by Greig Beck
“Three – two – one – ignition!”
Alex grunted as the weight came down hard, feeling like a giant sitting on his chest. He breathed in and out slowly, relaxing himself. He had time to think, lots of time. His system metabolized the drugs almost immediately, so he wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t rest, and wouldn’t be shielded from the worst aspects of the crushing G-forces. His body and mind would just have to bear the pain, as he remained conscious for the entire eight hours of flight.
Welcome to the Thunderdome, he thought, and half-smiled.
He tried to conjure up Aimee’s face again, and once again it was denied. Something’s wrong, he thought. Joshua wouldn’t do that. Would the Other, the dark entity that resided deep in his mind? It had never intruded on that space before. Why now?
Alex gritted his teeth as he felt the huge cylinder of steel approach the Earth’s atmosphere ceiling, knowing that he and his soldiers were sitting inside a giant thermobaric bomb. One that had been juiced up to continue its acceleration all the way to the moon.
Hundreds of pounds of pressure forced him back into his chair, and he exhaled and shut his eyes. It wasn’t to sleep, but instead to wrestle with the demons inside his own mind.
Joshua, he called.
I’m here, came the whispered reply.
Alex’s eyes flicked open – it sounded like his son, but oddly, didn’t feel like him.
Gonna be a long mission.
CHAPTER 21
John F Kennedy Moon Base
No one talked to anyone anymore.
Six people had vanished now, including the Russian woman, Olga; Handsome Tony; and Beverley from the infirmary. Only Olga had had a security alert posted about her: Approach with caution. That was the last security blast they had, because internal communications had gone down. Just like the external communications had a few days before – exactly like the Russian woman had warned.
Mia paused to look over her shoulder along the length of the silent corridor for a moment. But there was nothing there – thank God.
She didn’t get it; though the Russian woman was the prime suspect for bringing in the contagion, or lifeform, or whatever the hell was now afflicting their base, why did she try and warn them? Why did she urge them to get a warning message back to Earth? Mia sighed. Nothing made sense anymore.
She spun to stare back down the corridor, feeling the hair on her scalp prickle as she stood, frozen, for a few moments.
Stop it, she demanded of herself. Every pop, tic, or groan of the base made her jumpy as hell. But then again, the scenarios of the disappearances were always the same: people who found themselves alone, in their sleeping pods, in the ablution centers, or just walking along one of the corridors, never arrived at their destination. Sometimes all that remained was torn clothing and the black slime, as though something had thrown up or shat after eating them. Mia shuddered and hugged herself.
Base instructions were that everyone was to work and travel in at least pairs. But rumors were rampant, and they tore at everyone’s sanity – there was one story that the thing was so good at camouflage that it could mimic a piece of equipment or furniture, or that it could squeeze itself down and move around inside the walls, or the air-conditioning ducts, or even that it had some sort of ability to exist outside of the normal spectrum for human vision – basically, it could be invisible.
But the worst of all was the rumor that the thing “hid” inside people. That meant that the person who was accompanying you along some lonely corridor, or the person you were having a drink with, or the person you were fucking, could suddenly reveal themselves to be the lifeform. And then you were nothing but torn clothing and puddles of black shit.
Every single one of the scenarios was stupid and also plausible, so it meant no one came out, no one spoke, and no one trusted anyone. And that was why Mia wanted to be by herself.
She found herself in the rec room, alone, and went to the bar and leaned over, grabbing the homebrew vodka and pouring herself a triple. She gulped half of it, welcoming the cool burn, and sticking her tongue out to exhale long and satisfied. She refilled her glass to the brim before walking to the window and its view out over the lunar surface. The moon was as it always was: dust-gray, some blue shading around the jagged edges of the larger craters, and purple-colored plains.
Mia was about to turn away from the window when she stopped and craned forward.
“Oh, please no.”
There was a body lying out there. The helmet was beside it, but thankfully the face was turned away. She’d read what the airless and super-dry atmosphere of the moon could do to a body so was in no hurry to see the face.
“Suicide is painless,” she whispered as her eyes blurred. “I don’t know what’s happening or who I am anymore.” She lifted the trembling glass, toasted herself, and then brought it to her lips.
Movement in the window reflection behind her – Mia spun, coughing the vodka out. “Jesus Christ.” She put her glass down before she dropped it as her heart was hammering so hard.
“You shouldn’t be out by yourself, Mia, you know the rules.” Captain Briggs and one of the security personnel, Art Dawson, stood at the bar. Dawson’s hand rested on an extendable baton hanging from his belt.
Mia nodded. “I know, I know. Just getting cabin fever staying in my pod.” She smiled flatly. “I used to like it here. Now I hate it. And this is why …” She turned back to the window and pointed. “Look.”
Briggs and Dawson came closer, but Dawson stayed a few paces back, obviously not trusting her yet.
Briggs squinted. “Looks like Eric Wilson,” he said softly.
“Yeah, I think he killed himself.” Mia turned to him. “Seems there’s another infection spreading.”
Briggs nodded. “I know. Doctor Pandewahanna has informed me: depression.”
“More will die from it.”
“Sharma is working on a test.”
Mia’s brows went up. “So, we really do think it’s hiding inside someone?”
“I don’t know. I hope not, but it’s possible. Some sort of mimicry,” Briggs replied without meeting her eyes.
“More than just mimicry. If it is, it doesn’t just look like us, it actually becomes us.”
Briggs shrugged. “Maybe at first they don’t know, the people who are infected. One minute they’re normal and the next they’re …”
“Something else entirely.” Mia felt even more depressed at the thought. She looked up. “And what about Olga? Have you found her?”
Briggs shook his head. “Not only were the comms knocked out, but a lot of the base sensors. The external doors have been opening and closing without us knowing – poor Eric lying out there is a perfect example. But as for comrade Sobakin, she’s gone, maybe back to her base.”
Mia cursed, the guilt hammering her again. “It’s all my damn fault. I should have known. I mean, how was she even alive with that hole in her helmet? She was a Trojan horse.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You did what any one of us would have done if we found what we thought was a survivor. And maybe she was a victim herself. Like I said, maybe she didn’t even know she was sick.”
“We should check the Russian base. If Olga is the culprit, then everything she has told us could be misinformation.” She turned back to Briggs. “About the detonation, how it happened, and her escape.”
“I thought about that. Maybe it wasn’t her that set the detonation, but someone else.” He exhaled and then his mouth turned down for a moment. “I’d love to investigate the Russian base as you suggested, but we don’t want to spare the security personnel.”
“The Russians must also be coming from Earth. They’d be aware of their base destruction. It’s their job to check it out. But we should warn them somehow.”
“Yes, we should. But I don’t know how. We can’t even warn our own people.”
The overhead lights flickered, and the three looked up briefly.
“Hasn’t done that before,
” Mia said softly.
Dawson turned to Briggs, his face deadpan. “Power isn’t cut, just reduced. Could be a problem with the solar beds, or their base-feed cables.”
“Ah, fuck it.” Briggs let out a long groan before dragging himself to his feet.
“What is it?” Mia asked also rising.
Dawson turned to her. “I used to be in the military services. One-oh-one for siege warfare is to cut off your adversary’s communications. Then you cut off their supplies. Force them out into the open.”
“Our power, which is responsible for our air, warmth, and running water.” Mia quickly looked out the window again. “You think someone out there is messing around with one of our power sources? The panels or the conduits that feed back to the base?”
“Probably – it’s what I would do. We still have internal generators, but to affect the solar beds you don’t even need to be in the base,” Dawson said.
“We can’t let that happen,” Briggs declared, his jaw jutting. “Go and get Benny and suit up. I’ll meet you at the airlock.” He headed for the door.
“Wait.” Mia stood her ground. “It’s a trap.”
Briggs half-turned. “No choice, Mia; we’ll fry or freeze if any more power goes out. We need it all online, all the time.”
“I’m coming then.” She walked fast to catch up.
“Nope, got everyone I need.” Briggs kept going.
“Bullshit! This thing might have taken out an entire Russian mining base. I’m coming, and I’m bringing a burner.”
Mia pulled up as Briggs turned to her. He stared for a moment, as though thinking. “Bring two,” he said. He half-smiled and then continued on.
Mia headed for the maintenance shop to get the projection welders. They were the closest thing to a weapon they had on the base – not much, but better than just holding a long spanner or crowbar.
And right now, her gut told her she needed a weapon.
CHAPTER 22
Briggs stepped out of the airlock first, then Art Dawson, with Benny Minchen right on his shoulder. Both men were holding heavy equipment tools plus each had a maintenance and repair case. Briggs had his burner nozzle hanging from his belt and the small dark cylinder on his back. They paused to scan the lunar surface.
After another moment came Mia with a burner held in both hands. She felt her heart racing and gripped her burner hard, feeling the tension run through her like electricity. The burners were basically gun shaped and fed a stream of liquefied gases to the nozzle under pressure, where the initiator ignited them. Like normal welders they could be compressed and focused to provide a small super-hot jet for spot welding or opened up to deliver a body-length stream of heat for larger jobs requiring a broad melt rather than a spot weld.
Briggs waved them on, leading them the 200 feet toward the first of the solar arrays while Dawson and Minchen looked like they were trying to see everywhere at once.
Mia couldn’t help the crawling sensation on her scalp that constantly made her feel like something was sneaking up on her. It was made worse because she couldn’t scratch her head underneath the helmet.
Thinking of the helmet brought home another disadvantage: they were all wrapped inside their cumbersome suits, breathing stored air, with helmets that had front-facing visor-plates that limited them to just sixty percent of vision, and for all she knew, Olga – or whatever lifeform the woman really was – was indigenous to the moon. As crazy as it sounded, that meant the mix of thin gases might be just perfect for her, it – whatever.
Ugh, she felt ill.
They made it to the solar beds untroubled and the group quickly began to check them over, looking for damage. It only took a few minutes to locate the problem: not so serious – a few of the solar sheets, each six feet square, had been pulled off and flung onto the lunar surface. They’d be easily replaced.
“Must have been some breeze last night, huh?” Briggs said.
Mia could see a grin through his visor. “Yeah, right.”
But the strewn solar panels were nothing compared to what they found next: the actual energy feed cables that were once buried had been surfaced, and severed – or rather, shredded.
“This ain’t good.” Briggs crouched. “Lot of damage here.”
Mia stood over him. “Don’t suppose it was micrometeorite strike?”
Dawson shook his head. “See the surface dust? It’s all pulled upward. An m-strike would punch downward, and depending on size, leave a small crater. Plus, the solar sheets have been pulled up and tossed.” He swore. “This was deliberate and no micrometeorite shower.”
“We can repair it,” Briggs said. “Let’s do the hard job first. The cabling was designed to recover from little mishaps like this.” He pointed. “Benny, eyes open. Art, slide over your case.”
“You got it.” Benny turned slowly, scanning the moon surface and keeping watch.
Dawson also did as asked and then also continued to act as a sentinel, so they had a man watching each quadrant while Mia crouched beside Briggs to offer any help required.
The captain cleared away some of the silky dust, exposing the extent of the damage. There were three synthetic polymer fiber cables, each as thick as a wrist, and usually protected by flexible piping. The tough outer coating was designed to shield against micrometeorite strike, radiation bombardment, and was generally very robust. But it had been ripped open, gouged, and Mia’s immediate impression was that it looked like it had been chewed, as the outer edges were so ragged.
“Damn, lot of fraying.” Briggs sighed. “Best get to it.”
He cut away the ruptured edges of the pipe to expose the bundles of shredded cables within. It took him several minutes, but soon he was cleaning off the broken edges of the cables, and either pulling some together to heat-seal them again, or splicing in new sections where pieces were missing. These were the ones that took the longest.
Mia’s eyes burned from concentration and she lifted her head to look out at the moon’s surface. Small crystals glinted back at her from crater rims and, given her nervous concentration, it didn’t take long for her mind to start playing tricks on her – a shadow shifting, or noticing a darting movement from the corner of her eye, but when she turned there was nothing there.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds and then looked back at the repair work.
In another twenty minutes Briggs announced he was three-quarters done. Just as well, Mia thought, feeling like she needed to do a nervous pee, and though they could relieve themselves in their suits if pushed to it, no one really wanted to as you could feel the warm bag of urine up against your leg the entire time you were out.
Briggs tested all the links and they were optimal. He gave Mia the thumbs-up.
“Well done,” she said.
“Not just a pretty face.” He grinned.
“Not even.” She slapped a hand on his upper arm.
Briggs stood, dusted himself off and then turned about, sighting the half-dozen scattered panels. “Okay, everyone, let’s grab those runaway panels.” He walked to the closest solar array bed.
Mia followed, and being closer to the solar panel infrastructure, she could see where a few of the panels had been removed. The sheets looked like they simply needed to be reconnected and then slotted into place – easy.
She turned and saw that the security guys were each bringing back single sheets at a time, and though they were near weightless on the moon, they needed to take care not to damage them. The men lay the panels close to Briggs, and she watched as the short and powerfully built captain lifted the first two, and walked out onto the solar arrays, trying to stay on the joins where their support struts were located.
Briggs carefully laid the first panel and reached inside the grid so he could reconnect them to the entire gantry. She turned and saw Dawson and Minchen bringing in two more, leaving only two more to recover. She turned about again. It’s all too easy, she thought. If this is a trap, it’s the worst one ever.
&
nbsp; She turned all the way around to look at the few sensor poles that monitored movement and returned lunar surface images back to the base. Was this all just another diversion? Had Olga somehow managed to damage the grid and then make it back inside so she could … what?
Mia blew air between her pressed lips. She wanted to go home. Full stop.
* * *
Briggs had just grabbed the last panel when Mia turned to the plain beyond a small crater ridge. “What about Eric?” she asked.
The captain paused for a moment, and then nodded. ‘Yeah, we should bring him in while we’re out here.”
“Is that a good idea?” Dawson asked.
“Huh?” Mia turned. “We can’t just leave him here.”
“I know, but I mean if he’s, you know, infected.”
There was silence for a few seconds as they turned to Briggs.
“No problem. We’ll freeze the body. Mia, you stay with me while I finish up, and you two guys recover Eric.” Briggs went back to work. “Keep your eyes open.”
“Got it, chief.” Dawson punched Minchin on the arm and then both headed toward the crater rim and where the body lay.
* * *
“Eric was a good guy,” Art Dawson said.
“Yep, well, never picked him for someone who’d do himself in, though,” Minchin replied wearily.
“Depression, maybe? Or fear.”
“Fear, huh?” Minchin grunted. “Hey, I’m scared too, but not that scared. To come out here and just take your helmet off? No way. You get freeze dried – tongue stiffens, air sucked from your lungs, and your eyeballs pop. Shitty way to go.”
“Yeah, think I’d prefer to just drink myself to death. Oh wait, I’m already doing that.” Dawson chuckled.
“There’s our boy.”
They closed in on the body. The young man was lying on his back, his face turned away, helmet by his side. They crouched beside him.
“So much for freeze dried. He just looks asleep,” Dawson whispered.