lunar science teams into the four-mile-long bunkers beneath the complex where the bulk of their technology and food was secured.
As he leaped from spot to spot he kept glancing spaceward, hoping to find their three warships still safe in their orbits. How could three enemy saucers have escaped the destruction of their home world? he thought as he tried in vain to lengthen his strides. They had thought the entire enemy force and their orbiting fleet of saucers had been incinerated by the suicidal act of destroying Ophillias, but now he knew that assumption had been wrong.
He had to stop. He went to his knees because he was finding it hard to breathe. He looked around as the moon became a wavy and jumbled relief of gray and white. The mountains in the distance shimmered and turned to haze. His head was hurting and he was now struggling for air. Gideon had the presence of mind to look at the O gauge. The illuminated numbers and their backup needles jumped in his vision, so he brought them closer to his faceplate. He saw immediately that he had gone past redline on his reserve and knew he would never make it to the base. Loud and jumbled chatter pierced his ears as he slowly slid over onto his side. He should have known how much faster he would use up his oxygen by running. He tried to stand but only managed to roll onto his back, his survival pack digging into the soft soil. He felt himself let go mentally. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.
“Fool,” he said with the last breath he could muster.
“Fool!”
He heard the echo and was confused. He smiled as his self-deprecating curse came through the speakers in the side of his helmet.
“I told you, but no-you have to take chances!”
As his eyes started dimming around the edges, he felt himself rolled onto his side and then jerked into a sitting position. He heard a slight hissing that hadn’t been there a moment before. Cool air rushed into his helmet. He came around as the headache and agony in his extremities started gnawing around the edges of his brain, and then directly behind his eyes, fingers, arms, and legs.
“Maybe you’ll listen to me from now on you idiot!” the voice said as he was shaken roughly.
His eyes opened and he saw the helmeted person kneeling at his side. He swallowed, trying in vain to get rid of the cottony taste in his mouth as he stared at his reflection in the gold-colored visor. He saw a small, gloved hand reach out and lift the outer glass of the helmet. Then he found himself staring into the soft features of Lydia. She wasn’t smiling as she raised one of the empty tanks she had pulled from his backpack, then brought her arm back and launched it away into the light gravity.
“Next time I’ll just leave you out here, Major.”
“Okay, okay,” he said and then remembered what was going on. Before he could ask about the status of the situation he looked up and saw three bright dots taking form just over the eastern horizon at about a hundred miles in altitude. He struggled to stand.
“Take it easy. Do you want to pass out? I can’t carry you all-”
“Look-our ships,” Gideon said. He pointed skyward and at the same time lowered a middle visor in his helmet that magnified the image of the three ships far above them.
Lydia turned in her overlarge suit and saw the bright specks of Vortex, Guidon, and the much larger Ranger as they hurtled on.
“Damn, they’re still running in formation. Didn’t the base contact them?” He turned an accusing eye on the young scientist.
“Everything is down, radar, sonar, communications, everything. I told you things were getting weird!”
“I should have known,” Gideon said. “They’re not down, they’re being jammed, and I should have realized that.” His eyes never left the three ships flying in a wedge formation toward the base. Their altitude wasn’t even staggered. They were still about a hundred miles high and sailing wing abreast, the two smaller pocket battleships slightly behind their flagship, Ranger.
“Maybe-”
That was as far as she got as Gideon grabbed her and pushed her to the lunar dust. As he did so, the pocket battleship on the left side of the formation erupted silently into flame and floating debris. The eeriness of the enemy strike was so sudden and quiet it was surreal. Gideon saw another salvo strike what remained of the smaller pocket battleship Vortex, and her sizzling hulk vanished in a white hot explosion that sent chunks of lightweight metal flying in a torrent of faster-than-sound missiles of aluminum and plastic. The debris struck the lunar surface far below, sending up enormous geysers of dust and rock. The two remaining battleships were caught unawares and reacted far too slowly after taking hits from the explosion. Ranger started her turn, her bow thrusters firing at full throttle as she started to slow, and then Guidon did the same a moment later. Both were attempting to turn and face the sudden and unseen threat. The major shook his head, knowing they would be too late.
“They’ll never make it,” Gideon said softly. He lifted Lydia to her feet and pushed her toward the complex of huts hidden behind the wall of the crater.
The three enemy ships that Gideon had seen before reappeared. Without viewing them up close he knew the silverish saucers would be old and scarred from many engagements on and around Ophillias and their home world. He watched as their exotic weapons opened fire. The first six shots were evenly dispersed among Guidon and Ranger as they turned their bows around to bring their main batteries to bear. The large turrets swiveled to line up on the three enemy saucers.
Gideon watched in horror and then flinched as the first laser beams struck the larger of the two ships. Pieces of the ship’s pressure hull and of the main deck composed of spiderweb girders exploded outward. Noiseless and horribly bright, Ranger returned fire with her twenty-inch twin forward cannon, quickly followed by a salvo from their number-two forward mount. A bright flash of greenish light exited the crystal-tipped barrels, followed by an expanding gas slug of nitrogen that was used for cooling the large bore and diamond tip at the end of the great cannon. The nitrogen froze immediately as it exited the barrels, creating a blanket of fog that from a distance resembled smoke. The twin laser shots from each mount were infused with particles made up of two thousand ball bearing-sized steel balls that passed through a hole in the crystal refractor. This volley was soon joined by twin shots of infused light from the smaller fourteen-inch cannon of Guidon. Major Gideon saw the first enemy saucer vanish in a gut-wrenching, metal-shredding wreck as the laser slugs punched large holes in it. The three-hundred- foot-diameter saucer started to lose its orbit, sliding toward the lunar surface in a silent death plunge.
The second saucer in the enemy line broke from the remaining twin formation. It made a run directly at the lunar surface and the small base inside the crater. The major heard the chatter and screaming on the radio. Whatever jamming had been placed on lunar-space communication was now inactive as the captain of Ranger was heard asking the condition of his sister ship Guidon. Gideon, still holding Lydia’s hand, stopped and looked up as the battle raged directly over their heads. In the distance, maybe fifty miles away, they saw the silent impact of the first enemy saucer as it slammed into the lunar surface and blew to pieces. The eerily quiet death in the moon’s vacuum belied the shaking violence of the impact.
Above, the enemy saucer that had broken away started firing toward the lunar surface. He could see the green-tinted intermittent lasers as they struck the outer walls of the crater.
Bright flashes overhead announced that Ranger had fired again. Finally, the heavily damaged Guidon answered the bell and also fired, producing the eye-fooling slowness of the faster-than-light weapons. It was still amazing to behold as the laser blasts streaked toward their target. The lone enemy saucer in a high orbit tried to maneuver out of the way of the particle weapons fired at it, but it was too late. The four rounds struck the top of the saucer’s pressure hull in an enormous shower of flame and sparks fueled by oxygen released from the ship. Gideon and Lydia watched as the giant saucer broke into two distinct pieces and started an out-of-control fall toward the moon’s surface.
As Guidon and Ranger started ejecting thousands of gallons of water that transformed into ice crystals in an effort to cloud and diffuse any return fire, they began turning toward the remaining saucer.
For the first time the major let out a yell of triumph. They just might fend off this last, desperate attack. But his joy was short-lived as two things happened simultaneously. First, five distinct lines of green laser fire struck the base camp inside the crater. All Gideon could see were chunks of moon rock and white pieces of composite material from the enclosures-and then, to his horror, un-space-suited bodies sailing into the black night. The crater looked like a volcano spewing forth not red-hot magma like the planet below but man-made structures and men themselves as the lasers struck their oxygen and weapons storage areas. The second thing that happened was that the saucer now cascading in pieces to the moon below had fired all of her advanced lasers in the last second before
