Lord Banshee Lunatic (Nightmare Wars Book 3)

by Russell Redman

  “The real challenge is that all these changes need to be made, either in the next few days here at the Moon or on the run after they leave.

  “I’m not sure if it helps, but I want to ask Cap Thieu to command the rebuilt ship. She needs to disappear for an extended period because she is being targeted for assassination by hotheads in the Imperial fleet. She knows how to control a ship the size of the Mao. Admiral Wang mentioned that many of the traumatized TDF crew are willing and able to serve, but are unwilling to board another warship or refuse to serve their former enemies. Defending a university might give them a better motivation. Many of them will be your former students, junior Engs, Weps and Navs within the fleet. If you want to serve with Cap Thieu, this may be your only opportunity, with retirement as Dean of a School of Engineering as the final reward.

  “But in case you are still uncertain, I’m stark, staring insane, enough so that I will make this happen any way I can. For the moment, though, all I want is an estimate of how quickly the former Mao can be rebuilt to be space-worthy. It should be able to fight its way free of the Earth carrying enough supplies and people to complete the required changes en route. Can you do that before, say, 06:30 today?”

  Haliru/converse, “You want all that in, what, two hours?”

  Me/converse, “Quick estimates, nothing more. This is innovation time and the urgency is extreme.”

  Haliru/converse, “You are going to hijack his awards ceremony. He will hate you till the day you die.

  “Let me think about it. The Hammerhead conversion intrigues me and the Mao conversion is similar enough that doing both may not be completely impossible. Off the top of my head, I think they would both require two weeks to make the ships ready for trials. And then you want them to fight their way free of the surrounding fleets, ready head off to the unknown. That is completely nuts. 06:30, you say? I will see what I can do.”

  He hung up. It was my personal guess that Haliru was too abrasive to serve under any captain less self-confident than Wang himself. He was clearly uninterested in the kinds of promotion the TDF was still able to give. If so, he would only serve again if a completely new kind of job could be provided that was tailored for his unique talents. I hoped I had dangled the right kind of bait.

  I was about to start my next call when I received an incoming text call from LE and LRAD.

  [LRAD] Excuse me Sir, are you the one who called earlier?

  [LE] He is. Just repeat what you told me.

  [LRAD] Sir, I am afraid the Board has rejected the offered donation as insufficient to cover the value of the Quetzalcoatl. They refuse to transfer ownership of the vessel unless more money is provided. I am sorry, Sir, they...

  [Me] Stop apologizing. It was not your decision. It was not theirs to make, either.

  [LE] I tried to contact the Board myself, but LR refuses to make the connection, claiming they are all asleep. Except, apparently, for two members on the Earth who acted on behalf of their colleagues, claiming that no one can possess such authority because their Viceroy Wolong has superseded such authorities through all near-Earth space.

  [Me] I seriously doubt that Wolong has revoked those codes except in the most arm-waving fashion. In any case, his authority over the Moon has been explicitly denied by the Emperor, which leaves only his fleet to assert his will.

  Members of the Board residing on the Earth may not be aware of the impending invasion, nor of the campaign of assassination that Wolong is waging against the Lunar Government. Can you supply me with a list of the ID’s for all the Board members, as well as the CEO’s and CFO’s of LR itself, LRAD, and LRHS?

  The LE officer sent me the requested list. I sent an urgent wake-up call to everyone on the list except Board members (three of them) who lived on the Earth. It carried the kind of alarm they would receive if their homes were being invaded and their families murdered because that was exactly what I feared would happen. A cacophony of confusion and indignation scrolled down the screen, so I broadcast to the lot of them a simple command:

  [Me/urgency=extreme/authority=dictator] Silence!

  I have summoned you to an emergency meeting of the Board and senior officers of Lunar Recovery to discuss an issue that needs immediate resolution. As I am sure every one of you is aware, the Viceroy Wolong of the Earth has sent a fleet to invade our cities. If opposed, he has threatened to bombard every Lunar city from orbit. The declared purpose of the attack is to arrest and execute without trial a very long list of people whom he has declared to be criminals. Admiral Wang has a plan to disable part of his fleet, which could buy us as much as a month before the lunar economy would be ruined and our people dying of starvation.

  I mention this because many of the people on that list are hiding here on the Moon. The exposure of those people would discredit our own Viceroy and would justify the attack.

  I have a plan in motion to remove those people from the Moon, which requires the use of the former Quetzalcoatl. Ownership of the vessel will be transferred to Hope University, recently incorporated in the Belt and registered as a charitable donation. I do not wish to inconvenience LR, so I have arranged the ownership of a set of investments with the Spacer Benevolent Society to be transferred to the LR Hospital Service. Once trade resumes and the market recovers, they will be more than sufficient to cover your losses.

  Unfortunately, two Board members who are resident on the Earth and may be ignorant of the threat we face have rejected the transfer of ownership of the Quetzalcoatl, thereby imperilling everyone living on the Moon. They are demanding even more money.

  I have the authority to seize the Quetzalcoatl regardless of compensation and will do so if necessary. Can I assume that the two Earth-bound Board members acted without the consent or awareness of the rest of the Board?

  A scrolling murmur of assent spewed across the screen from people probably intimidated by the /authority=dictator clause, which the comm system had passed as valid.

  [Me] I would ask your manager from Asset Disposal to outline the case I presented earlier.

  [LRAD] I am passing the agreement we reached for the transfer of ownership of both the investments and the Quetzalcoatl. Read it and delete it immediately.

  [LRHS] I am sending a record of the charitable donation of a portfolio of investments with SBS to LRHS, which has already been completed. Its current value is less than our requested purchase price but much greater than the few bids we have received. Given the state of the market, I believe that the investments are indeed far more valuable than they seem right now. Last January they would have sufficed to purchase turn-key hulls for half the ships in our fleet. I cannot fathom what our Earthly colleagues were thinking.

  [Me] Sirs, time is extremely short to put my plan into action. Can I assume that the transfer of ownership of the Quetzalcoatl will occur as outlined in these documents?

  [LR-CEO] I do so order, effective immediately. And, Sir, if you would be so kind as to leave this connection open, I would like to discuss with my colleagues the continued membership of the fools who have imperilled us all by making that decision without consulting the rest of us.

  [Me] You might discuss with LE whether those members could be under coercion from an emoji attack, making decisions contrary to their own better judgement. They may need protection more than discipline. Regardless, that is an internal matter for you to discuss amongst yourselves.

  I closed my own participation in the call. I really hated exposing my authority so widely but was running out of time for subtlety.

  Sa’id and I called in a quick, late lunch. Although I felt a desperate urgency, I could not resist the temptation to look up the feeds covering the Fire and Ice Festival. We spent a peaceful half hour as we ate falling back in love with Lunatics everywhere. Afterwards, I changed back into my normal armour, ready to join Wang’s awards ceremony. For a little anonymity, I painted it white.

  Then I really had to get busy again and called the Lunar Genetic Database. Even being the dictator of all huma
n space wouldn’t normally have given me access to the inner circles of GD, but knowing Alexander/Alexandra (confirmed to have always had very ambiguous gender) opened the door a crack, having already been entrusted with multiple personae opened it further, and the limited use that I was requesting finally put me in touch with one of the hidden wizards. I wanted all the Banshees (supply a list, please) to vanish from the database. Effectively, we had all died for real on our last official expiration.

  In our ghostly afterlife, each of us would assume ID’s drawn from a personal pool of one hundred. We could generate new ID’s by dropping old ones, switch on a whim, and pretend to a member of any service of the Terrestrial Government, including the TDF. I explicitly excluded the ability to create fake memberships in the Lunar or Martian governments but asked for ordinary citizenship when that became well defined.

  The wizard chuckled, noting that I did not ask for much except clairvoyance, omnipotence on the Earth, and the ability to walk through walls without being seen. I laughed as well, countering that anyone could walk through walls provided they knew how to open doors, and invisibility mostly meant people considered you so unimportant that you were beneath their notice. Clairvoyance and omnipotence were a little tougher.

  Lastly, I gave Leilani and Sergei the ability to add new Banshees on request. I had to argue for that one, which was too open-ended for even my comfort, but I knew we would take losses that would have to be replaced.

  I had barely hung up that call and was thinking hard about what to do in the few minutes remaining before the meetings started when MacFinn was ushered through the door. I startled when I saw who let him in.

  “TDF guards at y’door? I thought ye were tryin t’be inconspicuous.”

  Sa’id apologized, “They insisted. When I ordered them to leave, they mutinied and declared they would guard us anyways. They know who you are, at least in the Banshee world, and that we all owe our lives to you. I swear, I did not tell them anything. It was weird to hear how they understood what had happened.

  “It was especially weird to hear how I fit into the story. I thought I was an anonymous messenger and part-time guard. Apparently not. It seems I am the Banshee Mercury, Messenger of Portentous Revelations.”

  MacFinn shook his head in mock despair. “I await y’message about who I’m becomin. It seems from the latest ballad that I’m in love wi the Angel o’ Hope. I hardly ‘ad a chance t’talk to her. I’m about as hopeless as a fool can be.”

  I smiled sadly, “Surgeon MacFinn, in love you will have to stand in line with the rest of us, but be assured she is no angel. You would have to get me very drunk before I would repeat the story, but she might tell it to you herself someday. She is a perfectly normal, human woman in desperate need of friends right now. I fear she cannot stay on the Moon, but in the future, who knows? I should warn you that your greatest rival might be the Buddha.”

  “Aye,” he agreed, disconsolate, “He’d be a tough one t’beat.”

  I pushed on, “But a lot less romantic and not nearly as motivated to woo her hand.

  “There is something else I want to talk to you about. Orderly Nasruddin knows the details, in case we get interrupted, but I wonder if you have had a chance to incorporate your new hospital service?”

  He started, shook himself like a wet dog, and stared at me. “How’d ye learn about... Na, not yet. We’re up and runnin, but still on the sly. Injured Belters respond best when we combine our meds wi their psychs, an for big lumpy tumours their surgical tools wi proper meds can reduce recovery by months. We took the big bump off the dear old healer today. She’s doing great, cheerful as anything.

  “But incorporation will ha t’wait ’til we’re not potential subversives and can raise a bit o’scratch t’hire staff. And in here, y’orderly might as well be Commander Sa’id. No one’s listenin.”

  Sa’id smiled much more broadly than I had. “Agent Douglas has some news that may alleviate...”

  A critical alert from the Admiral’s office made all of us jump. One of Wolong’s ships had fired a missile at Orientale Tereshkova. The TDF had destroyed it, of course. We listened live to a broadcast in which the Viceroy Wolong’s representative denounced the traitor Fenghuang for continuing to harbour fugitives from Imperial justice. The missile was a reminder that the ultimatum remained in effect. In one and a half days, if the Moon did not surrender unconditionally and allow his forces free entry to every Lunar city, he would destroy the TDF and bombard the cities.

  The message was followed by an announcement from the Lunar Viceregal Fleet, Forward Command, and the TDF that the Moon was well defended. It would maintain its independence as a loyal world within the Imperium.

  I ignored the rest of what I wanted to say, waved Sa’id and MacFinn into silence, and called the Lunar Ministry of Health.

  [Me/ID=23/urgency=extreme/authority=dictator] I need a current report on the incidence of contagious diseases in all Lunar cities.

  [LMH] Who are you and what does that authorization code mean?

  [Me/ID=23] It means I need an answer right now. Check with your legal office for the significance of the authorization code, but get me a reasonably up-to-date report on the incidence of contagious disease. You must have that under constant review these days. I want to know what has happened since the Fire and Ice Festival, where some infiltrators from the Earth were taken into protective custody. I have reason to believe they have not undergone bio-cleansing and may have been spreading contagious diseases at the festival.

  [LMH] There is hardly any risk of contagious disease on the Moon. We take... Ah, but as you suspected, there is a strong and growing spike in contagion amongst festival goers, in six different cities. Not many people reporting symptoms yet, but these are so recent that many more people must be infected and about to become contagious. Not just in the squares where the infiltrators were apprehended, either. At this rate, we will run out of meds for propionibacterium acnes, norovirus GII.7, and staphylococcus epidermidis within two days. And there are dozens of less common diseases, quite treatable but…

  [Me/ID=23] Concentrate on the norovirus. It kills people on the Earth. The others are unpleasant but mostly harmless. Can I have that report now?

  [LMH] Yes, we know that, of course….

  OH MY! OH MY! OH MY! HERE IS THE REPORT RIGHT NOW. SIR. I am sorry to have delayed you, Sir.

  Many people, even when composing a text stream, just speak at the comm and let the machine translate their words into text in real time. I never do and this outburst illustrated why.

  Still, I was trying to do other people’s jobs again so I bit my tongue lightly. All I wanted was for the right people to understand what needed to be done most urgently.

  [Me/ID=23] Thank you, I have it. Please connect me to the office of the Senior Minister, if you would.

  [LMH] Right away, Sir.

  [LMH-Ministry] Hello, may I ask who is speaking? Gracious, is that authorization real?

  [Me/ID=23] I am afraid my time is limited right now. The Moon is under threat of a direct nuclear attack. To prevent it, we need to take extraordinary measures.

  I want you to make an immediate recommendation to Viceroy Fenghuang that Viceroy Wolong’s troops may inspect any part of the Moon they wish, but only after they have completed their full bio-cleansing. Use the attached report to emphasize the severity of the risk we face and include the detailed instructions on bio-cleansing issued to physicians in the TDF. State that refusal to comply with this requirement will be regarded as the commencement of biological warfare. It will invite the complete destruction of the Terrestrial Viceregal Fleet. Asylum will be granted to any ships within that fleet who are willing to transfer their allegiance, but only if they submit to a full bio-cleansing themselves. Any Imperial ships bound for other destinations that carry people from the Earth must return to the Moon immediately or face destruction. The Earth is and always has been under quarantine to prevent the spread of epidemics amongst the unprotected populations of the
Moon, Mars and Belt.

  Send this message directly and immediately to the Viceroy’s office. Do not omit any part of it, nor say where it came from. Her advisors will know how to phrase the message more diplomatically before transmission.

  [LMH-Ministry] I understand the urgency and will obey, but may we rephrase some parts of that message to use proper medical terminology? In making such a recommendation, I would like to add about ten more explicit medical warnings. They would appropriately be addenda after your main message and I will copy them from a standard information sheet.

  I never in all my life thought we would face a crisis so severe that the authorization you are using would be needed.

  [Me/ID=23] Yes, but be quick. Other people are already composing a counter-ultimatum to the fleet that might trigger hostilities if there is no face-saving gesture.

  [LMH-Ministry] Yes, Sir, almost done. I will send it... Gone. Oh, I hope that helps and does not get us all fired. You cannot imagine how delicate things are right now.

  [Me/ID=23] Unfortunately, I think I can. My hope is that this will cement your positions within the government. They might not like the bit about the amnesty, but I know it has already been suggested. This might be a non-hostile method to defang Wolong’s fleet and satisfy their excuse for the invasion while giving everyone time to prepare a proper Lunar welcome. Thank you for your prompt response.