New Hope: Book 1

“Ellie!” Julius started shouting, completely forgetting that the lack of atmosphere on the Moon stopped the movement of sound waves and everything he heard was from the inside of his suit and the radio phone he had in his ear. “Where are you, Ellie!” he continued to yell, turning nervously in all directions, trying to light up as much space as possible, hoping he’d see his colleague nearby.

“Doctor, can you hear me?” Sergeant Holmes echoed after him. “What the hell just happened? Did you see where she disappeared to?” he asked seriously concerned, reaching instinctively for his weapon.

Lieutenant Lassiter also reached for his weapon. In a quick and trained move, he switched on the tactic flashlight mounted on the silver-white rifle and pointed the end of its barrel toward his line of sight.

“Everybody, stay alert,” he ordered in a calm but commanding tone, also trying to make anything out in the darkness surrounding him. The lights of the suits enabled them to see objects up to 60 feet away, but the setting of the building had such an intimidating area. Nobody knew what or who could be beyond the boundary of darkness. “Holmes, stay with the Captain and cover him. Don’t let Cousteau out of your sight,” he ordered. “We’re going to separate. I’ll go this way, you go that way, and let’s circle the building searching every crevice, looking behind every rock, even under the rocks. We have to find Dr. Johnson,” he said through clenched teeth. How could it be that a member of the expedition disappeared on his watch?! he thought, scolding himself that he didn’t let Cousteau stop Ellie from working the symbols. “Damn it!” he cursed. Then he gave the sergeant a sign to march on in the indicated direction, maintaining all precautions and minding his back now and then.

John Lassiter was a very good soldier. He was decorated twice in Iraq and Afghanistan during the peace mission. Sure, peace. Otherwise, the Americans wouldn’t have sent tens of thousands of people to try to forcefully introduce democracy in countries where the tradition of the notion was as long as the life of a fruit fly. The lieutenant went through both his tours very quickly. A few days before the end of the second, in Afghanistan, the Taliban attacked his convoy when it ran over a homemade mine, or an IED, hidden in the sand by the road along which his unit was driving. Due to the fire fight and direct explosions, almost half his platoon was killed on the spot - 20 people. Even today, the thought of the massacre that took place there made his hairs stand on end, and he felt his stomach come up to his throat. The lieutenant was lightly wounded in the side, but his injuries weren’t serious enough to exclude him immediately from active fighting.

The heroic fire exchange between the soldiers who were still alive and the swarm of Taliban lasted only about 15 minutes and ended just as swiftly as it began by bombing the rebels’ position by the air support summoned by the Americans. During this time, however, Lassiter was able to cover two more heavily wounded brothers-in-arms with his own body, protecting them both from the enemy’s bullets and the rocky shards thrown in the air after the intense bombing. Then, withdrawing toward a safer mountainous terrain, wanting to get away from the open and uncovered area, he pulled both soldiers out, covering the retreat of the remaining platoon with bursts of fire from his rifle aimed at the thickets of dry bushes several dozen meters away, from where one-off bullets were still being shot from time to time. The Taliban were desiccated but they were still a deadly threat, especially for a stout man carrying two motionless bodies.

Don’t leave anybody on the fighting field! he thought at the time. That’s what he learned in the military. Every life of a soldier is invaluable and must be protected. His friends may have been heavily injured and unconscious, but they were alive. And you can’t leave a living human being in the hands of those people.

Now, several years after those events, lieutenant Lassiter was thinking those exact words. He couldn’t leave Ellie and run, even though his dosimeter had already stopped showing green and was slowly approaching orange. It looked as though the radiation significantly increased when Ellie was playing around with the symbols. The lieutenant’s calculations indicated they should have a few more hours of exploration, but the color on the plate suggested that they were left with a quarter of an hour at most. Anything beyond that will mean there’s no coming back. Either he stays there and dies or he starts his way back to the space vehicle, hoping the dose of radiation doesn’t kill him in the weeks to come due to radiation sickness.

The lieutenant increased his pace as much as he could in the suit which was designed for space mining, so mainly for operating mining equipment, not for running. In the present conditions, any step that was too large could send him flying several feet high. This wasn’t a huge problem in itself as the gravity on the Moon is too great to bounce up that high using muscle strength and fly off into space. But it’s small enough to throw one off balance.

“Lieutenant Lassiter!” came Julius’ voice over the radio. “Lieutenant, are you there?!” said the voice in desperation.

“Mr. Cousteau, I’m here, I’m trying to circle the building and should be with you soon,” replied Lassiter. “Has something happened?” he asked.

“It’s Sergeant Holmes.” Julius’ tone of voice made the lieutenant’s blood run cold.

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked, preparing himself mentally for the worst news.

“The Sergeant decided to use that octanitro-thing to blast an opening in the building. He thought that if you don’t find any portal or gate, then at least he wouldn’t have wasted time,” said Julius. “He used a small amount and detonated it,” Julius paused. “Lieutenant, I’m afraid Sergeant Holmes has little time left...” he said.

“For God’s sake, what happened?!” yelled the lieutenant into the earphone. “The Sergeant is trained for using octanitrocubane and he’s done it many times, so I don’t understand, how is it that he’s got little time left?” he replied. “Anyway, I’ll be there in a moment. If you can do anything to stabilize the Sergeant, please do it and don’t let him black out. I’m coming,” said the lieutenant, and risking tripping over and losing balance, he started running with all the strength he had. After several hundred more feet, Lassiter saw two figures: one was sitting against the wall of the building, the other was standing nearby, looking around nervously. He recognized the astronauts easily by their movements.

“Holmes, what’s going on?” asked John Lassiter, breathing heavily, when he got there and could see the sergeant’s face from up close. It was all red, clearly... sick. The sergeant was sweating, his face had gone all pale. It was obvious he was trying to stay conscious with all his might.

“Lieutenant...” croaked Holmes. “I got what was coming, explosives weren’t necessary...” he said, then starting to cough. “I set off the explosive, and then... This...” he tried explaining, but the sergeant suddenly started coughing up blood, spitting it all over his visor from the inside. The sight was terrifying: a person choking on his own excretion in a helmet, in circumstances where it was physically impossible to help. The soldier’s life was escaping him at an excruciatingly fast pace. The lieutenant broke out in cold sweats in response to what he was expecting. “I’m scared...” said the young soldier with tears in his eyes, and then he started to fade. A moment later, convulsive attacks took control, and then Sergeant Holmes stopped still, his face now at peace.

“Fuck!” cursed the lieutenant.

“What did we get into?” said Captain Cousteau, his voice shaking. He approached the lieutenant and placed his hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, lieutenant. I know you worked with the Sergeant and feel responsible for him, but it’s not your fault,” said Julius, trying to bring comfort in the situation of losing a subordinate. He knew the feeling as he, too, had lost friends in the military. He knew nothing he said would change anything the lieutenant was thinking.

“What the hell happened here?! Why did Neil die here in such agony?! I had been gone only 10 minutes!” he hissed in anger, not entirely controlling his rage, trying to channel the emotions running through him. Even though he was a soldier who was familiar with death, as a human being, he couldn’t come to grips with the loss of his brother in such sudden and strange circumstances.

“Lieutenant, sir, I’m not sure what happened exactly, because it looked as if nothing had happened...” Julius started explaining, his voice breaking a little, clearly in shock of the turn of events. “The Sergeant activated the explosive, it exploded without damaging the building in the slightest, and then the Sergeant fell to his knees and reported problems with breathing, His condition was deteriorating so quickly, not knowing what else to do, I contacted you a few minutes ago,” said Julius. “I don’t understand what happened, but it must be connected to the explosion and this object,” he said in a tone accusing the building.

The lieutenant approached the motionless body of his subordinate to look at it more closely. Perhaps some splinter had cut through his suit? Even a small hole in vacuum conditions could have deadly consequences. There were no traces of blood anywhere other than the sergeant’s face and eyes. When the lieutenant lifted the sergeant’s arm, he saw something unexpected. His dosimeter was all black. Lassiter knew what this color meant.

“Jesus...” he said, though he wasn’t particularly religious.

“What did you find?” asked Cousteau with fear in his voice, his heart rate elevated.

“Holmes must have taken a deadly dose of radiation, his dosimeter isn’t even red. It’s as black as coal. Such a radiation level is impossible,” said the young soldier incredulously. “For a plate to go black, one would have to be on the Moon’s surface for a month. And in the conditions of a solar storm!” he continued.

“Lieutenant, the building was emitting ionizing radiation before, and we know it increased heavily for a moment when Ellie was playing around with it. You could see it on your own dosimeter plate,” said Julius. What if, in response to the attack, the object reacted by emitting deadly radiation? Maybe it’s similar to a human body? You know, lymphocytes that attack foreign bodies. Only here, the defense reaction was emitting a radiation dose that was high enough to kill the person who attacked it,” he speculated.

Lieutenant Lassiter knelt for a moment over the body of his deceased friend, contemplating the situation. First, he lost the Doctor in unexplained circumstances, and now his comrade lost his life. How many more sacrifices will this goddamn mission need? It’s just begun and already it’s ended with at least one tragedy and the disappearance of Ellie. Furious with himself for not explicitly forbidding the sergeant the use of explosives, the lieutenant cursed again strongly.

“We don’t have time to look for Dr. Johnson.”

“You’re not thinking of leaving her here?!” Julius objected. “We can’t!” he yelled in desperation. He couldn’t get over the death of his companion, let alone leaving his long-time friend for certain death.

“Captain, look at your dosimeter.” Julius glanced at it quickly: blood red. “We don’t have time, because we really don’t have time. We’ve taken the maximum dose of radiation we could take before we both get radiation sickness. We can’t do anything more or help anyone dead,” he added.

“But how can we leave her, what if she comes back in a second?” begged Julius.

“What if she doesn’t? And instead of us waiting for her, she’ll find three dead bodies of her companions on the surface of the Moon, without being able to return to base?” he asked rhetorically. “We have to get back to the vehicle, otherwise we will both die here. You know it as well as I do,” he said. “Please, believe me, I’m the last person who would leave anyone in the line of fire or in danger, abandoned, but,” he had to admit it to himself, “we don’t even know if Ellie is anywhere close by. You saw for yourself; she disappeared right before our eyes.” John tried to be rational.

Julius looked at him imploringly, as if he wanted the lieutenant to make some exception. But he realized that it was useless. Technically, he outranked him, but in practice, John was the commander of the mission, and his instructions were clear: listen to the lieutenant and follow his orders. Besides, he was right; the radiation would soon kill them, and waiting for Ellie would end in a complete mission failure, and endanger others to repeat their mistakes. If they don’t contact the base and explain what had happened, they might send someone to look for them, and they might share their fate. Not to mention, Ellie disappeared in a sharp bright light. Disappeared. Full stop. They didn’t know if she got inside the building by some physical passage, or if the extraordinary energy ripped her body into a million pieces. They did know, however, that if they didn’t move, they would soon join Sergeant Holmes at the wall of the alien construct.

“You’re right, sir, we have to move out,” replied the captain with glazing eyes and a feeling of his heart being ripped from him.

“Maybe we could do more from the vehicle. Remember, we also have access to satellite systems in the installation, which could help us determine Ellie’s whereabouts,” said Lassiter, trying to console himself more than Julius and realizing that all there remained was to take the dead body and head for the landing pod.

“We have to return his body to the family. I can’t imagine leaving him here like this,” said the lieutenant with sadness. He took the body of the deceased sergeant and threw it over his shoulder. He looked once more at the stagnant alien construct, and together with Julius, they started toward the space vehicle.