Moonwar gt-7

by Ben Bova

  “In a month or so?”

  Rashid ran a hand along her bare thigh. “Yes. For weeks now Yamagata’s been ferrying Peacekeeper troops up to their base at Copernicus. Together with a special team of Yamagata’s own security forces, they’ll hit Moonbase and take it over so swiftly that neither Joanna nor her pup will know what hit them.”

  She realized he was aroused again. Is it me, she wondered, or the thought of beating Joanna in their corporate power struggle?

  She giggled at her own question. Rashid thought it was his doing and began stroking her more fervently.

  She sighed and caressed his bearded face, then whispered into his ear, “You’ve been building up an army on the Moon and the Moonbase people don’t even know it.”

  “Not quite an army,” Rashid replied, pleased at her reaction. “Only a few hundred troops. But they’ll have missiles and tracked vehicles and everything they need to surround Moonbase and force it to surrender. Or demolish it.”

  “When? How soon?”

  But he stopped talking and pressed his body atop hers. Tamara closed her eyes and thought of Doug Stavenger.

  “General O’Conner is in conference and cannot be disturbed, sir,” said the woman.

  Jack Killifer stared angrily at her image on his phone screen. Typical Urban Corps flunkie, he thought: gray dress buttoned up to her goddamned chin, not a speck of makeup, hair tied up in some kind of knot on the top of her head. She could be attractive if she’d unwind a little.

  “Did you tell him it’s Jack Killifer calling?” he asked, through gritted teeth. “From Savannah?”

  “The general is not to be disturbed,” she repeated, like a brain-dead robot.

  Killifer thought it over swiftly. The general’s probably sleeping, or maybe in another coma. He kept getting these ministrokes that knocked him out for days at a time. I can’t tell this receptionist that Tamara Bonai’s off on a friggin’ boat ride and I can’t get to her. Nobody’s supposed to know about Bonai except me and the general.

  “Okay,” he said to the unblinking image. “Tell General O’Conner that I called from Savannah, will you?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “And I’m leaving tomorrow for a little vacation in Kiribati.”

  “Have a pleasant vacation, sir.”

  He killed the connection and the screen went dark. I’ll get her there, Killifer told himself. Back in the islands. I’ll do her there and that’ll be the end of it. All I need is a boat.

  Tamara dared not call Doug Stavenger until she was safely back in Kiribati. Rashid brought the boat back to Savannah the next morning and she hurried to her hotel, where she showered for half an hour, then headed for the rocket port on Tybee Island. Her aides had packed her bags and accompanied her in the limousine that Masterson Corporation had provided.

  All through the half-hour ballistic flight Bonai struggled against the temptation to call her office in Tarawa and have them patch her through to Moonbase. Too dangerous, she warned herself. Wait until you can make a tight-beam laser link to Moonbase.

  The Clippership lifted off from the Savannah area at noon, local time. It was 7.42 a.m. in Kiribati when she arrived at her office. With a quick flick of her computer keyboard, she saw it was 5.42 p.m. at Moonbase. Perfect.

  In less than ten minutes she was talking to Doug’s intently serious image on her display screen.

  “In a month?” Doug looked startled.

  Bonai nodded. “Several hundred troops. They’ve been gathering at the Yamagata base in Copernicus.”

  Doug seemed to stare off into space. “Coming in on the regular LTVs,” he muttered.

  She started to ask what LTVs were, then remembered: lunar transfer vehicles, the ungainly, unstreamlined carriers that plied regular schedules between the space stations orbiting Earth and the lunar outposts. All such traffic had been cut off from Moonbase by the U.N., but Yamagata’s base had not been affected at all. Trojan horses, Bonai thought, carrying soldiers to the Moon a few at a time.

  Doug could see that Tamara was terribly worried, frightened. She really cares about us, he told himself. Maybe Mom’s right and she really cares about me.

  “And they’re armed with missiles?” he asked.

  Three seconds later Bonai replied, “He said they’ll have tractors and missiles and everything they need to surround Moonbase and force you to surrender.”

  Doug muttered, “So that’s why we haven’t seen any Peacekeeper buildup. They’ve been building their forces a little at a time over at Nippon One.”

  “Yes.”

  “And training. Getting acclimatized to lunar conditions.”

  “What are you going to do, Doug? They’ll be ready to strike in a month!”

  “I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “I don’t know if there’s anything we can do in that short a time.”

  Tamara’s face looked anguished once she heard his response. “Doug, don’t let them destroy you! Surrender to them. Don’t let them kill you.”

  He said nothing. There was nothing he could say. Yamagata and the Peacekeepers were going to come in and overwhelm them. Doug realized that his efforts to build some sort of defense for Moonbase had been nothing but a child’s game. He’d been pretending to be a military leader when he didn’t have the knowledge, the experience, the resources—like a kid with a plastic raygun playing soldier.

  “Doug?” Tamara called again. “You can surrender now, you know. I can send a Clippership up there to get you and as many others as you want. You can live here in Kiribati. You’ll be safe here.”

  “Thanks,” he muttered, his mind still reeling. It’s all been for nothing, he told himself. We never had a chance, not from the very beginning.

  “I’ll call you back in a little while,” he said to Tamara absently. “I have to—I need some time to think this through.”

  “I’ll be here, Doug. I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  He sagged back in his desk chair as the wall screen went blank, his thoughts spinning.

  Edith came in from the corridor, all smiles. “Just sent another Pulitzer-quality report to the network,” she said, bending to kiss his cheek swiftly. Then she breezed past the partition into the bedroom.

  Before Doug could reply to her, someone rapped at the doorframe and slid the accordion-pleat door back enough to stick her head into the room. Jinny Anson.

  “I need to talk to you, boss,” she said crisply. “Got a minute?”

  With that, she slid the door all the way back and stepped into the living room. Behind her, Nick O’Malley and Claire Rossi trooped in.

  The little cubicle was suddenly crowded, especially with O’Malley’s bulky form. The redhead looked shamefaced, like a guilty little boy. Claire Rossi looked stubborn, defiant.

  Doug struggled to his feet. “What’s this all about?”

  “This mother-to-be,” Anson said sharply, “was supposed to be on the evacuation flight.”

  “You’re the couple who got married,” Doug said, feeling thick-headed, stupid.

  “I decided to stay here with my husband,” Claire said, clasping O’Malley’s arm.

  “But you’re pregnant.”

  “She’s fractured her employment contract,” Anson said. The rules are specific—”

  “I don’t care about the rules,” Rossi insisted. “I want to stay with my husband.”

  Doug looked up at O’Malley, whose wiry red hair almost brushed the ceiling. “Don’t you have enough sense to know what a risk she’s taking?”

  Looking miserable, O’Malley replied, “I told her. I wanted her to go. But she wouldn’t listen to me.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Doug saw Edith step from behind the partition to watch the proceedings. She thinks this’ll make a good news story, Doug thought. Great human interest.

  But he felt anger welling up inside him. “She wouldn’t listen to you?” Doug said to O’Malley. Turning to Rossi, he almost snarled, “And you, how idiotic can you be? Haven’t you given
any thought to your baby? Don’t you care at all?”

  “I care—”

  “Then why aren’t you on your way back Earthside, where you can get proper medical attention?” Doug yelled at her.

  O’Malley stepped between them. “Now wait just a minute here…”

  “Wait for what?” Doug hollered. “Wait until the next attack on this base, so both of you can get killed? And the baby, too?”

  He turned on Anson. “How in the whole dimwitted congregation of blockheads that passes for your crackerjack staff could she get away with this, Jinny? Didn’t you have anybody checking on who went aboard the evac flight? Are they all blind or stupid or just plain corrupt? What the blazes happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Anson said, her voice suddenly small and hushed.

  Rossi started, “I gave my paperwork to—”

  Doug silenced her with a fearsome glance. “Do you think this is all a game? We’re facing a life-and-death situation here and you put your unborn child at risk! What kind of irresponsible, unfeeling people are you? I don’t need this! Haven’t I got enough on my shoulders without worrying about an idiot pregnant woman and her baby?”

  Edith put a hand on Doug’s shoulder and Anson grabbed at Rossi’s arm.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” Anson said. “Doug, I’m sorry I laid this one on you. There’s nothing any of us can do about it now.” And she tugged at Rossi, urging her toward the door.

  O’Malley glared angrily at Doug and for a moment he looked as if he’d like to throw a punch or two. But he snorted and turned to follow Anson and his wife.

  Doug stood in the middle of the little room, realizing how small it was, how low the ceiling pressed down on him, how many people were going to die if he kept up this charade of trying to defend Moonbase.

  Edith whispered, “I was wondering when you’d blow off some steam. I’m just glad I wasn’t in your line of fire.”

  DAY FORTY-ONE

  It was well past midnight. Doug lay wide awake in the darkness, Edith beside him. They had not even tried to make love; Doug was too wired, too angry to either give or receive tenderness.

  I’m scared, he realized. I’m really frightened. And there’s nothing I can do to help. Not a blasted thing.

  “Are you sleeping?” Edith whispered so low he barely heard it.

  “No.”

  “Me neither.”

  Doug stayed flat on his back, staring at the dark ceiling. “I shouldn’t have yelled at those kids.”

  “They broke the rules, didn’t they?”

  “Yelling at them didn’t help anything. I’ve just made them sore at me.”

  “You’ve got to let off steam somehow,” Edith said. “If you don’t you’ll bust.”

  “I still shouldn’t have done it to them.”

  Edith was silent for several heartbeats. Then she whispered, “If you want to curse, go right ahead.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t hold it in. Sometimes a good string of cussing can be real satisfying. Go ahead, turn the air blue. I won’t mind.”

  For long moments he didn’t know what to reply. Then he confessed. “I don’t know any.”

  “Any what?”

  “Any curses. I never learned to swear. My mother didn’t like it and I never heard it when I was a kid.”

  “Nothing at all?” Edith was incredulous.

  “Hell and damn. Sonofabitch bastard. Fuck, shit, asshole.”

  “Lord, you make it sound like you’re reciting a list.”

  He shrugged. “They don’t mean much to me. Not emotionally.”

  Edith turned to face him. In the darkness she could barely make out the outline of his head against the pillow.

  “What do you do when you get real mad? When you want to spit and kick your faithful ol’ hound dog?”

  He knew she was trying to cheer him, trying to lighten his foul mood. “I never had a dog.”

  “Didn’t you ever want to kick anybody?”

  “I go outside,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “When I’m really ticked off, when it gets too heavy, I suit up and go outside. That usually makes me feel better.”

  “Then let’s go outside,” Edith said, propping herself up on one elbow.

  “Not now,” Doug said. “It won’t help.”

  “But you said—”

  “Get some sleep, Edith. The problems I’m facing aren’t going to be solved by a walk outside.”

  “Come on,” she urged. “You’ve never taken me outside. We could—”

  “Not now,” he repeated. “Go to sleep.”

  She gave up with a reluctant sigh and curled next to him. Neither of them closed their eyes.

  When he tried to reach Tamara Bonai in the morning, her phone relayed a message that she had gone to her private island and was waiting for him to make VR contact with her.

  Tiredly, Doug trudged down to the virtual reality studio, pulled on a full-body sensor suit and let a technician help him insert the contact TV lenses. Within minutes he was standing on the sandy beach, surprised that it was night on Tarawa atoll.

  “I’m a working woman,” Bonai told him, smiling brightly in the starlit night. “I have responsibilities that keep me at my desk most of the day.”

  Doug forced a grin. “Here I thought you had nothing to do but swim in the lagoon and go fishing.”

  Bonai was wearing a wraparound pareo, Doug was in his usual sky-blue coveralls. The night was magnificent: a warm salt breeze blew across the beach and thousands of stars sparkled in the great dome of the heavens. Doug searched the sky for the Moon but could not find it. Of course, he realized. We’re in the nighttime part of our cycle; from Earth it’s a new moon, invisible.

  “Have you thought about my offer?” Bonai asked, almost shyly.

  For a moment Doug felt puzzled. “Offer?”

  “Asylum here in Kiribati,” she said. “For you and as many of your people as you want to bring with you.”

  Doug took a deep breath. It was one place where the VR simulation failed. Instead of soft tropical sea air he tasted the flat, canned, slightly metallic mixture of Moonbase.

  “I need to know more about what the Peacekeepers are planning,” he said.

  “I’ve told you as much as Rashid told me,” Bonai said. “Several hundred troops, equipped with missiles, are being assembled at the Yamagata base in Copernicus. They plan to attack Moonbase within a month.”

  “Do you know anything about how they plan to attack?”

  She shook her head.

  Doug hesitated, then asked, “Tamara, can you find out anything more?”

  In the starlit shadows he could not make out the expression on her face. But her voice sounded strained as she replied, “Doug, I don’t want to see Rashid again. Once is a fling; twice… he’ll either get suspicious or begin to think he owns me.”

  “Oh,” he said, suddenly embarrassed. “I see. I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “I tried to talk with the director of Nippon One,” he said, almost mumbling the words. “He won’t take my calls.”

  Tamara touched his sleeve with her virtual hand. “Doug, I know it’s terribly difficult for you, but you’ve got to face the fact that Moonbase is lost. You’ve got to start thinking about your own safety.”

  He nodded, feeling miserable. “I know you’re right. And yet—”

  He stopped. Out in the shadows beneath the palm trees that fringed the beach he saw something move.

  Killifer was delighted. About time I caught a break, he said to himself.

  He had bought an inflatable boat, barely big enough for himself and the box of food and drink he had brought with him, and chugged out into the lagoon at sunset. The beach boys who watched the hotel’s rental outriggers paid him scant attention: a tourist going out for a little night fishing.

  As soon as it got fully dark Killifer set out for the private little islet on the far end of the atoll where Tamara Bonai someti
mes went. Alone.

  It wasn’t easy, out on the lagoon all by himself in the dark. The lights from the hotel and casino soon sank below the watery horizon. His eyes grew accustomed to the starlight, but each of the flat, palm-fringed islets looked pretty much alike to him. Bonai’s private little isle was the last one in the chain, he knew. Still, he almost missed the islet and drifted out to the reef in a sudden swirl of current between islands.

  Finally he got to ‘her’ islet, the farthest one from Betio and Bonriki. Sooner or later she’ll come here, he told himself as he beached the inflatable boat. Once he had pulled the boat safely out of sight, into the bushes beneath the palms, he took a quick swig of beer from the cooler and settled down to wait for her. Could be days, he knew. What the hell.

  And there she was! Killifer could hardly believe his eyes. The woman steered her outrigger up onto the beach just as pretty as you please and stepped out for a walk under the stars. Alone.

  Grinning to himself, Killifer thought that maybe General O’Conner’s god was looking out for him, after all.

  “Somebody’s out there,” Doug said, pointing toward the palm trees and low shrubbery beneath them.

  Bonai followed his gaze. There couldn’t be. Not at this time of night. The canoe rental closes at sundown.”

  “He’s coming toward us,” Doug said.

  “Yes. I see him.”

  Doug started to wave the man off, then realized that he was on the Moon, and the approaching man couldn’t see him.

  “Damn, we’ll have to put up NO TRESPASSING signs,” Bonai said, staring at the man striding toward her.

  “Or guards,” Doug muttered.

  She looked up at Doug. “I wanted us to be alone.”

  “Me too. Why don’t you tell him he’s not allowed here.”

  With a sigh, she said, “I suppose I’ll have to.”

  Starting up the beach toward the intruder, Bonai called out to him, “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re not allowed onto these islets. You’ll have to go back to Bonriki.” She pointed toward the faint glow on the horizon from the high-rise hotels.

  The man showed no sign of understanding. Bonai repeated her warning in German, then Japanese.

  “He doesn’t look Japanese,” Doug said, squinting through the shadows at him.