Space 1999 #5 - Lunar Attack (3 page)

In the medicentre, patients and staff were heaped in a drift against the external bulkhead. As the echoing blast died there was a single high pitched continuing scream and Helena Russell clawed herself out of the ruck to check it out.

A long fissure was opening in a direct vision port. Mathias was on his feet and grabbed up a sealing cannister. As the foam hit and hardened the screaming stopped.

Helena said, ‘Will it hold? We have to get them out.’

She raced to the Communications Post and called urgently, ‘John. Do you read me? Atmosphere leak.’

Koenig saw her picture shimmering on the screen and hauled himself to the console. She was going on, ‘We have it controlled, but . . .’

Before he could answer, the Hawk was in again on another run, cutting a bright swathe through the complex.

The vibration shook out Mathias’s patch and the scream rose again as though Moonbase Alpha was an animal with a mortal wound. He flapped a gauze strip over the crack and sprayed again. Helena Russell used her commlock to open the medicentre hatch. Signalling to the nursing team to get to it she began wheeling a trolley out into the corridor.

Koenig, leaving Sandra to the shattered desks took Morrow and Kano and was off at a sprint. When he reached the medicentre the corridor was already choked with trolleys and patients dragged clear in their blankets.

Mathias was back at his window with the scream jacking itself up into a demented shriek. His cannister spluttered and died. He yelled. ‘It’s going!’

Koenig weighed it up. They had seconds if that. He shouted ‘Leave it!’

‘I can’t.’

Helena was inside again struggling to lift the last patient. Koenig yelled ‘Helena!’ and shoved over the key to close the double hatch. As they began to slide shut he was in and grabbing her wrist, hauling her by main force through the narrowing gap.

As the seals met, the whole medicentre opened like a flower and Mathias and the blanketed form of the patient jetted out into space like seeds from a bursting pod.

There was silence in the corridor. Koenig stood in the litter of equipment and débris and huddled bodies and knew the bitterness of defeat. He said heavily to Helena, ‘Do what you can. Paul and David will help. I’ll be in Main Mission.’

A long way above their heads the single Hawk had turned in a long sweep and was heading away to the red planet.

Sandra Benes had not been idle. Bringing in fall back gear, she had conjured up a steady picture on the big screen. But what she had pulled out of space was no comfort. Hand to her mouth, eyes enormous she was staring at it in rigid fear.

Koenig came up behind her unheard, put an arm round her trim shoulders for human comfort and shared the horror of it.

Set fair in the centre of the screen with a swarm of Hawks like sucker fish round a shark was a long deadly supership, a mobile arsenal with power in its belly to shatter the Moon itself and leave no footing even for a wandering spectre.

Koenig said, ‘Copy book tactics. First knock out the fighter screen, then send in the heavy brigade for the pay off.’

Automatically, Sandra made some fine tuning adjustments and had the satisfaction of getting it crystal clear. For what it was worth they could run a count down to their own destruction. There was nothing else they could do.

Holding station like a piece of abandoned space rubbish, Carter’s Eagle was a marker buoy for the oncoming fleet to pass. Nerves at a stretch he expected any second that one of the fighter screen would peel off and blast the battered Eagle for good measure.

Hardly breathing, he said, ‘Alpha has one laser-equipped Eagle left
—if
they can get it launched. Somehow, someway this one’s for us. Bring up target display. Just a glimmer.

Johnson, still shaken to his soul, slowly tuned the scanner. The hair grid of the laser sights filled the screen. Way off centre, in the distance, the huge bomber swerved in and out of the central target zone as the Eagle rolled without stabilising power.

Carter, teeth snapped shut and a muscle pulsing at the side of his jaw was willing his craft to swing and the bomber to cross the fire zone. Thumbs on the fire bar, he was calling her every name he could find, going methodically from A to Z. A long yaw brought the Eagle’s head round and the bomber was through the centre and out before he could fire.

He took a decision and knew it was a once-only chance. He said, ‘Give me all the power we have, Pete.’

The Eagle came to life, vibrated to every last rivet in a bid to shake herself into scrap. Carter bucking in his seat, was concentrating like a medium in trance. For a split second, he juggled with the failing power pack and held everything steady with the bomber nudging into the crux of his sight grid. He yelled, ‘Laser at max,’ and Johnson diverted every scrap of usable power to the fire bar. A whine built up over the vibration and rose to a brief scream as Carter shoved venomously on the stud.

The laser beam hit fair and square on the slab side of the supership, played for a fraction of a second as though etching itself a small star and was lost in a white flare that engulfed the escorting Hawks in a gigantic nuclear event that lingered as a white fire ball between the red planet and the hurrying Moon.

Eagle One, flung nose over tail, came to an even keel with Carter doubting whether he was alive or whether it was his body carrying on regardless.

In Main Mission Koenig rolled Sandra off of his chest and helped her to stand unsteadily. She said, ‘What was that, then?’

‘It could only be Eagle One,’—Koenig punched at the communications desk console. ‘Alpha to Eagle One. Do you copy?’

Carter’s voice, jubilant in spite of his failing ship, came in loud and clear, ‘We copy.’

‘Alan, that was terrific.’

‘It was the big one. Meant for Alpha.’

‘Too right. I didn’t see any way off the hook. Why are you still alive?’

‘We had to play dead. How’s it fared with the base?’

‘Not good. How are you fixed now?’

‘Some auxiliary power. I reckon we can get back. What do they have for us next?’

‘I’m relying on you to tell me that. Out.’

Koenig flipped over to the bunkers and called Bergman, ‘Victor?’ Bergman’s face looking like a concerned father appeared on the screen, ‘What was the big bang?’

‘Their doomsday weapon, I’d say. Earmarked for Alpha but Alan got in the way.’

‘Alan?’

‘He’s all right. But we have a casualty roll as long as your arm and a real mess up here. Sandra’s checking with computer. She’ll give you a safe route to Main Mission.’

She was there with it at his elbow and read it out, ‘Travel tube to door nine. Corridor nine is safe and from there you can enter through the Commander’s office.’

She made it sound as though there was something to come home to, but looking around the wreck of his operations centre, Koenig knew it for a fiction. There was no way to restore Alpha as a viable proposition. Sandra caught his eye and read his thinking. She shook her head. That was one vote. He went slowly up the stairs to the command office. Better have them all in and sort out a programme.

John Koenig looked round the conference table at the head personnel of Moonbase Alpha. All were streaked with sweat and dust and sour with nervous exhaustion and plain physical fatigue.

Fastidious to the last, Helena Russell dusted off the surface she was about to sit on. It was a small thing but it went to Koenig’s heart. They none of them gave up easy.

He started with her report, wanting to know the human situation. ‘All right, Helena. Let’s know the worst.’

Face averted she said, ‘A hundred and twenty-eight dead. Mostly no trace. Sucked out. Explosive decompression.’

There was a quiet pause as each one came to terms with the figure.

Koenig said, ‘Survivors?’

‘Those who reached the bunkers are pretty much all right. Those who didn’t are in that first figure. There isn’t a half way when a section blows.’

‘We still have emergency power and the attack seems to have been called off.’

Carter said, ‘Maybe the bomber was the last fling.’

‘I’m not convinced of that. But as of now we are alive. How do we get to stay that way?’

David Kano had a time line to put on that, ‘About the emergency power, Commander. We’re running off solar batteries. There’s a shortfall even for minimum requirements. I couldn’t give more than eight days.’

‘Main generators?’

Morrow had done the homework, ‘Four weeks to repair the least damaged unit.’

Kano came in again, ‘Most areas lost artificial gravity units. Total write off.’

Technicians were thin on the ground. Helena confirmed it. ‘Most casualties are Techs. They went when the launch pads were hit.’

Koenig was being pushed to a decision and Sandra Benes put in another turn of the screw. ‘That’s not all, Commander. Food production and recycling plants took a beating. Water supply is heavily contaminated.’

‘Repair forecast?’

‘Nine weeks minimum. But then there’ll be at least two months before we can begin cropping.’

Koenig looked at Victor Bergman. There was no need to ask his question. Bergman was ahead of him and had the answer pat.

‘We shall be within range of this planet for only four days. Beyond that the nearest star system is at least too far by six months.’

Every eye was on Koenig. He felt the loneliness of the command slot. But he accepted it, made his voice even and deliberate as though he had a solution and it was just a matter of finalising the detail.

‘Alan. Get an unarmed reconnaissance Eagle winched up to a functioning launch pad.’

Every face looked its question. Answering them all, he looked at Helena Russell.

‘We’re going down to the planet.’

There was a burst of objection all round, but Victor Bergman’s voice seemed to stand out in the hubbub, ‘I tell you, John, I think they’ve been making it clear that we should stay away.’

‘The reason they’ve stopped their attack, Victor, is that they must know they don’t have to bother. Alan may have stopped the supership from handing out the
coup de grâce
—but Alpha’s dead. We can’t live here and there’s nowhere else to go. Computer’s estimate remains. That planet can support human life. Unless anyone has any better idea, I see only one course open to us. We make for that planet as planned.’

As a practical proposition, it held. He could be right. There was an outside chance. In any event, they would be marching for the edge of the precipice under their own power and not be dragged kicking and screaming to the brink. There was more dignity in it if that mattered—maybe it was all they had.

Within the hour, there was a reconnaissance Eagle on the one undamaged pad and Koenig was in the pilot slot with Helena Russell beside him.

As he lifted the ship in a flurry of moondust and small trash, she asked, ‘Do you think they’ll believe we’re unarmed?’

‘Who knows what they’ll believe?’

He flipped in the direct link with Main Mission and they watched the orderly activity as though they were already ghosts eavesdropping on the living.

The place had been cleaned up and was partly operational. Morrow was doing his best to give them a good reference, ‘. . . the ship now approaching your planet is unarmed. Our Commander, John Koenig, requests permission to meet your leaders and discuss our situation. We ask for your goodwill to be shown to the survivors of this base. This is Moonbase Alpha calling . . . the ship now approaching . . .’

Bergman was at the command desk and Sandra reported, ‘Casualties now running at one two nine.’

He shook his head slowly from side to side and she went on fiercely, ‘Why has all this happened to us, Professor?’

The optimist was in eclipse, he fell back on a grim quote, ‘As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.’

Koenig was also looking for a logical pattern and failing to find it. As the red planet filled his scanner, he said, ‘I can think of no reason why these people, this far out in space, should have developed strike craft so similar to what came out of Earth technology . . .’

‘Perhaps we’ve run into another Earth.’

The Eagle sped on, with the surface coming to meet them as if in a zoom lens.

John Koenig called Main Mission, ‘No response from the Planet, Paul?’

Morrow, looking anxious, appeared on his screen, ‘Still nothing, Commander. Maybe we have a race of deaf mutes.’

‘With their technology, they’d work out some way to communicate.’

Watching the surface from a direct vision port, Helena Russell said slowly, ‘I have the feeling they’re just playing us along, John.’

A green telltale flashed on the console and Koenig reported it for the record, ‘Compensators at six-sixths. We have Earth gravity.’

‘That levels with Computer prediction. And still no sign of enemy ships.’

Now they were getting surface detail. There was a bland air of mystery. They were flying into a gently undulating landscape clothed with a soft and succulent reddish foliage on a carpet of autumn green. At intervals there were towering structures that looked like futuristic extravaganzas. Helena was impressed. She said, ‘John, it’s beautiful.’

Koenig was staring in simple disbelief at his console. ‘Course correction five degrees green. We’re veering off.’

Helena came back to co-pilot duties, ‘No computer malfunction.’

‘Correction makes no effect.’

He ran a standard check and a row of green lights dotted the spread. ‘All systems check out.’ He called Alpha, ‘Alpha, do you copy? Come in, Alpha . . . Alpha, do you copy? Come in, Alpha.’

There was no reply. He looked at Helena, ‘No contact. I’ll take it on manual.’

Five seconds of concentrated effort, pulling out every trick in the book and he had to concede, ‘We’re still going off course . . . I can’t correct it.’

But the Eagle was levelling off for a planetfall and a third force joined them in the command cabin. A precise female voice spoke from the console, ‘Alphans, you are under ground control.’

It was the first crack in the blank, hostile front the red planet had presented; something to adjust to on familiar ground. Helena Russell said, ‘A
human
voice.’