Battle for the Earth (14 page)

Finney blinked nervously but carried on.

‘Am I right in assuming that the old Mars underground base that the Dropas had when they were mining for Moissanite is still there?’

This caught Konoco’s attention.

‘How do you know about that?’ he demanded

Finney looked like a public school boy who had just been caught playing truant.

‘Well, if the truth be known, one of my old school chums did a bit of tendering work - well quite a lot actually - got to go to Mars and everything, it was for a Dropas company back in late 2018, all hush-hush, you know, the mining was all being wound up at the time, and well, long story short, he told me all about it.’

Konoco looked astounded as did Lee and Marie, Lee butted in.

‘I didn’t know anything about this.’

He threw a glance at Marie, who said jokingly:

‘Don’t look at me, I didn’t have a clue that was going on.’

Jumouk felt he better take the situation back in hand.

‘Please, it was an old mining operation that’s closed down now. We just didn’t feel at the time it was important to mention it.’

Lee looked sceptical. He thought he had known everything about the Dropas operations. It was Konoco who got them back on track.

‘I understand your concerns, Lee, but could we just see where Finney is going with this?’

All eyes turned to an uncomfortable-looking Finney, who hadn’t expected the conversation to go this way. After all, he hadn’t known the ESG high council were unaware of the mining operation. Now he wished fervently that he had kept quiet about it - after all in the scheme of things he was just a lowly ground-troop battalion commander, unlike the big cheeses sitting around the table with him making decisions that would affect the fate of mankind.

‘Well?’ snapped Lee.

Finney stood up as if to make a point. The real reason was that his back was giving him gyp and he had only just noticed it.

‘The way I see it is - to quote - if Mohamed can’t come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohamed.’

It was a misquote, the nerves were now beginning to show, also the pain in his back was getting much worse.

‘What I mean to say is...’

Lee interrupted him.

‘Brilliant! The man’s a genius!’

Lee stood up as well.

‘It’s simple. We take the entire population from Earth Central and put them up in the mining complex on Mars. Job done’

He emphasised his point by slamming his hand on the desk.

At this moment Marie put her head in her hands and thought: if mankind’s fate is in our hands, God help us!

Lee saw the look on Marie’s face as she looked up.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I mean it. All we need to do is use three of the Dropas mining craft, set up an underwater base off the eastern seaboard, tunnel through to Earth Central, then evacuate them into the largest Dropas transports - at a push they hold up to two hundred and fifty thousand at time - take the transports underwater over to somewhere off Western Australia. If we cause enough of a diversion with the two Annunaki battle cruisers, we should be able to slip the transports off the planet without being noticed and get them to the underground facility on Mars.’

The room fell silent again. Jumouk looked at Konoco.

‘It’s possible, isn’t it?’

Konoco nodded.

‘Thourus has got a movable underwater station. We bring that in, the tunnelling can be done in a matter of hours. Then it’s just the time to evacuate Earth Central. Sure it’s possible.’

Lee looked to Finney.

‘Well done, Finney, you’ve played a blinder!’

Jumouk stood up and asked Lee if he could sort out the details, Marie and Konoco would help organise the logistics involved.

**

29

Thourus was busy organising the movement of the undersea station. It was a fair size, able to hold easily between seventy to one hundred thousand people at a time. It was completely self-sufficient and comfortable.

Once the anchors holding the station in place had been removed, the flotation tanks were filled to support the base. It could now be towed by two shuttle craft with surprising ease.

The journey from the Labrador Sea, where the station was positioned, to a point off Washington DC was a fairly short one, but certainly not without its difficulties. These were mainly caused by strong currents.

Thourus oversaw the anchoring in the new position personally. Everything went perfectly to plan. The three Dropas mining craft were already halfway to Bailey’s Crossing at a depth of two miles underground, and an airtight connection had been made between the three tunnels and the undersea station. Everything was being done with maximum security to prevent the Annunaki getting wind of what was going on.

**

Konoco and Marie had slipped off Earth in a small shuttle and were on their way to the underground base on Mars, so they could see for themselves the condition of the base.

Marie was perfect for this, after her experience of running the moon base. Lee in the meantime was trying to come up with a suitable diversion so when the time came the transports could get away safely.

As Marie and Konoco set down in a heavily disguised landing station equipped with its own gravity and atmosphere, far on the other side of Mars, the secret nature of the mining operation was becoming apparent to Marie.

They entered the mine entrance and proceeded to a series of lifts all apparently going in different directions. The scale of the mine must be huge, thought Marie, although she said nothing of her thoughts to Konoco, who was looking more sheepish and uncomfortable by the minute.

Finally she blurted out:

‘Where do we start?’

It was an uneasy attempt to break the awkward silence.

‘We must check the power source first,’ Konoco replied.

He was checking the audio-visual map to the right-hand side of the lifts.

‘Good. We take this one.’

Konoco ushered Marie into one of the lifts. For some reason he seemed suddenly a lot more confident. Once out of the lift they entered a huge room filled with electronic gadgetry, weird-looking even by Marie’s standards. She thought she had seen it all on Blue Star Moon Base.

Konoco went straight to a console on the left-hand side of the room and began to flick through its three-dimensional imagery. It was more than apparent to Marie that Konoco had been here before, probably lots of times. She wondered what the Dropas had been using this base for. It was obvious that some mining had gone on, but the base was far too big to be just a mine.

Konoco turned to her.

‘Well, the power source is fine, and everything should come on line just shortly.’

Marie looked concerned.

‘Won’t that leave a huge electronic signature, Konoco? It will be like we turned on a light in a dark room, a gift to the Annunaki sensors.’

‘Don’t worry, Marie. It’s totally shielded from detection. The Annunaki wouldn’t know we were here even if they were standing right next to us.’

Marie was very impressed, and even more so when systems started coming on line all around her. The thought even occurred to her that it was almost like standing in the engine room of some gigantic space craft.

**

Back on Earth, Fiona Green was pacing the floor of the control room at Earth Central. Things had gone from bad to worse. Not only were the Annunaki warriors almost knocking at her door, but to top it all she had totally lost communications with Jumouk and Heathrow.

She had technicians crawling all over the communications systems for hours now, but all they kept telling her was that the systems are all working fine. In truth she was starting to fear the worst.

The only good news seemed to be that the Annunaki battle cruisers that had landed at Dulles didn’t seem to be searching the area - at least for the time being.

**

Nalater was in personal contact with all of his patrol commanders as they spread out from Dulles International Airport. Shuttles were landing and taking off at regular intervals. Reinforcements had been brought in from all over Earth in the search for this elusive ESG base. Nalater couldn’t prove its existence; he just knew that it was there.

This was, of course, a fairly big gamble for Nalater to take. If things went wrong, the vengeance of Tannacha was notorious, and he would no doubt feel the full force of it.

The patrols of Annunaki warriors had got as far as Mclean, Falls Church, Jefferson and Annandale. The search was carried out door to door, street to street, and involved now more than fifty thousand ground warriors backed up by fifty Annunaki assault craft and assorted sizes of shuttles. If anything was there, Nalater was confident he was going to find it. After all, he knew only too well the consequences if he didn’t!

The next towns to be searched would be Bethesda, Arlington, Bailey’s Crossroads, Franconia and Groveton, in a search pattern fanning out from Dulles.

**

Back at Earth Central, Fiona was right to be worried. She wished Terry had been there, he would have known what to do for the best. Grant was a great aerial tactician, but didn’t have the same expertise with ground troops. She felt like a rat in a trap.

Jumouk and Lee were on the north mining craft as it penetrated floor two of Earth Central where the command centre was based. The two south craft would penetrate on floor four, the non-combatants’ shelter.

Tunnels in a perfect circular shape, and around eight hundred feet in diameter, had been bored out. This was complemented by a solid level floor two hundred feet wide. The mining craft had huge retractable lasers and crushers on the front of them. The lasers cut a path and fed the crushers, which pulverised, and super-compressed anything that passed through them. The compressed material was then converted in the second section of the craft to a substance a thousand times stronger than cement.

This finished substance was called Geronosite, and was used to make the walls and floor of the tunnel, which was all done automatically by the second section. A third compartment dried and sealed the Geronosite instantly, making it rock hard, without the need to be shored up. The fourth compartment was the driving engine behind the process and could drive the tunnelling at an incredible speed. At the end of the day you had a perfect, wide-floored tunnel, ready to use.

What used to take mankind years and years was now done in less than two hours.

The mining craft simply retracted their lasers and crushers and reversed down the tunnel to the awaiting undersea station. A series of shuttles on floor four would use the two tunnels in one circular direction, picking up people from floor four and dropping them off at the undersea station ready to board large transports, thence returning up the other tunnel to collect more people. Round and round the shuttles would go until the job was complete and everybody had been safely evacuated.

Jumouk and Lee disembarked from their shuttle and headed for the control room.

**

30

Marie and Konoco had left the room housing the power source and were on their way to the mining operation control room. With every step that Marie took she was becoming less convinced this base had just been about mining. If it was just about mining, why so hush-hush? Obviously, mining had taken place here, but the sprawling underground base was far too vast to account for any mining operation that could conceivably have taken place. No, she thought to herself, there was definitely an ulterior motive to this base.

As they entered the control room Marie stopped in her tracks in astonishment. This was the largest and most technologically advanced control room she had ever seen. It made the one on the ill-fated moon base look like an ancient relic.

‘What’s going on, Konoco? And please don’t say “mining”.’

Konoco had already made his mind up to tell Marie the full story when they had reached the lifts, which probably accounted for his change in mood at the time. He thought to himself - where do I start?

‘Marie, this is going to take a bit of explaining.’

Konoco led Marie across the huge control room to an annexe, a pleasant room, well furnished and comfortable. They sat down on a plush couch and Konoco voiced a command to the computer.

‘Computer, two green teas, thank you.’

Marie stared about her in disbelief.

Moments later a person, or perhaps even an Android, appeared, carrying a tray with two green teas on it, then proceeded to lay the tray on a small table in front of them.

‘Anything else, sir?’ the Android enquired politely, its voice was steady and self-assured with a soothing tone.

‘No, thank you.’ replied Konoco with the greatest of courtesy.

Marie was speechless. She had never seen an Android like this one before; it could almost have been human. Regaining her composure, she had a sip of the green tea, politely returned the cup and saucer to the table and relaxed back into the comfortable couch.

‘Well, Konoco, you were about to explain.’