Ben Bova - Moonwar

She almost started to twit him about her personnel job being considered non-essential, but the dead serious expression on her husband’s face stopped her.

Instead she asked, “Is everybody getting a spacesuit?”

“Not enough to go around,” he answered, shaking his head.

“Then why do I get special treatment?”

He smiled bleakly at her. “Because you’re a special person. You’re married to me. And you’re pregnant.”

“But that means somebody else will have to go without a suit.”

His lips were a grim, pinched line. “Claire, hundreds of people here are going to go without a suit. But you’re not. Now let me show you how to put it on properly.”

She knew better than to argue with him. He’s trying to protect me, she told herself. And the baby. But if the air pressure goes down, lots of people will die here. And how long will the suit keep me?

Aloud, as she struggled into the clumsy leggings, she asked, “Where will you be when the shooting starts? Not operating the tractors, of course.”

He scowled. “No. I’ve been assigned to help Professor Zimmerman, for the sake of St Ignatius.”

“Zimmerman?”

“I think Doug Stavenger wants me to be the old man’s bodyguard.”

“Is the professor getting a suit?” Rossi asked as she tugged on the boots.

“There isn’t one in the base that’d fit him.”

“Oh dear.”

As he knelt at her feet and helped her zip the boots and leggings together, O’Malley said, “After just half a day with the old bugger, I almost wish somebody would knock him off.”

“That’s no way to talk, Nick.”

“He’s impossible.”

“He’s a genius and geniuses have their quirks.”

O’Malley made a sour face. “You know what I’ve been doing for him all morning? Collecting dust!”

“What?”

“I’ve been teleoperating a tractor all damned morning, scooping up dust off the regolith for him to experiment with.”

“That sounds crazy.”

“Tell me about it. He wants to build nanomachines that behave like dust particles, so he tells me he needs samples of dust to work with.”

Rossi wormed her arms into the suit’s torso, then popped her head through the neck ring.

“Why does he want to make nanomachines that behave like dust particles?” she asked.

“Because he’s ’way beyond quirky, that’s why. He’s outright daft.”

“It’s easy duty,” said the security chief. “Four men outside, two inside. Pretty soft, really.”

Jack Killifer sat in the stiff little plastic chair in front of the chief’s metal desk, trying hard to keep his face from showing what he was feeling inside. I’m in Joanna Brudnoy’s house! he exulted. Okay, it’s just the servants’ wing of the house, but still—here I am.

The security chief wore a tan summerweight uniform with epaulets and shoulder patches and even a couple of medals pinned above his left breast pocket. Tin soldiers, Killifer thought.

He himself was in a baggy shirt and Levis, the “uniform of the day,” as instructed.

The security chief kept glancing at the array of display screens that made up one whole wall of the bare little office. They showed security camera views of the grounds around the house, the garage, the pool area, and every room inside except the master bedroom.

“The only thing you’ve got to remember,” the chief said, swivelling his attention back and forth between the screens and Killifer, “is that she doesn’t like to see uniformed guards around the place.”

“So we dress like gardeners,” Killifer said, putting just a hint of disdain in it.

“Yeah. Both chauffeurs are on the team, of course, and the butler’s supposed to be a black belt. He carries a nine-millimeter, too. All the time.”

They had issued Killifer a brand-new Browning machine pistol: fifty rounds, either semi- or full-automatic. It still smelled of packing grease.

“But the butler only works the day shift, doesn’t he?” Killifer asked.

The chief hiked an eyebrow. “The butler works until they both go to bed. He don’t sleep until they do.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So all you’ve got to do is patrol outside, make yourself look like a gardener, and keep an eye out for strangers.”

“What about people coming up to the house in cars?”

“You don’t have to worry about that. The two inside guys take care of that. And the butler.”

One of the inside ‘guys’ was a terrific-looking redhead, Killifer had already discovered. Hard as nails, though.

“What’s she need all this security for?” he asked, probing for weak spots in the security system. “You don’t need six people and machine pistols for burglars.”

The chief shrugged carelessly. “I don’t ask and they don’t bother to let me in on their secrets. It’s a cushy job, so don’t knock it.”

Killifer shrugged back at him. “Yeah, okay, but I’d kinda like to know what I’m supposed to be looking out for.”

Eying the display screens, the chief muttered, “Religious fanatics.”

“What?”

“She’s worried about fanatics from the New Morality trying to kill her.”

“No shit?”

The chief’s tic of displeasure told Killifer that he was probably a Believer himself.

“If some religious nutcase wanted to kill her, why not just drive a car bomb into the house?”

“Not their style,” said the chief. “The fanatics do their killing face-to-face, and they don’t believe in taking out innocent people when they hit somebody. Besides, she’s in and out so much—travels all the time, really—you can’t be sure she’s home unless you actually see her.”

“Yeah,” said Killifer. “I guess that’s right.”

“Listen,” the chief said, suddenly intense, leaning across his desk to stare directly into Killifer’s eyes. “Don’t judge the New Morality movement by the actions of a few crazies. Most of those assassins are foreigners, not Americans. Fanatics.”

Killifer nodded, knowing that the chief was certainly a Believer. Wonder what he’d say if I told him I worked for the Urban Corps. And that General O’Conner his own God-almighty self has sanctioned the assassination of Joanna Brudnoy.

It had been ridiculously easy to get hired onto the Masterson security team that guarded Joanna’s house. New Morality adherents had faked his employment record in the corporation’s computer files and provided a lucrative transfer to one of the women employed in the house guard detail. Killifer had miraculously popped out of the personnel files and been taken on within two days.

The weakest link in the security system is the system itself, Killifer knew. Manipulate the system and make it work for you.

The next step is to get into the house, on the night detail, when the butler’s asleep and Joanna’s in her bedroom where there are no cameras watching.

“Well, how much of the stuff can you make?” Vince Falcone asked, his patience obviously fraying.

“How much time do I have?” asked the head of the chemistry lab.

“I don’t know.”

“Then I don’t know, either.”

“Days,” said Doug, stepping between them. “Maybe only two days, maybe a few more.”

“Two days?” the chemist gasped. She pushed back a strand of dark blonde hair from her forehead. “Only two days?”

Doug wondered where she’d been all this time. “We’re expecting the Peacekeepers’ attack before this week is out,” he said.

She looked past Doug to Falcone. “How much do you need?”

“Four tons.”

She blinked, swallowed. Then, straightening her back, she said, “We’ll have to get the processing plant devoted completely to the job.”