Ben Bova - Moonwar

What the hell, Edith said to her voice. And then she stopped thinking altogether.

Out in the corridor, almost exactly thirty meters from Edith’s door, the mercenary let his back slide down the stone wall and hunkered down on the floor.

Goddamn, he said to himself. Looks like the kid’s going to spend the night with her.

He draped his arms across his upraised knees and rested his head on his arms. Get some sleep. Maybe he’ll come out before the morning shift starts to come through the corridor.

But he felt pretty certain that Doug was the kind who would spend the whole night.

Edan McGrath, president of Global News Network, was sometimes called Edan Me Wrath. This was one of those mornings.

Unexpected because he was on vacation, he had stormed into his Atlanta office and demanded that his vice presidents for programming, news and legal meet him in his office immediately.

He was a big man who radiated power even though his once hard and muscular body was now weighed down with the fat of overindulgence. Bald, he kept the same trim moustache he had sported when he’d been a Georgia Tech football lineman. Even though his grandfather had handed him Global News as an inheritance, McGrath told anyone and everyone that being born with a platinum spoon in your mouth wasn’t easy. “I’ve had to work to keep Global on top of the international competition,” he would say. “I earn my keep!”

For an industry that rewarded egomania, his office was comparatively modest. No bigger than a minor airfield, its decor was muted Persian carpets and quiet little marble busts and statuettes from ancient Greece and Rome. No desk, but a large round table dominated the room. The walls were display screens, naturally. One of them perpetually showed the Global News feed from its Atlanta studios. The other at present displayed a trio of sleek yachts slicing through New Zealand waters in a trial heat of the Americas Cup race.

The head of the round table was wherever McGrath chose to sit. At the moment he was standing, big hands gripping the back of one of the padded chairs, a stern overweight father figure in an white open-necked sports shirt and whipcord navy blue slacks. He was deeply tanned and obviously boiling mad.

His three (out of dozens) vice presidents dutifully arrived in his office and took chairs around the table. McGrath thought of them as Larry, Moe and Curly, although his evaluation of which was which changed constantly.

“MeWrath” did not sit down. He pointed the ringers of one hand like a pistol at the vice president for news.

“This Edie Elgin works for you, doesn’t she?”

The man swallowed obviously before answering with a timid, “Yes.” He was lean and sallow; he looked as if he hadn’t been out-of-doors since puberty.

McGrath pointed the finger-gun at programming. “How come her report from Moonbase was aired from freakin’ Kiribati instead of from Atlanta?”

Programming was made of sterner stuff. He too had been a football player and was still young enough to have retained his muscular physique.

“We agreed with the U.N. people on a blackout from Moonbase, chief. Remember? You talked to Faure yourself, weeks ago.”

“But the freakin’ broadcast aired out of Kiribati! We look like idiots! Every independent station on Earth is picking it up. Even our own subscribers are using it. They think it originated here!”

“We were just following your orders, chief,” the news VP found the strength to say. “You told us not to air anything from Moonbase until further notice.”

“Live footage of that shithead Peacekeeper blowing his own ass off and you keep it in the can?” McGrath roared.

“But you made this agreement with Faure…”

“That two-faced little frog let me think the Moonbase people had killed the Peacekeeper! He lied to me!”

“You didn’t tell us—”

“And they’ve declared independence! This is the biggest story of the year! Of the decade! Don’t you have any freaking sense?”

“You mean you’d’ve wanted us to air it?”

McGrath walked around the table to loom over the news VP Leaning over until his nose almost touched the younger man’s, McGrath pointed to the elaborate corporate logo engraved on the wall above the doorway.

“What’s our middle name?” he asked sweetly. Before the anguished vice president could open his mouth, McGrath bellowed, “ NEWS, goddammit! Global NEWS Network. A colony on the Moon declares independence and chases off a regiment of Peacekeeper troops—that’s freakin’ NEWS! ”

The vice president was perspiring, his face white with fear and shock.

Straightening, McGrath whirled on the head of the legal department, a distinguished-looking man with the chiselled features of a video star, carefully coiffed silver gray hair, and a tan almost as deep as McGrath’s own.

“How can Kiribati pick up a report from one of our employees and broadcast it around the world?”

The lawyer arched an eyebrow. “They can’t. Not legally. We can sue them for billions.”

McGrath stared at the man for several silent seconds. “It would make a great news story, wouldn’t it?” he asked rhetorically. “Global News Network sues the nation of Kiribati in the World Court because a bunch of half-naked islanders have the brains to broadcast news from one of Global’s own reporters while Global’s news department DECIDED NOT TO AIR THEIR OWN REPORTER’S STORY!’

“He was following your own orders,” the lawyer said mildly.

“That’s right, chief,” said programming. “You can’t blame the news department for doing what you told them to do.”

McGrath stood silently for a moment, then crossed his beefy arms across his chest.

“We look like freakin’ assholes,” he muttered.

“As I understand it,” the head of the legal department tried to explain, “Edie Elgin beamed her report here from Moonbase. We were under your orders not to reply to any messages coming from Moonbase—we expected her to return with the Peacekeepers, after all.”

“Okay, okay,” McGrath grumbled,’so I told you not to carry anything coming from Moonbase. But our own reporter, for chrissake! Shows the world that Faure’s a lying little sneak. And they’ve declared independence. Doesn’t anybody think for themselves around here?”

An uncomfortable silence greeted his question.

The lawyer resumed, placatingly, “Apparently Elgin, or the Moonbase people, repeated her report to several locations around the world. Maybe she was trying to get one of our offices to acknowledge receiving it.”

“We don’t have an office in Kiribati,” McGrath mumbled.

“That’s true. But those islands are spread out over a considerable portion of the Pacific. Somebody out there must have picked up Elgin’s report and decided to pirate it.”

“So what can we do, legally?”

“Sue them, of course.”

McGrath shook his head. “I’m not going to give the competition a chance to show the world what buffoons we’ve been.”

“We’ve got to do something, ” the lawyer insisted, “even if it’s just a suit to protect our copyright.”

McGrath fumed for a few moments. I’ll talk to whoever’s in charge there. I want to keep this as quiet as possible.”

Programming piped up, “So what do we do about Moonbase now?”

“Edie Elgin’s still up there?”

The news VP nodded.

“Then we run her reports, goddammit. We’ve got the only reporter on the scene at Moonbase. We play it for all it’s worth!”

“But your agreement with Faure…?”

“Fuck him! You think the United Nations is more important than Global News Network?”