she saw through the open roof the robot searching for the small humans who had escaped it. Then something caught its attention and it moved off, smashing the remaining roof off a building further down. As Sarah frantically looked around, trying to find something they could use to fight back with, someone’s COM system opened up and she heard a man scream. It was one of her own. She also heard Mendenhall directing fire from somewhere. Sarah had never felt so helpless in her life. The general turned and faced her. Inside his helmet she could see a determined look on his face.
“We have to get to the landing vehicles and leave the Moon. We can do no good here. The mission is over.”
Sarah looked at him with shock- All of this to turn and run? she thought.
“We have to bring something back,” she protested.
“Listen to me. We have the coordinates for the downed ship. That’s more than we ever hoped to get. That is heavy weaponry, Lieutenant. We have found what we came for, but if we don’t get off the Moon it will be for nothing. We cannot fight these things. We don’t have the firepower.”
Sarah saw the general’s point. If they remained, no one would ever know about the warship in the dust, and no one would know what they needed to fight these things.
“Okay, I’ll agree that we have to get off the moon, but how the hell are we going to get past these things?” she countered.
“That, Lieutenant McIntire, is the problem we face.”
“How far is your LEM?” she asked. She felt a sharp vibration as one of the two creatures struck somewhere close by. As she ducked, she saw several of the boltlike rounds rip into the wall opposite of their position. She knew then that they still had men close by.
“That is what I was thinking. Our lander is actually closer, as you Americans are fond of saying, as the crow flies. If we follow the valley just to the left of Shackleton, on the east side, we would have cover all the way to Magnificent Dragon. If I could get half of the men into that small valley and follow the terrain, not exposing ourselves to these creatures, we may make it all the way to our LEM. If we don’t use the radio, we have a chance; I don’t think they can track us without the use of electronic signals.”
“I was thinking the same thing. I believe that’s how they hunt. They were probably sent here seeking out human life to destroy. As soon as Mendenhall used his radio rather than his suit-to-suit COM, one of those things attacked.”
“Well, that’s one theory, and for now I’ll accept it, Lieutenant. So now the question is, how do we communicate?”
“Mendenhall to McIntire, where are you?” the voice came over the radio.
Sarah hit her COM switch. “We’re in the first set of buildings on the west side. We have a-” Sarah realized too late that she was doing exactly what she had said they couldn’t do. Instead of the line-of-sight transmission of a suit-to-suit call, Will had used his radio COM system to contact her. The next sound she heard coming through Will’s system was him shooting and she looked up just as hundreds of kinetic rounds flew upward from somewhere to her right.
“Damn!” the general said. “Listen, to all who can hear my voice,” he said, taking a chance on using the radio. “Get to the center of this complex. We’ll meet there. Now move!”
Kwan angled out of the small room and chanced the hallway that had no roof. Sarah followed and saw one of the metal monsters as it disappeared over the high wall of the building they were in.
“Look!” Sarah said, hitting Kwan of the back. They both stopped, one running into the other as they saw the ramp leading down. At that moment, several men appeared ahead of her. She saw a white-colored NASA suit in the lead. It was Mendenhall and he had several American, European, and Chinese troops with them.
“Look out,” Kwan shouted, as a giant three-fingered hand smashed through the wall and knocked Will over. Instead of grabbing Will it grabbed the next man in line. Sarah’s eyes widened as she recognized Sergeant Demarest, one of the older Green Berets on the mission. He was lifted out of the bunker and they all watched helplessly as Demarest and the arm vanished. Sarah thanked God the sergeant’s COM system was off.
Kwan waved the men ahead of him, indicating that they should go forward down the large ramp that angled downward at a 30 degree angle. He just hoped there were no more nasty surprises waiting for them at the bottom. As the men went, Sarah and the general followed, not knowing if they had found a covered haven beneath the bunker or if they had just found another way to hell.
As they continued heading down into the bowels of the ancient complex, Sarah placed her hand on the strange plasticlike wall. She stopped and felt the movement of the monstrosities above. It felt as though they were tearing the bunker system apart-perhaps trying to dig them out of the rat hole they could be heading into.
“You feel it too, yes?”
Sarah looked up and saw the general looking at her. He had stopped next to her, along with the comforting face of Will Mendenhall.
“They’ll dig and dig until they find us. It’s like their programming won’t allow them to do anything else,” she said as she lowered her gloved hand from the wall.
“I’ll tell you, whoever built them crazy bastards would have to be related to us somehow, because only our species could ever be so brutal,” Mendenhall said, shaking his head inside his helmet.
“I agree, Lieutenant Mendenhall,” Kwan said. “But I may venture to add, as long as it was beings like us that built them, it can also be counted on that those same beings can destroy them.”
“Unless, like us, they were just dumbass sons-a-bitches,” Will countered.
Kwan smiled, continuing down the ramp, following what was left of the three Moon expeditions.
“There again, you may have a point.”
As the three fell into line, the helmet lights bounced off of posters, possibly of rules and regulations, in the now familiar alien script. As Sarah looked, the posters began to look like U.S. Army bulletins on the do’s and don’ts of surviving in a hostile environment. There were depictions of space-suited men placing a finger to their helmets in a shushing gesture, possibly meaning loose lips sink ships. There were what looked like propaganda scenes on some of them, with flags, and even one that resembled the old World War I Uncle Sam pointing at the reader of the poster, as if saying, “I want you!”
“I’m getting the feeling these people just blew themselves straight to hell,” Will said as he tried to look more closely at one of the propaganda posters.
“Look at this one,” Sarah said.
Kwan and Will looked at what she was studying as the vibration from above them increased.
On a large and half-torn poster, their helmet lights revealed one very large moon, with what looked like transport ships leaving its surface. Below that was a picture of the mineral.
“Look familiar?” Sarah said, tapping the mineral.
“Looks like they may have been mining it,” Kwan said. “Is that our Moon?”
Sarah reached out and pushed the ripped corner back into place. As she did, all of their eyes widened. They saw a much smaller moon in the background of the first. Beside it was the Earth or at least it looked like the Earth. The continents weren’t in the right places.
“What the hell is this?” Mendenhall asked.
“My God, they were mining the mineral,” Sarah said, “but not from this moon. There was another moon that’s no longer there.” She reached out and slid up the other corner of the poster. That was when they saw it-another world in the far distance. This one had deep green oceans and red-colored continents.
“What planet is that?” Kwan asked.
“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “But our hope of finding a source of the mineral on the Moon just went right out the window.”
“All the more reason to leave this place as soon as we are able to escape our enemies-which are growing closer as we speak,” Kwan said. He turned and started down the ramp once more.
Sarah looked at Will and shook her head and then stepped into line with the general.
Mendenhall wanted to curse as he slapped at the reproduced depiction of the mined moon Ophillias.
“I don’t like this moon very much,” he said. Then she looked at the second, much larger moon. “Or that one
