Part 51 (1/2)
Looking at the view of the approaching Peacekeeper vehicles, Doug said, ”The longer they take, the better it is for us. Time's on our side.”
”For now,” said Anson.
He nodded. ”Better put out an announcement that all personnel without specific tasks for the defense of the base should meet in The Cave.”
Anson hiked her brows. ”Not stay in their quarters?” 'No, get them into The Cave. Food's there, and it'll be easier to deal with them if they're all together instead of strung out in their individual quarters. There might be fighting in the corridors; I don't want anybody hurt unnecessarily.”
”Collateral damage,” Anson muttered, turning to the console keyboard.
The editing booth felt hot and stuffy. Edith sat at the big board, watching the array of display screens half-surrounding her, showing views of the approaching Peacekeepers and the s.p.a.cecraft at L-l.
”The first shot in this battle has already been fired,” she was saying into the microphone that sent her words Earthside. ”The U.N. Peacekeepers knocked out a reconnaissance satellite that Moonbase had placed in orbit to observe the Peacekeepers' movements.”
She pressed the stud that sent the view from Mount Yeager's camera Earthward. ”Now the Peacekeeper a.s.sault force is moving across Mare Nubium, approaching Moonbase. What you are seeing now...”
Georges Faure was far from composed as he sat in his office, watching the broadcast of Global News. He fidgeted in his big chair, seething with anger. To think that this woman, this s.l.u.t of a reporter who had seduced him into allowing her to accompany the original Peacekeeper force to the Moon, to think that she was such a traitor, such a propagandist for the rebels-it exasperated him.
Yet a part of him was thrilled at the sight of the Peacekeeper armada crossing Mare Nubium. These are my my troops, Faure told himself, marching under troops, Faure told himself, marching under my my orders. Let the news media say what they will, in a matter of hours Moonbase will be under orders. Let the news media say what they will, in a matter of hours Moonbase will be under my my control, as it should be. control, as it should be.
And if those rebellious fools attempt the resistance, they will be crushed. As they should be.
Colonel Giap compared the electronic map on the display screen of his tractor's cab with the view of Alphonsus's ringwall mountains looming before him. His tractor cab was pressurized and armored, so he could ride with the visor of his s.p.a.cesuit helmet open. He could have made this journey in s.h.i.+rtsleeves, had he chosen to, but that would have meant that he would have to don his s.p.a.cesuit once they arrived at their designated campsite. He had decided to endure the discomfort of forty-three hours in the s.p.a.cesuit, instead.
Most of the trip he had spent worrying about nanomachines. Moonbase had no weapons to speak of, he knew, but what kind of devilish weaponry could their nanoscientists devise? Nanomachines had driven off the first Peacekeeper attack. Giap had chosen broad daylight to make his a.s.sault, but inside the tunnels of Moonbase the purifying effect of solar ultraviolet did not penetrate. That is why Giap had included special teams of civilians with powerful UV lamps to accompany his troops. He did not intend to be run off by invisible, insidious nanoweapons.
Their base camp location had been carefully chosen to position them close to the two easiest pa.s.ses over the ringwall mountains, while still placing them within the sheltering lee of the mountains themselves. Those solid piles of rock would protect them from the radiation pulse of the nuclear explosion. There was no need to worry about blast effects in the lunar vacuum, but even if there were the mountains would shelter them, just as it will protect us from the radiation and heat pulse, Giap a.s.sured himself.
Still, a tendril of worry gnawed at him. The missile must be accurately aimed. And its warhead must be fused at precisely the correct alt.i.tude. If it goes off too soon, or its aim is a fraction of a degree off-target, we could be hit by the heat and radiation.
He reached out a gloved hand to touch the armored roof of the tractor's cab. Enough protection against a slightly mis-aimed nuclear warhead? he wondered. More likely the metal would serve as an efficient oven, to roast us all to death.
Shaking his head inside the helmet, he tried to push such fears away by attending to his duties. He established communications contact with L-l, although the link was weak and strained with harsh bursts of static. The tractor comm sets were far from satisfactory and sunspots or some other esoteric phenomena could hash up communications quite maddeningly.
The image of a Peacekeeper junior officer appeared on the little screen, wavering slightly and streaked with electronic snow.
”We are on schedule,” Giap informed the junior officer. ”All my vehicles will be at their a.s.signed base camp positions within two hours.”
”Very well,” came the woman's voice, through hissing static. ”Missile launch will proceed on schedule unless you order otherwise.”
”Yes, launch on schedule,” said Giap, wondering how firm a comm link they would have once his vehicle was parked up close to the ringwall mountains.
THE WHITE HOUSE.
”Mrs President, you've got real troubles with this Moonbase business.”
The President gave her staff chief a chilling look, the kind that had been known to cause lesser men to write out their resignations.
The chief of the White House staff was an old hand at this kind of thing, though; he had been with the President since she had first run for the Senate, many elections earlier.
”I mean,” he said, hunching forward in the Kennedy rocker in front of her broad, modern desk,'the poll numbers are changing so fast we can't keep up with them.”
”The trend?” she snapped.
”Swinging steadily in favor of Moonbase. Those news broadcasts Global's airing are turning the public's opinion around a hundred eighty degrees.”
The President turned her chair away from this man she knew so well, away from his earnest, worried face and the problems that slumped his shoulders. She looked out through the long windows to the flower garden that had soothed both Roosevelts and everyone else who had sat at this apex of power in the Oval Office.
”I mean it, Luce,” her staff chief said,'this has turned into real trouble.”
”What about the New Morality?” she asked, still without looking at him.
He did the unthinkable. He got up from the rocking chair and walked around her desk, forcing her to face him.
Bending his knees slightly and leaning his liver-spotted hands on them so his eyes were on the same level as hers, he said gently, ”They're not going to be enough, Luce. The public's demanding that you do something.”
She glared at him and swung back to the desk. He returned to the rocking chair.
”Are you telling me that O'Conner and Previs and all the other New Morality leaders are abandoning me on this?”
”No, not at all,” he said, raising his hands. ”The hard core of the Faithful are with you as much as they've ever been. They see this fight on the Moon as the battle between the forces of good and the evils of nanotechnology.”
”So where's my problem?”
”It's the peripherals,” he said with a sigh. ”You've got the hard core, they're solidly with you. But the hard core isn't that many votes, Luce! The New Morality's real strength has been in its numbers, yeah, but most of those numbers aren't fanatics. They're ordinary folks who think the New Morality's ideas about cleaning up crime and vice are pretty good.”
”And now?”
”Now they're looking at their television screens and seeing the big, bad U.N. attacking poor little Moonbase. And most of those people at Moonbase are Americans.”
”Who use nanomachines.”
The staff chief shook his head. ”The voters don't care that much about the nanomachines. What's getting them worked up is the sight of a bunch of Americans getting attacked by the Peacekeepers-who are mostly foreigners.”
”But they elected me because I pushed the nanotech treaty.”
”That's not important to them now. As long as the Moon people keep their nanomachines on the Moon, the average American voter doesn't care a gnat's fart about it.”
The President glared at her staff chief for long icy moments.
He gave her a weak grin. ”Don't blame the messenger for the message,” he said.
She huffed at him, then reached out and flicked on her desktop computer. ”I want to see these numbers for myself.”
The staff chief leaned back in the rocker and watched her face as the data from the constantly ongoing public-opinion poll flickered across her screen.
When she finally looked up at him she asked, ”What should I do?”
”Call Faure and tell him to back off, maybe?”
”Don't be ridiculous! It's much too late for that.”