Moon Dreams

by M.A. Harris

Plots

  Aristide Industries’ sole visible extravagance was the Gulfstream/Tupolev Supersonic Business Jet that its chairman used to shuttle himself and the company’s top management around. Today the supercruiser was high above the vast emptiness of the South Atlantic, streaking towards New York, carrying Aristide Industries CEO, COO and CFO home from a meeting in Pretoria.

  The CFO, Benjamin VanBunt leaned back in the deeply cushioned leather recliner as he studied his principal. Ben was a lawyer and an accountant specializing in international finances. He was not well known because he’d worked for Aristide Industries, really for Richard Aristide, his entire professional career. He was certain that he could have been world famous, been recognized as powerful in the halls of the rich and famous, if he had followed the path of others through the great investment banks and into government service, but he was a quiet man and he knew that he was as well paid as any accountant on Earth.

  He was paid that much because he helped Richard Aristide in his single minded, at times brilliant and at times delusional, quest to take mankind to the stars. He’d started almost thirty years ago helping with Aristide’s ‘hobby’, which in those days was a small thing, a harmless obsession.

  Like many obsessed men of brilliance Richard Aristide had been lucky. The futurists and engineers in Aristide Advanced Engineering had developed a lot of useful technology as a by-product of concepts developed for space settlement and industrialization. Over the years AAE had developed a worldwide reputation for forward thinking, sophisticated and elegant engineering solutions, especially in rugged environment construction.

  AAE had its headquarters in Switzerland but it had various subsidiaries all over the world, especially in the US. Many of those subsidiaries looked like independent R&D firms to outsiders. Altogether these companies had spent billions on space settlement and industrialization, much of it paid for by customers who had no idea that they were funding space research, and who, by and large, had gone away happy with what they got in return for their money.

  But as Richard Aristide had grown richer, and his company more successful, his dreams had gotten more grandiose, in the early days Ben’s scrubbing process had hidden short-term losses and de-emphasized the scale and focus of the work going on in AAE. That had become harder as the costs of the delusions had grown. While AAE’s, and its various subsidiaries, reputations grew, their losses grew as well and Ben had to start draining funds away from AI’s hugely profitable construction business worldwide. Now he also found funds flowing in from sources he didn’t know about, which Richard would not tell him about, but even those flows were insufficient. Aristide’s dream was killing the company he had built over decades, and Ben was hiding that death spiral from the world.

  Ben had no delusions about himself; he’d done what he’d done for the kick of it, because he could, and because it allowed him to stretch his mind, not because he’d had any belief in Aristide’s manifest destiny of mankind among the stars. But now he found himself in a nightmarish world where delusion and fact mixed in bizarre and confusing ways.

  Aristide had gotten lucky, so lucky that if he had been rational they could have gotten out of the hole they had dug for themselves with little difficulty. The Paaly Stack and the Paaly Effect were going to change the world forever and give mankind the stars. The man and company who did that would have been forgiven much. But Richard Aristide was driving forward with his plans and those plans were as mad as anything any movie villain had ever hatched.

  Richard Aristide didn’t look insane but Ben was almost certain that he was, now. When obsession had crossed the line to megalomania was unclear, there was probably no clear line but Ben was certain that the big old man had traveled far beyond whatever line there was. But then again, he couldn’t really be insane because his plans were logical in their way and practical, given the power he now controlled, but the goals and methods of those plans were far beyond the pale of sanity, or what a quiet, Harvard educated Dutchman, thought of as sane.

  Ben glanced across at Howard Conrad who was deep in conversation with Richard Aristide. Conrad was ex-British Royal Air Force, at some point he’d been a security consultant, a mercenary. These days he was Aristide Chief of Operations, but he spent most of his time dealing with security and the Luna Haven project.

  The slim, sandy Englishman was relaxed as the two men discussed the progress of the Luna Haven project, “…Paul Richard’s both a boon and a problem Richard. He’s bright but not just in a technical sense, as his success in getting the command slot on the first Moonship proves. He’s been up to his ears in getting the Stacks straightened out and the Moonship finished. But he’s also developed some rather troubling friendships among the locals and he’s been poking around, I think he’s beginning to look up and ask where the hell all the money for the toys came from.”

  Aristide waved a hand, “He’s going to have the Alexis in space in less than a month Howard. They’ve got thousands of hours on the Stacks now; he’s blown a couple on purpose and has started stripping units to find wear patterns. The man is bright and driven; he’s also a believer in the goal. All of the old hands have questions Howard, they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t, but they all believe in the Goal.” He spoke with confidence.

  Howard’s voice was clipped and practical. “But he’s not an old hand or part of your little cult, or even one of the townspeople who want to save their home, he’s a bright young man who’s been burnt enough in the past following his dream. So perhaps he won’t follow quite so closely this time.”

  “We need him for a while Howard, long enough to get us up and started on the endgame. Once Luna Haven is established we have a place we can hold people with relative ease. If he becomes a problem he can become an early permanent resident of the base like Paaly and a few others will.”

  The sandy haired Englishman with his washed out blue eyes looked out the window, “All right Richard, I think we have a plan but I will keep an eye on Mr. Richards.” Ben saw the nervous tap of his fingers on his leg under the table. Howard wasn’t as relaxed as he looked. “What about the Coots? And the rest, are we going to be able to get them up and safely installed before the roof crashes in?” The dangerous eyes flashed over to look at Ben.

  “Ben?” Aristide’s voice was calm and flat.

  Ben closed his eyes and shrugged, “We have roughly nine months until we run out of cash at the current rate of expenditure, about three months later the ah, roof will start to crash in, in slow motion. I can dance over the coals for up to six months while the enormity of it all sinks in. So…. barring the unforeseen we have about ten months before smart people start to realize we are bankrupt, maybe a year before our suppliers stop delivering. I imagine about that time the Utah State Government and the Federal Government will begin to ask questions, in enough detail to realize that we have fallen far behind schedule on the canal project.” He sounded so confident, and he was, in reality this sort of thing was almost as predictable as the payout on a mortgage, he’d been studying this endgame scenario for the better part of two years now and it was surprising how little variation he had seen in his case studies.

  “Nine months then,” Howard discounted Ben’s answer

  The accountant shrugged expressively at Richard who smiled faintly and spoke to the ex mercenary, “Twelve months Ben says, twelve months we have Howard. But I agree we should plan to have it done in nine.”

  “I think we can have the Coots up along with all the key technical people from the Hollow and the garrison. I’ve gone over the construction schedule with Conti; at that point we’d have lots of room and life support for the garrison and lift capacity for the fighter hulls and the weapons platforms.” The gangly soldiers eyes were hooded, the fingers under the table tapped on as he thought.

  “I wish you would stop calling the Church of the Stars the Coots Howard, they are dedicated people following my dream and should be honored for that, not der
ided.” Richard’s voice was cool.

  Howard shrugged, “As you say Mr. Aristide, but from my viewpoint they are a reliable work force, and will form the core of a civilian population that has the social cohesion to survive in a rugged environment, take orders and not be a burden.”

  Ben shivered faintly; Howard was a ruthless and heartless bastard, though probably not cruel except when necessary. This was the first time the pair of them had talked openly about the garrison and the weapons. They’d been obvious but unstated for a while. The feeling of being trapped in a nightmare returned, “What fighters and what weapons platforms Howard? We’ve sunk all our money into the Moonships and the Base?”

  The pale blue eyes fastened on him and the almost lipless mouth curved as if tasting something sour, “Not quite all our money Ben. You’ve noted that we have a few relatively small, but significant, revenue streams coming in from…ah…unspecified sources?” Ben nodded.

  Howard’s nostrils flared, he smiled a thin satisfied smile, “Not all those funds came through your hands. The engineering group in Switzerland is developing a space fighter; I gave them sanitized specs for the Paaly Stack and asked them to develop something around it using existing hardware. They started out thinking they were developing something for a sci-fi epic. It turns out that the existing Stack will fit in the fuselage of the old F 104 Star Fighter, of which there are still literally hundreds in almost pristine condition in the desert storage after all these years. With electric powered steam attitude control jets and a gimbaled thrust bearing on the Stack you end up with a fighter that can operate in space or air. It can out accelerate any fighter in existence and can fly into and out of the atmosphere at will, though they have to be careful about velocity, since they’re plain old aluminum and could easily melt if they hit atmosphere too fast. ”

  Howard hesitated then went on with a smirk, “I’ve bought twenty mothballed airframes without engines and have them in storage. We also bought twenty-four solid-state radars and electronic countermeasures suites, built for the Euro-Fighter but never installed because the aircraft they were to be installed on were never built. Bureaucrats never fail to amaze me. Oh and we managed to ah…sideline a couple of boxcars of missiles and launch rails as well. Been stashed on a siding in an old Soviet era military reservation for a year and forgotten. Whole lot only cost about forty million Euros first to last.”

  Ben kept his discomfort hidden and watched the other man’s satisfaction, Howard’s sort survived, thrived, in the interstices of bureaucracy and failed statesmanship. Then he thought about the money, the soldier seemed to think forty million was chicken feed. He only hoped the soldier had hidden his tracks, he probably had. Mercenaries, good ones anyway, tended to be very careful people.

  Aristide spoke up next, “The weapons platforms are orbital busses we designed to carry bombardment weapons. Either guided reentry vehicles - or rocks for that matter! They will go into orbit around Earth, when we command them they will temporarily de-orbit themselves, drop the weapons selected and then regain orbital velocity - much like a dive-bomber. We could have used rockets to de-orbit the weapons, it doesn’t take much, but the dive-bombing is less expensive and potentially more accurate. Should be able to put an unguided weapon into a box ten meters wide by about a hundred meters long and that’s good enough for a lot of missions, the guided weapons will have an essentially zero miss distance.”

  Ben wanted to hold his head, it felt like it was going to explode, or float away, “So you still intend to declare the Luna Free State then Richard?”

  Howard snorted, “Of course we do Ben, where have you been for the last couple of years?”

  “Ben’s just expressing his concern Howard; he’s not convinced this is the best way forward for the race. He doesn’t see the end times coming as clearly as you and I do and the need to get mankind off this dying rock ball before we destroy ourselves. Right Ben?” Richard Aristide spoke calmly and kindly, Ben knew that the mad industrialist still trusted him and by doing so Aristide was trapping Ben, who couldn’t find it in himself to betray that trust.

  Aristide didn’t see the curve of contempt on Howard’s lips that Ben saw. The cold assessment in the pale eyes was terrifying, more so than any overt threat. Ben was surprised he could even speak; he was even more surprised to find that his voice didn’t squeak, “I’m afraid you’re right Richard but I guess I don’t have to believe in all of it to help. I just think the same things could be accomplished with much less precipitous actions.”

  Aristide shook his head, “God wouldn’t have given this gift to us if he hadn’t meant us to use it and use it quickly. The powers that be have proven that they have no interest in expanding the human hegemony; it would weaken their hold on power. If we delay, take this public, we would be dragged down by them. God would overcome eventually but it would slow things by years - decades - and that would be disastrous, I’m sure. Once the Free State is declared and we offer our services to the population of the world things will move forward very rapidly.”

  Howard smiled coldly, “But there is a large chance that the old line governments will try and stop us, try and stop the exodus of population and control to the solar system and the stars, so we need to be prepared to be cut off from Earth for some time. We must also be able to defend ourselves of course and usually the best defense is a good offense, especially when you are dealing with nuclear powers who believe in the balance of terror.”

  “Won’t the US ballistic defense system, even the experimental airborne and space based lasers be a problem?” Ben asked quietly, more to distract his mind from his nausea than anything else.

  Howard shook his head, “There aren’t many of the ground or sea based interceptors and we can saturate them, they’re designed for the old world where lofting ballistic weapons was expensive and the warheads were weapons of mass destruction, not barrages of precision weapons. And above a certain altitude the missiles are harmless. The lasers are soft targets from space, one of the first the space fighters will take out. If the US and the UN prove too much of a problem we will then show them who has the high ground and is in control, then we will dictate terms to them.”

  Aristide shook his head, “No, no they’ll see sense long before things come to that, but you are right that we need to have some teeth to show. Even in the twenty-first century, armed forces are necessary to make sure you are taken seriously, unfortunately.”

  It was obvious that Aristide didn’t realize that his henchman was planning much more aggressive, perhaps even preemptive action, under his own nose. Howard was looking towards world domination from the moon, while Aristide was looking at the salvation of humanity from the same location. Maybe the two views were just different ways of looking at the same scenario?

  Looking at the two men across the cabin Ben was struck by the thought that Howard was not insane, and yet the plans Ben saw in that narrow cold face were much more frightening than Aristide’s insanity.

  But wasn’t insanity defined as an inability to deal with reality? With a thump Ben realized that circumstances had robbed Aristide of his insanity. Objective reality had caught up with Richard and eliminated his obsessions dissonance with reality. Ben wanted to giggle as that insight flowered in his mind.

  Howard’s cold assessing look and Aristide’s beatific smile wiped away that impulse. He realized that both of the other men might not be clinically insane, but they were certainly mad, perhaps divinely mad, but mad nonetheless. He also knew he had no option but to ride this out. He knew that Howard would have him killed the instant he showed any intention of straying and Ben had no way of knowing how tight his surveillance was. If it hadn’t been tight before, it would be now.

  They had another couple of hours flying time, Ben closed his eyes and settled back, he wanted to sleep, some juvenile part of his mind hoped that maybe fate would intervene again and they would crash. He looked out and down at the seeming infinite expans
e of gray below. Somehow a cold, deep, quiet, sea grave seemed preferable to the black pit of uncertainty he saw looming. He lay there for a long time with his eyes closed but sleep would not come as his mind spun around this nightmare in real life. Finally his mind let go and he slipped into sleep, but even there he was running across a moonscape trying to find someplace to breathe, with a leering Howard Conrad dressed as a devil on one shoulder and Aristide as an angel on the other, both yelling directions he couldn’t hear in the vacuum of space.