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Chapter 16

THE MOON TURNS TO BLOOD

It struck with vehemence.

SCC 2’s ‘geological’ structure for research of lunar past became in fact a launching pad for robotic devices. They were quite cute, some felt, with little visors and things like faces, while their destructive power was like that of a cat among mice. They set out, 200 strong, for SCC 1's vital energy supply structure on the hill of Eternal Light.

Their arrival on the moon of course had been in parts, as if for other purposes, but in the dark crater complex, known somewhat facetiously as Washless D.C.C,  they had been painstakingly assembled and now was D-day. Some held it stood for Washless D-day Clever Contrivance, but opinions differed, others deeming Washless Dark Conning Tower, as if the seas of space were letting them spy out their victim, and the play on 'conning' seemed especially apt.

For what then, was this D-day from Washless D.C.C. ? It was not this time for the beaches of Normanby, to provide liberty, but for the breaches of the tall energy-tower of SCC 1.

Crippled by the loss of all but auxiliary power, the Commander of SCC 2 felt, the directors of SCC 1, in fear of losing the entire life of their little state with its specialised occupants, would become pliable. Soon after that, they could become subject to controls, and then to … control.

That inadequate attention had been given to the reactions of SCC 1 was typical indeed of Meredith,  the Commander of SCC 2. The pragmatic, the assured, the charming exterior, the ever-present excuse, explanation and the hard-headed progress to power: this was the outline of the image he cultivated. As for anything needed by way of justification for the outrageous invasion he was planning against SCC 2, he would invent a whole, long and bitter past in terms of multiple imaginary offences which his station would be alleged to have suffered.

There would figure items such as ... failure to give access, to provide help, support; and he could even  invent a series of pretended efforts to scuttle their own mission, on the part of SCC 1, and pretend this response was merely in self-defence.

Who would be able to judge! His ruminative mind had nothing of the pallid passion of Hu, but it had a kind of psychic brogue which pleased him immensely, a capacity at first to charm, disarm, then assert.

The attack on SCC 2's solar energy supply would be presented from a position of power, like that of Hitler about to invade and embrace Austria, with longing arms. Fear would lend wings to acceptance on the part of SCC 3, flying to accept his terms, he felt sure. In fact, he rather enjoyed, and in this not unlike his counsellors, the sense of thrust or bust, of gamesmanship and brinkmanship involved. His eyes narrowed with the glint and gleam of sanctified meanness. Sanctified ? someone had better rule the place, he thought, or those oddments on earth would be securing the moon as a mere base, if not target! before long.

In one sense, it made him feel more complete, a sort of undertaker not only for his own mission, in the sense of executive director, but of other competitive stations, in the sense of interring them and overcoming them so that his own ideals and hopes could become those of all, per force.

However in one thing, he had underestimated SCC 1. His were double agents, not at his design, but theirs; and though thought to be reporting correctly to Meredith, they were taken as useful spies by his opponents. Actually deriding him as Meredith the Little Maestro, they were in the pay of SCC 1 itself. The double pay attracted them, and they were laughingly acknowledged by their real boss, as double men: it made them feel most competent.

However, even two of that sort scarcely make for half a man.

Whatever their fractional part of humanity, however, the fact was that through their spying,  the robot attack was as well known in SCC 1, even its time of attack, as in the mind of the aggressor; so that they were intensely ready at the time of night, the long night in which these things occurred. The specially prepared energy ray which they turned smoothly on the robots from SCC 2 found little obstruction in the lunar atmosphere as it removed from ever working again, the electrical and electronic components in the robots’ systems. They could economise with power, since they knew of their attackers, the number, the site and the time.

Hence the assailants in all their mechanical glory,  fell as they stood, and never again moved.

What did move however were the vanes of the Energy Assimilation Plant  of SS 2’s own sun-drawing resources on the Eternal Mount. These fell tattered and inglorious, like a half-mast flag, and the fury of Meredith was such that his immediate advisers felt it best-advised to be elsewhere. The counter-attack was all but fatal to the very existence of SS 2, certainly as an autonomous station. The humiliation was complete: arrogant assertiveness was exposed, power was vastly depleted and treachery was met with a still more potent response than its own initiative had afforded.

Hu on earth, was not slow to receive the information of this scenario, and was almost insane with anger. He had been deceived! He was happy for SCC 1 to be destroyed, since his aim was to control all of the moon totally, or else destroy those on it, to simplify the earth situation. Then SCC 3 and 2 could watch each other for a time, in pleasant balance from his viewpoint, until the next move occurred, to remove both of them.

Now that both of these were severely compromised, SCC 3 might dominate and so allow one nation on earth to have the power to control him, Hu, instead of the apposite opposite, his control of them! He acted typically, at once.

A mission was sent to help SCC 2, to prevent sudden dominance by SCC 3. Hu however had long realised that his was not the only long head, and if he and his competitors for absolute power had been painted, it would undoubtedly have been El Greco who would have found their features easy to portray, with long heads and sallow faces. Hu reflected that soon all the parties on the moon would be weakened by this excessive fighting, so that the moon would assuredly become passion export station rather than raw material import base.

This reflection however had too little a time to provide that glow of satisfaction which was in fact fast becoming Hu’s little internal godlet. To his amazement, the space craft sent to assist SCC 2 with new supplies, not to say prestige as the recipient of aid from the Earth Unity Force, simply disappeared from the screen he was watching. It was not there. There was nothing to trace, although some slight particles appeared moving in different directions, not far from the place it had been.

Hu, for all his faults, was swift to appreciate what had happened. If Meredith had been double-crossed, so had he! Who WAS controlling the final picture! A shiver of fear went down his elongated spine as he considered what would happen if only a tenth of his schemes were ever brought to light by a 21^st Century Nuremberg Commission! No, it was imperative that this situation be addressed and remedied AT ONCE.

He called a commander and explaining the need of an immediate meeting, soon had the sawny and sordid features of the ruling junta before him: not that this was their official title, but rather was it Departmental Heads of Human Enlightenment Ministries.

Explaining with that high moral tone so readily obtained by some of the most immoral specimens of human degradation that history has ever provided, despite the fact he had no morals himself of any kind, nor any basis for them, and thus becoming one more in the parade of the irrationalist bigots in power: Hu revealed all. That is, he showed them all he had a mind to do.

His invention of documents and reports, his imaginary background for his now impelling action was not questioned.

He was the CEO and it was apparent that the destruction of the EUF space craft required, for prestige alone, reaction at once. So, at least, it seemed to the hypnotised minds of the great, pride the stimulant, fear the dynamic, inflation the medicine. Moreover, he had carefully organised with the technical section that the power employed would be ostensibly that to punish some, not to obliterate human life on the moon. The overkill could be portrayed as the mistake of some computer program or other, and an officer was deputed to bring out the necessary errors in clear and readily comprehensible fashion.

It was, then,  only 3 days later that an explosion on the moon removed all the components of man’s civilisation, except the waste. A handsomely developed neutron bomb with special retardation features for the case of lunar landscape, left a sort of grave-yard, not excessively disturbed. This, added to the blood shed in three weeks of lunar war which had preceded it, and with the smashing of protective devices, left the moon doubly derelict, a mortuary of blood, a biological blast of horror, protoplasm strangely imported with no export licence for anything material at all.

Hu glowed inwardly at the thought of such competence. One of his own maxims was so simple: Fear nothing but failure. What you failed in, did not concern him, for as long as the will desired it, failure was the non-securing of the goal. It was expediency in priestly robes, philosophy in skeletal toga.

As the sunlight began to cover some of the once dark territory, in its biennial transmission, the sun might well have shaken its head, had it not been too inured to such things on the earth. Still, were it a person, it might have lamented the loss of the purity of the moon, now a mere extension of the blood and passion of the human race, for whom no cruelty could be too much, no mockery of wisdom too vicious, no counterfeit too incredible and no dismemberment too extreme.

Such a sun would have been far wiser however than Hu, whose joy was extreme, since he felt he had removed the embarrassment of an unco-operative family at the same time. Were not ALL the lunar inhabitants casualties of the unfortunate technical error ?

His self-love had removed any sense of need for family. In this however, he was mistaken.