Ben Bova - Moonwar

He saw stars flashing, then nothing but darkness.

I’m dead, Wicksen thought. The nuclear warhead went off and it killed me. But why does my head hurt?

Doug and the others in the control center had been sitting tensely, waiting for Wicksen’s beam gun to disable the nuclear warhead.

The main overhead lights came on.

“What the hell?” Anson muttered loudly enough for Doug to hear.

“They’ve powered down the beam gun,” a technician’s voice said.

“Did they hit the warhead?” Doug wondered aloud.

“How could they know whether they’ve knocked it out or not?” Anson demanded. “They oughtta be shooting at it until it hits the frickin’ ground.”

Getting up from his chair, Doug called to the chief communications technician, several seats way from his own, “Can you get Wicksen for me?”

She nodded and worked her keyboard. All eyes in the control center focused on her—or on the screens showing the missile warhead streaking toward them.

“No joy,” said the comm tech.

The whole chamber shuddered. Doug felt the solid rock floor beneath his feet vibrate as if a major moonquake had struck.

“The missile hit!” a technician’s voice rang out. “Dove straight into the friggin’ ground.”

“But there wasn’t any flash,” someone said.

“Radiation counters are quiet.”

“Our nuclear reactor just went off-line,” said another technician, his voice high and quavering. “Backup power system is down.”

Doug looked from one screen to another in the insect-eye array on the console before him. It took him a few moments to realize what had happened.

“It wasn’t the nuke!” Jinny Anson’s voice sounded exultant. “They sent the conventional bomb first!”

“To check their guidance accuracy,” Doug said, his breath shuddering. He half-collapsed back onto the wheeled chair.

“And to see what we had to throw against it,” Gordette added.

Doug looked across to O’Malley. Sweat was trickling down his beefy cheeks.

“It wasn’t the nuke,” O’Malley echoed, sounding relieved, grateful.

“Yeah, okay, but they got our backup generator,” Anson said. “Now if they knock out the solar farms we’re out of it.”

“Another launch from L-1,” a comm tech announced.

’That’s the nuke,” said almost everyone in the control center, simultaneously.

Slowly, Wicksen pulled himself up to a sitting position. If I’m not dead yet I soon will be, he thought. Radiation poisoning.

Except for the throbbing pain in the back of his head, though, he felt all right. He tried to rub his eyes but his gloved hands bumped into the visor of his helmet. Feeling sheepish, he looked around. His assistant was on his knees, getting slowly to his feet.

“You okay?” Wicksen asked.

Before the man could answer, Wicksen’s helmet earphones buzzed with an incoming message. He punched the proper key on his wristpad, noting with a bit of a shock that his radiation dose patch was still a pale chartreuse.

“Wicksen here,” he said, surprised that his voice sounded so calm.

“This is Doug Stavenger,” he heard in his earphones. “What happened?”

“We didn’t have time to fix-wait a minute! Are you running on auxiliary power or not?”

“The missile took out our nuclear generator. It was a conventional warhead. Their nuke is on its way, launched four minutes ago.”

“You mean we’ve still got two hours to get this kloodge working?” Wicksen felt elated.

“Can you do it?”

Despite his cumbersome spacesuit Wicksen jumped to his feet, not so difficult a trick in the low lunar gravity. “We’ll do our best,” he cried, overjoyed at still being alive.

Killifer checked his wristwatch before starting out on his regular rounds through the house. With Rodriguez watching everything through the security cameras, Killifer wanted to make it all seem normal, dull routine. Don’t give the dumb spic any reason to think anything’s out of the ordinary.

It was a big house, and Killifer didn’t want to look hurried. He made his way from the kitchen through the dining room and living room, then into the foyer, where he carefully checked the front door to see that it was properly locked. Across the front hall and into the library, then the entertainment room, checking each of the French windows that opened onto the patio.

Unconsciously licking his lips, he started up the back stairs, past the monstrosity of a grandfather’s clock where the security team kept a pair of submachine guns stashed away. Maybe I should take one of them, he mused. But he decided against it. His pistol held fifty rounds, plenty to do the job. Besides, taking one of the stutter guns from the clock would alert Rodriguez—if he was watching the screens instead of his favorite video show. Be just my luck to have him spot me.

So Killifer passed the loudly-ticking clock on the landing and went on up to the second floor. All the bedrooms up there were unoccupied, he knew, except the master bedroom, but his job was to enter each one and check each window.

His palms felt slippery with sweat as he neared the master bedroom. Rodriguez can see me go in there, if he’s watching the screens like he’s supposed to. I’ll have to do it fast and then duck out before he figures out what’s going down. Quite deliberately, Killifer switched off the palm-sized two-way radio he kept in his shirt pocket.

At last he stood before the master bedroom’s double doors. He had memorized the electronic lock’s combination from the list kept in the security office.

Okay, he told himself, licking his lips once again. Don’t just stand around. Do it!

Swiftly he tapped on the miniature keyboard and saw its light turn green. He pushed the door open.

It was a spacious room. Lev Brudnoy law sprawled on the oversized bed, stark naked. Nothing but gray mottled skin and bones, Killifer saw, and that ratty little beard. The wall screen on the other side of the room showed a view from the Moon, the crater floor of Alphonsus, it looked like. No sound; either it was muted or nobody was saying anything from Moonbase.

“What is it?” Brudnoy said, sitting up, frowning, reaching for the bedsheet to cover himself.

Joanna was nowhere in sight. Killifer looked across the room: chaise longue, little desk and chair, a couple of upholstered chairs, bookcases, bureaus, mirrors—but no Joanna Brudnoy.

“Where is she?” Killifer hissed, sliding the pistol from his holster.

Brudnoy’s eyes widened. Killifer saw several doors: closets, all closed. And one other door, half ajar. The bathroom.

“Get out of here!” Brudnoy shouted, reaching for the phone console on the night table.

“Where is she?” Killifer yelled back, heading for the half-open bathroom door.

Brudnoy banged the red emergency button on the phone console as Killifer strode swiftly cross the bedroom carpeting.

“Joanna!” Brudnoy hollered. “Look out!”

And Killifer felt something thump against his shoulder. Whirling, he saw Brudnoy reaching for another book to throw at him, a skinny naked old man trying to stop him by throwing books.

With a wild laugh, Killifer fired twice. Brudnoy’s chest erupted in blood and he jerked back against the bed’s headboard, arms and legs flailing like a rag doll. Killifer pumped another two shots into him for good measure.

Joanna screamed. Killifer turned and saw her standing naked, frozen, in the bathroom doorway.

“Remember me?” Killifer taunted, levelling his gun at her. For a moment he thought how much fun it would be to rape her, to make her kneel to him, turn herself inside out for him, before he blew her head off. But there wasn’t time.