Parker's Folly (28 page)

“Come on man. We gotta' move,” JT told the stricken Marine. JT took his arm and led him forward. To his credit, Sanchez quickly recovered his senses and moved out. As they passed the Lieutenant and her two companions she called out “continue on to the surface, we're right behind you.”

“Lieutenant, this is Bear. We got spiders on the surface as well.”

Shit! We do not want to get surrounded out here
. Gretchen turned at the mouth of the cavern and ordered, “Yuki, Corporal, use the HE rounds, fire at the cave roof. Maybe we can bring it down.”

The three opened fire with 20mm explosive rounds, which flashed brightly against the roof of the dark cave. Slowly, the roof of the entrance collapsed, blocking any spiders from following.

“Come on, get yer asses on board,” yelled the Chief.

Bear jumped into the sled. On the floor, the creature in the carry sack moved feebly, which Bear stopped by jumping on the sack with both front legs. Seconds later JT hopped on board, quickly taking up position in the rear of the sled. Once on board he opening up with careful, directed fire at the spiders which were emerging from cracks throughout the rubble field. “We need to be elsewhere, people,” he shouted.

In the second sled the others clambered on board, trying not to step on Washington's recumbent body. Raising her sled, Lt. Curtis signaled the Chief to head back to the ship. “Hang on back there!” he cried, elevating the skiff and moving out as fast as the floater could travel. On the way out they had traveled at a leisurely 20 kph, now they were traveling closer to 80. JT looked to his left and saw the Lieutenant's sled doing likewise as bolts of glowing plasma streaked overhead.

“What are those things?” asked LCpl Feldman, manning the weapons console next to Bobby's side of the helm. His display had automatically zoomed in on the spherical objects emerging from the rubble field, bracketing them with aiming marks, range and velocity information.

“They would be your targets, Corporal,” the Captain replied. “Weapons are free, gentlemen—commence firing and take care not to hit the returning shore party.”

Ivan activated the upper firing station and both men began picking off the spiders. The weapons they were employing were meant for close in support—the destruction of incoming missiles or warheads. In that mode they fired rapid multiple pulses of coherent X-ray radiation. In support of the shore party the X-ray lasers fired singled pulses, directed by the operators on the bridge.

The gunner's interface was much like a first-person-shooter video game, with the computer highlighting possible targets and the crewmen choosing among them. All the humans had to do was highlight a target and press the fire button. As the short but intense bursts of x-rays struck the spiders, they flashed brightly and vaporized. Since the computer handled the actual aiming it was pretty much one shot, one kill.

The spiders evidently recognized that the ship, several kilometers away, was also hostile and began to target it as well. One shot, which would have struck the bow, created a glowing orange cloud where it impacted the ship's shields. Slight tremors could be felt through the deck as multiple plasma blasts were deflected.

“How are the shields holding Mr. Medina?” asked the Captain.

“No problems, Sir. Minimal power drain.”

“I think you will find that the shields were designed to handle much heavier impacts than these, Captain,” added Dr. Gupta. “After all, their primary function is to keep the ship intact when traveling at significant fractions of the speed of light.”

“Thank you for that reassurance, Doctor. Mr. Medina, please keep the shielding in front of the port cargo door intact until just before the sleds arrive. There's no telling what kind of damage one of those bolts would do if it managed to hit the open hold.”

“Aye aye, Sir.”

“Captain, it looks like a bulge is forming in the middle of the crater floor,” Susan noted from the navigation station. Using the 20 cm scope gave her a better view of the action than the others on the bridge.

“Sir, the power source readings are spiking,” added Jo Jo.

“Helm, be ready to move the ship the instant the shore party is on board.”

The Chief and the Lieutenant were weaving and dodging in an effort to throw off the alien fire. Plasma bolts streaked by on both sides and overhead. Hits against occasional promontories resulted in spectacular showers of sparks. Behind the two sleds streams of green tracer rounds described serpentine paths as the shore party returned fire as best they could from their constantly jinking platforms.

Lt. Curtis, having previously flown helos under fire, was in the zone—concentrating 100 percent on flying her sled. “Folly, shore party. We are just about at the cargo door, make sure the shields are down or you will have to come out and pick up the pieces.”

“Roger, shore party, dropping the shields in front of the cargo door now,” came the reply.

“If she don't slow down some they're gona' have a rough landing,” the Chief commented over the local link to Bear and JT. The Chief had fallen in behind Gretchen's sled and was braking while weaving from side to side.

“Gretchen is a good pilot,” Bear added, “I've flown with her myself.”

“That was in a helo, these skiffs ain't like helos. You can't just pull back and flair to kill yer speed. They don't brake fer shit.”

Gretchen was making that discovery on her own as she desperately tried to bleed off speed. She got the sled down to under 20 kph when the cargo hold door loomed large in front of her. “Everyone hang on! This is going to be messy!”

She popped the front of the sled up, trying to trade speed for altitude. At the last second, she threw the racing vehicle sideways as it entered the cargo hold, tilting on its side to present the sled's main repulsors to the onrushing far wall. Between the repulsors and the cargo netting the engineers had rigged the sled managed a safe if hard landing, coming to rest and then sliding down to the deck.

Damn, I think I need to practice my landings in these things,
Gretchen admonished herself, hands shaking from the adrenalin rush. “Everyone out! Grab Washington and get clear of the entrance!”

An instant later the Chief's sled entered the hold traveling sideways but at a more controlled rate of speed. “Bridge, we're in! Shut the hatch and get the hell outta here,” the Chief transmitted.

“Roger, shore party. Welcome home.”

“Secure all external hatches and doorways. Mr. Danner, put the crater wall between us and the hostiles. Smartly, if you please.”

“Aye aye, Captain!” Bobby was already lifting the ship as he replied. The ship rolled to starboard as it rose and turned toward the crater wall. Though the deck gravity compensated for the abrupt movement, people all around the bridge grasped their chairs tightly as the crater wall passed 10 meters off the starboard bow, the ship heeling over on its side as it accelerated.

Cresting the crater wall, Folly dipped down seeking cover from the plasma fire. The ship quickly righted, placing the lunar surface under its keel once again. All on the bridge wore tense or startled expressions save for Bobby, who's face was split by an ear-to-ear grin—flying a 7400 ton spaceship like an aerobatic plane was everything he had ever dreamed it could be.

“Captain, I would like to suggest that we leave this vicinity as rapidly as possible,” came the unsteady voice of Dr. Gupta. “I believe that whatever was buried under the crater will be emerging quite energetically.”

Outside the ship, which was headed due south, the landscape suddenly brightened. This included even the dark side off the port bow, which had been cloaked in lunar night only moments before.

“Helm, all ahead full! Head for space tangent to the surface.”

“Yes, Captain.” The lunar surface became a gray blur and rapidly disappeared as the ship accelerated at nearly 25 gravities. Again, the deck gravity system did its job, compensating for the acceleration which would have otherwise crushed all those on board.

Even so, the racing ship was overtaken by streamers of incandescent matter from the Moon's surface—ejected from the floor of crater Giordano Bruno. Fortunately, the ship was at the edge of the eruption and its shielding dealt with the  firestorm of tortured lunar rock that did cross its path. Under full acceleration, Parker's Folly soon outpaced the explosion's aftermath.

“My goodness, Captain,” exclaimed Rajiv Gupta from the engineer's station. “The ship is working splendidly. The inertial compensation system worked perfectly, dampening out the acceleration through the deck gravity grid. The reactor is running at about 90% of designed output with both the drives and the shields at maximum—I believe we could actually squeeze five more Gs out of her if we went to flank speed.”

“I'm glad the ship is working so well, Doctor,” replied the very relieved ship's Captain. “Helm, back off to ahead one quarter and adjust course to bring us back to the Earth-Moon orbital plane.”

“Aye, Sir.”

“Do we have a view of the crater explosion? Did the alien device just explode or did it launch something?”

“I'm putting it on the screen now,” said Susan from the navigation console. A bright spray of material could be seen on the limb of the Moon, originating at Crater Giordano Bruno and reaching several hundred kilometers into space.

“Well, they are certainly going to notice that from Earth,” mused the Captain. “If I were a Medieval monk, I think I could fairly describe that as
‘
a dragon on the limb of the Moon.
’
”

“Captain, it looks like the instruments are tracking something,” came Susan's unsure answer to the Captain's second question. Dr. Gupta hustled over to the navigation console and began checking sensor readings.

“Oh yes, Captain,” he said after a few moments squinting at readouts. “It looks like the spire was, in fact, a ship. About one quarter the size of Folly. It is accelerating at about five Gs, though its initial takeoff must have been much greater. And Captain, it is headed out of the plane of the ecliptic.”

“Captain,” said the ship's computer in a tiny voice that only the Captain could hear. “It is imperative that ship not escape the solar system.”

“What is it, Folly?” Jack whispered back. “Is it not what we were looking for?”

“No, Captain. That ship was not designed by the creators of the artifact. It is alien, but its builders are an unknown species. It would appear to have been an automated observation post, designed to detect the use of spacefaring technology on Earth.

“So it could simply be reporting back to its masters.”

“Given its reaction to being discovered I estimate that its creator's have a 95% probability of being hostile to the rise of a technologically advanced indigenous species on your planet. As previously stated, that ship must be prevented from leaving the solar system.”

The Captain sighed inwardly.
So far, a simple getaway had turned into a firefight in the cargo hold, a battle with plasma spewing alien spiders on the Moon and a near escape from an exploding crater. Now we have to chase down and stop an unknown alien vessel. Talk about mission creep!
“Helm, plot an intercept course for that ship. I want to catch it before it leaves the neighborhood.”

“Aye aye, Sir.”

Indicating the dot of light on his scope that marked the fleeing alien vessel, Billy Ray leaned toward Bobby and said in a low voice, “you were wrong, pardner. That there is the Imperial Probe Droid.”

Part Three

Every year, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich celebrates the start of spring by opening its doors to the public for a bit of Moon gazing. At the annual Spring Moonwatch, held by the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Observatory's 28 inch refracting telescope—the largest of its kind in the UK—was available for viewing by the public. With the help of the Royal Observatory astronomers many avid amateur observers were excitedly peering through the instrument, trying to make out the Moon's mountains and craters in detail. This year, quite unexpectedly, the assembled enthusiasts witnessed something unprecedented in modern memory—a large impact event on the limb of the Moon.

At least that is what it first appeared to be to the stunned astronomers, professional and amateur alike. But the Observatory staff quickly realized that—given the size of the plume of ejected material—an object large enough to cause the dramatic display should have been observed prior to impact. No such object had been reported, still there it was, a bright scintillating fan of ejectamenta, clearly visible to the naked eye.

Soon the Observatory's telephones started ringing off the hook with inquiries from news reporters and frightened members of the public. The best they could report was that there was no apparent danger to Earth, though there would probably be some spectacular meteor storms over the next few days. In the end, modern scientists were as mystified by the events on the limb of the Moon as their ancient counterparts, the monks of Canterbury, in 1178 AD.

* * * * *

In secret rooms at secret agencies around the world, scientists, military leaders and intelligence specialists were also discussing the spectacular explosion on the Moon. According to AFTAC, the emissions profile was unlike anything ever seen from a nuclear explosion. When asked to speculate, AFTAC's scientists ventured that it might have been the result of a small chunk of anti-matter impacting the lunar surface, but that explanation was quickly dismissed as too improbable.

“We need to catch that ship, Mr. Vincent. Have you computed an intersect course?”

“Aye, Captain. The alien vessel accelerated at around 1,000 Gs when it took off, but only maintained that rate for about ten seconds. It has now dropped back to around 5 Gs. If we accelerate at 20 Gs we should overtake the alien craft in approximate 33 minutes. That's give or take a few minutes for matching direction vectors. We will intercept the target about 665,000 km away from Earth and 322,000 km above the ecliptic plane.”