How could anyone have been able to hide and carry out such an operation without being noticed?
He realized that the moonbase could have been built before the other moonbase had been constructed and that it could well have been a hidden part of it at one time! There could be an underground connection! They could get most of their water and air from there! Whatever it was it had to have been even more secretive than it!
It staggered him when he thought of the nature of the moonbase! The place could have been built for atomic warfare!
Could it be an ultimate atomic weapon and doomsday device?
He realized the danger that he was in and he had to get out, and would have to leave fast! It was far too dangerous and he considered if he should have it investigated!
While he wandered up to the deadly black object he wondered how the thing could even lift off! The power behind it had to be colossal and new and highly confidential!
He quickly returned to where he had been and did his best to cover up all the signs that he had been there.
He soon found a small vehicle and sat in it and got ready to drive away. He was amazed at his original thoughts of what was there! It did not add up! What the hell was it doing there?
He scarcely even grasped why the moonbase was situated there! The moon was not near anything! Surely America had enough land and hidden places where it could be hidden? Why was it located away out there where anything could happen!
He shifted the vehicle away slowly getting use to using it while examining the black object and its immense shape, but never saw anything on or in it, or marks of anything, which would have shown it had been welded or had been somehow fitted together!
When he stopped to feel its surface he was surprised that it was some new unknown substance!
There had to be a way into it or something, and he raced along its side gasping at the immensity of it. Now amazed that there was nobody looking after it! How could it have been so hidden away?
The structure was like a gigantic torpedo, and when he reached the furthest point he realized that it was at least quarter of a mile long, and he was astonished!
Was it of military origins? It could have its looks to camouflage the technology and confuse observers? Whatever it was the cost and time behind it proved that it could take warfare to a new level!
An eerie sensation gripped him! Something was not right! He sensed something weird, which he could not recognize!
He found a computer and examined information, looking for answers, and he watched something voyaging through stars, exploring vast unexplored stars, and he realized it was an alien voyager, which had a new form of propulsion, with mind-boggling technology and powers, and had a capacity inconceivable, and was built to travel in deep space!
Chapter 2
The Secret Moon Mission
For a moment Weaver thought of them crashing or confronting a deadly scenario! The environment, in and about the space vehicle, was so peculiar he was unsure of anything though, but he had a strange feeling of there being great danger from something!
The military spacecraft descended to Moonbase X1 and the soldiers aboard checked their spacesuits and oxygen supplies, and received updates for their mission from Commander Craven.
Weaver gasped as he looked down at the moon surface and considered what lurked ahead, and the amount of danger he was being put in. Ever since the ice station incident had taken place it seemed like he had a curse put on him, which was them involving him in every deadly incidence about, as they had realized he was now the intelligence agent to do the job and handle the worst occurrences the best! It was a hideous conclusion that he had not accepted could occur! He expected to be promoted or be put in more advanced situations!
All the soldiers who had taken part in the ice station mission had been put on this mission! He gasped again at what had occurred there! Certain things that had occurred interested him greatly though!
None of them had even heard of the secret moonbase, and it had taken some time before they revealed anything of the secret mission details, and they had hardly received anything, and, in fact, they had not fully accepted that they were going to the moon from a secret launch site until they had been put in the space vehicle on the rocket.
There was more action than he could believe! What were the events that they were on the trail of? Were they being intentionally secretive or covering not knowing things enough themselves? What had he let himself in for?
He was to masquerade as one of the soldiers being put in the moonbase and basically find out what was happening there without getting caught, and to take any action if needed!
Sunlight in space blasted through one of the windows blinding them with its intensity in space. The conditions outside were incredible and he never thought that he would confront anything worse than the Antarctic! And he gasped at the temperatures recorded there and at the fact they were above the moon, and alone and away from the Earth! Now and then he had glimpsed the Earth behind them with amazement! It looked far different than described and shown, especially in orbit! He also expected it be slightly flattened at the top and bottom, and it seemed a perfect sphere to him!
So when they finally started landing on the moon, with the rockets blasting out slowing their fall, he was not surprised to see the pilots react and report that there was something wrong!
Weaver automatically gritted his teeth and got ready for what was about to occur!
The moon was large and the landscape startled him, and he could still hardly believe the location below was there, and that he would be trapped there without help if anything happened!
He realized that they had made a mistake already! They had been too keen to enter the mission and they had dropped down a greater distance away from the moonbase than they should have! And he could not even see it and only recognized it from the secret intelligence photos of the highly confidential underground Moonbase X1, buried beneath the lunar dust.
They had given him little and he knew they had little to give! Basically they had little of what was happening and he was to get information and help the soldiers with their work.
He discovered little in what he had been told and really only knew that there were mysterious deaths occurring on the moonbase, and most had been killed by military weapons, and space vehicles destroyed by missiles, and a man named Lucas had vanished on the lunar surface, which was the official reason why the soldiers were sent in to stop, and he was put there by intelligence agencies to find out more.
Nothing added up! Who wanted to kill anyone at such a place? It was basically a military and scientist research moonbase and he could only think that another country was behind it! Yet who had done it and why? There were no known cases like it on record!
Who could profit from it? They clearly would replace the people killed, and what good would it do them? There had to be far more behind it! Surely countries would profit little from it!
He gazed over at where the underground moonbase was embedded in the gray dust and rock with sunlight gleaming over it. The case was important and something had to have occurred!
He recalled the size of it below the ground as he watched the others and was surprised when they announced that they had to land manually on an area below, and that they would have to walk over to it, and he wondered how dangerous it could be!
While it went down he grasped the full dangers and emptiness of walking on the moon, and as they landed he felt a thud and something break on the space vehicle and he rested and considered his chances of survival and gasped!
Chapter 3
The Moon Battle
Sunlight exploded out blinding Weaver when he looked directly at the naked sun resting above the lunar landscape, and he studied the bright moon landscape while trying to explain why he had taken such a risky mission, especially after the last!
The entire mission could not have been planned and he sensed that they could not have avoided what had happened!
The
moonbase was further away than they anticipated and the moondust was deep in the region they were in, and virtually impossible to get quickly through! He wondered what the place would be like if they had landed there when the sun had been below the horizon. The incident with the spacecraft not landing at the moonbase showed that someone there was against them and perhaps the mission, and he wondered who had access to the vehicle or if they had altered the vehicle’s computer from somewhere else!
When a bullet hit and killed one of the front soldiers, beside him, Weaver was surprised, and realized that someone was directly attacking them on the moon surface!
It was strange as none of them seemed to have the slightest experience of handling such an experience in such a place! The low gravity and large spacesuits hindered their movements and they never had enough experience of moving there properly!
They were lucky there were some small piles of rock to hide behind to the side of them, and they rushed below them as bullets flew into the moondust about them. They were too far away from the moonbase and they never even knew how long it would take them to reach there. The bullets seemed to be off their targets and he was sure they had been unable to fire their weapons properly wearing the spacesuits! The gloves and helmet were hideous and he wondered what the outcome of such a battle would be!
None of them could see who was there and they were hidden at different locations and never moved around, and they were unable to recognize anything about them! It was like an alien world!
Were the gunmen professionals and had planned the whole thing well before they had arrived?
The whole terrain was unfamiliar too everyone and they had the advantage over them! How could they move forward and get to the moonbase without receiving many deaths? And they could not move back as the spacecraft had left and their air supplies would soon run out! They would have to move forward at some point, no matter what!
The temperature there was incredibly low and he considered what would happen if his body came into contact with the outside vacuum, and if it had the effect people had claimed, as he had not heard any accounts of it occurring, and he wondered if the temperature really was as low as claimed and what the effect of that would be.
There was a temperature reading in his spacesuit for inside his spacesuit but nothing for outside it.
It was lucky the place had not been far further! The place was hidden away! It was lucky they had seen it from above and knew the direction.
He even wondered if it was the people from the moonbase actually firing on them! If they had not known of their arrival and the situation there was worse than stated they could believe that they were being attacked!
He considered the most desolate regions he had ever been in, and he even thought there was something missing there that existed on the world. The stars were incredible in space and he watched the bare universe around him, and wondered if there would be any strange sightings.
What was staggering was their enemy was taking on so many professional soldiers! What did they actually intend to do? They surely could not expect to kill the entire group and if they had been informed about them they would have realized how trained they were! Could they be trying to scare them away? It was absurd also as they would have to go there! There was nowhere else out there they could stay, and they surely could get caught!
The mission now seemed flawed! Weaver copied the soldiers about him and started shooting away at them in an attempt to get them to move or do something!
They had a good team of everyone needed to carry out the mission and handle what they could and if they had landed next to the moonbase as planned nothing would have gone wrong!
He wondered if it had been someone on the plane who had landed them there after all?
At times he still could not believe that there was anything out in such a desolate region, and that anything existed there!
They were shrouded in moondust, and he realized again that they would have to go forward. And he considered if they would find his remains there one day, frozen and in an unaltered condition, and end up in a museum.
The gray landscape was untouched by water or life everywhere, and empty and hollow with no sound, and had a deep haunting silence in its environment that went further than any desolate snow landscapes. He was on another world! An empty lost world lost in the depths of space, absent of life, and a dieing world.
What was shocking was how easily they had trapped them?
Could they avoid a large amount of deaths? There was nothing to recognize anywhere, and he watched some of the men attempt to use communication devices to the moonbase to get a vehicle there fast, but they failed and just tried to see if there was anything to pick up on it anywhere!
Another problem was that they had experienced a long sleepy flight and had got easily exhausted wading through the deep dust with the large spacesuits!
It was no surprise that Commander Craven eventually grew angry and made them blast them with as many well aimed rounds to force some form of reaction, but they seemed to ignore it, and he knew that they would have to hit them with something!
“What are we going to do ...?” one of men finally spluttered through his spacesuit communicator, fighting for air, furious that they had been put in such a situation!
“We better agree to something ...” Commander Craven shouted back, giving glances about, realizing the mess of his expedition so far, and decided not to continue.
“We’ve put our foot in it again!” Reeves continued, who was near Weaver, who had become the closest and most trusted person to Weaver.
“We’ll have to do something!” Weaver forced himself to reply, and watched Commander Craven gasp.
“Are you thinking of attacking them directly!” Commander Craven answered finally.
“None of them have shown themselves! So I reckon we could surprise some of them!”
“Dangerous! Good idea! Can you do it without being seen?”
“We can’t stay here all day!” Reeves replied first. “Our air supply is getting low!”
“We’ll go together!” he replied firmly.
Weaver was surprised that they all agreed with it and that they would prefer to die there than die of suffocation!
Deep down Weaver really wanted to know who was there, and capture one and question him.
They all agreed on a plan of action and started fixing themselves up and preparing themselves, and he watched their blank faces examining everything in the distance and at the point where the gunmen were.
They all rushed out and sneaked along covered regions that they would be unseen in, with their guns ready for heavy action!
Weaver wondered why they had stopped firing anyway in amazement! Then when they moved swiftly close to them he realized they had seen them coming and had decided to retreat fast in a sideways direction, and he thought of chasing one but it was useless and the spacesuits and low gravity were too hard to use without training.
They were also well armed and capable of killing them and he was sure that they had heavier weapons available! How could they attack and win with them being so heavily armed without making major losses? Then as they properly examined the area around where they had been he realized that they had been capable of attacking them easier from there!
He just knew something would have stopped him getting any information from the gunmen if they had captured any of them!
He thought of the death of the soldier near him and how ruthlessly they had attacked! He had never fully realized how desolate, deadly, and beyond civilization the moon was, and how far from help it was! If anything serous happened they could not get help no matter what! He wondered if a war took place there if they could handle it!
Now all they needed to do was to get to the moonbase fast before their air ran out, and as they reached the moonbase he began wondering why none of their footsteps led to or came from the moonbase!
Chapter 4
The Secret Moonbase
The moonbase was
concealed deep underground and they found the tunnel with the entrance, and a soldier used a communicator at the side of the entrance to announce their arrival.
Weaver was bewildered and wondered how they managed to survive there! Surely the air alone would be tremendous and take vast space vehicles to bring in!
It was incredibly camouflaged and looked like part of the landscape, and he realized there must be other entrances to bring in vehicles and far larger objects, and perhaps at where vehicles might be kept.
Commander Craven identified himself and they sent out some soldiers to get them. Weaver realized that they were very precautious, and wondered why they had not described the mysterious deaths there as being the gunmen! And he wondered if they were actually at war with each other for some reason that they had not mentioned and that they had made it confidential!
Weaver recalled and realized one main point and that might prove that some of the gunmen had to have been in the base or have someone in it working for them, as deaths were reported as occurring in it, and he thought that it could be a major clue to finding them!
The entrance was slowly opened by soldiers in spacesuits who identified them and took them in and into a large air chamber where they stayed until air filled it, and they finally removed their spacesuits and marched in through a long corridor going downwards, wondering what it would be like.
As Weaver moved in at the front he saw that there was far more powerful lighting further in and he felt delighted that he would soon be able to rest and be inside and away from the severe conditions, and actually be doing his job that he was there for!
He wondered what they did there and were like in such conditions, and what peculiarities they must have with being in such a place, as he had seen elsewhere, and he wondered what effects the very low gravity had. Was it the same as being in space, and on space stations, and did they normally have to return to the Earth and proper gravity after six month, or was it longer?
The Black Hole Accelerator (Part I) Page 3