Legacy (77 page)

“Can you handle things here? I think the colonel needs help,” he called to Tram, who only nodded his head and fired twice more with the M-14.

Everett stood and looked for the briefest of moments as the second mechanical robot reached the far firing line of Japanese, Polish, and Australian soldiers. It was at that moment that the men scattered to create more targets for the beast, as it struck their defensive position. All semblance of a fight between them and the terrorist element had vanished as they took on two nightmares from another time and place. Several men tossed hand grenades over their shoulders as they sprinted ahead of the mechanicians.

Everett turned and sprinted after Jack.

Collins pulled his nine-millimeter and hit two men as they rose to shoot at him. He had caught them by surprise and his bullets struck both in the chest.

As Everett watched, his vision bouncing as bad as his feet over the rough rise of stone, he saw one of the men rise once more and fire at Collins’s back. He saw Jack stagger and go down.

“Shit!” Everett said, as a round from Tram struck the badly wounded man and dropped him. But the saving shot had come too late for Jack. Everett saw another man rise up where Collins had disappeared after hitting the rocks. Carl fired from the hips and then several more rounds from Tram struck the terrorist simultaneously, dropping him cold.

Carl saw Jack rise once more, stagger forward and then fall. For Everett, all semblance of reality was vanishing fast as he realized Jack was done for.

*   *   *

Niles rubbed a hand over his balding head. He had just returned from outside, where he had witnessed the new problem they were facing—he had nearly frozen at the site of the mechanical giants that were now chasing, catching, and killing the men defending the gallery. He knew these weren’t a technology of Earth origin, so he had to believe they had been left here to either kill the ancient travelers, or they had been left here by those same Visitors, though for what reason Niles didn’t know.

Appleby slammed his hand down on the alien weapons in the vise grips. He was frustrated when they couldn’t get the coolant tube to open. As he grew more and more frustrated, it was nothing compared to what Pete, Dubois, and Ellenshaw were feeling as they tried desperately to figure out where McCabe and possibly the Germans had failed in making one of the weapons operational.

“Look, I’m telling you based on the damaged weapons we’ve seen in here that they all overheated, so it must be the liquid hydrogen they were using. Either it was not enough, or our coolant just doesn’t work with their technology,” Dubois said as he looked angrily at Ellenshaw and Golding.

“I can’t believe that. No matter where these beings came from, the liquid nitrogen would still be on their periodic table. It would be just as cold on their world as ours. It’s not the coolant but the mineral!” Ellenshaw said forcibly, as Pete nodded his head in agreement.

“You’re a freaking cryptozoologist,” the MIT professor said to Charlie. He turned and glared at Pete. “And you’re a computer expert. I think I know who has a degree of confidence here when it comes to physics, and it’s not you two. The coolant is failing!”

“Oh, so we’re tossing degrees in everyone’s face now,” Ellenshaw said as he took a menacing step toward the much smaller Dubois. Pete stepped between the two men and adjusted his glasses.

“May I remind you two that we have men dying out there?”

Charlie nodded and angrily turned away.

“Look, I agree with Charlie here. If you look in the power pack—” Pete held up the large magazine-like power source for the light weapon. “—you can see that McCabe and his scientists, and possibly the Germans also, ground up the mineral, particulate matter and all. Look here. See that? It was so hot that heat turned it to solid carbon. We have to break the mineral down into its base form, separating the energy source.” This time Golding held up a small meteorite that had been stored inside a large airtight container. “This strange metal here, see the gold and silverish flecks? We have to break that free from the particulate matter. That way the carbon won’t overheat the energy pack, causing the nitrogen not to work. It’s our only chance.”

“How do you suggest we mill it in time? As you said, we have men dying out there,” Dubois countered.

“Oh, for crying out loud!” Ellenshaw said. He snatched the small meteorite from Pete’s hand and ran to the worktable. He rummaged through the mess of tools there and found what he was looking for. “You guys at MIT spend too damn much time in the lab. You need to get out more,” he said as he brought a hammer high into the air and smashed it down on the meteorite. The small rock shattered. Pete started scrambling on the floor to pick up some of the loose debris. Charlie brought the hammer up again and smashed down with all his strength.

“Okay, I see your point,” Dubois said. He too started picking up the metal as it was freed from the rock. “We don’t have time to chip away the rest of the particulate.”

“It doesn’t matter, as long as the percentage of heavy metal is far greater than the percentage of rock. That will allow the nitrogen to cool it better and create the chain reaction. The only problem is, in order to discharge the energy buildup, we have to continuously fire the damn thing or it will blow. That’s what we don’t have the time to figure out,” Ellenshaw said. He grabbed another meteorite and started slamming the hammer into it.

“I think I’d better get out of the lab more often,” the MIT professor said.

Niles finally found the access tube for the liquid nitrogen.

“The nitrogen works in two different ways with this weapon,” he said. “It’s introduced into the power pack as the liquid active agent, and this little induction pump here forces oxygen, or air, into the magazine, thus creating the chain reaction we witnessed on the Moon. Once the buildup is achieved, we only have … hell, I don’t know how long we have, but we had better target something and shoot, or the damn thing will blow up in our hands.”

“I see,” Appleby said, finally calming down as the noise of Charlie’s hammering echoed inside the blockhouse.

“Or I should say Charlie has only so long to discharge the weapon,” Niles finished.

Ellenshaw stopped a hammer blow in midair and looked at Niles with a questioning look on his face.

“Well, you’re the one who always wants to shoot something. Here’s your chance,” Niles said and tossed Pete the empty power magazine.

“Great,” Ellenshaw said. He slammed the hammer down one last time, freeing the mineral that would either save them or blow the entire gallery into oblivion.

Either way, the battle for Columbus would soon be coming to an end.

SHACKLETON CRATER, LUNAR SURFACE

As she bounced into the first room she came to, Sarah saw she had entered an area that had offered the visitors of millions of years before a place to suit up into their environment clothing. There was an airlock, which had been destroyed by the explosion created by the Beatle, and then a large connecting room that looked as if it ran off to connect with labs and other parts of the buried complex. As she watched, a soldier bumped into her. She turned and saw General Kwan as he unloaded a full magazine of bolt-sized kinetic rounds at one of the mechanical giants. She pulled him deeper inside the room with no roof. As she did she saw one of the men, a Chinese soldier, go flying past them more than thirty feet in the air. Her eyes followed him until he vanished over the exposed roof of the bunker. She kept pulling at Kwan as he reloaded a weapon that was the equivalent of throwing rocks at a tank. Sarah let go for as long as it took to activate her COM system.

“Will, get as many of the men together as you can and get them into the bunker any way possible. Maybe we can find a level here that these things can’t squeeze into.”

There was no answer for the longest time. She once more took General Kwan by the oxygen pack and pulled him along. She had only gone a few feet when a giant hand crashed down through the strange composite material and crushed the wall nearest them. She looked up as she fell and saw the robot staring down at her and Kwan. They were had. The thing towered over them in the silent vacuum of the Moon’s atmosphere. She saw that it had no mouth, no ears, and a head that looked like some kind of buffed or stainless steel. The red eyes were like quartz crystals. It had no numbers or distinguishing marks. The gears inside its body spun, stopped, and spun some more. There were pulsating bladders protected by a series of giant metallic ribs separated by only inches. Even if they had ground-to-air missiles, she didn’t know if anything like the BGM-71 TOW system could penetrate the strange alien armor. These things were built to survive, and had done so on this hostile rock for 700 million years. As she tried to get up, the metal beast raised its steel-entwined arm into the air and leaned over the high wall of the first building. Kwan kept firing, aiming for the eyes, as he was thinking that maybe they were some sort of information-gathering device. To Sarah’s way of thinking this was right, because robots certainly didn’t need eyes for aesthetic purposes. She knew that she and the general were about to be smashed to pieces, but at that moment several dozen kinetic rounds slammed into the steel and threw the robot off balance.

Sarah saw this and pulled on Kwan harder. This time the general didn’t need much convincing. They both turned and struggled down a not too wide hallway, one that wasn’t accommodating for their bulky suits, and made their way deeper into the alien complex. As she did, she heard Will Mendenhall ordering the survivors of the attack inside from someplace where they had attacked the first robot. Thus far she didn’t know the disposition of anyone.

Sarah saw a smaller room off to her right and made for it, closely followed by the general. As Sarah turned she saw through the open roof the robot searching for the small humans who had escaped it. Then something caught its attention and it moved off, smashing the remaining roof off a building further down. As Sarah frantically looked around, trying to find something they could use to fight back with, someone’s COM system opened up and she heard a man scream. It was one of her own. She also heard Mendenhall directing fire from somewhere. Sarah had never felt so helpless in her life. The general turned and faced her. Inside his helmet she could see a determined look on his face.

“We have to get to the landing vehicles and leave the Moon. We can do no good here. The mission is over.”

Sarah looked at him with shock—
All of this to turn and run?
she thought.

“We have to bring something back,” she protested.

“Listen to me. We have the coordinates for the downed ship. That’s more than we ever hoped to get. That is heavy weaponry, Lieutenant. We have found what we came for, but if we don’t get off the Moon it will be for nothing. We cannot fight these things. We don’t have the firepower.”

Sarah saw the general’s point. If they remained, no one would ever know about the warship in the dust, and no one would know what they needed to fight these things.

“Okay, I’ll agree that we have to get off the moon, but how the hell are we going to get past these things?” she countered.

“That, Lieutenant McIntire, is the problem we face.”

“How far is your LEM?” she asked. She felt a sharp vibration as one of the two creatures struck somewhere close by. As she ducked, she saw several of the boltlike rounds rip into the wall opposite of their position. She knew then that they still had men close by.

“That is what I was thinking. Our lander is actually closer, as you Americans are fond of saying, as the crow flies. If we follow the valley just to the left of Shackleton, on the east side, we would have cover all the way to
Magnificent Dragon.
If I could get half of the men into that small valley and follow the terrain, not exposing ourselves to these creatures, we may make it all the way to our LEM. If we don’t use the radio, we have a chance; I don’t think they can track us without the use of electronic signals.”

“I was thinking the same thing. I believe that’s how they hunt. They were probably sent here seeking out human life to destroy. As soon as Mendenhall used his radio rather than his suit-to-suit COM, one of those things attacked.”

“Well, that’s one theory, and for now I’ll accept it, Lieutenant. So now the question is, how do we communicate?”

“Mendenhall to McIntire, where are you?” the voice came over the radio.

Sarah hit her COM switch. “We’re in the first set of buildings on the west side. We have a—” Sarah realized too late that she was doing exactly what she had said they couldn’t do. Instead of the line-of-sight transmission of a suit-to-suit call, Will had used his radio COM system to contact her. The next sound she heard coming through Will’s system was him shooting and she looked up just as hundreds of kinetic rounds flew upward from somewhere to her right.

“Damn!” the general said. “Listen, to all who can hear my voice,” he said, taking a chance on using the radio. “Get to the center of this complex. We’ll meet there. Now move!”

Kwan angled out of the small room and chanced the hallway that had no roof. Sarah followed and saw one of the metal monsters as it disappeared over the high wall of the building they were in.

“Look!” Sarah said, hitting Kwan of the back. They both stopped, one running into the other as they saw the ramp leading down. At that moment, several men appeared ahead of her. She saw a white-colored NASA suit in the lead. It was Mendenhall and he had several American, European, and Chinese troops with them.