Chapter 29
Hugh had left the channel open to Mary's monitor and she had caught sight of movement on it. She stopped combing her hair and watched an odd device rise out of Hugh's floor. She watched as Hugh, seemingly in a trance, dropped his towel, and stood between the two arms. She watched him adjust the cones with his own hands, then drop his arms and close his eyes.
A low hum came from the device and the light in Hugh's room dimmed. Mary watched in disbelief as Hugh's head began to glow, and it looked as if every blood vessel in his body became a conduit for the glowing light to flow down from his head to every part of his body. His room was now dark, save for the light emitting from his body. This lasted several minutes, and then the lights slowly came up, as Hugh stopped glowing. He stepped off the device, retrieved his towel, and continued to dry himself as if nothing had happened. Mary shut off the monitor and sat back, stunned. What had she just witnessed? When she first caught a glimpse of this device, Hugh told her The Nine used it to upload additional information into his head. But she had already seen him receive information in a matter of seconds without the aid of an instrument. She quickly dressed and went to Hugh's door.
She gently touched the door.
Hugh responded, "Just a minute."
"Why?" Mary asked. "Something in there I shouldn't see?"
Hugh, with just the lower half of his flight suit on, opened the door. She rushed in past him, and adjusted her countenance. Before she turned around, she asked herself if she trusted him or not. A heartbeat passed as she gazed into his eyes. "You must be exhausted, darling," she said forcing a smile. "You've worked harder than any of us today."
"You must be whipped as well, hon-nee. You certainly did your share today."
"Yes, I am. I just thought I might sleep better wrapped in your arms."
She kissed him and they lay down upon the soft bed that emerged from the floor. Hugh lay on his back and Mary snuggled up against him. She threw an arm over his chest and a leg over his thigh.
After a moment laying still Mary asked, “Hugh, aren’t you breathing?”
“Oh, ah … just trying to be still for you, hon-ee.”
“Well, just relax and go to sleep.”
Mary then felt his chest rise and fall with each breath. She felt the warmth of his body next to hers. "Darling, I want you to promise me you will sleep. We are all very worried that you're pushing yourself too hard."
"I promise you Mary, when we rise I'll be fully rested. Sleep tight."
****
Mary's eyelids quickly became very heavy, and she slid away. There were lights before her eyes. Stars—the stars began to brighten and to focus. The image that materialized was that of a great city bustling with throngs of people and vehicles. But it was a city, vehicles, and a people entirely foreign to her.
She was standing on a great bridge over a yawing chasm that appeared to be bottomless. Out of this canyon rose two gigantic towers each topped with massive cone-shaped devices, identical to the two she'd seen in Hugh's room.
The two huge objects stopped many dozens of meters above her, and brilliant blue bolts of electricity arced between them.
Within the discharges, a human head began to form; it was translucent and made of the tiny web-like arms of the lightning.
Suddenly, the head tilted down to look at her. It was Hugh! The vision's lips moved and she heard his voice, "Mary—"
As she watched in stunned silence, the face began to morph, the electric bolts changed from a pale blue to a brilliant green and the face became that of one of the aliens!
Its huge eyes blinked, and it spoke, the voice was still that of Hugh! "Mary, we are all energy. Max Tegmark's level four. Tegmark—level four."
****
Five hours later, Mary awoke to find herself alone in the bed. She sat bolt upright and looked about. There, at the foot of the bed, sat Hugh. He smiled at her. "Good morning."
She smiled and ran her hands through her hair. "Good morning. How did you sleep?"
"I've never felt better," he said. "And you?"
"I had the strangest dream—never mind. Are you hungry?" she asked.
"I take it you are."
"You know what I really miss? Coffee."
Hugh laughed. "Come on, let's find you something to eat."
"Oh, Hugh," she said with a smile, "you're kidding, I have to go fix my hair and—"
He leaned over to her, and kissed her gently. "You are absolutely beautiful right now."
"You're such a liar," Mary quipped, but Hugh seemed not to see the humor in it. "You go on," she insisted, "I'll join you and the others in half an hour.
****
Hugh went to the dining area while Mary went to her room to prepare herself for the day. As Hugh entered, Larry stopped him. "Good morning, Hugh. Have you eaten?"
"Yes, thanks, from the dispenser in my room."
"Join us anyway, will you?"
He sat with Balaji and Larry at the table where they were eating. "Hugh, have you seen Mary?" Balaji asked.
"Yes. She seemed quite concerned with how much sleep I'm getting."
"We're all a little worried that you're not sleeping," Larry said.
"Guys, I'm fine. What about my functioning leads you to believe I'm not at one hundred percent?"
"Sleep or no, Hugh, we are concerned for you," Balaji said. "You are the only trained soldier among us. You alone can communicate with The Nine, and moreover, you are our friend."
"I assure you," Hugh replied, looking hard at Balaji, "I'm fully charged and ready to go. But, thank you for your concern, and your friendship."
Mary entered the room and all rose. Hugh went up to her. "Ham and eggs okay?"
"Don't I wish? Let me fix you a bowl," she offered.
"I'm sorry, I just ate."
"You love this stuff, don't you?" she said, as the purple-gray gruel filled her bowl.
They all sat together at the long, low table. Mary was the only one eating now.
"So you three ate and didn't wait for me?" Mary queried.
"Mary says she misses coffee," Hugh commented rather quickly.
"Me, too," Larry agreed.
"I miss my wife's cooking," Balaji whispered dreamily. "She makes the best Rajma. And her Dal makhani with her homemade chapati bread is the key to my heart!"
"I want a hamburger, with everything on it," Larry sighed.
"I think we'd all like a big, thick steak," Mary said.
Balaji cleared his throat. "I am a vegetarian."
"Okay, you can have my fries."
"How about you? What do you miss, Hugh?" Larry asked.
"Me? Hamburgers, steaks, and Dal makhani—"
Everyone laughed.
****
During the remainder of the day, they removed six of the dentist-style chairs from the theater in the spacecraft. The armrests were taken off and discarded. The chairs were to be relocated inside the ship.
They carried the chairs into another in a room that was just off the planetarium. This room contained twelve very small metal cases; each roughly forty-five centimeters by one point three-five meters by one point one-zero meters. They were set up in a ring around the perimeter of the room and in the center of the ring was a glass orb, a meter in diameter. This orb contained what looked like a large geode turned inside out. Twelve thin arms supported the orb. One extended from each case. These arms were wrapped by several of the small clear tubes filled with colored gels.
When the four entered, the room was dark and quiet. Nothing seemed to have power. A moment after entering the chamber, the lights quickly illuminated.
The group attached the chairs to the floor between two of the cases in sets of two, facing one another, creating a cradle.
Hugh removed from his backpack a large coil of black cable. Each end was tied off with what looked like a small tourniquet. He also produced two adapters. He opened one of the cases and attached an adapter to something inside. Then he removed the tourniquet from one e
nd of the cable. As he did, a thick, red substance began to ooze out. He attached this to the adapter. He set the rest of the cable and the remaining adapter down atop the case.
"Now," he said, looking at his three companions, "we finish the life support system."
"I thought life support was finished?" Mary asked.
"Elements of the environmental monitoring system are out, several CO2, Carbon dioxide sensors need replacement, and the oxygen regenerators require new accelerators and a replaced filter. The bio filters are inoperative, but that's immaterial. If the ship can be contaminated, we've already done it. All the parts we'll need are in the main environmental recycling center, except the filter. We'll have to make one of those."
"And where is this recycling center?" Larry asked.
"It's in another cavern, about sixteen kilometers from here."
Balaji stopped his work and looked up to say, "Hugh, I do not believe any of us here is too excited to have to leave the safety of our hotel, and trek that distance knowing that, all the while, Dr. Whitmore will be hunting for us."
"I know Balaji; nevertheless—" Hugh replied softly.
"When do we leave?" Larry asked.
"Let's have something to eat, pack food and water, and have a short rest. Then we'll set off. We're almost done, folks."
Three hours later, Hugh and Mary met the others at the 'T' intersection right by the door that led out into the wider corridor. All were rested, packed, armed, and ready.
The walk was, again, slower than it had been. Hugh would stop at every intersection, every turn in the hall to ensure it was safe to proceed. Eventually, they reached the "streetcar line"—that very wide corridor which connected the various caverns. This route was a straight shot which, tactically speaking was not the best path, as Dr. Whitmore would have a clear field of fire. But then again, so would Hugh.
After three hours of walking down the streetcar line, they were farther into the alien facility than they'd ever been. As the lights in the next section illuminated, they could clearly see looming ahead of them a dark hole, as if the path stretched out into space.
Exiting the tunnel, they found themselves in near-total darkness, standing on a bridge. Then, all around, lights began to flicker to life. At first, it looked like stars as increasingly more lights illuminated. Very quickly, there was light enough to see it all.
"Oh, my—" Mary murmured. "Hugh, I've been here before!"
"What did you say?" Hugh asked, shocked at her statement.
"Nothing; never mind," Mary whispered as she gazed about.
They were in an identically augured-out chamber as the one containing the facility where they resided, but this one contained a metropolis. The entire space was filled with buildings, far larger and more permanent-looking than the structures they were living in. Here were various constructs, immense domes, spheres, and buildings which formed columns that stretched from the floor to the ceiling of the cavern. There were also other elevated roadways, and what appeared to be glass elevator tubes.
Attached to the sides of several of the structures were platforms; landing pads, no doubt, for small flying craft that must have been about the size of a helicopter.
"Incredible," Balaji said. "This was a permanent settlement here upon our Moon. Why?"
They had all stopped on the bridge to stare in awe at this wondrous citadel when Hugh yelled back, "Keep moving and spread out. You're a tempting target, bunched up like that."
Three kilometers across an entirely unsupported bridge, they entered yet another tunnel which immediately curved hard to the left. Eight hundred meters farther, they encountered an area that must have been a loading platform for passengers. From here, they departed the streetcar line and walked into the city.
"This place is like Grand Central Station, but with low ceilings," Larry observed.
"Yes," Balaji said, "it bespeaks a large, highly-mobile population."
As they exited from the area of the loading platform they came upon an area that had suffered a great deal of damage. Hugh stopped everyone, and then advanced alone slowly into the site. There was an immense hole in the side of the structure.
"Explosion," Hugh said after a brief examination. "Note how the walls have been peeled outward. And look at the scorching; there has been a good-sized fire here, too. Yup, something inside the building detonated, blowing the walls outward. And if you'll look around," he pointed all around the area; there were body parts scattered all over. Here the skeleton of an alien's hand, there a mummified leg, over there, a skull.
As the realization hit her that a mass murder had been committed here, Mary's eyes grew wide and her hands shot to her mouth. It was one thing to clinically examine the skeletons of these creatures that died of disease, but this act of wanton murder was horrifying. Suddenly, she began to see these aliens as beings not unlike herself. Perhaps they were on their way home from work, to see their families, when their lives were violently snuffed out.
The horror was compounded when she deduced that there must have been the remains of thirty or forty beings here.
"A bomb in proximity to a crowded public transport—looks like an act of terrorism," Hugh went on. "Another thing, all these bodies...they didn't return to clean up. There was a rescue, I'm sure because none of these creatures look as if they laid here and died of their wounds. All the wounded were removed, but no attempt seems to have been made to pick up the other remains or to repair the damage."
"It is, indeed, very odd," Balaji commented. "What could have happened here? Do we attribute this to the alien madness that The Nine told us about?"
"Yeah," Mary swallowed, "madness is a good assumption."
Proceeding forward, they noticed horrific damage in almost every area. At last, they came to an aperture where the door had been ripped off its track. Beyond was a stairwell. Like the stairs which they descended into the first cavern, they were not very tall. They followed them down many levels.
"Hugh, are we positive none of the lifts are functioning?" Balaji asked.
"Sorry, Bal-ah-gee. I'm informed that as a result of the damage, there is little over here that works."
"Ask them what caused the damage," Mary said.
Hugh calculated the question and resolved the response. "Fighting is all they say."
Eventually, they reached the bottom of the stairwell and entered into a taller and wider corridor than that to which they had become accustomed, and followed it for several hundred meters. The doors they passed were made of 'clear metal' so even closed, they could see into them. They looked like sterile rooms, more because their interiors were all in white than for any other reason. Larry stopped at one door and called everyone to him.
"What's up?" Hugh asked.
"Look," Larry said, his eyes fixed on something in the room.
Looking in, they saw several humanoid mannequins in the room all attired in original Napoleonic war uniforms.
Hugh began to identify them. "Wow. That one is a Westphalian trumpeter of the Garde du Corps. That one is a Westphalian colonel of the Garde du Corps, King Jerome Bonaparte's Guard. That one on the left is Russian, an officer of the Pavlograd Hussars. These items all look to be in mint condition."
"How do you know this stuff, Hugh?" Mary asked.
"I told you, I retain everything I read."
"You are all missing the obvious," Larry said. "Look on the table in front of the dummies."
On the table were flintlock muskets, as well as cartridge boxes.
"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Mary said. "Those guns are almost four hundred years old!"
"Gun powder never loses it ginger," Hugh pointed out. "Given the powder and ball and decent flints, there is no reason why those weapons should not work. And look at them—they're like brand new."
Chapter 30
The door was, of course, closed. Hugh asked The Nine to open it, but was informed that there was no power to the doors in this area. Hugh found this odd because there was power for light. Hugh pla
ced his hands on the clear metal door, palm flat, and pushed. It budged just a little. Everyone joined in to assist, and slowly the door started to slide open. Soon, there was room for Hugh to press his hand on the exposed edge of the door. At about twenty centimeters, it gave way and slid open. Hugh asked Larry to hand him one of the antique rifles and Hugh laid it on the floor, wedging it between the door and the door sill. "Hate to be locked in here."
Next, Hugh and Larry examined the remaining weapons on the table. According to Hugh, there were four British land pattern Brown Bess muskets, three French Charleville Infantry muskets, and two Russian 1809 muskets; one a Tula, the other a Sestrovetsk. An examination of the available ammunition brought Hugh to a decision. Hugh and Larry selected the Brown Bess muskets due to the greater amount of ball ammunition for that weapon. Hugh gathered all the balls, powder, and from the weapons to be left behind—all the additional flints.
Once out in the hall, Hugh gathered everyone around for a class in the use of the weapon. He demonstrated the loading of the weapon and how to prime the pan. He explained how the frizzen worked and the proper adjustment of the flint. He showed them how to aim.
"Remember," he began, "this is a smooth bore weapon. It is accurate to only about one hundred sixty meters, but is most effective at about forty-five. Watch me and cover your ears." He selected a wall about thirty-eight meters away, pulled the hammer back, took aim, and pulled the trigger. First, there was a flash where the flint struck the frizzen and the powder ignited, followed instantly by the report of the weapon. It was very loud, being inside a closed area. The corridor then filled with an acrid white smoke. Hugh said the ball struck low and to the left of his point of aim.
Next, he had each person step forward to practice one shot. Mary proved to be fearless. She refused Hugh's help, pointing out that he'd not be there to load it for her. She closed her eyes too long before pulling the trigger, and her ball struck high and to the left.
Dark Moon Rising Page 22
