Ben Bova - Moonwar

Killifer had balked when General O’Conner told him to take care of Bonai himself. “Why not hire a professional?” he had demanded.

The wizened old man had glared at him from his wheelchair. “God’s work has to be done by God’s people, Jack. It would be wrong to bring in an outsider. Wrong, and dangerous. The fewer people who know about this, the better off we are.”

Killifer had been forced to agree. Get a professional and you’d be blackmailed for life.

“If the woman was in the States, or Europe, or even Japan,” O’Conner had added, “we could get one of our local zealots to do her. But out there on those islands, we don’t have anybody we can depend on. That’s why it’s got to be you, Jack.”

Reluctantly, he had bowed to the general’s order.

“Besides,” the old man had said, a vicious smile on his lips,’this won’t be your first time. You murdered Foster Brennart, didn’t you?”

Sitting at the bar closest to the roulette table, nursing a rye and ginger ale, Killifer thought back to Brennart and the first expedition to the lunar south pole. He’d wanted to kill Doug Stavenger; Brennart’s death was more of an accident than anything else. He’d tried to trap the Stavenger kid up there on the mountaintop during the radiation storm. But Brennart had to be a friggin’ hero and go out there with him. So Brennart died and became a legend while Stavenger pulled through and survived.

It was Joanna Stavenger that he had really wanted to kill. Joanna Brudnoy now. The bitch blamed him for her husband’s death. Paul Stavenger had been killed by nanobugs from Killifer’s lab. So his widow exiled Killifer to Moonbase. Either go to Moonbase or face trial for murder, she had told him. He picked Moonbase. It wrecked his career, ruined his life.

And she’s still running other people’s lives, Mrs Rich Bitch, lording it over everybody else. I’ll get her. One way or the other I’ll get her.

The tall glass in his hand suddenly shattered, spraying rye and ginger ale and ice cubes across the bar. The guy next to him jumped up from his bar stool and wiped at his shirt front, his expression halfway between surprise and anger. Fuck you, Killifer told him silently.

The bartender, a burly Micronesian in a loose fitting mesh shirt, hurried up to him.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Killifer said, shaking his drenched hand. “I’m all right, don’t worry.”

“Man, that’s some grip you got,” said the bartender as he quickly set up another drink. “Take it easy, Iron Man, we only got a couple hundred of these glasses!”

“You didn’t cut yourself, did you?”

A delicious redhead in a strapless gown took his hand in her gentle fingers, then looked up at him with big blue innocent eyes.

“Naw,” Killifer said, smiling at her. “I’m okay.”

“You must have some kind of troubles, crushing the glass like that. Like, real tension, huh?”

He admired the curve of her cleavage. “Everybody’s got troubles,” he said.

“Boy, is that true.”

“You too?”

“Don’t even ask,” she said.

“Come on up to my room,” Killifer said, “and we can tell each other about our troubles.”

She didn’t hesitate a microsecond. “Okay. Let’s.”

“Well,” said Lev Brudnoy to his wife, “They agreed to evacuate up to sixty people from Moonbase. They’re calling it a mercy flight.”

Brudnoy had just returned to Savannah from a two-day trip to United Nations headquarters. Joanna met him at the Masterson Corporation airport. Now, in the privacy of their soundproofed limousine, he told her what he’d accomplished in New York.

“A mercy flight,” Joanna echoed.

With a ghostly smile, Brudnoy said, “They intend to get as much publicity out of it as possible: bringing back people from Moonbase who might have been held as hostages.”

“Hostages! Why, that lying little—”

Brudnoy put a lean finger to her lips. “Publicity is very important. Faure is very much aware that public opinion must remain on his side.”

Joanna nodded understanding. “That’s why they tried to make a hero out of that Peacekeeper captain.”

“And why Faure went berserk with anger when the news networks started playing the reports coming out of Moonbase.”

“I hope he bursts a blood vessel.”

“They wanted Moonbase to stop broadcasting news reports,” Brudnoy said, “in return for the evacuation flight.”

“What?”

“I refused, of course. That’s why a half-hour’s conference took two days. They were adamant, but I—” Brudnoy placed a hand on the breast of his open-collar shirt “—I out-sat them. They demanded that we stop the broadcasts; I simply told them that it was impossible. After ducking into Faure’s office fifty times or so, they gave in at last.”

Joanna grabbed him by the ears and kissed him. “Good for you, Lev!”

“It was nothing. Had I known your reaction, I would have made more demands on them.”

She studied his smiling face. Behind his grin, Lev looked tired, worried.

“Faure’s building up a new military force to take Moonbase,” he said softly.

“You’re certain?”

He nodded wearily. “All the signs point to it. The U.N. bureaucrats are merely stalling for time, nitpicking about the evacuation flight and the arrangements for a meeting between you and Faure. In the meantime, I saw plenty of Peacekeeper officers heading into Faure’s office.”

“Really.”

“And worse,” Lev said. “There were several Yamagata Corporation people there, too.”

Joanna leaned her head back against the limousine’s plush upholstery. “I’ve got to get the board of directors to support Moonbase. If they back me, we can start to put pressure on the White House.”

“And if they don’t?” Lev asked.

“They will,” Joanna said firmly. “They’ve got to.”

Ibrahim al-Rashid steepled his fingers as he gazed at Tamara Bonai’s image on the wall screen of his office. She is certainly beautiful, he thought. If only I could convince her to see things my way.

“Then you will attend the emergency board meeting in person?” he asked.

“Yes,” Bonai said. “I want to be there.”

She was apparently in her office, too, although it was difficult to tell, with all the rattan and bamboo decor and the wide windows looking out onto a delicious tropical beach.

“Perhaps you could come a day or so early,” Rashid suggested. “I would be pleased to take you to New York City or wherever else you would like to visit.”

Bonai seemed to think the matter over for a few heartbeats. “I’ve never been to Washington. I understand it’s quite lovely in the spring.”

“Washington,” Rashid said, thinking quickly. “The national capital. I know a very comfortable hotel just a short walk from the White House. Perhaps I could arrange a visit with the President.”

She smiled delightfully. “I’m afraid that would have to be arranged by my own foreign secretary. I am a chief of state, remember, and there is protocol involved.”

Rashid smiled back at her. “Of course. But perhaps I could be of some help. I know the President personally, and a little friendly persuasion always makes the wheels turn more smoothly.”

“That would be very kind of you.”

“Nothing at all,” he said. “I’d be happy to do it.”

Bonai’s face grew more serious. “You understand that I am fully in support of Moonbase’s independence, don’t you?”

“Of course. But you won’t mind if I try to convince you otherwise?”

“You can try.”

“You see, I have believed for many years that the true future of Masterson Corporation lies in the development of fusion power.”