TAC FORCE — Sons of Khan

Be patient, dear reader, old tales take time to tell.

I recite our violent history under duress.

They demand these stories be told.

You don’t know them.

They watch.

I always hate this part. It’s bad enough when you’re sitting in a padded chair with a video monitor ten inches from your face, watching the countdown, waiting for your guts to get yanked to your feet. I knew it was coming but didn’t know when. I heard rumbling. Everything started shaking. I sat anxiously scrunched in a small dark box, clutching a backpack, my chin at my knees. Not the best idea I’ve ever had, but my options were limited. I thought about hiding in a bathroom. That would have been more spacious, but bathrooms are on the passenger decks and triple checked before liftoff.

The sudden shock of the thrusters felt like a swift kick in the ass. The vibration and pressure intensified, pushing my body painfully down against the smooth, hard walls of the cabinet I had secured myself.

The pounding thrust of thirty-five Raptor VX engines was deafening. The sudden shock and jarring tremors transitioned to oscillating numbness as the Star Cruiser accelerated through the lower atmosphere at two-point five G’s.

Earth would not let go of me. The claws of gravity pulled me back as the rocket fought against the force, powering ever upward. My body position, ouch. My nose was forced between my knees. Try doing that. I bet you can’t do it. I’m not a little kid. My back doesn’t bend that way. It hurt like hell.

The backpack, the only soft thing in that hard box, was my single comfort. I couldn’t breathe. Sweat dripped from my forehead. I felt like I was being crushed under the weight of an enormous cement block. Hell yes, I was scared. I was afraid I’d black out or worse. I could have died in that cramped box. How disappointing that would have been. All my efforts, months of planning only to die a crumpled heap in a storage cabinet. As the pressure increased, I concentrated on sipping air into my lungs. My body screamed pain, sounding the alarm that I should not be doing this.

I endured that agony for what felt like an eternity, yet lasted only two minutes before the pressure eased off.

This was a momentary pause to reduce stress on the spacecrafts structure while it experienced maximum dynamic pressure or Max Q.

I knew I had but a short reprieve. I quickly straightened my back-cracking vertebrae and hurriedly gulped air until I felt woozy. Here it comes.

The force of the engines rocketing to full thrust squashed me in my box again. The eerie cry of an injured cat screaming outside penetrated the darkness. From experience, I knew it was thin air slipstreaming over the passenger module.

The torturous ascent continued through a series of explosive booster separations, periods of one G acceleration during which I attempted to stretch my cramped legs, followed by a final acceleration to three G’s that felt like I was being crushed in a trash compactor. I prayed the spacecraft wouldn’t implode or crumple like an aluminum can under pressure which still happened on occasion.

Finally, the thrust stopped. Silence never sounded so sweet. The pressure eased and my pain diminished. It was a wondrous feeling. I bumped my head on the roof of the cabinet floating weightless in my box. Oh, the joy of being in space.

I opened the door of my cabinet and drifted out stretching my arms, legs and back in the open space. I was on the storage deck, the lowest level of the six-deck, one hundred passenger cruiser.

I grabbed my backpack floating in the cabinet and began changing into a United Launch Systems flight suit I had snagged weeks before. Changing clothes in zero gravity isn’t as fun as it sounds. I’d like to see you try it. I’m sure it would have been comical to watch me wriggle into floating pants and push off the wall chasing runaway shoes.

I stuffed my black jumpsuit in the backpack and pushed it into the cabinet. At least I wouldn’t look like a loading porter, which is what I was. I’d taken the job loading cargo for freight launches and the infrequent passenger flight four months earlier. I loaded vessels flying to the Moon and Mars. I worked for months learning the ins and outs, looking for a crack in the system that would allow me to sneak my way on a flight. I had a single goal to satisfy, an overwhelming, undeniable desire. I had to get back to the Moon.

Two

I gripped the handrails, controlling my ascent up the ladder to the lower passenger deck. I rose just high enough to peek and check things out. There were no passengers on this deck. Fifty empty plush reclining chairs. Any of these seats would have been more comfortable than my cabinet, but I knew the steward checks all passenger areas before and after liftoff. If they caught me, they’d abort the launch. That would have caused one hell of a commotion.

I’d read the manifest. There were only eight passengers on this flight, which was odd. The low head count meant they needed fewer people for flight prep. A fully loaded flight would’ve made it easier to get lost in the crowd, but flights loaded with tourists headed for a vacation on the moon were at least a month away. I couldn’t wait that long. This was my chance. There was no turning back.

I pushed off, soaring up the ladder to the next deck. It was configured as a gym. I suppose if you’re on a three-month flight to Mars you’d need a gym, but it’s a waste of space for a trip to the moon.

The thrusters engaged. I braced myself against a wall to keep from falling over. It was a long, hard acceleration burn. This was not some rich tourist with his friends out for a joy ride orbiting Earth three times to sightsee, followed by a drunken layover at the Gateway.

The Gateway is a waystation orbiting the moon, an ever-growing structure devised as support for lunar missions and a staging point for deep space exploration. As the platform grew a private company named Rotational Dynamics constructed a donut shaped ring, called the Torus Wheel, that slowly spins around the gateway’s axis. The rotation creates a centrifugal force that simulates gravity. The rotating donut supports up to thirty people. Various space agencies and Hilton Hotels lease rooms on the Torus. Soon it will become an orbiting refueling station for spacecraft heading to Mars and beyond. If there’s an emergency on the Moon, having the Gateway nearby is comforting. But this flight was wasting no time. It was going to be a fast trip. Fine with me. The sooner I get to the Moon, the better.

I made my way up the ladder to the First-Class deck where the seats are wider and the windows larger. I spied the male steward. A tall gaunt figure with a sharp nose and angry slicked back hair. He showed no emotion moving efficiently delivering fluid packets to the passengers. There were two rows of stadium seating arranged in a circular pattern. I counted six men wearing slate gray flight suits. Two others wore black suits with red piping around the neck and shoulder seams. They looked official. The manifest said the passengers were employees of the Yuldashev Hotel Group.

I knew from my training and loading many flights that the deck above First-Class housed the environmental systems. A ladder through the central chamber leads to a double height activity deck where passengers can have fun experiencing weightlessness. Beyond that is the flight deck. These eight passengers stayed in their seats. No one played weightless games.

I did my best to stay hidden during the flight. Although I made use of a comfy chair on the lower passenger deck for a time, I never let myself get too comfortable. Most of the time I hid from the steward, ensconced in my cabinet. I’m not a big guy. Maybe you figured that out.

No matter my size, being stuffed in a storage cabinet for a fourteen-hour flight was pure misery. I should have remembered to store movies on my chip. That would have made my agony more entertaining.

Nobody caught me and put me in handcuffs, which I knew would happen if they discovered me, although I had the distinct feeling my presence was known.

Maybe I was just being paranoid. I suppose I expected to get caught. How could I imagine pulling this off and not getting caught? Even though I deleted my name from the work schedule, the crew saw me working. They count the crew going in and coming out of the flight prep area. They would have double and triple counted when they came up one short. At work, I kept to myself, didn’t make friends and never chatted people up, which was hard for me. I tried to be of little notice but, was I invisible to my co-workers? Was I so insignificant that no one noticed?

I was going to get caught. There is no way to avoid it. No one arrives on the Moon, or Luna as the locals call it without Commander Harding knowing. I’ll deal with the consequences; I just need to see her again.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

The Cruiser landed in a vertical position. The airlock to exit the ship is on the lower passenger deck, one hundred twenty-five feet above the surface of the moon. A section of the faring opened, lowering like a large metallic flap becoming an elevator platform. The elevator lowered to the surface. A pressurized rover drove onto the platform, then the elevator rose to the airlock. The steward instructed the passengers to remain seated until the rover docked, and the airlock was open.

I hid behind a passenger seat next to the airlock. When the indicator light turned green, I pushed through the opening door and scrambled to the driver’s seat. Ha, I made it, I’m brilliant.

I felt a presence behind me, turned and saw the thin snooty looking steward standing outside the airlock. Even after the long flight, his hair was still perfectly angry.

“Welcome to Moon Base Alpha,” I called out stepping through the rover. The steward looked at me strangely. I hoped it wasn’t a look of recognition.

“The rover is self-driving. I didn’t expect a driver,” he admonished.

“Well, you can thank Commander Harding for that. He didn’t want our special guests to arrive without a proper greeting. The manifest says only eight passengers. Seems odd for such a large ship. Most cruisers coming in are hauling freight. Did you know these things can deliver up to one hundred fifty tons of cargo? That’s huge!”

The steward glared at me.

“Let’s get those passengers loaded.”

After helping the travelers get seated, I made my way to the driver’s seat.

I always feel shaky this high up, knowing the rover is held high above the surface by a thin panel of stainless steel.

The airlock sealed with a whoosh and the indicator on the control panel glowed green. “Locked and loaded,” I announced.

I turned in my seat to greet the passengers. “Howdy, I’m Frank Callahan, your driver. I hope you all had a pleasant flight. Please stay seated for the short ride down.”

I observed the woman. She had confidently moved through the rover to ride shotgun. The black flight suit she wore fit snug, nary a bump nor a bulge could hide in a suit that tight, but from the look of her she needn’t worry. All her bumps and curves were in the right places. Her face is thin and drawn. Maybe she pulled her hair bun too tight. This woman was not a frumpy scientist. She wasn’t shy either. Most people sit in the rear seats when they have a driver. Not this one. She went right for the front passenger seat.

“My name is Astrid. My associate is Garrick,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. She didn’t bother to introduce the other six passengers.

Astrid, that’s a good name for a woman in space. Astronomy asteroids, Astrid. It fit, but Garrick? Who the hell names their kid Garrick? Maybe they couldn’t decide between Gary and Rick, or Eric and Gary so they came up with Garrick, it’s weird.

“It’s oddly beautiful,” the woman said, looking out the windshield.

“It’s a cold, silent world framed by the never-ending blackness of space, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” I said.

The rover jostled as the elevator started down. I hate that feeling. Hanging precariously, tethered in space. I never did well on roller coasters either, they’re a pukefest if you ask me.

“It’s so stark and gray everywhere you look,” Garrick said behind me.

“It takes time for the brain to adjust to the absence of color. It will bug you for a while. After a few weeks of gray, it will blow your mind when you see bright colors,” I told him.

“It’s an undulating gray desert,” the woman said thoughtfully. “A new frontier ripe for the picking,” she added.

“There’s Mon’s Malapert, one of the highest elevations on the South Pole,” Garrick said, pointing at the mountain ahead of us.

“Look, you can just make out your hotel’s central dome from here,” I said. The hotel complex was built on the mountainside four hundred feet above Moon Base Alpha.

The platform bumped to a stop on the hard landing pad. I switched the rover to manual drive and pressed the accelerator to move the rover off the platform.

We moved swiftly along the smooth sintered road. I’d like to say I could hear the motor whine as I sped up, but sound waves don’t travel in the vacuum of space. I could feel the vibration, though. I waited for my passengers to ask about the road we were driving on, but they weren’t curious.

It’s funny how quickly people take things for granted, as if the moon always had paved roads. Raw regolith is nasty stuff, dusty abrasive micro grains of pulverized rock that clings to everything. Sintering regolith to make roads started as experiments with microwaves mounted under small rovers heating moon dust into solid mass. It was slow and cumbersome.

Today we have large graders with wide blades to smooth the regolith. Behind the blade are wide plates of magnetrons that melt the regolith with powerful microwaves to a depth of two meters, followed by massive heavy rollers that press and smooth the goo as it hardens.

I took a closer look at the woman. Not in a creepy way. I looked. She has black hair and a delicate complexion. Her skin is tight, making her face look thin, accentuating her cheekbones. It isn’t from the hair bun. Maybe she’d had plastic surgery. Her skin is fresh though, not dry, and haggard like people who’ve been on Luna for a long time. She looks like an Asian mix. Her nose is flat, and her pupils are hiding behind narrow slits. Her skin is light colored, almost white, but isn’t. Maybe she’s been tanning, hard to tell. Not fully any kind of Asian I’ve ever seen. Not Chinese, I don’t think; maybe a second or third generation mix.

I glanced at the guy. He looks fit in his tailored flight suit. He has thick dark hair. His complexion looks more Asian than the woman, but he has blue eyes. That’s freaky. And after a fourteen-hour flight, this guy has more facial hair than I could grow in a week. The only part of his face not covered in thick black bristles is a scar that runs from the from the right side of his mouth down across his chin. Kinda cringy if you ask me.

The six men in the back rows also look like some type of Asian. Four of them have mustaches that make them look Turkish. I was never good at this; hell, they could be members of a Mexican Mariachi band for all I know.

Most of the scientists who arrive at the base are eager to get working right away. Many of them have two-week missions, so they’re on tight leashes. They need to run their experiments and get results or lose funding. Those suckers are stressed out before they get started. Then, there are the guys hired to work up here for a six-month cycle, they’re more relaxed. They’re here to do the actual work of building a sustainable living environment, hired to run builder bots, setup new equipment for gas extraction, or work mining rigs. Those guys aren’t as intense.

I don’t know what the story is with these people. They work for the hotel company but look uptight for hotel employees. They arrived on their own cruiser, so they must be important.

I guess it doesn’t matter who they are or where they’re from. Everyone will know soon enough. When you arrive at Moon Base Alpha you check in with the Commander at base HQ. That’s where I’m headed.

TAC planners designed the new hotel complex. The grand lobby features enormous windows providing amazing views of the moonscape. The hotel lobby has two restaurants, a cocktail bar as well as ballrooms, meeting rooms, and a low gravity recreation hall. The huge central dome and east wing of smaller domes are part of the hotel. We will use the west wing of interconnected domes for additional base housing and science labs.

The Yuldashev Hotel Group, a foreign corporation nobody’d ever heard of paid big bucks to fund the construction. Builder bots have been crawling over the shoulder of that ridge for the last year keeping every excavator, extractor and block former busy supplying materials for the build.

We’re outgrowing Moon Base Alpha. There isn’t enough room on base for all the science missions. The hotel complex will be a tremendous boon to the scientists who still work and live in inflatables or rover habitats. The new complex will provide room for more missions and personnel. People will get out of the quints, have room to stretch their legs and mingle with tourists. Hell, life on Luna might finally get comfortable.

Just imagine, a hotel on the moon. Soon we’ll be invaded by space tourists. This place is going to be a frigging zoo when untrained idiots show up. The good thing is tourists spend money. When they return home, they’ll tell their friends about the amazing experience and others will follow, bringing more money. Business is about to boom on Luna.

Moon Base Alpha was built at the base of Mons Malapert because this location has more daylight than almost any other place on the moon, even though we still have several dark days every month. The only place that never loses sunlight is the top of Malapert Mountain. They call it the peak of eternal sunlight.

My guests sat quietly looking out the windows. This place must look very unusual to them. I’d better be a good host and make them feel welcome. I don’t want word getting back to the Commander I was impolite.

“When you look at the landscape, you will see landers and habitats from past missions. Most are vacant, used only once and left behind, but there are mission teams occupying a few habitats to conduct long-term science experiments. We’ve got all kinds of habitats, inflatables, structured modules, rover habitats and landers. There have been hundreds of missions. In the beginning, each mission landed with their own habitat. They landed, completed their mission, and flew home, leaving the habitat behind. Now days, many habitats are reusable, and we’ve built structures for long-term habitation. If you look at the lower part of the mountain, you’ll see we’ve built permanent structures from formed regolith blocks. That’s Moon Base Alpha. Hey, when you open the hotel you can offer tours of old landing sites and habitats. People will pay big money for a tour like that.”

I pressed the accelerator and felt the rover leap forward. My friend Gus, the base mechanic, likes to drive fast. He modified this rover to move faster than the standard pokey twenty-eight miles per hour of most moon rovers.

We sped along a narrow ribbon cutting a dark smooth path across the uneven dusty moon toward Mons Malapert.

“Look to your left. Those large machines are regolith excavators. They’re scooping up moon dust for processing,” I said, looking at three large excavators painted green with a yellow stripe and the words John Deere on the side moving in a row across the moon surface like grain harvesting combines on Earth.

Astrid didn’t seem interested. She was looking out the passenger window. “What are those strange umbrella structures?”

We were driving past a field of golden umbrellas, odd looking structures arranged like a small orchard. Their golden brilliance made them stand out against the bleak landscape.

“They’re nuclear power generators. The guts are buried. The umbrellas are for cooling,” I answered.

“They aren’t large. Not at all what I’d imagine for nuclear generators,” said Garrick.

“Each one produces twenty Kilowatts from an internal Stirling engine. I was told they use a regenerative heat exchanger, whatever that means. We call them Krusty’s for Kilowatt Reactor Using Stirling Technology.” I amazed myself. I can’t believe I remember that from the training manual.

“I count only twenty umbrellas. That couldn’t possibly produce enough power for a growing colony,” Garrick added.

“There are several Krusty farms that supplement solar panel arrays,” I replied. I noticed Astrid nod slightly to Garrick. “There’s a large Krusty farm, plus solar arrays to power your hotel, so no worries.”

The rover sped past a road grader paving a new road across the dusty moon surface.

“I thought we’d see men hopping around in EVA suits like the Apollo astronauts,” Garrick said.

“Maybe your hotel can offer that as a tourist attraction. Like the good old days on Luna,” I said.

“It seems you are familiar with the workings of the base. How long have you been here? Aren’t mission lengths restricted?” Astrid asked.

“Now that we have protective structures, radiation exposure is much lower, so they’ve lifted many of the restrictions. Still, most people don’t stay longer than a year. I recently rotated back from a stint on Earth,” I said.

The hilly, pockmarked surface of the moon slipped past as the rover sped along. When we crested an incline, the hotel structure came into full view.

“Now you can get a good look. Your hotel stretches across the mid-levels of Malapert,” I said, looking at the mountain. I gazed at the large center dome with its massive glass windows flanked by rows of smaller domes extending along the mountain’s shoulder. I was impressed. Our construction teams had made tremendous progress. I marveled at the wide tube built with the same dark blocks running down from the domineering center dome to the new Arrivals dome at base level.

I stopped the rover at a junction in the road.

“The road to the right leads up the hill to your hotel, then continues all the way to the peak of Mons Malapert, sixteen thousand feet above the lunar surface. We’ll turn left so you can check in with Commander Harding at HQ.”

Garrick twisted his head to look at the mountain peak. “Lots of antennas up there.”

“Yup, antennas, a small dome to manage communication systems, telescopes, an interferometer and what not, they’ve always got experiments running up there,” I explained to my guests.

“Malapert is a key location. It has near constant sunlight with proximity to mineral resources, thick workable regolith with high concentrations of oxygen and hydrogen, uninterrupted visibility of Earth, multiple pads for landings and launches now fitted with refueling systems. There is boundless opportunity for those with the vision to exploit all that is here,” Astrid said.

Dang, she said that with a touch of maniacal enthusiasm. I guess it takes a healthy dose of ambition to open the first hotel on the moon.

“It sounds like you know a lot about the area. Would you like a quick tour of the base before I drop you off at HQ? You can see for yourself how we’ve harnessed Luna’s resources.”

Astrid turned her head and smiled at Garrick. I glanced at him long enough to see a knowing twinkle in his freaky blue eyes.

“We are familiar with the base and its resources. It would be criminal for us to build the hotel without understanding everything,” Astrid said.

As the rover approached the base, the road widened into a large flat sintered area.

“You can study maps and drawings, but there’s nothing like seeing the real thing with your own eyes, like this sintered pad that surrounds the base, it looks like a huge parking lot, but we built it like this to mitigate the moon dust, allowing workers and equipment to move around outside the domes without trekking through the gritty sand. It’s a mess to clean up. The pad makes getting around in a rover quick and easy too.”

The rover drove past the large new dome that connects to the wide tube running up the mountain to the hotel. The new Arrivals Hall dome has an enormous airlock sticking out the front that tourists will pass through upon arrival. There are airlocks all over the base in the name of safety, but this one is huge. The spacious Arrivals Hall dome connects to the HQ dome.

I imagined myself auditioning for my new role as a tour guide. Tourists visiting the moon wouldn’t want to come all this way just to stay in the hotel. They’d want to get out and see the sites. I’d try to get my old job back, but times are changing, a man needs to look to the future and explore new opportunities.

The base was in full view now. This was my chance to make a good impression. “Welcome to Moon Base Alpha,” I exclaimed in my tourist guide voice. “The base gets its name from an old science fiction TV series; SPACE:1999. In the show they had a base right here at Malapert. That was fiction. Today’s Moon Base Alpha comprises a series of interconnected domes. Each section has five domes connected by airlocks arranged in a circle. We call them Quints. The airlocks connecting the domes are twenty-foot-long tubes, large enough to walk through standing up and long enough to extend through the eight-foot-thick walls. If there was ever a catastrophic dome failure, a locked tube can act as a short-term emergency shelter with communications and life support. Moon Base Alpha has eight quints linked together like a long chain.” I wondered if that was too much information.

Astrid looked at me with wide eyes. I couldn’t tell if she was amazed or annoyed. She didn’t say anything, so I continued.

“Most of the domes have walled corridors that follow the curvature of the dome. Corridors lead to the airlock tubes connecting to the next dome. Labs and work areas are behind the corridor wall, so people walking past don’t cause disruption. Most domes have living quarters on the upper level, so you sleep where you work. Larger airlock tubes link one quint to the next. If you viewed the base from above, it would look like a chain of interconnected circles. If any dome has a structural failure, like getting struck by a meteor, and loses its pressurized environment, crew members can quickly move to an airlock for protection or move into another dome. Safety is paramount. The moon is an unforgiving place. The average outside temperature is 200 degrees Kelvin, that’s minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But hey, on a warm day it can get up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s much colder on days with no sunlight. No matter the temperature, you still shouldn’t go outside without an EVA suit. If you don’t freeze to death, you’ll suffocate long before the radiation kills you.”

I looked at Astrid again. She was staring straight ahead. Her jaw was tight.

“Don’t worry, I was winging it. I can do better. Tell you what, I’ll work up a script. You can approve it. Your hotel guests will love my base tour. I’ll offer a fair price and we can split the proceeds.”

Astrid didn’t reply.