Ben Bova - Moonwar

“That’s right,” said Doug.

“Against what?”

“More Peacekeeper troops,” said Vince Falcone, head of the mining division.

“Worse than that,” Clemens said in his mild, soft way.

“Like what?” Falcone asked.

“One modest nuclear warhead exploded a few hundred meters above the crater floor could knock out all our solar farms.”

Doug countered, “But we’ve still got the nuclear backup. It’s buried—”

“Nuclear warhead number two will be a ground blast, to knock out our generator.”

Falcone nodded solemnly. “The second one doesn’t even have to be a nuclear warhead. Conventional warhead will do, if they’ve got the generator pinpointed.”

“Okay,” said Doug, looking at each of them in turn. “The first thing we’ve got to do is figure out what they can throw at us. Then we’ve got to look for ways to defend ourselves against each possible threat.”

“Lotsa luck,” Falcone grumbled. He was built like a fireplug, with short thick arms and a nearly perpetual scowl on his dark face. Instead of the usual coveralls he preferred to wear dark turtlenecks and comfortable, loosefitting jeans that he jammed into scuffed old cowboy boots.

“There may be a way to defend against a nuclear warhead,” said Deborah Paine.

Doug felt his eyebrows hike halfway to his scalp.

“The physicists have been using the mass driver’s magnets to power a particle accelerator,” Paine said. “If we could focus the beam on an incoming warhead, it could destroy the nuclear device’s switching and fusing mechanisms.”

“Are you sure?” Doug asked.

“It’s actually pretty old stuff,” she replied, “from the antimissile defenses that the Peacekeepers maintain in Earth orbit.”

“So it turns the nuke into a dud, huh?” Falcone asked.

“Yes. The warhead will crash onto the crater floor but the bomb won’t go off.”

“That’d still do some damage to the solar panels,” Clemens pointed out.

“Yeah, but not that many of ’em,” said Falcone.

Doug asked, “Could we actually focus the particle beam that way?”

Paine shrugged. It looked delicious to all the men around the table, even though they knew she didn’t do it for their benefit.

I’ll have to ask the physicists about it,” she said. “We should have plenty of time to aim the beam, if they fire the missile from Earthside. Days.”

“Suppose they take over L-1 and use it as a staging base. They could fire the missile from there.”

Nodding, Paine said, “That would still give us a couple of hours or so, maybe more.”

“Maybe less,” Anson said, “if they fire it at high boost.”

“Maybe.”

Doug turned to Cardenas. “Kris, what are you and Zimmerman developing? Anything useful?”

She sighed. “Willi’s got this bug in his ear about using nanomachines to make a person invisible. I was hoping something practical might come out of it, but so far as I can tell he hasn’t accomplished a thing.”

“And your own work?” Doug prompted.

“We can be a big help medically, of course. As far as weaponry is concerned, I haven’t come up with anything except the gobblers. We can program them to eat metals, if you like.”

“We can’t strew the whole crater floor with gobblers,” Doug said.

“Why not?” Anson shot back. “It’s only be for a short time.”

Doug ticked off on his fingers, “One, they’ll most likely land during daylight—”

“You can program gobblers to operate in sunlight, can’t you?” Anson asked Cardenas.

“It’s more difficult, but doable. I’d worry about deactivating them, though.”

“Two,” Doug went on, “what’s to stop the gobblers from i destroying our solar farms, the launch pads and their equipment, even the mass driver?”

Anson pursed her lips. Then she grinned. “Yeah, it would be like shooting ourselves in the foot, wouldn’t it?”

“Shooting ourselves in the head,” Clemens said, with surprising fervor. Doug realized he wanted no part of nanomachines that ate metals.

Turning in his chair to look at Gordette, Doug asked, “Bam, if you were in charge of the Peacekeepers, how would you go about taking Moonbase?”

Gordette shook his head. “I wasn’t an officer, just a dogface.”

“You’re as close to a general as we’ve got here,” Anson said.

“What do you think they’re going to do?” Doug repeated.

Slowly, reluctantly, Gordette got to his feet. All eyes focused on him. “Well, to begin with, I agree with Mr Clemens.

They’ll start with a bombardment to knock out our electrical power.”

“Nuclear warheads?”

“Most likely. But they might use a conventional warhead for our nuclear generator, if they know its location precisely enough.”

“They’ve got the same maps we use,” Falcone grumbled.

“Then what?” Doug asked.

“Most likely they’d have already landed troops outside the crater, on the Mare Nubium side. They’ll wait for the bombardment, then come over Wodjohowitcz Pass to get into the base.”

Doug saw most of the people around the table nodding agreement.

“If our electrical power is out, all they’ll have to do is knock on our door. We’ll have to surrender to them.”

“We have the fuel cells,” Anson said.

Gordette shrugged. “How long do they give us? A few days? A few hours? The Peacekeepers will be occupying the crater floor; we’ll have no chance to repair the solar farms. We’ll be forced to give up.”

“A nuclear blast probably’d screw up our radiators, too,” I Falcone pointed out. “We’d be boiling in here inside of a few hours.”

The meeting became grim, depressed. No one could offer a way to counter the scenario Gordette had drawn.

Then Kadar spoke up. “It may not be necessary for the Peacekeepers to destroy so much of our generating equipment.”

“Oh?”

“All they have to do is put some biological agents in the drinking water we bring in from the south polar ice fields.”

“Poison us?” Clemens blurted, looking shocked. Almost smiling, Kadar said, “It wouldn’t have to be fatal. A virus that causes a disabling disease. An especially nasty variation of influenza, for instance. Or viral pneumonia. Brought in through our drinking water.”

“We don’t use that much new water,” Anson pointed out. “Our recycling’s pretty efficient.”

“Perhaps so, but over a time scale of months? They could make us all deathly ill.”

“Do we have to defend the south pole, too?” Anson wondered aloud.

With a shake of his head, Doug replied, “We just don’t have the resources.”

“But we can test the water coming in,” Paine said, “and not allow it into the base supply until we’re satisfied that it’s all right.”

“Or,” Cardenas suggested, “we could run the incoming water through a nanomachine screen, program the nanos to pass only water molecules and divert everything else.”

“That would help,” Doug said.

“They won’t be that subtle,” Gordette said, still standing by the couch. “They won’t want to wait weeks or months for a biological agent to take effect. Besides, they know we’ve got nanomachines that we could use to cure any disease they cause.”

“So it’ll be a direct attack.”

That’s what I think,” Gordette replied. “They’ll land their troops, bomb out our electrical power equipment, and then march in here.”

Cardenas slumped in her chair. “Nanomachines aren’t going to be much help, then.”

“We can knock out a nuclear warhead,” Paine insisted.

“Maybe,” said Doug.

“How’ll we deal with a whole regiment of Peacekeeper troops?” Anson asked glumly.