April 8: It's Always Something (17 page)

"If you wish to tell me, I give you my personal word I won't call you out. Even if it does offend me. One can't realistically promise not to be offended, but I won't act on it. Neither will I divulge the matter to my partners, if you wish to tell me your objections in confidence. I wouldn't be calling you if I didn't have some respect for your standing in the business community, so your displeasure troubles me."

Jeff considered that, and Riley gave him a silent moment to think on it.

"All right, fair enough. I'm friends with Mr. Anderson who hired as a rigger and all around vacuum worker on the voyage. The three who returned your ship safe performed well beyond any reasonable expectation for their experience and pay level. That's in marked contrast to the responsible parties in command who failed in their duties miserably.

"Now it just so happens I'm Barak...Mr. Anderson's, banker as well as a friend. We've gone on vacation together and I've ties, in several ways, to him and his family. I even met him at dock when he returned to Home. When he gave me his pay voucher, I was able to cash it from my pocket change."

Riley had the decency to look embarrassed at the look Jeff gave him.

"Not only did he and his mates save your bacon by returning your ship and iceball intact, but I have to say he had the remarkable restraint to not say a bad word about you to me, for meeting the
exact
terms of your contract with him. I doubt I'd have been so nice, at least in private. No petulant Earth Think about how it wasn't
fair
, or complaints about the ordeal your poor planning put them through. In my opinion they deserved a generous bonus for saving your entire mission.

"Indeed, his only concern seemed to be for his crewmates who found themselves in similar straits. He was fortunate to be able to give them shelter here at Home for a few days. I was able to direct them to my partner Heather Anderson on the moon to secure them employment all together, where they could be a support group for each other. From what she says they have been marvelous workers, flexible and undemanding. I don't understand how you'd let somebody like that go. I've been counseled myself recently about retaining skilled workers, so perhaps I have a new appreciation for it. But I doubt the folks on the moon would let go of them easily, now that they see their value.

"I fear if I did business with you I'd be treated the same way. Exactly
correct,
by contract, and not a single penny more. The worst thing I can say about that, is it's
almost
as bad as Earth."

"I can see how bad that looks," Riley admitted. "May I just say a few things in our defense?"

"Sure, I'm interested," Jeff allowed.

"My partners and I were foolish about the risks of currency values. None of us had expertise in that side of the business and didn't do anything to hedge the risk. We got caught with a
ton
of USNA dollars. What's worse, we even had some EuroMarks we had to dump when they started depreciating. The hired crew did have the option to take a twenty percent advance against twenty five percent of their pay, and all of them took it. So they got the benefit of that when it was still worth much more. We also aided them in obtaining much better professional credentials than even their expanded hours merited.

"Now, we had the
Borghild
pretty well
paid
for even as the
Yuki-onna
was
launched. It wasn't assembled, but the contracts for the pieces were all let and paid for. Fortunately for us, very few of the fabbers and ship shops went under from currency losses. They were smarter than us. But all the remaining funds from the pre-sales for the
Yuki
and the
Borghild
were held in Earth currencies. Some of us even put our personal shares for water from the
Yuki
into the
Borghild
.

"If we hadn't already used most of our funds to build the second ship we'd have certainly gone bankrupt. As it is our personal shares from the
Borghild
are supporting us. Only one fellow sold all his shares out as futures right away. The price of water is up, and our personal allotments of the second ice ball can be pre-sold just like we did the company share, for much better money now. Most of my partners aren't complaining, but they
are
scrimping and watching their expenses very carefully. The cost of living has gone up sharply. We are all in the position of hoping the second mission for the
Yuki-onna
is fully profitable to save our butts. We simply don't
have
the cash to award generous performance bonuses to crew no matter how well they performed."

"I understand all that. I've been no stranger to finding I didn't have enough funds to proceed with what I wanted," Jeff allowed. "But, you seem to have decided that if you can't pay a debt of honor you can just decide to forget it. I haven't heard any sense of
obligation
from you to make it right later."

"All right. I can see that," Riley said. "But I don't know what you expect us to do that we
can
do for sure. I'm reluctant to make promises I might not be able to keep."

"Just acknowledge that to your people. Tell them you valued what they did and will see they are rewarded if and when you are able. When you've done that I'll work with you. Oh, and you'll probably have to tell me yourself, because I doubt they'll mention it to me," Jeff added.

"I'll speak to my partners, and see what they think is possible," Riley promised.

"Thank you. Not to sound too arrogant, but I think you'll feel better about yourselves if you do that."

"I'll let you know how they respond," Riley promised, and disconnected.

* * *

"Lunar com is back up, sort of," Dakota told Heather.

"Sort of?"

"There's a Mr. Harshaw on the line from their com shack who wants to talk to you. He's not offering to open up full access yet. He says he's a member of the temporary committee to organize the Lunar Republic." Dakota said.

"Well isn't that interesting? It's almost twenty four hours since com went down. Can they really have had a revolution in just three shifts? Do you think I should speak with him?" Heather asked.

"You don't give up anything by talking. I'm not saying to agree to anything. I'd have pumped him for a little more information, but I figured I'd leave that up to you," Dakota admitted.

"So you expected I'd talk to him?"

"Well yeah. But I didn't
promise
. I'll tell him to go away if you want," Dakota offered. "Or hand him off to somebody else if you think it's a bad idea."

"No, no...just curious," Heather insisted. "I'll speak with him."

She should have warned me...
Heather thought. Harshaw looked rough. He needed a shave. The closer she looked he needed a shower too. He had grime thoroughly rubbed on the folds of the jacket he was wearing and one side of his face. He was wearing one of the thin quilted caps with ear flaps that some vacuum workers favored in a suit. She wondered if anybody could wear one of those without looking like an idiot. He just looked
tired
, and he wasn't wasting any energy trying to look cheerful or friendly for her.

"Sovereign Anderson, did your secretary tell you my name?" he inquired.

"Yes Mr. Harshaw, and that you are one of a committee which intends to create a Lunar Republic. Might I ask how many are in this committee and how goes your efforts to affect this change?"

Harshaw blinked slowly like he had replies formulated for an entirely different set of questions. Heather saw suddenly that he was much more tired than she'd realized.

"We started with eight yesterday," he said. "I know two are dead. There might be six of us still, if we haven't lost any more on the committee, I know we lost others. As far as how it is going...pretty well, everything considered. We've been up all night, killing Earthies, and I'm so tired...I know we have a few holding out in the fueling facility at the port. I really don't want to direct gun fire into that building. If we damage much there I'm not confident we can repair it easily. We have two who took off in a rover and they may make it all the way to the New Marseille, and they're welcome to them as long as they don't try to come back. So I believe out of fifty eight known Earth soldiers we have killed somewhere from forty seven to fifty three."

He looked at her like he expected a reply. "It's hard to tell you see, when the pieces are too small."

"You've won then," Heather said, "that seems a remarkable feat, against professional soldiers."

"They were
stupid
," Harshaw said, contemptuously. "How do you find people with spacer
skills
to assault a space target, when hating spacers is a required to be a loyal party member?"

"That does seem a conflict," Heather agreed. "They were newbies?"

"They lost two the first week to suit accidents, when we weren't
trying
to harm them. The plan was to actually protect them from their own foolishness until they were in a routine, with a schedule, so we could get all of them, or at least most, all at once. We wanted to act while they were still not entirely acclimated to lunar gravity, while they were still clumsy."

"We've observed this...shift in personnel going on for near a month," Heather admitted. "That seems like it would have been stretching that plan."

"Yeah, the early ones were starting to be coordinated, but they never established a decent routine! We couldn't plan anything when their schedule changed every time they got a few more people. They had an administrator..." Harshaw visibly cut himself off. "Let's just say he was incompetent."

"So you balanced the odds on everything and acted yesterday," Heather prompted.

"Yes, we had a list. Mostly it depended on sabotage. They had no drills for emergency pressure loss. They showed a
video
to new people coming in about how to put on an emergency suit. They didn't even
do
a video for hole patching kits. I suppose they were expecting their people to read the printed instructions after they noticed the pressure dropping. We delayed sabotaging the suits and leak kits until the last three days. We were afraid they'd have a real emergency and discover the stuff was broken. We could have started much earlier and made it easy on ourselves. It was only a half dozen who had some idea what they were doing and were armed that gave us all the trouble. The rest never know what hit them." His head kept drooping as he spoke.

"So, are you part of the new government?" Heather inquired.

He jerked his head back up, surprised. "No. All eight of us agreed to sit out the first election. It hopefully establishes we aren't doing this just for personal power. After there is an election and a mayor and officials serve a term, then if any of us want to run that's fine. I'm an engineer. I have no desire to hold elective office. A couple of the others might give it a go, later on."

"So, to back up a little...what is the purpose of this call?" Heather asked. "Just to inform us you've had a successful revolution?"

"We are hoping you'll recognize us," Harshaw said. "If you decide we shouldn't exist, we're pretty much screwed. We're realists about that. All this will have been for nothing. We'll need trade with you, more of it than in the past, just to feed our people and keep everything running.

"A lot of us have been working towards this as a goal, for further down the road, but then we saw them getting set up for a second invasion attempt on you guys. We wanted no part of that. Not that we figured they stood any chance of actually overrunning you and winning. They were totally in denial about that. But we figured the collateral damage from your response might not leave much of Armstrong standing. Surely we deserve some credit for saving you the trouble," Harshaw reasoned.

"I'd think so too," Heather agreed. "We were waiting for the invasion. When com was cut we thought that signaled it was beginning. If they had come down the highway towards us we had some nasty surprises waiting."

"The com break wasn't directed at you," Harshaw explained. "We took
all
com down hard. Both the local net and connections to Earth and the rest of the moon. The point was to deny them the opportunity to issue orders and adjust to our actions. We were following a simple plan that would work without real time coordination, so it favored us. It wasn't possible to be selective, what with our resources and time constraints. Our people were actually starting repairs to com in just a couple hours, while the fighting was still going on."

"So, now that you're connected again, have you called Earth and informed them that Armstrong is no longer under USNA control?" Heather asked.

For the first time Harshaw looked amused. "To hell with them. As satisfying as it will be to inform them, they'll find out when we get around to it.
You
are the first call out we made. The Earthies are limited in projecting force to the moon, but you have overwhelming force on the moon. We're not idiots who don't realize it. We and the French exist at your pleasure. Even the Chinese recognized it or I don't think they would have withdrawn from the moon. It was far easier to withdraw than quietly live with fact they held it by your unspoken permission."