Luna Marine (12 page)

Dr. Marc Billaud stared past his tormentor with an icy indifference. “
Je ne comprends pas
,” he said.

“He's lying,” the Army captain at the colonel's side said. “His record says—”

“Ah, Colonel,” David said, interrupting, “I really don't think you're going to get anything out of them this way. Do you think I could have a few moments with them?”

The interrogators—three Army officers who'd made the trip out aboard the
Clarke
—stared at David for a moment. The senior officer, Colonel Thomas R. Whitworth, opened his mouth, then closed it again, as though fearful of appearing foolish. The other two, Major Dahlgren and Captain Slizak, glanced at one another, but said nothing.

Stiffly, then, hands clasped behind his back, the colonel glared at David. “For your information, Doctor, these…
people
,” he replied, “have information that we need. They
speak English…or at least this one does. But they're not cooperating.”

“I understand all that. I also
know
Marc Billaud.”

“Eh? How's that?”

“He's a friend of mine.”

“Dr. Alexander, how the hell is it you're friends with this
UNdie
?”

“I met him before the war, Colonel. There was such a time, you know. It only
seems
like the war's been going on forever.”

“Hmpf. My orders—”

“Are these people prisoners of war, Colonel?”

“Technically, no, Doctor,” Dahlgren said. “They are civilians, and unless we can prove that they've borne arms against American military forces, they must be treated as civilians according to the terms of the Geneva Convention.” The major was staring at Whitworth as he spoke, and David had the feeling there was no lost love between the two.

Well, being cooped up in a tin can with thirty-some other troops for the three-day coast up from Earth could do that to people. David was glad once again that he'd been able to spend much of the voyage up forward with the pilot.

“I am
well
aware of the legalities of this situation,” Whitworth huffed. “But these people know things that are vital to our operation here. I will not see this mission jeopardized by—”

“Give me a few moments with them alone, and perhaps I can get him to talk to you.
Without
the histrionics.”

Whitworth's eyes narrowed with an expression hovering between disbelief and outright suspicion while Major Dahlgren looked carefully noncommittal. The major, it turned out, was fluent in French and had been serving as interpreter…though Whitworth appeared dedicated to the age-old linguistic theory that speaking very loud and waving the arms about would hurdle all language barriers.

As though suddenly arriving at a decision, the colonel cocked his head, shrugged, and exchanged a glance with the other officers. “Well, of course. This isn't a formal
interrogation. Not
yet
, anyway.” He gestured at the French scientists. “Go ahead. Knock yourself out. I'll be back…later.”

“A friend of yours?” Billaud asked in English, rolling his eyes toward the doorway through which the colonel and his entourage had vanished.

“A friend? No, my God. An acquaintance only. I met him on the transport bringing me here. I think the major, the one with the mustache, is Army Intelligence.”

“
Oui
. He has the look. So, my friend. What did you hope to accomplish with that little show, just now?”

“I thought it would be more pleasant in here without the shouting.”

Billaud shook his head with a wry chuckle. “Thank you for that, David. We appreciate the quiet. But…you must know, I will not betray my country.”

“Of course not. But…well, damn it, Marc, what
can
you give me?” When Billaud did not immediately answer, David spread his hands. “Look, it's all just a big, ugly game, right? Give me something,
anything
, to make the bloodhounds happy, and maybe we can get 'em to leave you alone for a while.”

Billaud sighed. “You have, no doubt, read my notes. The ones I left at Fra Mauro? Your people, I'm sure, picked them up when they captured our base there.”

“No, actually. I came straight here, from Earth.”

“Ah. Well, your people already have those notes. I can only tell you what is in them…and nothing more.”

“At least it gets Whitworth off your back.”

“
Oui
.” Billaud hesitated, as though wondering where to begin, then pursed his lips. “You are in for a surprise, my friend, when you examine our dig outside.”

“I've been wondering about that. I was told it was a ship.”

Billaud nodded. “A ship,
oui
. Or rather, a piece of a ship. A piece of a very large ship that…ah…suffered an accident, we think, six thousand years ago.”

“I saw the trenches outside. How is it that the ship was buried?”

Unlike Mars, where winds blew, dust accumulated, and
sand dunes migrated across the landscape in million-year marches, the Moon was not a place you associated with changes in the terrain. A crash thousands of years ago, even millions of years ago, should still be on the surface, where it fell. The slow infall of meteoric dust was not enough to bury something as large as a spacecraft, even after millions of years.

Billaud exchanged a quick glance with the other scientists—there were three, two men and a woman. Then he sighed. “There
was
some wreckage on the surface. Most of that is…gone now. Salvaged.”

“Salvaged! What do you mean?”

“I'd rather not say more. But…you Americans are interested in the technology of these aliens, no?”

“Of course.” David nodded. Then he slapped his knee. “Of course! You found a power plant…or an engine assembly! Good for you!”

“Good for us, yes,” the woman said. “Perhaps not so good for you!”

“Estelle!” one of the other scientists warned.

But David already understood…enough, at least, to know in general what was going on.

“There really wasn't that much to salvage,” Billaud went on, as though he'd not been interrupted. “In fact, it appears the vessel was torn open some distance above the ground. The contents spilled out…here. Much of the wreckage was scattered across most of the floor of this crater.”

“There have been TLPs associated with Picard,” David said. “Transient Lunar Phenomena.”

“Yes. That was our first clue, in fact, to look here. Large chunks and scraps of highly polished metal. When it catches the light just right, it can look like unusual clusters of lights, here on the crater floor. Observers on Earth have seen unusual lights and effects here for some time.”

TLPs had been seen for almost two hundred years at many different sites on the Moon. They appeared only rarely and were usually dismissed as volcanic phenomena. David wondered if those sites now warranted a closer look by xenoarcheologists.

“The largest fragment was a kind of module or capsule containing the ship's power generator,” Billaud continued. “When it struck, most of it was buried. It took six weeks to dig it free. Many of the smaller, heavier fragments were buried on impact as well, which is why we have been digging the trenches.”

David found a chair by the compartment's one small table and sat down. “Tell me more,” he said.

One of the other men said something sharply, in French.

“Ah,” Billaud said. “Jean-Paul thinks I've already said too much.”

“Not really. We'd guessed that you'd found something important at Picard. And that you'd already moved it to your base on the Lunar farside.”

None of them said anything, either in confirmation or in denial.

“What can you tell me about the aliens? They had a base here?”

Billaud leaned forward, his eyes bright. “Oh, my friend! I wish I could tell you what I've seen, what I've learned! Things wonderful…and things terrifying, as well.”

“Where? Here? Or at your base? You're at Tsiolkovsky, right?”

Billaud sighed. “Your people must know that by now. Yes. And thousands of years ago, another race, another civilization, was there as well. Until they were attacked by
les Chasseurs de l'Aube
.”

“The…what?”

“‘Hunters of the Dawn' is how we have translated the name. There appears to have been a terrible war fought, here…and elsewhere.”

“I think you need to tell me more. Everything you can. Please.”

Twenty minutes later, he walked out of the compartment. The three Army officers were there, seated at a table. The Marine guard posted outside the room with the UN scientists stood by the door, and another Marine was leaning against one wall. He straightened as David entered the room. “Hey, Professor!”

“Kaminski!” David said, startled. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Waitin' for you. They told me you needed an assistant.”

David nodded absently. “That's…good….”

“Well?” Whitworth demanded. “Did they tell you anything?”

“Yes,” David replied. “They told me quite a bit.”

Whitworth's leathery face creased in an unexpected grin. “Excellent, Doctor! You had the routine down just perfect!”

“Routine? What routine?”

“Good cop—bad cop, of course. I had 'em rattled and worried. Then you stepped in and sweet-talked 'em. Works every time!”

The major gave David a sour look. “What did you learn?”

David resented Whitworth's implication that he'd been playing some sort of game. How little could he get away with telling the bastard and still have it sound convincing? “I'm not sure you're going to want to hear this,” he replied. And then he told them.

But not everything…especially what Billaud had said about the place he called Gab-Kur-Ra. The alien base uncovered at Tsiolkovsky he decided to keep to himself. He was damned if he would let the military fight over the treasures Billaud had hinted at, as they had the archeological treasure house at Cydonia.

Hab One, Picard Base
Mare Crisium, the Moon
1038 hours GMT

“Why just you?” Kaitlin wanted to know. “The Army's here. We should all pull back to Fra Mauro.”

Captain Fuentes shrugged. “God knows, Garroway,” she replied. “His message just said he needed to consult with the company commanders. He's a major, Lee and I
are captains, so we'll go consult. We'll take Bug Thirty-eight.”

“It's damned idiocy, if you ask me. Why do you think God invented radios and scrambled channels?”

“Here, now, Lieutenant Garroway!” Captain Rob Lee replied with a wry grin. “Are you actually implying that Battalion has something in its ditty bag masquerading as common sense?”

She smiled. Captain Rob Lee, Alfa Company's CO, was young, smart, and good-looking, with that sense of rough give-a-damn that she normally associated with fighter jocks. His penchant for scathing one-liners was legendary in 1-SAG.

“That's asking too much, huh?” she asked. “I
have
noted a tendency in Major Avery to slip back into his childhood, counting beans and shuffling files.”

Rob closed his eyes. “The major,” he said quietly, but with great seriousness, “is a good man, means well, and works hard. Unfortunately, he would not be able to get a clue if he went out into a field full of horny clues during clue mating season, smeared his naked body with clue musk, and danced the ritual clue mating dance.”

Kaitlin groaned. “Now
there's
an image I'd really have preferred you'd kept to yourself.”

“There shouldn't be a problem, Lieutenant,” Fuentes told her. “You're senior to Palmer, so you're in charge of both companies while we're gone. Colonel Whitworth, of course, will be in overall command of this station, but that shouldn't affect the regular routine.”

“The routine's not what's bothering me, Captain,” Kaitlin said. “It's the
non
-routine. If the UNdies are going to counterattack, it'll be in the next day or two, before we have a chance to get dug in.”

“We should be back by 2200 hours tonight,” Rob told her. He folded his arms. “I imagine the major just wants to go over routine joint-op protocol with us. IFF freaks, pass codes, and so on.”

“Which ought to already be set up,” Fuentes said. “Garroway's right. If the bad guys hit us anytime soon,
we're screwed, and it won't help things a bit if we're attending a fragging staff meeting at Fra Mauro.
Damn
!”

“I
do
have an idea,” Kaitlin told them. “If we could set things up this way…”

WEDNESDAY
, 15
APRIL
2042

The Dig, Picard Base
Mare Crisium, the Moon
1438 hours GMT

“So, anyway,” Kaminksi said, “I was wonderin' if we could, well, trade e-mails or something. I really enjoyed learning that stuff you were telling me about on Mars, and I keep wanting to ask you questions about it. And it looks like you've got a lot more to learn here.” They were standing on the Lunar surface, among the crisscrossing trenches of the French excavation. It seemed like a huge area for two men to search.

“That,” David said, grinning inside his helmet, “is an understatement! I'd be delighted to correspond with you, Ski. You're not afraid to ask questions, and you have a knack for asking the right ones.”

“Thanks! I'll try not to be a pest with it, but, well, the news, Triple-N, and all, they always seem to get the facts tangled up, at least from what you were saying.”

“Sometimes they do.”

“So, anyway, you was sayin' that the aliens who built the Face, and all that stuff on Mars, they're different from the aliens who were here on the Moon?”

“That's right, Ski,” David replied. “The Cave of Wonders, the Face, all of that is about half a million years old. Whatever crashed here was a lot more recent. Eight thousand years, six thousand years, something like that.”

Kaminski turned slowly, surveying the harshly illuminated patch of the crater floor, trying to imagine what must have happened here. This part of the Moon was now completely dark. Only the worklights cast any light at all, and they made this one tiny corner of the Lunar surface seem very small and isolated. Even the stars were banished by their glare, though the Earth, a blue-and-white first quarter, still hung in its unvarying spot in the western sky.

“Quite a mess, isn't it, Ski?” David asked, misinterpreting Kaminski's silent gaze.

“What do you mean?”

David, swaddled and clumsy in his government-issue space suit, turned to face Kaminski. “In proper archeology,” David told him, “we're interested in the layers, the strata, of debris, of how things are laid down one on top of another. We're also very interested in the precise locations in which artifacts are found, relative to one another, and to the terrain. We're very careful about such things, laying out precisely numbered grids, taking photographs of everything in situ, making sure we understand everything there is to know about an object's position before we remove it.”

“You were tellin' me about all that on Mars, sir,” Kaminski said.

“So I did. The problem there, of course, was far too much in the way of buildings, artifacts, and debris to explore and catalog, with far, far too few people to do the work. It's different here.” Turning again, David waved one arm, taking in the entire black panorama of the crater floor, the trenches and excavated pits beneath the worklights, the mounds of debris piled nearby. “We archeologists have a technical term for this sort of site,” David told him. “We call it fubaritic strata.”

“Yeah?”

“As in fubar.”

“Ah! As in ‘Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.'”

“Exactly. See? We'll make an archeologist out of you yet.” David started to walk. Kaminski followed, shouldering the massive canvas satchel he'd been packing for Alexander since they'd left the hab. It didn't weigh very
much in the Lunar gravity, but its inertia made it a chore to move or to stop.

With the satchel, his PLSS, and his slung ATAR, Kaminski was beginning to feel like a caddie following a VIP around a golf course. A golf course with grays instead of greens that was one big sand trap from tee to hole.

“So, how's it screwed up?” Kaminski asked.

“We just had two small armies tramping back and forth through these trenches the other day, Ski. What else
would
it be?” They arrived at the edge of a large, shallow pit. David jumped in, followed a moment later by Kaminski. The floor was covered by treaded-boot prints, with tangles of white string scattered about seemingly at random. “Looks like they had that area laid out in a proper grid for photography and cataloging, with string and posts, but so many people stampeded through that the grid lines are all torn down. I don't know if we'll ever be able to recreate Dr. Billaud's survey work here.”

“Maybe you could get him to help? I mean, back in the hab this morning, you were tellin' those Army guys that he was cooperatin' with you. He told you all that stuff about Sumeria.”

“Hmm. An attractive idea, Ski. Unfortunately, the government frowns on close collaborations with the enemy. I imagine they'll be shipping Dr. Billaud and his colleagues back to Earth on the first available transport.”

“What'll happen to them then? They're not gonna get sent back to France.”

“No. I'm afraid that's most unlikely. Especially considering what they know.”

“Is what they found here really that important? I mean, it's just more alien shit, like we found on Mars, right?”

Kaminski heard David's sigh, a blast of air across his helmet microphone. “What we're finding on Mars—and here—is completely changing everything we thought we understood about human origins, about who and what we are. The artifacts, the bodies and so on we found on Mars suggests that someone was tinkering with our DNA half a million years back. That's momentous enough. But what Billaud and his people have found here on the Moon is a
lot closer to our
historical
origins. It tells us, not about our biology, but about our culture, our civilization. I'm afraid this is going to upset people even more than the news from Mars did.”

“You mean the ancient-astronaut stuff? The stuff we found on Mars is already really stirring people up. All those cults and things.”

“Yes.” That one word sounded almost sad.

“'Course, doesn't this all just go to show the ancient-alien people are right?”

“Not the part about the ETs being God, or us being created in their image, or any of that. No.”

“You were telling the Army guys about what Billaud told you. Something about the Sumerians?”

“Sumer was one of Earth's earliest true civilizations. Dates back to about 4,000
B.C.
, though they probably had their start well before that. They established quite a remarkable culture at the head of the Persian Gulf, one that literally seemed to spring up overnight, out of nowhere.”

“The Fertile Crescent? Tigris and Euphrates Rivers?”

“That's right, Ski! Very good!”

He shrugged inside his suit. “Okay, so I
did
remember something from high-school history class. And you guys think these aliens got the Sumerians off to a civilized start, is that it?”

“The amusing thing is that the Sumerians themselves claimed—in their myths and legends—that the gods were people much like themselves who came down from the heavens and taught them everything they needed to know, agriculture, writing, building cities, working gold, numbers, medicine…” He stopped, then bent over, hands on knees, as he intently studied a patch of boot-trammeled Lunar soil.

“Yeah, but don't
all
those ancient civilizations claim they got their start from the gods? Kind of like a good public-relations campaign, y'know? My civilization is better than your civilization, 'cause it was started by the gods. I'm king, 'cause God said that's the way it is.”

“You're absolutely right. Still, that doesn't mean that the first people to claim that distinction weren't telling the
exact and literal truth.” He stooped and began scraping at the ground with his gloved hands. The regolith was soft and powdery, but firmly packed, with the consistency of damp beach sand.

“So…what were they doin' here?” Kaminski asked after a long moment. “The aliens, I mean. Why would they come all the way here to give us writing and stuff. What was in it for them?”

“Excellent question. Let me have that bag, will you?”

Kaminski let the massive satchel slide from his shoulder, and David unsnapped the cover and opened it up. Inside was a variety of tools, including hammers, a whisk broom, mirrors with handles, small shovels, and numerous pry bars, from a half-meter-long crowbar down to probes the size of a nutpick. The archeologist selected one of the latter, picking it up clumsily in his heavy gloves.

“According to Dr. Billaud,” David went on, scraping at the ground with the tool, “there was an alien ship flying over Picard a few thousand years ago. It…well, it didn't explode. But it apparently tore open, just like a seagoing ship getting ripped open by an iceberg. The loot inside spilled out.”

“Loot?”

“Statues. Gold plates or tablets with writing on them.
Objets d'art
. A lot of the stuff landed here, inside this crater, in an enormous footprint. The heavier pieces were moving fast enough to plow down into the regolith a ways, like bullets. The lighter, flimsier stuff ended up on the surface.”

“I don't see nothing like that up here.”

“Our UN counterparts have already cleaned the area out pretty well, Ski.” He began prying something shiny up out of the clinging dust. “They were in the process of sinking these trenches to try to find and recover the heavier things. Like…this.”

David straightened up again, holding something in both hands. Kaminski stepped closer, his eyes widening. It was a statue, perhaps ten inches long…and it gleamed in the worklights like pure gold. At first, Kaminski thought the figure was human…but then, as David turned it in his
hands, he got a better look at the face…roughly human, with mouth and nose and eyes in about the right place, but with eyes that looked like enormous goggles or bubbles, with deeply incised, horizontal lines instead of pupils. In one clenched fist it held a kind of staff or scepter; in the other, it clutched five ropes or leashes that ran down the front of the statue to the necks of five delicately sculpted figures, grouped waist high in front of the main figure. These smaller images were clearly human, with almond-shaped but human-looking eyes—three men and two women, nude, with their hands tied and their heads bowed.

“I wonder,” David said slowly, “if this might be our answer to your question.”

“If it is,” Kaminski replied, “a lot of these ancient-astronaut worshipers back home are in for one hell of a shock. That big guy there doesn't exactly look like their idea of a happy, loving, creator god, like they've been saying.”

“You're right there, Ski. This is going to upset a
lot
of folks back home….”

“Heads up, Marines, this is Bravo-six” cut in on their suit-to-suit channel. The voice was that of Lieutenant Garroway. Bravo-6 was the company's radio code for Marine C-cubed. “We have bogies inbound, presumed hostile! All Marines outside, take cover and look sharp.” There was a pause. “Kaminski! You copy?”

“Six, Kaminski. I copy.”

“You have the package?”

Alexander. “That's affirmative. Right here beside me.”

“Get him back inside, stat! We don't want him wandering outside when…shit!”

A babble of radio voices sounded over Kaminski's headset.

“Bravo-six, OP-two! Bogies in sight, repeat, bogies in sight, bearing two degrees north of Marker East Three. They're coming in low and tight!”

“Six! OP-one! I have them! Incoming, by East Three!”

“Bravo-six! Bravo-six! Perimeter Green One! We are taking fire! We are taking—”

Static hissed over the radio channel. Kaminski crouched in the pit, staring toward the blackness of the eastern horizon, but his night vision, burned by the worklights, was gone. He
thought
he saw—

Gray dust exploded in a silent, deadly blossom the size of a small tree in the airless void twenty meters to Kaminski's right. David was standing, staring in the wrong direction, his back to the explosion, and didn't even see the danger. Swiftly, Kaminski reached up, grabbed Alexander's PLSS harness, and yanked, hard, toppling the big man in a slow-motion tumble to the ground, the gold statue spinning in a gentle descent from the archeologist's hands.

“What the?…”

“Get down, sir!” Kaminski snapped, peeling the ATAR off his shoulder and slapping the charging lever to chamber the first round. “We got problems!”

He could see the first of the UN hoppers now, an ungainly flying bug shape dropping out of the glare of the lights fifty meters away, almost directly between the two of them and the HQ hab. “Ooh-rah!” he shouted over the radio. “Target acquired!”

He brought the assault rifle to his shoulder, switched on HUD targeting, and dragged the muzzle until the crosshairs on his visor aligned with a hatch in the hopper's side, already gaping open.

“All units!” Kaitlin's voice called. “We're under attack! Fire at will!”

Kaminski had already squeezed the firing button.

Hab One, Picard Base
Mare Crisium, the Moon 1455 hours GMT

Kaitlin looked up as a voice crackled from an overhead speaker. “Bravo-six! Bravo-six! Enemy troops in sight. They're not blue-tops. Repeat, negative blue-tops!”

“Chinese,” she said.

Gunnery Sergeant Yates, at her side, nodded. “Almost certainly.”

“Blue-tops” was slang for the light, UN-blue helmets worn by European troops. The Chinese forces encountered so far tended to wear olive-drab and black space suits, with either olive or black helmets.

The door to the Battle Management Center clanged open, and Colonel Whitworth stormed in, with Major Dahlgren and Captain Slizak in close tow. “What the devil is going on?” he bellowed. Kaitlin looked up from the map table and looked him in the eye.

“We are under attack, Colonel,” she said, her voice cool.

“I
know
that! By who, goddammit?”

Yates pointed at the map table, which had been set to display input from a small computer operated by one of the Marines at the communications console. It now showed the various buildings and trenches at Picard, together with a scattering of green and red symbols. “UN forces, Colonel. Probably dispatched from the UN base on the farside, unless they had the foresight to set up a ready reserve someplace a little closer than Tsiolkovsky. They're not wearing European Union space suits, so we suspect that they may be members of the
Hangkong Tuji Budui
.”