April 5: A Depth of Understanding (28 page)

"They'd have no reason to mark him dysfunctional. He doesn't assault anyone. He doesn't do a classic stalk with trespass and unwanted contact. I can't tell him not to talk to me. We have too many overlapping duties and work in the same areas. He's really expert at fitting some expression just short of going over the line, into a perfectly normal business conversation, to remind me  he still has a personal interest too."

"I doubt he is going to give up as long as he sees you as unattached and available," Deloris predicted. "To someone with his mindset what you think about it doesn't matter. He's selfish and he wants to control you, at least where it touches on him. The only thing that might make him back off is if he sees not only you are opposed, but you have a partner than would have to be dealt with too."

"I could bunk with Deloris and let you use my cabin so he sees you going in and out," Barak volunteered. "It wouldn't be hard, you know he's going to be snooping on you as long as he is holding out hope, so he'll make it a point to watch the corridor and where you go. These sort always do some sort of stalking, even if it isn't invasive. If he thinks we have hooked up likely he'll ease off."

"The trouble with that is what I mentioned," Deloris warned. "I wasn't kidding. If he thinks the other male is hogging
both
women, he just may work himself up into a murderous rage in a year and a half."

"I might be harder to kill than you think," Barak said smiling.

"And that's not an acceptable outcome either. We don't have a single backup for any of us," she reminded him. "If he can't do his jobs we make do with manuals and the long lag on calls home to ask what to do. I have a much better solution," she said, smiling.

"Oh, that's an evil grin," Alice said.

"I would propose I continue to bunk with Barak, as you knew I was already. We talked about it," she said offhand to Barak.

"What good would that do? He's not chasing you," Alice objected.

"Yes, but you can go stay in
my
cabin so he thinks you and I are an item," Deloris said. He may watch you, but I don't think he can keep track of all three of us. He has to do his work shifts and sleep and eat."

"I'd have never thought of that. You are truly devious and I mean that in the best way. That is likely to put him off thinking I'll
ever
find him attractive, even better than faking a relationship with Barak. His male ego would never let him see hostility to you as a natural response either. I am in awe," she professed.

Deloris just smiled, smug with her solution. "And a year and a half is a long time. If you
do
decide to take Barak for a check out ride I've already told him I won't make a fuss. Just make sure there are no dings or scrapes, check the oil and fill the tank up before you bring him back."

Barak looked up sharply, dismayed. "I'm still here, you know? Hearing all this. Do I get a say in anything? Maybe I don't want taken for a joy ride. I'm not furniture you know!"

Deloris ignored that. "Don't worry, he has lots of good miles in him," Deloris assured Alice. He really didn't like how they smiled at each other.

* * *

"This is the Central rover teams, calling from shelter. We have a handheld that can reach the lunar net satellites. Then through the Rock relay to your address. Can you hear us Home?

"Yes we can," This is Jon of Home security. I'm calling Jeff Singh and April Lewis to let them know you are in contact again. Are you all well? Any injuries or short term problems? You have air and supplies?"

"We are fine, but out of contact with Central. We have no idea if there are hostile ships in our sky, we don't want to run radar or let them know there is still a target here, so we want to make this brief and shut down. If they locate us and drop another missile like the last one our radio is not nearly far enough away from us."

"There are no more hostile ships in your sky. The single surviving ship has assumed a very slow insertion to approach us and is asking for asylum. They want to defect."

"Don't trust the sneaky bastards," Johnson growled. "I wouldn't let them anywhere near Home before they are boarded and disarmed."

"We won't. If they'd made
one
more orbit trying to decide what to do, Jeff and the
Flash Gordon
would have blown them away. The UN should be far too busy to raise another fleet too. We bombarded their Geneva campus this morning, catching all the higher level officials sitting at their desks. The other prominent UN offices are getting hit as night progresses, to minimize further causalities. They visit war on others and call it peacekeeping. I find it deliciously karmic that they finally attacked somebody who could attack back. It should have happened years ago."

"Aren't the Swiss screaming?"

"Let them scream. They decided to welcome a snake pit in their front yard. We used far smaller weapons than we could have. They'll mostly have broken windows outside the UN. There is lots of other screaming. To listen to them you'd think we bombed China and we haven't touched them. We
have
hit UN offices in North America and we'll be giving the Nairobi headquarters a little love pat soon."

"Jeff on circuit here. In the room actually. April will be with us in a few minutes."

"Jeff we are out of contact with the rest of our people. It looks pretty good to me for their survival. The Chinese hit us dead center. They must not have been off fifty meters. But that was the relay point to feed everything down a fiber to their shelter. The shelter is designed to ride out this sort of a shock wave, but I'd be surprised if the conventional tunnels weren't damaged somewhere. And I have no way to find out. They dug as deep as they could at the last. So there aren't multiple tunnels and paths to the surface until they get much higher."

"Do you have any kind of a metal rod, hard preferably? Oh, April's here. I'll fill her in."

"I have some spare axles, or I can strip the barrel off a rifle."

"Then I suggest you clear some regolith until you have bare rock. Burn a starter hole in the rock with a laser and drive that rod in. You'll need to cannibalize a mic off something if you don't have spares and attach it. Attach it real well, maybe glue it on with a glue that cures hard. Run the gain up and listen with the microphone. A tunnel boring machine makes an unbelievable noise. If they're digging out you should be able to hear it clear on the backside."

"Why wasn't I born smart instead of drop dead handsome?" Johnson asked.

"You'll have to ask your mother, but being both is really fun," Jeff ad-libbed.

"We'll make something like that and call as soon as we have some news," Johnson said. "We have supplies and can hold out for some weeks, but it's not terribly comfortable. We'll be sleeping in hammocks strung in the backs of the rovers and we have to suit up to go between rovers to use the shower. If we stay here very long it would be nice to rotate out to Home for R&R."

"How would we do that?" Jeff asked. "There's no landing field there now and the jump-bug you had was probably vaporized, right?"

"We have two rovers with plows and we took the towed machine that melts regolith into pavement to the other side of the mountain we're in and left it just off the Armstrong highway. The jump-bug was flown to Armstrong and the pilot made arrangements to stay with family there. They still won't cave in and build a hotel. So once we get part of a field plowed and burned, call it two or three days, you can bring a ship in or call Armstrong and tell the bug to jump in."

"OK, we're glad you're unhurt. I'm off to a late lunch and I'll fill April in on the news. Thanks Johnson."

"Let's go get some lunch and I'll tell you what's happening along the way," Jeff told April.

"Heather is OK or you wouldn't want lunch," April said in the corridor. "That's the only thing I really care about."

"Well, I
think
they are safe, maybe not to nine nines, but I'm not sick with worry."

"Good enough for me," April agreed. "We need to text Barak too."

Chapter 19

"I'm now a citizen," John declared.

"You could sound happier about it," Fred told him.

"There are no perfect choices. I'm ambivalent. But this looks better to me than just being a fugitive. As long as I was a USNA citizen that's what I'd be."

"Has the government acknowledged your renouncing it?"

"I don't expect them to. Indeed, I decided not to give them an address to which they could respond, or in the worst case, come looking for me. Nevertheless, I have gone to the trouble to make the formal breach. I feel like I did the right thing."

"I will probably join you, sometime. I have to say, I never had any thought of becoming a French citizen when we lived on the Turnip."

"I doubt you'd have been welcome. I wasn't welcome and I spoke perfect French. Indeed they hated me for having a cultured Parisian accent. There is no pleasing them."

"You weren't kidding about that? The woman really froze you out because your French was better than hers?"

"If I hadn't messed up and told her I was raised in Paris she'd have eased us into some cushy job. I should have lied and said I was schooled in the Ivory Coast. It fell out of my mouth before I realized she would take it as a slur on
her
accent."

"I'll be damned, that's crazy."

* * *

"Home, this is the Chinese lunar shuttle
The People's Scepter,
Captain Samuel Bia speaking. With whom am I speaking?"

"I'm Jon Davis. Normally you'd speak with local traffic control but I asked your call be routed to me. You will probably be most concerned with my administrating Home's militia. But I'm also head of security. What can I do for you?"

Bia laughed nervously. "The security people with who I am familiar don't ask how they can help me. Perhaps I do have the right person. Our entire crew agreed to surrender in a group, resign our service and defect to Home, if I can obtain assurances we will be allowed to immigrate and not be thrown in jail or treated as prisoners of war. Firing on civilians is repugnant to us, undoubtedly illegal, as China is a signatory to various conventions on warfare and we suspect after what happened in lunar orbit we wouldn't succeed anyhow. We have no personal wealth of any kind as we didn't plan this defection, so it is very important to us that we want to retain our ship as personal property to establish ourselves, not yield it as a prize. Do you have any set policy for this sort of thing?"

"First of all we have no jail, so it would be tough to throw you in one. Last prisoner I had was a USNA Lieutenant, captured off one of their satellites that fired a rail gun at us. We only had him overnight, so we put him up at the Holiday Inn. I have no desire to deplete my budget offering your whole crew long term accommodations at a nice hotel. As to your ship. We issued letters of marque and reprisal during our war with North America. That allowed us to seize enemy shipping to offset damages they inflicted on us. Do you understand the legal concept?"

"No, it isn't familiar. I don't know if we have such a thing under Chinese law."

"I'll show you documents and history if you are interested later. I just mention it to show we do regulate such things. People can't just seize private property on a whim, even if they are what you'd call an official. We have no such letters against Chinese vessels. The strongest claim you can have to ownership is
possession
. I am going to discuss terms under which you can approach Home. We still have concerns you may use defection as a ruse to attack us. I'm asking to send a militia team and have two of my men board and make an inspection. I'll make sure at least one speaks Chinese. They will likely have side arms, I won't ask them to leave them off, all Home citizens are free to go armed, even non-militia. I will ask you to help them temporarily disarm any missiles, by physically disconnecting power or data cables to them until we are satisfied you do intend to take residency or become citizens. They may even cut cables, but you can get them repaired later. If you want to send crew over I suggest you keep at least one higher ranking crew member aboard to guarantee a claim of continuous possession until you dock. My men will assist you if our docking is unfamiliar. Local traffic control records will also constitute a record of ownership."

"May one inquire what was done with the North American?"

"He was offered to those he owed a blood debt. Both of them declined to execute him. We sent him back to the mercy of his masters. We also destroyed the other two USNA satellites with rail guns."

"They didn't retaliate?"

"Never heard a word from them. Smartest thing they've done in years."

"I see." There was a good long pause while he absorbed that.

"I'd personally suggest you draw up a document naming all your crew business partners. You can parcel out shares any way you like. Most would favor higher rank and service with larger shares. A lot of people publicly publish such contracts in the business announcements of our local web. I'd really suggest you change the name of your boat. Something with a little less flavor of revolutionary theatre. Do you have some sort of code pad or biometric lock on your docking collar or air lock?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then you are set for personal security. Most Home owners keep an armed guard at the lock visiting other habitats. You might do well to talk with some of them. They might even send some business your way."

"Who do we see for personal identity documents and business licenses and you know, all the official sorts of things required? We don't have any cash to pay for these things."

"That's Earth Think. We don't have licenses or travel papers or passports. We have professional certifications, but obviously you are a master pilot. You can pick up the certs easy enough. You have some nuclear missiles don't you? Again, I was asking about rendering them safe. I'd like to do that at some distance, say twenty thousand kilometers. I'd appreciate if you didn't turn nose to us until that detail is taken care of. Once some of your people are on station I'll feel much safer that you aren't going to fire on it."