Moonwar gt-7

by Ben Bova

  “No traffic,” Doug said. “This morning’s LTV’s stopped at L-1. Nothing at all moving between LEO and here.”

  “Not yet,” muttered Brudnoy.

  “They wouldn’t invade us,” Joanna said firmly. “That little Quebecer hasn’t got the guts.”

  Brudnoy ran a bony finger across his short gray beard. No matter how carefully he trimmed it, the beard somehow looked shaggy all the time.

  “That little Quebecer,” he reminded his wife, “has fought his way to the top of the United Nations. And now he’s gotten the U.N. to declare us in violation of the nanotech treaty.”

  Joanna frowned impatiently. “We’ve been violating that treaty since it was written.”

  “But now your little Quebecer has obtained the authority to send Peacekeeper troops here to enforce the treaty on us,” Brudnoy continued.

  “You really think it’ll come to that?” Anson asked again, edging forward slightly in her chair.

  “Sooner or later,” Doug said.

  “They know we can’t stop using nanomachines,” Joanna said bitterly. “They know they’ll be destroying Moonbase if they prevent us from using them.”

  “That’s what they’re going to do, though,” said Brudnoy, growing more gloomy with each word.

  “Then we’ll have to resist them,” Doug said.

  “Fight the Peacekeepers?” Anson seemed startled at the thought. “But—”

  “I didn’t say fight,” Doug corrected. “I said resist.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve been studying the legal situation,” Doug said. “We could declare our independence.”

  His mother looked more irked than puzzled. “What good would that do?”

  “As an independent nation, we wouldn’t sign the nanotech treaty, so it wouldn’t apply to us.”

  Brudnoy raised his brows. “But would the U.N. recognize us as an independent nation? Would they admit us to membership?”

  “Faure would never allow it,” Joanna said. “The little Quebecer’s got the whole U.N. wrapped around his manicured finger.”

  “How would the corporation react if we declared independence?” Jinny Anson asked.

  “Kiribati couldn’t do anything about it,” said Doug.

  Brudnoy sighed painfully. “If they hadn’t knuckled under to Faure and signed the treaty—”

  “They didn’t have much choice, really,” said Doug. Looking straight at his mother, he went on, “But what about Masterson? How’s your board going to react to our independence?”

  “I’ll handle the board of directors,” Joanna replied flatly.

  “And Rashid?”

  She smiled slightly. “He’ll go up in a cloud of purple smoke. But don’t worry; even though he’s the board chairman now I can keep him in his place.”

  “Independence,” Anson murmured.

  Doug said, “We’re pretty much self-sufficient, as far as energy and food are concerned.”

  “How long is “pretty much?” Joanna asked.

  “We can go for months without importing anything from Earth, I betcha,” Anson replied.

  “Really?” Doug asked.

  She shrugged. “Condiments might be a problem. Ketchup, seasonings, salt.”

  “We can manufacture salt with nanomachines,” Doug said. “Ought to be simple enough.”

  “Where can you get the sodium and chlorine?” Anson retorted. “Not out of the regolith.”

  Doug smiled a little. “Out of the reprocessors. Recycle the garbage.”

  Anson made a sour face.

  “Could we really get along for months without importing anything from Earth?” Joanna asked.

  “Maybe a year,” Anson said. “If you don’t mind eating your soyburgers without mustard.”

  Brudnoy flexed his gnarled fingers. “Aren’t you glad that I insisted on planting onions and garlic, along with my flowers?”

  “Do you have any jalapeno peppers out at the farm?” Anson asked.

  Brudnoy shook his head.

  “A year,” Joanna mused. “This ought to be settled long before that.”

  “One way or another,” said Brudnoy morosely.

  “Pharmaceuticals might be a problem,” Doug said, turning to the wall screen on his right. With the laser he changed the display from a camera view of the empty rocket launching pads to an inventory of the base’s pharmaceutical supplies. “We’ve been bringing them up on a monthly schedule. Got a…” he studied the display screen briefly, “…three-month supply on hand.”

  “Maybe we can use nanomachines instead,” Joanna suggested. It was an open secret that her youthful appearance was due to nanotherapy that tightened sagging muscles and kept her skin tone smooth.

  “I can talk to Cardenas about that,” Anson replied.

  “And Professor Zimmerman,” Doug said.

  ’You talk to Zimmerman,” she snapped. “He always tries to bully me.”

  Brudnoy volunteered, I’ll see Zimmerman.”

  “You?”

  With a guilty smile, the Russian said, “He and I have been working on a little project together: using nanomachines to make beer.”

  “Lev!” Joanna glared at her husband.

  Brudnoy raised a placating hand. “Don’t worry. So far, we’ve accomplished less than nothing. The stuff is so bad not even Zimmerman will drink it.”

  Doug chuckled at his stepfather’s self-deprecating manner. Then he said, “Okay. Our first move is to declare independence and—”

  “How can we let anyone on Earth know we’re applying for U.N. membership if all the communications links are cut off?” Joanna asked.

  “We can talk to Earth,” Anson assured her. “Radio, TV, even laser beams if we need ’em. We don’t need the commsats; just. squirt our messages straight to the ground antennas.”

  “The question is,” said Brudnoy, “will anyone on Earth respond to us?”

  “They will,” Doug said. “Once they learn what we’re doing. And there’s always the news media.”

  “Ugh!” said Joanna.

  “Don’t knock them,” Doug insisted. “They might turn out to be our best ally in this.”

  “Our only ally,” said Brudnoy.

  “Okay, okay, so we declare independence,” Anson cut in. “Then what?”

  “If Faure refuses to recognize us we appeal to the World Court,” said Doug.

  Joanna agreed. “Tie him up legally and wait for world opinion to come over to our side.”

  “Lots of luck,” Brudnoy mumbled.

  “Do you think it’ll work?” Anson wondered.

  “It’s got to,” said Joanna.

  “Jinny,” said Doug, pointing a finger in her direction, “I want you to take over as base director.”

  “Me? Why? I haven’t been behind that desk in almost eight years!”

  Grinning at her, Doug said, “You know more about what’s going on in these tunnels than I do. Don’t try to deny it.”

  “But I’ve got the university to run,” she protested. “And what’re you going to be doing?”

  “The university’s going to be in hibernation as long as Earthside isn’t allowed to communicate with us. Your students won’t be able to talk to you.”

  “But you…?”

  “I’ve been studying military history ever since Faure was elected secretary-general,” Doug said. “One thing I’ve learned is that we’re going to need somebody to give his undivided attention to this crisis. I can’t be running the day-to-day operation of Moonbase and handle the war at the same time.”

  “You said it’s not a war,” Joanna said sharply.

  “Not a shooting war,” Doug admitted. “Not yet. But we’ve got to be prepared for that possibility.”

  “You can’t—”

  “He’s right,” Brudnoy said, interrupting his wife. “Doug should devote his full attention to this situation.”

  “And I’m gonna be base director again,” Anson said. She did not seem displeased with the idea.

&nb
sp; “So you will be our generalissimo,” said Brudnoy, pointing at Doug. “Jinny becomes base director once again. And you, dear wife,” he turned to face Joanna, “must serve as our foreign secretary, in charge of diplomatic relations with Masterson and the other corporations.”

  “And what will you be doing, Lev?” Joanna asked her husband.

  “Me?” Brudnoy’s shaggy brows climbed halfway to his scalp. “I will remain as usual: nothing but a peasant.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Anson chirped.

  Brudnoy shrugged. “I have no delusions of grandeur. But I think it will be important to keep the major corporations on our side.”

  “I’ll handle relations with Masterson Corporation,” Joanna agreed. “We’ll try to put some pressure on the government in Washington to oppose this U.N. takeover.”

  “If you can keep the board on our side,” Doug said.

  His mother raised an imperious brow. “I told you, don’t worry about the board.”

  “Or Rashid?”

  “Or Rashid either,” Joanna riposted. Turning slightly toward her husband, she added, “Rashid’s a man with real delusions of grandeur.”

  “Okay,” said Jinny Anson. “Then I’ll run the base and you, Doug, you can run the war.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Somebody’s got to—”

  “Hold it!” Doug snapped. The message icon on his left screen was blinking. Urgent message. And he saw that a cardinal red dot had cleared the swarm of low-orbit satellites around the Earth and was heading outward.

  “Message,” Doug called out in the tone that the computer recognized. His voice trembled only slightly.

  “A crewed spacecraft just lifted from the military base on Corsica,” a comm tech’s voice said. “It’s on a direct lunar trajectory.”

  “Peacekeeper troops,” Doug said.

  “Must be.”

  They all turned toward Doug.

  “So what do we do now, boss?” Jinny Anson asked.

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 114 HOURS 35 MINUTES

  “Five days,” Doug said to the woman’s image on his screen. “They’ll be here in a little less than five days.”

  Tamara Bonai frowned slightly, nothing more than a faint pair of lines between her brows. But on her ethereally beautiful face it seemed a gross disfigurement. Her face was a sculptor’s dream, high cheekbones and almond eyes; her skin a light clear teak; her long hair a tumbling cascade as lustrous and black as the infinity of space.

  Like Doug, she was seated behind a desk. Her life-sized image on the wall in front of him made it look as if Doug’s office opened onto her office on Tarawa: lunar rock and smart walls suddenly giving way to Micronesian ironwood and bamboo.

  “When I visited Moonbase,” she said, “the trip took only one day.”

  “We brought you up on a high-energy burn,” said Doug. “The Peacekeepers are coming on a minimum-energy trajectory.”

  It took almost three seconds for his words to reach Earth and her reply to get back to his office at Moonbase. Usually Doug relaxed during the interval but now he sat tensely in his padded swivel chair.

  Bonai smiled slightly. “The Peacekeepers are trying to save money by taking the low-energy route?”

  Doug forced a laugh. “I doubt it. I think they want to give us as much time as possible to think things over and then surrender.”

  Her lips still curved deliciously, Bonai asked, “Is that what you will do: surrender?”

  “No,” said Doug. “We’re just about self-sufficient now. We can get along without Earth for a long while.”

  If she was surprised by Doug’s answer, it did not show on her face. Doug wondered if anyone was eavesdropping on their conversation. It was being carried by a tight laser beam, but still the tightest beam spread a few kilometers across over the four-hundred-thousand-kilometer distance between the Earth and the Moon. The island of Tarawa was tiny, but still big enough for Rashid or someone else to pick up the beamed signal.

  “You are prepared to fight Peacekeeper troops?” she asked.

  “We’re not going to surrender Moonbase to them.”

  She seemed genuinely worried. “But they will have guns … other weapons. What weapons do you have?”

  “There isn’t even a target pistol in all of Moonbase,” Doug admitted. “But we’ve got some pretty good brains here.”

  Once she heard his words, she shook her head slightly. “You can’t stop bullets with words.”

  “Maybe we can,” Doug said. Not waiting for a response from her, he went on, “We’re going to declare our independence and apply to the General Assembly for admission to the U.N.”

  Her delay in responding to him was longer than three seconds. At last Bonai said, “It’s my fault, isn’t it? You’re in this trouble because I bowed to the U.N.’s pressure and signed the nanotech treaty.”

  “You did what was best for your people,” Doug replied. “You did what you had to do.”

  Masterson Corporation had owned and operated Moonbase from its beginning as a set of half-buried shelters huddled near the mountain ringwall of the giant crater Alphonsus. Nanotechnology made it possible for the base to grow, and begin to prosper.

  Virus-sized nanomachines scoured the regolith of Alphonsus’ crater floor, extracting oxygen and the scant atoms of hydrogen that blew in on the solar wind. Once ice fields were discovered in the south polar region, nanomachines built and maintained the pipeline that fed water across more than a thousand kilometers of mountains and craters. Nanomachines built solar cells out of the regolith’s silicon, to supply the growing base with constantly increasing electrical power. Nanomachines had built the mass driver that launched payloads of lunar ores to factories in Earth orbit.

  And nanomachines took carbon atoms from near-Earth asteroids and built Clipperships of pure diamond, Moonbase’s newest export and already its principal source of cash flow. Diamond Clipperships were not only the world’s best spacecraft; they were starting to take over the market for long-range commercial air flight on Earth.

  The United Nations’ nanotechnology treaty banned all nanotech operations, research and teaching in the nations that signed the treaty. Seven years earlier, when it became clear that the United States would sign the treaty—indeed, American nanoluddites had drafted the treaty—Masterson Corporation had set up a dummy company on the island nation of Kiribati and transferred Moonbase to the straw-man corporation. As long as Kiribati did not sign the treaty, Moonbase could legally continue using nanomachines, which were as vital to Moonbase as air.

  But the day after Tamara Bonai, chief of the Kiribati council, reluctantly signed the nanotech treaty, the U.N.’s secretary general—Georges Faure—personally called Joanna Stavenger and told her that Moonbase had two weeks to shut down all nanotech operations, research and teaching.

  Exactly two weeks later, to the very minute, all communications links from Earth to Moonbase were cut. And now a spacecraft carrying U.N. Peacekeeper troops had lifted from Corsica on a leisurely five-day course for Moonbase.

  “You have no idea of how much pressure they put on us,” Bonai said, her lovely face downcast. “They even stopped tourist flights from coming to our resorts. It was an economic blockade. They would have strangled us.”

  “I’m not blaming you for this,” Doug said. “I only called to let you know that we’re declaring our independence. As an independent nation that hasn’t signed the nanotech treaty, we’ll be able to keep on as we have been, despite Faure and his Peacekeepers.”

  She almost smiled. “Does that mean that you will continue to honor your contracts with Kiribati Corporation?”

  Moonbase marketed its diamond Clipperships and other exports to transportation companies on Earth through Kiribati Corporation.

  “Yes, certainly,” Doug said. Then he added, “As soon as this situation is cleared up.”

  “I understand,” she said. “We will certainly not object to your independence.”

  Doug smiled back at her. “Than
ks, Tamara. I knew I could count on you.”

  The three seconds ticked. “Good luck, Doug,” she said at last.

  Thanks again. I think we’re going to need all the luck we can get.”

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 114 HOURS

  Kind of a shame, the mercenary thought. They’re pretty nice people, these guys I work with. The women, too. But I won’t be hurting them. It’s the leaders I’m after. The Brudnoys and Jinny Anson and the Stavenger kid.

  Nodding as if reaffirming his mission, he went back to his work. Got to finish this job, he told himself. Can’t leave anything undone. No loose ends; no mistakes.

  The word spread through Moonbase’s corridors with the speed of sound. In workshops and offices, in living quarters and laboratories, out at the spaceport, at the mass driver, even among the handful of spacesuited men and women working on the surface, the word flashed: We’re at war. U.N. troops are on their way here.

  It’s about time, said the mercenary to himself. Years of diplomats in their fancy suits and their evasive language, farting around, trying to talk the problem to death, and now at last they’re taking action.

  He looked up from the work he was doing; he took pride in his work. No one suspected that he was a deep agent, a trained killer who had been inserted into Moonbase more than a year earlier to work his way into the community and wait for the right moment. He had been without contact from his superiors ever since he first set foot in Moonbase. He would operate now without orders.

  Cripple Moonbase. That was his mission. For a year he had studied all of Moonbase’s systems and personnel. The underground base was pathetically vulnerable to sabotage. Every breath of air, every molecule of water, depended on complex machinery, all of it run by sophisticated computer programs. Sophisticated meant fragile, the mercenary knew. A computer virus could bring Moonbase to its knees in a matter of hours, maybe less.

  There was another part of his mission. Decapitate the leadership. His superiors used words such as incapacitate and immobilize. What they meant was kill.