The Dying Time (Book 2): After The Dying Time (38 page)

She slid down the face of the array until her safety line and suction cup anchor yanked her to a stop.

“Linette!” Pavel yelled.

No answer.

“Celia, get below ready to receive her. Leila, get the buggy. I’ll lower her down. Don’t wait for me, just get her to the airlock.”

As the two women rappelled to the surface he clambered across the array, snapped his safety line to a spare suction cup and zipped down to Linette. A quick glance told him her self-sealing suit had prevented decompression above her foot and though she was out cold she was breathing. Good.

He fed her safety line through a carabiner on his utility belt and swiftly lowered her down to Ceilia’s waiting arms. He watched the women, Celia holding on to Linette for dear life as the buggy bounded toward the airlock, dust kicking up as the balloon tires bit into the loose lunar surface.

He took a loop around himself to lock himself in place and laid back against the array, pulse pounding. He blew another blast of cool air to clear his visor. A full Earth mocked him from just above the bleak horizon. So beautiful. So desirable. So impossible.

His breath whooshed in a world weary sigh and he turned his back on the Earth and resumed working.

*

Luna City

Aeriella Goldstein operated as fast as she could but there really wasn’t much she could do to save Linette Laverne’s left foot. The danger of encountering tiny meteorites outside was all too real. When one punctured Linette’s suit the self-sealing unit had protected everything above her ankle. Unfortunately, explosive decompression converted everything below her ankle into hamburger.

“Bone saw,” she said, her shoulders slumping in defeat.

Connie Cho sighed and handed her the instrument, wincing at the zhht-zhht sound it made going through the bone. This was one of those times she regretted her EMT training. Still she knew if they tried to save the foot sepsis would set in and they’d end up taking the leg, so this was the best of bad options. At least in this gravity perhaps Linette wouldn’t lose her natural grace as a dancer or her talent with a clarinet. She wouldn’t want anything to interfere with Linette’s ability to perform with The Loonie Tunes. The Band had been a real morale booster since being formed almost a decade ago.

“Vacuum,” Aeriella said and Connie moved the tube around collecting blood and bits before they could be drawn up into the air filters.

Dr. Sari Vindushanti, their pediatrician and anesthesiologist asked, “How much longer before the arrays are repaired?”

“Pavel said they were on the last set of panels when Linette got hurt,” Connie said. There had been several minor injuries but so far no fatalities. Linette’s was the worst.

“Let’s hope they finish soon,” Sari said as she watched Aeriella cauterize the severed blood vessels.

“Amen to that,” Connie said, as Aeriella applied Betadine then pulled a flap of skin over the exposed part of Linette’s ankle and began stitching it up.

*

Mary Adams quarters were dark, lit by a single candle. The others in the room, though they knew each other well, were dim shadows.

“Good God, Mary, the atmosphere in here makes me feel like I’m Fletcher Christian on the Bounty,” Leila Yoruba said.

Mary lit another candle and said, “Except we aren’t plotting a mutiny.”

“Military leaders do not take well to organized protests either,” Linda Green said, in her upper class British accent.

“Well, we have to do something,” Mary said. “Otherwise we’re looking at the same old same old and I’m thirty-eight, a few years older than most of you.”

“We know your biological clock is ticking louder than ours, Mary,” Leila said, “We all feel the pressure. But shouldn’t this protest be about more than reproductive rights?”

“Careful now,” Linda said. “I won’t be part of a mutiny.”

“Is it mutiny to ask politely to be included in decisions that effect us all? Aren’t we entitled to a voice?”

“Wow, you sound just like Christine, always going on about her precious bill of rights,” Marissa Reilly chimed in.

Leila sighed. “I suppose I do but if Chris wasn’t on her ISS tour she’d be here with us.”

Marissa said, “Yeah, well, Chis has another dog in this fight. Her daughter Angela is budding out and little Yuri is beginning to notice. It won’t be long before our children are having children so we need to resolve this issue.”

“And the easiest way to do that,” Linda said, “is to solve the raw materials problem. If we have those, the population restrictions will be lifted.” She turned to Leila and asked, “What have you heard from Suzy?”

Suzy Yakamoto, their mining engineer, and Elena Montoya, their lunar geologist had spent more than a month surveying promising areas of the moon but their report hadn’t been released yet. Without selenium, iron, boron, phosphorous and titanium they couldn’t produce more solar cells and without the ability to expand power production they couldn’t grow enough food to support a larger population. The math was simple, the emotions complex.

“She told me they found an iron pyrite deposit and Kenny says he can distill selenium out of the sulfur in that. All the nickel/iron meteor impacts over the millennia left us with plenty of iron ore. The problem is boron. It’s only formed by cosmic ray spallation and not by stellar nucleosynthesis so it’s rare even on Earth. So far they haven’t found any borax or kernite deposits here, so...”

“So we add that to the growing list of reasons why we need those morons down on Earth to get it together,” Mary said.

“Amen to that,” Leila said. “Because without them we’re one or two generations from extinction.”

Chapter 36: The Provo Spy

Michael rolled over and thumped his pillow. He had been tossing and turning all night long, thinking about Ellen and the kids and what would happen to the Freeholds if the King’s forces weren’t stopped. Nightmarish visions haunted his attempts at sleep. Ellen, lying dead on the field of battle. His son, Steven, slaving on one of the King’s road building crews. Little Mary and Jimmy and the rest of his family, dispersed and destroyed. Every time he closed his eyes the images jumped out at him. It wasn’t the first time he’d found himself the victim of his own hyperactive imagination.

Michael knew he needed rest. He and the other pilots had flown sorties around the clock for several days. Besides, a soldier always needs rest on the eave of a battle; and the battle was imminent. The sun had been out for several days and the ground was drying nicely. The enemy had stepped up the frequency of his probing attacks. Even the artillery barrage had intensified. Soon, today or tomorrow, it would be time for the real thing. With his mind chasing its tail he drifted into a fitful slumber. If he’d known that as he slept Jim’s relief force was being chopped into mincemeat...

*

Michael wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping. Martin Dinelli mashed a home-rolled cigarette into an ashtray and lit another one. He’d been chain-smoking so fast his tongue was scorched. His “private stock”, as he jokingly referred to his tobacco, consisted of dried kinnikinnick, corn husks and dogwood bark. He’d offered some to Bob Young earlier, forgetting that good Mormons didn’t smoke, drink or swear.

“It may be harsh,” he’d said, “but it tastes like shit.” Martin’s sense of humor was a bit on the dry side. At least smoking gave him something to do with his hands while he waited for his mission to begin. His cigarette burned down to his fingers, so he stubbed it out and reached for another, slapping his shirt pocket in frustration when he realized he was out. To hell with it, he thought. Let’s get it done.

*

Bob Young eyed the situation map, wondering if there was anything he and Adam had overlooked. There was just no way to know, but one thing he was sure of--staring at maps and reports wasn’t the answer. He pushed himself back from his desk in disgust and strode out of his office into the night. Seeing things first-hand might help.

*

Able Emery looked up from the crop duster he was working on. He thought he’d heard something, but he couldn’t see anything. He didn’t want to have to explain what he was doing to anyone, though if it came down to it, he was reasonably certain he could bluff his way through. He moved the trouble light to shine on the plugged filter he was replacing, slipped the dirty part out of its housing and set the clean filter in place. He’d heard from Michael that morning that Jason Banda wouldn’t be able to fly for at least another week. This was the first opportunity he’d had to replace the filter he’d sabotaged the evening before.

It was only a five-minute job, but without a clean fuel filter, the Pitts wouldn’t have gotten off the ground. Everyone knew the King would strike soon and Able had taken this way to insure he’d be flying a crop duster instead of an ultralight. No one but him would ever know what he’d done. His thoughts flitted to his family and shied from the way their bodies looked when he found them. He couldn’t stand remembering them that way.

He cursed silently as the wrench he was using slipped off the nut and clanged against the housing. He finished up, turned off the light and headed for his cot. He’d get his revenge soon.

*

What was that? Michael sat up abruptly, instantly alert. He’d heard a sound that didn’t belong and it jerked him awake. He slid, fully clothed, from under his blanket and slipped into his boots. He strapped on his .357, picked up his Uzi and opened the door.

As he entered the hangar where the Pitts Specials were stored, he heard a thud and froze. Though it was dark inside, there was enough light coming in from the crescent moon to allow his cat-like eyes to see. Someone, Michael was too far away to see who, was huddled over a fallen form. Even as he looked, the man stood and stepped away from the body, heading for the planes.

Michael drew his .357, lay his Uzi down soundlessly--no fully-automatic gunfire was needed near those planes--and began stalking. As he ghosted across the hangar toward the man, Michael could see him fiddling with the fuel refill cap on the farthest plane. Passing close to the fallen body, Michael recognized Able Emery. He appeared to be breathing.

Michael concentrated on the unidentified man, who was now moving purposefully toward the second crop duster. As the man passed close to a window, the faint light lit his face: Martin Dinelli. What the hell was he up to? Michael decided he’d learn more by waiting and observing than by attacking immediately. He sensed it was more important to find out what sort of mischief Martin was bent on than to take him out now and get medical attention for Able.

Martin opened the fuel refill cap of the second Pitts, dumped something inside, closed the cap and walked swiftly out of the hangar. Michael followed closely enough to keep him in sight, but far enough back to remain undetected. Martin was obviously nervous. He kept looking over his shoulder as if he knew he was being watched. Michael dropped back even farther and made it a point not to look directly at the man. Sometimes people really could feel another’s eyes on them.

Martin reached the last of several defensive breastworks and started carefully pacing along them. Michael had seen so-called civilians in the last war doing the same thing: measuring the coordinates of defensive positions while seeming to take an innocent walk. Michael recalled how Adam had told him that in Vietnam, such casual strollers had often managed to mark mine fields so the V.C. could avoid them when attacking at night. Michael’s gut churned when he considered all the vital information Martin could access and he wondered how much had already been passed on.

Michael had seen enough to convict Martin of sabotage, at least in his own mind. He crept closer, deciding on taking him alive so the allies could find out what Martin had given the King. That was when he saw the other man standing in the deep shadows of a nearby building. If he hadn’t moved... Michael changed course enough toward the second man. It was Bob Young.

“Hey, Bob,” Michael whispered softly.

“Michael?” Bob started.

“Yeah,” Michael said quietly. He put a hand on Bob’s nearest shoulder and continued. “Listen, Bob, Martin Dinelli is our spy. He cold-cocked Able Emery, dumped something in the fuel tanks of the crop dusters and now he’s measuring the position of our latest line of defense.”

Adam and Bob had constructed a many-layered defensive posture consisting of eight separate lines of trenches and bunkers, one behind the other. Dotting each trench line were a dozen or more bunkers, most of them only manned by two or three soldiers and a machine gun. But a few key bunkers shielded 90 mm recoilless rifles, whose job it was to take out the enemy’s tanks. Interspersed between each breastwork were minefields. As the enemy breached each one, the allies would fall back to the next. Taking Provo was going to be costly if Adam and Bob had anything to say about it, but what if Martin had already fed the precise coordinates of the anti-tank bunkers to the enemy artillery commander. He had presumably disabled the allied air force. What else had he done?

“I wish I didn’t believe you, Michael, but I was wondering what he was doing,” Bob said, nodding in the direction of Martin. “He’s pacing too steadily just to be out for a walk.”

Bob felt a fury rising within him. The memory of how Adam had taken a bullet in the chest while rescuing Martin from a band of marauders made the man’s betrayal even more unforgivable. Bob’s hands clenched and unclenched, as if aching to surround a certain neck.

Michael noticed the gesture.

“Look, Bob.” he said, “It’s only a few minutes after eleven. I know you want to kill the son-of-a-bitch, but it’s more important for us to discover everything Martin has sabotaged or betrayed. We have to know what to fix before the King attacks and my guess is he’ll hit us tomorrow morning.”

Bob swallowed convulsively, then nodded. In a velvet smooth whisper that raised the hackles on Michael’s neck he said, “Okay, we’ll follow him...for now.”

Martin finished taking measurements and headed back for his office at the AT&T building.

“He’s a clever little shit,” Michael said, thinking of how Martin had helped to establish satellite communication between Provo and the Freeholds. “Either the King already has satellite communication capabilities, or Ol’ Marty’s using our shortwave set to transmit his intelligence.”

“What about the atmospheric interference?”

“Shit, Bob, from the top of that building it’s probably line-of-sight to Payson,” Michael replied, adding, “He could be using a VFR set or even a CB. As for punching a message up to a satellite, only a lightning storm could interfere with that.”

As Martin entered the building, nodding to the guard at the door, Michael and Bob moved from cover and crossed the street to the entrance. Bob told the guard to go get Adam immediately, while Michael followed Martin.

As Martin closed his office door, he sighed with relief. He was almost done with this assignment and the riskiest parts were behind him. Sliding his chair over against the wall, he took a screwdriver out of his desk drawer and proceeded to take off the heater vent. Reaching inside, he pulled out a compact Ham set, placed it on his desk and turned it on. It had taken him two weeks to construct the radio from stolen parts and another three days to build and hide the antenna up on the roof amidst the welter of antennae already there. He’d run the antenna cable down the building’s ductwork.

On the other side of the door, Michael listened carefully, imagining accurately from the sounds inside what had just happened. His first thought was to kick down the door before Martin could transmit, but on second thought, he realized it would be better to allow Martin to send the message. That way the King would have no notice his spy had been caught. Michael listened to the clicking of the transmitter key as Martin tapped his message in Morse Code.

A few minutes later, Bob and an irate Adam Young joined Michael outside the door. From the sounds inside, Michael could tell Marty had put the radio back in its hidey-hole.

Michael placed a finger against his lips in a shushing motion and calmly knocked on the office door.

“Hey, Marty, this is Michael Whitebear. You got a minute?”

“Sure thi...,” Martin’s speech faded out as he opened the office door and found the barrel of Michael’s .357 being shoved up his nose.

“Got a few quick questions for ya, Marty old boy,” Michael said.

Martin’s eyes took in the grim forms of Bob and Adam Young, standing just behind Michael. He looked into Michael’s eyes and saw the devil lurking there. Martin wilted inside, knowing it was over. Martin Dinelli served the King out of greed and not, like Jamal Rashid, out of fanaticism. He knew when to cut his losses. The interrogation took surprisingly little time.

By midnight, people all over Provo were being awakened and given emergency orders. Five hours later, preparations for the attack were complete and all appeared back to normal. The recoilless rifles had been moved to other, unmapped, bunkers. The M102 howitzers had been shifted half a mile. Provo was dug in and ready.

In the hangar, Able Emery, who was all right except for a knot on his head, was busy supervising his crew in putting the finishing touches on both the planes and the ultralights. All fuel tanks had been drained, flushed and refilled. The same was done to the fuel lines.

Simple sugar had been the additive, though perhaps simple is the wrong word. For in a time and place where there were no sugar cane fields nearby and where no sugar beet refineries operated, sugar was so rare its value exceeded that of gold. There was more than one pilot there who would cheerfully have hung Martin Dinelli just for wasting sugar.

At six o’clock, the radio room exploded, destroying most of the Allies’ communications capability and killing the two men on duty. Martin had planted the charges and set the timer before he left to take care of the planes. It was the one thing he hadn’t told the Allies about.

At one minute after six, the enemy began an artillery barrage that pulverized the now-empty bunkers Martin had so carefully mapped out. Believing the Allies’ planes were grounded, their communications disrupted and their flanking army destroyed, Prince John struck hard and fast.

At two minutes after six, Bob Young swept into the interrogation room and strangled Martin Dinelli.