April

by Mackey Chandler

  The radar technician looked around scared because this sort of talk was dangerous. Dangerous to say, dangerous to even hear. And it didn't matter if you had stars on your collar.

  * * *

  Jon had seen the man on his screen before. In news shows and 'zines, not in person. It was a shock to see him calling and he knew it would not be a good thing. This was the head of Homeland Security, Preston Harrison and all the other sub-organizations it governed. Technically he was not Jon's direct boss. But from a political and practical aspect, it would be career suicide to not accommodate anything he wanted.

  "We need the list of people I'm putting on your screen arrested and held in the closest security you can provide, until we have a military presence on M3 and have the station locked down."

  The list was what Jon expected: Steve Lewis, Faye Lewis, Robert Lewis, April Lewis, Washington Dixon, Eddie Persico, Ajay Singh, Singh Nam-Kah and surprisingly Doris Chalmers. You missed some important ones, Jon thought to himself.

  "Very interesting, Sir. When do you intend to announce the application of martial law? Has it already been declared down, there or is it just being invoked on station? I'd hate to act for you before a proper legal declaration. Someone might charge me later with a crime for acting outside my civilian authority, if I aid use of military force against civilians."

  "Believe me, all of these people are already subject to arrest on civil charges. I have full authority to act without a formal declaration of martial law. The fact I can order the forces in question to move is sufficient in itself," he said smugly.

  "Well, Sir. Several of these people I am sure are not in my jurisdiction. Also Miss Chalmers is a ward of my department seeking emancipation and it is my understanding Dr. Singh Nam-Kah even if she were here, is married to a legal USNA resident and seeking asylum and legal status. Can you fax me warrants for their arrest please? I'm an officer of the law. I don't just arrest people on somebody's say-so, no matter how highly placed."

  Harrison was enraged by this answer. "Let me make myself clear. I am not asking you to exercise any discretion in these matters. You will arrest the people listed as required, without documentation and turn them over to martial authority when it arrives at your station and subject yourself to that authority. You will simply do it little man. Or you will no longer have your position even until the military gets there. You are a hair's breadth from going on the list yourself." Finally the glove was all the way off the iron fist. "In the mean time you will be contacted by Gary Chalmers and an associate, who will be assuming civilian authority over the station after this transition."

  "Little man? Jon asked him, indignant. "I am not your private goon to put the muscle on people at your personal whim. I quit." He disconnected on the man, surprised he got so much out and the other fellow hadn't unplugged him first. Harrison was obviously shocked speechless, anyone dared speak back to him. Jon felt good no matter how things turned out, he had taken the high road talking to the creep.

  "Frank?" Jon called right away. "I want you to bring the missile pack here out of the storage room, but leaving the empty case there and see if you can step up your surveillance to penetrate Chalmer's apartment. I'd especially like to know if he has any other weapons than the rifle."

  "I'm unemployed now. I just quit before Harrison could fire me. I don't know where that leaves you guys, but as far as I am concerned it loosens my hand a whole lot to deal with these two. Maybe they will call and fire all of you, or run through the list asking for someone to take over from me. I have to warn you. It's bound to be a short term position if anybody wants it. We got a bunch of soldier boys on the way. I refused to act without legal orders, warrants, or declaration of martial law and he threatened me. Said he had a right to act, because he has the power basically. We'll see if he really has enough, huh? If any of you want to refuse my orders now, you are free to sit this out at home. I don't have any legal authority anymore."

  * * *

  Thanks for the sleep. You made a good command decision," Easy allowed. "If I was tired enough to fall asleep under boost, I might have messed up and killed myself or broke something trying to do a fly around in such lousy shape. You want to finish this?" he offered the coffee bulb to April and she took it. "How does it look around the lock Ajay? Did it suck in any of the sealant after you sprayed it, or does it have a nice even meniscus all the way around the flange once it dried?"

  "It looks good Easy. I don't think we bent or scratched anything badly enough to leak. It's marked up from the gun clamps but not near the edge."

  Easy and April were clean again and had on the suit liners which had been vacuum cleaned. The others had cleaned up and changed liners also. All their equipment was packed back away. Ajay was obviously very uncomfortable stripping down, but Easy had warned him to not clean up and change, was to risk suit sores or infection, so he would order him to strip and clean up if he had to.

  The blood had cleaned out of the cabin pretty well, but they had flushed the air once at low pressure and then wore disposable face masks while they were cleaning up, so the filtration unit had a chance to run through the cabin volume several times before they took them off. They were very aware freeze dried blood dust in the air was an effective vector for all sorts of diseases and China remained one of the worst nations for emerging diseases, despite draconian travel and isolation laws, so they cleaned up the surfaces with their used wipes from bathing and tried to minimize their exposure to the slain Chinese fellow's remains.

  "What do you say we try to get some news April? I doubt anyone is saying anything good about us, but we might as well find out how bad it is."

  "What would you like? Official or pirate?"

  "How about the BBC? They're about as fair as anyone. They often make sneaky little hints at the truth."

  "OK. I'll see if I can get their broadcast for North American audiences."

  Twenty minutes later Easy was angry and April was mystified at the absence of any news about a major space battle. They had patiently heard the details on the religious rebellion in Madagascar, the latest viral disease to show up in Vietnam, which seemed to have jumped to humans from fruit bats of all things and the way the various Lunar authorities were trying to agree on controls for vacuum pollution. If it was not slowed down in a few years there would be such a haze around the moon many of the industries which depended on cheap hard vacuum would find the moon had too much of an atmosphere to continue. Burning a surveillance camera blind with a laser had been upgraded to a Federal terrorist crime, for even private or city owned cams. They chatted about the latest advances in sub-dermal medical monitors and the humorous story about the man in Italy, notorious for their free and open genetics laws, who combined the genes from his two favorite pets, a snake and a parrot and been banished from the Church for creating a dragon. However there was no hint of news at all about a space battle.

  "OK," April said, growing easily as angry as Easy, "I really want to hear each of you speak on this, before we decide what to do. I can understand the USNA and China would both be embarrassed we took their ships out. I don't understand them just not saying a word to acknowledge any problem. Why aren't they yelling and screaming for someone to arrest us? Or at least just shoot us on sight? It's like nothing happened." There was a pause as nobody jumped right in to express an opinion.

  "I don't like it," Easy growled. "It feels like too many black ops I've worked. Somehow I bet they still think they can cover up the whole thing and not disclose it ever happened to the public. I've seen copter loads of special forces go down on black missions and they send notices to the family about a training exercise killing everyone. Sometimes they will explain away each one separately. One a car accident. Another a presumed drowning on a canoe trip. They have the resources to do it. We did fight where there are no eye witnesses and if they're quiet it could mean they still think they are going to bag us before we do anything the public will see."

  "They can't have so much available to launch qu
ickly, they can reach us out here soon," Eddie offered. Maybe they're not sure about what happened between the two ships. Maybe the Chinese are blaming the USNA, or the other way around, instead of us.

  "No, sorry, there was just too much radio traffic right up to the end for them not to know exactly what happened."

  Dr. Nam-Kah offered a thought. "Maybe they don't have to come out here. Maybe they will just wait for us to go home. We wanted to go there in the first place. Wouldn't they expect us to show up there eventually?"

  April spoke her thoughts aloud. "Eddie told us they are going to take over M3 before the Rock gets there. Maybe they will just hurry up and do it as fast as they can now, maybe even before we can get back. But what would be the point of secrecy? Why wouldn't they just announce it?"

  "The court," Ajay said. "They'll still try to make themselves look as good as possible. We know it's bald faced theft, but they try to look as law abiding and decent as their propaganda can make them. They will take over M3, but shut down the communications and not announce they are stealing the Rock until the World Court announces its judgment and then they will announce they are immediately taking control and make public what has been reality for days or weeks. Oh, the Court will know privately, so they don't announce a ruling which will fail."

  "Could they manage it? I mean, how could it be done?" April asked.

  "Now you know why the fellow Art was so interested in the radio room," Easy said. "Everything is routed through the radio shack and all the data transmission and phones are all regulated out of the one office. If they cut them off, we are only talking about two thousand people. Most of the permanent station staff's relatives are on the west coast in the USNA and they have plenty of manpower down there to call on all of them and tell them it is a matter of national security to keep their mouths shut. They can even lock them down in their homes if they seem uncooperative."

  "For a few days or weeks it should be no problem keeping a lid on it. I can see them getting away with it. If a few people start asking about it they will just stonewall. There isn't a paper or a TV news service left in North America, that will push for a hot story anymore. They know they'll go to prison if they run a story they were warned to kill. Everything is labeled a National Security issue now. Crap, they even classify stuff like how big the corn harvest is now. Once the security label is on it you have no rights."

  "So what do we want to do?" Eddie asked. "If what you're saying is right, even if we can call home nobody can help us. They'll bottle them up."

  "I know several people who they can't be shut off through the radio room," April said. She explained Heather's talent for electronics. "If you shut her off from the regular com she can have a transmitter broadcasting to Earth in no time. She and Jeff are both amateur radio bugs – hams they called it.

  "We can talk to the press and media outside the USNA." Easy said. "There are still lots of them not affiliated with the big news channels and frankly quite a few who hate the USNA's guts. They'd be glad for the story. Question is how? I didn't think about independent long range communications. We don't have a interface for in-flight data access or phone, like a passenger shuttle, because those are all proprietary."

  "Obviously we are not going to get a friendly pass through from the traffic control channels. How are we going to call somebody up? We could aim a signal at a wireless network on M3 or ISSII with a dish, but they can't radiate strongly enough back to us to establish a two way connection the computer needs. None of you has a pad plug-in to make satellite phone connections do you?" Nobody did.

  "You know, all the guys who work outside in construction. Couldn't you call someone directly - whoever is out working around M3 in a scooter and ask him to relay a message into the local net for you? Or does the radio for local traffic not work this far?" Eddie wanted to know.

  "Yeah it should work." The guys use an omni-directional antenna around the station. But besides the construction shack, most of the scooters have a dish for longer range work at the same frequencies and once their system detects a weak signal it will automatically switch over to the dish."

  "You have to fly in a scooter and can't be stopping to aim an antennae, so the dishes are made to auto locate and lock on a signal. If you are positioned just right sometimes you get an unexpected auto lock on and can talk to a moon buggy or a hopper shuttle on Luna with a scooter radio. It amused us when it would happen, because sometimes it was hilarious the confusing things both parties would say, before they figured out who they had locked on."

  "We should connect with somebody even if the shack is not in line of sight. Once we are both on the dishes, the local net will not hear what the local boy is saying to us, unless the shack patches it in. But our signal will cover the whole work area there around M3 from this far away, so we have to make sure we don't mind anybody on the local suit and ship channel hearing what we have to say."

  Singh Nam-Kah spoke up again. "Are you sure you want to break this secrecy wide open? Is there perhaps the possibility you will just be publishing our part, in what many others will regard as a criminal act?

  "Nam-Kah, there is no way the USNA is going to let us get away with destroying their space plane, even if they would cover it up to the public. The Chinese and the USNA both know their ships are gone. They may not know the last confusing seconds in detail, but both governments were talking to their ships when they were destroyed. They know who to blame. Wasn't anybody else out here but us, who could be responsible, even if they hadn't got a word off before they were destroyed. They could charge us or they could just punish us in secret. We could disappear and never be seen again."

  "I've seen black ops just for the purpose of destroying enemies of the country in secret. Hell - I worked some of those ops myself. No. We're committed. There's no way to go back and undo the deed," Easy assured her. "And although you didn't decide to open fire on the station to escape, I doubt if you would escape blame for what we did, just for coming along as a passenger. They would say you were aware it might come to violence when you decided to defect. We don't have anything to lose now."

  "Then I suggest you put the whole thing out before the world. Tell everybody they are going to take M3 over and steal the Rock before it happens and before they have a chance to capture us and make us disappear. And since losing those shuttles doesn't seem to be enough to cause them alarm, let's do as April suggested and take their satellites out, until they damn well notice and acknowledge there's a problem!" she said, with uncharacteristic anger.

  "OK." April said. "Then we better make sure if we make contact through the construction gang we upload everything we can while we have a channel. Because the government might figure out how to cut off our communications again quickly. We should send a message to our families and Jon. I think I can get Jon on the channel to talk, even without asking for a tie in," she said, remembering the 898989 number. I want to run the satellite idea past him and see what he thinks.

  "How are we going to make it believable and make a European or an African news channel pick it up and put it on the Earth nets?"

  "Didn't you tell me your brother is rather mercenary, when it comes to money and business deals?" Easy asked.

  April looked at Easy funny. "Well yeah, mercenary is not the word I used, but it is pretty accurate. He will take advantage of me, even though I'm his sister, if I let him get away with it. I had to warn Jon to watch him with the scooter deal, because he could end up with most of the funds in his pocket and not feel the least bit badly about it. It's embarrassing sometimes, but what can I do?" she asked.

  "I suggest you use it. Let's not beg somebody to take our story as a freebie. Human nature being what it is, people don't value what you offer for free. Let's send the data to everybody who needs to know. Jon, Jeff and Heather, your parents, my Ruby. And let's make sure the construction guys all know through our contact, because the grapevine those guys have will spread it across a couple dozen countries within a day." "But to get the story to the media
, lets tell your brother to sell the story for as much as he can get and you'll split whatever he can get with him. In fact, suggest maybe he can sell it several times, if he moves fast enough."

  "It's brilliant," April admitted. "Absolutely brilliant. It will harness every bit of his business skills. There isn't any better way to motivate him. But we all contributed to this story and we're taking all the risks. I'll tell him he has an equal share with all of us on board, not a split. It's plenty generous for him sitting home safe to do what just comes naturally. So, what do we send? How do we tell the story?"

  "I wouldn't try to edit it. Let the writers and news organizations edit it. It's their area of expertise after all," Easy suggested. "Just take the raw files from the camera arm shooting and our radio log. Once they have the story they will go looking to prove or disprove the political side locally. I know it will be missing parts, but there is enough there to get the outline. And there have to be Earthies who can verify it from their end. They've never had video of a space battle. I doubt if spaceships have ever fought within sight of each other. It will wow them big time."

  April suddenly jerked with realization. "Easy, I can add the missing elements you want. Including Jan talking to us in the boom at ISSII, about M3 being taken over. Since this is my first flight and everything is so new, I've been running my suit camera and recorder anytime I was in the suit. I wanted a complete record to review and learn from later, so I've recorded from the time we walked in the shop to ride the Happy Lewis up the elevator to now. The only time I shut it off was when we were out of our suits cleaning up, or sleeping. The problem is going to be running through and editing out stuff we don't want them to know about - like about the package Nam-Kah brought. Not only when we talked about it, but anytime it shows on the video as she is loading, or if it shows strapped down back there."

  "Are you sure the earlier stuff isn't overwritten?" Ajay wondered. "Suits usually only have a Terabyte module in them and the video fills it fairly fast."