Mason Steinitz stood in the launch room, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He realized he was doing this and immediately stopped himself. It wouldn’t do for the other personnel involved with the launch to see him fidgeting. In one ear was an earbud through which he could monitor the communications of his security team.
He smiled uncomfortably at the thought of his current security team. He had issued batons and CEDs to all parents and given them quick instruction on their use. Those parents were currently deployed around the station, primarily in the commissary, where group activities were likely to originate, and in the hallway outside the launch room door. He didn’t know how effective they would be if things got bad, but they all had a stake in seeing this launch succeed.
To minimize possible conflict, the actual date and time of the launch had never been officially announced. But the parents all knew, and people talk. Rumors had circulated throughout the base. The food stores had been loaded onto the ferry over the previous night in an attempt to avoid confrontation. This had worked, but the increased activity had made it obvious that the launch was imminent.
Now, he was hearing reports of a large and unruly gathering in the commissary. There had so far been no violence, but the crowd was growing and getting more aggressive.
He looked at the screen which showed the Country Roads on the pad. The Chinese were transferring their propellant to the ferry’s tanks. It seemed like this process was taking forever. As the third rover pulled forward and was connected to the ferry, he realized he was fidgeting again.
Caitlin Byrne was in the commissary with twenty other parents, watching the activities there. The crowd had been growing all morning and now almost filled the space. There were speeches. There was chanting. There was the threat of violence.
She saw several people whom she might have considered friends in other circumstances but that were now chanting and shouting obscenities about parents and children and food. One woman she recognized smiled and waved to her. Caitlin waved back automatically, while also marveling at the woman’s lack of self-awareness. Did the woman not realize she was protesting the saving of her child?
She looked around the perimeter at the other parents stationed in the room. They seemed so few, compared to the crowd. She checked that her baton and CED were ready and shuddered a little at the thought of using either.
She was thinking of her son, Keiron, hoping he was alright, when suddenly someone ran in from the hallway and shouted, “There are Chinese rovers on the launch pad!”
That’s all it took. The kindling had been laid all morning. The fire of violence was ready to ignite. This was the match.
The crowd erupted in shouts and motion. She pulled her CED in one hand as she heard shouts of “Get ‘em!” and saw the crowd expand toward the parents along the walls. She pulled out her baton with the other hand as she shouted into her radio. “They know! Situation out of control here!” She fired her CED blindly into the approaching crowd. She saw one person fall beneath the feet of the others. Something flew out of the crowd and hit her on the head. She stumbled and fell to her knees, baton raised like a talisman that would somehow keep the crowd at bay. It did not.
As she fell to the floor beneath repeated blows, she heard a voice shout “To the control room!” She felt the weight of the crowd shift toward the door and tried to rise, but a chair crashed down on her head. As she fell back to the floor, she whispered into her radio, “They’re coming.” The chair came down again and she said no more.
Brendan Byrne had met Caitlin Devers while they were both in college, he studying planetary geology, she cultural anthropology. Through many years of grad school, they had managed to stay together, get married, and have a son. She had taken a sabbatical from her professorship when he received this post on Luna. The effects of climate change were causing increasing conflict on Earth, and they both agreed that a break from all the problems would provide them with some much-needed perspective. It had seemed like a great adventure to take their family to the moon. That had proved to be more true than they could have imagined.
In the hallway outside the launch control room, Brendan Byrne heard his wife’s radio calls. His first urge was to run to her, but he stayed at his post. Their son was on that ship outside, and it was about to launch. His job was here in this hallway, doing everything he could to make sure that happened. He pulled his baton and CED. All around him, other parents did the same. They all turned to face whatever came down that hall.
Everett Cook was in that hallway too, stationed near the launch room door. He was one of the larger inhabitants of the base, and the commander hoped that this would discourage anyone who got that far down the hall. Everett had heard the calls from the commissary and was readying his batons, one in each hand. He had no use for a CED. If it came to a fight, he would fight.
Something troubled him about the calls from the commissary. In the background he had heard shouts about Chinese rovers. He asked the parent nearest to him if they had heard the same thing.
“Yeah,” she said. “They’re supposed to be loading propellant right now.” She turned back to look up the hallway.
Everett shook his head. “That plan was canceled,” he said.
She turned her head and gave him a confused look. “No it wasn’t,” she said. “That’s just the story we told to keep the yahoos quiet.” There was a commotion up the hallway, and she turned away from him.
Story, he thought. And she knew. It suddenly dawned on him that he was a yahoo. He muttered an obscenity and dropped his batons.
Sounds of combat echoed down the hall as the battle for the launch room began. Everett Cook stood there, staring at the floor, working through his thoughts.
Mason Steinitz heard the calls from the commissary just as the last Chinese rover was hooking up to the ferry.
“How long before we can launch?” he said.
“Ten minutes,” said the launch coordinator. “If all goes well.”
“I can’t promise you ten minutes,” he said.
The launch coordinator looked at him. “Understood,” he said. He turned and began giving instructions to the technicians around him.
In his radio, Mason heard calls from his security team as one checkpoint after another fell to the mob that was approaching the launch room.
When the calls indicated that the mob was at the end of the final hall, he told the launch coordinator to clear the pad.
“Already done,” said the launch coordinator.
“I still see a rover out there. And at least two figures.”
“They have been informed of the situation and have volunteered to stay to manage final propellant loading.”
Mason Steinitz nodded. He knew those figures would never leave the pad. “Acknowledged,” he said.
Brendan Byrne could hear the mob as they approached. The rumbling of many feet and cacophony of shouts were like a scene in a movie about medieval times when two armies simply rushed into each other yelling and slashing. The rumbling grew louder until the mob rounded the corner into the hall and the battle was joined.
He watched in horror as the first few parents were downed and trampled while others dropped their weapons and ran past him. He didn’t resent their cowardice. Instead, he felt sorry for them. There was nowhere to run to; the launch room door was locked.
He realized right away that his CED would be useless against so many. He cast it aside and picked up a second baton from the discarded weapons. He took a deep breath and waded into the crowd, picking targets carefully and swinging his batons with precision. Many of his blows landed and people fell, but the force of the crowd moved him down the hall toward the door. There was no way to stop this mob. He was only buying time. He knew this and fought on.
Everett Cook looked at the melee approaching down the hall. He looked at the locked door. He felt betrayed by the commander and the other parents. He wanted to hurt them for betraying him. But the reality of the situation was that his daughter was on a ship that could save her, and that mob coming down the hall wanted to stop it.
A heavy weight crashed against his shoulder and fell to the ground in front of him. It was the man who had shot him with a CED in the kitchen. Brendan something with a twelve-year-old boy. He remembered the man’s kindness, even in the meeting in which they had disagreed. This man was now fighting to save both of their kids and clearly losing. Everett swallowed his bitterness, extended a hand and helped the man up. Then he leaned down and picked up the batons he had dropped.
Together, the two dads waded into the mob, batons swinging.
The mob slowed briefly due to the ferocity of the last two security guards. But only briefly. Soon the two were overwhelmed, and nothing stood between the mob and the launch control room but a door. Using whatever tools they had, they beat on this door. One of them was about to destroy the card reader with a piece of steel pipe when another stopped them. This other carefully opened the card reader and began picking through the wires inside.
Keiron took a deep breath and turned to look out the window. Most of his view was blocked by the crater walls around Metzger. He leaned toward the window and looked up but could see no stars. The lights around the ferry were too bright. He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes, breathing slowly and deeply. A calmness settled over him. Whatever happened now was out of his control.
He felt a vibration through his seat that quickly grew to a roar. His stomach fluttered as the ship around him bobbed briefly on its drive plume then began to rise.
The hacker was still picking at the wires of the card reader when a rumbling started that vibrated the floor beneath him. The one with the steel pipe pulled him out of the way and smashed the reader with the pipe. The door slid open. The crowd rushed in. The displays at every station showed the ferry rising slowly on pillars of fire from its engine bells. The mob screamed in frustration. They gave the control room crew the same treatment they had given the guards in the hall, but it did nothing to stop the launch.
Eventually, they stopped, dropped their weapons, and stared at the vanishing fires of the Country Roads. They looked at each other and at the evidence of what they had done laying bloodied and motionless all around them. Then they ran away.
You have reached the end of Part One of my forthcoming book, Food: Generation Mars, Book Four. If you’ve enjoyed this teaser, please share widely.