Fiction River: Moonscapes, page 11
“And I assume no blowing the thing apart before it enters Trans-Galactic speed?” Brian asked.
“They found the most stable hunk of rock I’ve ever seen,” Kip said, and Marion nodded.
“It would take an entire fleet of ships,” Kip said, sounding disgusted, “pounding it with all weapons, and I doubt that even that much would make more than a dent.”
They all three sat there in silence.
Brian just kept looking around, looking at his young body, at his command crew’s young bodies. Somehow they had made it out here, to this exact location in space.
He looked at Kip. “Who is driving the moon?”
“No one will be on the moon,” Kip said.
“So who drives us when we come out here,” Brian asked. “to exact coordinates, with our Trans-Galactic drives?”
Marion frowned and turned back to her board.
Kip did the same thing.
You don’t just send a ship hurtling through more miles of space than Brian wanted to think about without something or someone driving. Even with top shields, you didn’t want to plow holes through things along the way that didn’t need holes in them.
So that transport ship from Earth had someone driving it, controlling it, from somewhere.
And that moon would have someone driving all the way to Earth. One planet that far away was far, far too small a target to hit from this distance without a number of course corrections along the way.
“Computers,” Marion finally said. “Each transport we take out here is run by a computer to do course corrections.”
“Through sensors, the computer is able to see the route ahead,” Kip said, “and make corrections to avoid the transport putting a hole in a planet or moon or anything else along the way.”
“So there is a computer on that moon somewhere?” Brian asked. “We know where?”
“Buried with the Trans-Galactic drive engines,” Marion said.
“Damn,” Kip said, clearly getting angry. “They thought of everything.”
“Not everything,” Brian said, smiling. “Is the moon rotating in any fashion?”
Kip and Marion both looked puzzled at him, then quickly checked.
“No,” Marion said. “It couldn’t rotate and maintain its TG drive thrust.”
“So we blind it,” Brian said. “Tough to hit anything without being able to see.”
“The computer sensors,” Kip said, laughing. “Of course, they would have to be hidden on the front side of the moon to feed the computer.”
“And I’ll wager those sensors are not hardwired into that computer,” Brian said. “Not through that much rock.”
Marion laughed, the first time Brian had heard that for some time. “What are you thinking, Captain?”
Brian sat back, his hands behind his head.
“How about we feed those computers in that moon some bad targeting information, something simple such as the location of a Dog military base.”
“Oh, that will annoy them something awful,” Kip said, laughing so hard tears were coming to his eyes.
Marion informed all the other ships of the idea and then all three of them set to work on exactly where on that moon those sensors would be planted and how to intercept the signal from the surface sensors to the moon’s targeting computer.
Four
The moon was fast approaching the EPL border when Command gave the clearance to try their plan. It had been a scientist on Dot’s ship who had finally cracked the Dog computer code between the moon targeting computer and the sensors.
And it had been a scientist on yet another warship who had figured out how to intercept the signals from the sensors.
They would need to have a ship in tight over each of the six sensors on the moon and the intercept signal would have to be sent at exactly the same moment to all sensors.
In essence, the control of the moon was going to be transferred to Brian. He and Kip and Marion were going to turn the moon just before it started into Trans-Galactic drive and fire it at a Dog military base.
And then destroy the targeting computer by feeding it a very nasty virus.
That moon would wipe out that Dog base and then head out into deep space at full TG drive. The engines would have to fail before that moon dropped back into normal space a very, very long ways away from this entire galaxy.
At least that was the plan.
But there was one major problem with the plan that Brian didn’t much like. Six EPL ships would have to basically hover in close over the moon to intercept the signal from each sensor and relay the signal to his ship and then, in turn, take the new instructions and feed them back into the sensors.
Dot and her ship would be one of those in close.
And they would have to stay in close during the moon’s turn and then somehow get a safe distance away when the moon jumped to Trans-Galactic drive.
It was going to take exact timing. Just a second or two of delay and a warship would be lost.
And if one warship didn’t stay in close enough, all six sensors wouldn’t feed the computer the right data and there was no telling what might happen.
Brian sat back in his chair, trying to keep his nerves under control as they waited the last ten minutes. He knew everyone was busy checking and double-checking the plan. He had talked with Dot privately thirty minutes before, telling her to be careful and that he loved her.
She just laughed that wonderful, young laugh of hers, and said, “Trust me, I’m not missing the dancing tonight for anything.”
Dot loved to dance, more than anything in life it seemed at times.
And he loved to dance with her.
“Moon crossing the border now, Captain,” Marion said.
Brain nodded to Kip who opened a fleet-wide communications link.
“Move into positions now.”
On the screen in front of him, Brian could see the six other EPL warships with their sleek noses and wing-like appearance move as one, turning toward the large moon and matching speed with it. EPL warships had been designed to look like birds not only to allow them atmospheric flight if needed, but because in so many of the cultures the EPL fought against, birds were feared.
Including with the Dogs.
Brain kept the Bad Business outside and above the group, moving with them to match the speed of the moon.
Then, almost as a practiced dance in space, the six ships broke away from each other and moved in over an area of the large moon.
The closer the moon got, Brian could see that it did look a great deal like their moon at home. It had no atmosphere and was covered with impact craters. And it was just about the same size.
Brian took the Bad Business in right over the center of the moon and matched its speed and acceleration to stay in position.
“Thirty seconds,” Marion said.
“Signal when in position,” Brian ordered the other ships.
Each ship had to hover no more than a football field length above the surface where the sensor was, and match the increasing speed of the moon at the same time.
Very, very tricky flying and a slight miss and the EPL warship would crash into the moon’s surface, or be too far away to intercept the signal.
Brian could see the Blooming Rose turn and settle into its assigned position above the moon surface. Dot would be flying it. She had one of the steadiest hands at the helm of a ship that he had ever seen.
Three other warships signaled ready.
Then Dot signaled The Blooming Rose was in position and steady.
“Ready here,” Brian said, checking to make sure his people were ready with the computer download and new signal into the moon’s computer.
At the same moment the other two ships reported they were in position and stable.
“Hold and be ready to turn with the moon,” Brian said.
“Intercept signal,” Brian ordered the other ships.
As one all turned green that they had the sensor signal.
Then he turned to Marion. “Feed it.”
Her fingers flew over the panel and the new programming for the Dog’s computer was fed through all six sensors.
An instant later the moon started to turn off its course for Earth.
“Stay with it, everyone,” Brian commanded to the other ships as he moved the Bad Business to maintain position and keep the feed to the other ships constant.
The moon kept turning and somehow the EPL warships held their positions.
“We got some swearing and close calls,” Kip said, “but everyone’s holding.
“Ten more seconds,” Marion said. “And the virus will be loaded.”
At five seconds Brian counted it down for the other captains.
“Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”
Marion signaled cut.
“Get out of there now!” Brian shouted to the other pilots.
As one, the other pilots moved their ships up and away from the rough surface of the moon.
Brian had the Bad Business moving with them, pushing the ship as fast as he could to try to reach a safe distance.
Twenty seconds later the moon vanished into Trans-Galactic drive space, headed back into the Dog’s territory and right for a large military base.
“Clear,” Kip said. “All ships made it out of the wash zone from the drive.”
Brian slumped in his chair, just smiling as both Kip and Marion applauded and laughed.
Somehow, Earth had dodged that moon.
Barely.
Five
Captain Brain Saber looked down into the wonderful brown eyes of Captain Dorothy Dot Leeds and smiled. “One more dance?”
She laughed, the sound high and wonderful and something he needed to remember in the long days and nights at the nursing home. “Our bus back to the home is going to leave without us.”
“Let it,” he said, pulling her close and enjoying the feel of her against him. Since they had turned the moon weapon back on the Dogs, the general had allowed all seven EPL warships to dock at Stevens Base for some well-deserved time off while in younger bodies.
Brian and Dot had spent the first night dancing, then in his room on the base. The next day they had spent in meetings with the general and others, then dancing more that evening, then back to her room for the night.
The General had approved their application to move to Stevens in a very short time, be married, and work front-line there with their ships and any crew that wanted to join them, based out of Stevens.
As the General said, it was about time they had a staffed base full of front line defenders. He wanted Brian to lead the wing of fighters. The EPL would still bring many in from Earth when needed, but a number based out on the edge of the frontier would be a good idea.
But until that was fully approved, Brian and Dot now had to go back to Earth and the Shady Hills Nursing Home.
With one last dance, they kissed and walked hand-in-hand to the transport, not saying anything.
He kissed Dot one more time at her cabin door, then with a promise from her that she would help him with his applesauce at breakfast, he went to his cabin and took off his uniform, slipping back into his old nightshirt and crawling into the coffin.
The very next thing he remembered, he was being carried by Lieutenant Magusson from his sleep chamber.
His old stroke-damaged body now part of him again.
Dot and Lieutenant Sherrie met them at the transport chamber.
Brain so wanted to reach out to touch Dot’s hand, but he could no longer move his arms hardly at all.
The cold air of the Chicago night hit him as the transport beam let them go in the nursing home center court.
Above him the golden moon was full in the crisp night air.
He stared up at it as the Lieutenant carried him toward his room.
“Not so pretty any more, is it?” Dot said.
She was right. It wasn’t.
After this mission, he wasn’t sure if he would ever look up at the moon in the same way again.
It was amazing how seeing the universe and defending Earth could change a person’s perspective on things in such a short time.
Simple things, like staring up at the moon.
Introduction to “The Moon Was Bitter and Hungry”
JC Andrijeski writes in a variety of genres. She’s currently writing a new adult series called Allie’s War that’s romantic alternative history, a dystopian series called The Slave Girl Chronicles, and the Gateshifter series about shape-shifting aliens and a tough-girl PI from Seattle. In addition, she writes nonfiction for such places as NY Press and holistic health magazines. She’ll have a story in our upcoming special edition, Crime.
She has no idea how she came up with “The Moon Was Bitter and Hungry,” but I’m certainly glad she did.
The Moon Was Bitter and Hungry
JC Andrijeski
It had waited...many years now. Too many. Far too many to count.
Mistakes had been made. It knew that.
Glaring, unfixable, unforgivable mistakes.
Mistakes that now could only wait for outside intervention to be made right, which infuriated It to no end. It had to wait for the outer world to intervene now, to give It renewed purpose, to give It something to chew on, to push against, to create friction or pressure or anything but the inertia of endless rotations on a dizzyingly dull path to nowhere, where all of the good stuff remained tantalizingly out of reach.
It hated this teasing headfuck of a purgatory, forced to watch the living planet spin mindlessly below, endlessly inviting, but unable to take even a tiny mouthful from where It hung in the sky overhead, like a slavering and desperate voyeur.
It felt like It had spent aeons like this, on an enforced hunger strike with a television smack dab in front of It, stuck only on the food network, where some mammal in a ridiculous, white, fluffy hat chopped up dead animal carcasses right in front of It, pausing only to season that carcass with dried herbs and sticky sauces before throwing the whole mess on the grill to belch dense, aroma-filled smoke.
It could almost smell the thing, cooking.
It didn’t have a lot to do, so It watched a lot of television.
Really, the advent of television and the satellites buzzing around like annoying, blinking insects, belching their inane chatter and flashing, coma-inducing images should have improved things for It.
It didn’t.
This moon, this horrid rock, could not have been worse picked.
***
The mistakes It made were threefold, really.
One, It miscalculated the level of advancement of the dominant species of the planet associated with the moon itself. Namely, It thought they were on the verge of space exploration, when really, they were barely above cave painting trolls.
So yeah, bad research.
That coupled with a splash of arrogance, impatience...and possibly just run of the mill, home-grown and sheer stupidity.
Two, It waited far, far too long to travel from the previous planet It devoured in that particular solar system...meaning, the shiny, red one, the one the mammals now called Mars, after one of their war gods, an unfair name if It ever heard one. It waited too, too long, napping there, enjoying Its fill with a bit too much smug satisfaction. It should have immediately moved on to the yummy blue one, particularly since that blue planet was the last one worth eating before It took off looking for a new system to devour.
So yes, It waited far too long...thus making it impossible to reach the blue planet in one go without making a quick pit stop at the blue planet’s solitary moon. Back then, that moon had been a nice pink and green color, and a perfectly delicious-looking snack.
And that moon had been. Delicious, that is.
Which was all well and good, and would have been fine, sure.
But then, It made Its third mistake.
It fell asleep for too long after eating that snack.
When It woke up, It found Itself too weak to make the final leap to that tantalizingly close and extremely meal-able looking blue and white world, at least without risking being pulled apart in space like a hand-sparkler when it tried to cross over that nasty, crispy atmosphere that the blue planet held around itself like some kind of electric blanket of death.
So yeah, stupidity piled upon stupidity telescoping Its options down to a few aeons of mind-numbing boredom and hunger.
Many, many rotations had gone by since It found Itself in this mess.
But It had few options. It needed outside intervention.
So It waited.
And It waited some more.
It watched television. In those first few decades, It enjoyed I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke as particular favorites, although It got a fair bit of pleasure out of the advertisements as well, and the occasional episode of The Twilight Zone, although It could scarcely comprehend the last of these and often blew clouds of white chalk over the surface of the moon to expel Its puzzlement.
Before the advent of television even, It developed a fondness for screwing with the world’s oceans at every chance It got, back when the blue world’s mammals were more primitive and easier to freak out with mundane displays of natural force. Later, It turned sinister colors and giggled while they read portents into Its changes, thinking the end of their world was nigh...(If only they knew! It thought gleefully). Later still, It listened in on radio transmissions, then satellite phones, literally centuries of endlessly dull conversations, military movements and surveillance. It would interrupt transmissions on occasion, garbling messages at critical moments just to watch a few more of those mammals get crispy fried by their own tiny planes and dropping bombs.
Later, It watched All in the Family and The Dating Game...and decided It had a special fondness for Burt Reynolds and Lindsey Wagner.
It watched American Idol and screwed with the voting buttons. Then It chuckled and threw more chalky dust around gleefully as the mammals groused about who won.
It occasionally got into a huff and shut down cell phone reception in different regions of the world, or sent pornographic images to the Christian chat rooms and watched them type angrily at one another in cyberspace.
