out the cache she'd just found. "There's another railgun in here, if anyone wants it." She ejected her half-spent magazine and snapped in the new one. "Let's see if this last panel is fake, too."

  Bunny disappeared into the rightmost cache and returned with a grenade launcher cradled in her arms. "Bingo!"

  "Hey, can I have that?" Jeff said.

  "Find your own," she replied. "But you can have my railgun. Besides, we'd better get moving." She hopped off the ledge and turned north, toward the elevator.

  Dalton could see a large computer control center beyond the columns to the east, but there didn't appear to be anyone there. If Josef and the rest had come this way, it appeared that they'd traveled below, to the bowels of the mine, or whatever this place was.

  They stepped aboard the elevator, and Bunny pressed the button to take them down. It was a tight fit with the three of them, and Dalton wondered what use a mining team could possibly have for such a small lift. The elevator took them down deep—at least forty meters, he estimated—finally depositing them in an empty, unlit room carved from the lunar rock.

  "What now?" he asked.

  "Just keep going," Bunny said. "Somebody on our side left those caches up above and carved this place out, so there must be something at the end of this tunnel."

  They wandered for what seemed like hours in the dark, although his display told Dalton it had been only ten minutes. Finally a greenish glow appeared in the distance. Relieved, they increased their pace, only to find nothing except some strangely broken rocks that gave off an unearthly green light.

  "What the hell is this?" said Bunny, nudging one of the rocks distastefully with her foot. "Radioactive material?"

  "My Geiger isn't picking up anything," Jeff replied. "This stuff is weird—I've never seen anything like it before."

  Dalton had to agree. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something scuttling around in the shadows cast by the rocks. He leveled his plasma gun and stepped toward the movement.

  "Hey, I thought I saw—" He screamed suddenly as something the size of a medium-sized dog leaped out at him. It looked like an armadillo on steroids crossed with a piranha, and its razor-sharp teeth flashed white as its jaws gaped wide. But it didn't try to bite him. Instead it vomited forth a green globule, which fortunately evaporated on his shields.

  Still screaming, he fired two long bursts from the plasgun, killing the thing immediately. Bunny and Jeff came racing to his side and stopped, stunned by the sight of the unearthly corpse.

  Its hide was a mottled gray, and it was covered with a hard carapace of overlapping V-shaped plates that began at the top of its head and ran the length of its body. It had four limbs, and the two front legs ended in lethal-looking twenty-five-centimeter claws. Its blood looked green, a darker shade of the color that glowed from the rocks.

  "Ugly little brute," said Jeff. "Those claws could rip an unarmored suit in half."

  Bunny looked back at the glowing rocks. The fragments were scattered about, but not randomly. It was almost as if they'd been blown apart from a central location. "You don't think those rocks could be eggs, do you?"

  "Yeah, I think they could be," said Dalton in a tight voice. "And I think the mama-monster is pretty pissed off!"

  Bunny turned around, and what she saw nearly made her wet her suit. Something was illuminating the rocky walls of the giant cavern to the south with a deep reddish light, and as the light grew brighter, they could see just what that something was.

  It was a giant reddish orange version of the monster Dalton had killed, but where the little one had claws only twenty-five centimeters long, the giant's appeared to be three meters or more. It scrambled toward them on its armored knuckles, its massive, razor-lined jaws yawning open.

  Undisclosed Location

  26 November 2069

  18:30 GMT

  Pieter von Hayek lay in state on a crudely carved platform as Adams and Josef stood beside his body. Josef was holding his dead father's hand and grieving openly. Patrick Adams placed his arm around Josef's shoulder.

  "The medic did everything she could," Adams said. "His death couldn't be prevented. We don't have the equipment here."

  "I know that," Josef snapped, shrugging Adams's arm off. Tears streaked his face, but there was still a fire in them that no amount of weeping could conceal. "My father always gave everything he had. If he had known that the cause of freedom would require him to be buried in an unmarked grave, he'd have erased his name from the tombstone himself."

  He looked around the empty chamber, angry, but not knowing why. Maybe it was because he was ashamed to be seen crying, but even so, he was determined to shed tears for his father, although he'd be damned if anyone else would.

  "First of all, he is not dead. Only six people know otherwise, and they're all sworn to secrecy. I want his body incinerated, and I'll personally scatter his ashes. I don't want a trace of him to be left anywhere but in the people's minds."

  "Four," Adams said.

  "What?"

  "Soon only four will know the truth. Britt and Chen teleported back to Tycho. They're going to shut down the transporter there."

  "They can't do that! What if they get captured?"

  Adams smiled sadly. "Britt told me to tell you not to worry, that he guarantees they won't be. He also said to say good-bye."

  Josef worked his jaw, unwilling to believe Adams. "I can't believe he didn't tell me." He felt betrayed and would have been furious if he hadn't already been emotionally drained.

  "He knew you'd order him not to go. So he didn't ask."

  "Did you put him up to this?" Josef was suspicious. He knew Adams was just cold-blooded enough to arrange the removal of two of the only witnesses to his father's death.

  "No." Adams's tone was cool and self-assured. "I don't like it either, but the risk of leaving the portal open is too great. The men we left behind might be able to hold the Blacksuits off for a while, but they can't hold forever."

  "Right." Josef felt a momentary pang at the loss of yet another friend. But he was finished grieving, at least for now. There was too much to be done. Bending over the table, he gathered his father in his arms and carefully lifted him, then walked over to the far side of the room. Gently, he laid Pieter down on the bare rock on the far side of the room, then returned to the other side and began to put his battlesuit back on.

  "What are you doing?" Adams asked.

  "We don't exactly have a crematorium here. Patrick," Josef replied as he checked the charge on his plasma gun.

  Tycho Research Station

  26 November 2069

  18:40 GMT

  It hadn't seemed that difficult, deciding to try pulling off an insane stunt like this, Britt thought. The trick was simply not to let yourself think about it until it was too late. Until you were committed, with no way back. He felt like the man who'd just swallowed a bottle of sleeping tablets and now wasn't so sure that he wanted to die.

  Of course there was an easy way out. He could just march around the corner with his hands above his head. But Britt knew that with what was in his memory, surrender was a price too high to pay. He wasn't willing to buy his life at the price of the cause. He just hoped the team at Farside had done as he'd asked and cleared the transport room there. If not, well, they were in for a hell of a surprise.

  He looked over at his companion kneeling next to him and grinned, not that Chen could see him. As far as he could tell, th
e little Taiwanese commando was as insane as he was, which was apparently saying something. But their plan had worked—so far, anyway—and they were now within ten meters of the teleport room, according to his map. A left and a left and then: kaboom. If you're gonna go out, do it with style, Britt thought. One of his biggest fears was that he would die old and drooling and begging for his life. Bravery, he'd figured, was really just fear of cowardice.

  He touched his visor to Chen's. "Switch on your radar when we move, laddie. I'll take the left side, you got the right. If there's fewer than four of them, we'll try to take the room and dismantle the teleport before we blow it. No sense wreckin' the Farside receiver if we don't 'ave to." Hell, they might even make it out alive somehow.

  "Right," Chen said. "Got another nitro?"

  "Sure, why not?" They'd already shot up two apiece, but at this point, what difference did it make? "Too 'igh to die!" He slipped a Syrette into Chen's shunt, then into his own. A few seconds later the adrenaline rush hit him and he closed his eyes as he rode the initial wave.

  "Now!" he shouted and switched his radar on as he rose from his knees. He felt as if he was moving in slow motion, so heightened and drugged up were his senses, and he saw on the heads-up that only three guards were positioned outside the teleport room. But as quickly as he moved, Chen still rounded the corner first, firing a rapid series of three bolts into the midsection of the leftmost ATFOR guard, sending the man sprawling backwards.

  Britt had emptied and dumped his plasgun a few corridors back, but the railgun he'd picked up was perfect for his present need to move the bastards out of his way. He fired a long burst at his first target, snarling gleefully as the Bluesuit's shields collapsed. A shorter burst smashed into the middle guard just as a red bolt from Chen's ACR ablated the man's shield, and the dead Bluesuit was hurled back like a rag doll.

  Only steps from the door, Britt's own shields flared and he was knocked off-balance by a volley of lasers fired by a team of troopers stationed down the hall. He rolled with the blow and fired a wild one-handed burst that didn't hit anything, but forced the troopers to take cover. By the time he'd scrambled to his feet, Chen was already in the room, wiring a grenade to the frame of the transporter.

  "Can we get the pad off?"

  "I don't know," Chen said. "I think there's bolts on the bottom of the frame. I'll get the top."

  Britt dropped his weapon and fell to his knees, fumbling at his belt for his autoscrewer. Finally he got it unhooked and began to remove the bolts, one at a time. He managed to get three out before an ATFOR trooper appeared in the doorway, holding his ACR pointed at Britt's head. A moment later three more shock troopers arrived.

  "Put your hands on your heads—slowly, now," one of the Bluesuits commanded. Britt caught Chen's eye, then gave him a peek at the grenade in his hands.

  * * *

  Fifteen thousand kilometers away a small explosion ripped through an empty, shielded room at Farside. At the sound of the concussion, Josef von Hayek and Patrick Adams looked at each other and gravely nodded. They were safe now.

  Josef handed Patrick a glass, then reached for a bottle of champagne. He poured Adams a glass, then one for himself, and corked the bottle up again. It was cheap synthetic stuff, but it was made on the Moon, and in this case, it was only the symbolism that mattered.

  "To Britt Godfrey," Josef said solemnly.

  "To Britt Godfrey," Adams repeated. "And Chen Wang. May they never be forgotten."

  The giant red alien roared as it rushed toward them, eager to avenge its young. Jeff snapped a quick burst off with his railgun, but the metal projectiles just bounced off the thick plated armor. The beast moved much faster than its huge bulk would seem to permit, and the three LDF commandos barely managed to dash into a small alcove before the monster smashed into the wall, showering them with dust and small rocks as the ceiling shook with the force of the impact.

  Bunny and Dalton managed to get behind a bend in the alcove, but Jeff, a little behind them, was hit in the back and knocked over by a massive green glob spat at him by the monster. It was apparently energy-based, as the glowing stuff evaporated upon striking his shields but, in doing so, burned them down nearly to nothing.

  Dalton dropped the barrel of his plasgun and pulled Jeff toward them, managing to drag him around the corner just as another glob, nearly three feet in diameter, came hurling toward them. It splattered against the wall, and there was a faint hiss as some of it struck Dalton's shields.

  "God, what is that stuff?" he exclaimed, disgusted.

  "I don't know, but damn, that was too close!" said Jeff, still clinging to his arm. There was a loud scraping, scrabbling noise, and Dalton disengaged himself from Jeff to see what was happening around the corner. He was horrified to discover that the monster was clawing away at the wall protecting them, its long talons carving through the hard rock almost as easily as a miner's laser.

  Although Josef von Hayek owed her his life, he'd never laid eyes on Dr. Marjorie Gillen before. Upon meeting her, he was surprised to see that the chief of Farside Station and the head of MANTA research was a short, chubby woman of around sixty, with a grandmotherly air about her. He wasn't sure what he expected her to look like—this scientist who'd just made what might turn out to be humanity's most significant scientific development in centuries—but it surely wasn't the woman standing in front of him.

  "I have to thank you, Doctor," he began, ducking his head in a short bow. "I—"

  "No time for this—what are you, a colonel? Colonel, then." She turned toward Patrick. "The Estrons are going nuts. What's happening in the mines? You didn't let anyone down there, did you?"

  "I don't think so." Adams thought about it. "No, not that I'm aware of. Amalia?"

  "No, certainly not."

  The doctor frowned and pushed her glasses higher on the bridge of her stubby little nose. "Well, something has them upset. Tara's been trying to talk with them, but we can't make head or tail out of anything they're saying."

  "Wait a minute," Josef interjected. "Who are the Estrons?"

  "Why, the aliens, of course. You didn't think we developed MANTA on our own, did you?" She laughed at the expression on his face. "My God, you did, didn't you?"

  "But I heard that you, Doctor ... Aliens?"

  "Yes, of course. They traded us the matter transport technology. I'm a xenolinguist, not a physicist or a quantum mechanic. Talking to the aliens is my job. And right now they're really upset about something."

  Josef's mind, reeling and desperately seeking something familiar to latch on to, suddenly filled in an earlier blank. "You mentioned the mines. Did you mean the Highland Mines, the ones that were abandoned?"

  "Yes. One of the Estroni hive mothers is there. She was pregnant, you see, and we let them have the mine as a birthing place for her."

  "Oh no," said Josef slowly. "The left teleporter pad in the transporter room back at Tycho." A stricken look appeared on Adams's face.

  "I don't understand," said Dr. Gillen, and Trelstad shrugged. She was confused too.

  "Some of the soldiers who stayed behind to cover our retreat never followed us through to Darkside," Adams explained. "We thought they'd been captured or killed, but maybe they took the wrong teleporter."

  Dr. Gillen nodded. "Yes, the other teleporter does lead to the mines, now that you mention it." She rubbed her hands together. "Dear Lord, we're going to have to try to explain this to the Estrons. You'd better come with me, Colonel. I hope you can talk fast, because without the aliens' help, it's all over."

  "We can't stay here," Dalton shouted above the noise of the alien's giant talons tearing at the rock. "And we can't outrun it." He started at the sound of a railgun firing two long bursts behind him. "What the hell's going on back there?"

  "Sorry," Jeff said, wiping green gunk off the barrel of his weapon. "One of those little suckers was hatching back here, and I got carried away."

  Bunny, meanwhile, had slipped past Dalton and raised the grenade launch
er to her shoulder. "Stay back," she warned Jeff. "We're gonna get some shrapnel in here, and your shield power-level is too low to take it."

  She fired a round directly into the monster's face and, seeing how the beast bellowed, fired another. The force of the explosion knocked her back, but her shields held, and she shouted when she saw the monster retreating in pain and confusion.

  "It doesn't like grenades! Maybe it's not so tough after all." Bunny stepped out of the alcove and fired again, and again the monster roared in agony.

  "Let's see if it likes the plasgun any better," Dalton yelled. He joined Bunny outside the alcove and squeezed off two streams of plasma. Both hit, and though the result was not quite as dramatic, they clearly did some damage.

  But the monster wasn't through fighting. It spat a blob of plasma at the two commandos, forcing them to scatter, then charged Bunny. At such close range, she didn't dare to fire a grenade, and she closed her eyes as the beast rose up on its hind legs before her, its head nearly touching the cave's ceiling seven meters from the floor.

  Before the monster could bring its mighty claws down on Bunny, though, Dalton had recovered and fired a long stream of plasma into its chest. The ferocious heat forced the wounded monster back far enough that Bunny could risk a shot, and she quickly fired another round at its head.

  "Dammit, how much damage can this thing take?" Dalton swore, but he grimly set his jaw and continued to fire. They pursued the alien around the cavern, dodging its occasional dripping green projectile and forcing it into a protective crouch every time it seemed ready to gather itself for a charge. As his shields recovered, Jeff joined them, snapping off an occasional burst from his railgun whenever the monster's seemingly vulnerable chest presented itself.

  Bunny was down to her last few grenades when finally, after absorbing at least thirty direct hits, the monster uttered a noise that sounded like a moan and collapsed on its side. It shuddered briefly, then its eyes closed and vomited forth a large mass of glowing green ooze.