“What’s wrong?” I repeated. “Gee, let me think now …”
“We need to get moving, Lieutenant,” he said. “There isn’t much time.”
But I didn’t move. My father waited.
I turned to study his face, then asked him the question I needed to ask: “How badly outnumbered are we going to be? Once the entire armada arrives?”
“So badly it’s not really even worth thinking about,” he said immediately, without even pausing to consider his answer. And the lack of concern in his tone pissed me off all over again.
“Then why the hell did you bring me up here?” I asked. “So that you could have a quick father-son playdate before we both die horribly?” I jerked a thumb at the shuttle. “If we’re doomed, just tell me right now. I’d rather fly that thing back home and die with my mother. She’s all alone now, you realize?”
My father looked as if I’d just gutted him, and I felt a pang of regret—but it was mingled with a twisted sense of satisfaction. It felt good to hurt his feelings—it was payback for the way his choices had irrevocably damaged my own.
It took my father a moment to respond. When he did, his tone of voice had hardened.
“I didn’t ‘bring’ you up here, Lieutenant. You voluntarily enlisted as a solider in the Earth Defense Alliance. You don’t get to run home now just because you’re scared. Trust me.”
“I’m not scared,” I said, lying right through my teeth.
“If that’s true, then you’re a fucking idiot,” he said matter-of-factly. “But I know that’s not the case.” He looked me in the eyes. “I’ve been fighting this war for half my life now, Zack, and I’m terrified. You don’t know how long I’ve lived in fear of this day, and now it’s here.”
“You’re not making me feel any better right now,” I told him.
“I know that, Lieutenant,” he said. “I also know how hopeless our chances must seem, given what you’ve been told and the images you’ve been shown. But believe me, Son, there are a lot of things about our situation—and our enemy—that you still don’t know.”
He cast a glance back over his shoulder, toward a large security camera mounted above the nearest exit, sweeping its lens slowly back and forth. Then he turned back to me, and I think that was when I caught my first glimpse of something truly unsettling in my father’s eyes. A hint of the very madness that I’d always feared I might have inherited from him.
“We can’t talk now, or here,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “But things aren’t nearly as hopeless as they seem, Zack. I promise you.” He gave me a hopeful smile. “That’s why I’m so thankful you’re here now. I’m going to need your help.”
Despite my better judgment, I went ahead and asked, “With what?”
“With saving the world, Son,” my father said. “You think you’re up for that?”
I straightened my posture, and for the first time I noticed we were now the same height.
“Yes, sir, General, sir,” I replied. “Most definitely.”
There was no mistaking the look of pride on my father’s face. It was intoxicating.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he said, patting me on the back. “Follow me.”
He turned and began to jog back out through the hangar’s exit.
I cast another furtive glance back over my shoulder at the gleaming fighter ships stockpiled around me. Then I turned and ran after my father—even though I still wasn’t quite sure exactly where he was leading me.
AS GENERAL LIGHTMAN led me through the dimly lit carpeted corridors of Moon Base Alpha, I kept biting the inner wall of my cheek every few minutes, because each subsequent flash of pain was proof that I was wide awake, and that this was all really happening.
As we took a circuitous route down to the Operations level, I marveled at how strangely familiar my new surroundings were, and at how perfectly Armada’s simulated version of the moon base matched the real thing.
When I mentioned to my father that it looked like certain elements of the base’s exterior design had been “borrowed” from the fictional Clavius Base seen in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, he was delighted to confirm that they had.
“The team of engineers who designed and built this place were in a huge hurry, so they borrowed from a lot of existing designs,” he explained, motioning to the carpeted corridors around us. “They stole a lot of ideas from Syd Mead and Ralph McQuarrie, like everyone else. Other people, too.” He grinned. “The access corridors down on the maintenance level look like they were stolen right off the set of Aliens, I swear—wait until you see them.”
Once he told me all of that, I suddenly began to see evidence of sci-fi design theft everywhere I looked inside the base. Everything was sleek, ergonomic, and vaguely retro-futuristic in its design, which often appeared to favor form over function.
There were also a lot of vintage rock band and movie posters taped up everywhere, but I was pretty sure those had been added by the base’s current residents—as had the graffiti spray-painted in red on one of the corridor walls: THE CAKE IS A LIE.
We also passed one corridor lined with dozens of framed photos of men and women in EDA flight officer uniforms, wearing hairstyles from at least four different decades. Each photo was accompanied by a small plaque with the officer’s name and two dates, indicating each individual’s “Term of Service in the Earth Defense Alliance.” This was followed by “Made the Ultimate Sacrifice to Protect Us All.”
“All these people served up here?” I asked my father.
He nodded. “And they died up here, too,” he said. “Those are officers who lost their lives in the line of duty.”
“But they were just drone pilots, right?” I said. “How did they all die?”
“During previous attacks the enemy has made on this base,” he said. Then, before I could ask him to elaborate, he said, “I’ll explain in the briefing.”
When we reached the end of that corridor, my father led me onto a turbo elevator that carried us down to the Operations level, located over a mile beneath the lunar surface, in just a few seconds. Then my father led me through a series of cavernous chambers carved into the lunar bedrock, which housed the cold-fusion generators, life-support systems, matter compilers, and the enormous gravity-distortion array.
“I don’t know how most of this stuff works,” my father confessed. “Or even how to operate most of it. But I’ve never needed to, because all of the base systems are completely automated. And all of the maintenance is done by drones operated by real people back on Earth.”
When we passed the glass-walled med bay, I saw that it, too, was staffed entirely by drones. The base doctor appeared to be a specially equipped ATHID with a pair of articulated human hands that allowed a surgeon back on Earth to operate them remotely.
“A doctor in London used one of those med drones to remove my appendix a few years ago,” he said. “The procedure went flawlessly.”
The crew quarters were packed onto the same level—fifty modular dorm rooms, each designed for two residents.
“Since only three of the rooms are currently occupied, everyone gets their own private digs,” my father said. He pointed to a door labeled A7. “These are your quarters. The door has already been coded to your biometrics, and your pack should already be inside.”
I held up my QComm and checked the countdown timer.
“Why even bother giving me a room?” I asked. “The vanguard arrives in just a few hours—it’s not like I’m going to try to take a nap between now and then.”
“No,” he said, smiling. “But you might want some privacy later on, once you’re able to call your mother.”
I stared at him until he met my eyes. “Are you planning to call her?”
He shook his head. “I doubt that would be a good idea,” he said. “Why would she be interested in speaking to me, once she finds out I’m alive and that I … abandoned you both?”
“Of course she’ll want to talk to you!” I told him. “She’ll be overjoyed to find out you’re alive.” Then without thinking, I added, “Just like I am.”
He studied my face. “You really think so?”
“I know so,” I said, although I was trying to convince myself as much as him. “She never got over losing you. She never fell in love again after you. She told me so.”
My father suddenly turned away, and I heard a small noise escape him—like the sound of a wounded animal, caught in a trap. When he made no other attempt to reply, I motioned to the other doors lining the corridor.
“Which room is yours?” I asked.
He pointed to the first door at the end of the hall, labeled A1.
“But that’s not part of the tour,” he said, attempting to steer me in the opposite direction.
“Just let me peek inside for one second,” I said, standing my ground. “Please? Sir?”
“There really isn’t that much to see,” he said, still interposing himself between me and the door.