Hell Fighters from Earth

by William C. Seigler

  The newcomer opened a hole in the floor and a pole extended up into the ship.

  “Is that how we’re getting out?” someone asked.

  “Yes, your very own fireman’s pole on the Moon. Mr. Smith, why don’t you lead?”

  Denver laughed. “Okay, I’ve always wanted to try this.” With that, he leaped onto the pole and gently slid down about forty feet into the Moon base.

  He smiled back up at the others and waved for them to come on down. The whole thing had taken on the air of a school field trip. Fitz was the last one down.

  “I still enjoy that,” he said. “Come on.” Everyone bounced, skipped, or hopped along behind him. They stopped in front of a huge set of doors. Men in the control room cycled the door open.

  Denver noticed there seemed to be quite a few people watching them. There was something about those onlookers. The doorway opened into the main base, and the group stepped out onto a small raised platform.

  The room they entered was enormous. It had to be four football fields wide and almost that high. They could not even see the other end.

  There was a large promenade lined with small trees. Buildings seemed to jut out of the rock walls from the sides - light, tall, and spindly. Everywhere there were people. The whole place was lighted and very clean. There was a private conveyance by bicycle and in the distance, someone pointed out what appeared to be a large bird coming their way.

  “Wait a second,” said Fitz, “you’ll see.”

  What had appeared to be a large bird was a man, flying by flapping a pair of wings connected to some sort of mechanism. He came fairly close, turned and went back the way he had come.

  Fitz led them across the landing to where a monorail had just stopped. It was empty except for two security guards.

  “How did you guys build such an enormous base?” asked Smith.

  “We didn’t. Well not all of it,” Fitz began. “Welcome to Rill City.”

  “Explain, please,” said Smith.

  “You know what a volcanic tube is?” he asked.

  “Yes,” replied Smith. “It’s caused when the surface of flowing basalt lava cools, keeping the lava under it hot and flowing. Sometimes these drain out leaving an empty cavern. They are fairly common on Hawaii.”

  “There are a few of them on the Moon as well. Many have collapsed leaving the rills. However, some remain. One of these we have turned into a city.”

  They boarded the monorail and moved along smoothly for a while, hardly noticing the guards exchanging glances.

  It was so beautiful, like the hanging gardens of Babylon. Everything had been artistically balanced to soothe the senses and delight the eye. A subterranean paradise with a feeling of openness and was beautiful and functional.

  People were making incredible leaps that would cause death or serious injury on the Earth. In the Moon’s low gravity, it was sport.

  Denver turned to Fitz. “You do tell them not to try that on Earth, don’t you?”

  “Oh yeah, they know better than that.”

  Soon the car slowed to a stop, they got off and entered what appeared to be a government building. Fitz led them down a hall. A few people stopped and stared, but no one spoke. There definitely was something about them, though; they seemed rather skinny and pale. Probably needed to get out in the sun, only here it would be dangerous.

  Fitz led them to a large conference room that had a table in the back piled high with food, another of Denver’s ideas. He then left for an adjacent office. Slowly over the next few hours, people went in and heard the pitch Fitz had prepared. To his surprise and delight, he got more takers than usual. Smith was last.

  “Congratulations professor,” began Fitz, “your idea appears to have been a huge success.”

  “Well, there’s an old saying about seeing being believing. What about the guy who looked seasick?”

  “We loaded him on a stretcher, sedated him, and will load him back on the ship when it’s scheduled to go back to Earth.”

  “What about the ones who still want out?”

  “I was thinking about letting them think it over for a day or so, then asking again.”

  “Not a bad plan, especially if you let them run around here for a while,” Smith said waving his arm toward the large outside area. “To tell you the truth, I’d like to see it myself.”

  “Well, come on.”

  “What about the offer?”

  “It’s almost lunch time; I’ll make it over lunch.”

  “I may not be able to eat much after all the food your people put out.”

  “Good, that way it won’t cost me much.”

  “Cost you, you guys use money?”

  “Of course, gold; how else do you know how to value a thing?” Fitz led him out the door. Several of the others were already outside enjoying the view. Fitz just smiled as they walked past the newcomers who were apparently busy making friends with the locals.

  Once they were out of earshot Fitz said, “As long as we were bringing people up from the surface, I thought it would be a good idea if some of the students we are preparing as recruiters got some face time with recruits.”

  “And I thought all we had discussed about attitude problems might not be such a problem,” Denver responded laughing.

  Fitz’s mood darkened for a moment. “Oh, it’s a problem all right. I just hope we have some student recruiters left by the time you ship out.”

  As soon as he said it, he knew it had been a mistake. They walked along in silence for a long time. Then Smith started up with small talk.

  “Here comes the birdman of the Moon again. Don’t you people have any kind of air traffic control?”

  “Sure, everyone who uses the wing suit, peddle-trike, or flexible flying foil has one day a week during certain hours based on his address. If he wants to use it more, he just buys someone else’s time and off he goes.”

  “Don’t you have accidents?”

  “Oh sure, but they are usually minor.” Fitz was soon explaining all the effort that had gone into building a pleasant habitable space on the Moon.

  “It’s not just pretty, but it feeds the soul. It makes you feel like you are out in the open. Here you can find quiet private places or open plazas full of people.”

  Fitz stopped, “Here we are. Man, do I miss this place.”

  “Chinese, you have a Chinese restaurant on the Moon?”

  “Yes, there is also a pretty good Irish place I go to sometimes.”

  “Is it real Chinese?”

  “Define what you mean by real.”

  “Touché,” responded Denver.

  “Judge for yourself.”

  A tall, thin woman of Asian descent led them to a table. “Thank you,” they both said.

  “I was beginning to think you only let western Europeans up here.”

  “It did start that way, but we quickly decided the gene pool needed to be expanded. Moreover, I think the food was getting a little boring. All these things happened a long time ago when our founders first fled to the orient.” The food came, and conversation became sporadic.

  In between courses, Fitz made an offer. Considering where he was and the fact that he had nothing but jail to go back to on Earth, the choice was easy.

  “So we just ship out from here?”

  “Yes, that’s always how we do it.”

  “Where are we shipping out to?” asked Smith.

  “There is a training base on a planet with gravity only slightly greater than Earth’s. It’s perfect for building the legion.”

  “Legion?”

  “We’re calling it the Planetary Expedition Legion, or PEL.”

  “Catchy,” said Denver, with just enough sarcasm.

  “Glad you like it,” replied Fitz, matching Smith’s tone. “We have been training sailors for years. We
know something about training recruits.”

  “But not soldiers.”

  “We have recruited some former members of the French Foreign Legion to actually run the training.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  “Now that’s the spirit!” said Fitz.

  Smith grew quiet, and Fitz saw the change. “Is there someone back there to whom you need to say goodbye?”

  “Not really,” he said and suddenly realized it was true. “Besides, I like the promise of all that gold.”

  The check came, and he handed her a small chip. This she inserted into a device she carried attached to her belt. She handed it back and said, “It’s good to see you again; how long will you be here this time?”

  “Not long, a few days.”

  “That’s better than nothing,” she said with a sly grin.

  Smith did not ask what it meant, certainly none of his business. They went back out on the street and walked to the other side before turning back to the government building.

  Eventually, Smith said, “All this from trying to get away from the banks and the rest of mankind.”

  “Yes, it all goes back almost to the renaissance when goldsmiths handed out notes to people whose gold they kept. Eventually, they figured out that not everyone would come for the gold at once so began to hand out notes where there was no actual gold.”

  “What a racket.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you pay at the restaurant?” queried Smith.

  “Oh, I paid in gold and silver.”

  “No, you gave her some sort of credit card or something.”

  “We have to have a medium of exchange, and we use gold and silver as well as other metals on occasion, but I don’t have to carry it all the time. As long as someone in authority cannot go crazy with a printing press, the value of our money is safe. Emphasis on our, not the government’s money.

  “However, I don’t have to carry it on my person. It will be transferred from my account to the restaurant’s account.”

  “So you still have banks?” asked Denver.

  “Oh yes, but here they serve the people not service them,” Fitz said with a chuckle.

  “Have you tried some sort of communal deal where it is all centrally planned?”

  “Yes, and we nearly starved to death. This was all a long time ago, but why should I work harder or smarter or invent something new if I’m going to get nothing for it?”

  “You should explain that to some people down on Earth.”

  “No, we don’t waste time trying to talk to them; all they would want is our technology so they can destroy one another more efficiently. Therefore, we don’t bother them, and they learned not to bother us. We call it the rhinoceros hypothesis.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know the African rhinoceros. When they feel threatened, they will stand back to back in a defensive position. You don’t mess with them because if you do the reprisal will be devastating; so if you don’t mess with us, we won’t mess you up.”

  “I was wondering how safe your city under the sea is.”

  “Actually, there are more than one, and we have managed to keep them well hidden. They have their own defenses. Any attack on them would elicit a devastating counterattack.”

  “We got a bit nervous when you cracked the atom. We were way ahead of you on that one.”

  “Mutually assured destruction?”

  “No, it would be terribly one-sided,” responded Fitz darkly.

  “Do they know that?”

  “Yes, during your cold war, we captured and transported one of your submarines with nuclear weapons onboard through the air and set it down on an airbase in the middle of the United States. We did the same for the Soviets.”

  “I never heard of such a thing in the news.”

  “Do you think they are going to let the public know how powerless they are next to us?”

  “Your real weakness is not technological; it’s population, isn’t it?” asked Smith.

  “Yes, we can’t field an army, and we have to keep returning every so often to the gene pool.”

  “Do they know that?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t tell them even if I could. However, I don’t believe in Utopia. Don’t you have any crime?”

  “Yes, of course. You see, our cities are small, and it’s usually pretty easy to tell who the trouble makers are.”

  “Well, what if you get someone who refuses to go along, just will not do what he is told?”

  “We don’t tell people what to do.”

  “But what if someone doesn’t want to work or be a part of the machine?”

  “Parasitism, oh we take a dim view of that. People are pretty much left to their own devices, but nobody just sits on his butt and lives off the fruits of the labor of others.”

  “What do you do, let him starve?”

  “That or beg, but usually before it gets that far we find something he is willing to do, and he earns a meager living doing it. We are just too few to put up with that kind of nonsense. Not to mention such a person could forget about finding a marriage partner; who would want such a person?

  “By and large members of society are left to run their own lives as long as they don’t bother anyone else. They are free to marry whomever they will within reason.”

  “Within reason?”

  “Well, even you do that don’t you? I mean you can’t marry your sister.”

  “No, and there are social taboos as well.”

  “Taboos?” asked Fitz.

  “It means sort of like society forbids it.”

  “Yes, it’s the same with us; however, we are careful followers of our genealogies.”

  “With a small population, I can see why.”

  “Yes so even before you express interest in another person, you can check their genealogy.”

  “What about their privacy?”

  “Oh, they can find who is looking at them. We don’t do a lot in secret.”

  Inwardly Smith had his doubts but kept them to himself. Besides, he had no right to judge their society, a society that had blown off the rest of the human race. A change of subject might be in order.

  “What about you; are you going back to the recruiting station?” asked Smith.

  “Probably, but I was trained as an intermediary before they needed someone to run the recruiting station.”

  “Intermediary?”

  “Oh, to deal directly with the Greys.”

  “They have specially trained people to do that?”

  “Oh yes, it is very delicate. For all their technological advancement, they are fairly brittle; so only specially trained people work directly with them.”

  “So we are not likely to see one while we are off on our walk.”

  “No, I don’t think one has ever been here.”

  “Can I be trained to be an intermediary?”

  “No.”

  “Figures.”

  “They are not going to let any of you get anywhere near the Greys. Drop that from your mind.”

  “I’d just like to see one,” responded Smith.

  Chapter 9: Obstacle Course

  Planetary Expedition Legion Training Manual FM 1-1

  Introduction

  During training, an activity might not make sense to the recruit, so help him understand why he is doing something. People tend to react better if they know the why behind what they are doing. This is good for the legion.

  The exercises in Phase One Training are designed to develop mental and physical toughness along with evaluating trainability, and problem-solving skills.

  Remember, we have only one world from which to recruit, and our civilization, as well as that of the Greys, depends on it.

  * *
* *

  By the Hand of the Supreme Council High Command – For the Eyes of the People Only

  Subject: The Humans – Our Allies

  We discovered the human world as we began to explore the galaxy and moved farther away from the extreme edge of our spiral arm toward the core where stars are closer together.

  The arguments against using humans to fight our battles are well known to us. However, many of us who do not agree with those concerns or, at least, think that the greater concern of The People is the survival of our species.

  The humans like to fight. As strange as it seems, they even enjoy killing, but they do not like to die. This can lead to problems if they do not think they are being taken care of; so always make sure to have medics available. The second level, The People/Human High Command, has been most helpful in outlining basic needs to get the best fighting man out of the humans.

  Guile does not come easy for us. Over the generations, such things seem to have been bred out of us. However, to the humans, it is almost second nature. They always suspect it. Therefore, always be honest with the humans. While it might be useful to withhold certain information, do not deliberately lie to them. They are too good at it, and we have no talent for lies. However, do not always expect honesty from them.

  While their world will eventually be at risk, always think of their more immediate desires and needs. There are more than nine billion of them. We accept only volunteers, from the excess they cannot or will not feed, shelter, or clothe.

  Human governments have asked us not to make a permanent settlement in their solar system. Nevertheless, we have placed a clandestine base on their moon where we share a base with a dissident human population. Keep in mind, all traces of our presence must be removed after the war’s successful completion.

  This is, in part, because we want to keep our technology out of the hands of human governments. Though it may be more difficult, we do not want our human dissident allies to have much of this technology either, especially the star jump technology.

  Had the Reptilians not already gotten their hands on it from our ill-fated joint exploration mission, we might not have even gotten the limited permission we have to form the human legion. There are those who fear the humans. This fear is not unfounded given human proclivity toward violence. This new enemy makes it imperative that the human legion succeeds where we have failed.