America One: War of the Worlds (47 page)

Saturn was fast and hit one seconds before Michael Price got the second, and they headed over the horizon as
America Two
opened up at the outgoing craft. They were still out of any real range, and Kathy hoped the enemy ship would rise up to attack her. She was right.

Maggie took
SB-IV
down rapidly and landed behind a slight rocky rise the computers stated was half a mile from the last gun placement. Lunar had headed over for her third pass, the laser gun placement hadn’t fired, Michael didn’t get an explosion, and
SB-V
went vertical behind the five climbing enemy ships.

VIN, already inside the docking port, and feet off from the surface was already opening the outer hatch. He closed it and within seconds, Mars was climbing into the port and a minutes later he floated gently down from the wing and not realizing the lack of gravity bounced twenty feet high to join his father behind what looked like a lightly-colored rocky outcrop.

They watched as
SB-VI
rose, rapidly turned and headed upwards and away from the
Matt
base like a helicopter dropping troops.

“We have very little gravity, be careful and tread lightly,”
VIN told his son.
“This gravity is less than on DX2014.

They peered over the top of the outcrop and saw what looked like a blue shield in the distance about 600 yards away. It wasn’t that easy to see it, as the colors of the planet’s surface wasn’t black, or grey like the asteroids or planets, but was more of a pink sandy color.

Three more Matt ships floated out of three different places the same distance and headed spaceward after Lunar. Only SB-V was in communications range. Maggie and the mother ship were over the horizon. The space above the planet’s surface seemed alive with light. It certainly wasn’t all sunlight.

“VIN to Astronauts, three more ships heading up.”

“Copy VIN, will look out for them and relay to the others,”
replied Michael Price. VIN heard him get his message to the other two ships, as
SB-V
headed away somewhere and the radio went quiet.

The two men carefully headed towards the blue shield. Where the ships had exited from, both had seen the telltale signs of more blue shields, and five minutes later they saw two tiny explosions slightly larger than bight stars high above them, and Saturn giving out the good news.

As it was always in a spacesuit, there was no noise, or anything apart from any light entering the helmet visor from outside, or radio communications from inside the suit. Both men carefully looked around every few steps, their hand lasers at the ready.

Both carried sacks in their left hands, explosives and even a few old fashioned hand grenades in VIN’s pack he had stashed away since the early days. Mars had seen them, and had asked what the six baseball-size balls of steel were.

They reached a round blackened area forty feet across. Both men could see that it had once been a type of weapon pointing upwards, it was a blackened slither of metal, and the explosion had been from a blue shield exploding.

“Mars and I are in the blast area, do not fire at the base, over.”

“Copy that,”
stated all three ships’ pilots now high above them. Saturn had been telling Lunar that she had got one when VIN came up on radio.

“Two more up here and the skies are clear,”
added Saturn.

The fifth blue shield was 50 yards away, and they headed in that direction, the surface of the planet dark around them. VIN made sure that he and Mars were not silhouettes against the lighter area of space around the planet by making sure that they higher ground behind them. Their silver suits blended in well with the landscape. Inside the blue shield, they could see two
Matts
handling some sort of ten foot long weapon, its end was sticking out of the shield wall. The blue shield was just big enough to fit in the men and the weapon, and VIN slunk in behind the men and just had enough room to get his body in before one of the men turned to face a silver helmeted spacesuit giant two feet higher than he was.

VIN was fast, and very strong for a half-metal person, and before Mars could slip through the blue wall, VIN had connected both
Matts
on the head hard with his sack of explosives. He was sure the hand grenades had helped send the two small
Matts
to sleep.

Instinctively Mars crouched as the explosives hit the second man a split second after hitting the first. His father used a lot of power in the swing, and both
Matts
slipped to the ground and lay very still.

As the second man gently fell to the floor, a large cavern door began to open in the flat ground twenty yards from where they were standing, and the blueness of another interior blue shield lightened the light surface.

“I think more ships are exiting,”
stated Mars over his radio.
“Fifth ground unit is ours for future use. VIN is going to try and use their own weapon on their own craft.”

“Copy that 70 miles from target, both shuttles coming in at low level, will get them if you guys can’t. Tell us when we can enter the fight, over
,” replied his mother-in-law.

Three more ships exiting from the cavern, we don’t know if there are more exit doors out there. Hard to see from zero altitude, over.” stated Mars.

“Sorry I can’t figure out how to work this thing,”
added VIN.
“You guys up there go ahead, there is a metal hatch into the base next to the weapon. Just don’t kill the shield. Mars let us make ourselves welcome.”

As VIN said that two lines of laser light appeared from over the horizon and a massive blast lit up the planet’s surface a few hundred feet directly above them. VIN pulled Mars into the shield as parts of hot metal began ricocheting against the wall of the blue shield.

They quickly prepared to enter the vertical ladder down into the bowls of the planet, and lights were dimmed as a second explosion suddenly lit up the surface of the planet above, and the horizontal door began to slowly close.

It was dim when they entered the large cavern one after the other on a metal ladder that dropped down to the surface forty feet below. They were pretty much invisible behind a slatted metal protection tube around the ladder, and they could see more spacecraft being prepared in the wide cavern below. As fast as they could they scaled down the long ladder, both feeling vulnerable.

“Third bogey is history”
stated Penny Burgos far too loudly from
America Two
over their helmet intercoms and nearly made VIN fall the remaining ten feet. He wouldn’t have hurt himself as the gravity was extremely weak.

VIN looked around as he reached the floor while Mars waited above him, still hidden by the metal shield.

“What do we do now, Dad?”
Mars asked.

“I don’t know, trash the place,”
replied VIN as his attention was diverted to the cavern wall right next to their position.
“Look! There are hangar doors in the cavern walls. One has just opened. Go up ten feet Mars, I need to hide.”

Through the open slats in the metal work, both men watched as a robot pulled out what seemed the last
Matt
spacecraft from a hole in the cavern wall. The area the spacecraft was pulled out of did not have a blue shield, there were no
Matts
in the long tunnel like cavern that stretched into the planet for at least a couple of hundred feet. It seemed the robot was pulling out the last aircraft in that tunnel, as another three ships in the cavern, and inside the blue shield lifted off as the large cavern door opened above them.

“Three more enemy ships exiting in about 30 seconds,”
started VIN into his intercom. “
Don’t explode the blue shield Lunar, or Mars and I will be toast, over.”

“Copy that,”
replied Lunar.
“Setting up for a fly pass, 48 miles out. No bogeys up here VIN. Maggie will be coming over horizon in about 60 seconds. These guys are timing it perfectly for us, over.”

“It looks like there are three more bogeys after this flight about to exit, and they are out of reserves. I want to try and save the last three Matt ships so that we can have a space force here until we get new ships, over.”

VIN continued watching as the three ships exited spaceward, leaving the floor area for the last three to be pulled out of three separate storage tunnels. Under robotic power, they entered into the blue shields filling the large cavern and six
Matts
walked towards the ships to pilot their craft.

“Have the three ships visual,”
stated Lunar from above. That gave VIN the information he was wanting. He took his laser off safety, pulled Mars’s spacesuit leg to tell him to follow, and made his move.

VIN Noble walked in the direction of the pilots. They seemed to be the only
Matts
in the cavern. He was sure that the cavern was being controlled from the command center, and he didn’t know if they had any forms of video or not, but he took his chances.

The six pilots did not see him until he ordered them to stop in
Matt
telepathically.

He was quite surprised that they did, and looked around to see him approaching at least 70 feet away. It had been a long time since he, or Mars had actually thought to a
Matt
. On Mars they had seemed to have been able to suppress any telepathic communications. Here it seemed back to normal.

“Who are you ugly ones. You are very tall, and not wearing a blue suit?”
one of the
Matts
questioned the two large and silver-colored forms walking towards them. All six pilots were looking at the two forms in ungainly silver suits approach them. The
Matt
pilots seemed unafraid and arrogant.

“We are the Tall People from Earth destroying your space craft up there. We destroyed your bases and we will destroy this base and all of you unless you give it to us, now!”
VIN ordered.

The six pilots turned and ran for the command center, as a robot suddenly headed towards them from the same area. With ease VIN and Mars halted it in its tracks with two laser bursts.

As the pilots ran for cover, there was a bright light from above and as the cavern door to outer space closed, pieces of spacecraft bounced off the blue shield roof above them. VIN and Mars couldn’t run in their suits, so they headed for cover in-between the three spacecraft sitting ready for launch.

Two more robots on what looked like riding tank tracks headed out from the command center area, VIN and Mars didn’t hesitate, and whatever these robots were, melted to a halt.

Suddenly they knew what the
Matts
were doing, as the blue shields, five of them covering the cavern began to get smaller. These
Matts
didn’t understand that the enemy wore real spacesuits.

The two men waited until the blue shields had totally disappeared and then VIN walked towards where he knew the cavern door opener was and pushed the red panel. The large cavern door began to open.

“All astronauts, it seems we have an inside conflict between Mars and me, and the remaining Matts. Mars and I are going to try and fly out two of their ships. The blue shield is gone. They are trying to kill us by retracting the atmosphere. Do not, I repeat do not engage any future enemy ships exiting the open cavern with no blue shield, over.”

“We copy that Mars. I’ll relay your message to the mother ship and SB-V.”
replied Maggie.
“We have one bogey left up here, and we’ll await your exit. There are no other exit places we have seen from up here, over.”

“I wonder what those little robots do?”
Mars asked VIN as he opened the underfloor door to one of the three
Matt
ships.

“I learned a long time ago never to ask a Rottweiler, or a Pit Bull whether he is going to bite me or not,”
replied VIN doing the same.
“I bet they either bite or fry you.”

“What is a Rottweiler or a Pit Bull?”
asked Mars getting into the forward cockpit and closing the door and its attached flight seat he was sitting in. As usual he was squashed into the forward cockpit, but, like his father, he had flown
Matt
ships for hundreds of hours, and these Ceres ships looked identical to the Earth
Matt
ships.

“An Earth dog,”
replied VIN remembering that his son had lived much of his young life away from planet Earth.

“Using telepathic thought they warmed up the alcohol-driven
Matt
engines, and VIN noticed that the cavern door was closing above them. He turned the ship towards where he knew the command center to be and mentally fired his ship’s maser.

The whole cavern exploded into green, red and blue flashes of at looked like lightning bolts, and sparks flew everywhere. The wall where the command center was literally melted, part of the wall opened up, there were explosions behind the wall, and the door suddenly stopped moving.

Before the
Matts
could close them in, he launched and headed through the gap and out into the blackness of space as the cavern went pitch dark. Mars was a few seconds behind.

“Mars, land where we were dropped off by Saturn, then we go back in,” VIN ordered his son.

He brought his ship down, and within a minute had the door open and he was stepping out of the tight seat as Mars landed a hundred feet away.

This time, as they reached the surface gun platform there was no blue shield, but the hatch opened to let them in as VIN pulled it open manually.

“Leave your helmet light off. This time we go down in the dark,”
VIN told Mars.
“Son, you fly the third ship out and await my orders. I’ll check what is going on in there. VIN to Saturn, we have two of their ships parked where you let us out. There are no more enemy coming out of that hole in the ground apart from Mars. Just keep your eyes peeled for any other holes Metalman needs to destroy, over."