Hot Moon: Apollo Rising by Alan Smale

Author:Alan Smale
Format: epub

Sandoval

The Bunker had a raised area at its southern end: a viewpoint with steel-reinforced windows looking in all directions, with a military-grade radar antenna atop it sweeping the horizon. This was Sandoval’s nerve center, and it was cramped as all get-out inside, especially when Lin was in there too.

A missile launcher now sat in front of the Bunker. To the military eye of someone used to Earth-style artillery the structure looked skeletal, every ounce of excess metal removed or shaved down to save mass, and the missile was snub-nosed with open panels, as if they’d been removed for maintenance. It wasn’t aerodynamic: with no air, it didn’t need to be. It only needed to be strong enough to survive its own launch, and preserve its avionics and warhead till it hit its target. And that target had to be within visual distance, IR guidance not being worth beans on the Moon. Once fired, Sandoval would have to guide it by eye and joystick.

It still burned him that they hadn’t been allowed to bring tactical nukes. Although they’d had no positive intel confirmation, Sandoval was 90 percent sure that the Soviets had had them at Zvezda all along. Even if they hadn’t, he was 110 percent sure that the new Soviet force would be bringing some along.

Night Corps had brought plenty of weaponry, but it was all conventional. And fighting nuclear with conventional was literally bringing a knife to a gunfight.

So Sandoval sure hoped this didn’t go nuclear, because if it did, it would be game over before they even knew it had begun.

Would the Soviets go so far? Unknown. But Sandoval probably wouldn’t much care if they did, because he’d be right under the first nuke.

“Hold it. Damn. We’ve got to send them back up.” Lin frowned at his console. “Turn Moody and Jensen around.”

“Why?” Sandoval didn’t wait for an answer, but keyed the comms. “Hadley Delta Force, hang tight while we run some checks.”

Moody’s voice came instantly, calm and precise. “Delta. Roger that.”

“Delta Force? Cute,” Lin said, pushing buttons.

Sandoval switched out of secure radio. “Hey, Vivian. Can you hang tight and grab a few more rock samples at the crater edge? We need, uh, better coverage. Geological. You know.”

Vivian paused. “Sure thing.”

She was going to hate this. Sandoval knew she wanted to scope out Bridge today. She was still keen to do her harebrained camping trip out west. Even weirder, Norton was keen for her to do it too. That was probably just orneriness, because Sandoval himself was totally against anyone traveling so far from Hadley.

“Talk to me, Lin.”

“I’m seeing all kinds of scatter from the radar they just installed.” Lin flipped more switches. “Seemed okay when they placed it, but now … this.”

Sandoval leaned over to peer at Lin’s displays. The green circular screen was a mess of blobs. “Jeez, that’s not right. I don’t know what could—”

“Shit. Break.” Lin’s voice had taken on a clipped urgency. “That’s good data.”

“Good how?”

“No malfunction.”

Ice chilled Sandoval’s neck. “Aw, come on.”

“No kidding.

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