The Last Science Fiction Writer

by Allen Steele

  A rover.

  Dropping the stretcher, Phil began jumping up and down as high as he could, waving both hands above his head. That wasn’t a good idea; besides the fact that he used up more air that way, he was also exhausted. As the rover swerved toward him, the sole of his left boot came down on a rock; Phil lost his balance tumbled to the ground.

  The back of his head smacked the inside of his helmet, and that was the last thing he felt for a good long while.

  Like so many conflicts before it, the Moon War began with a press conference.

  The OTV from the Cape carrying the twenty members of press pool arrived at Olympus Station at 1100 hours. Phil was already there, of course; as a UMI stringer, he had living aboard Skycan for the past four months, filing stories about the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the Pax Astra and the spacefaring Earth nations. Fat lot of good it had done him; as soon as the U.N. Security Council voted in favor of the U.S.-backed resolution authorizing military action against the Pax, orders came down from the Civil Space Administration to quarantine the operations center in the station’s hub.

  Joni Lowenstein, Skycan’s general manager, had been apologetic about the whole thing. “Nothing personal, Phil,” she’d said during their brief discussion after he’d discovered he was no longer welcome in MainOps. “It’s just that CSA…” she pronounced it as see-saw “…doesn’t want any leaks. Don’t worry, you’ll get the details when your buddies show up.”

  The clampdown blew away any chance of him scooping the competition. The only people who knew exactly what was going on were sequestered from the rest of the station, and when Phil tried logging into Olympus’s computer from his bunk terminal, he found that the back door he had secretly installed eight weeks ago had been deleted. Joni probably knew about it all along.

  So he filed a brief dispatch describing the news blackout, a story which someone allowed to be sent because it contained nothing really new, and a half-hour later a desk editor at UMI’s Washington bureau replied with a terse message: Story thin. Try harder. Understand situation, but you’ve got the ball. Mariano arriving soon: hook up with him.

  So he monitored the net, which told him little that he didn’t already know—the Pax Astra embargo against shipments of He3 in retaliation against the U.N.’s refusal to formally recognize the Pax as an independent nation, followed by the shoot-down of an American lunar spysat, which in turn lead to an emergency meeting of the Security Council and the subsequent declaration of hostilities—and impatiently waited until, eighteen hours later, twenty journalists who’d won the straw-pull to represent the hundreds of reporters, photographers, cameramen and talking heads left behind came climbing or falling down the ladder into Module 39, one of the station’s two rec rooms.

  Phil watched their arrival with quiet amusement. His buddies. Right. There were perhaps two dozen reporters working the space beat these days, but most were posted either in Descartes City or in Clarke County, the big Lagrange colony. Of all the major net services, UMI alone had decided to put someone on Olympus. The station had once belonged to Skycorp, but when the powersat construction program had ended, the company had sold the station to a Japanese consortium, and when Uchu-Hiko failed to make it work as an orbital hotel, they had passed it off to CSA; the station was too big to deorbit, but too expensive to properly maintain, and so now it was just a ring-shaped hulk wasting away in geosynchronous orbit. His colleagues thought he was nuts for taking this backwater assignment; the real action was clearly further out in system, with the Mars colonies being the assignment everyone wanted. But Mars was claiming neutrality, and now the Pax was deporting correspondents from Descartes and Clarke County while censoring dispatches from the small handful allowed to remain.

  So UMI had something of jump on the competition. With the rest of the space press sent packing, the only reporters able to cover the story were groundsiders hastily mustered from bureaus in Washington, London, and Rio. Not only was UMI’s man already on the scene, but he was also long-since acclimated to Olympus. And even though he was out of the loop, at least Phil had the pleasure of watching his “buddies” come aboard.

  If the thunder and shudder of the shuttle launch, or the long ride to GEO aboard an orbital transfer vehicle, hadn’t been enough already to blow their professional cool, the gentlemen of the press were thoroughly rattled by Skycan’s one-third gravity. Some looked distinctly green, while others experienced the wonders of Coriolis effect for the first time; Phil watched as a woman absently dropped her datapad on the nearest table, then gape in surprise as it missed the table completely and fell to the carpeted floor below.

  One of the last people to clamber down the ladder was a squat, thick-set guy with a heavy gray beard, wearing a photographer’s vest over a New York Dodgers sweatshirt. A little less ruffled than the rest of the pack, he was still noticeably pale, the sparse hair on the crown of his skull slick with sweat. Phil had to stare at him for a minute before he was sure who he was.

  “George!” He whistled and raised a hand. “Hey! Mariano!”

  The photo glanced around, spotted him, trudged over to where Carson was seated. “Phil Carson,” he said, dropping his camera bag in an empty chair. “How the hell are you?”

  “Better than you, I think.”

  “No kidding.” George picked up his bag again, sat down. “What am I doing here?”

  “Covering another war. Didn’t they tell you?”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.” George grimaced. “Swear to God, I had to fight my way onto this junket. Arm-twisting, extortion, major bribes…and what happens soon as we reach orbit?”

  “You threw up.”

  “Threw up, threw down, threw out…” He pulled a bandana out of a vest pocket, swabbed his forehead. “Turned fifty last week. Haven’t been up in nearly six years. Man, I’m too old for this shit.”

  Phil grinned. When he met Mariano shortly after he started working for UMI, George had already been an old space hand, covering stories both on Olympus and the Moon. Mariano had shown him the ropes, then asked for reassignment to the Florida bureau. Now here he was, a few kilos heavier and a few less hairs on his head, called back into the saddle one last time…

  “Jeez, it’s nice to see you again.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” George glared at him. “Knock it off. I hear you’re having trouble.”

  “Max Q. News blackout as soon as the story broke.”

  “Pentagon?”

  “I’m told it’s CSA who set the rules.”

  “They don’t call the shots in something like this. At least not directly.”

  “Well, whoever it is, they’re not saying word one. Not until the briefing, at any rate.”

  “Screw the briefing. I want meat.” George unsnapped the top of his bag, found a tiny valve, and gave it a twist. An airtight membrane deflated with a soft hiss and the bag sagged slightly, then he unzipped the inner cell. “Get me to where the action is, that’s all I want. When do we ship out?”

  Phil shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. The military hasn’t arrived yet, so my guess is that the GM will handle the briefing.”

  “Lenny Baskin?”

  “Uh-uh. He got replaced a long time ago. The new boss is Lowenstein. Joni…”

  “I know Joni. Nice lady. Have you heard anything?”

  “Nada. You?”

  “A little.” Mariano pulled out a Nikon, fitted a 50mm lens onto its body, unwrapped a disk and slid it home. “4th Space mobilizing at the Cape, 2nd Space on Matagorda Island. Nothing confirmed, of course, but we’ve got reports that they’re about to launch, if they haven’t already. My guess is that they’ll go for a…”

  “Here comes Joni now.”

  The GM descended the ladder. An old Skycorp vet, Joni Lowenstein was in her mid-sixties, but only her butch-cut gray hair and the crows-feet around her eyes revealed her years; otherwise, she could have been a woman half her age. Conversation died off as she strode to the end of the compartment room and sharply clapped
her hands. “If I can have your attention, please,” she called out, “we’ll begin the briefing.”

  Cameras whirred and clicked, reporters switched on datapads. A TV crew jostled their way to the front of the room and hastily set up their equipment. Joni obviously didn’t want to be here; she shuffled her feet, looked like she wanted to disappear, yet she patiently waited for everyone to find their places before opening her pad and reading aloud a formal press statement.

  Most of the facts were already known. At 1800 hours GMT, Tuesday, January 16, 2052, a surveillance satellite placed in low orbit above the Moon by the United States was destroyed by a missile launched from Descartes City in the lunar highlands. This was followed by a communiqué from the Pax Astra stating that the spysat constituted unlawful infringement of its territory. Since the U.N. hadn’t recognized the Pax Astra as a sovereign nation, the Security Council had invoked the 1967 Space Treaty and unanimously approved the American resolution proposed that the embargo and shoot-down constituted an act of aggression against the signatory nations.

  “So the situation is as follows. The United States, under U.N. authorization, has decided to reclaim Descartes City.” Joni checked her notes again. “Five hours ago, one hundred troops from the 4th Space Infantry, U.S. Marines, were mobilized from the Kennedy Space Center, with forty more troops from the 2nd Space on standby at the ConSpace launch site on Matagorda Island. The assault will be staged from here, Olympus Station, where the forces will be loaded aboard lunar landing vehicles provided by various American and Japanese corporations, with logistical support from the European Union. The LLVs are scheduled to depart GEO within a launch window which is still classified. The objective is a frontal assault against Descartes City within a time-frame that is also classified at this time.”

  Joni lowered her pad. “I’ll take questions now,” he said. “Please identify yourself and the news organization you’re representing.”

  There was the usual coughing and shifting through scribbled notes before the first reporter stood up. “Dale Hale, Time-Global. It hasn’t been adequately explained why the Pax Astra would shoot down a U.S. spysat. Have they yet explained their reasons for doing so?”

  “The Pax government stated that the satellite was an incursion of the…um, airspace, for lack of better term…above Descartes. They stated that the sat was put there with the sole intent of monitoring their movements in preparation for a military attack. The Pentagon has categorically denied this. Next question.”

  Fingers gently tapped keypads. The compartment grew warm under the glare of camera lights. Joni swabbed sweat from her forehead; she seemed too aware that, even as she spoke, her image was being transmitted in realtime to hundreds of thousands of websites. The handful of reporters gathered here were little more than data-collectors and question-askers, acolytes of the church of information. With only the most insignificant of delays caused by satellite downlink and AI-augmented language translation, her words were being disseminated to billions of terminals scattered across the world below. For a few brief minutes, she’d become the most visible person on Earth. Phil felt sorry for her. He liked Joni, yet even if he didn’t, no one should have to endure this sort of exposure except a trained PR person. Most of them were professional liars; Joni wasn’t.

  “Ellie Horowitz, San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner. Why is the U.S. task force concentrating on Descartes when the Pax Astra government is based in Clarke County?”

  “I don’t know the reasons and…um, I’m not in the position to speculate.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the fact that Clarke County is reported to be in possession of a nuclear weapon?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t comment on that. Next question, please.”

  Mariano leaned over. “Geez, lady, do a little research, why don’cha?”

  Phil nodded. A direct assault on Clarke County was out of the question; all the colony had to do was close its airlocks and docking bays, and it was virtually invulnerable, unless the U.S. was willing to kill ten thousand civilians by blowing the windows of its habitat sphere. Besides, the colony had a ten-megaton nuclear warhead it had salvaged during the revolution from a low-orbit satellite intended to deflect the Icarus asteroid several years earlier. The Pax only had to lob its nuke at any approaching spacecraft, and the 4th Space was toast. Descartes City was far more vulnerable. Clarke County’s lifeline was lunar oxygen and water; if Marines seized Descartes, then the Lagrange colony would have little choice but to surrender.

  “Bet they’re going use Tranquillitatis as the LZ,” Phil murmured, and George nodded. No argument there. Mare Tranquillitatis lay just west of the highlands: a vast, flat plain, perfect for a large-scale troop deployment. But, of course, the Pax would know this…

  The press briefing lurched on. Skycan would be used as the command-and-control center for the invasion—now officially called Operation Lunar Freedom—until a beachhead was successfully established on the Moon. Beyond that, nothing new was disclosed. Joni answered questions one of two ways: no comment, or we can neither confirm nor deny this information. Phil impatiently waited for someone else to ask the most obvious question. When no one did, he finally raised his hand. Joni seemed reluctant to acknowledge him, but she pointed his way.

  “Phil Carson, United Media,” he said, rising from his chair. “When will the press be allowed to visit the landing site?”

  Joni looked as if she’d like to toss him out the nearest airlock. “Under the current conditions, there are no plans to let the press accompany the strike force. We can’t allow…”

  Everyone in the room groaned. “We can’t allow civilians to place their lives in jeopardy,” she continued, raising her voice. “All members of the press will remain aboard Olympus, where it will observe the operation from the closest safe-distance possible. We’ll accommodate any reasonable request…”

  “So far you’re doing a hell of job!” someone shouted from the back of the room.

  “Why don’t you let us decide whether we’re capable of taking that risk?” someone else asked.

  “Ladies, gentlemen, please…” Joni raised a hand. “I realize that many of you are accustomed to covering wars, but you’ve got to understand that this isn’t South America or the Middle East. This is the Moon we’re talking about here, as hostile an environment as you’re going to find. You’re simply not trained for this, and we don’t have the time to teach you how to wear moonsuits or handle an emergency like a blowout.”

  Low murmurs. She had a point; they were all groundsiders; for many this was their first trip into space. “Then send me,” Phil said. He felt Mariano nudge the back of his leg. “George, too,” he added. “Both of us are EVA certified. We’ve moonwalked before.”

  “Will you work under pool rules?” This from Horowitz of the Chronicle-Examiner.

  Phil glanced at George. The photographer shrugged. “Sure,” Phil said. “We’ll share any interviews or photos we get to the rest of the pool.” He looked back at Joni. “That way you only have to send down two guys, but everyone up here gets a piece of the action.”

  “Fair enough,” said Hale from Time-Global, and the rest of the poll murmured their assent. “How ’bout it, Ms. Lowenstein?”

  Joni shook her head. “Sorry, folks, but the military’s pretty clear about this. Absolutely no one goes out who isn’t combat personnel or support crew.”

  “Ah, c’mon!”

  “It’s not my call. You want to fight this, take it up with the Pentagon PAO when he gets here.” She closed her pad. “That’s all for now. Next briefing will be here at 0800 tomorrow. This compartment is now designated the newsroom, and Modules 36, 37, and 38 have been set aside as your quarters. You may link your pads with the terminals here or in the bunkhouses, and the com officer will transmit your reports when sat time is available. All meals will be served in the mess deck, modules 25 through 28. All other areas of the areas of the station are open to you except the data processing center and MainOps. I shoul
d warn you that, if you attempt to visit these areas without authorization, your credentials will be voided and you’ll be sent groundside on the next available OTV. Do you have any questions about these policies?”

  Some rumbles, a few obscene comments, but no arguments. Nor was Phil surprised. No one was going to buck the system. Getting shipped home during a breaking story was worse than humiliating; reporters have been fired for less. One of the eternal problems of war correspondence is that the military draws the line wherever it damn well pleases, and there’s little anyone can do about it.

  “Nice try,” George said when the briefing was over. “I could have told you she wouldn’t go for it.”

  Joni had climbed back up the ladder, dogged by a couple of die-hards desperately trying to catch any crumbs of information she might drop. Others hastily typed up their dispatches; lines were already forming in front of the terminals scattered around the room. The TV crew was breaking down their equipment. Someone complained about not being able to smoke.

  “Maybe we can get the PAO to change his mind.” Phil wearily took his seat again. “If we talk to him when he gets here…”

  “Ever dealt with a Pentagon public affairs officer?” George asked, and Phil shook his head. “Don’t count on it.” Then he dropped his voice. “Look, I’ve got some connections. I’ll fire off a squib, see if I can shake something loose. Are you going to be around?”

  As if he was going to skip out to the nearest deli for a Reuben and a beer. “Naw. I think I’ll head down to my bunk. Send a memo to New York, catch a few winks. I’ve been up for the last twenty hours straight.”

  “Okay. If I learn anything, I’ll find you.”