David Pedreira: Gunpowder Moon

Dechert shook his head. “So we start a goddamned war?”

“You think I’m agreeing with this lunacy? I’m just painting the picture for you, Dechert, because you’re not very good at looking at things from more than six feet above the ground.”

“So paint away,” Dechert said. “This crazy bastard who used to head up the OEA, Admiral Parks, he ran some kind of clandestine group that planted Thatch on the Moon three years ago, just in case they needed to drum up a war with the Chinese—by killing our own people? Do you know how insane that sounds?”

Yates nodded. “Of course it’s insane, but I doubt everything was as preplanned as you suggest. And have you forgotten how insane things have been on Earth for the last ten years? Do you think all the fear, all the insecurity that came out of the Max just fades away? Did you think our leaders would react well to becoming a secondary power?”

Dechert shook his head. “So what did they get out of it? What could they possibly have gotten out of their own gold getting blown up on the Moon?”

“I don’t know. A pause, maybe. A window for Europa to be based, and the mining operations in the Belt to start turning a profit. Probably, more than anything, they wanted to tell China they weren’t going to go quietly.”

“And if the whole thing blew up into a war on Earth?”

“Oh, I’m sure they had those chances calculated down to a percentage point. My guess is, they found the risk acceptable.”

Dechert could feel his face getting hot. He took a drink and tried to keep his voice down. “Well, I don’t find it acceptable. And I’m not going to sit by and watch Parks and Foerrster and whoever else ran this thing quietly retire to their mansions on the Chesapeake Bay or their safe houses in the Solomon Islands. I told you I want a reckoning. Those bastards killed Cole. They damned near killed my entire team.”

Yates chuckled, then held up a hand when he saw Dechert was about to blow.

“Easy. I’m not laughing about Cole or anything else that happened up here. I lost people, too, and I won’t soon get over it. I’m laughing at your naïveté. If Thatch was right about anything, it was that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this: Do you really think a three-star admiral was the last person to sign off on a plan to stage a lunar conflict with China?”

“Baby me, Yates. I’m still not getting you.”

“Fine.” Yates stared at Dechert as he ran a finger along the rim of his tumbler. “Did you know that Admiral Parks and the president are both ring knockers?”

“Come again?”

“Ring knockers, Dechert. Naval Academy graduates. They were in the same class. I understand they roomed together as plebes.”

Dechert sat back and took it in. “What… you’re saying the president of the United States did this?”

“Well, I doubt that he knew all the details, and I’m sure you won’t find a written order anywhere, plausible deniability being what it is, but yes. It’s a pretty safe bet that a lunar war wasn’t initiated without his say-so.” Yates leaned forward. “In other words, this is no conspiracy of middle managers, Dechert. And that’s why I’m trying to get you to stop tilting at windmills.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You’re surprised?” Yates asked. He stared at Dechert again and took another sip of his whiskey. “We’re not talking about some piddling oil field under the North Atlantic, Dechert. This is about the long-term rights to a power supply that could fuel the Earth for a thousand years, and perhaps beyond. We’re talking about the gateway to Jupiter and Uranus and the Kuiper Belt. Who knows? Whoever wins this treasure could be the first to reach Epsilon Eridani fifty years from now, and colonize the stars a hundred years after that.”

He stood up and stretched, putting his hands behind his back and strolling around the desk. “How many kingdoms fell in antiquity trying to win the Silk Road or the spice routes from Asia? Silk and salt? Those are trinkets compared to helium-3, Dechert, the childhood toys of feckless princes.”

“That was thousands of years ago, Yates,” Dechert said. He had heard this argument in a strikingly similar way from Lin Tzu, and it still irritated him. “I was hoping we could take into account some form of human evolution.”

“Oh? Then you’re a damned fool. Let me give you the real picture, Dechert. We are still the beast, and we always will be. And all this stuff that we fight over—power, money, territory, helium-3—it’s little more than a carcass on an African plain. A more refined version of life and death in the animal kingdom.”

Dechert finished his drink and put his glass down on Yates’s desk, ignoring the nearby coaster. He wanted to say that settling space could have changed all of that, that people could have set a new order to things when they left Earth. That they didn’t have to bring all their shit up to the heavens with them. But he only shrugged his shoulders.

“I’ll let you fight for the scraps with the rest of the hyenas, Yates. I’ve done enough for those assholes, and I want out.”

“Mmm,” Yates purred. He returned to his desk and sat down. “Which brings us to our current business. You know the spooks will find your secret file on the stream, this blind runner account that you boast of. They’ll find it and destroy it, and their current need to bow to your demands will be rendered obsolete.”

Dechert laughed. “Are those the same guys who let China steal our plans for a deep-space drive?” He caught Yates’s eyes and held them. “My guy is smarter than their guys, Yates. If he cared a little more about the spoils you speak of, Quarles would probably be running the entire show by now. They’ll never find his program.”

“You’re wrong, Dechert. Governments may be stupid and clumsy, but they have the advantage of brute force.” Yates straightened his jacket. “Listen, I’ve gone to the mat for you on this thing. I’ve even threatened them with my own personal treason if anything happened to you or your team. I like the idea of you being alive out there beyond the Asteroid Belt—the last idealist in the solar system. But you have to follow my lead on this, or I’ll cut you loose like a torn sail.”

The two stared at each other for a few seconds, not speaking. Dechert relented. “Fine, what’s the proposal?”

Yates sighed. “Simple. You hand over your little video of Thatch. You and your crew sign the mother of all nondisclosure agreements, and then you get Europa. Burling and Jenner are dead, so I can make the argument that you’re the next team up. They’ll like the idea of you being very far away, and it won’t be hard to pitch the value of you running the mining operations on Jupiter. You’ve always been a hell of a digger.”

He put his palms on the table. “I can’t promise you much about the world peace thing, but if it helps, rumor has it we’re already talking to China about a five-year ban on weapons on the Moon.”

“And Cole? Lin Tzu? Who pays for the lives that were taken?”

Yates shrugged. “I don’t know, Dechert. If I had to guess, I’d say no one. You hurt them, but this isn’t a beast that you or I can bring down. Even if you went full disclosure with your video of what happened at Yangel’, they’d come up with a way to wriggle out of it. When it comes down to it, most people on Earth are still too worried about food to give two nickels about what happens on the Moon.”

They locked eyes again as Yates slurped a piece of ice into his mouth and rolled it around his tongue. Dechert nodded and stood up.

“I’ll do it, Yates, but between you and me, this thing isn’t over. Someday it will get out.”