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Moonwar gt-7

Page 16

by Ben Bova


  Her smile faded, her face grew serious. “Unfortunately, the aquaculture project has been put on hold while Moonbase’s leaders and the political leadership of the United Nations discuss independence for Moonbase.”

  The camera panned slowly across the farm’s rows of hydroponics tanks as Edith continued:

  “Moonbase can feed itself. Even though no spacecraft has been allowed to land here for a week—except for the Peacekeeper troops who attempted to seize Moonbase—the men and women of this community on the Moon are self-sufficient. The question before the world’s leaders now is: Will Moonbase’s determination to be free be allowed to flower into true independence?”

  The camera stopped on Brudnoy’s little flower bed.

  “This is Edie Elgin, at Moonbase.”

  “We’re out,” said the camera woman, lowering the minicam and its awkward prompter screen.

  “Good work,” Doug said, reaching out to shake Edith’s hand.

  “And I didn’t mention nanomachines once, did I?” Edith said, grinning back at him.

  “You did a great job,” Doug said.

  Edith’s grin faded. “Now I’ve got to get the suits to run the damned thing.”

  Still clutching her hand, Doug started toward the airtight hatch that led out of the farm. “I’ve got an idea about that.”

  “Oh?”

  “You talk to Atlanta, I’m going to talk to Kiribati.”

  Tamara Bonai was on the rooftop of the Tarawa Kiribati Hotel and Casino when Doug’s call came through. As chairwoman of the board of the Kiribati Corporation, her responsibilities to her people were many and weighty. She knew that the Americans and Europeans regarded her people as childish islanders and regarded her as little more than a figurehead, an attractive front for the real power behind the corporation: Masterson Aerospace and its board chairman, Ibrahim al-Rashid.

  Until the Moonbase crisis rose up like a sudden typhoon, Bonai had been content to be regarded as a figurehead. Kiribati Corporation was making good profits from its ownership of Moonbase, where the diamond Clipperships were manufactured for sale all over the world, and from its hotels and casinos, scattered across a dozen islands in the broad Pacific. A strange combination, nanomanufacturing on the Moon and resort hotels on tropical islands, but no stranger than other corporations that took their profits wherever they could find them.

  Her father had bequeathed the corporate responsibilities to her. The old man had spent as many years as he could stand behind a desk; finally he had declared his early retirement and gone off to fish and play with his grandchildren. Tamara, the youngest of his five daughters and the only one still unmarried, inherited his desk.

  With it came gradually building pressure from the United Nations to force Kiribati to sign the nanotech treaty. Knowing that it would mean the death of Moonbase, Bonai resisted as long as she could, looking to Masterson and the other international corporations for help. They gave none. She was especially surprised, even hurt, that Rashid stayed aloof from the struggle with the U.N. There were raging arguments in the Masterson Corporation board of directors. Joanna Brudnoy fought for Moonbase’s survival. But Rashid insisted that the nanotech treaty was unavoidable; sooner or later they would have to obey it.

  Now Moonbase had defied Faure and the Peacekeepers. They had declared their independence, a move that Bonai supported with all her heart.

  Is it because of Doug that I want Moonbase to win? she asked herself. She had never seen Douglas Stavenger in the flesh; they had never been closer than the Moon’s distance since they’d first met. Their only contact had been through videophones or virtual reality links. Yet she felt that Doug was important to her; she could fall in love with him some day.

  She sat at a table near the railing that edged the roof and looked out at the sparkling ocean and the surf breaking on the reef beyond the island’s white sand beach. One of the hotel’s small army of assistant managers brought a phone to her and placed it softly on the table.

  “Mr Stavenger is calling from Moonbase,” the young man said.

  Bonai thanked him and activated the phone with the touch of a manicured finger. Doug’s earnest, handsome face filled the tiny screen as she worked the receiver plug into her right ear.

  “Tamara, did you look at the video we beamed down to you a couple of hours ago?” Doug asked immediately.

  “Yes. The Peacekeeper officer killed himself, didn’t he?”

  She glanced out at the ocean again as she waited for his response, thinking that he never called except on business. We have no personal relationship, she told herself. It’s never even entered his mind.

  “Global News Network is having difficulty deciding whether they want to air it not,” Doug said.

  “I understand that they are leaning over backwards to support Faure,” Bonai replied, “although I don’t see what good it will do them.”

  A boy was spearfishing for octopus out in the shallows by the reef, she saw. He lunged and pulled a pulpy tangle of tentacles out of the water on the end of his spear. It writhed helplessly, no larger than his hand. He bit its head and the writhing immediately stopped. She wished she could be out there too, having fun. With Doug.

  “We’re talking to the head of the network and trying to make a case for fairness, balanced reporting and all that,” Doug said. Without waiting for her to reply, he added, In the meantime, it occurred to me that Kiribati might broadcast the video in your hotels—maybe even bounce it off your commsats so the rest of the Pacific nations can see it.”

  She frowned slightly. “But isn’t the video the property of Global News? Wouldn’t our airing it cause copyright problems? To say nothing of the U.N.’s reaction.”

  This time she watched Doug’s face as she waited. He looked so earnest, so determined. “Yes, it probably would cause a flap. But we’ve got to show the world what really happened here!”

  “Ah,” she said, understanding.

  Doug was continuing, “We need air time, Tamara! We need to tell the world that we’ve declared independence and we’re serious about it and we didn’t kill that Peacekeeper captain. Especially in the United States, we need to get our side of the story to the people.”

  “And this will force the issue. I see.”

  For nearly three seconds she waited. Then Doug asked, “Will you do it for us, Tamara? Will you help us?”

  “On one condition,” she replied.

  She enjoyed watching his face turn perplexed.

  “One condition? What is it?”

  “That after all this is over you come here to Tarawa and go fishing with me.”

  He smiled at her once he heard her words. “You’ve got a deal!” Doug said fervently.

  DAY EIGHT

  “This is intolerable!” Joanna was raging. “We’ve been kept in quarantine for three days now!”

  The image of the U.N. flunkie on her phone screen seemed serenely unperturbed, as bland and inflexible as a wax dummy.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Brudnoy,” he said in an infuriatingly soft voice, “but the quarantine is for your own safety. You have no idea how strongly public opinion feels about the killing of Captain Munasinghe. If you were allowed out without our protection, it could be quite dangerous for you.”

  Joanna glanced up from the screen to her husband, stretched out on the couch across the room. Lev knows how to accept imprisonment, she thought. It must be in his Russian genes.

  But to the image in the phone screen she said, “Now look. I’m perfectly capable of arranging my own security. I could have a small army of bodyguards here in Corsica in a few hours if you’d allow me to make a phone call back to my corporate headquarters in Savannah.”

  “Aren’t you comfortable in your quarters?” the bureaucrat asked. “Our instructions were to see that you had the very best suite—”

  “The best suite in your jail!” Joanna spat.

  “Really, Mrs Brudnoy…”

  “Your damned medical tests have shown we’re not infest
ed with nanobugs. I don’t care what your so-called security risks are. I want to get out of here!”

  “I’m afraid—” The bureaucrat’s vapid expression suddenly changed. He blinked several times and a small knot of anxiety appeared between his brows. “One moment, please.”

  The phone screen went blank.

  Joanna wanted to scream. She looked over at her husband. “Lev, how can you just lie there?”

  “I am planning our escape,” he said, quite seriously. “All we need is a tunneling machine.”

  Before Joanna could reply the screen chimed and Georges Faure’s face appeared, scowling like a miniature thundercloud.

  The newscast from Kiribati came through while Faure was in his office discussing economic controls over international air traffic. He did not have the luxury, then, of demolishing the furniture or any other way of venting his fury.

  He dismissed his underlings and watched the newscast alone, his anger and blood pressure rising with each second. There was Captain Munasinghe, screaming uselessly at his troops as they ingloriously ran away from Moonbase’s garage. There was Munasinghe, obviously in a fit of hysteria, fumbling with a grenade and charging through the wide-open airlock. And there was Munasinghe, killed by his own grenade.

  Idiots! Faure fumed silently. Who allowed this to happen?

  He banged a chubby fist on his phone console and demanded to be put through to Edan McGrath, owner of Global News. But even before the electronics could make the connection he cancelled the call.

  It will do no good, Faure told himself. The cat has escaped the sack. Whether or not McGrath has gone back on his promise to me no longer matters. Neither of us can put the cat back inside now.

  Yet he made a mental note to work more closely with the New Morality zealots in Washington who wanted to put more limits on the news media.

  Breathing deeply in a vain attempt to calm himself, Faure put through a call to Corsica, instead of Atlanta.

  By the time Joanna Brudnoy’s surprised face appeared on his desktop phone screen, Faure had almost regained his self-composure.

  “Madame Brudnoy,” he said as pleasantly as he could manage.

  “Mr Faure,” she snapped back. Obviously she was not happy at being detained in Corsica.

  “It has come to my attention that you wish to return to your home,” Faure said.

  Joanna cocked a brow at him. “I didn’t come back to Earth to sit in a Corsican jail cell, no matter how nicely furnished it may be.”

  “I quite understand,” said Faure, “and I agree. Your detention has been a sad error on the part of certain over-anxious members of my staff. I apologize most humbly.”

  Joanna looked totally unconvinced.

  Faure went on, “I am giving orders this instant that you are to be released and provided transportation for whatever destination you wish.”

  Warily, Joanna replied, “We’ve been given to understand that we’ll need some hefty security because of public resentment over the Peacekeeper’s death.”

  Faure made himself nod reluctantly. “Alas, that may be true, Madame.”

  “If you don’t mind,” said Joanna, “I’d rather provide my own security. And my own transport, too.”

  “Of course! Whatever you wish.”

  The woman looked suspicious. Faure made himself smile at her as he thought, With a bit of luck, some fanatic will assassinate her.

  Joanna mumbled her thanks to Faure and broke the phone link. Looking up from the screen, she saw that Lev was already on his feet.

  “We’re free to leave,” she said, not quite believing it.

  Lev scratched at his beard. “Something’s changed Faure’s mind. I wonder what it was?”

  Joanna had no answer.

  “Do you think Rashid got to him, at last?”

  With an angry shake of her head, Joanna replied, “No. I think Rashid was very happy to keep us bottled up here. I think he’s going to be badly shaken up when we arrive in Savannah. At least, I intend to shake the little rat as hard as I can.”

  DAY TEN

  He hasn’t been alone for more than five minutes, the mercenary grumbled to himself. I don’t mind taking him out in front of witnesses if I have to, but it’d be better to get him alone, make it look like an accident or something natural, like a heart attack.

  He almost laughed to himself. Heart attack. The kid’s twenty-five years old and healthy as a horse. It’s going to have to be an accident.

  Plenty of places for an accident to happen, he reasoned. Might have to take out a whole lot of people, though. Knock out the air pumps or rig an explosion in one of the labs.

  He hasn’t gone out on the surface since this thing started. It’d be easy to get him when he’s in a spacesuit. Or maybe in the airlock. Christ, I’m starting to grasp at straws! Why’s it so fucking tough, knocking off one guy?

  Because you don’t want to do it, he answered himself. Because you really admire the kid. He’s everything you could’ve been if you’d been born different.

  Yeah, sure. And I could fly if I had wings. The facts of the matter are that you’ve been assigned to decapitate the leadership here and this Stavenger kid is the leadership. Sooner or later the Peacekeepers are going to come back in force and either take this base or flatten it. If you haven’t done your job by then you’re dead. Either you get killed in the battle or they drag you back to headquarters, a failure. And you know what that means. Better to get yourself killed trying to do your job.

  He tried to calm himself and think his problem through. The only time Stavenger’s alone inside the base here is when he sleeps. And he hasn’t been doing much sleeping, the past ten days. Conferences all the time. He’s always got a gaggle of people around him.

  Maybe tonight, though. He’s got to sleep sometime. Maybe I’ll walk him to his quarters and do him there and get it the hell over with.

  “All right,” Doug said, standing on a table in The Cave. “This your meeting. Let’s hear what you have to say.”

  Almost the entire population of Moonbase was jammed into The Cave. Only a skeleton crew was left on duty at the monitoring center, and they were piped into this meeting through the base intercom. The dinner shifts were finished. The other tables and chairs had been pushed against the far wall so everyone could gather into the space. From his vantage atop the table, Doug saw their faces focused squarely on him. They were standing shoulder-to-shoulder; the only empty spots on the floor of the big cafeteria were the little squares of grass.

  Edith Elgin, now in a Moonbase-issue white coverall, stood off to one side, where she had set up both her minicams on tripods to record the meeting.

  Jinny Anson was standing in the front row at Doug’s feet. She asked, “Well, are we independent or not?”

  The acoustics in The Cave were good enough so that she didn’t need amplification.

  Doug answered, There’s been no confirmation of our declaration of independence from the U.N. or any recognition by any country on Earth.”

  “Great,” someone sneered.

  “Physically, though,” Doug went on, “we’re showing that we can exist independently of supplies from Earth. The U.N. hasn’t allowed a flight here since the Peacekeeper mission took off. We’re under siege.”

  “Big deal.’.

  “Wait a minute,” one of the women asked. “You mean we can’t go back Earthside if we want to?”

  “I don’t know,” Doug said. “I’m sure we could arrange with Faure for transport to take people back Earthside, if there’re enough who want to leave to make a flight necessary.”

  “What about us?” asked the manager of the Canadian dance troupe.

  Doug lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Until we can negotiate your return Earthside, you’ll have to remain here as our guests, I’m afraid.”

  “But we have contractual obligations! Dates in a dozen cities!”

  “I can let you call Faure yourself, or your government in Ottawa,” Doug suggested. “Unfortun
ately, no one is returning our calls.”

  “I don’t want to be stuck here forever!” another voice called out.

  “It won’t be forever,” Doug said, with a grin. “It’ll just seem that long.”

  “My son’s birthday is next week.”

  Doug made a can’t be helped shrug.

  “How soon can I launch my survey satellite to the Farside?” asked Zoltan Kadar. He had pushed his way to the front row, Doug noticed.

  “That’s a good question,” Doug replied, stalling for time to think. “We’ll have to work it out with the logistics program, to see if your launch will use any supplies that we might want to hold onto, in case this siege goes on for a while.”

  “All I need is rocket propellant and some electricity,” Kadar shot back.

  His rocket would be propelled by powdered aluminum and liquid oxygen, both extracted from the regolith and both in plentiful supply, Doug knew.

  “We’ll see,” he said to Kadar.

  “What’re Lev and Joanna doing?” a man’s voice asked from the crowd.

  They went Earthside to negotiate face-to-face with Faure and the rest of the U.N. leadership,” Doug said.

  “Have they met with Faure yet?”

  “Not yet. They were detained at the Peacekeeper base in Corsica for a couple of days, but they’re back in Savannah now. She should be meeting with Faure in a few days, at most, I guess.”

  “How is this thing going to be settled? Are we going to be an independent nation or will the U.N. take us over?”

  “It won’t be the U.N.,” Doug said. “It’s starting to look as if Yamagata is really behind this whole business. If we lose, then it’ll be Yamagata Corporation that takes over Moonbase.”

  “You mean this whole thing is a fight between corporations?”

  “No,” Doug snapped. “That is not what I mean. This crisis is a fight between our right to live and work the way we want to, and a power grab by the U.N. and/or Yamagata Corporation. The question is: Do you want to keep on living and working the way you have been, or do you want to be shipped back Earthside without a job?”

 

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