***
“Nobody has ever had to fight a war like this one,” General Davis muttered. He sat at a monitor in the command center with Holly Lewis, Paul MacIlvain and several of his junior staff, waiting to have a first look at a videotape feed Lewis had pulled in from a National Guard unit at Fort Peck Reservoir. The signal had traveled to them via two mobile relay units and was pretty broken up. It was taking some time to get it unscrambled by NORAD’s central processing computers. The screen was blank, giving Davis a minute to reflect glumly on the situation.
“How do you fight an enemy shooting at you from Phaeon Crater? Every twenty-four hours the earth rotates like a giant rotisserie. When the moon is overhead we get blasted.”
“On the other hand,” Lewis replied, “every time we rotate away from the moon we’ll be out of the beam’s reach for twelve hours. So we have to keep our heads down from moonrise to moonset, but we should be free to maneuver the rest of the time.”
Davis nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. We can carry out operations above ground for twelve hours each day without risk from Phaeon. I foresee a peculiar geometry to this war, a kind of rhythm. As long as our enemy is in a fixed position on the moon, we know exactly when they’re going to be overhead every day. Trouble is, each time Phaeon comes overhead, everybody outside has to come in and everything exposed at the surface gets another dose of high-energy neutrons, or positrons or whatever is in that beam. The whole mountaintop is already a cinder. Whoever’s up there knows this site is a threat and something to pound on.”
“And just what is up there, Mac?” asked Lewis. “I know it’s been your job to monitor the secret missions on the moon, but those missions were too highly classified for my ranking. Given the circumstances, maybe it’s time you dished a little info.”
“Go ahead Mac,” Davis agreed. “It’s always made me uncomfortable having more than one level of security at NORAD, anyway. I think those days are gone.”
“Okay, sir,” Mac said with none of the arrogance he had exuded for years. “Where to begin? Ahh, well, the complex at Phaeon is as big as a good-sized city. There’s no telling how much military presence might have been assembled there in the two years since we lost contact with Recon One. What I got from the last update interview with John Lindmark, the commander of Recon One, was that they hadn’t even entered—let alone studied—more than half of the Phaeon complex.”
“But who was there,” Lewis pressed him. “That’s what I want to know.”
Mac sighed. “Nobody.”
“Nobody? How do you figure?”
“The astronauts never found any evidence of any living being, even though they surveyed hundreds of chambers and corridors. The place was laid out for occupants but no one was there, dead or alive.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Lewis wondered if Mac were still hiding something, but the old deceptive look was gone from his face.
“It would make sense,” he suggested, “if their intent was to occupy it later, somehow. There were big storehouses full of raw materials for life support: salts, phosphates, nitrates, carbonates, you name it. All the raw chemical materials for growing plants or animals, millions of tons.”
“Combine that with the DNA information on the computers,” said Davis, “and you could create just about any plant or animal you wanted, assuming your cloning technology was advanced enough.”
Mac nodded. “A reconstitutible army. Just add water.”
Lewis shook her head. “Why would anyone create such a cockamamie system? Why leave the place unoccupied? Why didn’t they just come to earth and set up shop?”
“That seems reasonable,” Mac replied, “unless earth was not such a nice place to be. When the asteroid hit, theory has it the planet was uninhabitable for centuries.”
“So they left a reconstitutible army on the moon?”
“Right, in case they had to fight to get the earth back.”
“But an army of what?”
“That’s what I hope to find out right now,” Davis interjected. “Have you got that video yet?”
“Any second.” Lewis eyed the screen uncertainly. It was still blank.
“In the meantime,” Davis continued, “what other news have you gotten from your communications network? For instance, have you been able to locate any Air Force capability?”
“Air Force, sir, seems to have been hit hardest of all the services. It’s pretty tough to hide aircraft and hangars. The beam’s hit them everywhere. Right now I can’t locate a functional training aircraft, let alone a fighter or a bomber. Crews, yes, but they’ve got no aircraft.”
“Still no nukes?” Davis asked. “Have you found any intact missiles?”
“Like before, all strategic missiles seem to have been blown up in their silos without nuclear contamination.”
“Clever devils, aren’t they?” Davis muttered. “They don’t want to mess up the place too badly while they’re taking us out.”
Lewis nodded. “I did some statistics on their targeting pattern, sir. Looks like they’re hitting every military target the size of a boxcar or bigger. They must have some good telescopes up there. If it was us, we’d be hard pressed to see that much detail from so far away.”
“Navy,” Davis continued. “What’s the status of the Navy?”
“Not well known, sir. Fleets at sea were ordered to disperse and maintain radio silence when things started up. They are either doing that or—”
“Or they’ve been destroyed.”
“No way to know right now, sir.”
“Submarines?”
“Those in port are toasted. Those at sea may still be with us, but we’ve lost contact.”
“Army?” asked Davis. “They must have something useful left.”
“They’ve taken a heavy beating everywhere sir, about like you saw at Fort Carson. Every base we managed to contact is heavily damaged. That includes equipment, supply depots, headquarters, communications, anything useful to a combat force. People are okay for the most part, but there’s precious little left to fight with. Just isolated pieces of equipment.”
“What about National Guard? They’re a decentralized operation.”
“Yes, sir. But just about unarmed. They kicked into action pretty well when the President declared the state of emergency this morning. We’re using them as communications organizers on the ground but we can’t count on them for much firepower. We’ll need them for civilian relief, anyway.”
Davis nodded. “We’ve got a major obligation there, haven’t we?”
“Yes, sir. Word from most big cities isn’t good. Things are pretty shook up. Power’s out, communication’s down, riots and panic in a few places but mostly people are real quiet. Scared.”
“Any cities under attack?”
“No, sir. Worst problems are power outages everywhere. An odd thing about that—the beam’s been cutting power transmission lines, but not hitting power generating facilities or networking stations. Like they want the power system intact.”
“Maybe so the can use it once we’ve been neutralized.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking.”
“Is there a lot of public hysteria?”
“Some, but not too bad. National Guard got a jump on it. They’re trying to stabilize the situation.”
“So Phaeon hasn’t been attacking cities, just their power lines and military targets?”
“Right. They’ve been sparing human life in general. Don’t know why, but once we get back on our feet we’re gonna have a logistics nightmare trying to feed everybody.”
“Once we get back on our feet,” Davis repeated. “I wonder when that will be?” He patted Lewis on the shoulder. “Good work getting as much information as you have.”
“Thank you, sir. Hasn’t been easy. Phaeon’s taken out radio and TV stations whether they were on the air or not, under cloud cover or clear skies, almost as if they knew right where to shoot. Looks like they’ve already mapped out everythin
g that transmits on a radio frequency and they’re just making the rounds—cell phone towers, TV stations, our communications complex on top of this mountain, everything except a few installations that haven’t broadcast in a coon’s age.”
“So we’ve got at least some outside assets to work with?”
“Yes, sir. Phaeon doesn’t seem to know about anything that hasn’t been broadcasting. Some installations may be too small to actually see from up there. With no signal to home in on, they’ve been overlooked.
“How many?”
“Too soon to tell. Minimal, but we’re spreading the word. Got truckers on CB radios, some ham operators and anything that’s moved around in the last couple of days—mobile transmitters, that sort of thing. The place where they used to be may have been hit but not their new location. As long as they don’t broadcast when Phaeon is in the sky—”
The computer console beeped. “Okay,” she said. “This should be it.”
A snowy videotaped image appeared on the screen, shaky and out of focus. The camera panned across an arid countryside under a blue sky, following an object streaking through the atmosphere. As the object neared the camera, it resolved into a gigantic double-tailed glider made of silver metal. It rapidly descended over the blue waters of a lake.
“Fort Peck Reservoir,” she narrated. “It’s the largest body of water in Montana. Still not obvious why they picked Montana as their primary landing site in America but so far twelve craft have landed at Fort Peck.”
The alien ship skimmed the water’s surface and then disappeared into a wall of white spray thrown up by its touchdown. When the spray cleared the ship was floating on the glassy surface of the lake.
“So that’s the way they’re doing it,” Davis muttered. “Belly-flopping those big gliders on bodies of water.”
The video followed the spacecraft as it slowly approached the far shore of the lake and pulled in beside several identical craft and lowered a ramp from beneath its nose. Immediately it began disembarking cargo onto the shore. Although detail was lost in the distance, the forms were those of large animals, some of them unmistakably dinosaurian. There were long-necked things bigger than elephants, horned dinosaurs, duckbills, armored dinosaurs and interspersed among the larger animals, forms too small to make out at such a great distance. The animals moved off the ramp and scattered into the surrounding landscape in pairs or small groups.
“It’s like Noah’s ark for Godzilla,” Davis murmured.
The video zoomed in on an object smaller than the big dinosaurs, standing near the ramp and just visible under the nose of the landing craft. It was an odd out-of-focus shape, two-legged, with a metallic glint to it. “It seems to be driving the larger creatures away from the ship,” Davis mused. “What is it, anyway?”
“No idea,” Lewis replied. “Seems to be directing traffic so I’d guess it’s the brains behind this operation. It looks like a robot or a mechanical device of some kind, about the size of a tank.”
The video ended and the screen blanked, leaving Davis shaking his head. “Well, that’s just fine and dandy, isn’t it? They’ve landed out in the middle of nowhere and I guess we should be glad they aren’t right here on our doorstep. But it’s only a matter of time until these guys start making a nuisance of themselves.” He got up from his chair and began pacing. “I hope none of you plan to get much sleep in the foreseeable future. Go out and get a cup of coffee, take a pee, get fed, whatever, but I want you back here by twenty-one hundred hours. And I want some ideas, folks, bright ideas. We’ve got to use whatever assets we can muster—National Guard, police, you name it—anything that can roll or fly. The time is coming when we’ll have to take this battle to the enemy. We’ve got to start thinking offense, not defense. We can gather information on just how bad our situation is until hell freezes over. But if we’re going to do anything other than wait here and arrange a surrender, you’ve got to find me some way of fighting back.”