by Dale Brown
Seeing a chain of interconnected craters curving ahead across one of his displays, he fired thrusters—climbing just high enough to clear the steadily rising terrain. That was the Leuschner Catena, the result of a massive asteroid impact that had created the moon’s vast, 560-mile diameter Mare Orientale more than three billion years before. Huge masses of molten rock, hurled outward from the center of that collision, had cascaded down across this part of the lunar surface, hammering out this series of linked craters.
Brad kept his attention riveted to his screens. Sweat was starting to puddle up under the communications cap that held his headset and mike in position. Orbiting this close to the rough moonscape required constant adjustments to his flight path with the lander’s four vertical thruster arrays—both to clear steep-edged crater walls and scarred mountains, and to cope with sudden changes in lunar gravity caused by unseen anomalies buried deep below the battered surface.
Given several more months to prep the Xeus for this mission, Sky Masters engineers and computer techs could have equipped it with the equivalent of a digital terrain-following system to handle this low-level orbit. Without it, piloting the spacecraft through these hazards required a man in the seat . . . and Brad was that man. The fact that he had to rely on exterior cameras to see anything outside the spacecraft cabin was one more worry. One minor electrical fault could leave them flying blind, without anything except the computer’s inertial navigation system to tell them where they were at any given moment.
“That’s the Michelson crater dead ahead,” Nadia told him. She was tracking their progress on the navigation computer’s detailed maps. “And we’re passing Kohlhörster now, off to our right.”
Brad saw the feature she meant growing larger across his forward-looking screen. Michelson was heavily eroded, almost erased by dozens of newer, smaller craters. He fired more thrusters, shaving off some altitude to come over its slumped rim wall at no more than a few hundred feet. It was imperative that they stay well below the horizon of the Russian plasma gun all the way in on this run.
“Thruster fuel is at sixty-eight percent,” Peter Vasey reported. While Nadia handled navigation, he was charged with monitoring their engines, fuel status, and other systems.
“Twenty seconds to the Hertzsprung crater,” Nadia warned.
Brad nodded tightly. Hertzsprung was another huge-impact crater. Billions of years old, it was even larger than some of the dark volcanic plains that early astronomers had mistaken for seas. And like the moon’s other big craters, Hertzsprung contained a significant gravitational anomaly buried at its core.
The anomaly made itself felt the moment they crossed the crater’s outer western rim. Here, the moon’s gravity was stronger, tugging them ahead faster and also dragging them downward toward Hertzsprung’s center, which lay nearly fifteen thousand feet lower. If they’d been orbiting higher up, the effects wouldn’t have been as pronounced and they would have had more time to react. As it was, Brad rotated the Xeus a few degrees and went for a prolonged thruster burn to offset the higher gravitational pull.
“Our thruster fuel reserves are down to fifty-five percent,” Vasey said coolly. That was a little lower than they’d predicted in their planning and simulator sessions back on Earth. The digitized maps created from hundreds of thousands of oblique images taken by earlier orbiting satellites hadn’t fully revealed the ruggedness of some terrain features or the exact irregularity of the moon’s gravitational field so close to its surface.
Brad eased up slightly on his burn, letting the Xeus drop a couple of hundred feet as they sped over the western curve of Hertzsprung’s inner ring wall, a rugged massif made up of four-billion-year-old anorthosite rocks flung upward when the original asteroid slammed into the moon at more than thirty thousand miles per hour. Seconds later, the sheer escarpment that marked the vast crater’s outer eastern rim appeared over the horizon. It was around forty miles off—less than a minute’s flight time at their current orbital velocity.
Frowning in intense concentration, he took the lander right through a gap torn in the cliff by debris from a later asteroid strike. Their side-view cameras showed slopes rising almost vertically above them, studded with broken boulders that were easily a hundred feet high.
He breathed out a bit as they emerged from the gap and headed across a steadily rising plain. A couple of minutes later, he spotted what looked like a jumbled mess of secondary craters, torn cliffs, and rounded hills.
Nadia leaned forward, peering closely at her display and then comparing it with her maps. “That is the Tsander crater,” she said confidently.
Brad nodded again. Tsander, large and heavily battered over hundreds of millions of years, was as far as they could safely go, even at this low altitude. Once past this ancient, eroded crater, they would come out onto a wide plain dotted with hundreds of much smaller craters. Across that steadily rising plain, the Russian plasma gun, mounted high up on the rim of Engel’gardt crater, would have a clear field of fire against anything flying more than a few dozen feet above the surface.
He twisted his hand controllers, spinning the Xeus around on its axis so that its main engine pointed ahead, against their direction of travel. Brad switched his display to the cameras rigged to the aft end of the lander. His eyes narrowed as he watched Tsander’s scarred outer edges grow larger and more distinct.
“Almost there,” he muttered, more to himself than to Nadia or Vasey. One side of his mouth twitched upward in a crooked grin. Could he really call this “flying by the seat of your pants” if the only thing holding him in his seat in zero-G was his safety harness? On his screens, he saw a tiny craterlet come into view. Sited several miles east of Tsander’s broken rim wall, it was more of an indentation in the lunar soil than a real crater. But it was definitely the aiming mark he’d picked out after spending hours studying maps and photos of their projected course. “Coming up on our retro burn . . . just . . . about . . . now.” He punched the RL-10 engine icon on his touch-screen control panel. “Main engine ignition.”
This was a hard, full-power burn to shed their orbital velocity. Slammed against his seat straps by deceleration, Brad fought to stay focused as his apparent weight tripled and then quadrupled in a fraction of a second. As the Xeus slowed rapidly, it began dropping toward the surface, now just a couple of thousand feet below.
Brad’s eyes darted back and forth between the aft-mounted cameras and others set on the lander’s underside, which showed the ground coming up with dismaying speed. As soon as the spacecraft’s forward velocity dropped to nothing, he shut down the big rocket engine and then immediately triggered the lander’s vertical thruster arrays to slow its rate of descent.
Less than a minute later, as their thrusters flared brightly, he brought the Xeus in for a landing. Dust billowed up, obscuring his view just before the skids touched down. He chopped the thrusters off, and they dropped the last few feet—hitting the ground with a thump that rattled the cabin.
Smiling in relief, he turned to the others. “Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly smooth. But at least it was definite. We’ve landed. So . . . welcome to the moon.”
In answer, Nadia leaned over and gave him a lingering kiss through his open helmet visor. “You are a wonderful pilot, Brad McLanahan.” He felt his face redden.
With a big grin of his own, Vasey reached around her and clapped him on the shoulder. “Not bad for a Yank, I guess.” His smile faded as he unstrapped himself and stood up, moving carefully in the moon’s low gravity. “If we had champagne, I’d offer a toast . . . but we’re on the clock, so—”
Brad nodded and reached for his own safety harness release buckle. The other man was right. This successful landing only completed the first phase of their attack plan. But they were still more than two hundred miles from the Sino-Russian base. Since they had been under constant observation by the Kondor-L radar satellite as they orbited around the moon, they couldn’t hope to achieve complete surprise. But there was at least a slim cha
nce that moving fast now might throw the base’s Chinese and Russian crew off-balance.
He stood up and helped Nadia get out of her own seat. Then he turned to Vasey. “Okay, Constable, the ship is yours,” he said quietly.
Solemnly, the Englishman nodded. He was tasked with waiting here to fly in and pick them up if they succeeded . . . or to die alone, if they failed.
Minutes later, Brad and Nadia stood outside on the surface of the moon. For now, the slim, silvery carbon-fiber space suits they wore kept them alive in this airless environment. Another Sky Masters innovation, the suits used electronically controlled fibers to compress the skin instead of pressurized oxygen. But EEAS suits were not designed for prolonged use under these supremely hostile conditions. Both of them were already starting to sweat as their suits’ limited environmental systems struggled to handle temperatures that hit 260 degrees Fahrenheit in full sun.
“We’re set,” he radioed Vasey. “You can open the cargo hatch.”
“Roger that,” the other man replied. “I’m activating the hatch now. Stand clear.”
There was no sound as the wide, curved hatch on the flank of the Xeus unlatched and swung open—revealing the lander’s crowded cargo compartment. More machinery spun into gear. Silently, pulleys and gear systems extracted two large, humanlike machines from the compartment and deposited them onto the surface. Insulated packs containing weapons, explosives, and other gear followed them out.
The two combat-modified Cybernetic Lunar Activity Devices, or CLADs, were no longer bright white. Instead, their composite armor “skin” was covered by hundreds of small, gray, hexagonal tiles. Made of a special material, these tiles could change temperature with amazing rapidity. Using data collected by its sensors, a CLAD’s computer could adjust the temperature of each tile to mimic that of its surroundings—rendering the robot virtually undetectable by infrared and other thermal sensors. Under combat conditions, that could be a lifesaver. But even on Earth, rapid movement with an active thermal camouflage system would drain batteries and fuel cells. Here, given the moon’s wild temperature fluctuations, where it was possible to experience swings of five hundred degrees or more just by moving from sunlight into shadow, this thermal camouflage system could only be used for very brief moments.
Each CLAD carried a second camouflage system, this one even more advanced—but equally limited by power constraints. Paper-thin electrochromatic plates covered each thermal tile. Tiny voltage changes could change the mix of colors displayed by each plate, giving the robot a chameleon-like ability to blend in with its environment while motionless or moving cautiously.
Brad glided over to the nearest machine. He reached up and pushed a glowing green button on a hatch set in its back. It cycled open. “Let’s mount up.”
“On my way,” Nadia radioed. She hit the hatch button on her own Cybernetic Lunar Activity Device, pulled herself up a short ladder, and crawled inside the machine. The hatch sealed behind her.
Brad did the same thing. As usual, he felt a momentary touch of claustrophobia as he wriggled upward into the lower level of the robot’s tiny cockpit. Green lights glowed on the right-sleeve control panel of his space suit. With its hatch closed and a human pilot on board, the CLAD’s own life-support systems had pressurized the cockpit.
Carefully, he undogged his helmet and pulled it off. His nose wrinkled at the faint odor of machine oil. Yeah, there was air in here, all right. Squirming out of the rest of his snug carbon-fiber suit in these tight confines took some doing, but at last he managed it. Then he worked his way upward some more, squeezing deeper into the robot’s haptic interface, a gray, gelatinous membrane. This was the material that took his body’s central nervous system’s signals, processed them, and turned them into robotic movement. At the same time, it acted as a direct neural link, meshing his mind with the machine’s sensors and computer systems.
For a moment, the small cockpit blurred around him and then vanished. It was as though his vision had grayed out in a high-G turn. And then just as quickly, his sight returned—only now he was looking directly out across the moon’s rugged surface and seeing it with crystal clarity, rather than through a helmet visor. The flood of information from the robot’s active and passive sensors through his neural interface gave him an almost godlike view of his surroundings.
Systems status check, he thought.
Instantly information flooded into his consciousness: All systems are fully operational. Power reserves at ninety-nine percent. Current life-support capability estimated at forty-four hours. He knew the status of every subsystem, every byte of computer output, and the position of every limb down to the fraction of an inch, just by thinking of it.
Good enough, Brad thought. He opened a secure connection to Nadia’s CLAD. “Wolf Two to Wolf Three, does your ride check out?”
“Wolf Three to Two,” Nadia replied. “I am claws out and ready to run.”
“Copy that, Three.” Brad turned away from the grounded Xeus lander. He picked up one of the camouflaged weapons and equipment packs and slung it into position across his robot’s back. Nadia took the other pack and did the same. “Then follow me.”
Together, the two machines bounded off to the west, moving easily in the moon’s low gravity.
Forty-Seven
Korolev Base, on the Eastern Rim of Engel’gardt Crater
A Short Time Later
“You’ve lost radar contact with the American spacecraft?” Marshal Leonov asked, evidently taken aback.
“It dropped off our feed from the Kondor-L satellite about thirty minutes ago and we haven’t been able to regain contact since,” Lavrentyev said. He glanced at Major Liu for confirmation and saw the taikonaut nod. The Chinese officer was monitoring Korolev’s radar and thermal detection systems. “At the time, the enemy vehicle was still well below our own radar horizon.”
Leonov’s brow furrowed in thought. “Where exactly did the Kondor lose contact?”
“Just east of the Tsander crater,” Lavrentyev told him. “About three hundred and fifty kilometers away.” He expressed his hope. “It’s possible that it crashed. Naturally, our altitude estimates were imprecise, but that spacecraft had to be coming in very low. And it was moving so fast, nearly six thousand kilometers per hour—sixteen-hundred-plus meters per second!—that any tiny error in its computer flight program could easily have led to disaster.”
Leonov shook his head. “That seems unlikely, Colonel. Highly unlikely.” His mouth turned downward. “You’ve seen the American flight path. After so successfully navigating through a gravitational and terrain maze like the Hertzsprung crater, why should its systems fail just now?”
“But if that spacecraft didn’t crash—”
“Then the Americans have landed,” Leonov said bluntly. “And our analysis of the situation was completely wrong. That Xeus lander was not flown by a computer. It carried humans, military astronauts.”
Lavrentyev suddenly saw what the other man meant. He felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. “You think the Americans intend a ground assault,” he realized. “Using some of their own combat robots.”
“What else?” Leonov said grimly. “Why should we believe we were the only ones who thought of modifying such weapons for use on the moon?” His mouth tightened. “You and the others had better don your KLVMs and look to your defenses. Hand over all responsibility for your sensors and the plasma rail gun to Major Liu and Captain Shan, in case we’re wrong again . . . and the Americans have some other trick up their sleeves.”
“I could send one of our machines out to find and destroy the American lander,” Lavrentyev suggested uncertainly.
Leonov dismissed the idea with a curt wave of his hand. “Too dangerous, Kirill. Any KLVM you dispatched could be ambushed. And even if it succeeded in wrecking the enemy’s spacecraft, weakening your own forces there might lead to disaster. We cannot afford to trade pawns with the Americans in this game. The security of your base is paramount. It must come
before any other considerations.”
Lavrentyev swallowed hard. “Yes, Marshal. I understand.” Yes, he and the other Russian cosmonauts were trained to pilot the base’s three Kibernetischeskiye Lunnyye Voyennyye Mashiny, its Cybernetic Lunar War Machines. But never in his worst nightmares had he ever imagined they would have to use them in actual combat. Up to now, their KLVMs had functioned primarily as heavy construction equipment—accomplishing tasks that would have been impossible for any cosmonaut in a conventional space suit. Even knowing that it was easier to defend than to attack, especially across the long, barren slopes below the crater rim, he found the prospect of actually going head-to-head with piloted American combat robots deeply unsettling.
Northeast of Engel’gardt Crater
Several Hours Later
Brad dug in to the loose scree piled just below the rim of a minor crater and cautiously pulled himself up the slope. Grains of soil and small rocks slid soundlessly downhill behind his CLAD. A hundred yards to his right, Nadia’s robot toiled up the same steep hillside.
One of the eerier effects of piloting a robot through a neural link was that you soon lost all distracting awareness of self. Within a matter of moments, you were no longer cognizant that you were directing a machine from inside its cockpit. Instead, you essentially wore the large cybernetic device as if it were a second skin—controlling its limbs, systems, and sensors as easily and unconsciously as if they were your own from birth.
A few feet below the crest of the rise, Brad halted in place and crouched down. So did Nadia. For most of their long approach march from the Xeus, they had been able to cover ground quickly, gliding and bounding at speeds of up to forty miles an hour across stretches where the going was firm. But now that they were almost within striking distance of the Sino-Russian base, it was time to exercise considerably more caution.
