Space 1999 #5 - Lunar Attack (2 page)

At intersection points, where Communications Posts were relaying the picture from Main Mission, groups of Alphans had gathered. Eagles were rising on elevators from underground maintenance bays. Their crews, bulky anonymous figures in space gear, were making for travel tube exit points. In the medicentre Bob Mathias and a couple of trim nurses were setting out surgical instruments. Others were preparing stretchers and beds.

It was total mobilisation and Koenig flipping round his bank of monitor screens could find nothing to fault. He saw his own face on the polished panels of the hardware and it could have been a stranger. High forehead, skull cap of dark hair, rat trap mouth, it was a hawk-like composition. Maybe it should have been behind a helmet at that, with a jutting nasal and a boar crest?

He saw the first Eagles rise to their launch pads and pressed a broadcast key to speak to all hands.

‘Attention all sections Alpha. Alien ships are approaching the base. Their intentions are not known . . .’

He was sidetracked momentarily by a movement on the medicentre monitor and watched Helena Russell hurry in, moving easily with her bell of honey blonde hair surging elastically round her head. On the neighbouring screen, he had the command module of the leading Eagle and Alan Carter with his co-pilot Johnson were in at a run from their boarding tube.

As the Eagles began to lift off with a thrust that sent vibrations through the base, Koenig went on evenly, ‘Eagle Flight One will take up intercept vectors. Flight Two move to readiness state one. Crash units on standby. Damage Control parties to stations. Medicentre stand by to receive casualties. Activate meteorite defence screens. Seal all bulkhead hatchways.’

As he switched himself off, he knew it was something and nothing. He was going through the motions as he was bound to do; but if the Hawks had the armament they should be carrying, it was all completely useless. A single salvo would leave Moonbase Alpha a smouldering pit on the cinder heap of the Moon.

Morrow called from the communications desk, ‘They still don’t reply, Commander.’ Kano came in from the computer spread, ‘Alien ships approaching at V fourteen point two.’

It was not good and Koenig kept his comment to himself, ‘Nearly twice the speed of any Eagle we have.’ The corollary was clear and he put himself in circuit to amend the instructions for Flight Two. ‘Cut secondary checks. Move to launch positions as fast as possible.’

Victor Bergman was whistling tunelessly, a habit he had when a problem refused to gell. Koenig said, ‘What have you got, Sandra?’

Every eye tracked to the big screen as she juggled with angles and brought in a sweep of the opposed forces. The Hawks were closing in, very near now to the Moon’s surface. The three Eagles of Flight One were racing to intercept.

Kano had it worked out and there was little comfort in it. ‘Alien ships within strike range for only forty-five seconds!’

Koenig punched a button and called Flight One Leader, ‘Alan!’

Carter’s face came up in an inset, hard and set as he concentrated to get it right for a once only strike. He said, tersely, ‘Closing fast, Commander.’

‘Fire warning shots.’

Alan Carter was incredulous. ‘If we don’t hit them first time, there’ll be nothing between them and Alpha!’

But it got him nowhere. Koenig’s answer was cold and final, ‘I said warning shots.’

The watchers in Main Mission were clearly in Carter’s corner. As the Hawks stormed in, three searing pencils of eye aching light streamed out from the closing Eagles, deliberately aimed off target. Unchecked, the Hawks were through, making no signal, hell bent to strafe the base, taking the bonus as a lucky break. There was a murmur all round the desks. Whatever Koenig was at, they didn’t like any part of it.

Koenig snapped out, ‘Get after them, Alan.’

Kano’s interjection was almost a rebuke. ‘They have just thirty seconds, Commander.’

Eagle Flight One was wheeling in a turn that shoved the crews to the edge of G tolerance. Carter’s lips writhed away in a snarl of effort.

Kano was checking it off. ‘Twenty seconds.’

They heard Carter grind out, ‘We’re locked on to them, Commander.’

It could well be; but the Hawks were pulling away, as though the clumsy Eagles were standing still.

Kano, fascinated by the sequence, said, ‘Fifteen seconds.’

There was no whistling from Bergman, he was still deathly still, staring at the screen. He said urgently, ‘It’s an attack, John.’

Koenig moved behind Morrow’s chair, ‘Still no signal?’

‘Nothing.’

Kano’s, ‘Ten seconds,’ chimed with the reply.

Alan Carter’s voice, full of bitterness, cracked round the quiet room, ‘We can’t hold them, Commander.’ Thumping the desk, Bergman stated what was in every mind, ‘Alpha’s wide open!’

‘Five seconds.’

He had left it late, maybe too late, but there was something niggling at the back of Koenig’s head which made him want to have it clear that the attacking force had been given every last chance to veer off. He called ‘Fire!’

Reaction times on the Eagles were incredibly fast. With the harmonics still vibrating round Main Mission there was a triple flare from the cones of the hard-pressed Eagles. Brilliant lines reached out and seemed to pluck the Hawks off the starmap. Each one was instant trash, opening out like an exploded diagram, disintegrating, disappearing as though it had never been.

There was a sigh from the watchers, a long exhalation of breath, compounded of relief and admiration for Carter’s team.

Paul Morrow said, ‘Great work, Alan!’

But Flight One Leader was looking puzzled. There was something that did not add up. They heard him speak to Johnson his co-pilot, ‘Too easy by half.’

A quick call from Sandra Benes interrupted. Fingers flying over her console, she was bringing up a different sector. ‘Commander! A new contact!’

They were not off the hook. Three more Hawks were arrowing in from another quarter.

Koenig said, ‘Orbital reference?’

‘Three four eight.’

‘Where’s Flight Two?’

Morrow answered him, ‘On the elevators now, Commander.’

Anticipating the next question, Kano came in, ‘Alan can’t reach them.’

Koenig leaned over Morrow and stubbed a button, ‘Flight Two! Cut procedures. Lift off.’

Grim faced, the watchers in Main Mission saw the elevators level with the launch pads and the rocket motors deliver as the pilots went for a crash lift.

Three Hawks in tight formation streaked low over the moonscape in a line for the complex.

Koenig said heavily, ‘We’ve got ourselves a war.’

It was a war Moonbase Alpha with its pressure domes and sprawling corridors was never designed to fight. A Hawk flew fast and low overhead as though picking its spot for a strike.

Paul Morrow reported, ‘Eagle Four has lift off, Commander. Clearing Alpha now.’

They saw it manoeuvring for sea room, climbing desperately and blindly as the Hawk dropped on it like a stooping falcon. One second it was there in full detail, the next, there was a white asterisk in space and wreckage was showering down onto the meteorite screens.

White light brightened the direct vision ports. Every operator felt it like a body blow and Morrow had to work at it to keep his voice level as he said, ‘Eagle Five lifting off now.’

It made all of two metres. The Hawk that blasted it, picked its spot with insolent ease. It was a funeral pyre flaring briefly from its pad.

Koenig was watching Eagle Six as the elevator brought it slowly to the surface. He called urgently, ‘Now! Blast off now!’

But the Hawk was already on station. The pad erupted in white light.

Unseen by Main Mission, a corridor breached. Suction, in a raging gale, emptied it. Small trash billowed out onto the moonscape. Clawing and scrabbling, a crewman was lifted through and away, launched into oblivion from the jagged open end.

Damage control telltales spread like a red rash on the computer desk.

Working to the book, Sandra Benes reported the obvious, ‘All three Eagles are destroyed, Commander.’

Beside her, Paul Morrow called up damage control units and reported to Koenig, ‘Explosive decompression in the end section. Area sealed off.’

Red Alert klaxons were still sounding off, adding their harmonic of doom to a situation that was escalating out of control. The stream of casualties to Helena Russell’s medicentre was turning it into a disaster zone
,
with trolleys still pouring in between already filled beds. She and Bob Mathias were back to old style medicine making a fast diagnosis and packing the victims in.

Koenig was still trying, but he was fighting a rear-guard with the logic in his head that told him there could only be one outcome. He did not need Morrow to tell him officially that launch pads one and four were non op. He wanted to know where the Hawks had gathered and Sandra rapped out, ‘Orbital reference 307.’

It was something to pass on to Carter and he raised his chief pilot on the communications scanner, ‘Alan. They’re coming your way.’

‘That I know, Commander. We have them on screen.’

‘Computer can give you performance data.’

He was looking across at Bergman and got a quick nod as he went on, ‘Processing attack data now. Take any chance. Fire as you bear.’

‘Will do.’

Other data was crowding Koenig’s network. A task force of moon buggies was outside, sealing off the broken limbs and Kano reported, ‘Airlock doors to pad four holding now at travel point fourteen.’ Morrow chipped in, ‘Damage control units already in that area.’

‘All right. I want damage reports on the launch pads and the Maintenance Section. Check minimum countdown to get the last laser-armed Eagle into action.’

It was all he could do and he was free to make a call which he had wanted to make for some time past. Helena Russell answered the buzz, wide spaced eyes level and serious, running the back of a glove across her forehead to clear a swathe of honey blonde hair.

‘Helena?’—It was a pleasure even to use her name, ‘Give me a casualty report.’

‘Apart from Eagle crews, we’ve lost all technicians on launch pad four. Eleven other casualties so far checked in. Two men unaccounted for.’

‘Unaccounted for?’

‘Believed to have been pulled out when the corridor blew. John, what happened?’

‘It’s war.’

Sandra was speaking into his ear and he released the key.

‘Eagles at orbital reference three two six. Hawks at three one nine and closing.’

Kano had already asked his computer and added, ‘Laser range in two minutes five.’

Koenig conjured Carter up, ‘They’re moving towards you from three one nine, Alan. Within range in two minutes.’

A stickler for truth Kano said, ‘And four seconds.’

Koenig repeated it, ‘And four seconds, like the man says. We’ll pass you all the data we can get. There’s only you between Moonbase and them. God knows it was never built as a fortress. We’re relying on you. Good luck.’

Carter stuck up a bulky thumb. Events were crowding him. Dead ahead, three Hawks in a racing arrowhead were closing fast. He called his Eagles and copied the oncoming formation.

‘Leader to Flight One. We did it before. We can do it again. One each as they come. Fire as you have range. If they pass there’s no home for a landfall.’

He shut his visor with a definitive click. He reckoned he should have had a headscarf flying back like a pennant and black goggles.

Main Mission watched the gap narrow. They saw streamers of brilliant light flare out like lances and the left marker of the Eagle flight was instant débris.

They heard Carter snarl ‘Split, Eagle Two,’ and the two survivors diverged in a V as they streaked outside the Hawk squadron.

As he passed, Carter slewed his laser, saw a Hawk plumb on the hair grid of his target finder and shoved down the fire stud. The Hawk was a wreck, carved through the underbelly and ripping into flailing fragments.

Koenig breathed, ‘Good, Alan,’ and checked. He had spoken too soon. The remaining Hawks had spun round incredibly fast to converge on Eagle Two and took it in crossfire that turned it to incandescent junk in a nanosecond.

Carter, beating the last fraction of urge out of his labouring Eagle, had flung it in a turn that brought one of the triumphant Hawks slap in his sights. He was boring down on it with his thumb locked on the firing stud and saw it shatter in a million flying fragments. He hauled away to clear the débris but there was no chance.

Johnson strained back in his straps as they ploughed in with vibrations running the length of the ship and noise notching to a crescendo.

‘We’ve bought it!’

‘It’s the main power pack.’

‘We’re breaking up!’

‘Cut power,’—Carter held them, and they floated, cruising without power in a sudden silence.

‘We’re a sitting duck.’

Carter flipped switches. Lights, controls, power went dead. He said, ‘Maybe they’ll leave us as a sheer hulk.’

Inside Main Mission, Morrow said, ‘No contact with Flight One Leader.’

It was quick and it was over. There was a stunned silence all round.

Koenig said, ‘We’re wide open. What’s the Sit Rep on the last Eagle?’

‘Elevator jammed.’

There was no longer any area of choice. Koenig hit a button for an all-sections call, ‘Hear this. Evacuate all non-essential surface installations as of now.’

His voice echoed tinnily round the medicentre where Helena Russell and Bob Mathias were working together on a patient in deep shock. They heard him go on ‘Bulkheads will close in thirty seconds.’

To his Main Mission staff, he said, ‘Paul, Sandra, David—I need you here. The rest of you, get below.’

There was an orderly race for the emergency bunkers. Victor Bergman stood fast. Koenig said, ‘You too, Victor.’

For a second it looked as though he would have a one man mutiny, but then Bergman heaved himself from the computer spread and moved slowly in the wake of the others.

They were doing their best, but to Koenig’s eye it was slow motion as the remaining Hawk came in with a bright lance searching out from its cone.

Main Mission shook to its foundations. Lights flickered and winked out, spot fires glowed on every console as circuitry melted out. Koenig, Morrow, Sandra and David Kano were flat to the deck holding on in a sliding smash.