“There really isn’t that much to see,” he said, still interposing himself between me and the door.
But judging by his reaction, there was clearly a lot to see—and I was determined to see it. I didn’t move. Our standoff continued for a dozen or so seconds before the general finally stepped aside and palmed open the door, his face already flashing red in embarrassment as I squeezed past him to peer inside the tiny modular room.
The entire back wall of my father’s quarters was covered with photos of me and my mom, including all of my yearbook photos going back to grade school. A photo of my mother in her nurse’s uniform, which he must have found on her hospital’s website, was hanging over his bed. The rest of his walls were completely bare.
Before I could examine his living space further, he prodded me back out of it into the hall, then locked the door.
“Hurry,” he said, trying to hide the unsteadiness in his voice. “Every second counts.”
Another turbo elevator hurtled us downward at an unsettling speed, then slowed to a stop just a few seconds later. A screen embedded in the wall displayed a 3-D map of the base, and it indicated that we’d just arrived at its lowest level, at the very bottom of the egg-shaped structure nestled into the Daedalus crater. When the doors hissed open, we stepped out into a short, blue-carpeted corridor that terminated in a pair of sliding armored doors with drone operations center neatly stenciled across them. Above these doors, spray-painted on the wall in stylized graffiti, was the name thunderdome.
The doors slid open as we approached, and I followed my father through them into a large circular room with a domed concrete ceiling that was painted a bright iridescent blue, like the screens that were used on movie sets as placeholders for digital effects that would be added later.
“Welcome,” my father said, stretching out his arms, “to the Moon Base Alpha Drone Operations Center. We call it the Thunderdome.”
“Why?”
“Well, because it has a dome,” he said, pointing up. “And we fight inside it, just like Mad Max.” He shrugged. “And because ‘Thunderdome’ sounds cooler than ‘Drone Operations Center.’ ”
In the center of the room, on a raised platform, was a rotating command chair with curved ergonomic touchscreens built into its armrests. It was encircled by ten oval-shaped pits sunken into the stone floor, each containing an individual drone controller pod. Unlike the multifunction stations we’d used back at Crystal Palace, these pods appeared to have been designed to control Interceptors exclusively. Each pit contained a simulated ADI-88 Interceptor cockpit—a pilot seat, flight stick, and all of its familiar control panels and system indicators arrayed beneath a wraparound display canopy that slid into place over you when you climbed into the pilot seat.
My father tapped a button on his QComm, and the bright blue dome over our heads switched on, like the screen of a high-definition television, providing a 360-degree view of the cratered landscape surrounding the moon base that made it seem as if we were standing in the observation deck on the base’s top level instead of in a reinforced bunker far beneath the lunar surface.
As he led me across the enormous domed bunker, I glanced inside each of the drone controller pods at my feet. I could see through their semitransparent canopies, and four of the pods were already in use: Debbie, Milo, Whoadie, and Chén were inside, giving their new rigs a test spin in some sort of training simulation.
The Japanese EDA officer I’d spotted earlier was standing at the command console with another EDA officer—a tall dark-skinned man I’d never seen before. Both men looked about the same age as my father, and both had the same weary, battle-hardened demeanors I’d seen in him. As they walked over to greet us, I glanced down at the collars of their uniforms and saw they both held the rank of major.
“Zack, I’d like you to meet two of my oldest friends,” my father said. “Major Shin Hashimoto, and Major Graham Fogg.”
“Konichiwa, Lightman-san,” Major Shin said. I saluted him, but he threw me off by returning it with a bow. “It’s good to finally meet you. Your father has told me way too much about you over the years.” He grinned. “I’ve gotten pretty sick of it, actually.”
“Sorry,” I said, just to have something to say.
Shin studied my face until it started to feel creepy; then he glanced over at my father, then back at me, comparing our faces.
“Holy Toledo,” he said, whistling. “You really are the spitting image of your old man.” He elbowed me in the ribs, grinning broadly. “My sympathies, kid!”