“So there’s no chance he might have survived?” Wordsworth realised how stupid her question was, as soon as she had uttered it.
“There’s nothing left, except energy.” Walt tried to say it gently, but felt he was slapping her with each word. “Ed, Eric, they’re gone too, and the Canadians in P.C. Eleven.”
“Mason?” Silvia groaned.
“Plus the Navy and Air Force crews in Twelve, Fourteen, Fifteen and Seventeen.” Walt found his stomach knotting up as he thought of their valiant crews. Senichi Arakaki, Bill Wodder, Carter Chella, Courtney and Chester, and the lovely Natasha… Captain of Marines. “We managed to save PC Nine, though the Drive is probably a write-off. It’s been left in orbit to fix up later. We transferred to Thirteen; Captain Attenburgh was the only casualty from that crew, though everyone else except Amber was incapacitated.”
“Amber? So she managed to get into the action… good for her.” Silvia found this seemingly insignificant news touched her more than she thought such a simple fact possibly could.
“And Harold would still have said it was worth it.” Violet tried to smile as she thought of her fellow pilot, lost so long ago, and how he had introduced her to Leroy Fraser. The other information Konig provided washed over her, unnoticed.
“We’ll build a memorial. The very best one we can create,” Konig declared. “We won the second battle of New Leeds, but we lost a lot of good friends today. The price of victory has been very high.” He refrained from mentioning that though the battle to defend the Patrol Craft production facility might have been won, the conflict high above the Earth was not yet over – he speculated privately on a lower level of his many storied consciousness that there were three ships probably engaging the remaining Narlav forces on the far side of the Moon at that very moment.
***
The three Patrol Craft flew down over the rim of crater Tsiolkovsky, low and fast. There, below them, was a huge conglomeration of long, metallic lines, like a super-sized railway junction, the details exaggerated by the low angle of the sunlight. No weapons opened fire as they decelerated rapidly. Near the massive central peak, motionless, like a colossal frozen sea-slug on a drained, icy seabed, lay a solitary Warrnam.
Where are all the Narlavs? Kirrina stretched out with her mind, not finding any alien presence at all. “It seems almost deserted.”
“All ships, maintain Shells, take station over the enemy craft!” Richard made another command decision as they dropped down and hovered a few hundred metres above the Space Hammer. Thoughts buzzed rapidly between him, Kirrina, Beckie and the other crewmembers as they closed in on the lonely target. Scanners confirmed there were no Shell Fields in operation, neither on the ship nor protecting the structures.
“Dan, hold your ship above this Warrnam with all laser weapons primed. Keep a look out for other Warrnam; they may have moved off and could return. You’ll let us know if that happens, I’m sure! And perhaps you’d better shut down your N-beams; they would make large chunks of this crater disappear!”
Citadel and PC Eight sank to the lunar surface and settled fractionally into the dust. There were a few minutes of apparent inactivity and then five Fepnine-produced space-suits appeared simultaneously on the ancient plain. Shell Fields came back on automatically, seconds after their exit. The laser pistols gleaming in the low but dazzling sunlight showed their intentions; the spacesuits themselves were so bright that they seemed to glow. The five progressed fairly rapidly towards the huge Space Hammer, some walking almost as if they were on Earth, and others bouncing about and landing on all fours, or one hand and one foot, or flat on their backs, as the low gravity caught them by surprise.
“I can’t believe this gem has been discarded here – as if it’s especially for us! This ship’s record system will provide us with star maps complete with the security password details for safe travel into the heart of the Rhaal system, a great prize!” Richard reminded his team as they worked, with varying degrees of success, to get their locomotion under control. Assuming they have such precautions in the world of invincibility that Narlavs believe is theirs to command! “If nothing else, we’ll get the latest details of the planetary system itself, and a huge transport ship for our rehabilitation program on Earth.”
“Just remember that it’s possible that there are squads of Narlavs here, though most would almost certainly have gone with the invasion force!” Karen cautioned. Then, speaking aloud for clarity’s sake, she indicated her answer to this imponderable. “Beckie and I will ‘sound’ them out.”
True to her word, the mental super-power linked up with her less-experienced but almost equally strong ‘little sister’ and sent out an ‘inquiry’ to determine the strength of the opposition, all the while wondering why so little Narlav ‘atmosphere’ was impinging on her mind.
Beckie bounced up high again and gasped, temporarily fogging her helmet ‘glass’ as together they reached further along the bullet-shaped vessel and deeper into the interior. There’s only two, or is that three?
“Just a handful are here, a mere skeleton crew, or…” Kirrina sent this finding to the others. Then a new worry sprang into her mind. “Pigeon, check for Drive signatures – tell us what is happening inside this craft.”
“Analysing now,” Navigator Wing responded quickly, wincing as she realised she could have anticipated this action, once the emptiness of the vessel had been inferred.
The small squad of humans reached the side of the massive Warrnam and checked out the multiple airlock doors, choosing one towards the centre of the seemingly endless side facing them.
Brad tried the airlock controls and was surprised to find they worked. He hesitated before entering, but the Karen-Beckie combination provided a confident assurance to him, as well as to Tracy and Richard, that there were no Narlavs waiting on the other side of the airlock chamber.
Laser weapons at the ready, they entered the airlock, revelling in the ‘Earth-normal’ gravity field, or what seemed to be a close approximation thereto, and waited whilst the pressure equalised. The inner door slid open, Richard popped his helmet seal, raised the vaguely spheroid covering up and off, listening intently – now that he was unencumbered – for the slightest sound of movement.
“Most of the Drives are inactive but several Drives are functional at low levels. One is at high output levels… and rapidly increasing to full power,” Pigeon announced via radio, the sound coming from multiple suit speakers, almost as if she had been endlessly cloned, as Karen and Beckie had followed Captain Fletcher’s example and removed their headgear.
“Booby-trap!” Richard, Kirrina and Beckie blurted simultaneously.
Brad and Tracy hesitated as this conclusion struck their natural hearing, just after they had copied their ‘fearless leader’ and taken off their helmets.
“Looks like they may be setting up this one Drive to self-destruct. Remember the crater in Nevada?” Richard noted their confusion. “We’ve got to stop this!” There might not be time to get away… and this is a much more powerful Eliminator reactor; if they manage to ‘eliminate’ more than a tiny portion of the fuel… “The explosive power might be enough to make a crack deep into the Moon, or to shower bits up, around and down – of course – to Earth!”
That mustn’t happen! Kirrina and Beckie powered this thought into all their minds.
Richard and Brad took the lead and hurried back towards the Drive chamber auxiliary controls – located, they recalled from Latt’s description, in the centre rear of the long ship, almost loping along in their spandex-like coverings, showing now as a more restrained silvery-white in the less intense light of the Narlav ship interior. Kirrina and Beckie inadvertently dropped a little behind as they continued their mental probe ahead, trying to locate and characterise the scant handful of Narlavs with some degree of precision before the Narlavs could find and target the invading humans, to prevent them from getting to the reactor.
There are definitely three in total, Kirrina / Beckie sent, havin
g difficulty distinguishing the most distant lifeform. The third one is really hard to read… ah! It’s because he’s deep inside the Moon, under a lot of solid rock!
Brad checked his weapon settings and then picked up the pace to a jog, with Richard keeping station to his right. Tracy hung back, increasingly nervous, now the ‘clock was ticking’, and kept checking the corridor behind her, but Kirrina and Beckie, bringing up the rear, assured her that the Narlavs, or at least the two that were above ground and inside the ship, were ahead of them.
“Nav. Wing, how long do we have?” Richard transmitted.
“Hard to tell, these Drives have such a large diameter with a correspondingly lower power density,” Petula ‘Pigeon’ Wing, PC Sixteen’s Navigator responded rapidly from her craft, high above them. She was trying to make sense of the data coming in from the massive ship as it lay, like a beached whale, on the entirely waterless ‘ocean’ floor directly below their watchful vessel. “I think there’re some intrinsic protective systems that would have to be overridden, so that will hamper the process somewhat, I think.”
I think! Doctor Hawk grimaced, her mind functioning in top gear as she realised that she might just need to fire her laser pistol and see the effect on a living, breathing being, instead of clinically turning large metallic objects into their component atoms, or sub-atomic fragments thereof, without ever really acknowledging to herself that innumerable living beings were also being converted into undirected energy inside these vessels.
Crillak positioned himself opposite the Drive conduit sub-corridor, such that the approaching humans would soon be parallel to his position. He cradled the laser rifle he had previously adjusted, savouring the fact that the beam would continue to operate, even when impacting on ship structures, anticipating how it would cut through the corridor wall, the intervening compartments and into the hated humans on the other side. Quite possibly it would also cut through the outer hull, but this prospect did not concern the fearsome Narlav. Extreme accuracy was not required of his plan – he knew from the sounds filtering around the otherwise deserted ship approximately where the enemy was located and he was confident that he could cut a swathe to impact them all. He was not concerned about the damage this might cause, knowing that his next move would be to commandeer their ship.
He brought the weapon up into a horizontal position, holding the hand-grip close in front of his face with his left hand, the body and barrel lying along the lower arm and resting in the ‘vee’ of the lower elbow. He brought the upper elbow to the same level and to the left, forming a truncated triangle, and started to squeeze. Either we kill them and take their ships, or we all die together, breathing vacuum!
Beckie dropped her helmet and ran forwards, her slight form ploughing into her adopted mother’s very feminine one as a brilliant beam of laser light panned across the corridor, bursting through from the left and creating a series of huge gouges on the right-hand side, filling the air with metallic vapours and an acrid smell that instantly brought on coughing and retching. She crashed to the floor, falling on top of Doctor Hawk in the process.
Brad and Richard hit the floor a moment later, inspired by the laser-induced sounds and crashing of bodies from immediately behind them. The faint reverberations of helmets bouncing and rolling briefly occupied the otherwise ominous silence.
The prone Kirrina, with her almost constant link to Beckie, checked mentally, confirming that, incredibly, her mental partner had not been injured. Her next thought brought her mind closer to Beckie’s than it had been since she had first calmed the mortally wounded orphan, so many months before. Together, their combined consciousness reached out, finding the Narlav – or was it two? – beyond the wall, and getting a blurred picture of the alien… with – !
Kirrina got up and ran past the downed team, leaving the others behind for a moment. Quick! She sent to Richard, as Beckie now focussed on her beloved ‘mother’, lying on the metallic floor, motionless. Only then did the youthful powerhouse realise that she had not moved quickly enough.
The emotions from that raw mind of power flooded all their minds, for Beckie had seen this happen before and the recollection and reality both paralysed her and threatened to disable the entire group.
Brad crawled back and gingerly held his burned and now unconscious wife, trying to check her status. Is she?
Beckie heard this thought. She ploughed deep into the unconscious mind, determining faint traces of thought processes still occurring in the par-boiled brain, trying not to focus on the peeling skin and patches of bone now visible on her adopted mother’s forehead and between the wisps of hair, and her expression told Brad how grave the situation was. Hawk took some solace in the fact that, though his wife was in critical condition, she was still breathing – not lethally wounded, as she had been before… at least, not yet.
Richard got back up and ran, crouched over, joining his wife as she reached the junction. As they passed this point, they fell in unison, rolled and bounced back up as they turned the corner, revelling in the super-flexibility of the suits in which they were clad so closely. Ahead, the Narlav was revealed at last, his weapon now lying idly on the floor nearby. Incredibly, he was standing, swaying, his back towards them, his arms stretched out in front, his powerful hands around the neck of a very hairy human!
Kirrina stopped and dropped to one knee, bringing her weapon to bear and Richard ran along the side of the corridor, ready to act if she missed the struggling enemy. A flash caught his peripheral vision, and he felt the heat of the laser energy on his face as it passed close to his shoulder.
The Narlav’s arms slackened; Kevin pulled the rough hands from his throat as the blocky creature tumbled towards him. He managed to side-step the impressive bulk of the Narlav as it crashed to the floor plates, the back of the alien head opened up by Kirrina’s precision laser burst.
Richard brought his headlong pelt to an abrupt halt. He stared at the savage-like human in confusion.
Steele looked back, his eyesight blurred, finding the face before him to be strangely familiar. He staggered, then saluted, feeling very awkward in the remains of the rags which had barely covered him – even before he had commenced hand-to-hand combat with the alien – and now were mostly falling off in a kind of tragic-comic slow-motion effect.
“Commander Kevin Steele at your service!” The sound of his voice was barely perceptible after the Narlav caress of death.
Kirrina almost ran into the two men and, reaching up, took Kevin’s salute-hand in a firm grasp, having no time for polite introductions. She passed him an intense package of information, explaining their presence and the task still ahead of them, and with her special touch soothed away the ache she had caused by depositing this data with such extreme haste, and also the worst of his other pains and light-headedness. Her other hand brushed the long, lank hair back from his bloodshot eyes as the communication continued.
In the process she discovered how the stalwart Naval officer had partly disabled the airlock door from the subterranean base into the Warrnam and laid a deliberate trail away from the door, making it seem as if he had not been able to enter it. How he had then returned to the command area, broken the security system and entered to find the Narlav observation viewscreens displaying the incoming Patrol Craft as they arrived overhead. Finally he had retraced his path to the ship in time to waylay the Narlav and give Richard and Kirrina the opportunity to dispatch the far stronger warrior. Her opinion of this long-lost submariner instantly became one of awe. How could he have survived the treatment they gave him, and not only have survived it, but maintained a level of fitness sufficient to achieve so much?
A brief mental message to her husband explained that they – the three of them – were now the attack team, as Brad was carrying Tracy’s limp body back to Dan’s ship and the Medic, Beckie hovering around him, both of them hoping beyond hope to get there before she was too far gone for recovery. The image of the Patrol Craft Sixteen butting against the airlock door to
allow the burned form of the young doctor to be transported directly into that ship, avoiding the delaying problem of the intervening vacuum, appeared in Richard’s mind.
Kevin picked up Crillak’s laser rifle and they ran on, all caution thrown ‘to the windless vacuum’ that existed just beyond the walls of the Warrnam, determined to find what they now knew was the final warrior on board and to prevent him from ‘scuttling the ship’, and them with it.
Behind them, already out of audible range, the voice of Wintkarn issued from Crillak’s communicator, where he now lay, so very lifeless on the metal floor: “Did you get them all?”
Wintkarn, the last Narlav on the Moon, correctly read the meaning of the lack of response from his Commander, set the destruct sequence into the fastest mode possible and walked slowly towards the enemy. He could gauge their approach easily, as their feet pounded on the metallic flooring, echoing down the passageway. Finally, he stopped and braced himself, getting the laser rifle into optimum position. His finger started to depress the trigger, ready to fire through the corner section and dispatch the foolish humans before they laid eyes on him. The advancing three were in trouble: this time there would be no Steele struggling with the Narlav to prevent this crude but potentially deadly sniper action.
Kirrina’s eyes, already grey, slipped to battleship hue and her run unintentionally slowed as her concentration hardened.
Richard knocked Kevin sideways at her signal, causing him to crash into the opposite wall and fall, adding new bruises to his knees and hands which he stoically ignored as he scrambled back up, staggering forwards again. Ahead – because of this precautionary move – by several feet in his asynchronous advance – though no laser beam had burst through the wall – the frantic Fletcher dived around the final corner, swinging his weapon parallel to the new section of corridor as he did so, Steele now moments behind him.
Cavalry Page 33
