The room went silent for a moment as the realization of exactly what that meant began to sink in. The calm then exploded as everyone began to talk at once while calling superiors to inform them of the new revelations and then asking for instruction. Again, voices rose and arguments ensued.
We had been unsuccessful in all attempts to get to the alien fleet and now it was using a strategy against us that we could not possibly counter. The scientists and engineers soon scurried off to their own meetings to discuss the consequences of a closer Moon.
Command was in chaos for much of the day before word began to trickle in of what may lie ahead for us. As the Moon grew closer it would first begin to affect the tides. Within three months the calculations had tidal waters rising by an additional two meters in many areas. At six months those figures would double.
At nine months the weather would be altered enough to send storms to parts of the world that were normally tepid. Snow would fall in the deep-south as far down as the equator and searing heat would build in the tundra’s of the far north. One estimate predicted the flipping of the Earth's magnetic poles.
At one year major catastrophes would begin to strike as earthquakes would become commonplace. Nowhere on the surface of the planet would be spared from the tug of our new enemy, our own Moon.
With nothing to contribute to the current dilemma I was soon given a week’s pass to return home. I arranged for Zack to join me. His parents had been grateful for the kindness they had received and had attempted to help out on the farm where they could. When we arrived we were greeted with teary eyes.
After an evening spent with the family I stepped out onto the front porch of my grandfather's home and sat in the swing with Zack. As we swung back and forth I looked up at the nearly full Moon and wondered at its beauty. All through history Man had admired it and looked upon it with fondness, but it was now threatening our existence.
The remainder of the week was spent getting to know Zack and his parents and everything I learned I liked. During the day we worked side by side with my father, readying the fields for the eventual spring plantings. Fences were mended and animals fed and cared for. It was a life I had always been fond of, but only now fully appreciated.
When we returned to base at Lake Pleasant my team was once again assigned to patrol duty. We would take up station at 50,000 kilometers distance from the mega-ship and observe for any changes. It was a grueling ten weeks of boredom before returning to Earth for another week of rest.
Again the time was spent with Zack at the farm and again the time was too short and our return to patrol duty prolonged. Six months had soon passed and the Moon grew ever closer. Low lying cities continued to be evacuated and our factories continued to churn out the implements of our defense.
As months passed Command tried many new strategies against our foe with no success. The Moon crept ever closer and the tides rose. The weather then began to take drastic turns as the world, thermohaline ocean circulation patterns, began to slow. Random snows were soon seen in the tropics and heat waves across the northern areas of permafrost.
A massive earthquake in Xi'an central China killed hundreds of thousands and left millions homeless. Rumors were rampant of the San Andreas being the next to go. The lives of the people of the world were in turmoil, but they somehow kept going to work, turning out new ships and weapons. We would not go down easy.
After our return to base and before I left my quarters for the ship I had a knock on my door. It was Zack. He came in and we embraced in a long passionate kiss. He then dropped to his knee and pulled a small black box from his pocket. It was a ring. Without hesitation I said yes and he slipped it onto my finger with his steady hand.
He rose to receive another long passionate kiss. He then told me of his new decision. He had joined the BGS Marines and would be leaving for his initial training within the week. He was a man’s-man and as such did not like being behind the scenes when fighting was taking place.
Support at all levels during wartime was critical and as such every duty station required someone to man it. Zack felt his skills would be better suited to fighting on the front lines. He had the physical conditioning, the weapons knowledge and a strong will, he only lacked the final training.
News then came of earthquake rumbles in Alabama. I decided it was time to act. I could no longer sit idly by observing while my loved one’s lives were in peril. I signaled Command and suggested that they allow my team to drill through the Moon and then drift up into the great alien craft. After a day of planning we were given the go-ahead.
As I sat in my quarters with Zack a warble on my QE comm told me it was time to go. I rose, gave him a long kiss and then looked back longingly as I slowly made my way down the hall towards the elevators. As I looked down at my finger I realized that I now had another reason to rid the world of our alien enemy... a reason to return and live and to grow old.
I met Randy, Raven and Shepard in the hangar and gave them the news of my betrothal. The congratulations were short as we were soon strapped into our chairs and powering up our GAF. When we lifted off I had a renewed feeling of fight. I had a feeling of being in control which I had not had for months, a feeling of being able to finally do something to bring an end to the madness that tormented our daily lives.
I plugged in the waypoints provided by Command and pushed the throttle full. Within seconds we approached the Moon and slowed to a speed where our shields would keep up with the drilling. Within two hours we were ten kilometers from our target.
At eight kilometers, Raven took note of something we had not counted on. The alien gravity wave penetrated deep within the rock of the Moon and the effectiveness of our shields began to drop. At five kilometers the shields reached 85%, at four kilometers 96%. We dare not go further.
We turned and moved back through the tunnel we had drilled on the way in. When the shield effectiveness had dropped to 15% I brought our GAF to a stop. I signaled Command and told them of our problem. I then asked for time to evaluate and was granted whatever I needed.
I had Shepard run the calculations for a full-on attack through the hole at just above light speed. Our shields would hold if only traveling through the Moon for the final four kilometers. They would not hold against the alien gravity beam.
We sat for most of the day in our tunnel through the Moon trying to find a way through the gravity field. Shepard worked feverishly at her calculations, but each attempt told a familiar story. We would need our shielding increased by a factor of 100 to have a shot at making it through. Our technology was not ready.
Randy then hatched a hair-brained scheme of his own. He wanted to know if it would be possible to remove a fusion reactor from the ship and to couple it into our BGS suits. Shepard rolled her eyes but was intrigued enough to run the numbers.
Several minutes later she began to nod as she worked, transposing formulas and assembling schematics on her holo-display. After half an hour she sat back in her chair and stared hard at her screen. Prolonged minutes of silence only made the tension grow before she turned and told us of her findings.
We would have to remove two of our reactors and couple them to a makeshift harness that she would construct from our supplies. She would then attach fused connections, binding the outputs of the two reactors together into one power tether. We would each attach the tether to our power belts through a hollowed-out power cell.
We would have to remove our food packs to make room for the new power coupler as our full power cells would still be needed once we got inside the mega-ship. With our BGS suits and filters we still had the ability to survive without food for several weeks. It was a risk we were willing to take.
I asked Shepard about other risks and rewards and she started with the later. The power supplied through the tether should be sufficient to keep our BGS shielding high enough to penetrate the spread-out alien gravity beam. The risk was that the reactors would cycle out of control and we would perish in a bright ball of Sodium fur
y.
I asked how long before it would be ready for me to try and I was told we would all be going. It would take the combined pulls of our fist BHDs to move the reactors through the final four kilometers of Moon rock. Our progress would be slow as we would have to hollow out rock with our BHDs making a tunnel nearly two meters wide.
Shepard placed our chances at 50 / 50. We would also have to field strip eight of our Drillers to construct a shield to put around the reactors. Should any part of our plan fail we would die an instant death.
We worked for hours breaking down Drillers and hand welding supplies to build our harness. I sent the plans of our endeavor to Command and was told they would have their engineers look into the likelihood of it being a success. They wanted the final say before giving us the go-ahead.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent removing the reactors. It would be many hours before Shepard would have a harness ready for testing. As the others worked I was left with nothing to do. I sat back in my chair and looked at the ring Zack had placed on my finger, my BGS gloves sitting in my lap. As I began to daydream my mind drifted off to better times. Time spent with Zack and my family, time spent on the farm. I wondered if this horrific war would ever end.
Chapter 14
The team worked well into the night hours before the harness was ready. The reactors were powered on at their lowest setting and their outputs merged. One by one we each coupled to the tether and tested our suits. They functioned perfectly.
Shepard then ramped up the reactors and again the suits were tested. We soon discovered that Raven's suit had a flaw in the heel that would expose her to the deadly alien gravity beam. It was decided that she would remain with the ship.
With Raven unhooked Shepard then set the reactors to full. I was the first to blink out, turning my BGS into the physics phenomenon of an invisible warped space field. Randy reached towards where I had been and pushed his hand through the space I had previously occupied. When his hand passed out of my space I blinked back into existence.
Shepard ran the numbers on my suit and again concluded that the shielding should be sufficient to withstand the gravity beam. Next out was Randy. It was fascinating to see someone first standing before and to then disappear in an instant. It was a sight that made you sometimes wonder about reality. Randy still existed in that space, but I had no way of knowing for sure.
When Shepard had completed her own venture into warped space, she evaluated the performance diagnostic results of our suits. Except for Raven, the three of us would make the journey.
Within the hour Command came back with the go-ahead. We turned the ship and opened the rear hatch. The alien gravity beam pushed at the contents of our GAF nearly pinning Raven to the front wall because of the defect in her suit. When the reactor harness was clear of the ship, the hatch was closed and the active skin brought back online.
We were each attached to the harness, but invisible to each other. I gave the command and with our BHDs we began to move towards the alien mega-ship through the tunnel we had drilled. When we reached the four kilometer wall I gave the command to start disintegrating the Moon rock that now stood between us and the alien vessel.
The drilling took many hours, our progress was slow. Shepard kept a leery eye on our suit parameters which had risen to 40% with just over a kilometer to go. When our nav computers signaled that we had entered the last 100 meters our shields had risen to 92%. Just before reaching the surface we gave one final pull with our BHDs to force us through the final meters of rock.
At 98% we broke through the last layer and floated out just above the surface. The mega-ship was still 800 meters away. At 600 meters the shields hit 99% and at 400 meters 100%. I began to feel the force of the alien gravity wave growing heavy against my skin. At 300 meters the force had reached two G’s and at 250 meters four G’s. We were being crushed as we moved ever closer.
At 200 meters the force was becoming unbearable. We did not have the shielding needed to get inside. As I enabled my comm to give the command to withdraw the gravity beam suddenly shifted. To our surprise Command had launched 500 Drillers as a distraction. They had been timed to arrive just as we exited from the Moon rock.
I gave the command to abandon the harness and to move the final 200 meters under the power of our power cells. Within seconds we were free. The Drillers had been spread out to keep the aliens occupied as long as possible. As the last Driller was sacrificed the gravity beam swept back into our location just as we entered the exterior wall of the alien craft.
For only a moment the gravity monitors in our suits spiked to 25 G’s. We soon learned that Randy had taken a hit. The gravity spike had crushed his feet before they had moved through the wall of the ship. He was now in excruciating pain and his BGS attempted to compensate by releasing meds.
He was soon drifting unconsciously through the green alien seas that lay just inside the alien vessel. The suit would keep him under sedation as it attempted to increase his rate of healing. There was nothing we could do.
As we drifted forward I took note of the many sub-trains moving cargo and squid riders about. Again the outer chamber was filled with row after row of skimmer and fighter. At our slow pace it took nearly an hour to cross the vast internal alien sea.
When we passed through the first inner wall we were again in a feeding chamber. I reminded Shepard through a thought message with our audio implants to not speak as we would be detected. The audio conversion process was fast with my QE comm enabled implant, but was slow for everyone else. Even simple conversions would sometimes have many seconds of lag. It was a function of our technology that needed improvement.
After drifting through several more bulkheads we came into an empty room. It was an air filled room. I blinked back in and soon felt the familiar pull of gravity. It measured as 0.77 G’s and was surprisingly pleasant after our long drift.
I sent an override command to Randy's suit and he was soon lying on the floor in front of me. Shepard followed behind and secured the room. It was 12 by 20 meters in size and held stacks of shipping crates similar to the ones the sub-trains had been moving about.
When I recognized a door down one wall I moved Randy around a stack of crates to a safer location. With the gravity now being in effect we were stationary. I adjusted Randy's suit to a setting that would allow the ship’s gravity to hold him in place while he himself would remain invisible to anyone else. It was the only option available to us.
With Randy secure, we turned our attention to the alien ship. Shepard checked the air and remarked that it was the same consistency as the air I had encountered when with the humanoids on the alien cruiser.
As we stood quietly debating our next move the door suddenly swung open. I blinked out, but Shepard was facing away and was too slow to react. A squid, wearing a helmet and pushing a small cart, looked up at her and jerked in a stunned reaction. Before it had time to react further I hit it with a pulse wave which in turn drove it backwards crushing it into the far wall.
The helmet made a loud clang as it impacted the wall and the bright green alien slithered to the floor dead. I blinked back in and rushed over to the door. The squid was alone, so I pulled the cart inside and closed the door behind it. As I looked down upon the dead alien a command came in over my QE comm.
We were given orders to continue our exploration of the massive alien vessel with an emphasis on learning as much as we could about the humanoid taskmasters. It was an order we were eager to comply with.
I was not about to leave Randy to the mercy of the aliens and soon had a plan in place to get him off the ship. Shepard programmed his BHD to give a sufficient enough blast to carry him off the ship. He would then drift for several days before he would be far enough out to safely be picked up by another crew.
With Randy tucked away we dragged the alien carcass to a secluded corner of the room. Shepard and I then turned and walked towards the inner wall. Just before reaching it we each blinked out and once again began t
o drift. The outer hallway was empty and we floated into another storage area.
When we came through the next wall we were surrounded by a number of the alien humanoids. They were sitting at tables, drinking and smoking. The six white eyes of the alien humanoids we had seen before now had a glazed appearance with green streaks running through them. I took it as a similar reaction that we had to drinking and smoking with our red bloodshot eyes.
There was much conversation going on and I was sure our linguistics boys back home were running it through their translation algorithms as we watched and listened. The lighting was dull and the room filled with smoke, so I took a chance with a momentary blink in and out to stop my forward progress.
It was fascinating watching the humanoids at play in what was predictably a bar scene. Conversations were loud with grunting noises that I could only imagine were laughs. Then, two of the humanoids stood facing each other while displaying angry gestures. The other patrons grew silent as they looked on. The four slits of their nostrils flared and the tips of their pointed ears turned a bright yellow. It was an impressive display.
A third humanoid from behind the bar soon joined them and just as with every squabble scene in every bar of every movie I had ever seen, the bartender calmed the anger and offered up a fresh brew. Things soon returned to normal as the crowd once again returned to their discussions.
I then received an audio text from Shepard. She was in a room with hundreds of sleeping humanoids. They were laid out on giant pillows on the floor with each curled up in a delineated space. One wall was full of what appeared to be lockers while another had racks of weapons. She had drifted into the humanoid's barracks.
When the same two humanoids again stood in anger I took the opportunity to blink out and maneuver out of the bar while heads were turned. After floating through another hallway I came into the same barracks area as Shepard. I again blinked in bringing myself to a stop. I had the urge to laugh when I observed the sleeping humanoids. Their nostrils opened and then flapped gently shut as they breathed in and out. They made the same sound we would associate with passing gas only with several hundred doing it at the same time.
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