by Ben Bova
“Bad enough,” said Doug.
“Their main force is coming across Wodjo Pass,” Gordette said, pointing to the screen. “The second force is a lot smaller, looks like.”
“But if they disable the antennas…”
“It’ll take them an hour to get to the top of Yeager, at least.”
“But still…”
Gordette said, “Count the missile launchers. That’s their heavy artillery. Looks to me like almost all of ’em are coming through Wodjo.”
Doug studied the screens for a few moments. “Maybe the secondary force is going to head for the mass driver?”
Gordette shrugged, then said, “Whoever’s in charge of the Peacekeepers probably wants to keep the secondary force as a reserve.”
Doug wished he could believe Gordette’s assessment. He’s just trying to cheer me up, Doug thought. Trying to lighten the load. It doesn’t matter what the secondary force’s mission is, once their main group gets in trouble in Wodjo Pass, they’ll still have these other troops to attack us. With all their weapons.
Maybe Falcone was right and we ought to fry them as they come through Wodjo Pass. Get them before they knock out the antennas. Kill as many of them as we can while we’ve got the chance. They’re here to kill us. They killed Lev, they tried to kill Mom. Why shouldn’t we kill them?
The blinking message light on the console told him that people were waiting to talk with him. He pulled up the list on the comm screen. Wicksen, Edith, Kris Cardenas down in the infirmary, four others.
Edith. Doug recalled her urging against killing any of the Peacekeepers. She’s right, he knew. Kill some of their troops and the whole world will turn against us. They’ll keep sending armies here until they beat us. Faure won’t stop until he wins, not if he has the world’s public opinion behind him. And once we start sending coffins Earthside world public opinion will swing totally against us, no matter how much people may be rooting for us now.
Beat them without killing them. Even though they’re trying to kill us.
He had put through a call to Savannah earlier, but it had not been answered so far. Is Mom all right? What happened down there? Who killed Lev? Is Mom safe?
They should’ve stayed here, Doug told himself. Then he realized the absurdity of it. Yes, stay here where all we have to worry about is being attacked by a small army of Peacekeeper troops.
Looking at his top left screen he saw that the first of the Peacekeeper vehicles was already entering Wodjohowitcz Pass. Doug glanced over at Falcone, staring grimly at the same view on his console.
Gordette was right; those troopers climbing Yeager won’t get to the antennas for another hour, at least.
He got up from his chair, spine creaking after being seated for so long, and walked stiffly to Falcone’s post.
“Wait until you’ve got as many in the trap as possible. Then spring it.”
Falcone nodded without taking his eyes from his screens. They had been over this a hundred times, at least.
“It’s your show, now, Vince,” he said, gripping Falcone’s burly shoulder.
“Right, boss,” said Falcone, his eyes still fixed on his screens.
Colonel Giap had learned long ago not to be the first in line of march through enemy territory. His tractor was the third in line as they threaded up the flank of the mountains and into the narrow defile of the pass.
“Force B, report,” he said into his helmet microphone.
All his communications were relayed through the L-1 station, hovering nearly forty thousand kilometers above. There was a noticeable, annoying little lag as the electronic signals bounced back and forth.
“Force B reporting,” crackled in his earphones. “No opposition. Proceeding on schedule.”
“Good. Report any problems immediately,” said Giap.
“Yes, sir.”
The colonel nodded inside his helmet. Keeping to schedule was important. He had planned the conquest of Moonbase down to the minutest details, and included every contingency he could imagine in his plans. The nuclear bomb did not go off, Moonbase still enjoyed its full capacity of electrical power. Giap had included that possibility in his planning. It made no difference. His primary force would batter down their main airlock and enter the garage area precisely on schedule, while Force B deployed on the crater floor as a strategic reserve, after sending a small contingent to take the mass driver—which Giap expected to be undefended.
His special team of mountain climbers would disable all of Moonbase’s communications antennas, cutting off the rebels’ reports to the news media back on Earth. Faure had insisted on that, and for once Giap agreed with the secretary-general. Cut out their tongues.
The first wave of assault troops would include the decontamination squads with their powerful ultraviolet lights, to deactivate any nanomachines that the Moonbase rebels might try to use. Giap smiled thinly at the memory of how the rebels had used nanomachines to panic the first Peacekeeper force sent against Moonbase. That trick won’t work a second time, he assured himself.
His earphones buzzed. Switching to the tractor’s intercom, Giap asked testily, “What is it?”
“Sensors are picking up an unusual level of microwave radiation, sir,” his surveillance officer reported.
In the cramped confines of his windowless command center, Giap barely had room to turn and face the woman. Even so, sealed inside her spacesuit, he could not see her face, merely the reflection of his own helmet in her closed visor.
“A dangerous level?” Did the rebels have exotic weapons, after all?
“No, sir, nothing dangerous. It’s more like a radar scan, but it’s coming at us from all directions, as if the microwaves are reflecting off the mountains walls around us.”
Giap felt his brow wrinkle. Microwaves? What are they trying to accomplish?
“Lead tractor calling, sir,” said his communications sergeant. “Emergency.”
Giap switched to the proper frequency. “Sir! Our tractor is stuck. We can’t move!”
“Can’t move?”
The voice in his earphones sounded more puzzled than worried. “It’s as if we hit some deep mud…”
“There is no mud on the Moon!” Giap snapped.
“Yessir, I know. But we’re mired in something. We can’t move forward or back. My engineer is afraid of burning out the drive motors.”
Giap’s own tractor lurched and slowed noticeably.
“What’s going on?” he yelled to his comm sergeant.
“I don’t know!”
Within minutes the first twenty-two tractors in the assault force reported being stuck fast. Several burned out their drive motors trying to force themselves through whatever it was that had mired them down.
“Get out and see what it is!” Giap screamed at his own driver as he motioned his sergeant to open the overhead hatch.
In his anxiety, Giap forgot the gentle lunar gravity and pulled himself up so hard he nearly soared completely out of the tractor. He sprawled across the roof of the cab, legs dangling inside his shoebox-sized command center.
Pulling himself up to a sitting position, Giap looked around. His first sensation was relief at being out of the metal coffin of the command center. He saw smooth-walled gray rock mountains and a dark, star-strewn sky.
Then he looked down and saw that his tractor, and every other one up and down the line that he could see, were engulfed halfway up their drive wheels in a weird, bright blue sea of spongy-looking stuff.
“Sergeant!” he yelled into his helmet mike. “Get up here.”
The sergeant popped the hatch to his cab and scrambled up to sit on the roof next to him.
Pointing at the sea of blue, Giap commanded, “Climb down the side of the tractor and test the consistency of that material.”
“What is it?” the sergeant asked. Then he added, “Sir.”
“If I knew what it was I wouldn’t need you to test it!”
“Maybe it’s some sort of Moon creature,” the sergeant said, h
is voice hollow.
“Don’t be stupid!” Giap barked. “It’s man-made. It’s something the rebels have cooked up to slow us down.”
The sergeant climbed down the ladder built into the tractor’s side, slow and awkward in his cumbersome spacesuit. Very gingerly, he touched the blue surface with a booted toe.
“It feels soft, sir,” he reported.
“How soft? Can you walk on it?”
The sergeant pushed his boot in deeper, then—still grasping the ladder rungs with both hands—he tried standing on it. His boots sank in until their tops were covered in blue.
“Well?” Giap demanded.
He heard his sergeant puffing and grunting. “I’m stuck in it, sir. I can’t pull my feet out.”
In the half-hour it took for Seigo Yamagata to answer Joanna’s call, she paced the living room, trying to burn up some of the fear and anger and grief that the tranquilizers had dulled but not removed.
While she paced she watched the Global News channel that was devoting full time to live coverage of the battle for Moonbase. Edie Elgin’s voice sounded strained, slightly hoarse from long hours of nonstop talking, but she was still going strong.
Joanna learned that the Peacekeepers’ nuclear missile attack had failed and Moonbase’s electrical power supply was still intact. Now she watched the view from atop Mount Yeager as the main Peacekeeper assault force came to a halt in Wodjohowitcz Pass.
“The smart foamgel will set to the consistency of concrete,” Edie Elgin was saying. “Wodjohowitcz Pass is effectively blocked, as far as the Peacekeepers’ vehicles are concerned.”
As she paced and watched, Joanna thought about getting dressed in something more substantial than her thin white robe, but that would have meant going upstairs. Even though the police were finished now with the bedroom, Joanna found she could not willingly go in there, not yet, not with Lev’s blood still staining the bedclothes. Tomorrow, maybe. After they’ve cleaned everything up.
The phone chimed at last and she went to the sofa where the camera could focus on her. Seigo Yamagata’s lean, lined face appeared on the screen above the fireplace, replacing Edie Elgin’s report from the Moon. It was impossible to tell what time it might be in Tokyo from the wide window behind Yamagata’s desk; the downtown city towers were drenched in driving rain.
“I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” Joanna began.
Yamagata raised a hand. “It is of no consequence. I have just been informed of the attempt on your life. Please accept my deepest condolence for the loss of your husband.”
Rashid must’ve phoned him, Joanna thought swiftly. Or maybe not. He’s got his own sources of information, certainly.
“I’ve decided that Moonbase isn’t worth the loss of more lives,” Joanna said, holding herself together with a conscious effort of will. “This war must end before more people are killed.”
Yamagata drew in a breath. “I sincerely regret what has happened. This was not of my doing.”
“I understand that,” Joanna replied, a slim tendril of doubt still in the back of her mind. But she pushed it away. “What kind of an agreement can we reach?”
Rubbing his chin in apparent perplexity, Yamagata said slowly, “The Peacekeepers are already attacking Moonbase. The battle has started.”
“I know that.”
“Within a few hours,” Yamagata said, “Moonbase will be under U.N. control.”
“I don’t know that,” Joanna replied coldly. “And neither do you.”
“Surely you do not believe that your people can hold out against several hundred trained Peacekeeper troops.”
Joanna allowed a ghost of a smile to curve the corners of her lips. “The Peacekeepers’ nuclear missile failed. And now their assault force is bogged down in the ringwall mountains. I’d say there is a fair chance that Moonbase will hold out quite well.”
Yamagata shook his head. “No. It is not possible. Despite their temporary successes, Moonbase will fall within a few hours.”
WODJOHOWITCZ PASS
Colonel Giap was in a frenzy of frustrated anger. Not only was his main assault force mired in this devilish blue muck that had hardened to the consistency of concrete, trapping his main assault force in the narrow defile of the mountain pass, but now Georges Faure was demanding that he get on with the conquest of Moonbase.
“It is unacceptable,” Faure was saying, his moustache bristling. “Entirely unacceptable.”
Giap glowered at the secretary-general’s pale image in the small screen of the laptop. The colonel was sitting atop his tractor, buttoned up in his spacesuit. A meter or so from him, where his sergeant still stood hopelessly imbedded, six Peacekeeper troops were chipping away at the hellish blue slime with makeshift implements from the tractor’s tool kit. Two of the troopers were even using the butts of their rifles to bash the sludge in their attempts to release the boots of their sergeant.
“I agree,” Giap said to Faure, tightly reining his anger. “It is unacceptable. But in battle the unacceptable is commonplace.”
Faure sat behind his desk, trembling with rage as he stared at the faceless image of the Peacekeeper colonel in his blank-visored spacesuit. How can a handful of rebels stop a fully-armed column of Peacekeeper troops? It is unthinkable, a farce, a disaster. Everyone will be laughing at me, unable to quash a tiny group of scientists and technicians, powerless to bring them under the rule of the law, impotent.
“I tell you this, mon colonel,” Faure said, seething. “If you cannot take Moonbase, then you are to release the volunteers. Do you understand what I am saying?”
In three seconds, Giap replied harshly, “You would rather destroy Moonbase than see it repulse us.”
“Exactly!” Faure snapped.
While he waited for Faure’s reply to reach him, Colonel Giap turned slightly to watch the activity he had ordered. Troopers were placing metal panels scavenged from the marooned tractors’ flooring from the roof of one cab to the tail of the next tractor, forming a bridge across which they could march to the front of the column of stalled vehicles. From the leading tractor they slid more panels across the treacherous blue slime, to where the dusty gray regolith lay bare—and safe.
“Exactly!” Giap heard Faure’s reply.
Taking in a deep breath and then releasing it slowly, to calm himself, Giap said, “There is no need to call on the suicide volunteers as yet. I am extricating most of my troops from the pass. We will march down into the crater floor on foot.”
Faure’s image was a red-faced thundercloud with a quivering moustache.
Before the secretary-general could speak again, Giap went on, “We will meet our secondary force on the crater floor and march on Moonbase. Our numbers will be diminished by less than five percent.”
There, he thought, let the pompous little politician chew on that for three seconds. I am the military commander here. I will counter the enemy’s moves. It was I who insisted on splitting the force. Only a fool of a politician would send his entire force through a single mountain pass that could be guarded or blocked by the enemy so easily.
When Faure’s response came it was a little more restrained. But only a little. “And your equipment? Your missile launchers and other heavy weapons? Your men carry them on their backs, I presume.”
“No,” Giap said, bristling at Faure’s sarcasm. “We will not need them. If the rebels do not open their airlocks to us, we have enough firepower to blast them apart.”
Three seconds later, Faure asked, “Without the heavy missiles?”
“We have the shoulder-launched anti-tank rockets. They will knock down an airlock hatch, I assure you.”
The secretary-general seemed to fidget unhappily in his chair. He riddled with his moustache, smoothed his slicked-back hair, adjusted the collar of his shirt. Giap sat motionless atop the tractor cab, waiting.
“Well…” Faure said at last. “Perhaps you can carry it off, after all. I hope so, for your sake.”
Giap restrained a bitter re
ply.
Faure went on, “Remember the volunteers. If all else fails, use them! Moonbase must not survive this day!”
“They’re assembling on the crater floor.” Jinny Anson stated the obvious.
Anson, Gordette, O’Malley and several others were clustered around Doug’s console now, watching the screens over his shoulders. Command central, Doug thought. Wherever I am is the nerve center.
He punched up the imagery that Edith was sending out to Global News and saw the same view: a couple of dozen white Peacekeeper vehicles inching across the floor of the crater, each of them piled high with Peacekeeper troops who had marched down from Wodjo Pass.
“The invaders are moving cautiously,” Edith’s voice was saying. She sounded tense, edgy, her voice raw and strained. She ought to take a break, Doug thought. But I can’t spare anybody to relieve her.
Then his eye caught the screen still showing the crowd in The Cave. Maybe there’s somebody there who could take over for her for a while. But Doug immediately put that thought aside. He didn’t have time to go recruiting. And, knowing Edith, she’d sooner burn her vocal chords out entirely than surrender this once-in-a-lifetime chance to narrate a battle on the Moon.
“They’ll deploy around the main airlock,” Gordette said. “Ought to be knocking on our door in less than an hour.”
Doug nodded. “Okay, we’re ready for them. Right?”
Everyone nodded and murmured assent. Doug focused on O’Malley. His dust was going to be crucial.
“Remember,” Doug said, “all we have to do to win is survive. We don’t have to kill any of the Peacekeepers. We don’t have to drive them off the Moon. All we have to do is survive. Like the Confederacy in the American Civil War; they didn’t have to conquer the North, all they had to do was prevent the North from conquering them.”
With a grunt, Gordette shot back, “Which they failed to accomplish.”
The others stared at him. O’Malley looked downright hostile. Anson turned and walked away a few steps. Doug thought, Barn’s not winning any popularity contests.
But he admitted Gordette’s point with a shrug. Moonbase against the United Nations, he thought. That’s what it boils down to. Moonbase against the world.