Lunar Escape

by C P MacDonald

  With a quick glance around to make sure he wasn’t being watched, Nilos snapped his arm up and over to throw the grenade to the other side of the hangar. It bounced off the far wall and detonated with a loud boom and a bright flash of energy. Instantly the room erupted into chaos as scientists and guards ran in panic.

  Nilos gestured for them to follow him and worked their way through the chaos until they were under the mysterious ship. In the confusion, Nilos slipped the control tablet out of his coverall and quickly tapped a series of symbols.

  Above them, tiny lines appeared in the smooth metal underbelly of the ship until the lines converged and a ramp silently descended from the ship.

  They went up the ramp in a hurry only to pause long enough to look around and make sure they were not being observed. In a few seconds they were at the top of the ramp and in what looked like a small cargo hold. Nilos tapped on his tablet again, the ramp raised and sealed itself back into the hull. The room plunged into total darkness.

  “Um, Nilos, any power in this baby?” asked Calin.

  “One second, looking.” Replied Nilos, his face appeared in the darkness illuminated by the light from the tablet.

  Nilos held the tablet up to light his way and crossed over to a hatch in the wall. When he held the tablet up to a symbol next to the hatch, they all heard the hatch click.

  “Here, give me a hand pushing this open.” He asked.

  Between Calin and Nilos, they were able to force open the un-powered hatch door to reveal a pitch black corridor that ran down the center of the ship. Again, with the tablet to light the way they followed Nilos down the corridor to another hatch.

  Calin glanced around the hallway and admire the smooth lines of the ship's interior design. “This thing makes my ship look like a flying toaster.”

  Nilos consulted the display on the tablet again before he and Calin pushed a second door open. On the other side, they found the bridge to the ship. There were four chairs at separate stations, two in front and two behind, all facing a curved glass wall. Everything looked shut down, except for a single blinking light on the center panel. Nilos crossed the bridge to the flashing light. He pressed it and the center station lit up with power, with more of the strange language flowing across it.

  Suddenly a smooth female voice emanated from all around them in a language Calin had never heard. Nilos held up his hands and calmly replied in the same language. The voice replied with a questioning tone to Nilos as he continued to converse with the disembodied voice. At the end Nilos added, “Switch to English please.”

  Nilos turned to Calin and Shona, “Guys, I would like you to meet Allia.”

  Shona asks in shock, “There’s another Atlantean on the ship?”

  Nilos smiled at her confusion, “No, Allia IS the ship. She is an Artificial Intelligence, but much more advanced than what we are used to.”

  Suddenly red lights flashed from the ceiling and the voice continued in English, “Warning! Terrans detected on board!”

  Nilos replied, “Allia, don’t worry, they are friends. They won’t hurt you. In fact, they need your help just like I do.”

  Shona jumped in, “Hi Allia, I’m Shona and this is Calin. Nice to meet you.” Calin could see how Shona had friends everywhere, she could make friends with a vacuum cleaner with that soft voice.

  Nilos added, “It's OK Allia, I'll vouch for them.”

  Allia replied, “Understood. I have added Calin and Shona to the authorized visitor list. But what about the Terrans outside that are trying to cut my hull?”

  “What?!” shouted Nilos. He spun toward the front curved wall and ordered, “Show me.”

  The front of the bridge turned into a large vid-screen that covered the width of the cockpit. It displayed engineers on scaffolding outside the ship as they attempted to cut into the hull with laser torches.

  “Allia, can they get in?” asked Nilos.

  Calin could almost swear he heard a hint of amusement in the A.I.’s voice, “No Nilos, they cannot. That little laser cutter will not get through MY hull.”

  Nilos followed up with another question, “Are you fully functional? Does everything work?”

  “Yes Nilos, I am fully functional.”

  “Is there a way out of here?”

  “Of course Nilos, how do you think I got in here?”

  Calin raised his eyebrows, this Allia may be an A.I. but she was the most sophisticated A.I. he had ever heard. She seemed almost… sassy.

  Nilos tapped on more symbols on the tablet and asked, “Allia, would you please get us out of here?”

  “Safety protocols require all passengers to be seated and strapped in,” came Allia’s stern reply.

  Each of them grabbed the nearest seat on the bridge and fumbled with the unfamiliar straps. All around them stations and vid-screens came alive as the ship purred with power. Outside the engineers jumped from the scaffolding, away from the ship as it activated. With a loud snap the ship detached from the pylon it was suspended from, and to the astonishment of everyone in the hangar silently floated 4 meters in the air. Troopers from all around the hangar drew their weapons and pointed them at the ship, but were unsure whether or not to open fire.

  With a ear-piercing screech the large hangar door, unused for centuries, slowly slid open and a magnetic force field appeared across the door with a soft luminous glow to keep the air inside the hangar from escaping. Smoothly the Atlantean ship rotated its nose around until it was pointed toward the hangar door and the large tunnel outside that disappeared at an upward angle.

  Without a sound, the ship shot forward out the door and up the tunnel to the surface of the Moon. The ship exploded through the end of the tunnel onto the surface of the Moon. It blew the pile of boulders and rocks that had covered the mouth of the tunnel flying in all directions in the low Moon gravity.

  As soon as they cleared the tunnel, Allia announced, “Stealth mode activated per standard protocol.”

  Nilos looked up from his scrutiny of the command tablet, his head tilted up to the ceiling, “A stealth mode?”

  “Yes, Nilos. Standard protocol for Lunar and Terran flight is to activate stealth mode to prevent detection. Destination please?”

  Nilos rotated in his chair with a wide grin on his face and asked Calin, “So, where can we go? We need someplace to lie low and...,” with a gesture at the ship around them, “figure all of this out. And I need to contact my superiors and report.”

  Calin offered, “We can go to my place. This ship should fit in the hangar out of sight. And I know an Engineer that would love to poke around in here.”

  Nilos shook his head negatively, “He won’t have time. After I report in I need to get her to Area 55 as soon as possible so my people can examine her. She is a treasure trove of information, the information we have been looking for a very long time.”

  Chapter 17

  Allia, despite being mothballed in an abandoned underground Moon base for several hundred years, still operated perfectly. Her stealth mode allowed them to avoid Caldera City traffic control, and she entered Calin’s outpost without being spotted. She maneuvered carefully and was able to squeeze in beside the Sea Rover in the hangar. He really wished he could have seen Dean’s face with Allia flew through the doors.

  While Dean drooled over the tech in Allia, and sulked because Nilos wouldn’t let him take anything apart, the rest of them were in the commons area of the outpost to discuss their next steps. With all of them seated around the table, Calin reached over to the cabinet on his right and pulled out a bottle of scotch and 3 tumblers. After he poured shots, he slid the glasses across the table to his guests. Nilos took a careful sip of his and raised his eyebrows in appreciation. Shona tilted her head back and down the entire glass in one gulp.

  Nilos fingered the control tablet from the Atlantean base and continued with their discussion. “Even without this, I’m afraid Silas will try to start the reactor, regardless of the danger. He won’t be able to resist the thought
of that much power at his disposal.”

  Shona nodded her head in agreement and asked, “What if we destroyed the base?”

  Nilos disagreed. "My people need the information in that base, and we need to keep it a secret. The public must not find out about it, or us." He exhaled in frustration. "But how do we take the base away from Silas? And keep it?"

  Shona poured herself another shot and stared at it, “Silas will never give up that base and its technology. So we need to get rid of him.”

  Calin tapped a metal finger on his tumbler, the clink, clink, clink displayed the agitation in his mind. “We can’t do it alone. Just the four of us? No way.” He looked at Nilos and asked, “What about your people? The SSA could get in on this, you have the numbers, the troops, and the authority to remove Silas.”

  He shook his head negatively, “We can’t do it. Keeping things secret is one thing, to remove a duly appointed Governor from office? My superiors will never go for it. I’m afraid we will have to do take care of Silas on our own.”

  Calin stood up and paced across the little galley. He knew the revolutionary wannabe Jerret would love to hear what he was about to say. “If the SSA can’t do it, we need to get the people to help. We need to get rid of Silas, period. Even if we got control of that fusion reactor and the base, he would never give up trying to get it back.”

  Shona started to smile, “Are you talking about starting a revolt?”

  He nodded. “The people are scared but tired of the oppression. All it would take is a little spark.”

  Nilos frowned, “Sure there are some closet revolutionaries and a few brave graffiti artists. But a total citywide revolution? We don’t have time to organize a revolt of that scale. And even if we get the people behind it, the PPD is under Silas’s control. He could squash any revolt with a simple order.”

  Calin poured himself another shot and contemplated, “I know a guy that could pull it off. And he has the numbers to fight against the PPD.”

  Nilos, paused in raising his glass to his lips and smiled, “Now if there is already an active revolt, the SSA could step in. If the current government is illegally suppressing the people’s right to protest, we might be able to help them. The SSA has the right and power to step in during any civil unrest. And nowhere does it say we have to support the established power base. But there is nothing we can do, legally, until there is fighting.”

  Shona drummed her fingers on the table to expel some of her nervous energy, “So, what you are saying is if we could get a civil uprising started, the Solar System Authority would have a legal excuse to come in and fight?”

  “Yup,” answered Nilos with a grin. He got up from the table and tilted his glass at Calin, “Thanks for the drink, but I need to get Allia to Area 55 so the tech guys can debrief and analyze her. There is nothing else I can do unless you can get a revolt going in Caldera City.”

  He tapped his watch and sent them both his personal frequency “But if pull it off, call me and I’ll bring in the calvary, guns blazing.” With a short bow, he turned and headed toward the hangar.

  Calin turned to Shona, “Feel like taking a ride up to Harbor Station? I could use your help to talk to a guy named Jonus.”

  “Jonus? The head of the Cold Space Gang?” she asked.

  He smirked, “Yea, he is an old friend of mine and occasional business partner. He and Silas have a bad history, which is one reason he operates out of Harbor Station and not here on the Moon.”

  “Sure, I’ll go. I’ve got nothing left for me here.” As she thought of her brother, her expression fell and sadness crossed her face.

  He placed hiss hand on the small of her back and led her toward the hangar, “Come on, let’s see if we can tear Dean away from Allia so Nilos can leave.”

  Once they pried Dean out of Allia’s engine compartment, the three of them boarded the Sea Rover. When Calin fired up the engines and gave their destination to Rose, he couldn’t help notice the intelligence difference between Allia and Rose. Rose was great as far as A.I.’s go, but she still had limitations.

  He almost laughed at himself. Thinking of Allia and her ship almost felt like he was cheating on Rose. He laughed to himself, then forced himself to focus on the current situation.

  Beneath his hands, the ship rumbled and a roar from the engines vibrated throughout the hull.

  As he handled the controls, he loved how smooth the ship responded. Nilos may have an advanced spaceship with super stealth technology and a smart A.I. but it was not the Sea Rover.

  He keyed in the control codes to the hangar door and Dean plopped down into his Engineering station behind him, “Shona was telling me we are going to see Jonus again.”

  “Yup.”

  “And something about starting a civil war? I thought we were smugglers, not revolutionaries?”

  “We are, but right now we need to be a bigger pain in the ass than normal smugglers to Silas. We can’t take on the PPD by ourselves, but we have to get that base out of their hands,” Calin explained.

  “So saving the people of Caldera City also saves us?”

  “Yup.”

  “This is getting complicated, and you know how I feel about things being complicated,” Dean frowned.

  “You’ll survive, you always do despite how much you complain about it.” Calin grinned at Dean.

  The hangar doors opened to the vacuum of space and they shot out over the Moon’s surface. He pulled back on the control stick and pointed the ship up. He had made arrangements with the duty officers at Caldera City control tower to ignore any unscheduled traffic in this sector outside the city. But as they shot toward orbit, a warning sounded on his control panel and a voice blasted through the comms.

  “Unidentified vessel, this is the PPD. Land and prepare to the boarded.”

  “What the hell? Where did they come from?” Calin snapped.

  Shona stood in the doorway to the cockpit and said, “They must have increased patrols since our little stunt back at the Atlantean base. This is more of Silas using the government troops for his own use.”

  “I should have seen this coming," complained Calin. He turned to Dean and asked, “Can we go stealth yet?”

  Their stealth tech was nothing compared to what they saw Allia do and worked best at a distance. Dean gave a negative shake of his head, “They are already too close.”

  With a deep breath Calin said, “I guess we will have to run for it, everyone strap in.”

  Dean pulled his safety straps down over him. Shona moved from the doorway to the copilot chair to Calin’s right. She strapped herself in and went over the control panel in front of her to familiarize herself.

  Calin gave her a questioning look, “Have you ever flown before?”

  She cut her eyes at him sideways and quickly tapped a command on her screen to boost the engine performance by 20%. “I think I can handle it,” was her dry reply.

  He grinned at her and found himself in almost a happy place, regardless of the situation. He was flying his ship, and he had a full crew on board. It hadn’t been like this since he had flown for his old boss, before she died.

  Calin angled the ship away from their original trajectory to Harbor Station and toward the busy space lanes of orbital traffic.

  From beside him Shona warned, “They are powering up their weapons, I think they mean business!”

  He ordered Rose to activate their meager shields while he increased their speed.

  “They’ve launched a missile!” warned Shona.

  Calin twisted the Sea Rover up and over the nearest lane of civilian traffic and skimmed the hull of a large cargo freighter before he dove between two luxury yachts. The missile, confused with the multiple sensor readings, spiraled out of control and exploded in empty space.

  The PPD ships fired another missile, the beep beep of its tracking filled the cockpit. Rose chimed in over the comm, “Incoming missile, impact in 10 seconds.”

  Dean quipped from behind him, “They are getting clos
er damn it! Fly faster!”

  Once again Calin flew up and over a cargo ship, but this time the missile hit the cargo ship. The explosion ripped through the hull and out the other side to surround them in flames. The Sea Rover bounced around and sideswiped a little but the shields were able to handle the pressure wave and heat, this time.

  Over their comms the patrol ship ordered, “Stand down and prepare to be boarded! This is your last warning!”

  “Those were only warnings?” asked Dean incredulously.

  “Are we far enough from them yet to do a Smuggler’s Run?” asked Calin.

  Dean checked his readouts and read out, “Almost there, keep going on this heading.” And then he began a countdown from 5, and at one he hit their radar jammers and sensor scramblers to erase them from the patrol ships tracking.

  Calin hit the reverse thrusters and brought the ship to an abrupt halt to land on top of a large slow moving space barge. And Dean slapped the emergency power down sequence to shut the ship down. They sat in silence and watched the patrol ship fly by.

  Chapter 18

  After they evaded the PPD patrol above the Moon, Calin flew the Sea Rover to Harbor Station and docked at a rarely used maintenance hatch in the lower levels. The same one he had used, unbelievably, only a few days ago to smuggle out a weapons crate. He didn’t think it would be a good idea to make an appearance in the public hangar. And this hatch was in a section under the control of the Cold Space Gang, a rowdy group of individuals who ran the docks and hangars of Harbor Station, unofficially. They derived their name from Jonus’s propensity to blow snitches and people that crossed him out of the airlock into space. Calin had a long-standing business arrangement with them to get stuff from Earth to the Moon and bypass the usual Custom inspections. Over the years he had developed a working friendship with the leader.

  Calin tightened the holster strap on his thigh and told Dean, “You stay here and keep everything ready to go while Shona and I talk to Jonus.”