New Hope: Book 1
31

Ellie prepared for the finale of this discussion when she heard the sound of breaking glass under some heavy boots and the noise of a reloading weapon. She opened her eyes and looked toward the sound’s source. There, at the door, she saw two uniformed figures with long firearms sitting on their shoulders. Elrael turned around at superhuman speed toward the two intruders, forgetting about the plan to crush the irritating astronaut.

“Good afternoon everybody,” said John Lassiter, aiming the automatic weapon at the huge robot figure. “I hope we’re not late for the main part of the party?” he asked nonchalantly and entered the room. Julius Cousteau was right behind him with an expression of terror all over his face, switching gazes from the massive robot to Ellie huddling in the corner.

“John, Julius!” she shouted. “Be careful! Don’t let him get to the cons...” Ellie was struck by the enormous arm of the robotic body of Elrael and went flying a few feet in the air, crashing on a desk and causing a fountain of sparks and smoke.

“Nooo!” cried John, firing a short burst of bullets which hit the robot’s metallic body, yet did not cause it much harm but pushed it back and make it take a defensive stance covering its vulnerable cybernetic components.

The Captain quickly threw himself toward the astronaut’s body hanging motionless from the console. “Cover me!” he yelled to Julius, who also aimed at the robot and continued firing short, controlled rounds.

Ordinarily, the bullets wouldn’t have been capable of causing any damage to the advanced armor that Elrael’s current body had. Luckily, there was much technological progress made on the Moon, which made it possible to miniaturize depleted uranium bullets, able to penetrate the armor of even a modern tank. At the same time, the technological progress in the production of high-energy firearms drastically increased shooting power while reducing the mass of the bullets, so they could pierce and tear even armored targets at enormous speed, without significantly increasing rifle recoil. This combination produced modern and lethal versions of rifles, which Captain Cousteau was using to shoot at his target. A few of his bullets reached their target and the damaged fragments of Elrael’s body started streaming a torrent of sparks mixed with different hydraulic liquids.

“Argh!” roared the robot. Technically, he didn’t feel any pain. Even if he did, he would treat it only as a hindrance - nothing that would bother him. His mind was practically immortal, after all. Clearly, the Protagonists’ robot body wasn’t as durable as the combat robots used by the Sarassians, so Elrael had to quickly decide to retreat before these burdensome monkeys could hurt his chances of completing the whole mission. Elrael, still covering his most important components, yelling in fury at yet another delay, ran out of the control center and headed further into the complex. After a short while, only the sounds of his metallic steps could be heard from the depths of the Protagonists’ installation.

“Ellie!” The lieutenant quickly made his way toward the astronaut lying in a growing puddle of red liquid.

“John...” she answered weakly. “We can’t let the robot send a signal to his kinsmen. He wants to summon an entire military armada here.”

“Are you alright, Ellie?” asked the lieutenant, strongly concerned. You can’t fly through the air without suffering at least slight injuries, he thought. “Does it hurt anywhere?”

Ellie let out a laugh and then curled up in pain. “Does wounded pride count?” she looked John directly into his eyes. “I think I’ll be alright. I landed on my backpack - it alleviated the blow,” she said. “I can’t say that robot lacks moxie.”

“What about the blood, Ellie? You’re leaking no less than a strainer!” said John. “Doctor, we need a doctor!” he shouted to Julius.

“Oh, that...” Ellie smiled slightly, looked at the puddle, and touched it. Cold. Definitely not blood, she thought with relief, letting the lieutenant know that she must have broken a container with some strange liquid when she landed.

At these words, John suddenly grabbed Ellie and embraced her. He pulled away after a long while and cleared his throat.

“Ehm, sorry, I don’t know why I did that,” he said, embarrassed and lacking the courage to look Ellie in the eyes.

“No problem, don’t worry about it,” she consoled him. That was nice, she thought but had no intention of sharing this thought with the lieutenant. Not yet, anyway.

When the three companions had settled that everyone was mostly okay, Julius asked:

“Ellie, for God’s sake, what was that?!”

Ellie pulled herself together and told the short version of the most important parts, as there wasn’t much time to share the whole story with her colleagues. After all, the robot had run away God knows where and God knows why. At least Ellie knew the goal of his mission.

“That robot is in fact the digitalized version of a race that is hostile to the Protagonists and humans. It wants to take over our entire galaxy and more.”

“Protagonists? Who are they?” asked lieutenant Lassiter.

“That’s what the builders of the artifacts from the Moon called themselves, the creators of the complex here and the installation on the Moon. They created it all,” said Ellie, pausing to prepare herself mentally for what she had to tell her companions. “It’s not going to be easy to believe this, but the Protagonists also created humans.”

Both men were speechless. It’s not every day one learns that one is not the product of millions of years of evolution, but rather the result of artificial genetic manipulation.

“How do you know this, Ellie?” Julius asked carefully.

“Suffice to say, I know from at least two different sources that aliens were involved in the evolution of man. They disappeared several thousand years ago and nobody knows where they went... At least that’s what Elrael suggested,” she said. The look on her companions’ faces made her realize that she was the only one to know that name. “The robot you fired at gave me that name.”

“Ah...” both soldiers said almost simultaneously, exchanging glances with one another.

Ellie, seeing the men’s disbelief added,

“Look, I know how all this sounds. You saw it yourself... the 9-foot robot who threw me against the wall like a raggedy-Ann doll. Regardless of anything else, you’ve got to believe me - stopping that robot is the most important thing we have to do. If we don’t the consequences will be tragic!”

As she said this, carefully and slowly, still feeling the pain coming from a few areas of her body that took a harder hit, Ellie approached the console Elrael was working at just a while back. She activated a holographic screen with the gesture of her hand, where she read a list of tasks the avatar had performed.

“Damn it!” she said angrily.

“What happened?” asked Julius.

“Elrael turned on the activation sequence for the hyperspace transmitter. He’ll be able to send a superluminal message to his kind in under an hour. “If he does...”

“Okay,” replied lieutenant Lassiter. “We’ll do everything in our power to stop him.” The lieutenant connected via radio with the head of the commandos who stayed at the entrance to the ancient complex.

“Sergeant Borrows, do you read me?” said the lieutenant into the handset.

“Burrows here,” said the voice on the radio.

“Sergeant, the strength of my transmitter won’t allow me to contact the nearest Antarctic station McMurdo, so send someone outside to summon a helicopter, quickly. We need transport. The lunar vehicle doesn’t have enough fuel to reach orbit, and we might need to evacuate from here soon. We have a very serious situation here which cannot turn into the catastrophe of the century,” he said. When the lieutenant said these words, Sergeant Burrows immediately passed on the order to one of his men at the entrance to the underground and confirmed its execution.

“Excellent, thank you, Sergeant,” said Lassiter. “We have a serious situation here with a hostile robot.”

“With what, lieutenant?! Can you repeat?” asked the sergeant in disbelief.

“You heard me right. We are dealing with a humanoid robot with a superiority complex. Take the other commandos and quickly hurry through the corridor to a room where there’s an illuminated circle. The defense systems that stopped you from getting to the facility have been deactivated so you won’t have any problems making the distance,” said the lieutenant. “The illuminated circle at the end of the tunnel is a transport device that will take you to us. I’ll need your help to smoke out and neutralize the enemy,” he said. Then, with a serious look, he added, “The life of everyone on this planet might depend on the success of our operation. Hurry, we don’t have a moment to lose.”

“Copy,” said the commando. “We’ll be there in a few minutes!” He disconnected and, together with his trained colleagues, started the sprint toward the previously darkened corridor.

John Lassiter sat down at one of the consoles to rest a little and catch his breath. He had run the entire way to this spot, not slowing down for even a moment, so after a short exchange of fire, his lungs felt like they were on fire. When he had a moment to take a breather, he asked,

“Ellie, what exactly are we dealing with? What do we have to do?”

“First, this is a representative of the race called Sarassians. I’ll tell you about them later. This isn’t the time or place, but it’s safe to say that his race does not have a friendly approach to us,” said Ellie. “If he manages to send the signal home, that’s it. An armada will reach our planet in a few decades, which will wipe out all life on our planet. We can’t let that happen!” said Ellie. “We have to find him and get the deactivation codes from him to the console he worked on. Everything’s been coded so I’m not able to turn anything off from here.”

“Okay, Ellie, in that case, do you have any idea where he could have gone?”

“Hm... There’s only one entrance to the building, and the robot ran the opposite way, so I think we can assume he’s still somewhere nearby,” said Ellie.

“Alright, we’ll go in the direction the robot disappeared and try to cut through. Our ammunition can injure him, though it won’t be easy to cause him actual harm considering the number of shots we had to make for him to even move from here,” said the lieutenant.

In the meantime, another idea came to Ellie.

“Listen, I don’t know if we’ll catch Elrael on time, and mostly that it will be impossible to get any information out of him that’s necessary to stop the transmission. “I may have another idea. A more sure idea... Though it’s riskier,” she added.

“I’m listening,” said Julius.

“Okay,” said Ellie. “When I was looking at the Protagonists’ systems on one of the consoles to find a way for turning off the defense systems, I noticed that even though this whole installation is powered by advanced fusion reactors, the transmitter alone has a separate power source and it’s located in the engineering section of the complex,” she said to her companions. “If we’re able to turn off and destroy the transmitter’s power supply, sending any message into space is a no-go.”

Julius inhaled loudly. Lieutenant Lassiter just looked at Ellie, extremely impressed, and asked, “What do we have to do and how quickly can we blow up this place? Will that be able to stop emitting the signal to those Sara...?”

“Sarassians. I think so, yes,” replied Ellie.

After some time of working with the console, Ellie shouted, “Got it! We have to get to the engineering level, past the storage rooms. That’s where the system powering the hyperspace transmitter is located,” she said. Then her face fell a little.

“What’s wrong, Ellie?” asked John.

“The exchange station for the fusion reactors powering the whole complex is near the system powering the transmitter. You have to be very careful not to damage anything there. Otherwise, there could be a thermonuclear reaction of unspeakable proportions.”

“How unspeakable?” asked Julius.

“Have you seen that horror classic from the 1980s, Aliens?” asked Ellie.

“Who hasn’t? Of course, I’ve seen it,” said Julius carefully, and then when he understood the reference, his eyes opened wide. “That bad?!”

“Unfortunately,” said Ellie. “So be careful not to wreck anything over there. A thermonuclear explosion in the polar circle would end in a global catastrophe and probably the death of millions of people living in the coastal areas of all the continents. We don’t want that,” she added, allowing herself to smuggle in a light joke. “Anyway, the exchange station is an installation made of very many pipes and wires; you can’t mistake it for anything else,” she winked. “Just avoid it at all costs.”

“So an octanitrocubane explosive is out of the question...” said the lieutenant under his nose.

In the meantime, the three commandos ran into the room and when they saw the destruction and bullet holes, they exchanged questioning looks with the lieutenant.

“Gentlemen, how good to see you! Small change of plans,” he said. “Instead of hunting the robot I told you about, one of you will stay here with Captain Cousteau and Dr. Johnson. Her life is the most important thing right now; you cannot let anything happen to her,” said John, looking Ellie in the eye. “Dr. Johnson is the only person who can operate this place in any way, so you need to maintain this position and protect the Doctor from the possible return of the hostile robot. You cannot let it do her any harm, understood?” asked the lieutenant.

“Understood!” replied Burrows, indicating to one of the soldiers the spot where he should take a position to cover the entrance to the room.

“You, Sergeant, and another one of the commandos will follow me into the installation,” said lieutenant Lassiter. “We have to find the engineering level and deactivate the power supply of the hyperspace transmitter. We need to do this in under an hour, otherwise, we’re going to have much more serious problems than one hostile metal adversary...”

“John!” shouted Ellie to the lieutenant as he was leaving the room. “John...” said the astronaut more calmly when Lassiter stopped and turned toward her. “On the way to the engineering level you’re going to pass the storage areas. I know there’s very little time, but this could be the only chance to get the core of the superluminal drive. There should be a few of them in storage. Without them, traveling at superluminal speeds is impossible,” she said. “If you have enough time, please, go and bring at least one core back with you. Dr. Yeager wouldn’t forgive us if we didn’t try,” said Ellie.

“Okay, I can’t promise anything. If we don’t encounter any problems, I promise to try and bring at least one back. I’m assuming it’s nothing heavy since you’re asking me this?” asked the lieutenant.

“Before the robot went psycho, he said the core is the size of a ball that should fit into the backpack. I don’t think he lied... When he told me, there was no reason not to tell me the truth. After all, he did think we’d all die at his hands...” said Ellie.

“Alright. If we find the storage you mentioned and we have time to search it, we’ll do it. Just remember that it’s not the priority right now,” said Lassiter.

“Of course, I know,” she replied. “Good luck! And be careful!” Ellie returned to work at the console, entering further commands. She had to hurry and get it done before her companions blow up the engineering level. “Hold on Ellie, just a little longer, just a little longer,” she said to herself in spirit.

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