by Bruce Bethke
"Absolutely." Aguila nodded confidently. "My place in history, my friend, will be as the hero who kept the food factories—"
Aguila froze, his left arm still pointed in an eloquent gesture at the moon, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open in mid-syllable. "Madre de Dios!" he finally managed to whisper.
Haversham turned in time to catch the last dying flare of a hellish star-bright point of light on the lunar surface. Then his jaw sagged, too, and his breath came in ragged gasps.
"Mare Nubium," Aguila choked out. "That... must be Volodya."
"That," Haversham said with a shudder, when he found his voice again, "was without question a nuclear explosion." Slowly, as if his head were on a swivel, he turned to look at Aguila. The undersecretary was reflexively making the sign of the cross. When he realized Haversham was looking at him, Aguila quickly dropped his hands to his sides.
"Antonio old boy?" Haversham asked politely. "I've never been too good at this phase business." He nodded at the moon. "What would you say that is?"
Aguila considered the thin crescent a moment. "It is a new moon."
"Indeed." Haversham nodded and then, without another word, spun on his heel and stalked off toward the elevator.
Chapter 9
Port Aldrin, Lunar Sector 3B
28 October 2069
23:40 GMT
"Hey, Starkiller. Can you hear me?"
Consciousness came slinking back to Dalton like a furtive and nervous animal. He shook his head, which started the little man with the sledgehammer pounding on his cerebellum again. He opened his eyes. The world was all blurry, as if his eyes were lenses that were out of focus. Maybe cracked, too, he thought as a wave of nausea made the ceiling lights spin in crazy circles.
"Buddy, it's okay. You're gonna make it."
Wonderful, Dalton thought. All hail the conquering hero. My first firefight and I manage to get off two whole shots before I get creamed. He blinked again, then looked around. "I'm alive," he said. He was really surprised to discover this.
"That you are," the other voice said. It sounded pinched, mechanical. After a moment's confusion, Dalton placed it as a male voice coming through a battlesuit speaker. "We found you lying here. Thought you were toast at first, but your suit telltales said you were still alive. So we flipped you over, gave you a wake-up hypo, and I volunteered to stay here and get you back to the first-aid station. Think you can walk?"
"I... don't know. Maybe." Dalton tried to sit up, but another wave of nausea knocked him back down again. "Gimme a minute." The spinning corridor slowed a little. "What happened?"
The owner of the other voice stepped into view. White suit, Dalton noted with relief. Good guy.
The soldier spread his hands; Dalton guessed he was grinning inside his helmet. "We hit 'em from behind. Came out of that grate over there; there's a tunnel behind it, see? We must have arrived just after they whacked you, because they were still arguing about whether to take you prisoner or melt your head."
Dalton shuddered. "I lucked out, huh?"
"You sure did. It was ballsy, man, real ballsy, trying to take on four Bluesuits by yourself. But you gotta remember: you aren't Icehawk anymore. This is the real world, and you only get one death in this game. No replays."
Dalton managed to work himself up to a sitting position, and he squinted suspiciously at his distorted reflection in the other man's helmet visor. "Do I know you?"
"Oh. Sorry." The soldier punched a few buttons on his chest unit, then unsealed a latch and tilted back his helmet. "Jeff Mahoney, remember? From the militia meeting?" His voice sounded completely different, much younger, now that it wasn't being filtered through the comm unit. The freckle-faced kid grinned and offered Dalton a white-gloved hand. Gingerly, Dalton took it.
"I didn't see you after the first meeting," Dalton said. "Thought you quit."
Young Mahoney gave Dalton's hand a quick shake, then shook his own head, and grinned again. "Nah. I decided to join the Regulars instead. I got to tell you, it is so cool; this uniform is like a chick magnet." His smile faded. "The LDF slaps that gaming crap out of you pretty fast, though. First thing they teach you is that the Moon needs living soldiers, not dead heroes. If I'd tried a stunt like yours and lived to tell about it, well..."
Dalton felt ready to try standing up. With young Mahoney's help, he staggered to his feet. "Stunt? What do you mean?"
Mahoney grinned again, then fished in his belt pouch and produced Dalton's pistol. "Setting your piece on low, to stretch your power cell? You were doing head shots again, weren't you?"
Dalton accepted the pistol from Mahoney and checked the power-level indicator. Sure enough, the thing was set on low. Training power level. He must have reset it unconsciously out of sheer stupid habit when he loaded it.
Dalton managed a sickly smile. "Bad form, huh?"
Mahoney laughed. "No, great form! Ten for ten on style, man! But, Icehawk, that sort of stuff'll get you killed!" He leaned back and gave Dalton an appraising look. "You ready to try walking?"
Dalton took a hesitant step; his legs seemed to be working. "Yeah. Let's get the hell out of here."
With young Mahoney's help, Dalton made it back to the shield generator room that was temporarily serving as a first-aid station. Svetlana Kosov was there, along with three or four other medicos, doing what she could to patch up the wounded. As Dalton and Mahoney staggered in, she looked up from treating a flash burn and seemed genuinely pleased to see them.
"Dalton! I heard you bought it!"
"Me too. Jeff here"—he nodded at Mahoney—"er, Private Mahoney, saved my neck. Literally." He smiled, grabbed the kid by the arm, and gave him a shake. "Buddy, when this is all over I owe you a beer."
Mahoney's face clouded over. "I'm only seventeen," he said.
Svetlana chimed in. "Doesn't matter. New rule: if you're old enough to join the LDF, you're old enough to drink beer." That seemed to cheer Mahoney up considerably. Kosov turned to her patient, a dark-skinned woman in an engineer's jumpsuit, and handed her a tube of something. "Second degree, but not deep," Kosov said to the engineer. "It'll hurt like the dickens for a few days, then peel and get better. When the pain gets too bad, smear some of this on it." The engineer took the tube, hopped off the table, and hobbled out of the room.
"Next," Kosov said. She pointed at Dalton. Mahoney helped Dalton over to the examining table, then helped Kosov remove the suit chestplate. "What happened?" Kosov asked Mahoney.
"I—" Dalton started.
"Shield overload," Mahoney answered. "Icehawk here tried to take on four Peacekeepers all by himself. Set 'em up nicely for the kill by my squad, but almost got himself greased in the process."
Svetlana tsk-tsked. "So they blew his shields and he got caught in the feedback. Okay, I'm seeing some neural scrambling and trivial first-degree burns here." She poked a spot on Dalton's back.
He jumped. "Ow!"
"But nothing serious," Kosov continued. "Good. Normally I'd prescribe painkillers, lots of rest, and some post-trauma counseling. But we're low on painkillers and fresh out of psychiatrists, so take two of these." She fished a plastic vial out of her lab coat pocket and dumped some small yellow pills into Dalton's palm.
Dalton eyed the pills. "What are they?"
"Antidepressants. I live on 'em. Take two now and you'll buzz around the ceiling for half an hour. And then, young Jedi, you will sleep."
Dalton considered the pills again, then palmed them. "Antidepressants? Why are you taking them?"
Kosov looked at Dalton, her icy blue eyes suddenly endless and unfathomable, then looked at Mahoney. "You didn't tell him?" Mahoney shook his head slightly.
"Tell me what?" Dalton demanded.
"This was just a diversionary tactic," Svetlana said. "The real attack was out west. Imbrium. Rheinhold." Tears started to well up in those blue eyes. "And Volodya. Volodya is gone."
Dalton didn't understand. "Volodya's been captured?"
"No," Mahoney interjected s
oftly, "it's gone. Blown away. The UN dropped a whole battalion there, we think, and there was some kind of massacre. And then someone blew the main reactor."
"Mama," Kosov whispered softly. "Jaja. Alexei." She sagged against the examining table and suddenly looked terribly lost and alone. "Dmitri." A few tears fell in fat, salty drops.
For a moment Dalton and young Mahoney stared at each other, both wanting to help Kosov, but having no idea how.
"Private Mahoney!" a new voice boomed out in an acid-etched Cockney accent. Mahoney jumped to attention and spun to face the door. The voice boomed again. "If you're done flirting with the birds and rips, lad, we've a bleedin' war going on!"
Dalton rolled over painfully and caught a glimpse of the new speaker: a short, angry-looking man with pale white skin, a shock of yellow hair, and a full set of sergeant's stripes. He was standing just outside the door. Dalton wasted a moment trying to remember whether militiamen were supposed to salute LDF sergeants, then thought, Screw it.
Mahoney was still frozen like a deer in headlights.
The sergeant spared a glance at Kosov and sniffed. "Nice bum. Now, private," he snapped at Mahoney, "your unit is presently in Sector Two-C, and you 'ave exactly five minutes to 'aul your worthless carcass over there before I—"
"On my way, Sergeant Godfrey!" Mahoney yelped.
"Too right!" The sergeant sniffed again, then vanished down the corridor. Dalton set up and flopped off the examining table. Young Mahoney seemed to start breathing again. Dalton went to Kosov first, but she waved him away and went back to crying, so he turned to Jeff.
"So, Mahoney," Dalton asked, "who's Sergeant Psycho?"
Mahoney sucked in his breath sharply and blanched dead-white. "Don't ever call him that," he whispered urgently. "He'll rip your lungs out." Mahoney edged up to the doorway, stole a peek down the corridor, then relaxed slightly.
Mahoney turned to Dalton. "That was Britt Godfrey, one of the LDF's finest. The first sergeant from hell. Meanest little s.o.b. you'll ever meet, and the toughest, too. Word is he immigrated up here to dodge a multiple murder rap."
Dalton collected the pieces of his uniform, tried but failed to make eye contact one more time with Kosov, then followed Mahoney out into the corridor. "And he's on our side?"
Mahoney shrugged. "Hey, beggars can't be choosers, y'know? Seriously, you stay on the sergeant's good side and he'll give you the shirt off his back. Great sense of humor, too." Mahoney took another nervous glance down the corridor. "But some of his best friends got killed today, and that'd piss anyone off."
Mahoney pointed back the other way. "Look, when Britt said I had five minutes to get over to Sector Two-C, he meant it. So I've gotta run now, but there's a militia crash room up that way, to the left. Can't miss it."
Dalton nodded. "Look, I don't know how to say this—"
Mahoney shrugged. "Then don't. See you later, Icehawk." He turned, punched his suit up to power, and took off running.
Dalton watched him disappear down the corridor, then turned and trudged in the direction Mahoney had indicated.
"I really hope so, Stormrider."
Dalton was completely unprepared for the round of cheers that greeted him when he shuffled into the militia room. "Dalt, man, we heard you bought it!" Terrell Davis lunged forward and grabbed Dalton in a big bear hug. There was an awkward moment or two while Dalton tried to sort out whether Davis was his boss, his friend, or his commanding officer; then the shakes and shudders hit, and Dalton felt himself starting to come unglued and fall apart.
"'S okay, man," Davis said softly. "'S okay." Davis gently steered him down to a battered brown sofa pushed against the far wall. The other militia members came swarming in to touch him gently and offer kind words: the black-haired guy, who he now knew was Peter Mercer, a research scientist; the short, tight-knit middle-aged redhead, Ginny Anson; the college kid from Kepler, Katsuhiro; the overweight ex-Israeli, Joel. Bob Connors, Elke Schwartz, Kandaya Singh, Krissi Donatelli ...
Someone pushed a cup of hot chicken soup into Dalton's hands, and he tried a sip. Something seemed to be wrong with his eyes. They were all blurry and wet.
"It's okay," Davis said again. "It's all right to freak out when it's over, Dalt. Hell, when I got here, first thing I wanted was a clean pair of boxer shorts, you know?" Someone in the back of the group sniggered; the laugh had a nervous and hysterical edge to it. "It's not funny!" Davis protested. "It's really not funny!" Despite Davis's protests, more militia members joined in the snickering, and within moments the whole group was laughing together, eyes and noses running freely.
The laughing seemed to break something loose inside of Dalton. He howled till his ribs hurt, then wiped his face on his sleeve, got down a couple large gulps of the soup, and started to feel alive again. A smile found its way onto his face, and he looked around the room at his comrades, his friends, his brothers in arms.
Svetlana Kosov was wrong. Dalton didn't need pills; he needed this.
Five minutes later he was snoring like a chain saw.
Undisclosed Location, Luna
29 October 2069
01:30 GMT
For Immediate Release:
My fellow citizens,
Yesterday at 7:00 p.m. Lunar Time the combined forces of the United Nations Peace Enforcement Command launched a surprise attack on the Free State domes of Port Aldrin, Von Braun, Imbrium, Rheinhold, and Volodya. Thanks to the brilliant leadership of General Consensus and the skill and bravery of our heroic self-defense forces we were able to repel this invasion, with only slight casualties to our side and grave losses to the jackbooted thugs of oppression, but the enemy has succeeded in taking temporary control of the Free State colony at Von Braun.
Sadly, the news from Volodya is worse. Following an unprovoked massacre of innocent noncombatants, and overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers thrown against them, the brave defenders of Volodya in a spectacular final gesture of defiance chose to detonate the nuclear core of their dome just as the UN troops began their final assault. Our best intelligence indicates the entire UN Second Battalion was annihilated in the blast. This, combined with enemy casualties in other locations, means that more than 480 enemy soldiers have been killed by our valiant defense forces, while our own losses have been comparatively light.
Therefore, let us not dwell on our losses, but rather let our hearts swell with pride. We have bloodied the enemy's nose, and he now knows that we will fight to the death to defend our homes. Yes, the UN armies will return, stronger next time and backed by all the mighty forces of Earth. Yes, they have occupied one of our cities and made of our people prisoners and refugees. Yes, our struggle is not yet over.
But we can look to the past and know that we are not alone! The eighteenth-century American revolutionaries—colonists like us—fought and defeated the most powerful empire of their day. Now we face the combined might of an entire planet, but we will be victorious because our cause is just. We will fight on—for freedom and the Free State. Remember Volodya!
May God bless you all and grant you luck in the days ahead.
Pieter von Hayek
First Councilor, the Free State Selena
Patrick Adams looked up expectantly. "Well?"
Pieter von Hayek finished reading the rough draft and frowned. "I don't know. 'Jackbooted thugs of oppression'? Isn't that a little ... well, extreme?"
"But they do wear jackboots."
"Find another phrase. And that stuff about massacres and refugees? We want our people to be resolute, not hiding under their beds and wetting their pants."
"Okay, I'll soft-pedal it. Anything else?"
Von Hayek scanned the text. "Yes. 'Our best intelligence.' That implies we've also got second-best intelligence and maybe even really rotten intelligence. Just say 'our intelligence.' "
"Gotcha. Any more?"
Von Hayek studied something in the text, then leaned back and stroked his chin thoughtfully. "The ending needs work. This is a press release, n
ot a sermon. Some of our people interpret the First Right to mean freedom from religion. Try to make it a bit less spiritual and more secular, if you can."
"Right." Adams nodded. "But, as usual, try to do so without pissing off the Coalition."
"Exactly." Von Hayek nodded, then turned to the next item on his agenda. "Now tell me: what the hell really happened at Volodya? The Volodyans were supposed to blow up the cargo launcher, not the whole damn city."
Adams shook his head and frowned deeply. "We don't know. Maybe we never will. I had five of my best people in there; two of them were friends. There was some kind of massacre, then a hellacious fight. The regulars got wiped out, and the militia got their asses kicked back to the core. Last thing I got was a fragmentary message about Masada, whatever that means. Then"—he made a little explosion gesture with his hands— "kaboom!"
Von Hayek nodded. "I understand. Any immediate reaction out of Copernicus or Eddington?"
"No. And now those two are occupied and under martial law, so don't expect anything in the future."
Von Hayek nodded again. "Farside?"
Adams shrugged. "Gillen claims they knew about it before she did. Something seismic. But it didn't disturb them."
"Very well." Von Hayek stole another glance at his agenda. "What about Von Braun and Rheinhold?"
"Von Braun surrendered with only token resistance. Montclair somehow managed to get himself captured— surprise, surprise. At Rheinhold, the UN skipped the habitat domes and went straight for the radioscope. They got it, too."
Von Hayek pursed his lips. "So much for our hope of setting up a direct radio channel to Earth. In retrospect, I never should have trusted Montclair. Oh, well, no use crying over leaked air." He stole a glance at his agenda. "You say the team that hit Aldrin almost made it to my office?"
"That seems to have been their objective. There were feints and diversions all over, but the team members who blew the airlock and made a laserline for your office weren't regular Peacekeepers. They were Special Ops of some kind—Americans, judging by their dental work. We're guessing they were 82nd Airborne, Delta Company. Your son, Josef, finally bagged the last one about a hundred meters short of target. And, boy, is he proud of himself."