Moonwar

by Ben Bova

  Keiji Inoguchi was surprised by Professor Zimmerman’s call. He hurried to the nanolab, eager to accept Zimmerman’s invitation before the crusty old man changed his mind.

  “I am most honored that you have asked me to visit your laboratory once again,” he said, after he had bowed to the professor.

  Zimmerman dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “I am asking for more than a visit, my friend. I need your help.”

  Inoguchi sucked in his breath. “My help? In what way can I help you?”

  Zimmerman led the Japanese scientist back into the bowels of his lab. They walked past rows of computer screens and gray, bulky cryogenic tanks beaded with moisture, Zimmerman in his usual gray suit, grossly overweight, dishevelled, looking distracted and unhappy; Inoguchi in an immaculate white turtleneck shirt and sharply creased slacks, lean and eager, his eyes snapping at every piece of equipment as if they were cameras.

  Hands jammed in his trouser pockets, Zimmerman said heavily, “I am relegated to assisting my former student, Professor Cardenas.”

  “Yes?”

  “She has asked me to prepare nanomachines capable of repairing wounds inflicted by gunshot or shrapnel—flying metal from explosions.”

  “And you want me to assist you in this?” Inoguchi asked.

  “I realize you represent the United Nations and are not to take part in the fighting,” Zimmerman said. “But for medical work perhaps you are allowed to use your skills, yah? For humanitarian reasons.”

  “Of course,” Inoguchi said without an instant’s hesitation. “Humanitarian purposes come before politics and other considerations.”

  Zimmerman stopped in front of a lab bench that supported a massive metal sphere connected to a desktop computer by hair-thin fiberoptic cables.

  “My staff.” Zimmerman gestured to the sphere.

  Inoguchi understood immediately. “Your processors.”

  “Yah,” said Zimmerman, lowering his bulk onto a spindly looking stool. “Now we must teach them to build other nanos that will seal wounds quick, before the patient bleeds to death.”

  “Can you do this?”

  The old man nodded slowly. “Yah. I have already done it once. Now I must do it again—in a day or so.”

  Inoguchi grinned at the professor. “We have much work to accomplish, then.”

  Colonel Giap did not relish being under Faure’s direct supervision. The man is a politician, what does he know of military tactics? Giap asked himself. I should report to General Uhlenbeck, through the normal chain of command. Instead I must bear with this politician questioning every breath I draw.

  He tried to reassure himself with Clausewitz’s dictum that war is merely an extension of politics. It was scant consolation. Yes, politicians such as Ho Chi Minh successfully directed the liberation of Vietnam from the imperialists, he knew. But that was generations ago, and besides, Ho and his comrades had military experience of their own. Faure had probably never even fired a pistol at a target range.

  “Was it wise to incapacitate their satellite?” the U.N. secretary-general was asking.

  Giap, sitting on the bare floor of his closet-turned-office, replied to the image on his laptop’s screen with all the patience he could muster, “It was necessary. Their satellite could observe our time of departure and our route of march. That would be giving the enemy more information than we want them to have.”

  He waited the three seconds, watching Faure twiddle his mustache. Then the secretary-general replied, “But by disabling their satellite, you have told them that you are ready to march.”

  “Yes. What of it? Don’t you think they have cameras atop their ringwall mountains looking for us to appear over their horizon?”

  Faure’s face creased deeply once he heard Giap’s comment. “Then of what good was it to cripple their satellite? I do not understand your reasoning.”

  They went around the subject twice more, Giap resolute and implacable, Faure irritable and demanding.

  At last Giap said, “Sir, you may consider my action premature or even mistaken, but it has been done and argument will not undo it.”

  Faure flushed angrily once he heard the colonel’s words.

  Before he could say anything, Giap added, “If you wish to remove me from command, I understand entirely.”

  The secretary-general’s eyes widened momentarily, then he quickly asserted his self-control. Forcing a smile that narrowed his eyes to slits, Faure made a soothing gesture with both hands.

  “No, no, of course not, Colonel. I have every confidence in you.”

  Of course you do, Giap said to himself, now that our jump-off for the attack is only hours away.

  “What you’re looking at,” said Edith into her pin mike, “is almost certainly a nuclear-armed missile.”

  The monitor screen in the little editing booth showed what Moonbase’s astronomical telescope was focused upon: the clutch of spacecraft hovering around the big space station at the L-1 libration point some 58,000 kilometers above the Moon’s surface. The picture, with Edith’s commentary, was being broadcast live over Global News Network.

  “Despite international agreements that date all the way back to 1967 banning nuclear weapons in space, the United Nations has brought a nuclear-armed missile here to use against Moonbase. Although Moonbase’s residents …”

  Doug watched Edith’s performance as he suited up for another surface excursion. It’s one thing to reveal to the world that Faure’s going to nuke our solar energy farms he told himself, it’s something else to try to knock out the missile once they launch it against us.

  Doug hitched a ride on one of the tractors carrying a team of construction workers out to the mass driver. It took the better part of half an hour to trundle the few kilometers in one of the electrically driven tractors. Doug thought that once this war was over, one of his immediate priorities was going to be developing faster ground vehicles. This is assinine, creaking along at a top speed of thirty klicks per hour.

  Then he realized that the Peacekeeper battalion was chugging along at pretty much the same low speed, and he didn’t feel so bad about it. Besides, he added silently, by the time this war is over there might not be a Moonbase and you just might be dead.

  The Sun was up over the ringwall mountains, bathing the crater floor in harsh, brilliant light that cast long slanting shadows. It would remain daylight for another twelve days. The Peacekeepers remembered that the nanobugs Moonbase had used against them the first time were deactivated by solar ultraviolet.

  The mass driver was crawling with spacesuited figures. Laser welding torches flashed against the dark bulk of the long metal machines. Doug clambered down from the tractor, leaving the construction team to drive a few hundred meters on, to where their cohorts were digging a trench for the prefab shelter for Wicksen’s people.

  The suit-to-suit radio frequency was alive with chatter, but Doug found Wicksen visually, from his slight form and the bright blue WIX stencilled on his backpack. There was so much crosstalk on the regular suit-to-suit frequency that Doug walked up to the physicist and tapped him lightly on the shoulder.

  Wicksen seemed to recognize Doug’s suit and held up three gloved fingers. Doug tapped frequency three on his wrist panel.

  “I’ve saved this freak for private conversations,” Wicksen’s voice said in his earphones.

  “How’s it going?” Doug asked.

  “Have they launched yet?”

  “Not as of half an hour ago.” Then he added, “I would’ve gotten a call if they’d launched while I was riding out here.”

  “We should have this kloodge put together in another ten or twelve hours.”

  “Good.”

  “But there won’t be any time to test it.”

  “Then it better work right the first time,” Doug said.

  He could sense Wicksen shaking his head inside his helmet. “Nothing works right the first time. Haven’t you ever heard of Murphy’s Law?”

  Ignoring that, Doug asked
, “How soon will you have the extra electrical power connected?”

  Pointing past the mass driver’s long metal track, Wicksen answered, “The extra men you assigned me are doing that now. You’re going to have a temporary brownout when we fire the gun.”

  “Better than having a nuclear explosion inside the crater,” Doug said grimly.

  Wicksen was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Thanks for putting the construction crew to work for us.”

  “The numbers that the safety people ran on their computer said that four meters of regolith rubble should protect you from the radiation blast—if they got the yield from the bomb right.”

  “Whether it works or not, we all feel a lot better knowing we can sit in the shelter while we’re running the gun. Thanks a lot.”

  “Nothing to it. The construction people have nothing else to do.”

  Turning back toward the mass driver, Wicksen made a wistful little sigh. “I sure wish we had time to test this beast.”

  “So do I,” Doug said fervently. “So do I.”

  SAVANNAH

  “But I must speak to Seigo Yamagata,” said Ibrahim al-Rashid. “It is most urgent.”

  Rashid’s office had once belonged to Joanna Brudnoy, when she had been chairman of Masterson Corporation’s board of directors. Many was the time that she had summoned him into her sanctum and he had dutifully scurried to her in response. Once he had acceded to the chairmanship, however, Rashid had completely refurnished and redecorated the office. His desk was a sweeping, curving modernistic work of glass, his highbacked black leather chair custom-built to his measurements. The walls were adorned with tapestries from Persia and India, the windows were actually wallscreens that could display any of thousands of scenes stored in his personal computer’s memory.

  One of those screens now showed the image of a young Japanese man in an open-neck white shirt and tastefully checkered sports jacket, sitting at a desk in an office panelled in what appeared to be teak.

  “Seigo Yamagata is not available at present,” he said in the homogenized American English of a television announcer. “I am Saito Yamagata, his eldest son. May I be of assistance to you?”

  “I must speak to your father,” Rashid demanded.

  The younger Yamagata smiled gently and said, “I regret to tell you once again that he is not available.”

  Rashid felt as if he were talking to a brick wall. Or worse, a large soft pillow that absorbed his words without being moved by them in the slightest.

  “This is important!”

  “Of course it is,” Yamagata agreed readily. “That is why the staff has routed your call to me, rather than some underling.”

  Rashid blinked with surprise. “You mean that you are in charge?”

  His face going serious, the young man replied, “My father left instructions that you are to be received by his personal representative and no one else. That personal representative is me.”

  Sinking back in his cushioned leather chair, Rashid recognized the oriental manner of stonewalling: polite, gracious, accommodating, but stonewalling just the same.

  “How may I help you?” Saito Yamagata asked solicitously.

  Bowing to the inevitable, Rashid said, through gritted teeth, “I have received information that among the Peacekeeper troops marching on Moonbase there is a special contingent of Yamagata suicide bombers who intend to blow up Moonbase.”

  Yamagata’s brows rose a couple of millimeters.

  “Destroying Moonbase is idiotic!” Rashid snapped, unable to contain his temper any longer. “Our entire operation, my whole understanding with your father, depends on Moonbase providing helium-three for your fusion generators. How can they provide anything if the base is blown to bits?” He fairly shouted the question.

  Saito Yamagata’s expression had gone from polite interest to mild surprise to the absolute blank face of a man who has much to hide.

  “Is your information trustworthy?” he asked softly.

  “I have my sources both in United Nations headquarters and the Peacekeepers’ chain of command.”

  “I see.”

  “This is a betrayal of our understanding,” Rashid said harshly. “It also destroys the very thing that your father wants so badly—Moonbase.”

  The young man nodded. “The suicide bombers are not Yamagata employees. They are volunteers from the Bright New Sun, an organization of fanatics that is allied with your own New Morality movement.”

  “Then how are they allowed to be with the Peacekeepers? Who permitted them to come to Nippon One?”

  “My father accepted their …” Yamagata searched for the right word, “… their help, most reluctantly. You must understand that even in Japan, religious zealotry is a very powerful force.”

  “But you’re going to allow them to destroy Moonbase!”

  Yamagata smiled thinly. “Not at all. My father is not stupid. He bowed to the pressures of the Bright New Sun and allowed them to add a squad of kamikazes to the Peacekeeper force. But they will not be permitted to damage Moonbase. The Peacekeepers will take the base and there will be no need for suicide bombers.”

  Rashid closed his eyes for a few moments, trying hard to think it all through.

  “Suppose,” he said at last, “that the Peacekeepers fail to take Moonbase.”

  “Impossible,” said Yamagata.

  “They drove off the first attack, didn’t they?”

  Yamagata smiled again. “This time there are three hundred troops, armed with missiles and heavy weapons. A nuclear bomb will knock out Moonbase’s electrical supply. This time they will not fail.”

  “But those people at Moonbase are very clever,” Rashid insisted. “Suppose they stop the Peacekeepers?”

  With a slight shrug, Yamagata said, “Then there will be no option except allowing the kamikazes to blow up as much of Moonbase as they can.”

  “But that is lunacy!”

  “A clever play on words,” the young man said, although his expression showed no humor.

  “You can’t let them blow up Moonbase!” Rashid yelled.

  “The forces are in motion,” said Yamagata. “How they will play out remains to be seen. Even if Moonbase is entirely destroyed, it can be rebuilt.”

  “But … but—”

  “Patience is a virtue, Mr. Rashid. Yamagata Industries will receive the U.N.’s mandate to operate Moonbase, no matter what condition the base may be in when the fighting is finished. If necessary, we will rebuild it. The important thing is that Moonbase will be in our hands.”

  It was not until that instant that Rashid realized he had put his future into the hands of ruthless men.

  Only a few miles away, Joanna paced restlessly through the living room of her home.

  “A new exercise regime?” Lev asked, stretched out on the big sofa across from the unused fireplace.

  “How can you just sit there?” she blurted. “The Peacekeepers have already started their march to Alphonsus.”

  Her husband made a wry face. “What can we do about it? The decisions are in Doug’s hands. Working ourselves into heart seizures won’t help.”

  “If only we could get there …”

  “And give Doug two more useless people to worry about?”

  She whirled and rushed toward him. “Lev, call him. Talk to him. Make him understand that he’s got to surrender! He can’t fight the Peacekeepers! They’ll kill everyone in Moonbase.”

  Slowly, like a weary old man, Lev swung his legs off the sofa and sat up. He grasped Joanna’s wrist and pulled her down onto the cushion beside him.

  “Listen to me, dear one. Doug understands the situation as well as we do, or better. He knows what he can do to defend the base—”

  “Against missiles and nuclear bombs? You saw the news broadcast!”

  Lev put a finger on her lips, silencing her for the moment.

  “It isn’t our decision to make,” he said softly. “If I called him, not only would it distract him from the thousa
nd of vital things he must think about, but I would end up agreeing with him—victory or death!”

  Joanna stared at him as if he had gone mad. “Victory or … what are you saying?”

  “Doug believes in Moonbase with all his soul,” Lev replied. “To him, it is his world, his life. He won’t want to live in a world without Moonbase.”

  “No,” Joanna said, feeling weak with shock. “That can’t be. Doug can come back here. He can live with us. I’ll protect him, guard him …” Her voice faded into silence.

  Lev shook his head. “Not all the fanatics belong to the New Morality, my darling. In his own very rational way, your son is a fanatic, too. That’s what it takes to fight hopeless odds.”

  Joanna sank back into the sofa, stunned with the realization that Lev understood Doug better than she did.

  And in the security office in the servants’ wing of the house, Jack Killifer leaned over his partner’s shoulder, grinning at the camera display of the Brudnoys in their living room.

  Rodriguez glanced up at Killifer. “You ought to be in the kitchen. That’s your post, not here.”

  Killifer grinned at him. “The entertainment’s better in here.”

  MOONBASE

  “There they are.”

  Doug stared at the smart wall display in Jinny Anson’s office. Three columns of tracked vehicles had come up over the horizon and were moving majestically across the barren plain of Mare Nubium, churning up plumes of dust from the regolith. He realized that the dust had lain there undisturbed for billions of years. No, not really undisturbed, he reminded himself. Meteoroids fell into the regolith constantly, adding to it, grinding it up, creating the dust that the cleated tracks of the Peacekeeper force were now violating.

  The cameras atop Mt. Yeager and two other peaks in the Alphonsus ringwall showed the approaching attackers clearly. Ahead of the middle column rode a smaller tractor, clean white except for a blue patch on its side.

  “Can we get a close-up of that lead vehicle?” he asked quietly.

  Anson worked her keyboard and the view zoomed in on the first tractor. The blue square was the U.N. emblem: a polar projection map of Earth on a sky-blue background, surrounded by a pair of olive branches.