Legacy (53 page)

“Thank you. We’ll try and put you to good use,” Jack said as he turned and faced Everett. He took a deep breath. Then he turned to the other two men who entered the small trailer. They both saluted Collins as they came to attention.

“Okay, gentlemen, that’s enough. I think we’ll just start out a little less formal.” Jack again held out his hand to the first of the two men. “I’m Colonel Jack Collins and this is Captain Carl Everett, U.S. Navy, and Sebastian Krell, German army.”

“Sergeant Tashiro Jiimzo, Japanese Self-Defense Forces, stationed as military attaché to Quito. I have four other men with me, sir.”

“Sergeant Huynh Nguyen, Vietnam People’s Army, reporting on behalf of my government to you. I have ten men accompanying me. We were on duty at our embassy, training security personnel, when the request from your president came through channels.”

As the men shook hands, Jack smiled. He had to hand it to the president; he was pulling in some serious favors from friends in other countries.

“Sergeant, Captain—welcome to our little band of invaders. Since this may be all the reinforcements for a while, we’d better get down to planning. It won’t be easy. We’re outnumbered two hundred to one, with the odds against us growing larger by the minute.”

The small Vietnamese sergeant tilted his head when Jack mentioned the numbers. Then he smiled. “The odds are not unheard of, Colonel. It all depends upon the plan.”

Jack returned the smile and gestured for the men to have a seat at the map table. He knew the sergeant was schooled on long odds and short hope. That was how he was raised. Right now Jack needed men such as this if what he was planning was going to have a chance of working.

“Gentlemen, our plan is to scare the hell out of an army that’s not used to fighting crazy people. So, if I may ask, how much equipment were you able to take out of your embassies?”

The British SAS officer spoke first. “We have ten full-sized G3 assault rifles, 2 G3SG1 sniper rifles, and five G3 KA4 short barrels with collapsible stock, and also five thousand rounds of ammunition.”

“All we have is five M-16 automatic weapons with a thousand rounds,” Jiimzo said, looking embarrassed.

“The same with us, the New Zealanders and the Australians,” Nguyen said. “We have only what we could sneak out of the embassy without being observed by the Ecuadorians.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot to mention—ten claymore mines were found in the embassy armory. We liberated them from the politicos,” Captain Mark-Patton said with a smile.

Jack looked at the men in front of him. “I’m looking at thirty-six of the best soldiers in the world. Captain Everett, Major Krell, and myself are humbled, to be sure.”

“There, there, Colonel. I believe you are selling yourself quite short,” Mark-Patton said as he laid his assault weapon on the map-covered table. “I believe you were in on the rescue of that downed Intruder pilot in Iraq in ’92 and certain other exploits, including the training of my very own commanding officer on behind-the-lines infiltration. So let’s, as you say, be informal here. Yourself, Major Krell, and Captain Everett have more experience than any ten men in this room.” The captain reached over and took a field pack. He tossed it toward Everett, who caught it in midair. “Those are BDUs, green and brown. I suspect you would rather go into battle wearing something other than work shirts and Levi’s.”

Collins looked at Everett and shrugged.

“Okay, gentlemen—again, welcome. Shall we get down to business?”

DARK STAR 3,
ALTAIR-FALCON
CREW MODULES, 98,000 MILES FROM MOON ORBIT

The twelve-man capsule, dubbed
Falcon 1
, was attached nose to nose with the
Altair
lander. The crew module was roomy enough to move around in, but for real exercise the crew had to crawl through to the far more spacious three-decked lunar module.

During their downtime on the voyage, the entire crew, with the exception of the command module pilot, worked on breaking down the large M-39 rocket-assisted projectile weapons designed by DARPA, as well as the short-barreled M-4 carbine, the little sister of the venerable M-16 that each man would carry on any excursion on the lunar surface. There were also four Stinger missile systems and five LAWs armor-piercing rockets that Sarah and Ryan had to learn about. Each of the excursion personnel would also carry a Glock nine-millimeter pistol in a nylon holster.

After six hours of weapons training in breakdown and cleaning, Sarah gave the crew a quick but detailed course on the mineral. Water and air of any kind were forbidden within a dozen yards of the mineral if any was found. Information on the alien weaponry was sparse at best, with only a few grainy pictures of the items they were looking for. Most were rifle-shaped weapons, but Sarah reminded the men present that there could be larger, heavier weaponry that wasn’t discovered by the Beatles.

After the meeting broke up, the crew went about eating and exercising. Ryan went forward to speak to the command module pilot and learn about the systems. Sarah had been proud of Jason as he tried to cram everything he could learn in the two-day voyage of
Dark Star 3
. This was a shortened venue for all the training they had to undergo, since it used to take four days to get to the Moon in the old Apollo days, but thanks to the added engine power of the new solid rocket booster engines on the command module, the trip had been cut in half.

Sarah approached Colonel Kendal as he floated onto the exercise bike.

“Any word on the Chinese?”

Kendal started pedaling and looked around to see who was in earshot. Then he placed two small earpieces in his ears and paused over the play button for his iPod.

“The time frame will be right around the time
Altair
lands. We won’t know until we’re either ambushed or welcomed as an ally. Maybe we can get some chatter from the French, since they land five hours before us, but I don’t anticipate getting that lucky.”

“The Russians?” Sarah asked, leaning into Kendal.

“Our old friends are a full day and half behind us. They won’t get there until the shooting has stopped. Besides, I understand they’re having problems onboard their lunar lander
Peter the Great
.” The colonel tapped the video monitor next to the lander control station. There was a picture of a large craft that looked similar to their own Altair lander
,
only more base looking. Below the picture were the Russian words,
—Peter the Great Lunar Lander.

“That doesn’t help me,” Sarah said frowning. “What’s wrong with the damn lander now?”

The colonel hit his play button and started pedaling. “I guess they didn’t steal the right plans from us back in the eighties,” he answered with a wink.

Sarah turned away and bumped into a floating Mendenhall. “What was that all about?” he asked, as turned a complete flip in the air.

“Just more good news about the Russians being a day late and a ruble short.”

“Well, let’s just hope the Chinese have a good attitude when we land.”

Sarah floated past Will and stopped him from spinning before he vomited for the fifth time on the trip.

“That, my friend, is in serious doubt.”

Dark Star 3
was hurtling toward the moon at a record-breaking pace of 35,790 miles per hour.
Altair 1
would attempt to set down in a possible hostile landing zone in exactly nine hours.

The ESA and Russian spacecraft were yet to be heard from.

THE ANDES, 100 MILES EAST OF QUITO, ECUADOR

Niles slammed the headphones down in frustration and was thankful he hadn’t been speaking to the president on one of the laptop computers Pete had offered.

“Unbelievable,” Charlie said behind the sweating back of Pete Golding. The two men had been steadily poised over a laptop plugged directly into the Europa system, which was being bounced off two satellites. One of these, the Event Group’s KH-11 bird code-named Boris and Natasha, had been retasked and was just now coming online for direct aerial views of the mine and the surrounding terrain so Jack could plan his makeshift assault accordingly.

“What is it?” Niles asked as he stood and walked over to the two scientists.

“Europa and our linguistics team have a promising link to the alien alphabet,” Pete said and turned the monitor of the laptop enough so Niles could see. “They’ve been studying the video from the crater—the flag, the lettering on the space suit, the number system on a few of the weapons, and so on. Europa has evaluated the writing and is comparing it with different symbologies that we have here on Earth. She’s come to the conclusion that it is a definite cross between a written language and a pictograph system similar to Chinese.”

“I don’t see how Europa can grasp their language from just a few words.”

“Actually, the number system was pretty easy, Niles. She just took every number that we had photographs of and repeated them through her system. As no number was higher than nine, she figured that the system was based on ten. Now, breaking down each number was a little harder. This is where Europa got extremely lucky. It all started with the very first find by the robotic Beatles, the skeleton itself—in particular, the air tank system on the spaceman’s backpack. The numbers were taken off and the size of the tanks evaluated by Europa as compared to a similar system of air tanks used by NASA, the U.S. Navy, etc. Europa figured it was twenty gallons or eighty cubic feet of air. She took the symbology for these numbers and deduced that what the writing on the tank said was air capacity of eighty cubic feet, the very same system we use, only it took our strange friends eight letters to spell out the word eighty and three numbers to indicate the numeral 80. The parentheses were easier.”

Niles shook his head. “And from this she has decoded their language? That’s hard to believe, gentlemen.”

“We won’t know for sure until we can get more detailed text, but I wouldn’t bet against Europa, Mr. Director,” Pete said as he pulled the screen back. He looked insulted that Niles had doubted Europa.

“Well, Jack’s going to try to get us in the mine as soon as he can. What about the flag and its symbology?”

“The four circles in elliptical form,” Charlie said for Pete, who had switched the view on the laptop from the writing program to the picture of the flag and the symbols described by Jack and the senator:

“Europa is very confused, as are most of the best astronomers in the world. She had been monitoring the study of the flag at every university in the world and most of them are of the opinion that it’s an elliptical orbit of the alien home world,” Charlie said, pointing to the animation of the flag.

“However, Europa does not agree,” Pete said, interrupting Charlie. “She seems to believe, and we are arguing with her on this point, that it’s a system of neighboring planets—perhaps a series of planets
and
moons. Of course I have asked her to explain and she states that the alignment could be two planets and two moons in the same orbit but on opposite sides of the sun. Personally I think the old girl’s guessing. There’s nothing remotely like this diagram in the solar system. Not even Saturn or Jupiter has moons that close to their own orbit. As for Europa’s theory that those two worlds and their moons could occupy the same orbit, but on opposite sides of the sun—well, we just don’t have a precedent for that scenario.”