Luna Marine
Now that the secrets of Mars have been unearthed, nation stands against nation in the brink of a catastrophic war. A war that threatens our entire existence.The revelations on Mars – a half-million year-old legacy of the vanished star-traveling Builders – have fed the flames of catastrophic war. A beleaguered United States and its Russian and Japanese allies struggle to hold their own against the indomitable forces of the enemy United Nations. The bloody conflict that has swept over the home planet now rages across the blackness of space – with the U.S. Marine Corps in the vanguard, leading the charge as always.But Mars is not the sole repository of alien wonders. The Earth's moon hides unsettling mysteries of its own-and dangerous secrets pointing toward an unstoppable threat advancing from somewhere beyond the solar system. And as scientists on both sides ract to utilize technology they have only barely begun to comprehend, the UN makes the opening move in a gambit that could end the hostilities quickly and decisively by bringing about the death of millions…without the aid of alien-inspired weaponry.A bad situation worsens by the nanosecond. And that means it's time to call in the Marines – to make a life or death stand on the gray shores of Luna.
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Luna Marine:
Book Two of
the Heritage Trilogy
Ian Douglas
Contents
Prologue
Sound did not carry well in near vacuum, but Dr.Davidâ¦
One
âOkay, gorgeous. Letâs get you out of those clothes, first.â
Two
Marine Lieutenant Kaitlin Garroway leaned forward and bounced, easing herselfâ¦
Three
Sergeant Frank Kaminski stood in line with the other membersâ¦
Four
A lobber hop on the Moon was nowhere near asâ¦
Five
The missile struck the LSCP from the right and fromâ¦
Six
âSo, David,â the other archeologist said, cuddling close in hisâ¦
Seven
The Moon filled the black sky, half-full from this vantageâ¦
Eight
âSo, anyway,â Kaminksi said, âI was wonderinâ if we could,â¦
Nine
Jack RamseyâPrivate Jack Ramsey, US Marine Corpsâstood at a rigidâ¦
Ten
There were no marching crowds today, for a change, noâ¦
Eleven
âIt is the finding of this court that Sergeant Frankâ¦
Twelve
âOkay, ladies,â Gunnery Sergeant Knox said, grinning. He was holdingâ¦
Thirteen
David was whistling as he entered the broad, skylight-illuminated lobbyâ¦
Fourteen
âWe have a problem,â the tall man said. âAnd anâ¦
Fifteen
âWell, Dr. Alexander,â Carruthers said with a smile. âAre you enjoyingâ¦
Sixteen
The FBI special agent was different, this time, not Carruthers,â¦
Seventeen
General Montgomery Warhurst took his seat next to his boss,â¦
Eighteen
âI just canât tell you how good it is toâ¦
Nineteen
The met-boys were calling for another day with a highâ¦
Twenty
Jack stood at rigid attention in front of Captain Thomasâ¦
Twenty-One
The main body of 2034L was considerably smaller than itâ¦
Twenty-Two
When the knock sounded on the door, David very nearlyâ¦
Twenty-Three
They called them LAVs, but the M340A1 Armored Personnel Carrierâ¦
Twenty-Four
Communicating with Earth was a real problem for the Rimâ¦
Twenty-Five
On the floor of the crater, the LAV could makeâ¦
Twenty-Six
Jack pulled his helmet down until the ring lock engaged,â¦
Twenty-Seven
Jack ducked through the aft airlock hatch and jumped, landingâ¦
Twenty-Eight
âDamn, Sam. I donât know how weâre going to pullâ¦
Epilogue
âLance Corporal Jack Ramsey, front and center!â
Other Books by Ian Douglas
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PROLOGUE
8 AUGUST 2040
Cave of Wonders, Cydonia, Mars
1445 hours MMT
Sound did not carry well in near vacuum, but Dr. David Alexander felt the slight, ringing vibration of each step through the insulation of his Marsuit boots. Thereâd been no sound within this chamber inâ¦how long? The teamâs best guess was half a million years.
âHalfway across the catwalk,â he said, speaking into the needle mike positioned close by his lips. âTwenty meters.â Over the headset clamped down over his ears, he could hear the unsteady rasp of his own breathing, the hiss-thump of his backpack PLSS. His breath, hot and moist, fogged his helmet visor with each exhalation, a white smear immediately dissolved by the stream of cool air blowing past his face.
âAh, we copy that, Aladdin,â a voice crackled in his ears. âYouâre looking good.â
Aladdin. The radio handle was a last-minute joke concocted by Ed Pohl that morning, back at C-Prime. Naming this place the Cave of Wonders had been his idea, after heâd seen the first transmissions from the penetrator robot three days ago.
It could as easily have been Ali Baba. The cavern, apparently, required a human presence to operate it, a living open, sesame to switch on power and lights and to open doors. Robots massing one hundred kilos and programmed to radiate at thirty-seven degreesâhuman body temperatureâhad failed to learn anything about the long-sealed chamber. Alexander, claiming the right as the one whoâd found the cavern entrance in the first place, had volunteered to go in. He was, he estimated, a hundred meters into the vast and labyrinthine complex hollowed out beneath the Cydonian Face, and perhaps ten meters beneath the surface of the ground outside.
âAladdin, weâre seeing an increase in heart rate and respiration. Please check your O>2 mix.â
âCopy.â His eyes flicked to the med and PLSS readouts mirrored above and to the right of his visor, checking that all were well in the green. Of course his heart and breathing were faster, the idiots! âO-two at six-point-three. Systems nominal. Fifteen meters.â
âAh, roger that, Aladdin. Watch the hyperventilation.â
That sounded like Doc Penkov. He could imagine all of the Team members back at Cydonia Prime, crowded into the radio shack as they followed his progress. Only Devora Druzhinova and Louis Vandemeer were on the surface today, now waiting just outside the tunnel entrance in case he needed help.
The catwalk of black metal trembled harder with his next few steps, and he stopped, gripping the pencil-thin guardrails to either side until the motion dampened itself out. His heart was pounding hard now, beneath the breastplate of his suit. At last, he was inside the Faceâ¦.
The Faceâ¦first observed on photographs transmitted to Earth late in the previous century by the Viking orbiters and subsequently confirmed by other robot spacecraft. The Faceâ¦enigma and lure, drawing scientists like David Alexander to probe its secrets, held in silence now for half a million years. Even now, with all the evidence of the ancient ruins uncovered on the Cydonian plain, with the uncanny discovery of flash-frozen and desiccated corpses of long-dead archaic Homo sapiens on Mars, there were some who yet thought the two-kilometer-long mesaâs vague and sandblasted resemblance to a human face to be the product of chance and human psychology.
