Moonwar Read online

  Moonwar

  Ben Bova

  Copyright

  Moonwar

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Copyright © 1998 by Ben Bova

  Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2009 by RosettaBooks, LLC.

  First electronic edition published 2009 by RosettaBooks

  LLC, New York.

  ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795309090

  To Janet and Bill Cuthbert

  And to Barbara, with thanks for the vacuum cleaner

  War is an evil thing, but to submit to the dictation of other states is worse…. Freedom, if we hold fast to it, will ultimately restore our losses, but submission will mean permanent loss of all that we value…. To you who call yourselves men of peace, I say: You are not safe unless you have men of action on your side.

  —Thucydides

  Once we have lived through the rapid changes that are now marking our transition from the third to the fourth phase of history, from a period of diversification to one of unification, we shall be squarely faced with a number of serious problems…

  It has been shown by many social experiments that man cannot control every facet of life. All we can do is to try to isolate the factors that are the keys to the entire structure, and to work on them. These are basically: the conservation of natural resources; power-production; population-control; the full utilization of brainpower; and education. The details of the social structure will fall into place automatically as the end product of all these forces; as they always have done…

  Political unification of the world is not the first necessary step. By the time it has become possible without turmoil, it will also have become unnecessary.

  —Carleton S. Coon

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  PART I – SKIRMISH

  MOONBASE CONTROL CENTER

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 116 HOURS 30 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 115 HOURS 55 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 114 HOURS 35 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 114 HOURS

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 113 HOURS 22 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 112 HOURS 17 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 112 HOURS

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 111 HOURS 48 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 110 HOURS 7 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 109 HOURS

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 108 HOURS 57 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 96 HOURS

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 95 HOURS 54 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 95 HOURS 20 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 93 HOURS 45 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 90 HOURS 11 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 63 HOURS 29 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 38 HOURS 30 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 27 HOURS 51 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 20 HOURS

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 17 HOURS 38 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 12 HOURS 22 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 11 HOURS 45 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 9 HOURS 45 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 8 HOURS 57 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 6 HOURS 11 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 4 HOURS 4 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 2 HOURS 38 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 1 HOUR 57 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 32 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 15 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 23 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 38 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 51 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 59 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 1 HOUR 11 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 1 HOUR 24 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 1 HOUR 45 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 2 HOURS 6 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 2 HOURS 11 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 3 HOURS 25 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 4 HOURS 48 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 8 HOURS 3 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 12 HOURS 26 MINUTES

  TOUCHDOWN PLUS 12 HOURS 52 MINUTES

  PART II – SIEGE

  DAY FIVE

  DAY SIX

  DAY SEVEN

  DAY EIGHT

  DAY TEN

  DAY ELEVEN

  DAY TWELVE

  DAY FIFTEEN

  DAY SIXTEEN

  DAY SEVENTEEN

  DAY EIGHTEEN

  DAY TWENTY-FOUR

  DAY TWENTY-FIVE

  DAY THRITY-ONE

  DAY THIRTY-SIX

  DAY THIRTY-EIGHT

  DAY THIRTY-NINE

  DAY FORTY

  DAY FORTY-ONE

  DAY FORTY-TWO

  DAY FORTY-TWO

  DAY FORTY-THREE

  DAY FORTY-THREE

  DAY FORTY-FOUR

  DAY FORTY-FOUR

  DAY FORTY-FOUR

  PART III – BATTLE

  THE HAGUE

  MOONBASE

  NIPPON ONE

  SAVANNAH

  MASS DRIVER

  SPACE STATION MASTERSON

  MOONBASE

  SAVANNAH

  MOONBASE

  BASE DIRECTOR’S OFFICE

  NANOLAB

  SAVANNAH

  MOONBASE

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  MASS DRIVER

  CONROL CENTER

  MASS DRIVER

  CONTROL CENTER

  ASSAULT FORCE

  EDITING BOOTH

  WODJOHOWITCZ PASS

  CRATER FLOOR

  CORRIDOR ONE

  CONTROL CENTER

  UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS

  CONTROL CENTER

  PLASMA VENT TUNNEL

  ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL CENTER

  THE STUDIO

  THE INFIRMARY

  CHRISTMAS EVE

  PROLOGUE

  In those days, if you stood on Earth and looked up into the night sky at the whitely glowing Moon smiling its enigmatic lopsided smile as it sailed cool and aloof beyond the clouds, you would not be able to see Moonbase.

  Even as you approached the Moon, hurtling toward its weary, battered face at more than five thousand miles per hour, the base would be hidden, invisible.

  For Moonbase was almost entirely underground. More than two thousand people lived and worked there, in tunnels carved out of the tallest mountain in the ring that circled the giant crater Alphonsus, yet only a handful of them ever went out on the surface.

  Masterson Corporation owned and operated Moonbase through a wholly-owned subsidiary headquartered in the island nation of Kiribati. Despite opposition from government and their own corporate board of directors, a dedicated, driven faction of Masterson’s people had doggedly maintained the base, slowly enlarging it from a cluster of half-buried temporary shelters to its current size, an underground village on the frontier of human existence.

  Only as your spacecraft fired its retro rockets to slow itself for landing would you begin to see hints that a populated settlement lay nestled into the smooth, rounded mountains of Alphonsus’ ringwall: the deep open pit that would one day become Moonbase’s grand plaza; the scoured-smooth landing pads of the rocket port; the glittering expanse of the solar energy farms; the long metal finger of the mass driver, out toward the middle of Alphonsus’ pitted, dusty floor.

  You would see one thing more: slick, smooth stretches of ground around the edges of the solar cells that made up the energy farms, looking almost like thin films of dark oily water on the barren regolith. They would puzzle you, because nothing like them existed on Earth. Nanomachines, virus-sized devices that could build new solar cells atom by atom out of
the lunar regolith’s silicon and aluminum, were silently expanding the solar farms, quietly, patiently enlarging Moonbase’s energy supply.

  Nanomachines, of course, were strictly outlawed on Earth.

  PART I

  SKIRMISH

  Let us not deceive ourselves, sir.

  These are the implements of war and

  subjection; the last arguments to

  which kings resort.

  —PATRICK HENRY

  MOONBASE CONTROL CENTER

  “L-1’s out.”

  The chief comm tech looked up sharply from her keyboard. “Try the backup.”

  “Already did,” said the man at the console beside her. “No joy. Every frequency’s dead.”

  The third communications technician, seated at the console on the chief’s other side, tapped one keypad after another. His display screen showed nothing but streaks of meaningless hash.

  “They did it,” he confirmed. “They pulled the plug.”

  The other controllers and technicians left their own stations and drifted tensely, expectantly toward the communications consoles. Their consoles flickered and glowed, untended. The big electronic wallscreen that displayed all of Moonbase’s systems hung above them as if nothing unusual was happening.

  The chief pushed back her little wheeled chair slightly. “They did it right when they said they would, didn’t they?”

  “That’s it, then,” said the male comm tech. “We’re at war.”

  No one replied. No one knew what to say. The knot of men and women stood there in uneasy silence. The only sounds were the low humming of the electronics consoles and the soft whisper of the air-circulation fans.

  “I’d better pipe the word up to the boss,” the chief technician muttered, reaching toward her keyboard. She started to peck at the keys.

  “Shit!” she snapped. “I broke a fingernail.”

  TOUCHDOWN MINUS 116 HOURS 30 MINUTES

  Douglas Stavenger stood at the crest of Wodjohowitcz Pass, listening to the silence. Inside the base there were always voices, human or synthesized, and the constant background hum of electrical machinery. Out here, up on the mountains that ringed the giant crater Alphonsus, he heard nothing but his own breathing—and the faint, comforting whir of the spacesuit’s air-circulation fans.

  Good noise, he thought, smiling to himself. When that noise stops, so does your breathing.

  He had climbed down from the tractor near the spot where the plaque was, a small square of gold riveted onto the rock face, dedicated to his father:

  On this spot Paul Stavenger chose to

  die, in order to save the men and

  women of Moonbase.

  Doug had not driven up to the pass for the sake of nostalgia, however. He wanted to take a long, hard look at Moonbase. Not the schematic diagrams or electronic charts, but the real thing, the actual base as it stood beneath the uncompromising stars.

  Everyone in the base thought they were safe and snug, dug into the side of the ringwall mountain they had named Yeager. Sheltered by solid rock, they had little fear of the dangers up on the airless surface, where the crater floor was bathed in hard radiation and the temperature could swing four hundred degrees between daylight and night, between sunshine and shadow.

  But Doug saw how terribly vulnerable they all were. They had protected themselves against the forces of nature, true enough. But now they were threatened with destruction by the hand of war.

  Doug looked out at the solar farm, thousands of acres of dark solar cells that greedily drank in sunlight and converted it noiselessly into the electricity the base needed the way a man needs blood. They could be blown to dust by conventional explosives, or blasted into uselessness by the radiation pulse from a nuclear warhead.

  Even easier, he realized, an enemy could knock out the radiators and we’d all stew underground in our own waste heat until we either surrendered or collapsed from heat exhaustion.

  His eyes travelled to the rocket pads. They were empty now that the morning’s lunar transfer vehicle had loaded up and departed. Beyond, he saw the geodesic dome that sheltered the construction pad; inside it, a half-built Clippership was being assembled by virus-sized nanomachines that converted meteoric carbon dust into hard, strong structure of pure diamond. How could we protect spacecraft sitting out on the pads? We can’t shelter them and we don’t have the facilities to bring them underground. That dome is no protection against missiles or even bullets.

  He looked farther out across the crater floor, to where the mass launcher stretched its lean dark metallic finger to the horizon. A single warhead could wreck it forever, Doug knew.

  Well, we can’t beat them in a shooting war, he told himself. That’s certain.

  Turning his gaze back to the edge of the solar farm, Doug saw the dark slick-looking film on the ground where the nanomachines were busily converting the silicon and metals of the lunar regolith into more solar cells.

  That’s what this war is all about, he knew. Nanomachines. And he thought he could feel the trillions of nanos inside his own body.

  If I go back to Earth I’ll be a marked man. Some crackpot nanoluddite will murder me, just the way they’ve killed so many others. But if the only way to avert this war is to close Moonbase, where else can I go?

  His mind churning, he turned again and looked down at the deep pit that would one day be Moonbase’s grand plaza. If we ever get to finish it.

  All construction jobs begin by digging a hole in the ground, he said to himself. It doesn’t make any difference if you’re on the Moon or the Earth.

  Under the brilliant illumination of powerful lamps spaced around the edge of the pit, front-loaders were working soundlessly in the lunar vacuum, scooping up dirt and dumping their loads onto the waiting trucks. Clouds of fine lunar dust hung over the machines, scattering the lamplight like fog. The first time I’ve seen mist on the Moon, Doug mused. Not a molecule of water in that haze, though.

  All of the machinery was controlled by operators sitting safely inside their stations at the control center. Only a handful of construction workers were actually out on the floor of the crater Alphonsus.

  I should be inside, too, Doug told himself. The deadline comes up right about now. I ought to be inside facing the music instead of out here, trying to avoid it all.

  In the seven years of his exile on the Moon, Doug had always come out to the lunar surface when he had a problem that ached in him. The Moon’s harsh, airless otherworldliness concentrated his mind on the essentials: life or death, survival or extinction. He never failed to be thrilled by the stark grandeur of the lunar landscape. But now he felt fear, instead. Fear that Moonbase would be closed, its potential for opening the space frontier forever lost. Fear that he would have to return to the Earth, where fanatic assassins awaited him.

  And anger, deep smoldering anger that men would threaten war and destruction in their ignorant, blind zeal to eradicate Moonbase.

  Simmering inside, Doug turned back to the tractor and climbed up to its bare metal driver’s seat. The ground here along the pass was rutted by years of tractors’ cleats clawing through the dusty lunar regolith. He himself had driven all the way around these softly rounded mountains, circumnavigating the crater; not an easy trek, even in a tractor. Alphonsus was so big its ringwall mountains disappeared beyond the short lunar horizon. The jaunt had taken almost a week, all of it spent inside a spacesuit that smelled very ripe by the time he came home again. But Doug had found the peace and inner tranquility he had sought, all alone up on the mountaintops.

  Not today. Even out here there was no peace or tranquility for him.

  Once he reached the crater floor he looked beyond the uncompromising slash of the horizon and saw the Earth hanging in the dark sky, glowing blue and decked with streams of pure white clouds. He felt no yearning, no sense of loss, not even curiosity. Only deep resentment, anger. Burning rage. The Moon was his true home, not that distant deceitful world where violence and treachery lurked be
hind every smile.

  And he realized that the anger was at himself, not the distant faceless people of Earth. I should have known it would come to this. For seven years they’ve been putting the pressure on us. I should have seen this coming. I should have figured out a way to avoid an outright conflict.

  He parked the tractor and walked along the side of the construction pit, gliding in the dreamlike, floating strides of the Moon’s low gravity. Turning his attention back to the work at hand, Doug saw that the digging was almost finished. They were nearly ready to start the next phase of the job. The tractors were best for the heavy work, moving large masses of dirt and rock. Now the finer tasks would begin, and for that the labs were producing specialized nanomachines.

  He wondered if they would ever reach that stage. Or would the entire base be abandoned and left suspended in time, frozen in the airless emptiness of infinity? Worse yet, the base might be blasted, bombed into rubble, destroyed for all time.

  It can’t come to that! I won’t let that happen. No matter what, I won’t give them an excuse to use force against us.

  “Greetings and felicitations!” Lev Brudnoy’s voice boomed through Doug’s helmet earphones.

  Startled out of his thoughts, Doug looked up and saw Brudnoy’s tall figure approaching, his spacesuit a brilliant cardinal red. The bulky suits smothered individual recognition, so long-time Lunatics tended to personalize their suits for easy identification. Even inside his suit, though, Brudnoy seemed to stride along in the same gangly, loose-jointed manner he did in shirtsleeves.

  “Lev—what are you doing here?”

  “A heartwarming greeting for your stepfather.”

  “I mean … oh, you know what I mean!”

  “Your mother and I decided to come up now, in case there’s trouble later on.”

  Nodding inside his helmet, Doug agreed, “Good thinking. They might shut down flights here for a while.”

  “How is the suit?” Brudnoy asked.