Jeramey Kraatz - The Dark Side of the Moon

“Hey,” Benny said as he walked in, coming to a stop at one end of the circular desk. “Sorry. I got a little distracted.”

Hot Dog turned from the window and let out a breath. “ There you are. I was starting to think our fearless leader was abandoning us.”

Benny shoved his hands into his space-suit pockets. “I’m not the leader here. We all helped—”

“I know, I know.” Hot Dog walked over to the holodesk. “You keep telling us that, but you really should learn to take some credit.” She frowned. “I hate to say this, but Drue might be right. Maybe you do need to chill out a little.”

Benny looked at Drue and raised his arms out to his side, but his friend just shrugged and spun in his chair.

Pinky, the artificial intelligence in charge of running the Taj, appeared as a hologram in one of the empty seats. Benny had got so used to her popping up out of nowhere that he barely gave the incredible nanotech projectors that brought her to life a second’s thought any more.

“Shall we begin?” Pinky asked, adjusting her black-rimmed glasses. “Or should I send for my favourite scholarship winner, Ramona? She’s currently in one of the basement labs, staying far away from my programming, for once.”

“Let’s not interrupt her,” Jasmine said. She looked to Benny. “Ramona’s working on turning a few Space Runners into makeshift satellites so we can re-establish contact with Earth. Once we find a safe flight path, we can launch them. The problem is that there are still alien asteroids positioned between us and the planet. We’ve sent several unmanned Space Runners to run scans, looking for a way past them, but so far we haven’t had any luck.”

“And we can’t just … go round those asteroids?” Benny asked.

“Obviously the entirety of space isn’t blocked off. There has to be a way to avoid them, but it’s a slow scanning process. We’ve already lost two SRs. These asteroids seem to be – for lack of a better word – programmed to hit anything that gets too close. They’re basically space mines. The Maraudi knew what they were doing when they set them up.”

“Speaking of being blocked off,” Drue said, “how am I still banned from the garage? I’m a space hero now!”

“Because as soon as you got back from the asteroid field you tried and failed to hot-wire one of Elijah’s prototype muscle cars,” Trevone said.

Hot Dog glanced at Benny. “He obviously didn’t take notes whenever you stole that Chevelle.”

“Borrowed,” Benny said.

“Besides,” Trevone continued, “the McGuyvers have enough on their plates trying to repair the SRs that were damaged in the attack. They’re the best mechanics in the galaxy, but they’re only two people. The last thing they need is you causing problems.”

“I was trying to help!” Drue leaned over the holodesk. “We should know what we have to work with if we’re going to war with some aliens.” He shrugged. “Plus, it turns out that prototype didn’t even have an engine in it, so it’s totally not my fault I couldn’t get it started.”

“You’re going to get banned from the entire Taj,” Hot Dog said. “And we’re not going to war with the Alpha Maraudi. We’re …” She trailed off, biting her lower lip.

Drue looked back and forth between Hot Dog and Benny. “Really? Because I bet the aliens are pretty mad that we schooled them this morning. Maybe we should go on the offensive. Though we’d probably need more than lasers if we wanted to take down that big mother ship.” His eyes lit up. “I bet Elijah has all kinds of prototypes for crazy stuff in his files that we could use. Pinky, what have you got for us? Show me the biggest, most ridiculous thing he was working on. Where are all the killer robots like the ones we fought in the video-game room?”

The AI clasped her hands together on the holodesk. “Let’s put a pin in that.”

“We’re not going to attack anyone,” Benny said. “That would make us just as bad as they are. Besides, I told you guys, they’re kind of not what we expected. They’re … more like a space caravan.”

Trying to wrap his head round the idea of extraterrestrial life coming for Earth was one thing, but the realisation that the Alpha Maraudi weren’t really some evil alien race was another, more difficult notion to process. They were just trying to find a new home. Doing everything they could to survive. In a way, Benny understood where they were coming from, and he didn’t want to have to fight them.

That was the real problem, the thing sitting like a heavy lug nut in the pit of Benny’s stomach: what were they supposed to do now? The day before, the stakes had been terrifying, sure, but their goals had been so simple: stop the asteroid storm, keep Earth safe, protect humanity. Now there were so many variables.

And despite his insistence that he wasn’t the leader of the Moon Platoon, it felt like everyone kept looking to him for answers.

“Benny’s right,” Hot Dog said, taking a seat. “I just wish they’d find another place to set up camp.”

“This is like game theory,” Jasmine said, scrunching her eyebrows together. “Another species needs Earth to survive, but so do we. Normally I’d be into a logic problem like this, but it turns out this kind of thing isn’t nearly as fun in real life.”

“So …” Drue said, “we’re taking ‘blowing up the aliens who tried to kill all humanity’ off the holodesk?”

“Pinky, if he gets within a metre of a laser, let me know,” Trevone said.

“What about this guy on the dark side of the Moon?” Benny asked, turning his attention to the Pit Crew member. “Could he help? Any idea how we find him?”

As if the shock of everything that had happened during their battle in space hadn’t been enough, Trevone and Pinky had unexpected news when Benny had arrived back at the resort: the residents of the Taj weren’t alone on the Moon.

“Dr Austin Bale,” Trevone said. He tapped on the desk in front of him and a hologram of a man appeared above it. He was maybe fifty years old in the image, with thick wire-rimmed glasses and a shock of black streaked across the front of his otherwise silver hair. “No clue. He’s spent years avoiding all Elijah’s sensors and expeditions. We have no idea what he’s been up to.”

“How do we know he’s even alive out there, then?”

“Well, for one thing, he was probably the person who left supplies for Hot Dog when she crashed her Space Runner.”

“I didn’t crash,” Hot Dog said. “I was shot down . Big difference.” She leaned back in her seat and clicked her tongue. “I knew I wasn’t crazy to think someone left me stuff. I can’t believe Elijah tried to tell me I was confused.”

“Remind me why we should care about this guy again?” Drue asked. “Let’s imagine that I wasn’t listening too carefully earlier. We had just got back from blowing up a bunch of asteroids.”

“Dr Bale was Elijah’s right-hand man when he began the construction of the Lunar Taj and in-depth exploration of the Moon,” Trevone said. “A renowned astrophysicist and engineer. He was with Elijah when he first discovered the base on the dark side of the Moon.”

“Yeah, yeah, Elijah told us that part,” Drue said. “He wanted to warn Earth about the aliens, but Elijah didn’t want him to. So what’s he doing on the Moon? Why stay up here?”

“Well, things are a bit more complicated than Elijah may have let on,” Trevone continued. “Dr Bale did go back to Earth to warn people about everything he’d seen. He even took a bunch of artefacts from the Maraudi base with him.”

“You mean, he stole them from the Taj,” Pinky corrected. She drummed her holographic fingers on the desk silently.