Moonbase - Moonwar Part 53

Doug saw Gordette standing a few paces away. "Bam, when's the last time you took a break?"

"I'm okay," Gordette said, folding his arms over his chest.

"Go grab a bite to eat," Doug ordered. "While there's still time."

"I'm okay," Gordette repeated stolidly.

"That's the nuke?" O'Malley asked, pointing to the screen on Doug's console.

That's it."

"How soon?"

"Should hit in twenty-five minutes or less."

"What's Wicksen waiting for?"

"He knows what he's doing," said Doug, wis.h.i.+ng he felt as confident as he was trying to sound.

Then the overhead lights, always dim inside the control center, went off altogether. The display screens wavered and faded, hundreds of electronic eyes blinking, then steadied. A low moaning gasp echoed through the rock-walled chamber. "It's okay!" Doug yelled. "Wicksen's powering up the beam gun. We expected this. The auxiliary power system's cut in.

Still he felt the cold hand of fear clutching his innards.

"Power's up to ninety percent," said the physicist.

Wicksen, bending over the makes.h.i.+ft control board inside the buried emergency shelter, saw a swathe of green lights interspersed with a handful of yellows. No reds, he told himself. So far, so good.

"Power to max," he said quietly.

There was no whine of generators spinning up, no vibration from powerful machinery. Just the low background hum of electrical gadgetry in the cramped, round-ceilinged little shelter. The five of them had taken off their helmets; there'd been no time to get out of the suits entirely. Nor any inclination to do so.

Two red lights suddenly glowered at Wicksen. "Main buss has cut out," he said, tension edging into his voice.

"On it," said the only woman among his a.s.sistants. I'll have to run a diagnostic."

"No time. Go to the backup."

"Right."

The red lights remained, but a new pair of greens lit up. Wicksen glanced at the countdown clock: fourteen minutes remaining until impact.

"How's the pointing system?" he asked.

"It's tracking okay. Hardly any movement, the bird's coming right down our throats."

"Makes life simpler," Wicksen murmured.

"Magnets are at full power."

He nodded, blew out a breath through puffed cheeks, then leaned his right index finger on the firing b.u.t.ton.

A mult.i.tude of red lights sprang up on the board.

"What the h.e.l.l?"

"Main buss shorted out!" the woman shouted. "Backup's malfunctioned!"

Wicksen swore under his breath. Murphy's law. Turning toward her, he saw that her face look agonized.

"What's the problem?" he asked calmly. Twelve minutes to impact.

"I don't know," she said, voice jittery, as she stared at the instruments in front of her.

Three minutes later Wicksen had satisfied himself that the main buss itself was functioning properly.

"It's the wiring," he said, reaching for his helmet. "The connections must have come loose."

"That can't be!" said the man who had done the wiring job.

"Can't be anything else," said Wicksen simply, as he pulled his helmet over his head.

"You're not going out there! With the nuke less than ten minutes from detonation!"

"Somebody's got to."

"Let me," said the man who had done the wiring. "It's my responsibility."

"We'll both go," said Wicksen.

Colonel Giap had taken the precaution of having the seven suicide volunteers placed in the same tractor with him. He wanted them under his eye; he was not willing to take chances that such fanatics might strike off on their own once the action started.

The American woman especially intrigued him. She was not young, and she certainly did not seem fanatical. Giap wondered what could have happened in her life to make her want to embrace death.

So he asked her. There was scarcely any privacy in the tractor, crowded with troops and the seven volunteers, all in s.p.a.cesuits, but once they were safely parked in the lee of Alphonsus's ringwall mountains, Giap clambered down onto the dusty regolith soil for a quick inspection of his vehicles.

Once satisfied that all the vehicles were properly positioned and there were no problems with the troops-except the usual complaints of soldiers everywhere-he returned to his own tractor. Instead of re-entering it, however, he ordered the American woman outside.

She came without a murmur and stood before him, an anonymous, s.e.xless figure in a white s.p.a.cesuit. Giap connected their two helmets with a communications wire, so they could speak without using their suit radios.

"I want to know," he said without preamble, "how reliable you and your comrades are going to be."

Without hesitation she replied, "Faithful unto death. That is our motto."

"A motto is one thing. Soon we will be in action."

This time her response took a few moments. At last she said, "We are pledged to give our lives to the cause of eliminating the scourge of nanotechnology. When the time comes, we will not hesitate to act."

"I'm certain," Giap said. "What concerns me is-what if the time does not come?"

"Does not... I don't understand."

"Soon a pair of missiles will knock out Moonbase's entire electrical generation capability. They will be forced to surrender, or die within a few hours from lack of air to breath. There will be no need for you to sacrifice yourselves."

"Oh, I see. You want to know if we will obey your orders."

There will be no need to blow up Moonbase-and yourselves."

"If all goes as you have planned."

"Well?"

"You have nothing to fear," she said easily enough. "Our pledge includes that promise to obey the authority over us. For the time being, that authority is you, Colonel."

All well and good, Giap thought. But still he had no inkling of why this woman-or any of her comrades-was willing to throw away her life.

As if she could read his mind, she said, "You are wondering why I am not married and mothering children, or building a career for myself."

"Yes," he confessed. "Why have you volunteered to kill yourself?"

"Because I want to die."

"But why?"

Without hesitation she began to tell him: of her abused childhood, of her disastrous first marriage, of her slowly evolving awareness that she was h.o.m.os.e.xual, of her second husband's violence, of the years she spent in mental hospitals, of the casual rapes by hospital staff and the even more casual applications of mind-altering drugs in an effort to'rehabilitate' her.

Giap wanted to vomit long before she was anywhere near finished. He realized why she thought quick death preferable to continued life.

To interrupt her, he looked at the watch on his wrist pad. Stopping her unbroken flow of misery, he said, "We must return to the tractor now. The missiles will be reaching their targets soon."

"It's the wiring, all right," said Wicksen's a.s.sistant. "My fault, Wix. I did a d.a.m.ned sloppy job. I was so rushed-"

"No time for that now," Wicksen said. Pointing to the equipment still strewn on the ground around the ma.s.s driver, he said, "We've only got a few minutes to get it fixed."

The man seemed to freeze for several heartbeats, standing immobile in his s.p.a.cesuit. Then he said only, "Right.' And started for the equipment.

It's not going to do any good, Wicksen thought. We can't get this wiring repaired and then power up the magnets again and get everything running in ten minutes. It's just not enough time. But he bent to his task, forcing all other thoughts out of his mind.

Until his earphones screeched, "Here it comes!"

He jerked up, saw nothing but the looming dark hulk of the ma.s.s driver. Then something jarred him off his feet. He sailed like a feather, floating, floating, until he slammed painfully into the ground.

He saw stars flas.h.i.+ng, then nothing but darkness.

I'm dead, Wicksen thought. The nuclear warhead went off and it killed me. But why does my head hurt?

Doug and the others in the control center had been sitting tensely, waiting for Wicksen's beam gun to disable the nuclear warhead.

The main overhead lights came on.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Anson muttered loudly enough for Doug to hear.

"They've powered down the beam gun," a technician's voice said.

"Did they hit the warhead?" Doug wondered aloud.

"How could they know whether they've knocked it out or not?" Anson demanded. "They oughtta be shooting at it until it hits the frickin' ground."

Getting up from his chair, Doug called to the chief communications technician, several seats way from his own, "Can you get Wicksen for me?"

She nodded and worked her keyboard. All eyes in the control center focused on her-or on the screens showing the missile warhead streaking toward them.

"No joy," said the comm tech.

The whole chamber shuddered. Doug felt the solid rock floor beneath his feet vibrate as if a major moonquake had struck.

"The missile hit!" a technician's voice rang out. "Dove straight into the friggin' ground."

"But there wasn't any flash," someone said.

"Radiation counters are quiet."

"Our nuclear reactor just went off-line," said another technician, his voice high and quavering. "Backup power system is down."

Doug looked from one screen to another in the insect-eye array on the console before him. It took him a few moments to realize what had happened.

"It wasn't the nuke!" Jinny Anson's voice sounded exultant. "They sent the conventional bomb first!"

"To check their guidance accuracy," Doug said, his breath shuddering. He half-collapsed back onto the wheeled chair.

"And to see what we had to throw against it," Gordette added.

Doug looked across to O'Malley. Sweat was trickling down his beefy cheeks.

"It wasn't the nuke," O'Malley echoed, sounding relieved, grateful.

"Yeah, okay, but they got our backup generator," Anson said. "Now if they knock out the solar farms we're out of it."

"Another launch from L-l," a comm tech announced.

'That's the nuke," said almost everyone in the control center, simultaneously. the nuke," said almost everyone in the control center, simultaneously.

Ma.s.s DRIVER.

Slowly, Wicksen pulled himself up to a sitting position. If I'm not dead yet I soon will be, he thought. Radiation poisoning.

Except for the throbbing pain in the back of his head, though, he felt all right. He tried to rub his eyes but his gloved hands b.u.mped into the visor of his helmet. Feeling sheepish, he looked around. His a.s.sistant was on his knees, getting slowly to his feet.

"You okay?" Wicksen asked.