Ben Bova - Moonwar

“Yes,” said Rashid, dipping his chin slightly. “They see it as a transparent ploy of Masterson Corporation to maintain control of Moonbase and continue using nanotechnology.”

The meeting room fell silent. What Rashid had told his board was not entirely true, he knew. Yes, the media executives he had spoken with knew that Masterson still controlled Moonbase, despite the legal fiction that the base was owned by the Kiribati Corporation. Tamara Bonai’s beauty and earnestness were not enough to disguise the maneuver that the Moonbase people had pulled to evade the nanotech treaty. But when Rashid had met with his friends among the news media in New York to brief them on the Moonbase situation, he had conveniently overlooked the independence angle.

And from all the communications beamed from Moonbase to Masterson corporate headquarters in Savannah, Rashid had carefully excised all mention of independence before sending them on to the news outlets.

Of all the members of Masterson’s board of directors, Rashid was the least surprised to learn that Yamagata was behind Faure’s grab of Moonbase. Let them have Moonbase, he thought. We still have the patents on the Clipperships. Let Yamagata manufacture them with nanomachines on the Moon; we will still get the patent royalties and our costs will drop to zero. Nothing but profit for us.

And, of course, sooner or later Yamagata will want to initiate a merger with Masterson Corporation. That’s when I will become wealthy enough to retire in true style.

Joanna’s insistent voice snapped him out of his pleasant reverie.

“Once the Peacekeeper troops land here and take over the base we won’t have a chance of stopping Faure from turning Moonbase over to Yamagata.”

“We will be compensated for the takeover,” Rashid pointed out.

And now we have to wait three infernal seconds for her reply, he grumbled to himself.

Joanna stared down the length of conference table at him, her eyes ablaze. “Compensated? You mean it’s all right with you if Faure screws us as long as he pays for the pleasure?”

Rashid’s own temper rose, but he maintained his composure. “I believe it is an ancient piece of oriental wisdom, Joanna: When rape is unavoidable, you might as well relax and enjoy it.”

Joanna stared into Rashid’s beady eyes and battled with every ounce of self-control she possessed to keep from screaming at him.

All across the walls of her living room, the images of the board members were watching her, some sympathetic, some apathetic, a few looking tense with apprehension.

“Omar,” she said, deliberately using Rashid’s belittling nickname, “you might enjoy getting raped, but I don’t, and I don’t think the other members of this board do, either.”

Raising her voice slightly, she said, “I move we take a vote of confidence in our chairman.”

For three tense seconds she waited for a response. None came. No one seconded her motion. Brudnoy, sitting off in a corner of the room where the camera could not pick him up, looked at her with growing pain in his expression.

That’s it, Joanna told herself. Rashid’s in control of the board and I’m not. He’s been using this crisis to solidify his position and undermine mine.

“Very well,” Joanna said at last. “It’s clear that this board is not going to support Moonbase. We’ll have to defend ourselves in spite of you.”

When Rashid heard her words he smiled thinly. “And how to you propose to defend Moonbase, may I ask?”

“We’ll fight with everything we’ve got!”

Rashid smile widened. “You sound like Churchill after Dunkirk, Joanna. “We shall fight them on the beaches and the landing fields. We shall fight them in the cities and the streets.” Do you intend to turn Moonbase into a battlefield?”

“If I have to,” she snapped.

Before Rashid could respond she added, “Churchill won his war. I intend to win mine.”

And she banged the manual switch that cut off the transmission. The smart walls went dark.

Brudnoy got up from his chair and walked across the small room to sit beside his wife. “At the end of that famous speech that Churchill gave,” he said, “he supposedly added, under his breath, that the British would have to throw beer bottles at the Nazis, because that’s all they had left to fight with.”

Joanna looked into his sad eyes.

“We don’t even have beer bottles, I’m afraid,” Brudnoy said softly.

“I know,” said Joanna, fighting back the tears that wanted to fill her eyes. “I know.”

Captain Munasinghe pushed the plastic plug deeper into his ear and waited impatiently for his laptop to finish decoding the message from New York.

At last the computer’s synthesized voice said, “Com-mander-in-Chief, United Nations Peacekeeping Forces to Commander, Lunar Expeditionary Force: Urgent and Top Secret. Message begins. Latest intelligence on enemy intentions. Sources indicate Moonbase will resist your force with all means available to them. You are advised to take every precaution and to be prepared for armed resistance. Message ends.”

Munasinghe nodded to himself and glanced at the American newswoman sitting across the aisle from him. She seemed deep in earnest conversation over her own comm link back to Earth.

He floated out of his chair, fighting back the queasiness that still assailed him whenever he moved. Hovering in the aisle next to his second-in-command, he said, “Start them checking their weapons.”

“Now?” The Norwegian lieutenant blinked his ice-blue eyes at Munasinghe. “We still have six hours before touchdown.”

“Now,” Munasinghe said firmly. “I want the grenades and other explosives checked out and parcelled among the troops. All guns checked. Then start them getting into their spacesuits. We must be prepared for hostile action the instant we land. Fully armed and fully prepared.”

Edith Elgin was furious.

“What do you mean you can’t run the interview?” she hissed into the pin mike that almost touched her lips.

The spacecraft was so far from Earth that it took seconds for her boss’s answer to come back to her.

The decision was made on the twentieth floor, Edie. Nothing I can do about it.”

“But the captain as much as admitted that they’re going in shooting!” Edith wanted to shout, but she had to whisper. It made the whole situation doubly frustrating. “He’d just as soon blast Moonbase with a nuke, if he had one.”

Again the agonizing wait. “Don’t you think I want to run the piece, Edie? It’s great stuff. But my hands are tied! The suits upstairs want to play ball with Faure and the Peacekeepers. At least for now.”

Yeah, Edie said to herself. And after this bloodthirsty captain wipes out Moonbase the suits will want the interview burned because it’ll show what shitheads they are.

“They’re coming right down the pipe,” said the landing controller.

Doug leaned over her shoulder and looked at her radar screen. Only one blip, the Peacekeepers’ Clippership. It was precisely aligned on the grid of thin glowing lines that represented Moonbase’s landing corridor. The spaceport control complex was dark and empty except for this one console. Still, Doug felt the tension that the one solitary blip generated.

“You’ve told them that all four pads are occupied?” Doug asked.

“Yep,” the controller replied without turning from her screen.

“No response from them?”

“Not a peep. They’re not gonna turn around just because we haven’t laid out the welcome mat for them.”

“No,” Doug admitted. “I guess not.”

“Six hours, four minutes,” the controller said, pointing to the digital time display on her console.