by Allen Steele
Billy was about to climb into his moonsuit. He thought about it a moment, then grabbed the bar above his head. "No suits," he replied, doing a chin-up while withdrawing his legs from his outfit. "We can move faster that way."
My thoughts exactly. Moonsuits would be unnecessary if we were going to remain within Apollo's underground levels, and wearing them would only slow us down. So, I had a tech come by to help me out of my suit, then I picked up my carbine and joined Billy at the ready-room door. We took a few seconds to grab a couple of headsets from a locker and do a quick radio check with MainOps, then we set out for the south end.
Once we were past the shelter, we entered the point in Apollo's subsurface labyrinth where the corridors had been blacked out to preserve power during the siege. I found a couple of flashlights in an emergency locker, though, and once we switched them on, we were able to locate the stenciled wall signs pointing the way to Airlocks 1 through 4. Unfortunately, we didn't also find one of the electric carts used by maintenance crews to move through the base; apparently they had been parked somewhere else. We would have to make our way on foot. I was glad we'd left our moonsuits behind; they would have been cumbersome in the narrow corridors.
Billy and I said little to each other as we headed for the south end. It had been a long time since we'd been foes, but we hadn't really become friends either. I owed him for getting me through Ranger training, but I hadn't forgotten the way he'd treated me and the other outcasts--particularly Eddie--when we'd first arrived on the Moon. Nor had Billy ever apologized for the things he'd said and done back then; he stopped acting a jerk, but that didn't mean he wasn't still one. So, while I was willing to work with him in the Rangers, I hadn't yet figured out whether I could trust him.
The air became colder as we moved away from the inhabited areas of the underground, and every now and then we'd come to a pair of pressure doors which had been shut. One of us would quickly check the adjacent wall gauge to make sure that there was pressure on the other side, then we'd use our wristbands to unlock the doors. We did this six times before we reached the corridor leading to Airlocks 1 through 4, and when the final pair of doors quietly slid back into the walls, we immediately realized that we were no longer alone.
Until then, the only illumination we'd seen had been wall gauge readouts or the beams of our flashlights. When the doors parted, Billy and I saw something new: about fifty feet down the corridor, a glowing rectangle seemed to hover in midair. As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was: the window of an inner door leading to an airlock ready-room.
Someone was in there, all right.
Billy and I glanced at each other. Neither of us spoke, but instead we raised our guns and switched off our lights. Then we crept down the corridor, passing Airlock 4 as we carefully approached Airlock 3.
Upon reaching the airlock, we discovered that the inner door was shut. I inched closer to the window, ducked down low, then slowly raised my head to peer through the window. The ready room was vacant, but the door leading to the airlock was half-open. I checked the wall gauge next to me; neither room had been depressurized. Or at least not yet; a quick glance at the suit racks, and I saw that one of the moonsuits was missing.
I looked at Billy and nodded. He nodded back, then grasped the door handle with his free hand. The door came open, but not without a faint creak of hinges that, in the silence of the darkened corridor, sounded as loud as a rusted cogwheel. I winced and Billy swore under his breath, and we both froze, but nothing moved on the other side of the airlock inner door.
We waited another moment or two, then slowly stepped into the ready-room, walking on tiptoes with our carbines raised to firing position. Step by careful step, we made our way to the airlock. We'd almost reached the inner door when we heard a quiet voice from the other side:
"Mole Man to Beta Team...Beta Team, this is Mole Man...standing by for insertion...do you copy? Over."
"Aw, dammit!" Billy snarled, so loudly that he could just as well have used a bullhorn. Before I could stop him, he slammed the door the rest of the way open and barged straight into the airlock, pointing his carbine at the figure standing near the outer door.
"Uncle Don," he yelled, "what the hell are you doing?"
Caught by surprise, Donald Hawthorne turned around so fast that he almost tripped over his own feet. He wore the missing moonsuit, although he hadn't closed his helmet faceplate, and in his left hand was a small unit that could have only been an encrypted short-wave transceiver. He stood within hand's reach of the airlock control panel, and propped against the wall was the cane he was still using to get around.
"Billy." Hawthorne stared at his nephew, his eyes wide with...I wasn't sure what. Astonishment? Fear? Maybe just a bit of shame? "What are you...?"
"You know damn well why I'm here." Billy's voice was taut with anger. He didn't even notice that I'd come up beside him, my own gun raised as well. "And it's pretty obvious why you're here, too."
"No, Billy." Hawthorne slowly shook his head. "This isn't what it looks like. I'm just..."
"Checking the airlock to make sure it's shut?" I couldn't help myself; I was almost as mad as Billy. "There's a Ball North squad waiting just outside. Tell me you didn't know that."
Hawthorne gave me a mean look, but didn't bother with any more denials. He knew that we knew why he was there. And although he could have punched the EMER. EVAC. button which would have jettisoned the outer doors and instantly voided the airlock, I knew he wouldn't. Doing so would have killed me, but also his nephew as well. He was wearing a moonsuit; we weren't.
Instead, he turned his gaze toward Billy.
"You know what to do." His voice was low and menacing. "Put this little twit down."
Hearing this, it felt as if every nerve in my body had suddenly turned to ice. My gun was pointed at Mr. Hawthorne and so was Billy's...but I'd seen Billy play moonball, and I knew how quick he could be. In an instant, he could turn his gun on me and blow my head clean off my neck. And sure enough, his eyes twitched in my direction, as if calculating the distance between the two of us.
I'll never know what thoughts ran through his mind in that moment. But in those seconds that seemed much longer, he came to a decision that probably haunted him for the rest of his life.
"Jamey," he said, so quietly that I barely heard him, "call MainOps and tell the Chief we've found someone down here trying to open the door."
Mr. Hawthorne stared at him. "Billy, don't do this..."
"Shut up." Billy's gun remained leveled at his uncle. "Just back away from the airlock and drop the radio."
Donald Hawthorne didn't respond. He regarded his nephew with eyes that seemed to burn. When I was sure that Billy wasn't going to obey his uncle, I raised my hand to my headset. "MainOps, this is Ranger Barlowe," I said. "We've...we've got a situation in Airlock 3. Please send a backup team. Over."
The Chief's voice came over: "Copy that, Jamey. What's going on down there?"
I couldn't bring myself to explain. "Just hurry up and send someone." I left the mike open, though, so that he could hear what I was saying. "Mr. Hawthorne, drop the radio and get away from the hatch."
The radio fell from Mr. Hawthorne's hand. It broke apart as it hit the mooncrete floor, but he didn't seem to notice. "Billy," he said, raising his hands unnecessarily, "I cannot believe that you'd ever stoop to treason."
"I'm not a traitor," Billy replied. "I'm a Ranger."
Billy and I held Mr. Hawthorne at gunpoint until two Rangers in moonsuits arrived at Airlock 2. Accompanying them were Mr. Garcia and--much to my surprise--Mr. Porter. By then, Billy's uncle was a broken man, his anger replaced by humiliation, unable to look his nephew in the eye. I had no sympathy for Mr. Hawthorne, yet I couldn't help but feel sorry for Billy. Of all the people to catch his uncle, it was sadly ironic that he'd have to be the one.
In hindsight, it wasn't surprising that Mr. Hawthorne had done this. He'd always been opposed to both the embargo and the refusal to surrender Apollo, claiming that it was
treason against the United States. When Mr. Porter questioned him, he confessed that he'd swiped the transceiver from the mining crew; once he'd used it to get in touch with Ball North, they coordinated a sneak attack in hopes of taking control of Apollo.
Mr. Porter and Mr. Garcia stepped away from us and spoke quietly for a couple of minutes. Then they came back to Mr. Hawthorne and gave him a choice: he could leave Apollo right then and there, or he could stay and face everyone whom he'd betrayed. Donald Hawthorne quickly made up his mind. Borrowing my headset, he contacted his pals waiting outside and told them that he was coming out alone. Then Mr. Garcia got on the line and told the Ball North strike leader that they were opening the airlock, but that several Rangers would be standing just inside and that they'd shoot anyone they happened to see.
The goons got the message. No shots were fired when Airlock 2 was opened. Mr. Hawthorne left Apollo without a final word to anyone, not even Billy. The last we saw of him, he was hobbling on his cane back to the Duke with the Ball North team.
I tried to talk to Billy, but he didn't want to discuss the matter. He walked back to the shelter in silence.
That was Ball North's last attempt to take over Apollo. For the next six hours, nothing moved outside the city. No more mercenaries came our way. Then, suddenly and with no further communication, the Duke lifted off from beyond the hills east of the colony. MainOps tracked the freighter as it ascended to low orbit; it swung once around the Moon, then its main engine fired and it headed back to Earth.
Just like that, the siege came to end.
It was unbelievable how long and loud everyone in the shelter cheered when Mr. Porter announced that the enemy was gone. All around me, people hugged each other, danced, yelled and screamed in delight. Of course, it was always possible that the White House might dispatch another strike force to the Moon, one better equipped and more determined than Ball North. For the time being, though, victory was ours, and it tasted sweet.
Yet our triumph wasn't complete, or without cost. Fifteen people had died during the invasion, including those who'd been killed defending Cabeus Station. The crater dome was still damaged, so most of Apollo was uninhabitable until it could be repaired; until then, we'd have to continue living like rats in a cellar. And there had been no further contact from anyone on Earth. The loss of the communications satellite had severed our broadband links, and there hadn't been any further transmissions since President Shapar's ultimatum. We didn't even know for certain whether anyone had picked up the speech I'd made; the only response was silence.
So we did the only things we could do. We recovered our dead and temporarily entombed them in an underground storage area, with Mr. Porter leading a memorial service in their honor. We took care of those who'd been injured; most were on the way to recovery, and a few had already left the infirmary. And then we rolled up our sleeves, put on our moonsuits, and began the long, back-breaking business of rebuilding Apollo.
I was among those who entered the solarium for the first time since the attack, and it was awful to see what had happened. It was as if a tornado had ripped across the crater floor. The sudden decompression had torn apart the entire solarium, tearing up grass, gardens, and trees, then flash-freezing everything that hadn't been blown through the hole in the western side. Most of the livestock had been evacuated to the shelter, but a few didn't make it, and none of the songbirds had survived; their bodies lay everywhere. Most of the apartments in the crater wall were undamaged, since emergency pressure doors had come down when the blowout occurred, but the schools were in ruins, along with most of the other free-standing structures on the crater floor.
I didn't visit Ag Dome 2. I just didn't have the heart to go looking for Eddie's body. But Melissa surprised me by volunteering for that duty. She felt like she owed it to him. When she got back, she held Nina in her arms and cried for a long time.
I saw Hannah only occasionally. Both of us were too busy to do anything else besides have lunch now and then. Besides, privacy was scarce, and we'd become all too aware of the fact that curious eyes turned our way whenever the two of us were together. Perhaps it was only inevitable that, even if the invasion hadn't been forced everyone into the shelter, people would've learned that the former First Daughter had a new boyfriend. Neither of us were comfortable with the attention being paid to us, but there was nothing we could do about it.
At least, so I thought.
Four days after the Duke lifted off, that evening's vid was an obscure movie from the late 20th century called Moon Zero Two. The Apollo High kids decided to get together to watch it. Now that the crisis was over, we had a little more time to see each other again, and we wanted to get away from the adults for a little while.
So we claimed a spot over to one side of the room where we could rest our backs against the wall. As a bonus, there was also a support column that would hide us from most of the room. We dragged our sleeping cushions over there and put them close together, and cold-shouldered anyone older than eighteen who tried to sit with us. It had been weeks since the last time we all had been in the same place at the same time; the adults seemed to figure out that we wanted to be left alone, and so they gave us our space.
Hannah and I sat together near the edge of the group. We carefully maintained a couple of inches of distance between us until the lights went down, just in case anyone happened to look our way, but even before the opening credits were over I'd put my arm around her and she'd curled up against me. Nicole favored us with a sly smile and a wink, Melissa stared at me until I glared at her and she turned away, and after that everyone decided to ignore us.
The movie was terrible. Trying to show what life out here would be like and managing to get everything wrong, now and then it was unintentionally funny, but most of the time it was just a bore. As it dragged on, though, Hannah gradually drew closer to me, until her head was on my shoulder and her arm was draped across my knee. All I had to do was turn my head a little and her face would be against mine, her mouth only an inch or two away. It wasn't long before even that distance ceased to exist.
In the middle of the scene where the space cowboys start brawling in the space saloon, Hannah suddenly pulled herself away from me and rose to her feet. For a moment I thought I'd done something wrong, but then she reached down and took my hand. She didn't say anything, nor did she need to. I got up and let her lead me from the room. Glancing back, I saw Melissa watching us go. My sister didn't say anything, yet there was a knowing smile upon her face.
There was a large storage closet just down the corridor that Apollo General had turned into a temporary surgical room. It had all the necessary medical equipment, but just then the most important thing in there was the operating table. It was narrow and not very soft, yet it was just large enough for two people. The ceiling lights went off again almost as soon we shut the door, leaving only the red and blue glow of diodes.
From nearby, we could hear the sounds of the movie, the occasional burst of laughter from the audience. Otherwise, we were alone. I started to sit on the table, but then Hannah pushed me all the way down upon its thin mattress. A second later she was on top of me, straddling my hips, her hair falling down around my face. My hands found her body in the darkness, and it was warm, tense, and eager. Her lips were soft against mine, and it wasn't long before we were fumbling at each other's clothes.
She'd just opened my shirt and I was starting to remove hers when there was an sudden uproar from the shelter, as if everyone in there was shouting at once. Both of us stopped for a second to listen, then we decided that nothing could be happening over there that was more important than what was happening in here. Yet Hannah was about to oblige me by pulling her shirt over her head when the door banged open.
"Jamey!" Melissa stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light streaming in from the corridor. "You gotta...!" Seeing what she'd just interrupted, she stopped. "Oh...sorry," she mumbled. "I didn't know...I mean..."
"What do you want?" If ther
e was ever a time that I wanted to murder my sister, this was it. Hannah hastily pushed herself off me, yanking her shirt back down. "You better have a..."
"There's a transmission coming in!" she snapped. "It's from the White House...and it's not President Shapar!"
Hannah and I stared at each other for a second. An instant later, we were off the table, straightening our clothes as fast as we could as we ran down back the corridor, Melissa right behind us.
Everyone in the shelter was on their feet, yet a silence had fallen across the room. The only thing we heard was the voice of the woman on the wall screen. It took me a moment to recognize her: Mildred Ferguson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, last seen in handcuffs as federal marshals escorted her down the front steps of the Capitol. Now she was standing behind a podium upon which was the symbol of the President of the United States.
Hannah, Melissa, and I came in after she'd begun speaking, so the first thing I heard was: "...inform you that, at 5:45 PM Eastern Standard Time today, officials from the Department of Justice, under armed escort by members of the Virginia National Guard and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, accompanied me to the White House, where we confronted President Shapar in the Oval Office. There she was informed that the United States Supreme Court, by a majority decision of six-to-three, had ruled that there were sufficient grounds for immediate removal from office for both her and Vice President O'Hanlon, pending federal investigation of charges that her administration has acted against the interests of the people of the United States..."
Hannah's hand clenched mine so painfully that my knuckles hurt. I barely noticed. My attention was fully upon the woman on the screen.
"President Shapar refused to voluntarily surrender office, so she was taken into custody by FBI agents. Vice President O'Hanlon was arrested ten minutes later when a car containing him and his aides was pulled over by District of Columbia police while it was attempting to leave the city. By then, I was administered the oath of office by Chief Justice Marco Gonzales and sworn in as President Pro Tem, a duty I will serve while an impeachment trial is..."