"Bova, Ben - Moonwar [v1, rtf]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

TOUCHDOWN MINUS 115 HOURS 55 MINUTES
'So they've done it,' said Jinny Anson, with a challenging grin. 'Damn flatheads.'
Anson, Brudnoy and Doug's mother Joanna were sitting before Doug's desk. Anson was leaning back in her webbed chair almost casually. Wearing comfortable faded denim jeans and an open-collar velour blouse, she looked vigorous and feisty, her short-cropped hair still golden blonde, her steel-gray eyes snapping with barely suppressed anger.
Joanna seemed calm, but Doug knew that her composed expression masked an inner tension. She had let her shoulder-length hair go from ash blonde to silver gray, but otherwise she looked no more than forty. She was dressed elegantly, as usual: a patterned coral skirt, its hem slightly weighted to make it drape properly in the soft lunar gravity, and a crisply tailored white blouse buttoned at the throat and wrists, where jewelry sparkled.
Seated between the two women was Brudnoy, his long face with its untidy gray beard looking somber, his baggy eyes on Doug. Brudnoy's dark turtleneck and unpressed denims seemed almost shabby, next to his wife's impeccable ensemble. His gray lunar softboots were faded and shiny from long use.
Although Doug's office was little larger than a cubbyhole carved out of the ringwall mountain's flank, its walls were smart screens from padded tile floor to smoothed rock ceiling; flat, high-definition, digital display screens that could be activated by voice or by the pencil-sized laser pointer resting on Doug's desk.
Doug kept one eye on the screen covering the wall to the left of his desk; it was scrolling a complete checkout of Moonbase's entire systems. He needed to reassure himself that everything was operating normally. The other two walls could have been showing videos of any scenery he wanted, but Doug had them displaying the security camera views of the base, switching every ten seconds from one tunnel to another and then to the outside, where the teleoperated tractors were still working in the pit as if nothing had happened. The wall behind him was blank.
Feeling uneasy as he sat behind his desk, Doug said, 'Now I don't want people getting twitchy about this. The base should run as normally as possible.'
'Even though Faure's declared war on us?' Anson cracked.
'It's not that kind of a war,' Doug snapped back. "There's not going to be any shooting.'
'Not from our side, anyway,' said Anson. "The best we could do is throw rocks at 'em.'
'At whom?' Doug's mother asked testily.
'Peacekeeper troops,' said Doug.
Everyone in the office looked startled at the thought.
'You don't think they'd really go that far, do you?' Anson asked, looking worried for the first time.
Doug picked up his laser pointer and aimed its red spot at one of the icons lining the top of the wall screen on his left. The wall became a schematic display of the Earth-Moon system, with clouds of satellites orbiting the Earth. A dozen navigational satellites clung to low orbits around the Moon, and the big crewed station at the L-l position still showed as a single green dot.
'No traffic,' Doug said. "This morning's LTV's stopped at L-l. Nothing at all moving between LEO and here.'
'Not yet,' muttered Brudnoy.
'They wouldn't invade us,' Joanna said firmly. 'That little Quebecer hasn't got the guts.'
Brudnoy ran a bony finger across his short gray beard. No matter how carefully he trimmed it, the beard somehow looked shaggy all the time.
'That little Quebecer,' he reminded his wife, 'has fought his way to the top of the United Nations. And now he's gotten the U.N. to declare us in violation of the nanotech treaty.'
Joanna frowned impatiently. 'We've been violating that treaty since it was written.'
'But now your little Quebecer has obtained the authority to send Peacekeeper troops here to enforce the treaty on us,' Brudnoy continued.
'You really think it'll come to that?' Anson asked again, edging forward slightly in her chair.
'Sooner or later,' Doug said.
'They know we can't stop using nanomachines,' Joanna said bitterly. 'They know they'll be destroying Moonbase if they prevent us from using them.'
'That's what they're going to do, though,' said Brudnoy, growing more gloomy with each word.
'Then we'll have to resist them,' Doug said.
'Fight the Peacekeepers?' Anson seemed startled at the thought. 'But-'
'I didn't say fight,' Doug corrected. 'I said resist.'
'How?'
'I've been studying the legal situation,' Doug said. 'We could declare our independence.'
His mother looked more irked than puzzled. 'What good would that do?'
'As an independent nation, we wouldn't sign the nanotech treaty, so it wouldn't apply to us.'
Brudnoy raised his brows. 'But would the U.N. recognize us as an independent nation? Would they admit us to membership?'
'Faure would never allow it,' Joanna said. 'The little Quebecer's got the whole U.N. wrapped around his manicured finger.'
'How would the corporation react if we declared independence?' Jinny Anson asked.
'Kiribati couldn't do anything about it,' said Doug.
Brudnoy sighed painfully. 'If they hadn't knuckled under to Faure and signed the treaty-'
'They didn't have much choice, really,' said Doug. Looking straight at his mother, he went on, 'But what about Masterson? How's your board going to react to our independence?'
'I'll handle the board of directors,' Joanna replied flatly.
'And Rashid?'
She smiled slightly. 'He'll go up in a cloud of purple smoke. But don't worry; even though he's the board chairman now I can keep him in his place.'
'Independence,' Anson murmured.
Doug said, 'We're pretty much self-sufficient, as far as energy and food are concerned.'
'How long is "pretty much?"' Joanna asked.
'We can go for months without importing anything from Earth, I betcha,' Anson replied.
'Really?' Doug asked.
She shrugged. 'Condiments might be a problem. Ketchup, seasonings, salt.'