Moonwar

by Ben Bova

  “Second,” said the man across the table from her.

  The resolution passed by one vote: Bonai’s. Joanna sighed with relief. She’s not in his camp, she realized. Maybe in his bed, but not in his camp.

  Then she thought, But the resolution doesn’t mean much, not compared to this issue of merging with Yamagata.

  Rashid was saying, “… each board member should express our support for Moonbase with his or her senators, I imagine. And I will appoint a committee to meet with the president in support of this resolution. Joanna, I suppose you should chair that committee.”

  He seemed to be taking his defeat graciously enough. Why not? Joanna asked herself. He’s got every member of the board dreaming of a tenfold increase in the worth of their stock.

  “I think we should set up another committee, as well,” Joanna heard herself saying, not realizing where she was going until the words formed in her mouth, “to work with our board chairman in his negotiations with Yamagata.”

  “That’s not on our agenda,” Rashid snapped.

  “Call it new business,” said Joanna.

  “Yes, I want to be on the Yamagata committee,” said the oldest member of the board.

  “And so do I,” Joanna added sweetly.

  DAY FORTY

  Tamara Bonai cancelled her plans to return to Kiribati and extended her stay in Savannah for twenty-four hours—at Rashid’s request.

  As the board meeting had broken up, he had asked her to remain an extra day. “Now that the pressure is off, I’d like to take you sailing.”

  She saw something in his eyes that surprised her: not anger or worry over Joanna Brudnoy’s intransigence, but relief, almost satisfaction. So she thought it over for a few moments, then smiled and agreed. There is something going on in his mind that he didn’t tell us at the board meeting, she thought. It could be simple lust, she realized. Alone together on a boat, it would be difficult to evade his ardor. But what she saw in his eyes was more than that. Tamara saw triumph in Rashid’s pleased expression.

  He was happy, carefree, as he guided the power cruiser down the river, past Fort Pulaski and the Clippership port on Tybee Island, and out onto the deep swells of the blue-gray Atlantic.

  “It’s going to be a beautiful day,” Rashid said cheerfully as he sat in the pilot’s chair, one bare leg hooked over its armrest. “And a lovely, starry night,” he added.

  He was barefoot, wearing nothing but blue swim trunks and a tee shirt with a Masterson Corporation logo on its breast. Bonai wore a sunshine yellow bikini with a gauzy see-through hip-length robe over it.

  “Not a cloud in sight,” Rashid enthused.

  Bonai was not worried about the weather. She was disappointed that Rashid hadn’t taken out a sailboat, which would have been more fun than chugging along on power. At least the boat’s electric motor was quiet and clean; no diesel fumes to assault her sense of smell.

  The day passed uneventfully. By lunchtime they were out of sight of land. The sun set and the stars came out, as promised, different from the constellations she knew in Kiribati’s skies, but just as beautiful.

  There was no Moon in the night sky.

  All day long Rashid’s conversation had been innocuous, as if the last thing he wanted to talk about was the board meeting and Moonbase. Over dinner, though, he spoke of his long struggle to reach the top of Masterson Corporation.

  “It hasn’t been easy for a Moslem to move forward in corporate America, even a Moslem born and raised in Baltimore,” he said, with growing bitterness. “But I’ve worked harder than any of the others. When they called me Omar I let it pass. And they’ve called me worse, behind my back, I know. Towel-head. Camel humper.”

  Tamara offered sympathetic noises as they made their way through the prepackaged veal and salad.

  Dessert was figs and dates, and champagne. Tamara knew what was coming next, and almost welcomed it. Soon enough they were together in the bunk up at the boat’s prow, heaving in rhythm to the ocean waves. Rashid was a well-versed lover, Bonai discovered; he made pleasure pleasurable for her as well as himself.

  It was afterward, as they lay sweaty and spent with the curved overhead less than an arm’s length above them, that Tamara gently, slowly got Rashid to tell her more about himself. Of his rise to Masterson’s board of directors. Of his victory in the battle to be chairman. Of his ambition to bring efficient, clean, economical fusion power to an energy-hungry Earth.

  “That’s what I’ll be known for, after I’m gone,” he said quietly in the darkness. “Future generations will remember that I made fusion power practical.”

  For long moments Bonai said nothing. She listened to the creaking groan of the boat as it rose and fell in the endless ocean waves, thinking that it was Yamagata’s researchers who had doggedly worked to make fusion practical.

  “That’s a magnificent achievement,” she said at last.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Magnificent.”

  “But if Mrs. Brudnoy prevents the merger with Yamagata … what then?”

  He chuckled softly and turned toward her. “There’s nothing she can do to prevent it. You saw how the board members reacted when I showed them how much their stock will increase in value.”

  “Mrs. Brudnoy is a very determined woman. Very powerful.”

  “Not for much longer. In a month or so Moonbase will belong to Yamagata Industries, and her power base will be gone.”

  “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 flunky, 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 Ki
ribati. 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 AM in Kiribati when she arrived at her office. With a quick flick of her computer keyboard, she saw it was 5:42 PM 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 wallscreen 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 the low 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.