Ben Bova - Moonwar

Colonel Giap had climbed up onto the roof of his tractor’s cab. There had been no word from Moonbase since he’d told Stavenger about the suicide bombers. His troops loitered around their vehicles, waiting for the inevitable. The ground had trembled twice, more than an hour earlier. Then nothing but silence and stillness.

Giap looked at the watch on the wrist of his spacesuit. They’re all dead in there by now, he thought. Dead or dying. I should send the troops in, perhaps we can save a few.

Something caught his eye. He blinked, not sure of what he was seeing. A cloud of glittering sparkles was erupting slowly from the hatch that opened into the plasma vents. The ladder that his troops had placed there toppled slowly, like a stiff, arthritic old man, and fell flat on the crater floor in complete silence, sending up a puff of dust.

It was like a geyser, Giap thought, but a geyser of scintillating little jewels that flashed and twinkled in the harsh sunlight. On and on it went, spewing slowly out from the plasma vent hatch across the dark lunar sky, a thousand million fireflies flickering in all the colors of the rainbow.

Then something solid and heavy came shooting out of the hatch. Giap saw arms and legs flailing. A spacesuit! A man! One of the suicide volunteers, he realized. The body soared across the crater floor and landed with a thump that raised a lazy cloud of dust. It did not move once it hit.

Giap stared, not knowing what to think, what to do. Another body came flying out, tumbling like a pinwheel, landing helmet-first on the regolith. And then a third, limbs hanging loosely, already unconscious or dead. It fell near the other two.

Doug stopped in front of the double doors marked LUNAR UNIVERSITY VIDEO CENTER: DO NOT ENTER WHEN RED LIGHT IS FLASHING.

As he reached for the door pull, Gordette grabbed at his hand.

“Hold it,” Gordette said. “Look before you leap.”

Doug nodded and went to the wall phone next to the doors. Calling the control center, he asked for the security camera view of the studio.

The wall phone’s screen was tiny. It showed the panoramic view of the studio from the ceiling.

“Maximum zoom,” Doug ordered, “and pan across the room.”

The picture tracked across the studio, shadowy and dim in its spotty lighting. Cameras, monitors, racks of electronic equipment, the editing booth—empty—the sets where Zimmerman and Cardenas and others had given their lectures and demonstrations, also empty.

The thought of Zimmerman sent a pang through Doug, but he swiftly suppressed it. Edith is in there with a crazy man, he reminded himself. That’s what important now.

“Hold it there,” Gordette snapped.

The camera stopped. Doug could see Zimmerman’s extra-wide couch had been pulled from the wall; Edith and the spacesuited suicide bomber were crouched behind it.

“Well, he’s no fool,” Gordette muttered. “Dug himself in as far from the door as he could. Long as he stays behind the couch I won’t be able to snipe him. Have to spray the whole couch.”

“And kill Edith?”

“Maybe you can talk him into letting her—oh, oh!”

“What?”

“Is that the best magnification we can get?”

“Yes,” Doug said. “What is it?”

Squinting hard at the little screen, Gordette said, “Looks like he’s already got his thumb on the detonator button.”

“So?”

“That arms the detonator. When he takes his thumb off the button the bomb goes off.”

Doug felt his insides sink. “So if you shoot him it explodes?”

“Yeah.”

“What can we do?”

“Talk him into disarming the detonator.”

Doug knew how futile that was. “Or into letting Edith go.”

Gordette inclined his head slightly in what might have been a nod. “There is that.”

Anson peered at the screen showing the camera’s view of the crater floor just outside the main airlock. Spacesuited Peacekeeper troops were gathering around the three unmoving bodies sprawled on the ground.

“Two hit the nanolabs,” she said, ticking off on her ringers, “one did the water factory. That’s three. One’s in the studio, that’s four. And those three make seven. That’s all of ’em.”

“The water’s out of the factory,” said the technician next to her. “Maintenance crews are re-establishing electrical power in the areas that were shorted out.”

Vince Falcone trudged into the control center, a bright grin slashing across his dark stubbly face.

Anson got up from her chair, yanked off her headset, and threw her arms around Falcone’s neck. “We did it!” she said, then kissed him soundly.

Despite his swarthy complexion, Falcone blushed visibly. “Yeah, okay, we flushed out the garbage,” he said. “But there’s still one of the bastards in the studio, isn’t there?”

Colonel Giap was almost glad when he told Faure, “They have defeated us. There is nothing more we can do.”

Faure’s image on the colonel’s laptop screen was nearly purple with rage. “But there must be something! Your second wave of troops! The solar farms! Something!”

Resignedly, Giap said, “If I send more troops into those tunnels they will be blinded and neutralized just as the first wave was. If I try to destroy their solar energy farms they will engage us in a firefight that will cause unacceptable casualties.”

Then he waited three seconds, watching Faure’s helpless frustration. Perhaps the little man will give himself a stroke, Giap thought.

Faure’s reply was explosive. “Who are you to decide how many casualties are unacceptable! I am your superior! I make such decisions!”

“Throwing away lives will be pointless,” Giap said. “I will not do it.”

As he waited for Faure’s reply, Giap reflected that battles are won or lost on the moral level. One side loses the will to fight, and that’s what has happened to me. Why should I throw away my troopers’ lives for that pompous little politician in New York? To destroy Moonbase? To kill two thousand civilians?

“Are you saying to me,” Faure replied at last, voice barely under control,’that you would refuse my direct order?”

“I am saying that I will resign my commission before carrying out such an order,” Giap said, almost surprised to hear his own words.

We could tear up their radiators, he thought. Or simply cut the pipes that connect the radiators to the inside of the base, and then leave. That would take only a few minutes and it would leave them to cook in their own waste heat. There would be no firefight, not if we left immediately afterward. But what good would that do? They would come out and repair the damage.

No, he said to himself, best to leave now while the entire force is alive and unhurt. The Sacred Seven have killed themselves, that’s enough. No sense killing more.

“It’s me he wants,” Doug said, reaching for the studio door again. “He’ll trade Edith for me.”

“Maybe,” Gordette replied.

“It’s the only chance we’ve got.”

“What’s this ‘we’, white man? He wants to blow you away!”

“I can’t stand out here and let him kill Edith.”

Gazing at him with red-rimmed eyes, Gordette said softly, “I know.”

Gordette seemed to relax. He let go of the assault rifle with one of his hands, holding it only by its barrel, letting its butt touch the floor.

“You stay out here, Bam,” said Doug. “If he sees you with the gun he might touch himself off.”

“Yeah,” Gordette said, with a resigned sigh. “Go ahead.”

He watched Doug open the door and step inside the dimly-lit studio, thinking to himself, Doug wants to die. He’s ready for it. They’ve worn him down to the point where he’s willing to give them his life in exchange for hers. Then Gordette realized that it wasn’t merely in exchange for Edith. It’s for Moonbase, he understood at last. He’s willing to give his life for ours. All of us. For chrissakes, he’s willing to die for me.