It was time to go back home, we had a schedule to keep. Besides, the sun was coming up, and I was smelling rotten eggs, Sulphur Dioxide, as the atmosphere of Io began to thaw. I said something about that and was accused of having an overactive imagination. I know, self-contained spacesuit. Can’t smell the atmosphere. Whatever.
It was still quite dark where we were on Io, as we shuffled behind a rock expanse, so we had lights on, including internal helmet lighting. We could see each other’s faces. As we were gathering in preparation to port back home, Mr. T clapped Rock and Roll on their shoulders and nodded toward Jupiter.
“So, guys, what’s it like to thread-the-needle?” he asked.
I’m sure I heard a couple of gulping sounds from the twins, and their jaws kind of dropped as they looked at each other. Then they both looked right at me! Traitors! Giving me up like that. Just wait. Oh, you think I told him? Now you’re for sure going to get a talking-to.
When we got back to HQ, Rock and Roll studied the pictures taken by that spy ship, BugEye, the one that was blasted by Darkside Luna during the Nemesis 12 mission. When was that? Not that long ago! Glad it was a robot ship. But I still want to cry when I think about the Nemesis 12 crewmembers.
Anyway, the twins felt they could port us to within a mile of Darkside Luna. Oh, if we are talking about the part of the base physically on the Moon, we say Darkside Luna. If we are talking about the part in close orbit, we say Darkside Orbit. Time for some recon work. We would go in under cloak.
***
*COMMUNAL: Viz was anxious. Though she was confident they would succeed, her role was crucial. It is easy for Viz to cloak herself in invisibility. It requires much more concentration and energy to extend the cloaking field. If there was one momentary lapse in the cloak the bugs would detect them. Then it would be much more difficult to complete their objective. And the hostages would be in jeopardy. It is a heavy responsibility. We’re with you Viz.
***
We ported to a small crater about a mile from Darkside Luna. It didn’t take long to walk that Moon-mile. I regularly mouthed my recitation. Cloak. Cloak. Cloak. We saw a lot of bugs. They were all over the place in their snazzy bug Moon-suits. There was a mining operation under way. Probably mining for Helium-3 to use as fuel. Or, they might be expanding the base. Hard to know for sure.
We walked the surface perimeter, our IVs set to record. After that there was a short wait near an airlock hatch waiting for a bug to go inside. The outer door opened to a typical airlock set up. Outer door. Chamber. Inner door. We shuffled in with the bug. The chamber was large enough to fit the bug, all of us, and leave enough room to keep clear of the bug. That was especially important as we were all huddled close to keep the bug outside the cloaking field. Even so, I wouldn’t have wanted two bugs in there.
The outer door closed. The bug seemed agitated. He kept looking around the chamber as if he felt something was not right. The chamber filled with base air and the inner door opened. The bug rushed in. We scrambled into the base staying close to our unwitting host. The lighting was somewhat low for our eyes and had a reddish hue. Eerie. The bug kept looking around. Agitated. We followed our bug for a while hoping to get a nice tour.
He was a boring tour guide, so we moved off and looked around on our own. We had to be extra careful. There were a lot of bugs. We needed to be sure to keep in close contact so as not to break the cloaking field. No field, no invisibility, lots of trouble. Cloak, cloak, cloak. We took note of guard station locations, important looking equipment, and the like.
We also had the latest in DARPA scanning equipment so we were getting detailed video, sound, air measurements, radiation. All sorts of data. We paid special attention to what was clearly the portal gate control room. Extra scanning. Perhaps there would be enough data to pinpoint when the gate was scheduled to open. A nice countdown clock would have been good.
We found where they were keeping the hostages. We even got to see a few of them. They looked to be in good shape. Not exactly happy, but healthy. That made me feel better. At least the bugs were trying to keep the hostages in decent condition.
Mr. T was especially interested in the base HVAC, the heating-ventilation-air-conditioning. That would be critical to the operation. The plan was to gas the bugs. Insecticide.
The scientists had done a complete work up on some of the captured bugs. That added to the base of knowledge already obtained from all the hyper-scanning done during the Battle for Los Angeles. The lab guys knew what gases would effectively kill them, or at least immobilize them. They put together a bug mix that would not harm people.
The bugs are different from Earth insects, though there are clearly similarities in form. And people have been making bug spray for a very long time. At least there was no plan to try to melt them again. Mr. T tapped Rock on the shoulder. It was time to go.
We popped out of the base and into our porting room back at the office. Yup. We have a special room set aside just for porting. No one goes in; it’s locked all the time. Good, safe porting, that’s how we like it.
September 21st. Today we’ll play catch up and study all the new information we have about Darkside. We will do a little more reconnaissance. The
