Read Online Rogue Command (The Kalahari Series) by A J Marshall - Free Book Online Page B

small, four-wheeled, twin-seated vehicle. Matheson floored the accelerator pedal and the rear wheels spun. The fire ball was large and threatening as it sank lower in the sky, drawn by gravity. The buggy sped off at right angles to its trajectory while Aldrin tracked the vivid menace that now had the fiery tail of a comet – even in Io’s rarefied atmosphere there was enough friction to make it glow white hot. Its flight path became predictable.
    “We’re not going to make it, Mike! Make a ninety degree turn! It’s our only hope.”
    Matheson wrenched the small steering wheel to the right and the buggy slewed, trailing dust and ash. Their eyes widened in horror. Something in his subconscious made Matheson ease off on the throttle – it seemed suicidal to drive towards the thing. He quickly realised his folly and floored the pedal again. Stomachs tensed and hearts raced as the buggy bounced wildly over fatigued wheels.
    Now they could hear it. The shockwave started as a distant rumble, but soon their helmets became ineffectual against the ever-increasing volume. Then it was like thunder and every cavity in their bodies resonated as the pressure wave built up – like standing too close to a railway line as a bullet train approached. Matheson held his course. With an altitude of barely 1000 feet, the white hot orb dropped lower and lower until the sizzling disc seemed to skim the planet’s surface; it raced towards the tiny vehicle and its huge bulk seethed. Visible now were pieces of flaming debris that broke off and scattered – most impacting on the surface and raising spiralling clouds of dust and ash and releasing bursting geysers of yellow, green and orange gas. They felt the crushing, debilitating force on them; it pressed on their bodies, squeezing them into their seats. They gasped for breath. Then the shockwave engulfed them. There was pain. Excruciating pain. The heat, the thunder, the shuddering, their throbbing bodies, the light, a riot in hell . . . and then it was directly over them. The massive disturbance pummelled them. The buggy slewed and skidded as Matheson lost control.
    It passed. Heightened senses subsided. Matheson pulled the buggy around to complete a full turn and then slammed on the brakes. They did not immediately feel the relief because a long flaming tail trailed the object for hundreds of metres. The fizzing brilliance they watched with dumb struck awe as it flew towards the hills.
    The close proximity caused the surface of the moon to contort and the brittle, overlying chemical frost simply peeled off and churned like swirling eddies of sand beneath a hovering helicopter. And then the explosion. Never had they seen such a catastrophe. The object hurtled away from them for two or three kilometres. It bounced and, from the point of impact, made a shallow channel that continued as a gouge and finished as a chasm. Minutes later a kind of stillness settled, belied by the whole mess that smouldered and smoked with insignificant explosions, effervescing sparks and debris plumes, like expensive fireworks on a special occasion. There was rubble and shards and ruin.
    Totally oblivious to his heat-stressed body and his suit’s overwhelmed conditioning system and the red warning light on his wrist-mounted control panel, Matheson drove slowly and then, abruptly, stopped.
    “No! Please no! If there’s a God, no!” Mike cried, his despair causing Aldrin to stare at the carnage.
    Mere seconds appeared to be minutes, and those minutes became hours as both men sat in a silence of eternity. Sweat trickled down their brows and dripped from their noses. Thirty metres away and a little to their left a red flame fringed with blue fired off from a twisted piece of silvery tubing. A distorted section of latticed gantry lay half-embedded in the ash and the sand. Matheson looked to his right and drove forward slowly. He felt his hands trembling. He lined up the buggy with the laser-straight trench – now