Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart

by Steven Erikson

  He gingerly took a seat on the sofa, felt himself sinking deeply into its plush confines, the Leader to his left.

  “History,” said Xin Pang, “belongs to the bold.”

  On the screen the countdown had begun.

  Following their remote mapping by an ancillary mission conducted covertly during the Chang’e soft-landing on the lunar surface in 2013, Project 937 had begun as a top-secret mission to occupy the Grey moon-bases. Based on an exhaustive survey of close-encounter and abduction reports worldwide, the Bureau of Psychology had determined that the psychic assault capability of the Greys was limited by range, roughly estimated at one hundred meters.

  Under the command of Captain Shen, the marine contingent accompanying the second landing intended to strike employing an array of specially designed weaponry discharged at a distance of one hundred twenty meters, to penetrate outer building walls and trigger—hopefully—explosive decompression. They would then advance and, following the doctrine of decompressing chambers via hardened-RPG fusillades, proceed to clear the innermost rooms of the enemy base. Accordingly, even in the event of complete success, the assault team would have advanced with the expectation that all of their potential Grey assailants were already dead. Or at least dying.

  Additional defenses to the little-understood psychic capability of the Greys included armored helmets constructed from laminated layers of tungsten and ceramic, every second layer with its molecular polarity reversed. Privately, Shen had expected these precautions to be as effective as tinfoil hats. He had hoped that the loss of atmosphere within the alien constructs would prove as fatal to the Greys as to anyone else. Failing that, he had anticipated what an American counterpart might call a clusterfuck.

  News of the flight of the Greys had been a relief, and what had begun in Shen’s mind as a suicide mission now seemed achievable as far as mission protocols went. Now, however, new challenges presented themselves. It was unlikely the Greys had left the door open. Three combat engineers were attached to his team, each one loaded down with a collection of machinery that might prove useful, but without a proper vacuum chamber or airlock, the risk of damaging delicate technology in the base, even making it entirely uninhabitable, was very real.

  The Long March 15 CZ-7 heavy lift rocket that propelled into space the three modules of the Lunar Occupation mission had been the world’s largest, and as with any rocket containing thousands of liters of volatile fuel, failure would have meant the deaths of everyone on board. Despite the rapid scaling up of the EFFE already underway, the risk was deemed acceptable in the name of arriving first and thereby laying claim to all that the Greys had left behind.

  At each moment of phase completion, when all aboard were at the mercy of technology—breaths held at tank separation, module disengagement, booster-rockets fired, trajectory input and if necessary correction—the sense of sudden vulnerability afflicted everyone, including Shen and his team of combat veterans.

  Space was inhospitable, unwelcoming. It reduced each human form to a fragile sack of precious fluids. Shen had begun to imagine the inky blackness outside as something both alive and hungry. At other times, especially during the sleep cycle in the crew quarters, he could think of it only as a vast graveyard, eager for one more frozen lump of matter. If each planet was an island of life, then space was indeed its lifeless counterpart.

  On the fourth morning of the mission, the final module separation freed the massive lander for its descent to the lunar surface at Site 71. Shen and his team were fully kitted, although still breathing ship-air. They held bulky weapons resting on laps, thick gloves gripping oversized stocks. Tripod attachments bulked out the back of their life-support packs, since firing a weapon on the lunar surface could send a soldier off his feet, spinning through space. In the original mission, the tripods would have been deployed behind each soldier prior to firing.

  Shen was fairly certain that such a precaution was unnecessary, but given the immense list of unknowns defining the original mission parameters, he appreciated over-compensation where the lives of his soldiers were concerned.

  There were no windows in the lander’s main hold, so Shen could only assume that even now they were drawing ever closer to the moon’s dusty surface. The infrequent bursts of chatter from the pilot crew ranged from highly technical instructions to monosyllabic grunts.

  He felt very far from home.

  “Contact ten seconds.” This directed comment came thoroughly startlingly clear in Shen’s earbuds.

  “Copy.” The captain double-clicked on team coms to wake up his soldiers.

  The Greys were gone. This seemed to have been confirmed by innumerable sources. But what if they weren’t? Shen had read the reports of abductions. The terror afflicting the human victims was described as soul-crushing, as effective as a paralysis ray. Abject, utterly helpless. Weak as a newborn baby. Under this terrible spell, there was no resisting the Greys. They did whatever they pleased, and often afterward they psychically repressed the memories in their human victims.

  As someone online had described it: as pernicious and inherently evil as a date-rape drug.

  He would have liked the Greys still huddled in their moon-base. He would have liked to see their flimsy forms spinning through space, dying in the agony of icy-cold vacuum, dying in gasps as the last of the air rushed from the rooms where they hid. But most of all, he realized, he would have liked to put a bullet between the oversized black eyes of a Grey. Just one would do. One chance for pay-back. Standing immune to their psychic terrors, looking down as helplessness spun round to afflict the alien, not the human.

  There was a soft thump, then a settling sensation as the faint gravity took hold.

  Vocal instructions weren’t necessary. Everyone knew their tasks. The chamber decompressed, lights blinked the all-clear, the side-door nudged outward, and then began its slow pivot to form an angled platform.

  Disengaging from the ship-board air feed and then moving as quickly as seemed possible, two point-men exited the craft. In quick order the rest followed. Shen was last of his team to leave the lander, last to set foot on the lunar surface.

  The low gravity was uncanny. In his mind—after three days of zero-g—all his instincts seemed to be groping for the more familiar pull of Earth’s own gravity. Instead, the moon seemed unselfish about their presence. He could imagine himself launching his body upward—and possibly leaving this white and grey world forever. Not likely, he told himself, but still the unease remained in his mind, dogged in its fearful whispering.

  He watched as his team spread out in awkward bounds, watched as the tripods automatically extended behind each man, like the legs of a spider unfolding in the harsh light.

  The two scouts were already thirty meters away, hopping in bounds toward the crater’s rim, beyond which—buried in shadow—awaited the alien moon-base.

  “Advance,” Shen commanded.

  They set out, following the scuffed tracks of the point-men.

  “Joey Sink here again, folks, and it looks like we got the bug fixed. That feed you’re seeing is from an amateur astronomer based somewhere in Texas—although you’d be hard-pressed to call anything in that picture amateurish. This is serious state of the art tech going on here. Rock steady, and the lander’s clear as day, just to the right of the crater’s edge. Looks like a grain of rice, hah hah—oh, listen, wasn’t being racist there or anything. Honest. It really does look like a grain of rice! Anyway, those thin lines are maybe tracks—looked like a whole bunch of people left the lander—not that we could make that out, of course. Okay, we got Nonny Mouse wanting to chime in here and being the expert and all, maybe he can give us some idea of what’s happening right—whoah! Was that flashes? From the crater? Hey, can we run this back—hold on, yeah … there! Holy crap! Three flashes, and bits of crap flying, and dust—plumes of moon-dust. Wow! Nonny Mouse? You there? What did we just see?”

  There was a long pause, and then Nonny Mouse’s feed kicked in. “Sorry, that go
t us bouncing around a bit … around here it’s looking like that television series, 24. You know, that top-secret installation with everybody whispering into their cell-phones and looking suspicious. Anyway, those flashes. We’re thinking they had to set charges to open a breach in the alien construct—”

  “You people got a better view than us, Nonny?”

  “Not much—your buddy on the ground in Texas has serious stuff. I’ve got it up on a monitor here and it’s tracking smooth as ours does with nary a wobble. Great res, too. Nice find, Joey.”

  “So you figure they got in?”

  “Don’t know. Sure, they blew stuff up, but did that manage a breach? And those plumes could’ve been just blow-back rather than escaping atmosphere. We’re analyzing those frames right now, trying to decide. If it was atmosphere, then the chamber beyond was relatively small and able to seal itself. Otherwise we’d still be watching jets of air freezing up in big clouds.”

  “And we’re not. Got it. Anything else you want to tell us before Jack Bauer finds you?”

  “That lander is huge. The Chinese aren’t being forthcoming on the size of the crew. The thinking is they might be intending on actually occupying the base, as in ‘permanently.’ Hang on …”

  Joey squinted at the telescope image of the landing site—something had caught his eye. “Hey Nonny, that rice grain just did something. Four, uh, pebbles? Separating out from it, two to each side. You seeing this? Nonny?”

  “Sorry! Yeah, we’re tracking that. They’re lunar rovers and they’re big. I’d say the breach got them in. They’re in the Grey base! Shit! And here we are, still looking for a damned rocket! Look, Joey, gotta run here. I’m catching wind that our building’s about to go dark—big wigs coming in—”

  “Going dark? What’s that mean?”

  “Means they’re going to cut off signal any moment now—”

  “What, as in cellphone signal? Nonny? Nonny Mouse? Well, huh. There it is, folks, Big Government playing with secrets again—you’d think they’d have given up that stuff by now. Habit, I suppose.

  “Never mind, let’s keep watching, shall we? Those rovers are making tracks. If they’re full of people … well, that’s a lot of people.

  “But think of it this way. Up until today the only people managing to live not on this planet were in a cruddy space station, going all brittle in the zero gee. Now, as of today, humanity has claimed the moon as the new chic residence du jour. Sure, not Americans, and that sucks. Well, try thinking about it like this, folks. Armstrong took that first step all right, but the Chinese brought suitcases.

  “This is history in the making, friends, and here we are on Joey’s Vlog, sharing it. Could it get any better than that?

  “Oh man, my chat-box is going wild. Okay okay, the not-Americans thing has you all howling. Don’t blame me! Or, put it another way, yeah, blame me, and then blame yourselves while you’re at it, and your daddies and mommies and their daddies and mommies. We couldn’t be bothered, remember? We dropped the ball in the race to space. Oh, I know, the Greys kept us down, but only because almost nobody knew the truth! If it had all spilled out in, say, the Eighties, well, man, we’d have gotten fired up, don’t you think? Not in my backyard, you bug-eyed interlopers! And I’ll tell you this, I survived Afghanistan and the Moon’s got nothing on that—it’s no wonder the Greys never stuck a hidden base in old Stan. The Mujahadeen would’ve kicked their butts! So that’s what I’m saying. Hey, all you old retired Presidents, listen up! We could’ve taken ’em, if only you had the guts to tell us the truth. We could’ve taken them down!

  “All right, I’ll go all zen now. Someone kicked my toolbox, right? Secrets, man, you know. They suck. Secrets, the hidey-hole of cowards. If I was a swearing man, like King Con, I’d say … well, you can guess what I’d say, can’t you? There’s an ‘F’ in it, and a ‘U’ and the rest you don’t even need, do you?

  “So there it is, the Chinese beat us to the punch. Up there on the Moon, making history. We dropped the ball, us Yanks. Dropped it big time. But suck it up, my fellow Americans. Let’s just sit back, kick our feet up, pop a beer and grab a handful of popcorn, and just watch the show. It’s pretty much all we do these days, right?”

  Evidently, the base’s automated emergency counter-breach measures still worked. When the outer wall of the base blew apart, the elongated corridor inside expelled its atmosphere, while large locks slammed shut on three hatches on the opposite wall and to either side of the breached section.

  Shen and the two scouts led the way into the corridor. He looked around as best he could. There was nothing overtly alien about what he found. Directly ahead, on the three now-closed doors, the mechanisms for deeper ingress into the base were more or less recognizable, with wheeled handles suggesting redundancy and what looked like a function panel displaying nine rows of three round buttons. Selecting the central door, the engineers moved past Shen and set to work figuring out how to manage the evacuation of atmosphere in the chamber beyond to effect an airlock.

  His heart was pounding in his chest. He watched as one of the engineers began pressing various buttons. This went on for some time. It was possible, Shen thought, that they would have to knock holes into every room they wanted to explore, meaning they would all need to stay suited, at least until certain breaches were repaired and sealed back up, allowing the portable air tanks to be installed and the valves opened wide. Maybe then, finally, the next set of doors would open of their own accord. It seemed far from ideal, not that he’d been expecting any favors from the Greys.

  Then the engineer at the panel stepped back as the door silently opened. The man turned to Shen and the captain saw a perplexed expression through the face-shield. A moment later the engineer lifted his hands in the suited version of a shrug.

  Weapons out, the two scouts edged into the new chamber.

  The surface level of the Grey Base at Site 71 consisted mostly of empty chambers. In some of them, brackets in the walls were the only evidence of machinery and equipment. Everything had been stripped away. Near the center of the complex, however, Shen’s engineers found what they thought to be an atmosphere processing plant, although its configuration made it seem discordant with the rest of the room. It stood on four stubby legs in the middle of an otherwise featureless chamber. A cluster of tubing rose from its top surface, disappearing into the ceiling.

  Biologists set up tests of the atmosphere, filtering for contaminants and biosigns, and after an hour’s muted discussion they pronounced it safe to breathe. In fact, the lead biologist revealed to Shen, the nitrogen-oxygen ratio was identical to that of Earth.

  By this time, the rest of the occupation team was safely ensconced and a crew was at work sealing up the original breaches in the outer wall of the complex. Gear had been brought in, crowding the rooms closest to the point of ingress. Once heaters had been set out and turned on and the all-clear was given, everyone climbed out of their suits and excited conversation filled the still-icy air. A communications station was assembled in what was now designated Room 5, and contact via lander and then satellite uplink was established with Mission Control down in Jiuquan’s Satellite Launch Center, including video-feed.

  In the meantime, Shen’s marines completed their mapping of this level, finding in one of the last chambers to be explored a robust and oversized hatch in the floor. A control stand stood beside it, resembling a speaker’s podium although at perhaps half the height. Its tilted panel had been shattered, rendering it useless.

  Shen now gathered a half-dozen of his marines in this chamber, while his engineers continued examining the control panel. The captain was relieved to be out of the exo-suit. The low gravity still proved unsettling at times, particularly when he made any rapid motions. He could hear chatter from adjacent chambers as teams began setting up cots, including the higher pitched voices of the women discussing sanitation protocols.

  Second in command Lieutenant Hong Li moved to stand beside him. They both studied the massive
hatch. “We may have to drill,” he said. “The vacuum units should keep particulates down, but I would still advise we cordon off and seal this chamber while the drilling takes place.”

  Hong Li held a PhD from Simon Fraser University, in mechanical engineering. He always conveyed the impression that he knew what he was doing, and this Shen found both useful and somewhat heartening. A startling contrast remained, however, given the man’s appearance—the over-muscled body, the sloping shoulders and the cabbage ears of a wrestler. His eyes were small in a broad, battered face, and he rarely spoke in anything above a whisper—except when barking orders to his soldiers, when the register of his voice dropped to a basso rumble.

  In the wake of Hong Li’s suggestions, Shen nodded. It was certainly possible that what awaited them in the levels below was simply more of the same. Gutted rooms, smashed control panels. The Greys didn’t seem big on overt expressions of technology. He wondered if their psychic abilities extended to controlling machinery, thus minimizing the need for elaborate electronics. He glanced over at the huddle of engineers examining the pedestal. “Zhou Wei! What have you found?”

  The lead engineer looked up, blinking rapidly behind his glasses. “There is evidence of repair.”

  “What?”

  Both Shen and Wong Li strode over.

  Wei waved the other engineers back a step and gestured the officers closer. He pointed with a narrow metal stylus at the facing beneath the broken shards of glass. “Here. This is some kind of circuit board. Not complex.”

  “Non-Euclidian,” muttered Hong Li.

  Wei grunted agreement. “And here, and here, processing units.”

  “They look like M&M’s,” Shen said, and then paused and squinted at the expressions on the faces of Wei and Li. “Candies.”