Ben Bova - Moonwar

One of the troopers awkwardly lifted one foot and tried to bend over far enough in his spacesuit to see the sole. His buddy looked down, and dropped the set of grenades she’d been handling.

Edith heard a panicky jabbering in a language she didn’t understand.

“Speak English!” Munasinghe’s voice demanded.

“The boots… they’re coming apart!”

“My glove!”

The other troopers in the garage stopped in their tracks. For an idiotic moment, each of them tried to inspect his or her boots.

“The nanomachines!”

“They’ll kill us all!”

Stavenger’s voice came through again, strong and calm. “Get out of the garage. Ultraviolet light deactivates the nanobugs. Get out in the sunlight where the solar UV can save your lives.”

Munasinghe screamed, “No! No!”

“If you don’t get out now, ” Stavenger’s voice urged, “the nanobugs will eat through your boots and start digesting your flesh. Once that begins there’s no way to stop them.”

“I order you to blow those hatches!” Munasinghe screeched.

Military discipline is often a fragile thing. For several seconds the troopers stood immobile, torn between the ingrained reflexes of their training and the hard-wired drive for self-protection. One trooper, in the middle of the garage, threw down his rifle and ran out into the sunshine.

That was all it took.

The entire squad bolted like green soldiers facing enemy fire for the first time. The troopers stomped and stumbled back across the garage floor, streamed past their raging captain, and flung themselves down on the dusty regolith, raising their legs high so the sunlight could get to the soles of their boots.

I’ll have you court-martialed for this!” Munasinghe raged. “Cowardice in the face of the enemy! You’ll be shot! Each and every one of you!”

“Why don’t you go in?” Stavenger’s voice asked calmly.

Edith turned to face the captain squarely, so that her helmet-mounted camera would capture this moment in its entirety. Munasinghe was shaking, visibly shaking even with the cumbersome spacesuit enveloping him. Whether he quaked with fear or fury, Edith could not tell.

I’ll show you!” Munasinghe screeched, fumbling on his equipment vest for one of his grenades. I’ll show you all!”

The Norwegian lieutenant, last to leave the garage, reached a hand toward him. “Captain, wait—”

Edith watched, wide-eyed, as the lieutenant tried to calm Munasinghe. But the captain struggled free of the taller man’s grasp and ran a staggering few steps to the entrance of the garage, the grenade in his gloved hand.

I’ll destroy you all!” Munasinghe screamed, tugging at the grenade’s firing pin.

“Don’t!” the lieutenant was saying. “You can’t reach the hatches from here. It’s too far—”

But Munasinghe stumbled on, into the garage, and tried to throw the grenade. Encumbered by his spacesuit and the clumsy gloves, his throw went only a few yards. The grenade bumped on the garage floor, rolled once, then exploded.

The lieutenant had thrown himself down on the ground, a curiously slow, dream-like fall. Edith involuntarily ducked behind the rock face at the side of the airlock hatch. She saw a flash but heard nothing.

She looked out into the garage again. Munasinghe was still standing, turning slowly to face her. The lieutenant was clambering to his feet.

Edith saw that the front of Munasinghe’s spacesuit was shredded. The man took a faltering step, then another, and pitched face-forward, slowly, slowly falling to the smooth rock floor of the garage.

The lieutenant did not hesitate for an instant. He raced into the garage, grabbed his captain’s inert form under the shoulders, and dragged him outside into the sunlight.

Edith hefted her minicam. I’ll have to know.”

“Hansen,” he said bleakly. “Lieutenant Frederik Hansen, from Kristiansand.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Lieutenant Hansen looked down at the body of Captain Munasinghe, lying stiffly in his torn spacesuit on the dusty lunar ground. “What a waste,” he muttered. “What a waste.”

Doug stared at the display screen. “He killed himself,” he whispered.

No one in the control center moved or said a word.

“He went crazy and killed himself,” Doug said, his voice still hollow with shock.

“He was trying to blow one of the hatches,” Joanna said.

“And fragged himself instead,” Anson added.

Doug shook his head. “I don’t know if he meant to, but he committed suicide.”

“That tall guy did a gutsy thing,” Gordette said, “dragging him out of the garage like that.”

“But I never meant for anybody to get killed,” Doug said.

“It’s not your fault,” said Joanna firmly. “The idiot went berserk.”

“He was trying to kill us,” Brudnoy pointed out.

“But I never meant for anybody to get killed,” Doug repeated.

The Norwegian lieutenant assumed command of the mission and sent a radio report Earthside.

“What happens now?” Edith asked him.

“We wait for orders from Peacekeeper headquarters,” said the Norwegian, his voice low but even.

“I didn’t get your name,” Edith said.

His spacesuited shoulders moved slightly in what might have been an attempt at a shrug. “What difference does that make?”

“Mexican standoff,” Jinny Anson said. “They’re not coming in, but they’re not going away, either.”

“We can sit tight inside the base longer than they can stay out on the crater floor,” said Brudnoy, the slightest hint of optimism in his low voice.

“This won’t do us any good,” Joanna said. “We’ve got to get them to leave, go back to Earth.”

Still sitting on the wheeled chair, Doug turned it around to face them.

“They’re waiting for instructions from Earthside,” he said. “This might take some time.”

“How much oxygen can they be carrying with them?” Anson wondered.

Doug said, “They’ve suffered a casualty. That changes everything. We’ve got to give them an honorable way out, something that they can take back Earthside with them to show that their mission hasn’t been a complete failure.”

“Why bother?” Joanna scoffed.

“Because otherwise, even if this troop leaves, Faure will just send another force, bigger and better prepared. Or maybe he’ll drop a few missiles on the solar farm, just to get our attention.”

“They’ll be out for blood next time.” Gordette agreed.

“Like they weren’t this time?” Anson shot back.

“What do you suggest, Doug?” Kris Cardenas asked.

Doug took a deep breath. He had been thinking about this for more than four days now. The first part of his plan had been accomplished: the Peacekeeper troops had been kept out of Moonbase. But it had cost the life of their captain. That raised the risks for all of them.

“When I read about the Cuban Missile Crisis of Nineteen sixty-two, I saw that the American president was willing to make some concessions, as long as he achieved his major objective, getting the Soviet missiles out of Cuba.”

“Ancient history!” Anson complained. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

Doug looked up at her and refrained from quoting Santayana. He saw that Brudnoy understood.

“We should be willing to give up something that we can do without, if the Peacekeepers agree to leave,” Doug said.

“But what do we have that we can give up?” Cardenas asked. “We can’t give up the nanomachines, and that’s what Faure’s after, isn’t it?”

“No,” said Doug. “From what he told you, Mom, he wants Moonbase to continue using nanomachines—under Yamagata’s control.”