Part 57 (1/2)
In his anxiety, Giap forgot the gentle lunar gravity and pulled himself up so hard he nearly soared completely out of the tractor. He sprawled across the roof of the cab, legs dangling inside his s...o...b..x-sized command center.
Pulling himself up to a sitting position, Giap looked around. His first sensation was relief at being out of the metal coffin of the command center. He saw smooth-walled gray rock mountains and a dark, star-strewn sky.
Then he looked down and saw that his tractor, and every other one up and down the line that he could see, were engulfed halfway up their drive wheels in a weird, bright blue sea of spongy-looking stuff. stuff.
”Sergeant!” he yelled into his helmet mike. ”Get up here.”
The sergeant popped the hatch to his cab and scrambled up to sit on the roof next to him.
Pointing at the sea of blue, Giap commanded, ”Climb down the side of the tractor and test the consistency of that material.”
”What is it?” the sergeant asked. Then he added, ”Sir.”
”If I knew what it was I wouldn't need you to test it!”
”Maybe it's some sort of Moon creature,” the sergeant said, his voice hollow.
”Don't be stupid!” Giap barked. ”It's man-made. It's something the rebels have cooked up to slow us down.”
The sergeant climbed down the ladder built into the tractor's side, slow and awkward in his c.u.mbersome s.p.a.cesuit. Very gingerly, he touched the blue surface with a booted toe.
”It feels soft, sir,” he reported.
”How soft? Can you walk on it?”
The sergeant pushed his boot in deeper, then-still grasping the ladder rungs with both hands-he tried standing on it. His boots sank in until their tops were covered in blue.
”Well?” Giap demanded.
He heard his sergeant puffing and grunting. ”I'm stuck in it, sir. I can't pull my feet out.”
In the half-hour it took for Seigo Yamagata to answer Joanna's call, she paced the living room, trying to burn up some of the fear and anger and grief that the tranquilizers had dulled but not removed.
While she paced she watched the Global News channel that was devoting full time to live coverage of the battle for Moonbase. Edie Elgin's voice sounded strained, slightly hoa.r.s.e from long hours of nonstop talking, but she was still going strong.
Joanna learned that the Peacekeepers' nuclear missile attack had failed and Moonbase's electrical power supply was still intact. Now she watched the view from atop Mount Yeager as the main Peacekeeper a.s.sault force came to a halt in Wodjohowitcz Pa.s.s.
”The smart foamgel will set to the consistency of concrete,” Edie Elgin was saying. ”Wodjohowitcz Pa.s.s is effectively blocked, as far as the Peacekeepers' vehicles are concerned.”
As she paced and watched, Joanna thought about getting dressed in something more substantial than her thin white robe, but that would have meant going upstairs. Even though the police were finished now with the bedroom, Joanna found she could not willingly go in there, not yet, not with Lev's blood still staining the bedclothes. Tomorrow, maybe. After they've cleaned everything up.
The phone chimed at last and she went to the sofa where the camera could focus on her. Seigo Yamagata's lean, lined face appeared on the screen above the fireplace, replacing Edie Elgin's report from the Moon. It was impossible to tell what time it might be in Tokyo from the wide window behind Yamagata's desk; the downtown city towers were drenched in driving rain.
”I'm sorry if I disturbed you,” Joanna began.
Yamagata raised a hand. ”It is of no consequence. I have just been informed of the attempt on your life. Please accept my deepest condolence for the loss of your husband.”
Ras.h.i.+d must've phoned him, Joanna thought swiftly. Or maybe not. He's got his own sources of information, certainly.
”I've decided that Moonbase isn't worth the loss of more lives,” Joanna said, holding herself together with a conscious effort of will. ”This war must end before more people are killed.”
Yamagata drew in a breath. ”I sincerely regret what has happened. This was not of my doing.”
”I understand that,” Joanna replied, a slim tendril of doubt still in the back of her mind. But she pushed it away. ”What kind of an agreement can we reach?”
Rubbing his chin in apparent perplexity, Yamagata said slowly, ”The Peacekeepers are already attacking Moonbase. The battle has started.”
”I know that.”
”Within a few hours,” Yamagata said, ”Moonbase will be under U.N. control.”
”I don't don't know that,” Joanna replied coldly. ”And neither do you.” know that,” Joanna replied coldly. ”And neither do you.”
”Surely you do not believe that your people can hold out against several hundred trained Peacekeeper troops.”
Joanna allowed a ghost of a smile to curve the corners of her lips. ”The Peacekeepers' nuclear missile failed. And now their a.s.sault force is bogged down in the ringwall mountains. I'd say there is a fair chance that Moonbase will hold out quite well.”
Yamagata shook his head. ”No. It is not possible. Despite their temporary successes, Moonbase will fall within a few hours.”
WODJOHOWITCZ Pa.s.s.
Colonel Giap was in a frenzy of frustrated anger. Not only was his main a.s.sault force mired in this devilish blue muck that had hardened to the consistency of concrete, trapping his main a.s.sault force in the narrow defile of the mountain pa.s.s, but now Georges Faure was demanding that he get on with the conquest of Moonbase.
”It is unacceptable,” Faure was saying, his moustache bristling. ”Entirely unacceptable.”
Giap glowered at the secretary-general's pale image in the small screen of the laptop. The colonel was sitting atop his tractor, b.u.t.toned up in his s.p.a.cesuit. A meter or so from him, where his sergeant still stood hopelessly imbedded, six Peacekeeper troops were chipping away at the h.e.l.lish blue slime with makes.h.i.+ft implements from the tractor's tool kit. Two of the troopers were even using the b.u.t.ts of their rifles to bash the sludge in their attempts to release the boots of their sergeant.
”I agree,” Giap said to Faure, tightly reining his anger. ”It is unacceptable. But in battle the unacceptable is commonplace.”
Faure sat behind his desk, trembling with rage as he stared at the faceless image of the Peacekeeper colonel in his blank-visored s.p.a.cesuit. How can a handful of rebels stop a fully-armed column of Peacekeeper troops? It is unthinkable, a farce, a disaster. Everyone will be laughing at me, unable to quash a tiny group of scientists and technicians, powerless to bring them under the rule of the law, impotent.
”I tell you this, mon colonel,' mon colonel,' Faure said, seething. ”If youcannot take Moonbase, then you are to release the volunteers. Do you understand what I am saying?” Faure said, seething. ”If youcannot take Moonbase, then you are to release the volunteers. Do you understand what I am saying?”
In three seconds, Giap replied harshly, ”You would rather destroy Moonbase than see it repulse us.”
”Exactly!” Faure snapped.
While he waited for Faure's reply to reach him, Colonel Giap turned slightly to watch the activity he had ordered. Troopers were placing metal panels scavenged from the marooned tractors' flooring from the roof of one cab to the tail of the next tractor, forming a bridge across which they could march to the front of the column of stalled vehicles. From the leading tractor they slid more panels across the treacherous blue slime, to where the dusty gray regolith lay bare-and safe.
”Exactly!” Giap heard Faure's reply.
Taking in a deep breath and then releasing it slowly, to calm himself, Giap said, ”There is no need to call on the suicide volunteers as yet. I am extricating most of my troops from the pa.s.s. We will march down into the crater floor on foot.”
Faure's image was a red-faced thundercloud with a quivering moustache.
Before the secretary-general could speak again, Giap went on, ”We will meet our secondary force on the crater floor and march on Moonbase. Our numbers will be diminished by less than five percent.”
There, he thought, let the pompous little politician chew on that for three seconds. I am the military commander here. I will counter the enemy's moves. It was I who insisted on splitting the force. Only a fool of a politician would send his entire force through a single mountain pa.s.s that could be guarded or blocked by the enemy so easily.
When Faure's response came it was a little more restrained. But only a little. ”And your equipment? Your missile launchers and other heavy weapons? Your men carry them on their backs, I presume.”