Battle Luna

by Travis S. Taylor

  “Hardly,” Chakarvarti said. “This isn’t just some interesting oddity. The Mimic is a replicator: a device that can copy and manufacture virtually any nonliving object.”

  Pappy winced. So the rumors he’d heard were true. Damn. “Seriously?” he asked, putting some scoffing disbelief into his voice. “Big deal—I’ve got a printer in my office that can do that.”

  “I doubt it,” Chakarvarti said. “The Mimic isn’t some upscale 3-D printer with three or four materials it can draw on. It does a complete scan of what you want duplicated—a complete scan, mind you, down to the atomic level. It then takes whatever scrap or garbage you’ve loaded into its hopper, sifts through it all for the specific atoms it needs, and builds a duplicate of its sample, again from the molecules on up. Are you really going to pretend you hadn’t heard about any of this?”

  “No, but it sounds very cool,” Pappy said. “And United Earth thinks it deserves this thing why?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Chakarvarti said, an edge of bitterness in his voice. “You have fifty thousand people. Earth has seven billion. Seven million of them die every year from hunger alone, and that doesn’t even count the millions who are malnourished. The Mimic would be a godsend for these people.”

  “In what way?”

  Chakarvarti spat something. “Are you stupid or just lacking in imagination? Put in a loaf of bread, add a neighborhood’s worth of garbage into the hopper, and that neighborhood’s children will no longer be hungry. Feed in the pieces of a truck, add in the rusted metal from a scrapyard, and that bread can be taken across the city. Put a hundred gallons of petrol in the Mimic with anything that contains carbon and hydrogen, and that bread and that truck can travel to the most inaccessible of villages.”

  “Sounds like a lot of work for one humble little Mimic to handle,” Pappy said.

  “It wouldn’t be alone for long,” Chakarvarti said, warming to his topic. “Reverse-engineering will give us ten of them. Then the Mimics themselves will create a hundred, then a thousand, then a million. Hunger wiped out. Poverty wiped out. Sickness wiped out—put in a vaccine, and every child in every country will be protected.”

  “Good thing food will be free,” Pappy said. “Because everyone except the people who shovel garbage into the hoppers will be out of work.”

  “You think anyone will care about back-breaking labor when they finally have food to eat and clothes to wear?”

  “No, actually, I don’t,” Pappy said, his stomach tightening. “Because it’ll never happen. Not the rosy picture you’re painting, anyway. If United Earth gets the Mimic, the leaders will keep the benefits for themselves.”

  “They wouldn’t dare.”

  “Since when?” Pappy retorted. “Leaders dare whatever they damn well please. And since they’re the ones with the guns and the armies, they usually get away with it.”

  “Not in this case.”

  “Yes, in this case, too,” Pappy said. “Because for everyone who wants to lift the poor out of poverty, there will be two more who don’t want their constituents thrown out of work.”

  “Those unemployed people won’t care.”

  “Those in power will,” Pappy said. “Because their sole job is to hold onto their power.” It was hard to see from his vantage point, but it looked like the Ueys’ rock-clearing bucket brigade was starting to slow down. If he didn’t come up with something fast, it was going to be too late. “You think the politicians will risk losing the next election because all the voters have been thrown out of work? You think the manufacturers are going to give up the profits they make from selling widgets to people? You think the military types will put bananas in the Mimic when you can shove in a single tactical nuclear weapon and have a hundred of them by dinner time?”

  “Not all leaders are like that,” Chakarvarti insisted.

  “Not all, no,” Pappy agreed. “But the humanitarians will be the first to be mowed down by the more vicious types. You sound like one of the good guys, Colonel. If you win, you’d better watch your back.”

  “Ridiculous,” Chakarvarti said. But to Pappy’s ears he didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  He hoped so. Right now, turning Chakarvarti was about the only plan he had.

  There was pressure on his sleeve. He looked down to see KC clutching his arm with one hand and making a slashing motion across his throat with the other. Frowning, Pappy muted the transmitter. “What is it?” he asked.

  “I’ll take it,” KC said, a slight quaver in his voice.

  “What?”

  “The bomb,” KC said. “You need to get it to the tank. I’ll take it.”

  Pappy sighed. Drugs or blood loss—either way, the man was starting to slip from reality. “Thanks, but you’re not up to a walk,” he said. “Anyway, they’d kind of notice you carrying something that big.”

  “I’m not going to carry it,” KC said. “You put it in my oxy carrier. As long as I’m facing them, they won’t see what it is.”

  Pappy stared down at him. So much for drugged delusions.

  And it could work. It could actually work. The bomb would fit into the oxy-tank carrier on KC’s back, and it would be hidden as long as no one got a good look from the side. Once that discovery happened, he would be close enough to make a run for the Dunsland. If he was fast enough, and the Ueys were slow enough, he should be able to unload the bomb, get it under the tank, and detonate it where it could completely scramble the works.

  There was only one, small, minor problem. “And you’d breathe what in the meantime?”

  “You made it back on fumes,” KC said. “If you can, I can.”

  Pappy grimaced. He hadn’t realized KC had even been aware of his little sortie, let alone had noticed that he’d been without his own tank when he came back. “Okay, we’ll try it,” he said. “Only I’ll take it, not you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” KC said, some strength and determination returning to his voice. “You weren’t invited. I was. I’m taking it.”

  “You’ll never make it,” Pappy insisted. “Even if you did, you’d never make it back. You want to be their prisoner?”

  “No, but it beats bleeding to death.”

  “We’ll get the MASH truck here.”

  “Not until we hammer the Dunsland.” KC grunted with exertion as he got another grip on Pappy’s arm and started to pull himself upright. “You want to give me a hand? Or are you going to make me do it myself?”

  “Sergeant MacLeod?”

  “Stay put,” Pappy ordered KC as he turned his transmitter back on. “Yeah, I’m here, Colonel.”

  “I thought for a moment that you’d left us,” Chakarvarti said. “Everything all right?”

  “I was checking on my friend,” Pappy said, scowling across the open space at the Ueys. Unfortunately, KC was right. Pappy hadn’t been invited to drop in for tea. If he headed across alone, they would know something was up.

  But if he was simply helping an injured soldier who couldn’t navigate on his own . . .

  The upside was that he might be able to paralyze the Dunsland for good. The downside was that he and KC would both end up prisoners. Or worse.

  But they were out of other options. With two lines of shieldbearers standing guard, the only way to get the cement bomb close enough was for Pappy to carry it there.

  “How is he doing?” Chakarvarti asked. “My offer to treat him still stands. I’ll even send some unarmed men to assist him, if you’d like.”

  “I appreciate that.” Pappy braced himself—

  “Wait a second,” Morgan spoke up suddenly. “I’ve got an idea. Stay put, and stall him. And I’ll need that last bomb.”

  Pappy frowned. Surely she’d worked out the same logic he had. How in the world did she think she could slip it past the shieldbearers?

  Maybe by throwing a couple of oxy tanks first to confuse them?

  In fact, he realized suddenly, that might work. The bomb’s outer shell didn’t look anything like that of an oxy tank
, but the Ueys wouldn’t necessarily know that. If he and Morgan both sent oxys toward the tank, and then one of them threw the remaining bomb—

  “You’re obviously still not convinced,” Chakarvarti said. “Very well. While you consider—and while your friend bleeds to death—let me put one other factor into the mix.”

  “You going to say please?” Pappy suggested, squatting down and picking up the cement bomb. Of course, now that the Ueys knew about the bombs, lobbing it across to Morgan carried its own set of risks. If the machine gunner was fast enough, he could blow it open and probably cover him, KC, and Morgan. Another juicy tidbit for the future history texts. “Come to think of it, did anyone at United Earth consider saying please in the first place?”

  “I don’t know,” Chakarvarti said. “Not my department.”

  “I suppose not,” Pappy said, eyeing the ground between him and Morgan. Theoretically, until the detonator was armed, the bomb should be able to handle a bounce. Theoretically. “So why exactly do you think this Mimic thing—if it exists, and I’m personally not convinced it is—why you think it’s in Hadley instead of one of the other domes?”

  “We don’t,” Chakarvarti said. “If it isn’t, we’ll pack up and leave you in peace.”

  “And head to the next colony?”

  “I have my orders, Sergeant, as do you,” the colonel said. “But let’s talk about that. Your orders, I assume, are to protect Hadley Dome?”

  “And all of Luna.”

  “But mostly Hadley Dome?”

  “Mostly,” Pappy agreed.

  “All right. So what then are you planning to do when the aliens who created the Mimic come looking for it?”

  Pappy frowned, throwing a look at Morgan. But her attention seemed to be alternating between her rangefinder scope and her hand computer. “Who says they’re even around anymore?”

  “Who says they aren’t?” Chakarvarti countered. “And if they are—and if they decide they want it back—are you and Luna really prepared to fend them off?”

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Morgan duck down in her foxhole and come back up with her coil of monofil. One final look through her scope and she began counting off loops of the cord. “You think you can protect it better?”

  “Of course we can,” Chakarvarti scoffed. “We have the militaries of two hundred and four countries to draw on.”

  “What about those seven billion hungry citizens?” Pappy asked. Morgan had reached whatever count she was going for and had taken her knife to the proper loop. “You get an alien war going and a lot of them are going to die.”

  “You get a war going and all of you will die,” Chakarvarti retorted.

  Morgan had ducked down out of sight again. “Maybe it won’t come to war,” Pappy said. “Maybe the aliens will ask for it nicely. They might even say please.”

  “And if they don’t?” Chakarvarti persisted. He was starting to run out of patience, Pappy noted uneasily. That probably meant the Dunsland was nearly cleared and ready to roll. “What if they just come tearing in and plow up the landscape until they find it? Are you willing to take that risk?”

  “Like you said,” Pappy told him. “Not my department.”

  “Pappy?” Morgan murmured in his ear. “Now.”

  Clenching his teeth, hoping to God Morgan knew what she was doing, Pappy lifted the cement bomb to his chest and gave it a shot-putter shove toward her.

  The Uey machine gunner was ready. Unfortunately for him, his training still wasn’t quite acclimated to the lower gravity and lack of air resistance. His shots slashed through the space above the bomb, digging up more lunar dust a few meters past his intended target. Before he could adjust his aim Morgan snatched the cylinder out of its arc and once again dropped down out of sight.

  “You refuse to cooperate,” Chakarvarti said. “So be it. The record will show that the United Earth forces did everything in our power to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.”

  “Hardly,” Pappy said. The Ueys who’d been around the Dunsland’s rear were moving away now, clearly getting ready for it to pull out. But if continuing the conversation could buy Morgan a few more seconds . . . “You could have continued negotiations instead of bringing soldiers here to shoot us down and destroy our homes. And you still can, because there’s still one factor you haven’t added in.”

  “Which would be?”

  And then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the cement bomb shoot out of Morgan’s foxhole, arcing toward the Ueys. So she’d used the catapult after all.

  Only the bomb was going too high.

  Pappy cursed, following the cylinder with his eyes. If Morgan had intended to overshoot the shieldbearers, she’d certainly succeeded. Even as the first trio leaped upward in response it was abundantly clear that the bomb would sail well over their heads.

  The problem was that it would also sail well over the Dunsland and splatter its contents over the distant landscape.

  He’d asked Morgan earlier if the catapults could be set for high angles. She’d told him they couldn’t. Maybe she thought she’d figured out a way to do that anyway.

  But if that had been her plan, she’d failed. Pappy’s years in the SAS had given him an eye for judging a shell’s trajectory, and this one was heading into the sky at no more than forty-five degrees.

  Could Morgan be trying somehow to cut off the tank’s retreat? After all, if the goal was to keep the Mimic in Hadley, then letting Chakarvarti get hold of it wouldn’t gain him anything if he couldn’t escape with it.

  But Pappy knew the terrain back there reasonably well, and there was no spot he could think of where a splash or a lump of vacuum cement would do anything but pave over the rocky ground. Did Morgan know something he didn’t?

  The three shieldbearers were nearly at the top of their group jump, and as Pappy had already anticipated they would end up far too low to intercept the bomb. On the ground behind them, the second row of shieldbearers now went into action, this group throwing their shields up into the sky toward the soaring missile.

  But the shields hadn’t been designed for throwing, and the Ueys certainly hadn’t had any practice with the technique. Two of the shields immediately started tumbling, not so much of a problem without air resistance to slow them down, while the third stayed more or less upright. But the first two didn’t have enough momentum to intercept the bomb, while the third reached the necessary height but ended up a couple of meters to the side. As the shields and the shieldbearers floated back toward the ground the bomb reached its zenith—

  And directly above the Dunsland it jerked to an abrupt halt.

  Pappy blinked in surprise as the bomb seemed to hover for an instant in empty space. What the hell—?

  And then, as it began to fall straight down, he caught just the slightest glint of sunlight reflecting off part of a line behind the cylinder.

  Morgan had used her monofil to tether the bomb to something in her foxhole. Now, having reached the end of its leash—and having evaded all Uey attempts to block it—it was dropping straight down toward the Dunsland.

  The Ueys instantly spotted the unexpected threat. But it was too late for them to do anything to stop it. Some of the soldiers, who’d been moving away from the tank in anticipation of once again getting on the road, turned back to try to intercept the bomb. But their momentum was starting out in the wrong direction, and they still were unaccustomed to the footing and the rules for low-gee movement. None of them made it more than a couple of steps back before suddenly stopping and again reversing direction. Chakarvarti, no doubt recognizing the threat and the inevitability of its success, had presumably ordered them back rather than have his soldiers immobilized along with his vehicle. The bomb continued its leisurely fall . . .

  It hit the ground right beside the Dunsland’s left rear wheel, right where Pappy’s earlier rockslide had left a mound of broken rock, and exploded into a cloud of white foam. The cloud collapsed to the ground, leaving the Dunsland, the rock, and the lunar s
urface locked solidly together.

  Pappy took a deep breath and looked at Morgan. She gave him a tight smile through her faceplate and lifted her hand in a thumbs-up. Pappy nodded, smiling and gesturing back, then turned back to the Ueys. “Colonel Chakarvarti?” he called.

  “I’m here, Sergeant,” Chakarvarti said. His voice was tight with controlled anger, but Pappy could hear a hint of grudging respect beneath it. “Nicely done.”

  “Thank you,” Pappy said. “You and your men were able to stay clear of the burst, I hope?”

  “We did,” Chakarvarti said. “And we still have weapons.”

  “I thought we’d agreed that we didn’t want to start the bloodshed today,” Pappy reminded him. “I mean, apart from your shooting my man.”

  “I have a mission.”

  “Which you can no longer complete,” Pappy said. “You can run over us, you can kill everyone in Hadley, but you can’t bring the Mimic back to Tranquility. Not until you get your Dunsland free, and I’m really doubting you can.” He considered. “If the Mimic is even here. Which I don’t concede.”

  “There are four other tank units I could call.”

  “There are four other units and one other tank,” Morgan put in. “The other three Dunslands weren’t up to the terrain and climate.”

  “Your commanders really should have thought things through a little more thoroughly before rushing into this thing,” Pappy added. “So here’s how it’s going to go.”

  He jerked a thumb toward the two Ueys still cemented to the ridge. “Your two men will probably run out of oxy before we can get them free. We can give them each a fresh tank, good for four hours. We can also call Hadley and have them send out some hammers and chisels to get them loose. But we’re not going to do any of that until all of you—and I mean all of you, including the ones guarding the other side of Waffle Ridge—are back inside your vehicle.”