Moonwar

by Ben Bova

“You think his motivation was personal, then?” Ingersoll asked.

  She glanced at Rashid before answering. The man looked puzzled. Of course, Joanna realized; Omar doesn’t know anything about Killifer or his history.

  “Yes,” she said to Ingersoll. “Personal.”

  “Can you tell me something about it?” the captain asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Joanna said. “Call me tomorrow, around noon.”

  “Because we still got a problem here,” Ingersoll went on, slow, measured, not easily deterred.

  “A problem?”

  “The other security guard, Rodriguez.”

  “The one who shot Killifer.”

  “Yes’m. He’s nowhere to be found. Apparently took off for parts unknown. We found the stutter gun he used; he left it on the kitchen table, nice and neat. But his car’s gone and him with it.”

  Rashid’s brows knit. “Why would he run away?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” said Ingersoll.

  “Tomorrow,” Joanna said firmly.

  Ingersoll seemed to think it over for a heartbeat or two, then nodded and walked back into the dining room.

  “Omar, thanks for coming over,” Joanna said to Rashid. “I’m sorry if it looked as if I suspected you. It’s been … it’s been a terrible few hours.”

  Rashid knew he was being dismissed and he felt grateful for it. Getting to his feet, he asked, “Will you be all right? Do you need anything?”

  “My doctor’s here,” she said, remaining seated on the sofa. “He’s already dosed me with tranquilizers and god knows what else. He’ll stay here in the house and there are the servants, of course.”

  “Of course,” Rashid murmured, eager to get away, glad that the burning fury of her suspicion had passed over him.

  Joanna summoned the butler, who accompanied Rashid to his car, then returned to the living room.

  “What else can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “That’s all for now. Go get yourself some sleep.”

  “And you … ?”

  “I’ll sleep here,” Joanna said.

  “I’ve had the guest suite prepared for you,” the butler suggested.

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to go upstairs. Not just yet. I’ll sleep here on the sofa. I’ll be fine.”

  The butler left, silent as a shadow, then returned a moment later with a downy white blanket and a flowered pillow. Joanna watched him place them on the end of the sofa, then leave the room again.

  I should cry, she told herself. I should let it come out. Lev didn’t deserve this. It was me he was after. Lev died trying to save my life.

  Instead of crying, she reached over to the phone console and told its voice-recognition system, “Get Seigo Yamagata for me. No intermediaries. This is an emergency call for him and no one else.”

  It’s time to end this war, Joanna told herself.

  EDITING BOOTH

  “Moonbase has survived the Peacekeepers’ missile attack,” Edith was saying into her microphone. “But not unscathed. The first missile destroyed Moonbase’s backup power generator. That was a conventional explosive warhead and it hit the buried generator precisely.”

  The display screens running across the top of the control board showed the quiet frenzy of Moonbase’s control center, the crowd milling around in the Cave, a view of the crater floor where Wicksen and his crew were riding back to the main airlock in a jouncing tractor, and the scene from Mt. Yeager showing the Peacekeeper assault force’s vehicles trundling up toward Wodjohowitcz Pass.

  Selecting the view of Wicksen’s tractor, Edith continued without missing a beat, “The U.N.’s second missile was a nuclear weapon, aimed to wipe out Moonbase’s main electrical power solar panels, which are spread across the floor of the crater. The people here call them solar farms. Thanks to the brilliant work of a handful of scientists and technicians …”

  She praised Wicksen and his people, explained how the beam gun had deactivated the nuclear warhead and turned it into a dud.

  But her eyes were pinned on the screen showing the Peacekeepers’ vehicles creeping up the outer slope of the ringwall mountains.

  Vince Falcone was watching the same view, sitting at a console in the control center. He was sweating, perspiration beading his upper lip and forehead, trickling down his swarthy cheeks.

  This has gotta work, he kept telling himself. It’s gotta work. Otherwise they’ll be able to bring their missile launchers right up to our front door and blast it open.

  For the twentieth time in the past half hour he checked the circuitry to the microwave antennas atop Mt. Yeager. One of the bright-young short-timers had done a computer simulation that showed the microwaves would be reflected by the rock walls of Wodjo Pass and effectively reach all the foamgel goo they had spread there. The rock absorbed some of the microwave energy, of course, but reflected enough to get the job done.

  Falcone hoped.

  He looked across the row of consoles to where Doug Stavenger was sitting, deep in conversation with somebody on his screens. The kid’s got all this responsibility on his shoulders, Falcone told himself. Least I can do is get this mother-lovin’ foamgel to work.

  He returned his attention to the screen showing the approaching Peacekeeper force. And felt a shock race through him.

  They’re splitting up! Falcone saw. The vehicles were dividing into two columns, one of them coming up toward Wodjo Pass, but the other snaking around the base of the ringwall mountains toward the steeper notch some two dozen kilometers farther away.

  And it looked like a small party was starting out on foot to climb Mt. Yeager, where the microwave antennas were.

  Stupid shitfaced bastards, Falcone raged, offering the assessment both to the Peacekeepers and his own shortsightedness. They’re only sending part of their forces across Wodjo. The rest of ’em will get through without being stopped by the goo. And if they knock out the antennas up on Yeager, the goo won’t do us any fucking good at all.

  The earphone of the headpiece clamped over his thickly curling hair suddenly crackled. “Vince, this is Doug Stavenger. They’ve divided their force.”

  “Yeah, I can see it.”

  “It looks like that second group’s heading for the northwest notch.”

  “And they’re sending a team up Yeager.”

  “They’re going to get through with no trouble, aren’t they?”

  Falcone nodded bitterly. “Even if we could spray some goo over that pass, the microwaves from Yeager couldn’t reach it. Assuming they don’t disable the antennas before we want to use ’em.”

  “Well, what can we do?” Doug asked.

  Falcone wished he had an answer.

  We should have known they’d split their forces, Doug raged at himself. I should’ve figured that the Peacekeepers wouldn’t send their whole force through Wodjo. That was wishful thinking, nothing but wishful thinking.

  “It’s not so bad,” Gordette said, pulling up a chair to sit beside him.

  “Bad enough,” said Doug.

  “Their main force is coming across Wodjo Pass,” Gordette said, pointing to the screen. “The second force is a lot smaller, looks like.”

  “But if they disable the antennas …”

  “It’ll take them an hour to get to the top of Yeager, at least.”

  “But still …”

  Gordette said, “Count the missile launchers. That’s their heavy artillery. Looks to me like almost all of ’em are coming through Wodjo.”

  Doug studied the screens for a few moments. “Maybe the secondary force is going to head for the mass driver?”

  Gordette shrugged, then said, “Whoever’s in charge of the Peacekeepers probably wants to keep the secondary force as a reserve.”

  Doug wished he could believe Gordette’s assessment. He’s just trying to cheer me up, Doug thought. Trying to lighten the load. It doesn’t matter what the secondary force’s mission is, once their main group gets in trouble in
Wodjo Pass, they’ll still have these other troops to attack us. With all their weapons.

  Maybe Falcone was right and we ought to fry them as they come through Wodjo Pass. Get them before they knock out the antennas. Kill as many of them as we can while we’ve got the chance. They’re here to kill us. They killed Lev, they tried to kill Mom. Why shouldn’t we kill them?

  The blinking message light on the console told him that people were waiting to talk with him. He pulled up the list on the comm screen. Wicksen, Edith, Kris Cardenas down in the infirmary, four others.

  Edith. Doug recalled her urging against killing any of the Peacekeepers. She’s right, he knew. Kill some of their troops and the whole world will turn against us. They’ll keep sending armies here until they beat us. Faure won’t stop until he wins, not if he has the world’s public opinion behind him. And once we start sending coffins Earthside, world public opinion will swing totally against us, no matter how much people may be rooting for us now.

  Beat them without killing them. Even though they’re trying to kill us.

  He had put through a call to Savannah earlier, but it had not been answered so far. Is Mom all right? What happened down there? Who killed Lev? Is Mom safe?

  They should’ve stayed here, Doug told himself. Then he realized the absurdity of it. Yes, stay here where all we have to worry about is being attacked by a small army of Peacekeeper troops.

  Looking at his top left screen he saw that the first of the Peacekeeper vehicles was already entering Wodjo-howitcz Pass. Doug glanced over at Falcone, staring grimly at the same view on his console.

  Gordette was right; those troopers climbing Yeager won’t get to the antennas for another hour, at least.

  He got up from his chair, spine creaking after being seated for so long, and walked stiffly to Falcone’s post.

  “Wait until you’ve got as many in the trap as possible. Then spring it.”

  Falcone nodded without taking his eyes from his screens. They had been over this a hundred times, at least.

  “It’s your show, now, Vince,” he said, gripping Falcone’s burly shoulder.

  “Right, boss,” said Falcone, his eyes still fixed on his screens.

  Colonel Giap had learned long ago not to be the first in line of march through enemy territory. His tractor was the third in line as they threaded up the flank of the mountains and into the narrow defile of the pass.

  “Force B, report,” he said into his helmet microphone.

  All his communications were relayed through the L-1 station, hovering nearly forty thousand kilometers above. There was a noticeable, annoying little lag as the electronic signals bounced back and forth.

  “Force B reporting,” crackled in his earphones. “No opposition. Proceeding on schedule.”

  “Good. Report any problems immediately,” said Giap.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel nodded inside his helmet. Keeping to schedule was important. He had planned the conquest of Moonbase down to the minutest details, and included every contingency he could imagine in his plans. The nuclear bomb did not go off; Moonbase still enjoyed its full capacity of electrical power. Giap had included that possibility in his planning. It made no difference. His primary force would batter down their main airlock and enter the garage area precisely on schedule, while Force B deployed on the crater floor as a strategic reserve, after sending a small contingent to take the mass driver—which Giap expected to be undefended.

  His special team of mountain climbers would disable all of Moonbase’s communications antennas, cutting off the rebels’ reports to the news media back on Earth. Faure had insisted on that, and for once Giap agreed with the secretary-general. Cut out their tongues.

  The first wave of assault troops would include the decontamination squads with their powerful ultraviolet lights, to deactivate any nanomachines that the Moonbase rebels might try to use. Giap smiled thinly at the memory of how the rebels had used nanomachines to panic the first Peacekeeper force sent against Moonbase. That trick won’t work a second time, he assured himself.

  His earphones buzzed. Switching to the tractor’s intercom, Giap asked testily, “What is it?”

  “Sensors are picking up an unusual level of microwave radiation, sir,” his surveillance officer reported.

  In the cramped confines of his windowless command center, Giap barely had room to turn and face the woman. Even so, sealed inside her spacesuit, he could not see her face, merely the reflection of his own helmet in her closed visor.

  “A dangerous level?” Did the rebels have exotic weapons, after all?

  “No, sir, nothing dangerous. It’s more like a radar scan, but it’s coming at us from all directions, as if the microwaves are reflecting off the mountain walls around us.”

  Giap felt his brow wrinkle. Microwaves? What are they trying to accomplish?

  “Lead tractor calling, sir,” said his communications sergeant. “Emergency.”

  Giap switched to the proper frequency. “Sir! Our tractor is stuck. We can’t move!”

  “Can’t move?”

  The voice in his earphones sounded more puzzled than worried. “It’s as if we hit some deep mud …”

  “There is no mud on the Moon!” Giap snapped.

  “Yessir, I know. But we’re mired in something. We can’t move forward or back. My engineer is afraid of burning out the drive motors.”

  Giap’s own tractor lurched and slowed noticeably.

  “What’s going on?” he yelled to his comm sergeant.

  “I don’t know!”

  Within minutes the first twenty-two tractors in the assault force reported being stuck fast. Several burned out their drive motors trying to force themselves through whatever it was that had mired them down.

  “Get out and see what it is!” Giap screamed at his own driver as he motioned his sergeant to open the overhead hatch.

  In his anxiety, Giap forgot the gentle lunar gravity and pulled himself up so hard he nearly soared completely out of the tractor. He sprawled across the roof of the cab, legs dangling inside his shoebox-sized command center.

  Pulling himself up to a sitting position, Giap looked around. His first sensation was relief at being out of the metal coffin of the command center. He saw smooth-walled gray rock mountains and a dark, star-strewn sky.

  Then he looked down and saw that his tractor, and every other one up and down the line that he could see, were engulfed halfway up their drive wheels in a weird, bright blue sea of spongy-looking stuff.

  “Sergeant!” he yelled into his helmet mike. “Get up here.”

  The sergeant popped the hatch to his cab and scrambled up to sit on the roof next to him.

  Pointing at the sea of blue, Giap commanded, “Climb down the side of the tractor and test the consistency of that material.”

  “What is it?” the sergeant asked. Then he added, “Sir.”

  “If I knew what it was I wouldn’t need you to test it!”

  “Maybe it’s some sort of Moon creature,” the sergeant said, his voice hollow.

  “Don’t be stupid!” Giap barked. “It’s man-made. It’s something the rebels have cooked up to slow us down.”

  The sergeant climbed down the ladder built into the tractor’s side, slow and awkward in his cumbersome spacesuit. Very gingerly, he touched the blue surface with a booted toe.

  “It feels soft, sir,” he reported.

  “How soft? Can you walk on it?”

  The sergeant pushed his boot in deeper, then—still grasping the ladder rungs with both hands—he tried standing on it. His boots sank in until their tops were covered in blue.

  “Well?” Giap demanded.

  He heard his sergeant puffing and grunting. “I’m stuck in it, sir. I can’t pull my feet out.”

  In the half hour it took for Seigo Yamagata to answer Joanna’s call, she paced the living room, trying to burn up some of the fear and anger and grief that the tranquilizers had dulled but not removed.

  While sh
e paced, she watched the Global News channel that was devoting full time to live coverage of the battle for Moonbase. Edie Elgin’s voice sounded strained, slightly hoarse from long hours of nonstop talking, but she was still going strong.

  Joanna learned that the Peacekeepers’ nuclear missile attack had failed and Moonbase’s electrical power supply was still intact. Now she watched the view from atop Mt. Yeager as the main Peacekeeper assault force came to a halt in Wodjohowitcz Pass.

  “The smart foamgel will set to the consistency of concrete,” Edie Elgin was saying. “Wodjohowitcz Pass is effectively blocked, as far as the Peacekeepers’ vehicles are concerned.”

  As she paced and watched, Joanna thought about getting dressed in something more substantial than her thin white robe, but that would have meant going upstairs. Even though the police were finished now with the bedroom, Joanna found she could not willingly go in there, not yet, not with Lev’s blood still staining the bedclothes. Tomorrow, maybe. After they’ve cleaned everything up.

  The phone chimed at last and she went to the sofa where the camera could focus on her. Seigo Yamagata’s lean, lined face appeared on the screen above the fireplace, replacing Edie Elgin’s report from the Moon. It was impossible to tell what time it might be in Tokyo from the wide window behind Yamagata’s desk; the downtown city towers were drenched in driving rain.

  “I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” Joanna began.

  Yamagata raised a hand. “It is of no consequence. I have just been informed of the attempt on your life. Please accept my deepest condolence for the loss of your husband.”

  Rashid must’ve phoned him, Joanna thought swiftly. Or maybe not. He’s got his own sources of information, certainly.

  “I’ve decided that Moonbase isn’t worth the loss of more lives,” Joanna said, holding herself together with a conscious effort of will. “This war must end before more people are killed.”

  Yamagata drew in a breath. “I sincerely regret what has happened. This was not of my doing.”

  “I understand that,” Joanna replied, a slim tendril of doubt still in the back of her mind. But she pushed it away. “What kind of an agreement can we reach?”

  Rubbing his chin in apparent perplexity, Yamagata said slowly, “The Peacekeepers are already attacking Moonbase. The battle has started.”