Ben Bova - Moonwar

“Good,” said Joanna. “We’ve only got a little more than two and a half days before the Peacekeepers land here.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Don’t let Faure delay until his troops land. I won’t wait that long. Tell him he’s got twenty-four hours to get in touch with me. Or else I go to the media.”

“Harkening and obedience,” said Rashid, just as he did in the old days when Joanna was chairman of the board and he was only a rising young executive.

Edith’s nausea was almost completely gone. A tendril of unease persisted deep inside her, but she thought it was probably more psychological than physical now. She still felt slightly dizzy whenever she moved her head too fast, but the moment passed quickly.

In fact, floating free in zero gravity was fun! She had set up her two minicams in the spacecraft’s cargo bay, amid bulky crates marked AMMUNITION: 9 MM: FRANGIBLE and GRENADES: CONCUSSION: MARK 17/A.

She had interviewed two ordinary troopers, a shy teenaged boy from Bangladesh and his sergeant, a tough no-nonsense Cuban woman. It was like interviewing athletes: monosyllabic answers, platitudes, and long, perplexed silences.

Edith checked her hair in her hand mirror. It was floating nicely; not so wild that it would distract the viewer, just enough to show what weightlessness could do. The cameras were tightly tethered to a pair of tied down crates so they wouldn’t bob around; there were no girders or other projections on the smooth curving bulkhead of diamond on which to secure them.

Captain Munasinghe glided through the hatch, trying to look as if he was unaffected by zero gee. He had removed the medication patch from behind his ear, but Edith saw faint rings there, like the scars from an octopus’s suckers, and wondered how comfortable the captain really felt.

He was small and slim, dark skin shining as if it had been oiled. He had put on a fresh uniform, Edith saw, crisp and clean. His eyes were his best feature, large and dark and somehow fierce-looking. They’ll show up great on camera, she thought. But he’s so little, I’ll look like a horse next to him.

Then she smiled to herself. Zero gee to the rescue. I’ll just let him float higher off the deck than I do. Keep the focus tight, head and shoulders. He’ll look taller than me and I’ll bet he’ll love it. Realistic journalism.

“I just want to ask you a few questions, Captain Munasinghe,” she said, trying to put him at ease. “Just look at me and ignore the cameras.”

“Yes. Fine.”

“Ready?”

Munasinghe nodded, then licked his lips.

Wondering who had taught him to do that, Edith pressed the switch on her remote control wand and said, “Okay, here we go.”

She arranged herself facing Munasinghe and slightly below him, so his head topped hers by a few centimeters. Camera one held the two-shot; the second camera focused on the captain’s face. Edith would do her reaction close-ups afterward; they would be spliced in Earthside as cutaways.

“Here with me now is Captain Munasinghe of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force, the commander of this mission to the Moon,” said Edith.

“Captain Munasinghe, how do you feel about leading forty armed troops to Moonbase?”

Munasinghe drifted closer to her as he replied, “The Peacekeepers were created by international agreement to enforce the decisions of the United Nations’ secretariat. Moonbase is violating the terms of the nanotechnology treaty, therefore we have been dispatched to the Moon to put an end to this violation.”

“Yes, but how do you feel personally about this mission?”

“I am proud to bear the responsibility of carrying out the United Nations’ decision to enforce the nanotechnology treaty,” he said. It sounded like a parrot repeating a line it had been laboriously taught.

The interview teetered between a disaster and a farce. Munasinghe had canned answers for every question she asked, undoubtedly written in New York for him to memorize. Worse, he kept pushing so close to Edith that she thought he wanted to rub noses with her. She could smell the cloying, faintly acrid odor of whatever breath treatment he had gargled.

She unconsciously moved away from him, trying to maintain a proper distance for their interview, but he kept moving in on her. In the back of her mind Edith remembered that different cultures have different ideas of the proper distance for social intercourse, but this was going out on the network, for chrissakes! It’s going to look like he’s coming on to me.

The cameras tracked them automatically, but after only a few minutes Edith’s back bumped against one of the cargo crates and she could retreat no farther. Munasinghe hovered before her, his breath making her want to gag, his burning eyes boring into hers as if he intended to rape her.

Edith was about to give up all pretense of trying to conduct a rational interview and wind it up as quickly as she could, but some inner determination was urging her to get something, anything out of Munasinghe.

In desperation, she gestured with her free hand to the crates of munitions around them. “Do you think you’re really going to need all this firepower against the people of Moonbase? After all, they’re unarmed, aren’t they?”

“They claim that they are unarmed, yes.”

“You don’t believe that?”

“I am a soldier,” Munasinghe said, eyes burning into her. “I must be prepared for the worst that the enemy could possibly do to us.”

“But what could a gaggle of scientists and technicians do to a platoon of fully-armed Peacekeepers?”

“We don’t know, but we must be prepared.”

“With hand grenades and explosives?”

“With every weapon at our disposal,” Munasinghe said, without an instant’s hesitation. “If the people of Moonbase offer the slightest opposition, we are prepared to use whatever level of force is required.”

Edith’s breath caught in her throat. “You mean you’re prepared to kill them?”

“If necessary. Yes, of course.”

“Even though they’re unarmed?”

He jabbed a finger in her face. “You keep saying they are unarmed. How do we know this? How do we know what kinds of weapons they may have at Moonbase? I am responsible for bringing Moonbase under United Nations’ jurisdiction. I am responsible for the lives of my troops. If the enemy offers the slightest resistance, the slightest provocation, I have ordered my troops to shoot.”

“Shoot to kill?” Edith was surprised at how hollow her voice sounded.

“When you are in battle you don’t have the luxury of attempting to merely wound your enemy. Shoot to kill, yes, of course.”

“At the slightest provocation?”

For the first time, Captain Munasinghe smiled. “I have served in Eritrea, in Colombia, and against the Armenian terrorists. Believe me, you do not give an enemy a second chance to kill you. Not if you want to survive the engagement.”

“Let me get this straight,” Edith said. “You’re saying that you’ve ordered your troops to shoot to kill at the slightest sign of resistance from the people of Moonbase.”

“At the slightest sign of resistance,” Munasinghe affirmed. “Better to destroy Moonbase and everyone in it than to return to Earth with our mission a failure.”

Edith swallowed hard, then said, “Thank you, Captain Munasinghe.”

She had to push herself past him, then forced a smile as she looked straight into camera one and concluded, “This is Edie Elgin, in space with the U.N. Peacekeeper force, on the way to Moonbase.”

Munasinghe drifted back, then asked, “Is that all? Is it finished?”

“That’s it,” said Edith, hoping he would go away.