Moonbase - Moonwar Part 62

A shadow fell across him and he looked up. Gordette was standing over him with an a.s.sault rifle held across his chest.

Before Doug could ask, Gordette smiled grimly and said, "I'm guarding the control center. Security's sent teams out to the other areas to guard them. They told me to stay here with you; they didn't want me with them."

Doug didn't have time to worry about Gordette's feelings.

Blinking with a sudden idea, he said, as much to himself as to Gordette, "If we open all all the plasma vents we might flush out any of the kamikazes crawling through them." the plasma vents we might flush out any of the kamikazes crawling through them."

Gordette's brows rose a half-centimeter, but he said nothing.

"Especially if we start pumping high-pressure air into the far end of each of the vents," Doug muttered. "We'll turn those old vents into wind tunnels!"

He called Vince Falcone over to him, hurriedly explained what he wanted, and then hunched over his keypad and began banging away at it.

PLASMA VENT TUNNEL.

It was easy to become disoriented in the dark, empty plasma vent tunnels. Crawling along inside a s.p.a.cesuit with a hundred kilos of explosive strapped to your waist did not make the job any simpler.

But I'll get there, Amos Yerkes told himself. I have the most difficult a.s.signment, but I'll carry it out. They gave me the farthest target, the hardest one to reach, because they know I'm the best of the batch. The others needed drugs to buck up their courage but I've never touched them. I'm better than they are and they know it. That's why they've entrusted me with the most demanding task: blowing up their environmental control center.

Yerkes was twenty-two and considered himself a failure as a son and as a man. But this is one thing I will not fail at. "Nothing in my life," he slightly misquoted Shakespeare, "will so become me as my leaving of it."

In the light of his helmet lamp he saw another of those dreadful part.i.tions. It had taken him far longer to open the last few than he had thought it would. Hours, it seemed. They were all stuck fast, and he had been sweating inside his s.p.a.cesuit before he could pull them down on their creaking hinges. Then, once he had crawled over them, they had each snapped shut again with a startling clang that could probably be heard over the length and breadth of the base.

This part.i.tion was no different: a thin baffle of metal, hinged on the bottom. Stuck fast with caked dust. Yerkes brushed doggedly at the dust with his gloved fingers, wishing he could open his visor and blow the stuff out of his way. But he had been ordered to keep his s.p.a.cesuit sealed, just in case the vent tunnels did not hold air as they believed.

As he worked, sweat stinging his eyes, he pictured the services that would be held in his honor back in Atlanta. General O'Conner himself will give the eulogy, he thought. My parents will cry and wish they had treated me better.

Vince Falcone was grateful for the Moon's low gravity as he and six other men trundled heavy cylinders of oxygen down the corridor toward the environmental control center.

Doug's idea was wild, Falcone thought, but he couldn't think of anything better.

This had better work, he told himself. Otherwise we'll all be dead in another half-hour or so.

"You will take me to the control center," the s.p.a.cesuited j.a.panese said.

"I can't," Edith blurted.

He grabbed her wrist hard. "Why not?"

Thinking as swiftly as she ever had, Edith lied, The corridors are guarded. We'd both be shot the minute we stepped outside."

He glared at her.

"And we're so far away from the control center," Edith quickly added,'that your bomb wouldn't touch it if you set it off in here."

Still glaring, he looked around at the studio's cameras and fake-bookcase sets. Not a worthy target.

"You're hurting my wrist," Edith said.

He let go. "You are my hostage," he said.

"Okay," she said, looking around the empty, spa.r.s.ely lit studio. Nowhere to hide, nothing here but video and VR equipment. Even if I grabbed a camera or tripod or something and tried to bash him, he's protected by his helmet. And he might set off his bomb.

"You will call the control center and tell them to surrender to me," the young man said, his voice harsh, guttural. "If you refuse I will kill us both."

"Oh, I'll call them, don't worry about that."

Doug fidgeted on his chair, waiting for Falcone to report he was ready to pump high-pressure oxygen into the plasma vents.

"We're clear of the factory," Jinny Anson reported from a corridor wall phone. "Had to seal the whole section of corridor, "cause the door to the factory's been damaged by the blast."

"Okay, fine," Doug said. "We ought to open the vents to vacuum in a few minutes.' Silently he added, Come on, Vince!

"Call from the university studio," a comm tech's voice said in his earphone.

Edith, he knew. Doug nodded and touched the proper keypad.

Edith's face appeared on his central screen. She looked strained, worried. Then Doug saw, behind her, the face of an oriental in a s.p.a.cesuit helmet.

"Doug, I'm a hostage-"

The intruder pushed her aside. "You must surrender to me immediately! If you don't, I will blow up this chamber with this woman in it!"

Doug felt as if someone had pushed him off a cliff. His mouth went dry. It took him two swallows to work up enough moisture to reply, "Hold on. I'll surrender. Just don't do anything foolish."

"I must speak to the commander of Moonbase!" the suicide bomber insisted. "No underlings!"

"I'm Douglas Stavenger, the chief administrator of Moon-base."

The j.a.panese's eyes widened momentarily. "Douglas Stavenger? The one whose body is filled with nanomachines?"

"Yes, that's me.' Doug felt Bam Gordette's presence behind him, strong, protective.

"You must come here and surrender to me personally!"

"I understand."

"Now! Quickly! Otherwise I kill her!"

"Okay, I'm on my way," Doug said. He cut the connection and jumped up from his chair.

Gordette stood in his way. "You go in there, he's gonna set off his explosives."

"If I don't go, he's going to kill Edith."

ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL CENTER.

Falcone and his team threaded their way through the maze of piping and pumps that recycled and circulated air through Moonbase, dragging the cylinders of high-pressure oxygen clunking loudly along the narrow metal mesh walkways that twined through the throbbing equipment.

"There it is!" one of his men shouted, pointing to a metal hatch set into the rock ceiling.

Falcone squinted up to where the man was pointing. The ceiling was shadowy, criss-crossed with pipes.

"Naw," he said. "Farther back. We want the last one of the hatches. The very last one."

The man grumbled but moved on, deeper into the EVC.

"Is this really gonna work?" asked the guy just behind Falcone, gasping with exertion as he dragged a bulky oxygen cylinder.

"High-pressure gas on this end, vacuum on the other end. Oughtta blow out anything in the vents that ain't fastened down."

"Oughtta," the man puffed.

Oughtta, Falcone said to himself. If the team with the friggin' hoses shows up in time.

Doug spoke into his hand-held phone as he ran along the corridor toward the university studio.

"How soon?" he demanded.

"Got the hoses, finally," Falcone's voice crackled. "Gimme five minutes."

"We've got to open the vents to vacuum, Vince! Water's shorting out half the sections on level two."

"Three minutes."

"Call the control center when you're ready. Jinny's back and she'll handle it."

"What about you?"

Glancing at Gordette, loping along beside him with his a.s.sault rifle gripped tightly in his hands, Doug replied, "I've got other problems."

As far as Amos Yerkes could tell, this was the last part.i.tion between him and the environmental control center. Blinking at the sweat trickling into his eyes, telling himself he should have thought to wear a head band, he pulled out the schematic map of Moonbase and tried to check out where he actually was.

Yes, that should be the end of the tunnel, on the other side of this part.i.tion. One more to go and he'd be directly over Moonbase's environmental control center.

When I blow that that up, he thought happily, they won't have any air to breath. I won't go alone; I'll take up, he thought happily, they won't have any air to breath. I won't go alone; I'll take all all of them with me! of them with me!

He started working on the part.i.tion with newfound energy.

Face streaked with grease, Jinny Anson sat at the same console Doug had been using, finger hovering over the keypad that would open all the plasma vent baffles.

Come on, Vince, she grumbled to herself. Move it, you big ape.

As if he'd heard her, Falcone's swarthy face appeared on the screen showing the environmental control center.

Grinning broadly, he said, "All connected. We're ready anytime you are."

Anson let out a grateful sigh, then said, "Ten seconds?"

"Ten seconds," Falcone said, teeth flashing.

"On my mark...' She glanced at the console's digital clock. "Mark!"

"Ten seconds and counting," Falcone said.

As they approached the double doors of the studio, Doug said to Gordette, "Are you a good-enough shot to get him without hitting the explosives?"

Gordette grunted. "Which eye do you want me to hit?"

Doug almost stopped running. We're going to kill a man, he realized. Deliberately kill him. Or try to.

"Besides," Gordette added,'they're most likely carrying plastic explosives. Bullets won't set 'em off."

"You're sure?"

"Yep," said Gordette, without missing a stride.

As he worked on the final part.i.tion, Yerkes wondered how the other volunteers had done. He had felt the rumble of two explosions, it seemed like hours ago. Since then nothing. The others must be having the same troubles I've had, he thought. But they don't have as far to travel as I do. I'll blow up my target before they even get to theirs.

The thought pleased him.

The part.i.tion was loosening, he could feel it as he dug the acc.u.mulated dust away from its hinges. Not merely loosening, it was shaking, flapping- It sprang open, banging on his helmet, half stunning Yerkes. He heard a rushing sound, like wind, like a roaring hurricane.

He was sliding along the vent, skidding backwards on his belly, being pushed by some giant hand faster and faster. The dim circle of light thrown by his helmet lamp showed the vent walls speeding past.

Desperately he tried to stop himself, dig his gloved fingers into the vent floor, but there was nothing to grab onto. He reached out sideways toward the tunnel walls but the force of the wind tore at his hands, his arms, and he skidded along backwards, screaming now in fear as he slid down the vent like a feather caught in a tornado.

Colonel Giap had climbed up onto the roof of his tractor's cab. There had been no word from Moonbase since he'd told Stavenger about the suicide bombers. His troops loitered around their vehicles, waiting for the inevitable. The ground had trembled twice, more than an hour earlier. Then nothing but silence and stillness.

Giap looked at the watch on the wrist of his s.p.a.cesuit. They're all dead in there by now, he thought. Dead or dying. I should send the troops in, perhaps we can save a few.

Something caught his eye. He blinked, not sure of what he was seeing. A cloud of glittering sparkles was erupting slowly from the hatch that opened into the plasma vents. The ladder that his troops had placed there toppled slowly, like a stiff, arthritic old man, and fell flat on the crater floor in complete silence, sending up a puff of dust.

It was like a geyser, Giap thought, but a geyser of scintillating little jewels that flashed and twinkled in the harsh sunlight. On and on it went, spewing slowly out from the plasma vent hatch across the dark lunar sky, a thousand million fireflies flickering in all the colors of the rainbow.

Then something solid and heavy came shooting out of the hatch. Giap saw arms and legs flailing. A s.p.a.cesuit! A man! One of the suicide volunteers, he realized. The body soared across the crater floor and landed with a thump that raised a lazy cloud of dust. It did not move once it hit.

Giap stared, not knowing what to think, what to do. Another body came flying out, tumbling like a pinwheel, landing helmet-first on the regolith. And then a third, limbs hanging loosely, already unconscious or dead. It fell near the other two.

THE STUDIO.

Doug stopped in front of the double doors marked LUNAR UNIVERSITY VIDEO CENTER: DO NOT ENTER WHEN RED LIGHT IS FLASHING.

As he reached for the door pull, Gordette grabbed at his hand.

"Hold it," Gordette said. "Look before you leap."

Doug nodded and went to the wall phone next to the doors. Calling the control center, he asked for the security camera view of the studio.