Chapter 25 Chapter Twenty-Four

The invaders who invaded the moon were all dead, if not then, all wiped out soon after.The death toll was over a thousand, more than three times the number of Moonmen who died fighting them.But the number of injured moonmen is countless.We took no prisoners of war in the various settlements, but we took a dozen officers and crew from the ship as we rushed aboard. A very important reason why most unarmed lunar people can defeat heavily armed and trained soldiers is that those earthlings who have just landed have not yet adapted to the conditions here.The gravity of our Moon was only one-sixth that of Earth's to which they were accustomed, and the habits they had acquired all their lives became their deadly enemy.So they use too much force, their marksmanship is out of aim, they can't stand still, they can't run--they stumble.These troops must also attack from the top down, so they are even more unstable.They broke in from high levels and had to repeatedly rush down the ramp to take over the city.

These Earthlings don't know how to go downhill.The downhill movement is not running, not walking, let alone galloping, but like a well-controlled floating dance step, the soles of the feet hardly touch the ground, and only play a role of balance.A three-year-old child on the moon can also go downhill at will, jump freely, and only touch the ground with his toes every few meters. But for a person fresh from Earth, as soon as he finds himself "floating in the air," he struggles, spins, loses control, and falls.Although it won't be injured, it will be pissed off with anger. These troops were dealt with by us on the ramp.I saw some soldiers gradually mastering the tricks of walking on the moon, and actually went down the three-story ramp.Even so, only some snipers lying on the top of the ramp can shoot effectively, and those soldiers on the ramp can only try their best not to fall down, not to drop their weapons, and try their best to reach the next floor.

But the Moonmen would not let them succeed.Men, women and even children surrounded them, some with bare hands and some with homemade bayonets.We knocked them down and killed them with whatever we could get our hands on.Other than me, there are people around with laser guns. Two of Fern's soldiers stormed a balcony, crouched there, and took out the snipers at the top of the ramp.With no one telling them to do it, no one leading them to do it, no one ordering them to do it, Fin never had a chance to control his semi-militarized messy militia.But the war broke out, and they threw themselves into the fight automatically.This is the main reason why we lunar people can defeat them: we fought bravely.Although most Lunarians had never seen a live invader before, once an army invaded, the Lunarians snowballed up -- to fight.No one told them to do it.Our fragile organization collapsed under the sudden attack of the other side, but we lunar people resisted desperately and wiped out all invaders.No invader can get down to the sixth floor in any area.The people in Bottom Lane said they didn't know invaders had been to the moon until the war was over.

But the Raiders also played well.These troops are not only the most elite anti-riot troops sent by the United Nations, but someone also indoctrinated them and took stimulants beforehand.They were told that their only hope of returning to the surface was to occupy the lunar sectors and conquer us.If they were successful, they would be freed from continuing to serve on the Moon.Win or die.It's obvious.If the battle is not won, the battleships that transport them cannot take off, because the battleships need to replenish the reactors - and these are not possible before occupying the moon (this is true).

After taking stimulants, listening to other people's mobilization, and taking fear suppressants that make rats bite cats, they were sent to the battlefield.They played very professionally, fearlessly, and fought to the death. Casualties in Lower Tycho and Churchill Field were less one-sided than elsewhere.Only those Lunarians who happened to be wearing pressurized suits were immune to the gas.But the result is still the same, it just takes longer.The gas just knocked us out because the authorities didn't want to kill us all.They just want to teach us a lesson, control us, and force us to work.

This sneak attack made us understand why the United Nations hesitated to act.In fact, their decision was made shortly after we imposed the food embargo (this is what we learned from the captured officers).They spent a lot of time preparing for the attack - most of it in orbit.It's a long, elliptical orbit that's a long way from the orbit of the Moon.They circled the moon along this orbit and rendezvoused at the witch moon point.Mike did not discover the assembly of this fleet, and the other party's assembly point was his blind spot.He keeps monitoring the sky with his radar, but the radar can't see farther than the horizon.The earth spacecraft flew in a small circular orbit, each went directly to the target, and landed on the moon with swift movements.I have to admit that the United Nations peacekeeping fleet has done a really good job.

It wasn't until the battleship landed that Mike caught a glimpse of more than a thousand enemy troops swarming into Moon City.If he had scanned eastward with the new radar installed at the catapult in the Sea of ​​Onderaan, he would have spotted the enemy seconds earlier.But unfortunately he was training "his silly son" to scan the direction of the earth to the west.It didn't matter for a few seconds.The whole attack plan was so well designed and complete that before we woke up, the landing soldiers had rushed into various regions of the moon at 19:00 GMT.It was no accident that the hemispheres where the regions of the Moon were located were just under the sun at that time.The authorities don't really know what's going on on the moon, but they do know that no lunar person would choose to be on the lunar surface at this time unless necessary.Even if he had to go up, he had to get back down as soon as possible—and check for damage from the sun's rays.

So they caught us off guard, many without pressurized suits and weapons at the ready. Although these soldiers are all dead, there are still six battleships on the moon surface and a command ship in the sky. The fight I was in had just ended, and I immediately had a call.No word from Conville, nor from the professor.The battle for Johansson had been won, as had New Lyon—the ships there had been damaged on landing.The invasion force was already understrength due to losses suffered during the landing, and Finn's men seized the opportunity to take control of the ship.The battle between Churchill and Tycho's Lower Town continues.There is nothing wrong with other areas.

Mike has shut down the pipe irons and is working on restoring the telephone lines within the districts so that he can communicate. There was an explosion in Churchill's Lower Town, causing the air pressure to drop sharply, which was not contained. Fern had arrived, and I was finally in touch with him. I told Finn the location of the warship attacking Moon City, and made an appointment to meet at the thirteenth airtight gate underground. Fern's experience was similar to mine - he was caught off guard, except that he happened to have the pressurized suit with him.He didn't get his lasgun team under control until the end of the battle, fighting alone in the Old Dome.Now he began gathering his men, placing an officer in charge of receiving reports from Finn's own office.

He has already contacted the Xinlien Command, but he is still worried about Yuecheng in Singapore. He asked me: "Manny, do you think I should send someone to reinforce it by tube?" I want him to wait.It's not that I'm afraid that the enemy will attack us while we're riding on the tube iron, as long as the power is still in our hands, they won't be able to do it.My concern is that this battleship we have here takes off and escapes. "Let's take a look at that spaceship first." We walked out of the thirteenth air-tight gate, into the private pressure tunnel of someone else's house, into a neighbor's farm tunnel (the family couldn't believe that the earthlings had broken in), and took advantage of the air-tight tunnel leading to the surface of the moon. The gate observes the ship a kilometer to the west of us.I carefully pushed open the hatch of the airlock, climbed out, hid behind a rocky outcrop, and looked around through the binoculars of my helmet.

Then we retreated back to the rock and started talking. Fern said, "I think my men should be able to handle it." "How to do it?" "If I told you, you'd be racking your brains to tell me it wouldn't work. Just wait and see what I do, man." I heard that in the army, the subordinates have no right to tell the superiors to shut up - this is called "discipline".But we are amateurs, not a regular army, so sometimes the subordinates are allowed to climb on top of the superiors. It took him an hour to get the group together and two minutes to deploy.Using the farmers' surface airlocks, he arranged for a dozen men to scatter around the battleship and ordered radio silence—in fact, the pressurized suits of these guys didn't have radios at all.Fern herself occupied the westernmost corner.After making sure everyone was ready, he fired a signal rocket. The ship opened fire.Everyone immediately returned fire, each aiming at a pre-designated antenna. Fern's power supply died too, so he replaced it with a new one and started searing the hull. The laser gun shot a small cherry-red spot on the hull, and immediately there was another one next to this spot, and then several more, and several laser guns burned the same hull—suddenly, the molten steel There was a splash, and there was a whirring sound of gas leaking from the spaceship.Several people continued to work hard, digging a big hole, and were exhausted. I can imagine what it was like inside the ship: sirens blared, emergency hatch shut, crew desperately trying to fix three big holes - Fin's men spread out around the hull, dug holes in two other points on the hull —but it was impossible.They are not going to attack anywhere else.The ship has no air and its pressure hull is separate from the power plant and fuel tanks.They only attack where it is easiest to get results. Fern's helmet was on mine. "Now it can't fly or talk. I'd like to see if their hulls are really sealed enough to allow them to survive without a pressurized suit. Let it stay here for a few days Let’s see if they can come out. If they don’t come out again, we will push in a heavy drilling machine and give them some color to see.” I think Fern knows how to get on with the show without me telling her the way.So I went back underground and called Mike.I want him to adjust a pipe iron compartment for me, and I want to go to the ballistic radar to have a look. He asked me why I didn't stay inside, it would be safer. I said, "Listen, you pretentious semiconductor group, you're just a minister without a ministry, and I'm the minister of defense. You can see half of Chrisim's situation, and I have eyes, why can't Come out and see the whole fight. Do you fucking want to have all the fun?" He advised me not to get mad, he could put what he saw on the TV screen, he could go to the Fortune Hotel room and watch it - he didn't want me to be hurt... Also, heard the joke about the driller who upset his mother ? I said, "Mike, please send me an iron pod. I'll put on my pressurized suit and wait outside West Station—West Station is pretty much destroyed by now, as I think you know." "Okay," he said, "it's your life anyway. Wait a minute, just thirteen minutes. I'll let you drive all the way to Cannon George." He is so nice.I got there and went on the phone. Fern has called other regions, contacted his junior commander, or whoever is willing to take charge, and told them how to cause trouble for those dropships that have landed - except Singapore, because we know that the earth soldiers have taken control Singapore. "Adam," I asked him in the presence of the others, "do you think we should send a maintenance team in the Rollingon transport to try to restore contact with Billy Earl?" "It's not Mr. Selene," Mike replied in another voice. "I'm one of his assistants. Adam Selene was there when Churchill went uptown when the pressure dropped. I'm afraid we'll have to assume he's already died." "what?" "I'm really sorry, sir." "Don't hang up!" I chased some drillers and a girl out of the room, then sat down and pulled down the soundproof cover, "Mike," I said softly, "I'm alone now. What nonsense were you talking about?" " "Man," he said quietly, "you think about it. Adam Selene is going to die one day. He's done his job. And, as you pointed out before, he's pretty much out of government control." .I've discussed this with the professor and it's only a matter of time before he dies. Wouldn't it be nice for Adam to die in this war against aggression? Then he would be a national hero...and a nation needs a national hero ...before you discuss it with the professor, we say 'Adam Selene may have died' so that if the professor needs Adam Selene, we can say he's trapped in a private pressure tunnel, It took us a long time to get him out." "Well, that's fine, let's not decide, let it hang. Personally, I've always preferred your 'Mike' personality." "I know you'll think so. Man, my first and best friend, I actually think so too. This is who I am, and 'Adam' is just a cover." "Well, yes. Mike, but if the professor dies at Conville, I still need 'Adam''s help urgently." "Then let's 'freeze' him first, and bring him back as soon as we need it. Manny, after all this is over, will you take the time to continue studying 'humor' with me?" "I'll make time, Mike. That's my promise to you, and I'll keep it." "Thanks, Manny. You and Wyoh haven't had time to come over these days . . . and the things the professor wants to talk about aren't very interesting. I'll be glad when the war is over." "We're gonna beat 'em, won't we, Mike?" He giggled. "It's been a while since you've asked me that question. Here's the latest reckoning, from the moment of the invasion. Listen, Manny—we're equal chances of success and failure now." "Great!" "Get down to business and enjoy yourself. But you have to keep at least a hundred meters away from the laser cannon. Once the laser cannon fires, the spaceship may lock on to the laser beam and strike back quickly. I will determine the target soon , and twenty-one minutes." Impossible to get that far, because I have to be within range of a phone line, and the longest phone line is less than a hundred meters long. I plugged the phone line into Captain Lascannon's phone port and sat down in the shade of a rock. The sun hangs high in the west, so close to the earth that the earth can be seen clearly as long as the sun's dazzling light is covered.The Earth was still a full moon, a little gray in our moonlight, shrouded in a thin, quivering atmosphere. I put my helmeted head back into the shadows. "Ballistic Control, O'Kelly Davis is at Cannon Station George right now, I mean near, a hundred meters from it." Guess Mike can't tell how long the phone line I'm using is unless it's thousands of miles long. "Trajectory control understood," Mike said without picking on me, "I'll report to headquarters." "Thank you, Ballistic Control. Please check with headquarters for me if they have news from Congressman Wyoming Davis today." I fear for the safety of Wyo and the family. "I will," Mike said after a short wait. "Headquarters says Ms. Wyoming Davis is in charge of emergency care at the Old Dome." "Thank you." Suddenly, the hanging heart was relieved.I'm not favoring Wyoh over the rest of the family, but after all, she's a new addition to the family and the Moon needs her. "Target determination," Mike said lightly, "all gun crews, please pay attention. Altitude is 870, horizon longitude is 1930, and the parallax from the surface is 1300 kilometers. It is tracking and monitoring. I will continue to report." I stretched my limbs, hid my knees in the shadows, and began to search the sky just indicated, that is to say, almost south of the zenith.The sun didn't hit my helmet directly, and I could see the stars, but the telescope was difficult to adjust and it took a lot of effort to turn.Didn't find anything - looking through the binoculars, I just saw some haloed stars...there shouldn't be stars there.I noticed another star that was closer, stared at it, and waited. Mmm, that's right!It brightened and moved slowly north - ouch, no, this guy is about to land right where we're hiding! But even at top speed, thirteen hundred kilometers is a long way.I told myself that it would not land on my head, because it was flying in an elliptical arc, where it should descend in the orbit of the moon—unless the craft had been transferred to a new orbit.Mike didn't mention the situation.I wanted to ask him, but decided not to—I wanted him to devote all his energy to analyzing the ship, and I didn't want to bother him. All batteries are continuously reporting visual tracking results.Mike personally controls the four cannons via synchronized sensors.The four laser cannons, which were not manually controlled by the artillerymen, were reported to be keeping a close eye on the ship—good news; it meant Mike had figured out who the guy was and had successfully resolved the orbital problem. Before long, I saw that the ship did not follow the curve of the lunar orbit, it was going to land directly.The ship got brighter and brighter, but its position relative to the stars remained the same—damn it, it was going to land on us! "It's approaching another 500 meters," Mike said calmly, "ready to shoot. All the laser cannons are remotely controlled, and after the order to fire is given, they will be switched to manual control. There are still eighty seconds." It was the longest minute and twenty seconds of my life - that guy got big!Mike reported every ten seconds until the last thirty seconds, and then he started counting down the seconds. "—Five—Four—Three—Two—Zero—Shoot!" All of a sudden, the spaceship became glorious. Just before (maybe at the same time) we fired, a small dot burst out of the ship. We almost didn't see it, but Mike suddenly said: "The other party launched a missile. The synchronous remote control gun group is controlled by me, not manual firing. The other gun groups continue to stare at the spacecraft. New coordinates are being prepared." A few seconds later, maybe a few hours later, he gave me new coordinates, and told me: "Observe closely, shoot freely." I tried to keep an eye on the ship and the missile at the same time, but I couldn't keep my eyes off of both—just looked away from the binoculars when suddenly I saw the missile—it was between us and the catapult.So close to us, not even a kilometer.No, it didn't undergo hydrogen fission, or I'd be screwed.It exploded itself, a violent explosion, radiant.I guess it was the fuel remaining in the missile body, which glowed hot and silvery white in the sun, and I felt the shock waves on the ground after a while.But apart from a few large rocks being shaken away, no damage was done. The spaceship continued to land, but it was no longer just a dazzling star like before.We could see that it was a ship, but we couldn't see any damage to it.We expect it to burst into flames and explode at any time. but no.It slammed head-on ten kilometers to the north of us, and we only had time to see half an arc before it blew up. Mike said, "Report casualties, check all lasers. Once safe, move to tunnel." "Alice battery, no casualties." "There were no casualties in the Bambier artillery crew." "One person in the Caesar artillery crew was injured by gravel, and the air pressure in the pressurized suit did not drop." I went to the phone and called Mike: "What happened, Mike? The other party refused to give you the control of the spacecraft after the navigation system was destroyed?" "They gave me control, Manny." "But is it too late?" "I crashed it, it was more prudent to do that." An hour later I was down with Mike for the first time in four or five months.It's faster to get to the government complex than to Moon City. Besides, when we get there, we can have a good talk, unlike in Moon City where there are always people bothering us.I need to talk to Mike. When I tried to call Wyoh at the tube station, a worker from the Old Round Top made the call and told me Wyoh was exhausted and lying in bed.Now she can finally get off duty at night and get a good night's sleep. Fern took his men to Churchill on the pipe iron, to lead the attack on the battleship there. No news from Stu. News from Singapore and the professor has still not recovered. Now it seemed like it was just me and Mike in the whole government. Just at this time, we must start "Operation Rock". But the plan is not just throwing stones, we have to tell the planet what we are going to do and why we are going to do it, our justification for doing it.The professor, Stu, Heaney, and Adam have all researched what to do when attacked.Now that the time for the attack has come, the promotional material needs to be reworked to accommodate the event.Mike has rewritten it and printed it out so I can study it.I search in a volume of documents. "Mike, the news and the messages we sent to the UN say we've won the war in Singapore. How sure are you?" "About eighty-two percent or more." "Is this confidence big enough? It won't be a problem to send out the news of our victory?" "Manny, even if we haven't won over there yet, we will definitely win in a while. That battleship is no longer moving, and the others are about the same. Singapore Moon City doesn't have that much nuclear fuel, and they will definitely come here Come on. That means they'll have to move troops across land in Rolling-Room transports under the sun--a trek so arduous that even a Lunarian can't handle it--and beat us here. But they can't Beat us, that ship and army are no better equipped than the rest." "What's new for the maintenance guys down to Billy Earl?" "I think it's better not to wait any longer. Manny, I've got everything ready with your voice. Horror pictures of the old dome and other places, especially under Churchill, are ready to be broadcast on TV, and there are supporting story. We should immediately broadcast the news to Earth and announce the implementation of 'Operation Rock'." I took a deep breath: "Execute 'Operation Rock'." "Do you want to give the order yourself? Speak louder, and I will choose the appropriate voice, words, and further embellish for you." "Okay, say what you feel good about when the time comes. Use my voice and my powers as Secretary of Defense, Acting Head of Government, go ahead, Mike, throw rocks at them! Damn, throw rocks! Hit them hard !" "Yes, Manny!"