Saucer: The Conquest

by Coonts, Stephen

  That it was nearby, with its optical sight centered on the radio tower, was a given. But where?

  He craned his neck, searching in every direction.

  Newton Chadwick was curled up in a fetal position on a chair in the back of the compartment, apparently oblivious to Lalouette and his problems.

  Chadwick had been that way for the last hour, ever since he regained consciousness. “Someone stole it,” he muttered, looking wildly at Lalouette, reaching for him.

  The French pilot pointed toward the rear of the saucer and raised his right fist threateningly. The American shrank away, still muttering. “It came out,” he said mysteriously. “I’m aging quickly. I need more serum. God in heaven, how am I going to get it stuck on the moon?”

  Lalouette didn’t know what to say. Chadwick seemed to have come completely unhinged.

  “My serum,” the American shouted at him, “someone has stolen my serum.”

  After that he fell silent. He sat in a chair, and seemed somehow to shrink into it, becoming smaller and smaller.

  Lalouette forgot about Chadwick.

  Pine wasn’t out on the lava sea. He would see her ship if she were there. No, she was somewhere in these mountains, either to the right or left, or perhaps above him.

  He turned his saucer and began climbing the steep gully using only the antigravity rings, trying to stay in the shadow of the ridge as he did so. He had plenty of water on board—he had filled the saucer’s tanks in the two days he had been waiting for Charley Pine to fly to the moon.

  So he had the fuel to use his rockets whenever the tactical situation required. Pine couldn’t, not if she planned to ever get back to earth. The surplus fuel gave Jean-Paul a huge tactical advantage, and well he knew it.

  Every fighter pilot since Roland Garros had used every advantage they had to kill the enemy and avoid being killed themselves. Only fools liked fair fights, and Jean-Paul Lalouette wasn’t a fool. Nor, he reflected, was Charley Pine. She would shoot him in the back without the slightest iota of remorse.

  Unless he killed her first.

  He intended to do just that.

  CHARLEY LIFTED HER SAUCER FROM THE SHADOW that had shrouded it, lifted it until the canopy was just clear of the ridge line and she and Rip could see.

  They watched expectantly. Sooner or later Lalouette would come looking for them, and they intended to see him first. They had to see him first.

  The minutes passed, one by one, agonizingly slow.

  So where is he? she asked the computer. The holographic display was blank. The ship’s radar and computer system had yet to detect the other saucer, and until it did, it could not answer the question.

  There—a flicker of movement, on top of the ridge to the left. As fast as Rip saw it, it disappeared.

  He pointed. “The other saucer just crossed the ridge there. Seconds ago. Going away from us.”

  CHARLEY STARTED UP THE HOGBACK USING ONLY THE antigravity rings. She thought the French pilot would silhouette himself somewhere on the irregular crest when he crossed back to this side, the southern side of the range. He had to know that she had just shot up the radio tower; Artois could be relied upon to pass that word along using a short-range radio of some sort.

  Climbing the hogback, watching the crest for the flash of movement, Charley was ready. If Jean-Paul came over the crest to the right or left—and she saw him—she would get a quick squirt with the antimatter gun. Maybe that would be enough.

  But where was he?

  And why had he crossed over to the northern side of the range?

  On a hunch, she moved laterally off the hogback, placing the crest of it to her left. Now she had some room to duck down, if necessary, or to dive away. Just in case—

  The rock to her left began popping, as if bullets were striking it. Or antiprotons.

  She jammed the stick forward as Rip shouted, “There!” and thrust out an arm. To the left.

  She glimpsed the other saucer just as she sank behind the hogback. It was nestled in a deep V, a cleft in the rock. Jean-Paul had let himself be seen crossing the mountain crest so that she would follow and he could ambush and kill her.

  The canyon she was in wound its way up the steep slope above and dropped quickly away toward the lava sea. Up or down?

  She continued upward for a few seconds, then stopped the saucer, spun it 180 degrees and tilted it. Lalouette would be popping over that hogback, ready to pounce.

  She didn’t have long to wait. The larger Roswell saucer crossed the ridge banking sharply. What Jean-Paul didn’t expect was that she was waiting for him. She jerked the crosshairs onto the bigger machine and shouted, “Fire!”

  Most of the antimatter particles were deflected by the Roswell saucer’s streamlined, stealthy shape. However, a few of the particles penetrated the saucer’s skin, roaring ahead until sooner or later, inevitably, they encountered positrons buried in atoms’ nuclei. One popped harmlessly in the saucer’s water tank; another met its positron in the food bay, and the resultant small explosion scattered cans and plastic-wrapped goo willy-nilly. One of the particles hit the instrument panel and blew out a multifunction display, showering Jean-Paul with shards of a hard glasslike material.

  He was already on the juice, trying to accelerate over the smaller ship using the rockets. As the G hit him he went over the small ship and pulled the nose up hard to avoid the rising slope of rock. Accelerating hard, the big saucer shot up the slope and across the crest before Charley Pine could turn her ship and send a river of particles after it.

  Off the juice, turning hard in a 120-degree angle of bank while pulling four Gs, Jean-Paul whipped his saucer around and decelerated. He didn’t think Pine had the water to maneuver with him; yet if he persisted in riding around her like an Indian riding around a circle of covered wagons, he was going to get shot out of the saddle.

  He halted the saucer and waited to see if she was going to pop over the crest in hot pursuit.

  His heart was pounding. He tried to get his breathing under control as he waited under the crest for Charley Pine, waited for his shot. For he knew he would get one. He would win. He would kill her and everyone else in the enemy saucer. He was good and he would live and they would die. It was as simple as that.

  So where was she?

  EGG AWOKE IN THE DISPENSARY, ACROSS THE CORRIDOR from the com center. The door was open, and he could hear the people in the com center gabbling in French. They were not happy—that was obvious from their tone. He tried to move his arm and found he was tied to the gurney. He was only half awake, and it took a few seconds for all of it to come back. Moving the saucer over the antigravity beam generator, Julie Artois and her syringe …

  Augh! He blamed himself. If he had had more courage when Chadwick kidnapped him, he would have refused to fly the Roswell saucer. Would have told them to go to hell.

  But he didn’t. Now Charley and Rip were up there somewhere, risking their lives, and these fools were trying to take over the world.

  As he came fully awake he began working on extracting an arm from the cloth ties that held it. His right was looser. He worked it, tugged, pulled and strained, trying to create some slack. The more he pulled, the angrier he got.

  THE HOLOGRAPHIC DISPLAY PANEL IN FRONT OF JEAN-PAUL literally exploded. He was wearing the computer headband, so the rocket engines ignited as quickly as thought and the saucer was instantly accelerating—but not before he heard a series of bangs behind him as positrons and antipositrons detonated like firecrackers.

  In seconds he was out of the antimatter particle stream, accelerating rapidly at six Gs, heavy on the juice. He began weaving, right, left, up and down at random. Finally he went into a turn and looked back over his left shoulder. By leaning left he could see almost dead aft.

  There was the other saucer, moving slowly along the crest, not using its rockets. The distance was at least five miles, opening fast. Now it was turning toward him, barely moving.

  He tightened his turn, put the
other saucer over his head and pulled as hard as he could. The Gs began graying him out. He tensed every muscle, moaned against the weight, fought to keep his head erect, watched the nose come around and the enemy move slowly under the reticle. He was still on the juice, still accelerating.

  Straighten out and fire!

  Now the other saucer lit its rockets. He saw the fire from its exhausts, and it squirted out the bottom of the sight reticle.

  He dumped the nose, trying to hold the crosshairs on it as the G threw him upward against the safety belt, tried to throw him out of his seat. He couldn’t get the crosshairs on the enemy ship—and the dive angle was steadily increasing. Now he pulled hard, upward.

  My God. His nose was well down. He was below the ridgeline, which filled his canopy. He was going to crash into it! No! More G. The lights began to fade as the G mashed him downward, six, eight, ten Gs … His peripheral vision came rushing in; he was screaming as his vision shrank until he could see only the rocks ahead … then everything went black.

  The G was taking him out … With the last of his consciousness, he asked the computer for more G.

  JEAN-PAUL RECOVERED CONSCIOUSNESS AS THE G eased. His saucer was still accelerating at about four Gs. He thought about weaving to throw Charley’s aim off if she was behind him, and the ship automatically responded.

  So where is she?

  Even as he asked the question, the display in front of him gave him the answer. She was diving down between two mountain ranges, the one north of the base and the one beyond it. Jean-Paul, you fool! You should have been asking the computer to track her all along. She is diving into that steep chasm.

  He brought his ship around in a wide, gentle turn, slowing as he checked the display, matching it to the real world beyond the canopy.

  He would get her this time. With the system’s help, he would keep the stream of particles on her until something vital blew apart or she crashed into the rocks.

  Coming over the ridge he lowered the nose and let his saucer accelerate downward. Yes, the symbol for the other saucer was right there, ahead and low.

  He was below the rock walls now, dropping swiftly, the sun shining full upon his face. He had to squint to see the display. He held up a hand to shield his eyes, kept zooming down.

  Shallow the dive, close the distance.

  The valley was steep and narrow and twisty. He threw the saucer right, left, then right again to avoid the steep walls. They rushed past in a blur.

  He glanced at the display—

  And Charley’s saucer was no longer there!

  Of course not! She’d disappeared from radar. The computer—

  As he rounded a turn the enemy saucer was only feet away on his left, motionless. He glimpsed it as he shot across in front of it.

  His left arm exploded. Blew apart at the elbow. The hand and forearm fell onto the instrument panel in a spray of blood.

  The cliffs were right there, on either side.

  Full power, nose up, Jean-Paul told the computer.

  He grabbed at his stump as the nose began to climb and the G came on steadily, increasing.

  He forced himself to lift his damaged appendage and hold it straight up so the G would help stanch the flow of blood.

  He kept the nose rising and the juice full on. Ahead through the canopy he could see stars. And the earth.

  Earth, he told the computer. Take me home!

  17

  PIERRE ARTOIS HAD STATIONED A MAN ON TOP OF THE lunar base in a space suit to radio him firsthand reports of the saucer battle. Each suit had a radio in the helmet; the transmissions were picked up by a small antenna mounted on the top of the base air lock. With the base radio tower in pieces, these transmissions were not automatically rebroadcast to earth, nor could Pierre talk to or hear Mission Control in France on the com center radios. The man outside spotted the exhaust plume of the saucer leaving the moon. He reported it to Pierre.

  “Which one is it?” Pierre asked, a question that revealed the depths of his despair, because even he knew that there was no way to tell one saucer from the other from a distance. And the distance was great, at least twenty miles.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Keep watching,” Pierre ordered, trying to calm himself. He made a transmission on the handheld, calling Jean-Paul Lalouette.

  There was no answer.

  Julie strummed her fingers on top of one of the useless large radio transmitters, which didn’t help the emperor’s mood. He called several more times on the small radio before he finally gave up and laid it on the plastic counter. Henri Salmon, Fry One and Claudine Courbet were also in the com center, so he weighed his words before he spoke.

  “It must have been Charley Pine,” he said. “Lalouette probably frightened her.”

  Julie said nothing as Pierre recalled his contacts with the American pilot. She never struck him as a woman who would frighten easily. He cursed under his breath.

  Of course, Jean-Paul Lalouette wasn’t a person who would turn tail and run from a fight either. He was French, after all, and he believed body and soul in the glory of Pierre’s crusade.

  “Or something went tragically wrong,” he admitted aloud.

  “Newton Chadwick,” Julie said bitterly.

  Ah, yes, Pierre thought. Chadwick, a man without a shred of honor. If something happened to Lalouette, Chadwick would abandon the fight, abandon the people on the lunar base, abandon the dream of world conquest, abandon everything to save his own skin. If something happened to Lalouette, Chadwick would run like a rabbit. He was that kind of man.

  “Without a saucer, how are we going to get back to earth?” Claudine Courbet asked rhetorically. Pierre and the other two men stared at her.

  “Putting Chadwick in the saucer with Lalouette was a mistake,” Julie said, unable to resist a dig at Pierre’s decision to send them both to shoot down Pine. “You fool!” she continued shrilly, addressing the emperor and unable to control the timbre of her voice. “You taught Pine to fly the spaceplanes, you allowed her to come to the moon when she knew nothing of our plans, you failed to prevent her escape with the spaceplane, and you sent a person of dubious loyalty with Lalouette in our only possible transport off this miserable rock.”

  Pierre sat frozen, unable to think, unable to analyze the situation. Never in his worst nightmares had he envisioned a situation like this. Marooned on the moon!

  Julie unconsciously brushed the hair back from her forehead and eyes. In times past Pierre had thought the habitual gesture captivating, but he didn’t now.

  He watched mesmerized as Julie took several deep breaths and by sheer force of will brought herself back under icy control. “Fortunately all is not lost,” she said. “We still have Egg Cantrell. Pine and her boy-toy will undoubtedly try to rescue him. They will land their saucer somewhere nearby. We must have that saucer.”

  She scrutinized the faces of her listeners, ignoring Pierre. Then she looked directly into the eyes of Henri Salmon and began issuing orders.

  WHEN SHE FINISHED, JULIE ARTOIS SENT EVERYONE off to make preparations. Pierre remained, listlessly staring at the useless radios.

  She waited for him to meet her eyes, but he didn’t. After a moment she walked out. Salmon was heading into the mess hall to address the assembled base personnel when she saw him. She caught his eye and motioned for him to follow her. They ducked into the Artois living compartment and shut the door.

  “You saw him. Do you think he is still capable of leading us?” Julie asked bluntly.

  Salmon considered carefully. He wasn’t sure where she was going with this and didn’t want to make a mistake. They needed the saucer, which had a limited carrying capacity. Regardless of how the cake was cut, many of the base personnel would have to be left behind. Henri Salmon didn’t want to be one of them.

  “I don’t know,” he said after a pause.

  “Oh, you know,” she said, “and you are hedging.” She moved closer, reached for his hand and placed it on her bre
ast. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? I’ve seen the way you look at me.”

  “You are a beautiful woman,” Salmon admitted.

  “The conquest of earth was my idea,” Julie said, holding his hand in place and staring into his eyes. “I thought Pierre was the man who could do it, but when major difficulties arose, he folded. You, I think, are made of sterner stuff.”

  Salmon said nothing. He was very aware of the ripe firmness of her breast. The rumors weren’t true, he decided. She had not had surgical enhancement.

  “If we take the saucer to earth, negotiate, then return, the antigravity beam generator will still be here. We can still force the world’s governments to yield. Honor, power, glory, wealth—it can all be ours. You and I—we can rule a united earth!”

  Salmon felt the power of her personality. And he wanted off the moon. He swept her into his arms and kissed her.

  RIP CANTRELL AND CHARLEY PINE STARED THROUGH the canopy of their saucer at the lunar base, which was about two miles away. The saucer was behind a ridge northwest of the base, with just the canopy protruding above the bare rock ledge. The only sign of man that they could see was the pile of rubble that had been the radio tower—and the tiny figure of an individual in a space suit standing near it. The sun reflecting off his silver space suit made him readily visible.

  “So what do you think?” Rip asked.

  “I dunno.”

  “We are going to have to go in there after Egg.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Can you think of another way?”

  “Make them send him out.”