The ship has been destroyed, sir, Mikado said. Then he looked at his board and said, We also have a message coming in from spaceport authority.
Put it on speaker, Lieutenant.
The speaker came on and a voice asked, Commodore Kosiev, did anyone survive the destruction of that ship? Kosiev looked at Lieutenant Mikado, who nodded and held up one finger.
Yes, we recorded one person ejecting.
Then he heard a new voice from the speaker. Commodore Kosiev, I am Inspector Esa Connor and I am the head of the Americas Security Enforcement Committee. I have reason to believe that the person who stole that ship is someone weve been trying to apprehend for more than three years. It is important that he not escape. We are sending you seventeen additional warships to assist you in locating the whereabouts of this person. I have just learned from your military attache that you were firing eight lasers at his ship and he managed to avoid every one of them.
Kosiev stood up from his command chair and looked out the view screen at the surface of the moon below him. Yes, sir, thats correct. We dont understand how that could happen and we were forced to use missiles to stop the ship from escaping.
It has to do with the talents of the person you were chasing, Esa said. He knew before you did when and where you were going to fire. Ill explain it in more detail later; right now I want you to take command of the ships were sending and find Thomas Gardner.
We werent able to track exactly where he landed because our sensors overloaded briefly due to the explosion of his ship. We have it narrowed down to a four-hundred-square-mile quadrant. Kosiev glanced at Mikado, who was shaking his head and said, Sir, it might be easier to bombard the surface and kill him than to actually find him.
Commodore, you will do absolutely everything in your power to find him and not, I repeat not, harm him in any way. I will be sending someone to your ship he might listen to. They will arrive within five hours.
Yes sir. We will begin search operations immediately.
Commodore, that young man on the moon possesses a gift that may ultimately save all of mankind some day. Its critically important that we find him alive.
Ill do my best, sir.
Do better than your best, Commodore; find him alive. Kosievs com went dark.
Everyone on the bridge stared at each other silently, and then Lieutenant. Mikado said, Ive never heard of more than three ships being used in any kind of search operation and especially not warships, and even if we have a hundred ships, we still may not find him.
Kosiev replied, Warships have the best sensors and the most highly trained people using them. Well have to do our best. This person were looking for must be very important for some reason. It appears that we will look however long it takes until we find him. Lieutenant, set up a search pattern that covers the area we think he landed in. Well start on one boundary, Red Sea will start on the second, and Yellowstone will start on the third. The next ship to show up will start on the last boundary, and then well work our way inward. As other ships arrive assign them an area to scan. If we dont find him well start the search all over again. They may force us to go to the surface and find him if all else fails.
What about the craters, sir? Their walls are so irregular that someone could hide under them and not be seen by any of our sensors, especially if they turn down the power of their spacesuit. Lt Alverez, Kosievs weapons officer said.
Then scan an area far enough away from the crater wall and fire a low power laser into it. It might make him leave his hiding place where we can see him. But I want it perfectly clear, you will only fire into an area far enough away from the crater walls so that he will not be harmed, and only if were certain hes not close to our target. Does anyone know who the person is that is supposed to communicate with him?
Lieutenant Mikado looked at his board, Weve just received a message concerning that. Its a senior inspector from the security enforcement committee named Danielle Ash.
Annihilation
H e sat on the surface of the moon among the rocks, pebbles, and dust with his back against a crater wall. He had watched as the dust he kicked up running into the craters shadow finally settled back to the surface. It had settled slowly in the moons gravity like rain falling in slow motion. He was sitting in a shadow cast by the overhang of a crater, staring up at the Earth overhead, which looked huge, with white clouds covering the southern hemisphere and oceans shining deep blue. It was breathtaking and was made all the more beautiful by the stars that surrounded it like a halo. He could see the North American continent clearly with Central City covering most of it, and it reminded him of his home there as a little boy. He decided that if it had to end here, at least he had a spectacular view. The moons surface was so bright that he had to put his helmet visor on its highest setting to keep from being blinded. It was pitch-black in the craters shadow, but the moons surface was brilliant as it sloped away to the far wall of the crater more than four miles away. In its own way, the moon had a beauty in the starkness of its ragged, scarred surface, with every inch screaming its billion-year-old bout with meteor impacts. The one good thing about the titanic struggle was it offered many hiding places.
He would look up and occasionally see the thrusters from one of the naval warships as it maneuvered overhead looking for him. The warships had their own kind of beauty too, and their sleek lines glowing brightly with the power of their screens belied the danger they represented. He wasnt too worried about being seen because he was in the craters shadow and they had no chance of seeing him with the visual sensors. Blazes, he couldnt even see himself. Since the moon had no atmosphere light was not scattered, so the shadows were pitch-black. The only real risk he faced of being discovered was that one of the warships would get close enough and its sensors would pick up the small electronic emissions of his suit, but even that was a remote possibility. He had turned off most of the suits accessories, leaving only his environmental and visual circuits active, so they would have to come very close to detect him.
The warships overhead had been firing energy beams from high-altitude randomly into the surface, hoping to get him to move. Each beam would vaporize rocks for a hundred yards, and one had hit two miles across the crater from where he was hiding. Even at that range his suit had to turn up its cooling just to dissipate the heat. Weapons designed to destroy starships at forty miles just werent effective at such short range. They did, however, make a very impressive hole in the moons surface. He watched the dust from the beam strike slowly settle back to the surface as the warship moved further along the crater and fired again.
He had counted twenty ships crisscrossing overhead. Twenty ships! Can you believe it? They didnt use twenty ships to wipe out the belt pirate fleet of the last dictator five hundred years ago, he thought. He was genuinely surprised that the fleet would go to this much effort to capture or kill him. Well, maybe not too surprised. After all, they had been chasing him for three years, and now they had the chance to eliminate a prime target. The skills he had used to avoid their capture over the years, coupled with the fact that he had managed to steal a ship that had interstellar capability, only added to their resolve to end this particular problem now. Some poor flight officer is going to disappear shortly, he thought, and he felt a twinge of sympathy for the poor fellow, but only for a moment. Part of the dues for having a high-paying position, he said to himself. I wonder where all those people who disappear go? I guess Ill find out if they capture me.