by Ben Bova
Anson’s normally perky expression paled slightly. “Why would they do that?”
“They want to take over the base,” Brudnoy replied.
“Yeah, but they wouldn’t want to kill us! Not if we’re just sitting tight inside.”
“Blowing the main airlock wouldn’t necessarily kill us, would it?” Cardenas asked.
“No,” said Anson, “it’d just open up the garage. All the tunnels would still be sealed off—”
“Corridors,” Doug corrected.
“Whatever.”
“Still,” Brudnoy said, “if they blast out the main airlock that would surely mean that they are prepared to blow their way through any of the other airlocks and hatches in the base.”
“It would mean they’re ready to kill us,” Doug agreed.
Zimmerman, sitting alone on the couch by the door, pointed out, “If they blast open the main airlock we would have to surrender. There would be no other option.”
“Not unless we can breathe vacuum,” Anson admitted.
Doug turned to Gordette and again the man was staring at him. “What do you think, Bam? What does your military experience tell you?”
Without the slightest hesitation, Gordette replied, “The Peacekeepers are trained to accomplish their mission with as little bloodshed as possible. They won’t blow any airlocks. Not at first, anyway.”
“You mean we could sit inside and wait ’em out?” Anson asked.
Gordette shook his head.
“What would you do,” Doug asked, “if you were heading up this Peacekeeper mission?”
Getting slowly to his feet, Gordette walked to the wall map and pointed to the thin lines that represented the buried power cables that led from the solar farms into the base. “I’d cut your electrical power lines, here, here, and here.”
“The solar farms,” murmured Brudnoy.
“Without electricity this base goes down the tubes.” Gordette made a diving motion with one hand.
“We have the backup nuclear system,” Anson said.
“They know that,” Gordette replied flatly. “They’ve got as good a map of this base as you do.”
Doug said, “So they’ll cut the line from the nuke, too.”
Gordette nodded.
“Kaput,” said Zimmerman. “How long can we last without electricity? Thirty seconds, perhaps?”
“We have emergency batteries, fuel cells,” said Anson.
“So? How much time do they give us?”
“A few hours.”
“The Peacekeepers will have enough air to wait for us to surrender, no?”
“Yes.”
From his chair in front of Doug’s desk, Brudnoy looked up at Gordette with gloom in his pouchy eyes. “Is there anything we can do? Anything at all?”
Gordette seemed to think about it for a moment. “There’s a maneuver that we use in martial arts when your opponent points a gun at you.”
“What is it?”
Gordette slowly raised his arms over his head in the universal sign of surrender.
The room fell into a dismal silence. Doug looked at them; they seemed defeated already.
“What we’ve learned,” he said in as firm a voice as he could, “is that we’ve got to keep the Peacekeepers from cutting our power lines.”
“How?” Brudnoy asked.
Doug pointed toward Zimmerman. “We need something to defend those power lines.”
“Something?” Zimmerman growled. “What?”
“That’s what you’ve got to figure out, Professor. And you’ve got less than four days to do it.”
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 63 HOURS 29 MINUTES
Joanna Masterson Stavenger was not accustomed to being snubbed, not even by the world’s most powerful politicians. But Faure refused to speak to her.
At first the U.N. simply did not acknowledge her calls. The wallscreen in her quarters showed nothing but electronic hash. The comm tech who was monitoring her transmission said flatly, “They’re not answering.”
She reached the Masterson Corporation offices in New York and tried to pipe a call to Faure through them. After nearly twenty-four hours of delays and evasions, one of the U.N. flunkies blandly told her that the secretary-general was unavailable.
Huffing with impatient anger, Joanna called Masterson corporate headquarters in Savannah on a direct laser link.
“I want to speak with the chairman of the board,” she told the young man whose face appeared on her wallscreen.
“Mr. Rashid isn’t here, Mrs. Brudnoy. He’s in—”
Joanna did not wait for the sentence to end. “Find him, wherever he is. I need to talk to him immediately.”
It took almost three seconds for her words to reach Rashid’s aide and his startled expression to show on her screen.
“Get him!” she snapped.
Nearly half an hour later, Ibrahim al-Rashid’s face finally appeared on the wallscreen. He had been handsome once, but now his romantic good looks were sinking into softness. His closely-clipped beard was streaked with gray, as was his tightly-curled hair. He had a look of decadence about him, Joanna thought. She knew that Rashid did not drink; he was a faithful Moslem in that regard. But there were drugs. And women, many of them. And the responsibilities that came inescapably with great power.
“Greetings and felicitations, most illustrious one,” he said, his voice reedy but melodious. “How are you enjoying your visit to the Moon?”
“I need to talk to Faure,” Joanna said, unwilling to engage in the usual banter.
Three seconds later Rashid’s brows rose slightly. “I very much doubt that the secretary-general would be willing to speak with you at this point in time.”
“Make it happen, Omar,” Joanna snapped.
If her use of his old nickname upset him, Rashid showed no trace of it. He merely smiled patiently and replied, “And how do I do that, Joanna? Rub a magic lamp?”
Holding on to her swooping temper, Joanna replied, “You get that little Quebecer on the phone and tell him that I’m going to announce to the news media that he has no intention of shutting down Moonbase. He’s going to continue using our nanomachines for his own profit!”
Rashid seemed more sobered than surprised when her words reached him.
“Your son’s declaration of Moonbase’s independence has not been carried by the media,” he said slowly. “There is a blackout on news about Moonbase. Even here in the States the media have acceded to Faure’s request for restraint.”
“This isn’t about Moonbase,” Joanna replied impatiently. “This is about the secretary-general of the United Nations telling the world he’s going to enforce the nanotech treaty when he’s really planning to use our nanomachines for his own purposes.”
She watched his expression intently. Does he already know about this? Has he already cut a deal with Faure?
At last Rashid said, “That does cast a new light on the situation. Perhaps the media would be interested in such a story. Do you have any evidence to back it up? Any corroboration?”
Suddenly Joanna felt wary. “Plenty,” she said, thinking to herself, Omar could be part of Faure’s scheme. He’s never been a supporter of Moonbase.
Almost as if thinking out loud, Rashid murmured, “There is a reporter on board the Clippership heading for Moonbase.”
“I don’t want a reporter,” Joanna said. “I want all the networks. I want every news service on Earth!”
“But the commsats have been programmed to reject all transmissions from Moonbase.”
“I don’t need the commsats. How do you think we’re talking? The technicians here can beam my transmissions to any spot on Earth, almost. All the news services have optical receivers on their rooftops.”
Rashid was silent far longer than the three seconds it took for the round-trip transmission from Moon to Earth and back again.
“Perhaps Faure would be willing to speak with you, after all,” he said at last. “Let me see if I can reach him and get him to
listen to reason.”
“Good,” said Joanna. “We’ve only got a little more than two and a half days before the Peacekeepers land here.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Don’t let Faure delay until his troops land. I won’t wait that long. Tell him he’s got twenty-four hours to get in touch with me. Or else I go to the media.”
“Harkening and obedience,” said Rashid, just as he did in the old days when Joanna was chairman of the board and he was only a rising young executive.
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 38 HOURS 30 MINUTES
Edith’s nausea was almost completely gone. A tendril of unease persisted deep inside her, but she thought it was probably more psychological than physical now. She still felt slightly dizzy whenever she moved her head too fast, but the moment passed quickly.
In fact, floating free in zero gravity was fun! She had set up her two minicams in the spacecraft’s cargo bay, amid bulky crates marked AMMUNITION: 9 MM: FRANGIBLE and GRENADES: CONCUSSION: MARK 17/A.
She had interviewed two ordinary troopers, a shy teenaged boy from Bangladesh and his sergeant, a tough nononsense Cuban woman. It was like interviewing athletes: monosyllabic answers, platitudes, and long, perplexed silences.
Edith checked her hair in her hand mirror. It was floating nicely; not so wild that it would distract the viewer, just enough to show what weightlessness could do. The cameras were tightly tethered to a pair of tied-down crates so they wouldn’t bob around; there were no girders or other projections on the smooth curving bulkhead of diamond on which to secure them.
Captain Munasinghe glided through the hatch, trying to look as if he was unaffected by zero gee. He had removed the medication patch from behind his ear, but Edith saw faint rings there, like the scars from an octopus’s suckers, and wondered how comfortable the captain really felt.
He was small and slim, dark skin shining as if it had been oiled. He had put on a fresh uniform, Edith saw, crisp and clean. His eyes were his best feature, large and dark and somehow fierce looking. They’ll show up great on camera, she thought. But he’s so little, I’ll look like a horse next to him.
Then she smiled to herself. Zero gee to the rescue. I’ll just let him float higher off the deck than I do. Keep the focus tight, head and shoulders. He’ll look taller than me and I’ll bet he’ll love it. Realistic journalism.
“I just want to ask you a few questions, Captain Munasinghe,” she said, trying to put him at ease. “Just look at me and ignore the cameras.”
“Yes. Fine.”
“Ready?”
Munasinghe nodded, then licked his lips.
Wondering who had taught him to do that, Edith pressed the switch on her remote control wand and said, “Okay, here we go.”
She arranged herself facing Munasinghe and slightly below him, so his head topped hers by a few centimeters. Camera one held the two-shot; the second camera focused on the captain’s face. Edith would do her reaction close-ups afterward; they would be spliced in Earthside as cutaways.
“Here with me now is Captain Jagath Munasinghe of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force, the commander of this mission to the Moon,” said Edith.
“Captain Munasinghe, how do you feel about leading forty armed troops to Moonbase?”
Munasinghe drifted closer to her as he replied, “The Peacekeepers were created by international agreement to enforce the decisions of the United Nations Secretariat. Moonbase is violating the terms of the nanotechnology treaty, therefore we have been dispatched to the Moon to put an end this violation.”
“Yes, but how do you feel personally about this mission?”
“I am proud to bear the responsibility of carrying out the United Nations’ decision to enforce the nanotechnology treaty,” he said. It sounded like a parrot repeating a line it had been laboriously taught.
The interview teetered between a disaster and a farce. Munasinghe had canned answers for every question she asked, undoubtedly written in New York for him to memorize. Worse, he kept pushing so close to Edith that she thought he wanted to rub noses with her. She could smell the cloying, faintly acrid odor of whatever breath treatment he had gargled.
She unconsciously moved away from him, trying to maintain a proper distance for their interview, but he kept moving in on her. In the back of her mind Edith remembered that different cultures have different ideas of the proper distance for social intercourse, but this was going out on the network, for chrissakes! It’s going to look like he’s coming on to me.
The cameras tracked them automatically, but after only a few minutes Edith’s back bumped against one of the cargo crates and she could retreat no farther. Munasinghe hovered before her, his breath making her want to gag, his burning eyes boring into hers as if he intended to rape her.
Edith was about to give up all pretense of trying to conduct a rational interview and wind it up as quickly as she could, but some inner determination was urging her to get something, anything out of Munasinghe.
In desperation, she gestured with her free hand to the crates of munitions around them. “Do you think you’re really going to need all this firepower against the people of Moonbase? After all, they’re unarmed, aren’t they?”
“They claim that they are unarmed, yes.”
“You don’t believe that?”
“I am a soldier,” Munasinghe said, eyes burning into her. “I must be prepared for the worst that the enemy could possibly do to us.”
“But what could a gaggle of scientists and technicians do to a platoon of fully-armed Peacekeepers?”
“We don’t know, but we must be prepared.”
“With hand grenades and explosives?”
“With every weapon at our disposal,” Munasinghe said, without an instant’s hesitation. “If the people of Moonbase offer the slightest opposition, we are prepared to use whatever level of force is required.”
Edith’s breath caught in her throat. “You mean you’re prepared to kill them?”
“If necessary. Yes, of course.”
“Even though they’re unarmed?”
He jabbed a finger in her face. “You keep saying they are unarmed. How do we know this? How do we know what kinds of weapons they may have at Moonbase? I am responsible for bringing Moonbase under United Nations’ jurisdiction. I am responsible for the lives of my troops. If the enemy offers the slightest resistance, the slightest provocation, I have ordered my troops to shoot.”
“Shoot to kill?” Edith was surprised at how hollow her voice sounded.
“When you are in battle you don’t have the luxury of attempting to merely wound your enemy. Shoot to kill, yes, of course.”
“At the slightest provocation?”
For the first time, Captain Munasinghe smiled. “I have served in Eritrea, in Colombia, and against the Armenian terrorists. Believe me, you do not give an enemy a second chance to kill you. Not if you want to survive the engagement.”
“Let me get this straight,” Edith said. “You’re saying that you’ve ordered your troops to shoot to kill at the slightest sign of resistance from the people of Moonbase.”
“At the slightest sign of resistance,” Munasinghe affirmed. “Better to destroy Moonbase and everyone in it than to return to Earth with our mission a failure.”
Edith swallowed hard, then said, “Thank you, Captain Munasinghe.”
She had to push herself past him, then forced a smile as she looked straight into camera one and concluded, “This is Edie Elgin, in space with the U.N. Peacekeeper force, on the way to Moonbase.”
Munasinghe drifted back, then asked, “Is that all? Is it finished?”
“That’s it,” said Edith, hoping he would go away.
“Was it satisfactory? Can I see it?”
Wearily, Edith ran the abbreviated interview on camera one’s monitor. Munasinghe watched himself, fascinated. Edith wondered if the network suits would play the interview. They had made it clear they wanted to cooperate with the U.N., and this interview could stir a lot of h
ostility toward the Peacekeepers if it was aired.
No, she told herself, they’ll play it. They’ll have to. So the U.N. bitches about it, so what? This is news.
TOUCHDOWN MINUS 27 HOURS 51 MINUTES
The mercenary returned to his quarters and sat on his bunk. The time to strike is nearly here.
The situation was almost ludicrous. The more he thought about the base’s electrical power supplies, its life-support systems, its total lack of weaponry or military capability, the more he realized that a single man like himself could bring the entire base to its knees.
They won’t need a ship full of Peacekeepers. I can do it all by myself.
But the Peacekeepers were on their way and there was almost nothing that the inhabitants of Moonbase could do to stop them.
Why assassinate the leaders when they can’t offer any resistance? Just knock out their electrical power system and they’re helpless. It won’t make any difference if Doug Stavenger lives or dies; Moonbase will cave in as soon as the Peacekeepers arrive.
The mercenary got down onto the floor in front of his bunk and folded his legs into the lotus position. Resting the backs of his hands on his knees, he closed his eyes and murmured his mantra, seeking harmony and understanding.
He saw in his mind’s eye what he always saw. His ten-year-old brother in convulsions, dying of the zip he had snorted while their mother lay sprawled on the sofa, too dazed with the same shit to phone for help. He saw his six-year-old self locked in the dark roach closet because he’d been a bad boy, watching his brother die through the closet door keyhole, listening to the screams that turned into strangled, choking sobs and finally ended in a groan that still tortured his soul.
If I had been good, I wouldn’t have been locked in the roach closet. I could’ve helped Timmy.
He saw his mother die, too. She was the first person he ever killed. He was fifteen and a father, but she still treated him like a little kid. Took the strap to him. He grabbed it away from her and swung it hard enough to knock her down. Her head cracked on the table leg and her eyes went blank.
He saw his first sergeant die, as brutal a man as any, but fair and unwaveringly honest. And the old cowboy on the rifle range, the one who taught him how to shoot. And how to hunt.
