Ben Bova - Moonwar

“Welcome to Moonbase,” said the old man, breaking into a boyish smile. “It is my pleasant duty to help you take off your clothes.”

Wilhelm Zimmerman scowled at the woman. She was pretty, in an All-American, blonde, coltish way. And completely stupid.

“You came this close to killing yourself,” he growled at Edith, holding his thumb and forefinger a bare millimeter apart.

Sitting on the examination table, wrapped in nothing but a thin sheet, Edith nodded somberly. “I didn’t realize I’d be putting the whole base at risk.”

“You think perhaps all this is a game?”

“Not hardly.”

Zimmerman locked his hands behind his back and stared at the readouts on the display screens lined above the exam table. Everything looked normal. The UV lamps had deactivated the nanomachines infesting her boots. None of them had penetrated to the inner soles. This woman was clean of nanobugs. Her boots and the rest of her spacesuit were in the nanolab, down in the old section of Moonbase. Zimmerman wanted to inspect those boots personally, to see how much damage the gobblers had done to them. He intended to play back the video of the reporter’s dash through the garage and establish a time-line to determine the rate at which the nanobugs ate through the plastic of the boots.

“When can I get my clothes back?” Edith asked, clutching the sheet under her chin.

Startled out of his thoughts, Zimmerman waved a pudgy hand in the air. “Now. They were not contaminated.”

With a shy smile, she asked, “Then where are they?” Zimmerman scowled again. “Am I your valet? How should I know where they are?”

Hansen had returned to the Clippership and spent a weary hour discussing the situation with his superiors. He started with his commanding officer at the Peacekeeper base in Corsica, then was bucked up to Peacekeeper headquarters in Ottawa and finally to the U.N. secretary-general, Georges Faure himself.

Patiently he explained how Captain Munasinghe had been killed. Faure listened, a strange little smile playing about his lips.

“The captain died in battle against the rebels, then.” Faure made it a statement, not a question.

“He killed himself accidentally,” Hansen corrected.

Faure’s expression hardened once he heard the lieutenant’s words. “No, no, no. He died in battle. How it happened is of little consequence. If the Moonbase rebels had not resisted, he would not have been killed.”

Hansen let the point pass. More than one soldier had become a hero after the fact, he knew.

“Tell me then,” Faure said, “what do you propose to do now?”

“Our only alternatives,” he reported, “are to return to Earth with our mission unfulfilled, or to destroy Moonbase’s electrical power equipment, which will force them to surrender within a few hours.”

Faure’s face, on the cockpit’s small screen, looked perfectly composed. Only the slightest tremble in his voice hinted at the seething rage boiling within him.

“And if you destroy the electrical equipment,” Faure asked, with exaggerated patience, “what happens to the people of Moonbase?”

Hansen said, “They will be forced to surrender.”

Three seconds passed. Faure asked, “Why will they be forced to surrender?”

“Because without electricity their air-recycling system will shut down and they will soon have no air to breathe.”

Another three seconds. “And once they surrender, do you have air for them to breathe? Do you have space aboard your ship to carry two thousand men and women back to Earth?” Faure’s voice rose to a snarl. “Or do you propose to let them all die, choking to death while you watch?”

Hansen stared back evenly at the secretary-general’s image. “I was merely stating what our options are, sir. I was not recommending a course of action.”

While waiting for Faure’s response, Hansen glanced at Killifer, who seemed grimly amused. “Friggin’ politicians want to have their cake and eat it too,” Killifer whispered. “And when they can’t, they blame it on you.”

“Attend to me, Lieutenant,” Faure snapped. “You were sent to Moonbase to take over its operation and remove its leaders from control. It now seems that you cannot accomplish that task.”

“Not without destroying the base, sir,” Hansen replied. “And killing everyone in it.”

Faure seemed to mull the situation over. “You say that Mrs Brudnoy is willing to accompany you back to Earth?”

“To negotiate directly with you, yes, sir.”

The secretary-general toyed with his moustache. Then he asked, “And this news reporter, this Edie Elgin, she is still in Moonbase?”

“Apparently she intends to stay there. She says she does not wish to return with us.”

Hansen thought he might be mistaken, it was hard to tell on this small screen, but Faure’s face seemed to be getting quite red. As if he might explode into fury at any instant.

But instead, the secretary-general said mildly, “Very well. Bring Mrs Brudnoy back with you. Leave the news reporter. The mission is a failure, Lieutenant. A complete and utter failure.”

Then he added, “Except, of course, for the martyrdom of Captain Munasinghe.”

“At least we don’t have to pack anything,” Joanna said as she sat at her delicate curved writing desk of light walnut and booted up her personal computer.

“Are you sure?” Lev Brudnoy asked, from the doorway to their bedroom.

“Of course,” she answered, without even glancing up at him. “We’ll go to the house in Savannah. My God, I’ll be able to go shopping again!”

Brudnoy ambled into the living room and sat on one of the little Sheraton sofas. “Are you sure we’ll get to Savannah?”

Joanna looked up from her computer. “What do you mean?”

“We’re being carried Earthside on a military transport. It will land at the Peacekeeper base in Corsica. Has it occurred to you that we might be held there, incommunicado?”

“Incom- what makes you think Faure would do that?”

Brudnoy shrugged. “It’s easier to negotiate with someone when you have him in prison.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.”

“Lev, I’m not some nobody that Faure can hide from public view. I’m Joanna Brudnoy! There’d be an uproar if he tried anything like that.”

“Maybe. Maybe I’m just a worried old man. But,” Brudnoy ticked off on his fingers, “One: Faure has controlled the news media very effectively. Two: As far as everyone Earthside is concerned, you are at Moonbase. Faure isn’t telling anyone that you’re returning with the Peacekeepers. Three: You would make a very good hostage.”

“I’m sending word to Savannah right now,” Joanna said. “The board of directors will know that I’m coming back with the Peacekeepers.”

“Can you trust Rashid to inform the board?”

Joanna stared at her husband for a long, silent moment. Then she nodded. “I don’t think he’d have the guts to keep this information from the board, but just in case, I’ll send the word to each individual board member.”

“Good,” said Brudnoy.

“And the news media, too.”

Brudnoy gave her a sad smile. “Don’t expect a brass band when we arrive in Corsica. Or reporters, either.”

“You really are a reporter for Global News,” Doug said, feeling foolish even as the words left his lips.

“I really am,” said Edith Elgin, sitting in front of his desk.

She was back in the coveralls that the Peacekeepers had given her: sky blue with white trim. The color showed off her thick blonde hair very nicely, Doug thought. Her eyes were her best feature: big, lustrous, emerald-green eyes. Startling eyes. Eyes that made you want to believe whatever she told you. Long legs. She must be almost as tall as I am.