The Silent War

SHINING MOUNTAIN BASE

Been a long time since I drove a tractor, Pancho said to herself as she puttered up the ramp toward the base’s topmost level. They haven’t changed much since my astronaut days, she thought. Haven’t improved them.

The fact that the Nairobi base was so big was an advantage to her. They’re scurrying all over the place looking for me; got a lot of territory to search. I’ll be in good shape until those three blind mice down there start talking.

The tractor reached the top of the ramp and Pancho steered past a knot of blue-coveralled construction workers, heading for a quiet, empty spot along the base of the dome. She figured it would take the better part of half an hour to get the laser going and cut a reasonably sized hole in the dome’s metal wall. Better get into the softsuit before then, she told herself. Unless you want to breathe vacuum.

Nobuhiko felt sorry for Daniel Tsavo. The man sat in a little folding chair in the base’s infirmary, hunched almost into a fetal position, his fists balled up on his lap, his unseeing eyes aimed at the floor. It must be terrible to be blind, Nobu thought, even if it’s only temporary.

A pair of doctors and three nurses were finishing their ministrations, taping a bandage across Tsavo’s eyes while the man kept up a low angry mumble about what Pancho had done to him.

Keeping his face impassive as he listened to Tsavo’s muttered story, Nobu couldn’t help feeling some admiration for Pancho. She walked into the lion’s den knowingly, he realized. She came here to learn what Nairobi is doing. I wonder if she understands now that Nairobi is a tool of Yamagata Corporation? And if she does, what should I do about it?

I should call my father, Nobuhiko thought. But not here. Not now. Not in front of these aliens. Wait. Have patience. You’ve come all the way to the Moon, be patient enough to wait until they capture Pancho. Then we’ll find out how much she knows. Once we determine that, it will be time to decide what to do with her.

Pancho was thinking of Yamagata as she toted the laser from the back of the minitractor to the base of the dome’s curving metal wall. This topmost level of the base was quieter than the lower levels. Construction here was nearly complete, except for small groups scattered across the dome’s floor, painting and setting up partitions. There were guards at all the airlocks, though, and more guards stationed along the lockers where space suits were stored.

She kept low and stayed behind the tractor, hoping that anyone searching for her up at this level would see nothing more than a tractor parked near an empty section of the wall. Until the laser starts flashing sparks of molten metal, and by then it’ll be too late to stop me. I hope.

Why is Yamagata backing Nairobi? she asked herself as she plugged the power cable into the tractor’s thermionic generator. Nobuhiko told me Yamagata’s not involved in space operations, they’re concentrating all their efforts on Earth. Yeah, sure. What was it Dan Randolph used to say: “And rain makes applesauce.” Nobu was lying through his teeth at me. Sumbitch is using Nairobi to get established on the Moon. But why?

It wasn’t until she had the laser ready to go and was pulling the soft-suit out of her travel bag that the answer hit Pancho. Yamagata’s getting ready to take over the Belt! They’re letting Astro and Humphries slaughter each other and they’ll step over the bloody corpses and take control of everything! They’re even helping us to fight this damned stupid war! Suddenly Pancho felt angry. At herself. I should’ve seen this, she fumed silently. If I had half the smarts god gave a warty toad I would have figured this out months ago. Damn! Double damn it all to hell and back! I’ve been just as blind as I made those people downstairs.

Okay, she told herself. So you’ve been outsmarted. Just don’t go and kill yourself. Check out this suit carefully.

The softsuit was easy to put on. You just stepped into it the same way you stepped into a pair of coveralls, put your arms through the sleeves, and sealed up the front like it was Velcro. The nanomachines are activated by the body’s heat, she knew. Wriggling her fingers inside the skin-thin gloves, she wondered all over again how the virus-sized nanobugs could keep her safe from the vacuum of space without stiffening up the way normal gloves and fabric suits did.

She had never worn a nanotech helmet before. It hung limply in her gloved hands, like an empty plastic sack. Reading the illustrated instructions off her palmcomp, Pancho blew it up like a kid’s balloon. It puffed out to a rigid fishbowl shape. It felt a little spongy to her, but Pancho pulled the helmet over her head and sealed it to the suit’s collar by running two fingers along the seam. Same as sealing a freezer bag, she thought.

No life-support pack; only a slim green cylinder of oxygen, good for an hour. Or so the instructions said.

Okay, she told herself. You got one hour.

It was difficult for the Nairobi security woman to understand what the nearly hysterical Japanese woman was saying. She kept pawing at her eyes and sobbing uncontrollably. The two African guards, both men, were still sprawled on the concrete floor, unconscious.

She called her boss on her handheld and reported her finding: one tractor driver and two guards, all three of them incapacitated, blinded.

“Where’s the tractor?” Her boss’s face, even in the handheld’s minute screen, scowled implacably at her.

“Not here,” she replied.

The boss almost smiled. “Good. All tractors have radio beacons. Get the number of the tractor out of the driver, then we can track its beacon and find out where the fugitive is.”

“Assuming the fugitive is with the tractor,” she said, before thinking.

His scowl deepened. “Yes, assuming that,” he growled.

It wasn’t wise to second-guess the boss, she remembered too late.

Pancho hesitated as she held the laser’s cutting head next to the curving metal wall. I cut a hole and the air whooshes out. None of the people up here are in suits. They could get killed.

Then she shook her head. This dome’s too big for that. The air starts leaking out, they’ll pop some emergency sheets that’ll get carried to the hole and plug it up long enough for them to get a repair crew to fix it. Nobody’s going to get hurt except you, she said to herself, if you don’t get your butt in gear.

She thumbed the laser’s control switch. Its infrared beam was invisible, but a thin spot of cherry-red instantly began glowing on the metal wall. Holding the laser head in both her gloved hands like an old-fashioned power drill, Pancho slowly lifted it in an arc-like shape. She felt nothing inside the softsuit, but noticed that dust was swirling along the floor and disappearing into the thin, red-hot cut. Punched through, she thought. Nothing but vacuum outside.

The wall was thick, and the work went slowly, but finally Pancho cut a hole big enough for her to crawl through. Dust and scraps of litter were rushing through it now. But as she turned off the laser and ducked the hole, she saw there was another wall beyond it. Drat-damn it! Meteor shield.

It was a flimsy wall of honeycomb metal set up outside the actual dome structure to absorb the constant hail of micrometers that rained down on the Moon’s surface. Grumbling to herself, Pancho took up the laser again and started cutting once more. This one’ll go a lot faster, she told herself.

She heard a voice bellowing in Japanese, very close, but ignored it, sawing frantically with the laser to cut through the meteor shield and get outside.

“You there!” a man’s voice yelled in English. “Stop that or I’ll shoot!”