America One: War of the Worlds (39 page)

“We don’t have very many short Tall People aboard,”
replied VIN trying to make a joke.

“Maybe get the girls to do this exploration thing. They are shorter than us,”
replied Max.

“Not us astronauts,”
stated Maggie at close to six feet tall and heading over on
SB-III’s
first orbit.
“Max, the large cavern door is still open, so there is zero atmospheric conditions in that part of their base, over.”

“Copy that, thanks Maggie. Come on guys let get to the end of this shield,”
and Max got up to continue the bent-over walk.

They all had the new suits on which gave them four hours of suit time, and they reached the end of the tunnel 190 minutes into their timed allowance.

The atmospheric readouts inside the blue shields were good. They could have taken off their helmets and breathed at any time, but they wanted to be ready in case they had to pass through an area which didn’t have air. At the end of the second blue shield they found that the next shield was missing.

As they gently walked out of the protection of the shield, they could stand and they quickly saw that they were inside the cavern. The large cavern door was open several hundred feet in front of them.

“Max to VIN, do you copy?”

“Your voice has changed, more static, but you are still coming through clear enough to hear you, over,”
replied VIN.

“We are in the cavern. The door is open, the whole area around us is black and there are large puddles, or globules of melted gold everywhere. I think I can see piles of what must have been be three spacecraft up squashed against the rear wall. Three ships or something. They are about three feet high, and piles of totally black melted metal. SB-I is not here. I would assume that they died instantaneously and must have been vaporized, over.”

“Any signs of life?”
VIN asked.

“We walked through two shields, still operational and with oxygen, so there is a power plant still working, I would assume below us. I see another blue shield on the opposite side of the hangar, or cavern. It looks like to me that the blast took out the shield, or shields inside the cavern, and did not destroy the others in the tunnels. I’m counting dozens of pieces of blue space splatted up against the walls, and even in the pools of melted gold, over."

“I would assume that Penny didn’t hit the power supply on this hit,”
replied VIN.
“Last time, SB-I took out the cavern in Mattville, the blast was ten times bigger than what I saw from up here. Proceed forward, and with caution. Remember nobody can fire a laser through a shield wall, so you are totally safe inside the cavern, unless they have weapons we don’t know about.”

Carefully, they inspected what was left of the piles of what had been spacecraft, and hundreds of pieces of blue
Matt
space suits. There wasn’t much left of the dark-stained pieces of space wear, but there seemed to be far more pieces of blue suits than for six pilots. Mars and Max agreed that at last a couple of dozen or more people died in the explosion when the blue shield in the cavern lost its atmosphere.

“I count six remains of suits in the flattened and burnt out piles of spaceship metal,”
stated Vitalily.

“VIN, tell Jonesy that he can count off another three enemy ships on his tally. I bet knows how many we have hit,”
suggested Max.”

“Twenty-two. We went through the video and sound recordings of hits, and I’ll check with him when he comes back round,”
VIN replied.

The crew looked hard and studied every particle inside the cavern while keeping careful eyes on the blue shields either side.

Max and Vitalily inspected the blue shield on the other side. It was also extended into a five-foot high tunnel about twenty feet long. They couldn’t see through the other side, but there was light, and the inside of the blue shield was empty.

Max turned his gaze to look at the evidence in the cavern itself. The blast must have blown out everything except the three heavy spacecraft, as the cavern was totally clean of dust or debris, as if somebody had swept it. There was not one piece of evidence that
SB-I
had ever flown into the cavern. Apart from the torn pieces of suits splattered on the blackened walls and roof, and dozens of tons of melted piles of gold on the floor by the walls, the cavern was clean and empty.

“Remember Max, Commander Fob was inside SB-I with Michael and Penny,”
stated VIN.

“Well he isn’t anymore,”
Max replied
“there is not one shred of evidence that our ship was in here. That blast must have blown everything other than those three ships out the door.”

Just before their suit time ran out, they reached the open cavern door. They were about a hundred feet above the flat surface of the dusty red planet outside, and Mars noticed a panel at the edge of the opening that looked like it controlled the door. It was not blinking, but glowed a very dull red so he pushed it, and the massive door a hundred feet wide and twenty feet high began to silently close downwards from above his head.

Not expecting the door to still work, Max relayed to VIN that the door was working, and VIN ordered them to return to the safe shield area to recharge their suits and rest.

They rested, unscrewing their helmets as the small suit chargers gave their suits a recharge. It would take two hours, and the latest chargers each had two full chargers inside them.

The air inside the blue shield smelt like it had in all the other
Matt
bases, old and stale, and their voices were slightly higher pitched with the extra helium.

“What do you think, Mars?” asked Max as they ate an Australian chocolate bar, and drank a pouch of high energy liquid.

“Their bases are all much the same, except that extra tunnel on the other side,” replied Mars. “I’m sure they have a lower level in this base. The spaceship exit cavern in Mattville was lower than the rest of the base. I think this one is the other way around since we are a hundred feet above the Martian surface.”

“The doors to the underground level must have been closed, and
SB-I’s
attack did not reach the power plants as it did in Mattville?” Max replied.

“Well, Mattville had two separate survival power systems,” added Max. “Maybe this side of the base was a second cavern for the ships. It seems the same size, but
SB-I
didn’t destroy the main power plant, so it must be below this level. Also Jonesy mentioned that there could even be a third part of this base as all the enemy spacecraft couldn’t have exited from here. Now we’ve seen the size of this cavern, I tend to agree with him.”

“Then what is over there on the other side?” asked Vitalily.

“Globe room and command center, I expect” replied Mars. “Maybe another hangar, or cavern full of spaceships.

While the men had their helmets off, they didn’t have intercom contact with VIN who had gone over the horizon anyway. There was currently nobody to talk to outside the base, so they discussed their next moves among themselves.

“The shields will have protected anybody not standing inside the cavern,” stated Max.

“There must be
Matts
alive on the other side, as well as behind any protective door we find in the base. We are going to have to go through this whole base before we can make it safe,” added Mars. “I remember the separate hangar on DX2017. The door was hidden, my father couldn’t find it, but when he was shown it by Commander Joot he had to walk down a long tunnel to get to it. I bet all these bases are connected, and we are going to have to find a door to where the rest of their ships are parked.”

“If we find an unused black box shield, we could fill this cavern again, pump air into it and then bring in the shuttles. The door doesn’t seem damaged,” suggested Vitalily.

“The whole door retracts into the rock of the mountain. The door was completely protected when the explosions occurred,” added Max.

“They certainly work hard to make their bases livable,” stated Joey, one of Max’s men.

For two hours they rested and ate and drank what little they had while their suits recharged. Sitting in the low tunnel in the blue shield they saw nothing, no movement whatsoever.

“We have 8 hours of suit time before we need resupply,”
stated Max to VIN up in the mother ship once they connected their helmets.

“There must be food and water somewhere in the base,”
replied VIN.
“Check the storage units usually behind the wall opposite the entrance to the globe room. You have air to breathe. The shuttles will be up here in ten hours. I cannot let them return individually until we have found the other enemy fighters. Max, you either turn back now for Mattville, or head forward and survive on what you can find in their base. We have never known them to be armed with hand weapons. We were very shocked to find out the hard way that they had Masers on their ships. Shoot first if attacked, but I think you’ll find a bunch of very scared Matts down here, and you have my son to talk to them telepathically, over.”

“How is the boss?”
Max asked.

“Doing OK. He is still beating himself up about the loss of crew, but casualties were going to happen sometime. We at Astermine have had it too good for too long, and he didn’t do very well with the loss of life during the first attack either. The boss is not a soldier, just a CEO who is not use to battle fatalities. Max, make your decision and let me know, over.”

Max looked at the others, who all nodded to go forward, and replied.

“We are going in VIN.”

“OK, well done. Just remember to leave a few minutes of charge in your suits in case we have to fly in to pick you guys up. I would suggest you open the cavern door again so we can get in to rescue you. You don’t have time on your side, and we are heading out of range in a few minutes. Good luck, out.”

Max signed off and they readied themselves to go door to door. The hand lasers were checked by firing a short burst at the roof of the cavern, then they opened the large door.

“You hear any chatter with your helmet on?”
Max asked Mars Noble.

“Negative, very quiet on the telepathic airwaves. My helmet wouldn’t stop any thoughts,”
Mars replied.

Carefully they entered the blue shielded tunnel on the other side of the cavern one by one, and as VIN had taught them, at least ten steps apart when they walked across the empty cavern floor and through the tunnel. It was nearly impossible to run in a spacesuit. Mars and Max went first. The rest waited for orders.

They exited the shield at the end of the tunnel and the inside of the Matt base looked the same as all the others, and the doors were all closed.

“There is the globe room door. That will lead us to the command center. Maybe we can see the other base in the command center,”
suggested Mars.
“My dad told me that on DX2017 or in one of the bases I can’t remember which, he saw a camera showing him the outside. It worked for a while then went dead.”

“I wonder why the Matts have these blue shields activated inside their base?”
Mars asked seconds before he was about to open the door to the globe room.

“I think that they must have had to use them when the first explosion occurred,”
replied Max.
“I’ve had much time analyzing the outlay of Mattville, and how these guys built anything in space without real spacesuits. They built everything in the vacuum of space while inside these shields”.

“That’s right! Thanks Max,”
exclaimed Mars.
“Something I have been wondering about for years just clicked. They couldn’t have built anything without these shields.”

“Then that’s why they went for our shields every time they attacked,”
added Vitalily.

“But how did SB-I destroy the cavern shield? They used Masers to destroy ours, and we know that our laser beams just increase the energy of the shield. They don’t destroy it?” Mars asked.

“I think that SB-I was so close, that the energy blast and the explosion of the enemy ship exiting was too much for the shield,”
replied Max.
“Captain Pete reckons that the shield can take several energy blasts from hundreds, or thousands of miles away, but not from point blank range. That’s why the Matts don’t fly with their shields extended. They know the limitations of the shields. We are still learning those limitations.”

“Then how did Mattville explode?”
Mars asked.

“I think the shield wasn’t extended at the time, the cavern open and SB-I’s laser blast went right in and the exploding energy inside the cavern caused a lightning bolt of pure energy to fizzle down into the lower levels, or caught several fully fueled ships about to take off, and the explosion from those ships blew up the power plants. Now open the door Mars and let us see what’s inside?”

Mars pressed the panel, and the door to the globe room opened. Inside there was no blue shield, and the room was empty of people. The globes, the same ones in Mattville were there, and so were the tiny light depicting the reinforcements on their way from Ceres.

The command room was also empty, and the door to the cryogenic chambers found in the other bases didn’t exist. There was no door panel.

“Nobody would have been hurt in here, and the air is good”
stated Mars looking at his suit readouts on his arm.

“They must have run for cover,”
Max replied.

“There is still no chatter in my head, not even a whisper.”
added Mars.

They headed back out and back into the main base. There were the usual three doors to the storage rooms, and they were opened one by one.

Again there was nobody in the rooms, and in two of the three rooms there was ample growth of vegetation inside a blue shield. It looked exactly like the inside of one of their shields back at the Retreat.