by TS Paul
“Oops. Sorry. Are the kids ready?” Bobcat looked around and found them staring at him.
Marcus pressed several of the controls and the door irised open. He peeked inside. “It’s a pressure chamber to the outside. This is it.”
Not worrying about pressure, Marcus opened the outer door. There was a rush of the atmosphere as the pressures equalized. The surface of the moon could be seen outside.
Marcus looked at the line of students. Tina was last in line. “Tina, do me a favor and turn off the EM field. It will help us to call down the pod.” She ran back to the other room.
“William will go first, followed by all of the students. Bobcat and I will bring up the rear. When you get outside, get clear of the ship and out onto the surface of the moon. We cannot be sure if we will be pursued or not.” Marcus pointed to William.
As the others departed, Bobcat spoke to Marcus. “Do you think we will be chased? The kids did say they saw Aliens.”
“I'm just being careful. There might be more robots or a failsafe. Just watching out for our charges.”
Tina came rushing back. “I turned off the EM, Marcus.”
“Excellent. Go join the others.”
Tina smiled and ran for the door. Not seeing Bobcat’s robot heads on the floor she tripped over them. Her momentum combined with the half gravity caused her to glide rather than fall, and she crashed headlong into the lone control panel in the room.
Marcus, worried, rushed over to her, “Tina are you alright?”
She steadied herself on the floor and grabbed the control panel as she pulled herself up. “I…I think so.”
“Careful don’t touch the panel control!” Marcus could only watch as her hand brushed the control activating it.
Bobcat replied for him. “Too late.”
Lights in the room began to flash. An Alien voice began to speak. The tones and grunts being spoken reminded Marcus of the noises seals or walruses make.
“What did I do?” Tina looked, eyes open wide, at the panel she touched.
“Not sure.” Marcus bent down and examined the now violently blinking panel. The tones being spoken were now coming faster and more hurried.
“Sounds like a countdown.” Bobcat cocked his head and stared at the ceiling.
“Tina, go ahead and join your friends.” They watched as she ran out the door.
“Self-destruct maybe? It’s in the right place for it,” Marcus commented.
“You are such a downer, Marcus! We should leave shouldn’t we?” Bobcat asked as the two men started towards the exit.
“Ya think?” The two of them ran out the portal and jumped off the ship’s side. The others were milling around on the top edge of the crater and could only stare at them.
Everyone felt a rumbling as what felt like successive explosions rocked the Alien base. There was a brilliant flash of blue light that enveloped the entire area for just a moment then went away. The ship they had all just left, dropped down and crashed into the bottom of the hole, as the elevator shaft collapsed.
Tina looked at Marcus, tears were running down her face. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Tina. If anyone is to blame for this it’s Bobcat for leaving those robot heads where someone could trip over them,” he told her.
“My heads! I left them!” Bobcat turned toward Marcus and pointed, “I blame you for this.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bobcat looked over the edge of the crater and mumbled “My heads.”
“You and your heads. We still have the arms!” William held up the pair of robot arms they had been using as clubs.
“Those are not as cool as robot heads. Maybe we can go down and look for them later. What do you think Marcus?” Bobcat looked at his friend.
“The technology is impressive. Maybe we can salvage it later after we tell the Queen it was destroyed.”
“Crap! I forgot about that part. She’s going to be pissed, isn’t she? We didn’t tell her about the search or anything did we?” Bobcat’s eyes were now very wide.
“No, we didn’t. What do we do? You’ve known her longer than we have.” William looked at his friend.
“Who, me? She hired me, then you. Don’t give me that crap. We are all so dead.” Bobcat looked over at the students. They were clustered near the crater talking.
“We could blame the kids, but those two sisters would still come after me. What if we pretend that nothing happened? No alien base or ship. We tell the kids not to say anything.” William looked to Marcus.
“She would still catch us. You have both told me yourselves that the Queen reads minds.”
“That’s true, but she doesn’t do that to her friends, Marcus. William’s idea might work.” Bobcat jumped in.
William called the kids over to the discussion. “We have a minor problem. No one but us knows about what happened down there. We would like to make a bargain with you. Forget that the ship and base exist and we will ignore your trip out of bounds and disobeying orders.”
“Hide it from the Queen? Doesn’t she read minds and stuff?” Tina could only stare.
“She doesn’t do that to friends. We will tell her about what happened eventually, just not right now. She doesn’t need to know we almost got all of you killed. Clean slate.”
The kids looked at their smiling mentors and started to discuss it.
“Ya think they will go for it?” Bobcat looked to William.
“They should. It will leak, though. Those kids can’t be trusted not to talk about the cool stuff on the moon. I just hope the Queen isn’t too mad at us about it.” William looked down at his feet.
“The Pods are on their way down. I called in the extra one. There are more than five of us here. The E.I. told me that only the Academy has inquired about the moon. You two may have gotten away with this escapade.” Marcus walked over holding his tablet.
“Us? Marcus, we are all in this together.” Bobcat looked at his friend.
Marcus smiled, “I will just say I was coerced. Have they decided to lie for you?”
“Not yet. William was just going to ask them.” Bobcat gave his friend a little shove.
“Me?” William turned back and made faces at his friends. “What’s the verdict kids?”
Maxim and Yana turned away from the others and looked at him. “You are going to tell the Queen about this?”
“We intend to, yes.”
“Then you have a deal. We won’t say anything to the other classes or to the Ds for two weeks. Does that work for you?”
William nodded. “I’ll tell them, but it works. The Pods are on the way so get ready to leave.”
William walked back to where Marcus and Bobcat were standing. “They are giving us a couple of weeks to fess up to the Queen, but they will keep quiet until then.”
“Score!” Bobcat made a fist pump motion.
Marcus shook his head. “Less trouble if we fess up now. Whatever. Let’s get out of here.”
Silently the two pods dropped out of the sky and hovered several feet off the surface of the moon.
“Our rides’ here. Everyone get on board one of them.” William pointed at the prototype Pods.
Bobcat and Marcus took off with half the kids while William took the other half. First stop was the mostly dismantled TQB base. The hanger bay retracted and the pods entered. As the doors to the bay closed and re-pressurized Marcus talked to the students.
“You have two weeks left with us. How would you like to help us build the next stage of Pod development up on the Meredith Reynolds? Or we can stay down here and pack some more.”
The overall choice was to go back to the asteroid base. The promise of hot food, showers, and a normal, robot free, schedule appealed to the kids more than packing up a moon base.
“How are we going to get this job done down here? We don’t have all that much time. I promised Jean she could destroy it.” Bobcat looked all around as the kids jumped off the pods.
“We’ve alre
ady taken the important stuff off the base. Why not let her do it? You’re just being too picky.” William gave Bobcat a look.
“Fine. Whatever. Let’s get our stuff so I can get out of this space suit and into something more comfortable.”
“He really does need a girlfriend. I hope this new girl can handle his moodiness.” William remarked to Marcus.
“It’s my understanding she’s Wechselbalg. She can do it.” Looking around and sniffing, Marcus looked back at William. “He has a point. Let’s get out of these suits.”
When everyone was reasonably clean and odor free they gathered in the makeshift cafeteria. One thing the spacesuit designers had not yet mastered was scent elimination. The orbital miners had their own decontamination areas that were upwind of the regular ones, for obvious reasons.
“It’s too bad the base was destroyed but did we gain any knowledge from its destruction?” Bobcat sat at the head table.
Ron jumped up to answer. “Both NASA and the Soviets had secret space programs that put people on the moon.”
“Very good Ron. Yes, some of what we found was rumored when I worked for NASA but not to this extent. It was unfortunate about the Soviet attempts. Our current government is a mess as some of you are already aware. When we tell the Queen about our adventure, we will share the story you learned about. Contacting a country’s government is her job, not ours. What else did we learn?”
“Alien robots are not to be discounted,” Maxim answered from the front row.
“I can agree to that one. Some of those were really tough.” William nodded to the boy.
Tina raised her hand. “Will the Queen be mad the base was destroyed?”
“Maybe. However, she will be upset with us not you. Tina, what happened is none of your fault. We,” Marcus pointed at Bobcat and William. “Should have called in the Marines instead of searching for you ourselves. That is on us. Depriving the world of destructive tech is one of our goals so in that we are safe. She likes us too much. Don’t worry.”
Bobcat leaned close to William and whispered. “I’m worried.”
Maxim and Nestor both smirked and coughed loudly to remind the adults that they could hear everything. Bobcat winked to the two of them, he hadn’t forgotten.
Marcus spoke up, “Finish your food and get your kits together. The Pods leave in an hour.” All of the kids dropped their food in the trash and headed back to their room to pack.
William looked down at his meal in a bag. “It doesn’t taste all that bad, does it? Reminds me of boot camp.”
“Only you William. This stuff tastes like boot heel. I know they keep trying to make it better, but they have yet to succeed. The suit food is better than this stuff.” Bobcat tossed his pouch in the trash with the others.
Marcus continued to eat after the others left. He was an academic and had been very poor most of his life. Food was food, at least when he remembered to eat.
—
The flight back to school was uneventful as was taking the tram home. Max, the driver, remarked that they all looked very tired.
“The moon will do that to you. Gravity changes so many things.” Ron avoided mentioning robots and aliens.
“How long were you down there?” Max only monitored the systems. The computers did all the work.
Tina answered for Ron. “Just a couple of weeks. We helped break down the engineering base down there.”
“See anything fun?”
Ron looked at Yana who in turn looked at Tina. “Not a whole lot. We checked out where man first walked on the moon and did some walking ourselves. It’s dusty and very dark most of the time.”
Max looked at the kids with a funny look. “Sounds boring.”
“It sort of was. Team BMW showed us around, and we got some hands-on experience with tech, but that’s about it.” Ron smiled at Tina.
Sensing that they might be hiding something Max stopped asking questions, but made a silent note to mention it to the administrators. His job was to watch for irregularities.
The tram slowed to a halt in front of the entrance to the Academy. “All ashore that’s going ashore. This is where you get off.”
Thanking Max as they stepped off, the kids entered the doors as a group, not as individuals. Max watched with silent interest. Something down there made this group into a cohesive team in a very short amount of time.
Diane and Dorene were waiting in the lobby for Alpha Team to return.
Diane spoke first. “Did you kids have a good time on the moon? Did Marcus and the others manage to teach you something?”
Both Ron and Tina giggled for a moment and glanced at the others. Yana cleared her throat. “Yes, Ma’am. We did. Marcus is a good teacher as well as a demonstrator. Even Bobcat taught us something.” Nestor stifled a laugh at that comment.
Diane pursed her lips and frowned. “Good. You still have a couple of weeks with them. Do they have a project for you to do?”
Yana continued to answer for the group. “Yes. Marcus said we would be helping with the ten-passenger Pod project.”
“Did you get a tour of the moon?” This came from Dorene.
“We did. They allowed us to use the moon rovers and we explored a little. Marcus showed us some of the craters.” Yana smiled at the twin.
“Great. Do you think the next class to work with them will have as much fun as you did?”
The entire Alpha team froze for just a moment. Maxim spoke up for the rest. “We, uh, finished dismantling the base down there. The next group might only get a pod tour. The rovers were destroyed in a slight accident so they can’t be used anymore.”
“Really? What happened?” Both twins’ laser focused in on the kids’ expressions.
“They were crushed. Large chunks of moon rock and metal fell on them. Total accident. Bobcat and Marcus forgot they were parked there.” Nestor chuckled and nudged his cousin. Maxim turned and glared at him.
“I see. Was anyone injured?” Diane didn’t look happy.
“No, we were too far away from the event. It was just an accident.” Maxim smiled at the twin administrators.
“OK. Well, it’s getting late. You can tell us more in the morning. Get some rest.” The two ladies watched as the team split up at the top of the stairs and went to the dorms.
“They’re lying about something,” Diane said to the open air.
“Ya think? I told better lies than that to mom.” Dorene shook her head.
“Mom was smart, you needed to. Should we confront Bozo and the other two to find out the truth?”
“Heh. You called him Bozo. Let’s wait. They’re kids. Most can’t keep a secret to save their own lives. Whatever it is we will find out soon enough.” Dorene gave her sister a nudge just because.
—
The next morning it was business as usual. Many of the other teams were surprised to see the Alphas were in the dining hall and told them as much.
“When did you guys get back?” Paul was one of Ron’s old friends from Colorado.
“Last night. The moonbase is all dismantled and ready for demolition. We came back to help with one of BMWs pod projects.”
“That is so cool Ron! How was the moon?” Paul high fived Ron.
“It was pretty cool. We moon walked and got a cool tour. What has your group been doing?” Ron grinned back at his high school friend.
“We’ve been working with ADAM and the hackers under his command. Most of us in Echo Team only use computers, not program them, but we’ve been pouring over databases and matching up money and resources to countries. Really high tech stuff. I had no idea the world was as big as it is. You being you, will know more about what they do when you get there. So far it’s been really interesting.”
“That’s good. How are the other members of your team doing, is it starting to feel cohesive like a real team?” Maxim and Nestor perked up and stared at Paul.
“What do you mean by that Ron? It’s just a bunch of guys in my class. I don’t hang with them or any
thing if that’s what you are saying.” Maxim caught Ron’s attention and shook his head.
Ron smiled at his friend. “It was just a question. I wondered if you bonded with anyone or something. Forget it. Have you seen any of the old gang?”
Paul smiled and launched into a huge dialog about high school and friends from the tech classes. Nestor glanced at his cousin and muttered under his breath. “Not a team yet. Are we the only ones so far?”