by Bruce Bethke
"Any damage to the government offices?"
"Lots. We can have it cleaned up by morning, though. You want me to include something in the press release about how you're in a place of safety and in no danger?"
"No!" Von Hayek shook his head vigorously. "Absolutely not! The people must believe we're sharing their risks. In fact, stop the cleanup now, and get RealNews One in there. I want to wave the bloody shirt for all it's worth."
"Right." Adams fished his personal comm pad out of his pocket and tapped in a note to himself. "Anything else?"
Von Hayek glanced down. "No, that's everything on my agenda. What about yours?"
Adams checked his pad. "Just two items. One is that a couple of the evac shuttles didn't make it. We've located some wreckage in Imbrium, but we're still trying to determine whether they were shot down or just collided."
"Okay, keep me posted on that. What's the other?"
Adams looked down at his comm pad, licked his lips nervously, then looked up. "Governor, are you sure this isn't the time to move against Lacus Mortis? That old arsenal is just waiting for us, and we could certainly use the gunships."
Von Hayek shook his head. "No. A raid like that would be too provocative. Right now the UN is sitting there licking its wounds, realizing it's gotten into a real fight, and wondering if it has the belly to go through with this. General Consensus says it doesn't: the UN always loses its courage when the boys in blue start to die, and right about now the delegates should be looking for an excuse to break this off and go back to diplomacy. We need to give them that excuse. The general's analysis is that if we sit tight, they'll back off, rattle their sabers a bit, threaten us with sanctions, and then quietly suggest peace negotiations. But if we do anything to make them lose face in the media, they'll be forced to attack again just to maintain their credibility."
Adams took a deep breath and blew out a sigh. "So we sit on our hands and wait." He looked up at von Hayek. "Are you sure that they know this is the plan?"
Militia Crash Room, Port Aldrin
29 October 2069
04:30 GMT
The Red Cross volunteer gently shook Dalton awake. "Mr. Starkiller? Er, Dalton Starkiller?"
Dalton brushed her hand away. "Not now, honey," he mumbled. "I'm asleep."
"Mr. Starkiller, sir? I'm afraid I've got some bad news."
Dalton managed to open one eye and look at her. "Who are you? Can it wait till morning?"
"Jodi Potteiger, Red Cross. I've had some trouble tracking you down. You weren't in the domestic partners registry."
"So?" Then the idea started to seep through, and Dalton's other eye popped open. "Dara?"
"There's been an accident. Well, not an accident, I guess. Her shuttle was shot down near Imbrium." Jodi bit her lower lip, then blurted it out. "There were no survivors." The young woman reached out, gently touched his arm, then stood up. "I'm sorry."
Dalton's ears heard, but his mind refused to accept the words. No. There's been a mistake. In the morning I'll wake up in my own bed, and Dara will be right there beside me.
But morning, when it finally came, didn't change a thing.
UN Headquarters, New York
29 October 2069
07:30 EST
The limo pulled up to the curb and two plainclothes SAS men bailed out, followed by Antonio Aguila. The network reporters, circling like a school of feeding sharks, caught the scent of fresh blood and swarmed forward to form a gauntlet of cameras and microphones all the way up the granite steps. Aguila flipped the collar of his camel's hair coat up, as much to hide his face as to ward off the chill October wind, and plunged in.
"Senor Aguila! Has the Committee on Lunar Development issued an official statement regarding last night's explosion?"
"No comment."
"Senor Aguila! Is it true that Volodya Colony's main reactor was the same design as the infamous Chernobyl Number Four?"
"No comment."
"Senor Aguila! What of the claims that the explosion was actually caused by a nuclear weapon?"
The undersecretary stopped dead and turned around. "Off the record?" The nearest reporters nodded innocently. "Speaking strictly off the record, I can tell you that it was not a nuclear weapon. The Volodyan main reactor was built twenty years ago by Ukrainian engineers who cut way too many corners. We've been telling them for years that the reactor was unsafe and they needed to shut it down. Now it looks as if we've had a serious leakage up there." Aguila turned his back on the journalists and made to leave.
A GNN reporter pushed in front of him. "Leakage? Professor Paul Cornell says that was a twenty-kiloton blast!"
Aguila stopped again and this time turned around with icy slowness, deliberately showing his back to the GNN reporter. "May I remind everyone that Professor Cornell also says we are in the midst of a dangerous global warming?" He flashed a smile, pulled his hand out of his pocket, and pointed at an imaginary spot floating through the air. "Hey, look! It's snowing!" The reporters on the steps tittered.
Aguila turned back to the woman from GNN. "It was leakage. Our sources say it was a cloud of hot radioactive gas expanding rapidly in the vacuum and one-sixth G. Professor Cornell should stick to lecturing children."
The woman from GNN looked as if she didn't buy that, but she didn't get a chance to say anything more before a bodyguard nudged her out of the way. Aguila started to move again.
The reporters surged forward. "Senor Aguila!"
He lifted his head and shouted, "No comment!"
The heavy brass doors clanged shut behind him with ponderous finality.
First Strike: Aftermath
Following the stunning defeat of General Jackson and the All-Terran Antiterrorism Force Second Battalion at Volodya, the Security Council meeting on 29 October was nasty, brutish, and short.
General Jackson was summarily relieved of command — posthumously, as it turned out — and General Marcia Daniels was moved up to take his place. Field Marshal Leighton-Smythe continued to argue that the basic ATFOR strategy was sound and that the downing of two civilian transports, which the USN Tigershark's battle computers had accidentally identified as combat craft, was justified.
In the end, however, the Security Council voted to adopt a modified version of the second Russian plan. This new plan, devised by General Fyodr Buchovsky, could best be described as conservative. For the next few weeks ATFOR would concentrate on ferrying troops and materials to Luna and on reinforcing existing positions, particularly the garrisons at Lacus Mortis and Sinus Roris.
It is thought the Security Council secretly believed this slow buildup of overwhelming force would eventually bring the lunar revolutionaries to their senses — and to the negotiating table — preferably without any more nuclear explosions.
Again the elderly Lord Haversham entered the picture, to argue that the revolutionaries were no doubt as horrified by the events at Volodya as were the United Nations ruling councils and that lifting the electronic blockade and restoring free communications between Earth and Moon would be a good first step toward restoring peaceful relations. He succeeded in convincing the Security Council that the Volodya blast was clearly a kamakazi-like act of defense, but his proposal to open peace negotiations was argued down, for reasons that were not immediately clear, by Shi Cheng Wu of the Committee on World Peace and Antonio Aguila of Haversham's own Committee on Lunar Development. In the end, the Security Council voted 12-2, with North Korea abstaining, to implement the Russian plan.
Meanwhile, on Luna, the LDF and the Council of Governors quickly realized that the war was not going to be settled in one bold stroke, and so they began planning strategy for the long haul. In the moves of Pieter von Hayek one can see the hand of the master chess player at work, plotting action twenty moves out and relishing the prospect of a protracted but bloodless battle of maneuver.
Sadly, however, while Governor von Hayek was once a chess master, General Marcia Daniels was once the captain of the West Point fencing team. In
her moves one can see the actions of the master swordswoman: while the Russian and American navies continued to ferry troops and supplies up from Earth, she ordered a series of small guerrilla raids to assess the LDF's readiness, probe the lunar defenses, and train the disparate United Nations forces in the ticklish business of working together. Sometimes these probes yielded unexpected bonuses as well. Consider, for example, the raid on Korolev. ...
— Chaim Noguchi, A History of the Lunar Revolution
Chapter 10
Aboard Assault Shuttle LST(N)-14
7 November 2069
06:00 GMT
"No, you're wrong!" Faroukh Ibn-Yusef exclaimed to Walid ibn Walid. "The Prophet prohibited images of people because we are made in the image of Allah, who is infinite. Images can be reduced to binary, to numbers, thus placing a finite limitation on the infinite, which is blasphemy!"
"That's ridiculous, Faroukh. The very concept of digital information didn't exist until a hundred years ago. You're saying the Prophet foresaw the development of computers? Pfah!"
A third man, like the others wearing a blue UN battlesuit that concealed all but his head, spat onto the black plaz deck. "The Prophet prohibited nothing. He communicated the vision that was sent to him through the archangel, that is all. The law is of Allah!"
Faroukh smiled. "Hamal is right, Walid. Only in modern times are we able to understand the wisdom behind that particular law. But would you dare to argue that Allah did not understand the truth of binary, even in the Prophet's early days in the desert? And is not the nature of man's soul itself binary, forced to choose between good and evil?"
Captain Eileen "Devil Bunny" Mahoney, deciding that enough was enough, butted in. "Stow it, Sergeant." She shook her head in exasperation. Five minutes to insertion in a hot LZ, and her boys were debating the nature of God. Again.
Bunny was pissed. In her initial briefing on Operation Restore Justice, she'd been relieved to learn that she'd been assigned as cadre officer to a Palestinian unit. At least the Palestians could fight, she'd thought at the time, remembering the Intra-Arab War of the 2050s, and they never tried to eat the enemy dead, as the New Guineans sometimes did.
That was before she'd actually met her troops and discovered that she was stuck with a bunch of would-be Sufis. And the ones who aren't mystics want to die in battle. That's an express ticket to paradise.
Uh-oh. Faroukh was staring at her for daring to interrupt again. She tried to shrug it off. "Well, binary or ASCII, Faroukh, right now I'm sure Allah wants you to make sure your weapon is charged up and set on full." She tried a smile.
Oops. Wrong move. Faroukh turned to Walid, and the two of them began speaking heatedly in Arabic, their sparsely bearded chins working with great vigor, their dark eyes darting narrow glances toward her.
Enough of this, Bunny decided. If I can't get them to like me, then they damn well better respect me. She bounced to her feet. "Speak English, troop!"
Walid looked at her with casual disdain. "Ah, the woman of scarlet has made a sound."
Enough! It was bad enough that they had to argue incessantly over the Koran. It was bad enough that they'd spent the last five days arguing over whether the current sharif of Iran was in fact the seventh incarnation of the second Imam. But she'd be damned if she let Walid call her a hooker again!
Bunny charged forward, simultaneously slapping the oversize button that took her battlesuit up to full power and slamming her helmet down over her head. Before Walid could react, she'd grabbed him by the gap between his breastplate and abdominal webbing and lifted him high over her head. Walid kicked once, then relaxed, quickly realizing that even a large and angry man could not overwhelm a woman in a powered battlesuit.
"Get this, Private," Bunny spat out. "My name is Captain Mahoney. You will call me 'Captain' or 'sir.' If I hear you refer to me by any other name, or if I hear you imply even one more time that I am a woman of ill repute, I will rip your genitals off with my bare hands. Is that clear?"
Walid nodded slightly. "Yes." "Yes what?"
"Yes, sir, Captain Mahoney, sir."
"Very good." For a moment Bunny considered dropping him, then decided against it. It was one thing to instill some healthy fear in the man, quite another to humiliate him, especially as he might soon be standing behind her, holding a loaded weapon.
Bunny gently lowered Walid to the deck of the shuttle. "As you can see," she said through the suit comm system, "my face is now properly covered, so I won't be tempting you to sin for at least the next six hours. Will this do?"
Walid nodded more emphatically. "Yes, sir."
She turned to face the other eleven men in her platoon. Two of them, Masrur and Hasan, had powered up and risen to their feet, but the rest remained seated and seemed amused. She was glad to note that Hamal, the quiet one, was nodding, apparently well pleased that her face was now covered. Some of the more fanatical men regarded Hamal as an Imam-in-training, and she hoped that if she could earn his approval, the others would follow.
"Look, I'm not trying to seduce any of you, believe me," she assured them. "And I'm not trying to lead you to Gehenna—just the opposite. Hamal, I don't care what you say, this is not jihad, and nobody's going straight to paradise. Asrad, don't touch those grenades unless I tell you to! This is just a recon mission; no suicide bombings this time.
"Men, you don't have to like me. But if you want to survive this mission you're going to have to take orders from me. The Loonies are going to be ready for us this time, and they're not going to give up easily."
"Hmph!" Walid snorted behind her. She spun around, ready to deck him, but there was no challenge in his eyes, and he raised both hands peacefully, even as he lifted his eyebrows at the quickness of her response. "You really think they'll be able to resist us?" he asked.
It was an honest question, and she saw him hide a smile as her upraised hand dropped to her side.
"Second Battalion thought their mission would be easy, and look what it got them. The Loonies know how to move in low-G if the dome's gravity goes down. We don't. There's no telling what kind of surprises they might have ready."
"But they are not fighters or soldiers," Walid argued.
Faroukh nodded, for once agreeing with Walid. "They are infidels and scientists, not warriors of Allah." A number of the others agreed noisily, until a soft voice silenced them.
"What is a weapon?" Hamal said. "Many things are weapons. It is true that these infidels are not warriors like us. So who knows what horrors they may have created with their stinking Iblis-spawned technology. We must be strong in the faith and pray for victory."
Faroukh sighed and nodded. "Inshallah."
Bunny shook her head, desperately hoping Hamal wasn't going to declare it time for daily prayers, as the transport rocked gently and the landing warnings began to sound.
"Thirty seconds!" the pilot's voice crackled through the comm system. "LZ is hot!"
Bunny darted to her seat and reached for the buckle above her shoulder. "Stations, men! Power up and strap in!" She nodded with relief as she saw the men follow her orders. On the far side of the pod, she saw Walid feeling about his hip. She surreptitiously checked her own holster, then relaxed as she felt the familiar grip of the laser pistol.
"Blue Team?" she said.
Masrur's voice crackled in her ear. "Check."
"Green Team?"
Hasan chimed in. "Check."
"Red Team check," she called out, verifying it herself. "This is it, men. You know the drill. When we touch down and the hatch pops, exit Red-Green-Blue. And if you see anyone who isn't wearing UN blue, terminate without prejudice."
"What does that mean?" Asrad asked.
"Kill them," she clarified.
"Oh."
Bunny paused for a moment, then decided to go for it. "Allahu Akhbar!"
Wincing as the overamplified cheers sounded in her helmet, Bunny grinned despite herself. Maybe leading a bunch of hyped-up Palestinians into battle on the Moon wasn't
exactly the career path her mother would have chosen for her in Kansas, but what the heck? Sometimes you just had to go your own way.
Less than two hours later Bunny and the three surviving members of Red Team were circling an octagonal structure that stood in the center of a large chamber on the east side of the Korolev dome.
She held up a hand as she stopped, then gestured to Asrad indicating that he should cover them from the wide stairs to the north. He saluted quickly and obeyed, backing away from them with his pistol carefully leveled towards the far corner of the octagon.
Their initial encounter with the LDF had cost Bunny most of Green Team as well as Red Three, but the Palestinians were learning to respect the rebels' ability to hit them when they weren't expecting it. Bunny suspected that her platoon's communications were compromised—hence the tight radio silence—and although she didn't know how the rebels were intercepting their transmissions, or even if it was possible for them to, she was determined to look into the matter. But that would have to wait until later; in the meantime there were more pressing matters.
A section of the octagon was concave, exposing a small ledge, and Nasrullah pointed his pistol at it and drew Bunny's attention to it. She waved him forward, and he leaped easily onto the ledge and pressed a small button on the octagon wall as the others covered him.
The wall turned into a vertical door that split in half to reveal a weapons cache containing ACRs, the automated combat lasers that were standard equipment for UN shock troops. ACRs were more powerful than the little laser pistols Bunny and her platoon carried, but they drained their power cells faster, too.
Nasrullah picked up an ACR and offered it to Bunny, but she pointed the palm of her hand at the floor and gestured sideways, then took the rifle. Holstering her pistol, she popped out the ACR's power cell, clipped it to her belt, and tossed the rifle back into the storage room as she leaped off the ledge, away from the octagon.