Chapter 17: The Final Battle
T-36 days, 0 hours, 45 minutes and 6 seconds (May 7, 11:14 PM EDT).
Five days passed. Francine spent the days in social activities, actively snubbing the many people who had hurt her through the years. She told herself the humiliation was acceptable; after all, she wasn't sending any of them to the Moon. Her sister Dinah and scheming brother-in-law Harold took this moment to finally break the decades of pretending that Francine had died before marrying "some bankrupt artist". The fact that they now tried to pretend that it was she who had never contacted them led the Empress to seriously consider forging Nimnul's signature on an order to condemn their precious lunar hospital.
Very little of her nights was spent sleeping. Instead she compulsively vacuumed the hallways of Gogol as she tried to imagine what was happening on the Moon at that moment. Francine had trained for spaceflight with the others, so she was keenly aware of the dangers.
One night, Klaudaine poked his head in the door. "It has started," he told her.
Francine sat up, grabbed the remote control, and turned on the bedroom's television. Now that Norris was gone, she could finally bring modern conveniences like remote controls into Gogol, but she had limits. The only computers in Gogol, for example, were those brought in by Klaudaine and his men.
Francine didn't have to turn channels, because coverage of the battle was on every station. There was sporadic fighting on Earth, but most of the Danaans had returned to their ships as soon as the lunar mothership had blown up. The news agencies lacked reporters on the Moon itself, so the fighting was covered using ground and space-based telescopes-the ground telescopes were radar-based to penetrate Earth's cloud cover . There was even a hapless reporter stuck pointing his camera at the Moon from the Space Dock, after he had been stopped from stowing away aboard a Moon-bound freighter.
In her mind, Francine trusted in Nimnul's cynicism to stay out of the thick of fighting. He had his "drone" fighters on foot, the moon buggies and the shuttles, and the big guns mounted on the mountains, all of them powered by Nimnul Power Cubes, little blue boxes that the operators had all been told were observation devices until the last one had been installed and the whole set had been irreversibly activated by radio control immediately before the battle. There was no need to be in the front lines. That was the work of heroes and fools, two words Francine held to be synonymous. On the one hand, Nimnul had Miss Weir beside him, a person Francine put into both categories at times. On the other hand, he also had David Kano with him, and a more levelheaded man Francine had never met.
"They're retreating!" David Kano told Nimnul. He was not elated. In fact, he sounded horrified.
"Let them!" replied Nimnul, sitting back in his chair at the Moonbase Alpha command center. "They're headed right for the central force field roller. However did you think of that, anyway?"
"It wasn't me; it would have been Professor Bergman's contribution if he had been made emperor. But it's not moving!"
"What!" Nimnul shouted, standing up. "Where's the crew?"
David checked his instruments. "They fled as soon as the Danaans started heading their way, and it appears they sabotaged the remote controls on the way out."
"That was the roller Commander Gorski volunteered to pilot. This is treason! When I get my hands on him..."
"There's no time! If the Danaans get past that roller, they've got a straight shot at Waste Area Two!"
As David gestured at the electronic map, the left sleeve of his bulky sweater was pulled up his arm, revealing a peculiar wristband that looked an awful lot like one of Nimnul's Metamorphosizers, but he didn't have time to dwell on that in the middle of a battle. Looking instead at the map he said, "Yes, that's where Earth stored most of its radioactive waste. So?"
"So, they have the whole area rigged to explode!"
"Explode? Don't be ridiculous! They would never survive an explosion of that magnitude, now that their mothership is gone."
"Neither would humanity. Think, Nimnul! What do the Danaans want? And the answer is not 'conquest'."
"Destruction? They would sacrifice themselves to destroy all of us?"
"Yes! They would have done it on September 13th against Emperor Bergman, so I'm dead certain they'll try to do it again!"
"What?" Nimnul shook his head to clear it of cobwebs, consulted an electronic map showing where everybody was, then picked up the microphone. "Captain Cellini, we need your troops in Clavius Crater immediately! We cannot let the Danaans reach the nuclear waste!"
Cellini face appeared on the screen. He appeared to be fighting off a lot of fatigue. "My forces are boxed in at Theophilus Crater, but we'll try to flank them."
"They'll never make it in time," David said, pointing at the map. "No, we have to go out there and man that roller."
Nimnul hesitated for a moment, then reached down and picked up his equipment bag. "Alright, I'll try to rig up another remote control unit on the way."
Laurel caught up with them on the way to the Eagle shuttle. "Where are we headed?" she asked.
"Just over that ridge," Nimnul replied. "If I can fix the remote control unit, we can just stand back and let it handle the Danaans."
Laurel nodded. "I'll fly the Eagle, you two do the rest."
The Danaans were continuing to fire their electron beam weapons as they retreated, so Laurel needed some fancy flying to keep the shuttlecraft in one piece as she flew around them to reach the enormous cylindrical roller. After landing, the three occupants suited up and bounded across the lunar surface to the open airlock at one end.
Once inside, Nimnul wasted no time in finding the damaged remote control unit and quickly started repairs. A few minutes later, he was finished and the whole vehicle powered up upon receiving the signal from Laurel's computer. David sat down, booted up the computer controls and started entering commands. The cylinder levitated upwards and was immediately surrounded by a larger cylindrical force field. Another control caused the unit to begin rolling back towards the Danaans.
"What are you doing?" demanded Nimnul.
"I'm making sure your victory in this battle is total, Emperor," David replied. Ahead were six other rollers, all of them manned by crews who had not deserted. David ordered his roller to speed up to close the gap.
"We're leaving, now!" Nimnul ordered, grabbing David. Seeing that the roller was locked on course, David allowed himself to be dragged away.
Nimnul, David and the silent Laurel sped down the corridor to the airlock. A set of lockers nearby had held rocket packs, but all of them had been taken by the deserting crew. "How do we get out?" Laurel asked. "We're fifty feet above the surface, and miles away from the Eagle."
The wily scientist turned to another locker with a padlock and twirled it open. Above it was the sign "For Imperial Use Only!" Inside were two rocket packs. He put on one and handed the other to David. "These can support two people each," he explained. After cycling through the airlock, Nimnul stood for a minute at the open edge and looked around at his surroundings through the shimmering wall of the force field and the sheer drop down to the lunar surface. He then removed a device called a "comlock" from the side of his suit. Commander Gorski had issued one of these to everyone on Moonbase Alpha as soon as he had returned from Earth; they acted as universal remote controls, among other functions. Nimnul pressed a button, and the force field became completely transparent. Over the suit radio, he announced, "we have two minutes-after that, we'll just bounce off the inside of the field." Putting the comlock back, he took hold of the two control handles of the rocket pack, jumped away from the airlock, and activated the rockets. He passed through the field, quickly followed by David Kano with Laurel Weir strapped facing him.
As they were flying back towards the waiting Eagle, there was a tremendous flash of light behind them, followed by a great percussive force that plucked them out of the sky and hurled them into the ground. Nimnul's training paid off as he rolled into a safe landing. Standing up and seeing chunks of metal flying past him to embed themselves in the lunar regolith, he looked back to see that the axle of the next roller over had been snapped by an electron beam discharge, and had collapsed, leaving a hole in the trap. This as the outer edges of the line of rollers had already contacted the enemy. Then he heard a scream over the radio.
He turned around to see Miss Weir, who had unstrapped herself from David, removing his right glove. Nimnul opened his mouth to protest, but then saw that one of the shards of the shattered roller had already destroyed the left glove, including the mysterious wristband . A glimmer showed that the removed glove was sealed by a miniature force field. He bounded over to see what had happened. To his bafflement, David's suit was empty. Without saying a word, Laurel secured David's right glove to her suit and then used the rocket pack to continue her flight to the Eagle. Nimnul mutely followed.
When he entered the Eagle, Nimnul saw Miss Weir putting a small creature into a compartment in the cockpit and locking it. "You know, I think you're much cuter this way," she appeared to inform the animal. From the way she was cradling her right arm, it appeared she had broken it in the same accident that had damaged David's suit. The next thing she did was pull out a pocket mirror and examine her reflection closely. "But it looks like I'll remain Laurel Weir for now ," she concluded.
"What's going on here?" Nimnul demanded.
She responded by pointing out at the screen with her good hand. The view showed the Danaans streaming through the gap in the force field trap and heading straight for the Eagle.
Nimnul strapped himself into the pilot's seat, while Miss Weir did her best with the co-pilot's seat. He started up the controls, and then considered his next course of action.
Run for it! the logical, scheming part of his brain told him. That gap is tiny and I can see Cellini's forces returning. Let them handle it.
You have to stop them, Nimnul, Gadget's disembodied voice told him. The fate of all life on this Earth depends on it.
I...Miss Weir could get hurt! Nimnul's self protested.
His inner Gadget smiled. Isn't this a perfect Earth? she argued. They elect scientists to rule over them. They think, like you, that optimism is a waste of time. They recognize and applaud your genius. Would you allow such a world to be destroyed? A world without 'meddling vermin'?
"Let's show them that we don't take kindly to being invaded!" Nimnul cried. He aimed the Eagle straight for the breech, lasers blazing.
"The battle for Earth is over, and humanity is victorious." So stated Galt Braunbight, the legendary television news anchor who had covered the manned space program from the beginning, and had returned from retirement to cover the Battle of Clavius (as it was now being called). "The number of casualties is still being determined. Among them is Norton II, the most recent Emperor of Earth and mastermind of the effort that liberated humanity from alien annihilation. We have been following the aftermath of the battle on Earth, and...hold on." Braunbight picked up the piece of paper that had been set before him. "It appears...that Emperor Norton is alive! Yes, the Emperor has been found in a crashed shuttle near the site of the battle and he and a Miss Laurel Weir have been taken to Orlac Lunar Hospital. We bring you now a live announcement from the hospital spokeswoman, Doctor Helena Russell."
Francine leaned forward, staring intently at the screen. The scene before her shifted to a curtained backdrop with a podium. A young austere woman with wavy, nearly white hair stepped up to the microphone. Since there were still no press on the Moon yet, the sound of her organizing her notes was the only sound to be heard.
"Ah, Emperor Norton was brought to Orlac Hospital at 03:18 Lunar Time. His co-pilot is in stable condition, with a fractured radius bone that is expected to mend. As for the emperor, he was severely electrocuted and his spine was severed in several places. Luckily the cervical nerves were still intact, so the patient is still alive, but he is paralyzed from the neck down. He is currently being prepped for surgery, and we have high hopes to have some sort of artificial lung set up shortly to help him with breathing. He is currently unable to speak, but..." at this point Dr. Russell looked down at her notes, and a rather unpleasant look flashed across her features. "But," she forced herself to continue, "Doctor Harold Largess is preparing a radical new technique which will allow him to say whatever he wants him to...allow him to speak his will to the people." A hopeless look came in the spokeswoman's eyes as she spoke her final sentence: "Largess expects that the emperor will have plenty to say when he comes out of surgery."
