Chapter 8: Moon Dark
Marshall informed the farming community that the arrival of an unscheduled ship bearing a false tag was imminent, and that it more than likely contained pirates.
'You said it would never happen,' the family elder pronounced.
'My grandfather said that we were too remote for pirates to bother with, and that we had nothing worth stealing.'
'And yet, if what you say is correct, here they are.' And then the farmer added pompously. 'It's a good thing complacency is not our way, is it not?'
Marshall was unable to disagree on that one.
The farmers had long been prepared for such an eventuality, and in the absence of any planetary defence force, had converted the basements of abandoned buildings into a warren of interconnected catacombs. Into these, they rapidly dispersed, driving their herds into separate chambers prepared with supplies of animal feed and water.
For ease of access, the farms had been established on the outskirts of a city which had been hastily built and later almost as quickly deserted. The farmers made use of the city as a source of free building materials, metals for making equipment, and from the old town hall it also provided hard-wired telephone communication with the Junker's Moon base.
Judith had no trouble persuading Debbi and Lucy to accompany her on the mission to the moon. Both were keen to take part in protecting the base, and neither was very enthusiastic about remaining on a planet which was likely to be the first target of the pirates. Marshall had been curiously unforthcoming when it came to the details of his plan.
'What should we do if the pirates came out of the pipe firing?' Judith had asked while packing spare pressure suits and oxygen tanks.
Marshall's reply had amounted to little more than 'Improvise.'
Judith was fairly sure that when she reached the moon domes, she would find something of use up there but Debbi and Lucy, who had spent rather fewer years on the base than Judith, were not convinced. It was also a good thing the taxi was to have only three occupants because, although it would hold five, Debbi insisted on taking not only her own personal customised computer tablet, but also a high-power infra-red coms laser.
Judith and Lucy struggled with attaching the hydraulic lifting suit to the roof of the taxi, while Debbi stashed the crates containing her gear inside. With the space taken up by Lucy's toolbox, there would be just enough room for the three of them.
Judith shouted down into the interior bay, 'What do you need all that for?'
Debbi stuck her head out through the hatch and squinted up at the other two women. 'You said it yourself to Marshall, if brute force and hard-wiring fail… so you'll be glad of this if it comes to it.'
When they landed on the moon's surface, their taxi generated a blizzard of dust. It only added to the near total darkness, being on the side furthest from the sun. Judith and Lucy scrambled around, repeatedly losing their footing in the one-fifth gravity of the moon. Debbi dragged the crates protecting her equipment from the cabin. As soon as the hydraulic lifting suit was detached, Judith climbed into the harness and picked up the crates before stomping in the direction of the domes. Lucy and Debbi were already bounding ahead to where Marshall had indicated they should find the first active airlock.
The glass-walled chamber was large enough to accommodate two people or one in a hydraulic suit. Judith went first while the others watched for leaks as the air lock cycled and Judith stamped through into the dome beyond. As soon as the inner door was closed again, Debbi and Lucy stood with their eyes fixed on the pressure dial mounted on the door. Five minutes later they were inside, each with their individual collection of equipment. None of the women bothered taking off their pressure suits, there was too much to do and the pressurisation too unreliable. Judith and Debbi checked the power feeds from the solar panels and turned on the lights. They would be sure to turn them off again before the pirates arrived.
The multiple arrays of solar panels remaining on the moon had been originally set up to power the domes. They could be seen glinting in the sun from Cymbeline when the moon was at the correct point in its rotation. Surplus power generated when they were exposed to the sun was stored in huge thermo-electric cells which had been scavenged from a deep space explorer ship, along with the solar panels. Lucy explored the rest of the dome complex, reporting on which chambers had pressure and which were holed.
Judith told Debbi that it was not certain that the storage cells would still be generating an output which would power any of the weapons Marshall had assured them they would find there.
'If there isn't power for those, there certainly won't be sufficient for your coms laser,' she said.
'We'll see about that,' Debbi said with a determined crimp to her lips just discernible through her helmet glass.
Lucy returned just as Debbi had succeeded in not only measuring the power flow from the most active bank of power storage cells, but had also managed to fire up the computer system. She had left the coms systems inactive, so as not to run any risk that the pirates detected their presence. Marshall's plan depended on the pirates having no reason to expect that they were being outflanked.
'There's a dome two along from here which has a big star-shaped hole in the centre,' Lucy reported. 'I didn't bother running the air lock as I didn't think we'd be going in there.'
'Any sign of these weapons Marshall has promised us?'
Lucy nodded. 'There's a crawl-way under the surface leads to the hulk of an old ship. You can see the barrels of some ancient ballistic launchers pointing out.'
'We should all go through Lucy's crawl-way and take a closer look at these weapons,' Judith said.
Debbi shook her head. 'With respect, Judith, you two should go while I set up the coms laser as a backup.'
'Marshall put me in charge, and I say we all go. If Lucy and I don't need you, you can come back.
'OK, but at least help me carry the crates.'