Luna Marine(43)

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.”