The other officer seated at the short end of the desk shifted in his chair. Tudel looked and saw that he was a two star. His name tag read "Opper.” He knew the name from his chain of command. General Opper might be subordinate to General Bonner, but the man was still his boss's boss's boss's boss. The gap was dizzying. Tudel swallowed.
General Opper reached down and picked up something from the floor and put it on the desk. A spacesuit helmet in a large sealed evidence bag. "You wore this during your escape from the Wookkiee to the RTFM."
It didn't sound like a question, but Tudel nodded and croaked, "Yes, sir." He cleared his throat, embarrassed that his voice had caught.
Opper raised on eyebrow. "Interesting stuff in the onboard processors. Complete logs of everywhere the Wookkiee has been for the last three years. Pickup points in the Pacific... and off the coast of Nigeria. Keys and protocols for opening Aristillus airlocks." He paused. "I'm impressed."
Tudel blinked. General Opper was impressed? With him? No, he must be reading that wrong. He'd fucked up - his career was over. There was no chance -
"But we retrieved other helmets - we've got a couple dozen off the RTFM. So this isn't unique." Ah, of course. Opper was building a bit of hope, and then crushing it. He had to admire the technique - he'd used it himself, but rarely so well.
Tudel took a breath and kept his face impassive. He was going to face his fate like a warrior.
Opper reached down and pulled up another evidence bag, this one much smaller. He placed it on the desk. "But this - this is the piece de resistance." He nodded to himself. "Darcy Grau's personal phone. The contact information alone - Mike Martin, Javier Borda, Albert Lai, Hector Camanez - is amazing. We know those names; a lot of them were in the CEO Trials, and the ones that weren't are on lists that - well, never mind. But I don't care about the names. The crypto keys to her journal, her email archives - that's the red meat here. Foreign Materiel Exploitation loved this one."
Opper reached out and spun the evidence bag around on the desk so that the phone faced Tudel. "Well done, soldier. Well done."
Tudel felt dizzy and suddenly it felt harder to breathe. Was this another cycle of raising hopes before crushing them? Or were they seriously...
General Opper turned to Bonner. "You want to tell him?"
"He's your man, Bill. You do the honors."
Opper nodded. "We're promoting you - light colonel would have been appropriate, but there are regs, so it's just major for now. But don't worry - that oak leaf will turn silver soon enough."
Opper kept talking, but his voice seemed to grow quiet and distant. Tudel felt like a man lost at sea, trying to clear his lungs and push himself above the waves. He forced himself to remain utterly straight in his chair, but it was a challenge. He clung to one thing: he'd done it. He hadn't disgraced himself after all. He - he was a hero. The hero of the entire mission.
Opper was saying something. " - scout ahead of the big one."
"I'm - I'm sorry sir, what was that?"
"We've got a new mission for you. The ships are ready; we're just waiting for the reverse engineering lab to clone the AG drive."
"I -" Tudel swallowed. "I - thank you sir." How? How had this turned around so quickly?
He didn't know, but he knew that he was going to do his best on the new mission. And sure as hell wasn't going to make the same mistakes he'd made this time.
Chapter 57
2064: Mike’s house, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
Two rooms over, the water rushed as the bathtub filled, but Mike didn't hear it as he paced the length of the den. He stopped, picked up a lunar globe from the book case, stared at it for a few seconds, and put it back. He paused. Next to the globe was a toy yellow Caterpillar tracked loader, dented and scratched from endless afternoons being played with in a Texas backyard fifty years ago.
He picked up the Cat and stared out the window. Outside the apples on the trees were starting to ripen, but Mike didn't see them.
The war was starting way too soon. He'd won a battle - no, not even. A skirmish. A fistfight.
He'd won nothing.
Mike ran his hand over the small yellow loader absently. He'd known that the US and the UN would come after him. He'd known it from the day Ponzie had shown him the drive and they'd hatched their insane idea to leave Earth and build this place.
It was in their nature. What was government except control? People breathing without official permission wasn't just an annoyance, it was an existential threat. A threat because it showed that freedom was possible, that self-organization worked, that people didn't need to be ruled.
So of course there was going to be a war.
But that war was supposed to be years in the future.
His hand contracted around the toy, and he didn't notice that the edges were biting into the meat of his palm.
He'd spent ten years building the colony, working every minute of the day, and now the whole thing looked doomed. Given a few more years, Aristillus would have the population to fight, the infrastructure and weapons to fight, and maybe even public opinion on Earth on their side.
But now the Earth governments had the AG drive. Would they be able to reverse engineer it? The politicians might be stupid and corrupt, Earth's economy might be a basket case, the incentives for industry might be somewhere between idiotic and malign...but the expats had no monopoly on intelligence. With a population of nine billion, Earth had more geniuses than Aristillus had people. Of course they'd reverse engineer the drive.
He'd assumed there was a political barrier, that the Earth governments would be too wrapped up with their own problems to come after them, at least for a few more years, but apparently he was wrong.
He'd assumed there was a technological barrier, and now that was gone too.
The war was here, and it was too soon. Way too soon.
They'd arrive in force, and soon. And when they arrived and conquered Aristillus, what would happen to him, Darcy, and all the other expats? Mike swallowed. It might make the show trials a decade earlier look like just a warm-up act.
Mike put the Cat toy back on the bookshelf, turned away from the window, and wandered into the kitchen. He looked in the fridge, and then shut it. He wasn't hungry.
He was doomed.
He was an escaped felon, a fugitive from the CEO trials. And if even if that was wiped from his record, his actions since going on the run would provide enough grist for any government lawyer to find a near-infinite number of 'crimes.’ Illegal emigration. Cross-state travel without a voucher. Construction without a license. Hate speech. Relocation without a housing classification permit. Making business loans without approval. Suborning others to do all of the same.
Treason.
He'd been looking at decades in jail when he fled earth. Now, if he was taken captive, he could face a hundred life sentences. A thousand.
Mike snorted. A thousand life sentences? Two thousand? Ha. He'd cheat them out of all but one of them! He let his hand fall to the counter, where it landed on a bowl of peaches Darcy had put there.
He picked the top peach up and looked at it.
It wasn't the best he'd seen; he remembered eating peaches right off the tree in his grandparents’ yard in Georgia when he was a boy. But this one was good enough. He turned it over in his hand and marveled at it. This peach had never seen Georgia. In fact, it had never seen the sun. How crazy was it that a sapling brought from Earth had been planted in manmade dirt, grown under artificial lights in a lunar tunnel, and had produced a peach like this?
Mike had been looking at the fruit absently, but now he stared at it, seeing it with fresh eyes. He shook his head at the audacity of what the people of Aristillus had accomplished. Eleven years ago this - all of this - had been solid rock. And now - just a decade later? Endless kilometers of living space, bright, warm, full of laughing kids, racing vehicles, teens playing soccer, restaurants, schools, commerce.
And at least one God-damned peach tree orchard.
It
was incredible.
They'd built this - all of this. And now they were going to lose it all. He pictured it: the city evacuated, the populace jailed back on earth, the cold dark tunnels slowly losing air through leaky seals, the dead trees standing mute witness to what once was.
And him and Darcy dead, or in separate underground jail cells for their rest of their lives.
He'd never eat a peach again.
The image - all of it: the cold tunnels, the dead trees, Darcy in jail - enraged him.
How dare they.
Fuck that.
Fuck that!
No. No, he wasn't going to let some bureaucrat do that. He wasn't going to let some jailer decide what he could eat, what he could read, when he woke and when he slept.
Not after all the work he'd put into building Aristillus. Actually building it, not just as an idea, but with his own hands, with his own men and his own machines.
There was some famous Revolutionary era quote about preferring death to living in chains. He'd never heard it in school, of course, but thousands of people used it in signature blocks on underground bulletin boards.
Patrick Henry. That was it. What was the exact quote?
He pulled out his phone and looked it up.
"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
He took a deep breath.
Yes. Exactly.
So the governments had the AG drive and wanted a war? It was years too early, and Aristillus wasn't ready to fight. But the fight was here. Maybe they'd lose. Hell, almost certainly they'd lose. But even if they lost, they could die on their feet. The light of liberty had already burned out on Earth - and maybe it was going to go out here on the moon too. But it would burn again someday. Somewhere. And the fight now, here, would make a glorious tale to inspire some future generation. He - he would make a glorious tale to inspire some future generation.
Mike took a bite of the peach.
He was Mike Martin. He'd risen from a small town in Texas. Without money, without credentials, and without permission he'd built everything he'd ever owned.
Twice.
He swallowed and took another bite, larger this time. Juice spilled over his hands.
And you know what? Screw dying a glorious death to inspire future generations. Screw that. If the Earth governments wanted a fight, wanted to cage or kill him and his friends, employees, and associates, he'd give them a fight.
And he wasn't going to fight to inspire others. He was going to fight to win.
Mike swallowed. The peach was delicious.
Chapter 58
2064: Mike’s house, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
Mike paced through the living room. "It's too damned dangerous! You barely escaped with your life last time!"
Darcy sat on the couch, her robe pulled around her and her hair still wet from the bath. "Mike, please - can we let this rest for a week? Or at least a day or two?"
He turned his hands upward. "What's going to change in a week or two?"
"Nothing, but - "
"Well, then, why -"
"Darn it, Mike! I had guns pointed at me, and I've only been off the ship for a few hours. I just want to rest and -"
Mike stopped and faced Darcy. "You had guns pointed at you! That's exactly my point. These runs aren't safe. They never were, but it's worse now. The war has started, Darce. I can't have you on the front lines."
Darcy looked around the house theatrically. "What? Do you think that here in Aristillus is somehow not the front lines? I was held hostage and you were just in a gun battle not three klicks from here. Every place is the front lines!"
Mike looked away, then back. "That's rhetoric. You know as well as I do that it's safer here in the tunnels than it is flying to Earth and back."
"I agree with you."
Mike blinked. "You do?"
"Yes. It is safer. But you've spent the last forty-five minutes telling me about your plans for the revolution. Building fortifications, funding militias, recruiting technical advisers. If you're going to fight this revolution, Michael Martin, you're not going to do it by yourself. You're going to need every man, woman, and child in Aristillus to help you."
"So help. But there's no need for you to be flying. There's other stuff you can work on."
Darcy stood and put her hands on her hips. "Those new EP doors you want? Someone's got to fly them here. You want military advisors? That means ships, and ships mean navigators."
"Navigators, sure - but that doesn't mean you have to do it."
"Mike, I told you I was in on this scheme ten years ago, and I meant it. If there's a war, then I'm doing my part."
Mike shook his head. "That's not the end of the conversation. We're not done talking about this."
"Good. This war needs every one of us, and I've got a lot to say about it."
Chapter 59
2064: Benjamin and Associates Office, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
Mike ticked off the action items on his fingers. "I need to free up cash from Morlock Engineering. I need to get that cash to Earth. I need to use that cash to buy supplies. I need to get the supplies back here. I need to hire mercenaries to train the rifle club." He looked up from his fingers to Lowell expectantly.
Lowell steepled his fingers. Then, after a long moment, he asked, "And what do you want me to do? I hope you're not assuming I've got any advice on hiring -" he shook his head slightly "- mercenaries."
Mike shook his head. "No. I need you to tell me how to get gold from Aristillus into the Earth financial system." He paused for a moment. "Money laundering, I guess."
Lowell raised his eyebrows. "Why do you need my advice? You buy TBMs and spare parts all the time from Earth. Just do whatever -"
Mike shook his head. "No, this is different. We're talking bigger amounts. Much bigger. Tens of millions, maybe hundreds. And that's just to start."
Lowell's forehead creased. "That much?"
"If the PKs are going to invade us, we need e-p-doors -"
"E P doors?"
"Emergency pressure doors. Big - I'm talking vast - doors that can slide across tunnels. Like bank vaults."
Lowell nodded, but his brow was furrowed. "You've got some of those up in the top levels; why not just have them fabbed locally?"
Mike shook his head again. "Those are in the old A-series tunnels. Ten meters across. Most of the colony is C-series. Those are thirty meters across, and nine times -"
"Nine? What?"
Mike gave Lowell a withering look. "Didn't you take any engineering courses?"
Lowell rolled his eyes. "No, Mike, Harvard Law doesn't -"
Mike waved it away. "EP doors for a C series tunnel are nine times the area, plus there are complications having to do with the span -" Mike stopped. "Look, you don't care about the engineering details. The bottom line is that we need armored doors that are a lot bigger than anything we can produce locally, and they're even bigger than anything we can get from our regular black-market suppliers in Vietnam or Somalia. We need First World facilities and engineering."
Lowell sighed. "Money laundering isn't my area of expertise; you knew that when we started doing business ten years ago. Seasteading and private law - that's what I do." He paused. "Alright, let me look into it. I can make a few calls. You can get the cash to me in gold?"
Mike nodded. "Most of it's in Goldwater certificates; it shouldn't take more than a day to convert that to bullion."
Lowell thought further. "How much gold are we talking? Bars?"
Mike shook his head. "Pallets of bars. At the very least. Maybe more by the time it's done."
Lowell gave him a cautioning look. "There are very few people I'd trust around even a single one kilo bar. Even mostly honest men have their price - and the kind of men we're going to have to deal with on Earth to move this stuff - they're not honest men." Lowell looked
up over his steepled fingers and stared at Mike hard. "If I can figure out how to launder this and get it into First World bank accounts, can you figure out how to purchase these doors of yours without tipping anyone off or having anyone turn you in for a reward?"
"Well", said Mike, rubbing his hand across the lower portion of his face, "I guess I'll have to."
Chapter 60
2064: Javier's office, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
Javier shook his head. "Smuggling gold? Hiring mercenaries? This is a mistake, Mike."
"Jave, the war is here! This stuff is critical."
"Yes, the war is here - but you're diving into details when you need to back up and think about the big picture. The strategy-""
"Strategy? There is no strategy. We're playing defense, and we're screwed unless we start now."
"Mike, stop. What's your goal here?"
"My goal? My goal is to smuggle the gold to Earth, get the EP doors built, hire military advisors -"
Javier held up a finger. "No, bigger picture."
Mike's mouth twisted. He hated it when Javier lectured him like this. He always had some stupid zinger up his sleeve. "Bigger picture? We've got to defend Aristillus."
"Closer. I'd say our goal is to avoid a war, if we can."
"It's too late for that!"
Javier shrugged. "Maybe. Probably. But you should try - and be seen to try - if only for the propaganda value. And then, if that fails -"
"When it fails."
"Fine. When it fails." Javier sighed. "If, when, whatever. After that your goal is to fight and win a revolution."
Mike threw his head back. "Finally. Jesus." He paused. "But it's not a revolution; I'm not trying to change -"
"Secession. Whatever. My point is that to win you need -"
"It's not a secession either because it was never a single government."
"Mike, damn it! This is exactly the problem. You want to dive into details when you need to back up and figure out the big picture. It's the same problem you have at work - you spend too much time thinking about TBMs and not enough time managing the business. If it weren't for Wam basically running half the show for you you'd be bankrupt by now."
The Powers of the Earth (Aristillus Book 1) Page 23