Moon Dreams

by M.A. Harris

Plots

  Captain Derrick Jenkins sat back and watched the video on the twenty year old LCD monitor he’d found in his grungy office at the dockyard. Around him the naval detachment’s offices were dark, the officers and noncoms had all gone home. Derry had no home to go to, just an apartment a few blocks off the waterfront. A place he could store his stuff and his body when he didn’t have a good enough reason to be either here or on ‘his’ ship, unlaunched but already a historical artifact. He rubbed his eyes, trying to scrub away the depression that fueled those kinds of thoughts.

  He glanced out his second story window towards the dry dock where the sloped slab faces of CG-103 loomed out of the dry-dock. The yellow white glow of the sulfur lighting system lit up the gray sides without revealing any detail. The ship, designed for stealth in every wavelength, even cheated the eye, she was bigger than any WWII armored cruiser but it was hard to see that.

  He watched someone walk along the side of the graving dock, looking up at the ship, the human figure finally giving scale to the sleek gray mass. The figure turned and trudged away, head tucked down, hands stuffed deeply into pockets. It was probably just the bitter Maine weather, but it looked like rejection and Derry felt a flash of pain. His charge, not even commissioned, was as obsolete as her distant predecessor, the USS Constitution, an eighteenth century sailing frigate, still maintained on active duty down the coast in Boston.

  Most of his peers in the military were feeling the same, as if someone had pulled their world out from under them. Someone, somewhere, had invented something that had made everything they knew obsolete, so obsolete that a tiny rogue nation with the new technology had vaulted onto the world stage as a superpower.

  Derry assumed that the CIA, NSA and other intelligence services were working to discover what the secret drive was. He’d spent time in the Pentagon’s think tank looking at potential future threats, which had given him some contacts to exercise. He’d come up dry, people seemed honestly stumped right now.

  The public storyline was that the drive had been developed by an all but unknown multinational called Aristide Industries for the pathological killer who called himself Admiral General M, who wanted to control access to space. Of course what people hadn’t quite gotten, yet, was that true control of space eventually equated to ruling Earth.

  But the storyline made no sense. No publicly traded company would have done what Aristide Industries had done if its board had known what was going on. Somehow Joseph Mindow had learned of and captured the drive technology from some research group in AI, relatively recently, but there were a lot of holes in that theory too.

  Derry did a scan of the news feeds, some talking heads discussing the Space Raiders and a couple of people talking about Palalo Sadong and its insistence that the whole thing was a fabrication. But that was bullshit too, real people had died, and others had been kidnapped.

  Another group of talking heads were discussing the implications of the space drive, human colonization of space and the UN Space Treaty. All of it was pretty pointless.

  Rubbing his eyes he felt a giggle rise in his throat. He was exhausted, depressed, but still had a kernel of bubbling excitement. The future was exploding out around the present and the boy who had read Clark, Niven, Pournelle and Webber at times wanted to scream at the unfairness of all this happening when he was nearing the end of a career he had taken up as the next best thing to his real dreams.

  Then he came back to reality. The fact was that the US and the rest of the world couldn’t decide what to do, partly because they didn’t understand what was going on but mostly because they were afraid of what could happen if they made a bad decision. This was no sci-fi video game you could replay.

  The phone rang; Derry opened his eyes with a jerk, realizing he’d drifted into a doze. The tone told him it was a personal call from a friend, he reached forward to tap the accept button without checking the ID, “This is Derry?”

  There was a pause, Derry focused on the screen, the name attached to the number on the display made his eyebrows fly up, an old friend he hadn’t heard anything from in more than a year. “Hello Derry, it’s Paul Richards.” The voice confirmed the claim, Paul’s distinctive light baritone.

  “Paul…Paul, where the hell have you been?” Derry couldn’t help himself.

  Silence, Derry frowned then wild supposition took hold, as he opened his mouth to ask the answer came, “Here and there Derry.”

  “I got your birthday and Christmas cards bud but no return address and you haven’t been answering your phone or e-mails, I was feeling a bit confused.”

  There was a long pause, then a sigh, “Sorry about that old friend, I was under a security blackout, figured you’d tried but the black suiters weren’t giving a bit.”

  Derry frowned, “Thought you’d gone strictly civilian?”

  “Not by government security, I was working for Aristide Industries Derry.”

  The words didn’t make sense at first then it hit like a punch, “Paul, the drive?”

  That odd pregnant pause, then, “We call it the Paaly Stack Derry, Paaly was one of my Crazy Pork contracts.”

  “Paul...how could you?” Derry was shaking; Paul had been a good friend until his abrupt departure.

  Again the now creepy pause, “Derry I know what you’ve got to be thinking but I, we, didn’t know what was going on. Many had no clue as to everything that Aristide was doing. I have to admit that I and others didn’t want to believe what was going on under our noses…then we couldn’t decide what to do. Now we’re doing what we can to make amends for not paying enough attention, for not being more careful with the power we were playing with.”

  “Where are you Paul, on Palalo Sadong, were you one of those they grabbed?”

  After the pause there was a laugh, “Derry, I’m talking to you from the moon, from a town called Luna Haven just over on the dark side.”

  That explained the long pauses, Derry realized his hands were shaking, “Paul, you’re not feeding me crap are you?”

  “No Derry, Aristide was, is, a visionary, this was his dream. But he made the mistake of giving himself away to the Admiral General and a bunch of mercenaries called the Crimson Staff. They are the ones making the power grab and they have a whole bunch of innocent civilians as hostages and essentially slave workers on the island.”

  “What’s going on up there then?”

  “We’re going to declare independence Derry…” The voice on the other end of the line was firm and clear, every bit the focused and down to earth man Derry had known for years, but distilled to a new level. But then ‘these’ were the times that tried men’s souls, and created heroes out of the most ordinary of men and women, and Paul had hardly been ordinary to begin with.

  Silence stretched, Paul was waiting for Derry’s answer…. was asking if they were still friends, if they could still trust each other, “I guess I can understand Paul. I’m glad you’re OK.” He stopped and waited.

  “A lot of us were worried, still are, there are a lot of people up here with friends and loved ones who are still unaccounted for. We know a lot of them are on Palalo Sadong. The Admiral General does not understand the situation up here, but when he does he’s likely to threaten them if we don’t surrender. We need to get this over with before he has a chance.”

  Derry nodded to himself, he knew enough about Joseph Mindow, Admiral General M to agree with that assessment, “Paul do you have a President or something? Does he have a plan? You know the US is in check right now, we have no way of defending our cities against that bastard’s orbital bombardment system.”

  There was a pause, longer than the signal delay, then a sigh, “Yes to both Derry. We do have a President and we do have a plan, or the beginning of one. I’m the President Derry, and our plan is to take out his bombardment system, smash his fortress and break out the hostages, but we only have part of the solution. I need help from the US Military Derry, weapons, followed by
a lot of real down and dirty, trust each other to the hilt help…That’s why I called you.”

  Derry sat bolt upright in his chair and stared at the comm panel, his heart leaping, his mind exalting and cringing at one and the same time. He couldn’t even formulate an answer at first; he just sat there trying to understand his own thoughts. “You still there Derry?” Paul’s voice was calm, faintly amused, he knew Derry was still on the line, Derry decided that Paul had also anticipated the shock effect of what he had said.

  “Why me Paul?” Derry’s voice was surprisingly calm.

  “Because I can’t go in through the front door, it would leak for sure. We have some other contacts, I won’t lie, we are using them in parallel, like you they are all high enough in the system but out of the main corridors of power where everything leaks these days. You can get a hearing and have good contacts that can go to the top quickly, but through the back door. What we are going to do has to stay secret to till the instant it goes down.”

  Derry contemplated this for a few moments, “OK…can I ask what the plan is?”

  Paul chuckled but his voice was firm and dead calm, “Mainly what we need are a couple of hundred small diameter guided bombs, a big air raid and a couple of companies of Marines. All within the next few days, and all without the slightest hint getting out to the media.”

  “Jesus Christ Paul! You’re not asking a great deal are you?”

  The voice that came back was fierce, “Derry, we’re talking about the future of the human race here, not whether we survive, but what form of the human race goes to the stars. Our children will have the stars Derry. But will they be ruled by the likes of the Admiral General or will they be free to expand the liberties and responsibilities of a free people, based on the US model? That’s what’s at stake.”

  It was a fantastic stump speech, but then Paul had always been able to deliver an emotional charge if he needed, “You think we only have a few days, once you go public?”

  “I hope we won’t cave to the Admiral General, even if he does start shooting friends and loved ones on live video feed, but I can’t guarantee it. Neither can I guarantee we won’t fail and then be bombed into oblivion leaving him in complete command of space and the future.”

  Derry rested his forehead on his hand, “Damn it Paul!” He almost asked ‘why me’ but he already knew that. No point in asking again. He sat still, thinking for long seconds, typically Paul remained silent. And Derry realized that Paul still was his friend, and he did trust him, trust what he said was true. Paul was too transparent to have made that impassioned plea if he was under some kind of duress.

  “OK Paul, let me make some calls, I’m going to make some very senior officers unhappy, can I call on you?”

  “My old number works again, I can send a lot of documentation down if necessary. I can also come down to talk with people directly, as long as I get a promise of diplomatic immunity and we can find someplace out of the way for me to land. We’re going to have to be very careful; the Sadongese space force has fifteen very big, capable and maneuverable spy satellites.

  “OK, let me get some people roused up, I’ll call you back.”

  “Thanks Derry. Thanks a lot.”

  “You’re welcome, I guess…But when all this is over I want a ride out to the Moon, maybe Mars.”

  A chuckle came back, “You’re on, I want to get out that way myself. Talk to you later buddy.”

  “Buddy yourself, and you owe me a couple of steaks at Ruth Chris’ later.”

  “Done.”

  -Palalo Sadong-

  Howard Conrad, General of the Palalo Sadong Space Force stood watching his staff with some disgust. Colonel Frank Foster in charge of the bombardment platforms, and Colonel Giselle d’Augustine in charge of the recon platforms and the command platform, Colonel Micah Tassinara, his senior space officer, Major Maguire commander of the renamed MoonDream, and Major Halberg fighter wing commander at the Admiral General’s order. He missed Arkan Olarik; the Kazak had been his best military leader and tactician, as well as planner and manager. Conrad didn’t like not understanding what had caused the quintessentially apolitical, uninvolved mercenary to take off on such a tangent.

  The door closed behind the steward who had been setting up the drinks and food on the sideboard. Before Conrad could call the meeting to order and have everyone sit down Maguire looked coldly across the table at Halberg, “Got your wings singed, I told you Olarik would be waiting for you.”

  Halberg bared his teeth, immaculate in his black space force uniform, he looked like the reincarnation of a Nazi, “At least we kept that clapped out trash hauler of yours from being blown to pieces. Which it would have been if we’d followed your strike plan! If we’d had good intel, more precision on the strike platforms and we’d hit with a second wave we’d have had them.”

  The Irishman’s expression was neutral; Conrad decided that Maguire had intentionally prodded Halberg into insulting pretty much everyone at the table. Halberg was an idiot and didn’t comprehend how dangerous Maguire was. Before this could go any further Conrad stepped in, pitching his voice to bite, “Major Maguire, we’ve had a debrief while you were up yesterday, no need to rehash the action.”

  The Irishman shrugged calmly, he’d already made his point and left Halberg simmering angrily, Conrad glanced at Maguire, “If you please Colonel d’Augustine, an after action report?”

  The report was detailed, with images from d’Augustine’s recon platforms. Before and after pictures of the Observatory village showed that the strike had done catastrophic damage. The ‘sticks’ had walked diagonally across the one arm of the small habitat and managed to penetrate more than two thirds of the concrete tube sections and the hub section as well as the single dome, reducing them to smashed ruins. Another stick had smashed the small cargo staging area.

  “You see this here, it is one of the two tanks Colonel Olarik had.” The image showed a shape jumbled in among new impact craters, “It was near the landing field, under camouflage; it was not expected but we were lucky, when platform seventeen malfunctioned it’s stick destroyed the tank, unfortunately after it had shot down one of our fighters and a platform.”

  “Giselle, how did they move the tank without us knowing?” Conrad asked.

  The dark skinned, bony little woman was strikingly ugly at the best of times, this wasn’t one of those, “It was inside a modified hab section, that was where it was hiding till just before the attack,” her pointer highlighted a section of the cratered area that had a few straight lines.

  Then she went on to outline the, as expected, much lighter damage at Luna Haven, here she highlighted the fact that the platforms had missed badly, “Major Halberg’s decision to keep the escort in his strike group caused the rather poor accuracy, though I will point out that given the effectiveness of the defensive laser system we would almost certainly have lost the escort fighter.”

  “And we almost certainly would have lost another one to Yarina’s combat patrol.” Halberg snapped.

  Conrad ignored the American, looking at d’Augustine. “Giselle do you have any information on the radar system Paaly developed?”

  She shook her head lips curling; looking almost demonic, “Our spy was unable to get much information, other than that it was stack powered and that Paaly spent months tinkering with it. The spy reported that he had sabotaged the stacks and we have picked up no signals of any kind, nor any indication that they are spotting targets beyond the range of the passive sensors we know about. I do not think it is a factor to be concerned about.”

  There was a long silence, Howard did not like discounting something Paaly had worked on especially with Paul Richards involved, the pair had been stunningly efficient inventors. “You are sure Colonel?”

  “As sure as I have ever been, they have been working on several things for months, one of them in the ‘garage’ area, they have ceased to work on several things that my analysts think were parts of
the Paaly Sensor, it is a dead issue.”

  There was a pause, and then Halberg burst out, “We have to smash Olarik, he cannot be allowed to flout the Admiral General, next thing you know they’ll be calling on the US for help, acting the innocent refugees, and they know too much. We need to kill them all now!” Halberg’s voice was harsh. Conrad had seen him after the action, the playboy had been shaken by the battle and losing two of his ‘buds’, Sten Friedriksen and Gallen Robstoy. The three had been as close to friends as their arrogant and narcissistic personalities had allowed.

  Micah spoke quietly, “We need to make them fight us at a time and location of our choice, on our terms. We have to destroy or at least cripple all or almost all of their space capability before they compromise us, that way we do not need to destroy the colony, they will starve to death unless we allow them to surrender.”

  “How sure are we that we have them in a blackout Giselle?” Conrad picked up on a point he had asked of d’Augustine before.

  “They have two options, wide beam radio or laser com. We have sensors and weapons in place in case they try the radio. We control the satellites Aristide Industries had launched with laser relays. They are getting broadcast news from stations on the surface or satellites they can get an ‘angle’ on but no more.”

  “So we have time.”

  The little woman shrugged, “From that angle; but I will point out that there are rumors of a moon base circulating in the scientific and military communities all over the world, and in public as well as classified forums. There are hundreds of thousands of amateur astronomers some with very sophisticated instruments, the dust the battle kicked up and glints of laser fire were spotted.”

  Conrad grunted, she’d told him that before.

  Colonel Foster spoke up, “We need to end this now, we cannot be worrying about two fronts. We need to use the special weapons we have received from our sponsors.” His deep voice was flat, emotionless; his face was just as emotionless, he never seemed to care. There was stillness around the table.

  Halberg, with his non-military background was the slowest to catch on, but couldn’t keep his mouth shut, “Jesus Christ, the Chinks are giving us Nukes?”

  Conrad frowned at the broad shouldered ex US Air Force weaponeer, Foster rarely said anything without being asked directly, “How would you use them Colonel Foster?”

  “To destroy Olarik’s military space force. I don’t see any practical chance of us being able to recapture any of it and it has the potential to cripple our space forces. My suggestion is to mount nuclear warheads in several of the bombardment platforms, with impactors gone they will be able to sustain an acceleration of ten gravities. Since they are extremely hard to spot they will be able to close on the enemy and destroy them. They are the only space to space weapon we have other than the lasers. Even if the enemy spot them at the last second, the warheads would detonate if the propulsion or guidance systems are hit.” A terrible and uncharacteristic smile stretched his mouth, “and near is good enough with a nuclear weapon.”

  “All right! I like this!” Halberg was almost bouncing with boyish delight at the thought of using nuclear weapons. Conrad realized that his emotions were much nearer to dread; he could see shadows of that emotion on most of the others’ faces, including, oddly enough, Maguire’s.

  Micah was shaking his head, “If we start an escalation like that what are the US, Russia, and the Europeans likely to do? It might frighten someone into doing something drastic?”

  Foster shrugged, “They would know we have nuclear weapons, something they are already wondering about. They already know we can attack their silos with non-nuclear weapons accurate enough to destroy them. All the countries with ballistic missile submarines have changed their patrol schedules to make sure more than half the boats are at sea at any one time. They know sea launched missiles are the only viable deterrent weapons they have left. And I’ve been following the professional and policy blogs and chats, people are afraid that even those have been checkmated.”

  Colonel d’Augustine waved her hands, “It will finalize the realignment of power blocks. Europe and North America in one block as our enemies, Oceania and the Asian Pacific Rim as our allies, with South Korea, Taiwan and Japan trying to mediate. Australia and New Zealand will perforce take an aggressively neutral position. Africa, South America and the Middle East have hardly noticed what’s going on.”

  Conrad looked at d’Augustine, “You agree with Colonel Foster then? That we should use the weapons if we get the chance?”

  She smiled grimly, a frightening expression, “Only in space.”

  After a moment Conrad looked at Colonel Foster, “Colonel, I assume you’ve been working on the modifications necessary?”

  “There are none sir; well if we had time we could give them active seekers but they can be command guided and the fittings are standard. We could arm platforms with nuclear warheads in a few hours.”

  Halberg’s quiet crow of delight told Conrad that the playboy mercenary was a fool not long for this world. His head ached with suppressed anger and fear. This was getting out of hand, he could feel the avalanche building up around him but he had no idea of how to stop it. And if he tried he was sure the Admiral General would replace him.

  While these thoughts went through his mind he let Foster suffer at the other end of his stare, then turned his eyes on his tactical commanders. “All right. Micah, Maguire, please start working on a plan to bait the enemy in range of the nuclear missiles. I want Olarik on his knees in a couple of days. Am I understood?”

  The nods around the table were firm; the expressions on everyone’s faces were grim, except for the fool American, who was almost bouncing with excitement. As Conrad climbed silently to his feet and turned to go he decided he would be glad when Halberg got himself killed.