“That’s what you’re doing right now, isn’t it?”
“Huh?”
“Recruiting.”
Frank chuckled. “You got me.”
“Allahu akbaaaaarrghh!”
A concatenation of white flashes twinkled between the orbiting fragments of Phobos.
“Looks like someone took a few toilet rolls with him,” Frank said. “Give that man a job.”
A second later, Mendoza felt the space around him shiver, as if the vacuum were a waterbed and someone had jumped on it. “I felt that,” he said, puzzled.
“So did I,” Frank said.
“Must be a bug,” Mendoza said. “You can’t feel shock waves in a vacuum. You’d better fix that.”
Frank did not answer.
Another tremor rolled through Mendoza’s body.
Which was one hell of a bug, actually. Since he didn’t have a BCI. And wasn’t lying in a telepresence couch. So he shouldn’t have been experiencing any sensory feedback beyond what the mask and gloves could provide.
He logged out. Sitting up on the lawn, he wrenched off his mask and headset.
A wave of noise crashed over him.
Klaxons.
Screams.
Automated voices bellowing in English and Arabic, overlapping so that neither language was intelligible.
Frank hurried around the lawn, pulling headsets off, wrenching the protesters out of immersion. He gestured for Mendoza to help. Still woozy, Mendoza just sat there, staring.
Until he felt a breath of wind touch his hair.
Wind.
In a dome, that meant only one thing.
Depressurization.
xxvii.
Mendoza did not even think about the other people still sprawled on the lawn. He bounded towards the R&D building.
A voice said, quietly but clearly, in his head: “Go back and help the others.”
Mendoza turned back, into the teeth of the wind, which was now a gale. It pulled leaves off the trees. It fluttered the dishdashas and burkas of the people still lying on the lawn. Mendoza helped to drag them out of immersion. As he hauled an obese girl to her feet, something car-sized smashed on the path outside the R&D building, right about where Mendoza would have been standing if he’d been banging on the door, trying to get in.
“That,” Frank shouted, “looked like a piece of the roof!”
The wind picked up. Mendoza could now hear its thin howl, despite the din of alarms and screams. He dragged the fat girl towards the R&D building. She blubbered, “Laa hawla wa laa quwwata illa Billaah, laa hawla …”
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” Mendoza responded. They were praying in different languages, but they were both praying for the same thing: to live. “The Lord is with thee. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners …”
Another piece fell out of the roof. It hit the cross on top of Notre Dame de la Lune and knocked it upside-down.
“ … now and at the hour of our death, amen. Hail Mary …”
Roof tiles danced in the air. They were not tiles in the Earth sense at all, but rectangles of lightweight insulating material. The wind sucked them towards the hole in the top of the dome.
“… full of grace …”
Frank led them around the R&D center. With the wind howling between the buildings, they had to fight for every step. Mendoza dragged the fat girl bodily, and her mass (he later realized) saved him from being blown away, like the other people now thrashing in the air.
There was a trapdoor in the terrace outside the cafeteria. It opened to Frank’s command, explosively. They tumbled down into a bunker where the rest of the staff had already taken refuge.
★
“Well,” Trey Hope said, “so that was the long-rumored, much-feared PLAN attack.”
The PLAN fleet in orbit around Mars had been a ruse. While humanity’s attention was fixated on it, the PLAN had launched a smaller strike force. Four nine-packs had snuck up on Luna, fully stealthed. They had disabled the PORMSnet with a wave of EMPs. The Lunar Defense Brigade had never even got off the ground. Star Force had slagged a few of the toilet rolls as they were leaving … by which time, they’d already bombed hell out of Luna. They had rained enhanced-radiation nukes on the surface cities, and deployed kinetic missiles against the underground habs.
The regolith above Marius Hills had fractured, causing shards of igneous rock, each weighing hundreds of tons, to fall into the lava tube. One of these had struck the Hopetown dome, and breached it.
Armies of repair bots had instantly leapt into action. They had wrestled a nanofiber mesh net over the breach, and then squirted liters and liters of splart on it. Air had continued to rush out while they worked, so that as it solidified, the patch bulged up like a boil from the roof of the dome.
The agony of Hopetown had lasted just under seventeen minutes.
Death toll: eighty-three, mostly people working in the building that the shard had fallen on top of, plus a few who had been sucked out of the dome to their deaths.
Wounded: lots.
Traumatized: pretty much everyone.
The therapy industry was going to have a bumper year.
“But you know what I think?” said Trey Hope, a silver-bearded lion of a man, prowling the stage at an all-hands meeting on campus. “If that’s the worst they can do? Pffft.”
He raised his face to the ceiling, shook his fist.
“We’re still alive! Damn you! We’re still here!”
Laughter and cheers rang out. Mendoza applauded as wildly as anyone. His heart overflowed with gratitude for the simple fact of survival. He had gone to Mass this morning, and joined the volunteer party who scaled the steeple to restore the cathedral’s cross to its upright position.
When the clapping died down, Trey Hope got serious. He confirmed that Shackleton City had been hit much worse. Verneland had been flattened. Confirmed deaths had already mounted into the five figures, and many more were missing, presumed dead.
“They’ve asked us to take some refugees,” Trey Hope said, “and we’ve agreed, of course. I want all of you to open your hearts and your homes to our unfortunate neighbors.”
So Mendoza ended up sharing his deluxe apartment with a Coptic Christian family of eighteen, who spent their days shitting blood and getting radiation treatments.
In the D.I.E. offices, morale quickly rebounded. The King had made a commitment of S500 million in the wake of the disaster, which induced previous fence-sitters to jump on board. The elites of Luna were now united behind D.I.E. The PLAN had clearly intended to shut the project down. Screw that.
As Trey Hope said: this proves we’re doing something right.
Quibbles emerged from Earth, and then the UN passed a Security Council Resolution reaffirming the obligation of “Member States” (read: Luna) to refrain from “technological activities” that might “endanger human populations.”
The resolution was respectfully ignored. The gulf between Earth and Luna yawned wider.
Elfrida said, “See, I was right. There was nothing to worry about.”
“Huh? Forty thousand people died!” Mendoza sat crosslegged on his sofa. Behind him, in the open-plan kitchen, his refugees shuffled and muttered, considerately keeping the volume down while he was on the phone.
“Same old, same old,” Elfrida said, her face pinched.
“Shackleton City was devastated. People are still dying every day from radiation exposure.” Mendoza beckoned to the youngest of the Copts who had come to him from Shackleton City. He carefully set the small boy on his knees. “This is Gerges. He’s seven. He’s already had a couple of stem cell transfusions, but he suffered massive damage on the cellular level. His gut lining is gone. He can’t keep anything down.” The little boy snuffled and stroked the furry carebot wrapped around his left arm, which was feeding him intravenously.
Elfrida paled. “You poor little guy.” Then she added, “I didn’t mean to minimize anyone’s suffering. I just meant they didn’t
target Earth, so I was right about that, that’s all.”
“No, they didn’t target Earth!” Mendoza shifted Gerges onto the sofa beside him. Keeping his voice down so as not to frighten the boy, he leaned towards his tablet, which he’d propped up on the coffee table. “They didn’t target Earth, because they’ve already defeated Earth! They attack our moon, slaughter tens of thousands, and all the UN does is pass a Security Council resolution blaming the victim! At least Luna is fighting back!”
“Oh? I haven’t heard anything about that.”
Mendoza sucked his lips. Open mouth, insert foot. “I just meant, in principle,” he said lamely.
“Are you mixed up in something I don’t know about, John?” Elfrida’s eyes held a queer light. She was leaning on the carved balustrade of a bridge over the Tiber. “Tell me what’s going on,” she demanded.
Mendoza hesitated. “How about I come see you?” he said.
★
In the end, he wasn’t able to get away until October. D.I.E. was ramping up production of Dust at a new facility, this time right here in Hopetown, since there was no longer any need to be furtive about it. At the same time, fighter production had resumed on Mercury. The consortium had twisted the arm of the new CEO of Wrightstuff, Inc., to honor the contract his predecessor had signed. The project’s other outsourcing partner, GESiemens Inc., had come through the tragedy on Mercury relatively unscathed. They estimated that a dozen Fraggers would be complete in time for the next Mercury-Earth launch window, at year’s end. The little fighters were not powerful enough to escape the Sun’s gravity well on their own; they’d be coming aboard a hauler. Everyone at D.I.E. was eager for them to arrive, so the next phase of their campaign could begin.
Before he returned to Earth, Mendoza had thought long and hard about what he would tell Elfrida. He couldn’t talk about D.I.E., but he had to explain why he would probably not be coming back to Earth again.
The truth: he had signed up to be a Fragger pilot.
What he told Elfrida: he was going out to the Belt with the Yonezawa brothers.
As he told this story, he realized that it reflected his regrets. A great sadness afflicted him when he thought about the way Jun and Kiyoshi had vanished, taking Fr. Lynch, but not Mendoza.
He’d worn the virtual armor of a Knight of the Order of St. Benedict of Passau. Had risked his life alongside them. But in the end they hadn’t judged him worthy.
He snapped at Elfrida when she begged for more details, and hated himself for that, too.
They took that long-postponed trip to New York, with Elfrida’s therapist for a chaperone. (The therapist was a robot, and could easily be ignored.) For Mendoza it was a guilt-fueled splurge. In the Plaza Hotel, a floating wedding-cake moored on Central Lagoon, they lay in each other’s arms, mutually miserable.
“I wish you were a woman,” Elfrida said suddenly.
“I could shave my legs, if hairiness is the issue,” Mendoza pretended to joke.
“Until we met, I’d only ever slept with women. It was different.”
Mendoza had known she was with a woman before him, of course. He had spent a long time being jealous of that woman. Thankfully, Cydney Blaisze wasn’t in the picture any more. But he had not known he was Elfrida’s first boyfriend ever. His mind instantly formed the words: So I took your virginity. He had just enough sense not to say them.
“How is it different? Better, I hope.”
The reflections of lights on water wavered across the ceiling. Elfrida blurted, “The Church says that homosexuality is wrong.”
She’d been getting more and more interested in Catholicism. Mendoza was afraid she was doing it for him.
“Well, the Church says fornication is wrong, period,” he offered. “It doesn’t matter with who.”
“So we’re sinning right now.”
“Well, yeah.”
“And you’re OK with that?”
No. Yes. No, but you unbuttoned my shirt, and I forget what happened next. No, but I’ve been waiting my whole life to hold you in my arms. “No,” he said, “but I’ll go to confession tomorrow.”
“And that makes it all right?”
“No! Of course it doesn’t.” He rolled on top of her, kissed her to stop her from arguing. This was Earth, so he weighed enough to pin her down. “I’m a sinner, Elfrida.” Kiss. “I’m a selfish bastard.” Kiss. “Do as I say, not as I do.”
“Just as long as you keep on doing that.”
“This?”
“No, the other …”
“This.”
“Yes, that. That. That! Ohhh …”
But nothing had been resolved, and the next morning at breakfast, Elfrida said, “I think Lorna’s going to get off.”
Mendoza eyed her uneasily. He had been to confession already, slipping out of the hotel and back again before she woke up—he had enough self-respect to keep his word about that. “Lorna won’t get off.”
“You’ve got this childlike faith in justice,” Elfrida said darkly.
“I think I’ve just been insulted.” Mendoza loaded his plate with bacon and sausages from the breakfast buffet. In the back of his mind was the thought that this might be his last chance to eat real food.
“Pig.” Elfrida selected strawberries and kiwis from a vat of fruit salad. She was trying to lose weight, as usual.
“Why do you think Lorna’s going to get off?”
She shook her head, spooning yogurt over her fruit.
“You’re going to testify at his trial. You’re going to tell them the truth about everything that happened on Mercury. With the evidence from Gloria dos Santos’s BCI, that’ll convict him beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
Her forehead crinkled at the mention of dos Santos. “It might. But you see, I don’t think he’s ever going to come to trial.”
“It’s already on the ICJ docket!”
“Yes, but who says he’s going to show? I say he won’t. He’ll skip bail. His friends on Luna will protect him.” Her lips curled in an ugly grimace. “The guys you work for.”
“I told you, I’ve already quit.” He prayed she never found out the truth. Or at least not until the war was over and he could be named as one of those who helped to defeat the PLAN.
“Sorry; the guys you were working for. They won’t want him going on the witness stand. Who knows what would come out? So, they’ll either kill him or spirit him away.” Elfrida wandered over to the beverage station.
Mendoza came up beside her as she was ordering an espresso. “They wouldn’t do that.”
“You’re pretty defensive of them, considering that you quit because you realized they were all about the money.”
Mendoza felt himself getting snared in his own lies. He ordered a latte with goat’s milk.
“So my guess is they’ll spirit him away,” Elfrida resumed. “Because he’s still got his expertise, and that’s worth a lot of money. If it wasn’t for the mess in Shackleton City, they probably would have done it already. But in my opinion, he deserves to die.”
“I agree.”
“It’s a shame we don’t have the death penalty anymore.”
“Well, the Church is against the death penalty, too,” Mendoza pointed out.
“I might just take a weekend trip to Luna and do it myself. I’m sure I could get to him. I know Dr. Hasselblatter and everything. I’ve got an in.” After an excruciatingly long moment, Elfrida grinned.
Filled with relief that she was joking, Mendoza took his latte and led the way to a table. He slurped foam. “Mm, pretty good.”
“Mine’s disgusting,” Elfrida said, pushing her espresso away. “I should’ve known better than to order espresso in New York. No one can make it right except Italians.”
“Let’s blow this town. Let’s go to Italy. Introduce me to your parents. Show me where you grew up.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, John, but I just want you to go.”
“What? Why?”
“You’re goi
ng, anyway, aren’t you? You’re going out to the Belt with the Yonezawas. This …” She gestured at the view of Central Lagoon, the swan boats and floating hot-dog vendors. “This is too painful. I’d rather just say goodbye and get it over with.”
Goodbye.
Mendoza hadn’t wanted to frame it like that, even to himself. But the fact was, it might be goodbye … forever.
“I love you,” he said.
“That doesn’t really make me feel better. Actions speak louder than words, you know.”
He did know that, of course. He prayed that in the future, when his actions in the war against the PLAN could be revealed, she’d understand why he had to do this.
“OK,” he said, feeling like a complete shit. “I’m leaving.”
xxviii.
Mendoza had been accepted as a Fragger pilot, but this was not the accolade it sounded like. Regardless of what Frank had said about favoring the descendants of Vikings and jihadis, the selection committee was, in fact, taking all comers. When it came time to sign on the dotted line, not many people were willing to risk their lives.
Few of the volunteers had ever flown a spaceship before, let alone a stealth fighter. But most of them had spent years of their lives playing shoot-‘em-up immersion games, which gave them a head start. Mendoza didn’t even have that. Never would he have expected that his lack of interest in sims, usually considered a sign of a rational and well-organized mind, would end up holding him back.
Frank had actually said that he was just putting Mendoza on the list as a bribe to get him to stick around after 9/29 (as they were now calling the PLAN attack on Luna).
Determined not to be left out, Mendoza did regular sessions in the training sim, but he wasn’t even in the rotation for hands-on practice with the Fragger.
The Fragger.
Until the first shipment of new fighters from Mercury arrived, there would be only one Fragger for the new cadre of pilots to train on. This was the one that Frank had been going to pilot to Mars, but hadn’t, due to the skiing accident that had broken his back. (He was fine now. When you had a nanotically reinforced skeleton, it could be fixed with a welding torch, crudely speaking.)
The Sol System Renegades Quadrilogy: Books 1-4 of the Space Opera Thriller Series Page 122