The Lunarian: Chapter 1
In which I find myself in a most unfortunate situation
It was a clear, bright day. The Sun and the stars shone, and the Milky Way blazed in brilliant glory. The Earth was in its gibbous phase, its beauty shrouded in swirling clouds. Instantly, I knew where I was. I was on the moon. I had nothing else but my pressure suit and the charred remains of my landing vehicle. I wondered how I had survived.
A craggy mountain range, untouched through the ages, loomed before me. My immediate surroundings consisted of an endless dusty plain scattered with rocks. As I observed the mountains more closely, I saw that they comprised the walls of a crater. Suddenly, a bolt of blue light shot from behind the mountains. A boulder detached from the mountain, shot into the air, took a few lazy somersaults, and landed not ten feet from my pile of charred wreckage.
The bolt of blue fire was followed quickly by many others. I hid behind what was left of my plexiglass window for cover. A blaster has many uses, and is as much a part of a Moon-man as his own fingers. It is a weapon for short and long distances, a signal tool to down unwary Terran satellites, and most importantly, the tool with which he cuts the basalt blocks to build his houses. It is powered by concentrated microwaves, and is basically a handheld laser.
Another wave of blue bolts came, this time from the opposite direction. A line of rovers appeared on the horizon. The vehicles were silver, six wheeled, and were oblong cylinders with turrets at the top that shot the blue bolts. They fired, and the response came blazing over the mountain. The exchange continued for some time, with the rovers drawing ever nearer. A final blaze bathed the mountains in light, and the rovers stopped firing. They were coming, and there was nothing I could do, except surrender to the victors. I had only ten minutes of oxygen left.
I was a Terran Union analyst. On the Moon nothing was hated more than the TU Leadership and Mentoring Division. This I was told, was incomprehensible. The Terran Union wanted only to bring Luna into the great glorious order that all on Earth enjoyed, and that troublesome meddlers and privateers were sowing chaos on Luna. This, all Terrans were meant to learn in school from infancy.
All the wagons stopped in their tracks, save one, which drove toward me at 12 o’clock, dead center.
My helmet radio crackled to life.
“Are you Tycho or Shackleton?”
“Which are you?”
This was a dumb question, I admit, but asked only under the pressure of survival.
“No business of yours. Tycho, or Shackleton”
“I am a Terran”
“Get in the rover”
The rover stopped, the door opened, and seven spacesuited figures got out. One of them walked towards me and pointed his blaster. I raised my arms in surrender, and was marched into the vehicle.
Rovers are not so much cars, as mobile homes, and quite sizable ones at that. This was a South Polar Free State model, with onboard nuclear reactor, defensive turrets, and a water recycling system. It had two levels, one for living and the other for swarm and reactor control. It is customary on Luna for a lead crew vehicle to pilot a swarm of drones.
I was stowed in a small chamber on the second lever, in full view of the commander, whose seat was directly below the plexiglass floor. “50 more hours of daylight until Shackleton” squawked a speaker in the side of the wall.
My mission could still continue, I thought. I had been sent to the Moon to study and report on the effects of the 10th 5 Year Lunar Development Plan. What better way to do this could there be than to live among actual Lunarians?
The commander looked up from his control panel and spoke through the wall
“Got another #$%# T.U spy I see. We don’t really like seeing that around here. I’m Trader Nicholas Munchhausen and I’ve raided over 50 Terran convoys and downed I don’t know how may satellites. Give us all identification you have , or your right back out in the dust!”
“Winston Watson, First order L and M analyst”
“Fellow traders, All who are in favor of airlocking the prisoner say aye. All opposed say nay,”
I could hear three ayes and three nays.
“ Watson, There was a divided decision, so I will vote nay and allow you to live. For now. Even low-level lackeys like you can help our cause,”
And slowly but surely, the rover crawled, over high mountains, and deep craters. In many craters, there was a pleasant green living-dome, home in some cases to an entire city-state. In others, there was only an isolated outpost, sometimes only a dejected helium prospector making a meager living repairing satellites.
In these days, the Moon was restless, from Shackleton to the Mare Frigoris. There was a grim and building tension between the Terran Union Lunar Agency, and the free craters. Helium-3 extraction was at an all time high, powering the fusion reactors of the ever-growing metropoli of Earth. To safeguard the precious helium, great armies of Terran stations were placed in orbit and over the surface of the moon, and the ancient autonomy and liberties allowed to crater settlements were being eroded, day by day.
Time sector by time sector, if you will. They are typically 20 hours long, as the fortnightly lunar day is too unwieldy for general use.
An inevitable tension was building. The Terran, surrounded by his fellows in vast towers a thousand levels high, had become separated from his brother the Lunarian freeholder irreperably, who roamed freely over the gray plains. True, all Lunarians were former Terrans or the descendants thereof, but only one type of Terran came to Luna. And that breed was best represented by Nicholas Munchausen, and all his kin.
Something began to dawn on me that had never done so before. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Lunarians were on to something. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Terran Union could be wrong….?