three revised scenes

These three scenes are the very beginning of the climax of the series. Enjoy!

== 2064: Raptor #1, between Earth and the Moon

General Restivo leaned forward against the harness and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Even in zero gravity, the grit in the fabric bugged him. He and his team had sped up the Raptor project to a brake-neck pace a hundred – no, a thousand – shortcuts. Cannibalizing half-century-old seats out of mothballed cargo planes and airliners got the project done on time, but it meant desert sand in the upholstery. He hoped that that was the worst problem he’d run into.

On the screen the icon for Raptor #3 still blinked “out range / lost com”. He turned to Colonel DeCamp. “Anything more on number three?”

Decamp looked up from his screen. “National Guard sealed off the crash site and internet-kill-switched coms in and out of Carson city half an hour ago. Nothing since then.”

“Any pictures leak to the net?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

Restivo nodded. The expats would knew the invasion was coming in the next few days or weeks – the rumors were rife – but he’d hate for pictures of on of his ships to give them any more information. It wasn’t clear how much data they could get from pictures of a brutally wrecked ship that had fallen from the troposphere with malfunctioning AG drive, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

“The industrial facilities?”

“The snatch team continues to insist that they’re not expat colonies.”

Restivo turned to him. “Do you believe that an AI actually built them?”

Colonel Decamp shrugged. “When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever else remains -”

Restivo nodded. “OK, keep the penetrators on course.” He paused “And our mini-sats?”

“All in lunar orbit, all functioning well.”

“Are we getting any more intel from them?”

“Another new expat radar site came online 19 hours ago, and our LEO energy weapons took it out. Since then, nothing. If they’ve got any more radar they’re keeping it well hidden. And the mini-sats will tell the second it comes online.”

Restivo blew air out of his cheeks and drummed his fingers.

== 2064: Boardroom Group Headquarters in Tunnel 1,288, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside

Albert Lai looked away from the wallscreen and turned to Darcy. “This isn’t cheap, you know.”

“You’re not upset that we’re using floor space in your docks, are you? It’s not like there’s been any commercial traffic in weeks -”

Albert shook his head. “My concern is that I’ve already cycled every lock a dozen times to get the refugee ships in, and we lose a fair bit of air each time. With air costing six times what it did just a few weeks ago -”

Darcy nodded sympatheticly. “I understand. But after all the work building the array -” she gestured at the video image of the modules laid out across the floor of Laid Docks bay three “- we need one more cycling.” She paused. “I know it’s pricey, but the Boardroom Group -”

Albert snorted “Don’t tell me to expense it. That just means I get to pay myself. No, I agree, Miss Grau, we need to see if the PKs launch another invasion so that we can prepare ourselves, so I’ll pay to cycle the lock again.” He sighed. “But promise me you won’t ask me for any more favors?”

“If the invasion does come, then a lot of people are going to die. Compared to that, a little air -”

Albert grimaced at a joke gone flat. “I know, I know. That came out wrong.” He picked up his phone and configured it for speakerphone. “Doug, let’s open our eyes, shall we?”

“Yes, sir.”

A moment later the wallscreen showed the ceiling of the hanger split, then roll back. On the floor below small scraps of packaging material and dust blew about as the finally wisps of air that the pumps hadn’t been able to capture blew out through the open roof.

As the overhead doors continued to roll back the lighting in the hangar changed – the illumination thrown by the color balanced panels was drowned out by unfiltered brutal sunlight. Finally someone turned off the internal lights entirely.

Albert squinted as the stunningly bright sunlight reflected off more and more of the hanger floor. The wallscreen autoadjusted after a moment but after-images still danced in her eyes. With a deep thud the overhead doors finished their transit and stopped.

Darcy asked “Can we pan the camera up?”

Albert gestured at the screen and the view shifted. Through the open doors he could see the black sky and the partially illuminated sphere of Earth. After all these years, it still took his breath away. It was too easy, living in the tunnels of Aristillus, to file the phrase “I’m living on the moon” away in a mental bin – a true fact, but a footnote, a detail. The blandness of the daily routine – making answering email, hiring staff, negotiating berthing contracts – tended to push this huge central fact into the background. But every now and then he looked up and saw the Earth hanging overhead and it all came rushing back to him.

Albert was snapped out of her reverie when Doug called out over the speakersphone “The techs are powering up the array.” Albert panned the camera back down to look at the floor of the bay where the radar units sat, but there was nothing to see – the grey boxes on just sat there.

Darcy tapped at her slate and a window popped up on the wallscreen, ghosting the display that the radar techs were using. Albert watched as she rapidly opened several more diagnostic windows full of scrolling data. She muttered something.

“What’s that, Miss Lai?”

“Something’s not right. The first signal should take a few seconds…let me…”

Albert said nothing as Darcy tapped at her slate. Suddenly the largest pane on the wallscreen – the video overlooking bay three – dimmed. Albert wrinkled his brow. The hangar floor that had been dazzlingly bright with raw sunlight just a moment before was in shadow. He panned the camera back up then stood and reached for his phone, snapping it off of speaker mode. “Doug, did someone close the -”

Albert fell silent as he looked up through the open hangar doors. In the darkness – were those navigation lights? He blinked. Yes. They were – and the huge black ship that floated overhead was unmistakable. He dropped the phone and felt himself stagger.

A moment later the huge ship was fully over the hangar, dwarfing it, then it was sliding past, dropping lower as it went. Albert tried to say something but was speechless. Seconds later a deep booming THUD rolled through the ground. The remote camera in Lai Docks bounced in the shock, then fell from its mount. The wallscreen showed a crazilly skewed view of the control room. Two men in Lai Docks uniforms grabbed cans of sealant from the emergency cabinet next to the fire extinguisher and rushed off in response to the alarm woops of pressure sensors complaining about leaks.

Albert was still trying to form words when a second, then a third, then a fourth thud slammed through the lunar ground. Soon the individual impacts piled up and blurred into one long wave.

He turned to Darcy. What – what was going on?

== 2064: Solar Installations headquarters, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside

Matthew Vaz stepped through the door and took a place standing against the rear wall as he looked around his Rover Operations room. It wasn’t a place he normally spent too much time in. In the first few years of Aristillus, he and his men had erected the solar engines by hand. The transition to using remotely operated rovers had cut costs and dropped the price of electricity for consumers. And, perhaps best of all, it had meant that he could hand off management of the whole installation process to Todd and spend his time on other tasks.

Today, though – today he couldn’t tear himself away from the RO room. The PKs weren’t here. Not yet. They might not be, not for days, or for weeks. Until then his people were practicing. And that was worth watching.

Matthre looked at the wallscreen at the front of the room for an overview of the current scenario. Several dozen rovers were deployed on the lunar surface along one of the scree walls that separated one industrial area from the next like old New England stone walls.

One by one the rovers crawled to the top of the berm and traversed their weapons back and forth, raking an imagined enemy. Another batch of rovers started forward but Todd Belcheck stood up and interrupted the operators. “OK, folks, shift change – let’s take the next twenty minutes to bring all the rovers back inside and -”

Todd was interrupted by one of the operators yelling something. Todd turned. “What?”

The operator repeated himself “The invasion ships – they’re here!”

Matthew blinked. Was this part of a drill? He looked around the room. His operators looked scared. No. This was real.

This was real. His stomach felt empty and hollow. He reached out for a chair back to steady himself, then sat. At the front of the room Todd Belcheck bellowed out orders. The room was tense and expectant. Matthew Vaz leaned forward. The invasion ships were here? Where? What was going on? Finally someone put a video feed on the wallscreen and he saw them them – giant black ships drifting overhead.

As they drifted over Matthew saw a line of tracers open up from somewhere else on the surface, then another, then more. Good. If the PKs were stupid enough to try to force a landing directly on top of Aristillus, then the anti aircraft guns should take care of them – they’d learned that lesson in the last invasion.

Matthew squinted as he watched the video, waiting for the ships to lurch and fall. And waited. And waited. Nothing. What the hell? They’d discussed this scenario – the ships should fall and splash. Were the ADF’s AA guns defective somehow?

As he watched a small green cross hair icon appeared on the wallscreen – one of the rover’s aim-points. A moment later one of the tech’s yelled out “My guns aren’t working!”. Todd Belcheck yelled back “flip from practice’ to ‘combat’ mode!” A second later the cross hair icon turned red and the sound of a roaring mini-gun came out from a speakers. Other crosshairs appeared on the screen and turned red, and the synthesized sound effect of the first rover’s shooting was joined by others. Thousands of rounds must be pouring into the PK ship. Even if the ADF’s AA guns were defective, his own rovers would do the job.

He listened to the roar over the speakers and watched. It looked like the ship was just gently gliding down. It should be crashing, or at least listing, but it wasn’t showing any effect. Shit.

Matthew stood and yelled “Cease fire!”. No one listened, and the waste of precious ammunition continued. Matthew ran to the front of the room and waved his hands over his head. “Cease fire, cease fire! They’re armored!” He had to yell it several times before all the remote operators listened, but slowly the simulated sound of gunfire died away.

On the wallscreen the huge black ship was drifting overhead and descending behind the scree wall. Todd Belcheck looked up from his console. “What do you want us to -?”

“Hang on.” Matthew Vaz looked around the room center, found an empty console and sat. “Let me see what’s going on.” He balled his fists, loosened them, then rolled his neck. OK. He brethed deeply, then called up a list of unpiloted vehicles, grabbed the first and drove it up over the skree berm. From here it had a better view of the ship passing low over the surface. He zoomed the camera. The surface of the ship was dark; it was hard to make detail out. Was it armored? Were there weak spots they should be targeting? The ship kept sliding out of frame and Matthew tapped the controls again and again to slew the camera as the ship descended.

…and then the surface of the moon was visible beneath the ship. A second later it landed, hard, crushing part of a conveyor belt as if it was made of tinfoil. Matthew blinked. Conveyor belts for mining tailings were BIG. Yet this one looked small next to the ship. He hadn’t realized the scale of the thing before. A second later the room shook beneath them and a deep rumbling sound engulfed the operations room. Matthew swung his head. The sound was coming from the ceiling, the walls, the floor. Everywhere.

Jesus. That ship wasn’t big – it was HUGE.

He turned back to the wallscreen. With the PK ship down he could zoom in and look for details – some weakness. The camera zoomed in on the flat black exterior. Matthew scanned the screen. Nothing – just thick-looking black walls, with nothing – wait. There! A large door in the side of the ship was opening. He zoomed in tighter. Next to the opening door – those looked like small turrets flanking the hatch. He put his rover’s cross hairs on the open crack in the door then held down the trigger. A stream of tracers showed that his rounds were reaching their target.

One of the turrets pivoted, pointed straight at his rover and flashed. His control screen went dead. “ROVER CONTACT LOST” blinked on the screen.

Shit.

He turned to Todd. “The door is-”

“I’ve got it.” Todd stood and bellowed instructions to the other rover operators. Matthew ignored him as he tabbed back to the list of free rovers, grabbed control of another, and piloted it to the top of the berm. He wasn’t alone – a half dozen other rovers climbed the berm at the same time. Two pulled ahead and as his rover crested the rise he heard the simulated machine gun sound effects again.

The rovers to his right were shooting, brass flying off to spin in the lunar vacuum. He zoomed in on the invasion ship again. There – the vast hangar door in the side of the ship that he’d seen before. This time he paid attention to the turrets that flanked it. They were swiveling independently. Flashes of hot gasses from their muzzles indicating that they were firing. He zoomed in tighter and enhanced the video. Yes – above each cluster of machine guns was a sensor pod.

Matthew put his rover’s cross hair on the left one then and squeezed the trigger. After a second he paused to look at the result. Was it dead? It wasn’t moving, but he couldn’t be sure. His cross hair was still on it. He squeezed his trigger again then looked once more. It was definitely dead now. He turned to Todd, next to him. “The ship is armored – get everyone to zoom in and fire at the sensors and gun mounts!”

The operator next to him yelled out “I’m fucking hit!”. Then a second tech yelled in frustration, then two others.

Matthew ignored them and adjusted his aim point, picked out another gun, and squeezed the trig- and suddenly his video feed went dead. “ROVER CONTACT LOST”.

Damn it! Two rovers in less than thirty seconds.

He tabbed over, grabbed another free rover and drove it up the berm. Around him in the conference room the synthesized roar of chain-guns continued. As his rover neared the top of the berm he saw dozens of other rovers at the crest. Several were shooting, each spitting a rain of brass as they fired – but more than half were inoperative, torn and shredded by the PK fire.

Shit. Matthew rubbed his mouth. After the first invasion attempt, when a few impromptu militia teams had shot dozens of PK ships out of the sky with rifles and a lunar covert ops group had trapped the rest in a cave-in, it had become an unexamined article of faith among many of them that the next PK invasion would be just as simple to defeat. The peakers were stupid, unimaginative – they’d fly their ships right into fire, then march their men right into traps. Matthew hadn’t believed it would be quite THAT easy – but he hadn’t expected that the PKs would learn this much, this fast. Jesus. The armor? The guns? Shit.

Matthew wiped the sweat off his hands on his pants and grabbed the joystick. Another rover advanced past him on the left – and was torn apart by gun fire. He blinked. How – where? The other rover wasn’t yet exposed at the top of the berm.

A ran down his neck and shoulders. Matthew panned his camera around behind him – and saw the rest of the invasion fleet. The huge black cubes – nine? ten? more? – squatted across the surface, spread out over the city’s topside. Each was surrounded by the wreckage of the solar installations, kilns, vacuum sintering ovens, and other topside facilities.

– and guns on the nearest of those ships were flashing. It was attacking his rovers from behind. Jesus. From that vantage ALL of his firms rovers – even those that were just being held in reserve at the base of the berm – were exposed. SHIT. His machines were caught in a cross fire between two different ships.

What could he do? Could they get the rovers back into the warehouse, and live to fight another day? He shook his head. No. The nearest ramp was a kilometer away – they’d be picked off one by one.

Better to stand and fight. But everyone needed to know. Matthew yelled out over the simulated roar of gunfire. “They’re behind us!” A moment later Todd Belcheck took up his cry.

Matthew returned his attention to his screen. If that second ship wanted a fight, he’d fight. He zoomed in on it, put his crosshair over a turret and fired a burst, holding it for two long seconds. The turret was torn apart. Good. He tapped his crosshairs to the right, onto a second turret and –

“ROVER CONTACT LOST”.

Damn it.

He tabbed back to the list of available rovers and blinked. It was shorter than it had been. A lot shorter. Shit. They’d had 1,200 rovers just two minutes ago, and now ? A few hundred, at most.

He shook his head. He’d worry about that later.

As soon as his latest rover came online he pivoted it in place and destroyed a gun clusters on the second ship, then a second, then a third. He was moving his crosshairs when his rover was destroyed. He tabbed over for another machine – and saw that there were only thirty live rovers, all of them allocated to other operators.

The synthesized gun sounds around him in the Remote Operations room grew less and less intense.

He checked his screen again. Eighteen live rovers.

Six.

The tab refreshed.

Zero.

He felt sick.

If this is the level of resistance they were getting before the ships even disgorged their own troops, what was the rest of the battle going to look like? He tried to swallow but his throat was dry.

For a moment he started to think about how Solar Installations was going to recover after the battle…and then realized that he was being far too optimistic. What were the chances that expats could win?

Matthew stood, his face pale and damp. “People – this facility is too close to the surface. Get out of here. Go home, find a militia. Do whatever you can do. We’re done here.”

In shocked disbelief his operators stood, one a a time, and filtered out of the room. Todd Belcheck was the last to leave, looking at Matthew silently for a moment before he, too, turned and left.

Matthew sat alone in the room for several long minutes. Then there was an explosion somewhere nearby and the power went out. A moment later the dim red emergency lighting kicked on and Matthew continued to sit.