Asteroid Wars 3 - The Silent War by Bova Ben

Author:Bova, Ben [Bova, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SELENE NEWS MEDIA CENTER

Despite its rather glitzy title, the news media center was little more than a set of standard-sized offices—most of them crammed with broadcasting equipment—and one cavernous studio large enough to shoot several videos at the same time.

Edith Stavenger stood impatiently just inside the studio's big double doors, waiting while the camera crew finished its final take on a training vid for the new softsuits. A young woman who actually worked a tractor on the surface was serving as a model, showing how easy it was to pull the suit on and seal its front.

Many years earlier Edith Stavenger had been Edie Elgin, a television news reporter in Texas, back in the days when the first human expedition to Mars was in training. She had come to the Moon as a reporter during the brief, almost bloodless lunar war of independence. She had married Douglas Stavenger and never returned to Earth. She still had the dynamic, youthful good looks of a cheerleader, golden blonde hair and a big smile full of strong bright teeth. She was still bright-eyed and vigorous, thanks to rejuvenation therapies that ranged from skin-cell regeneration to hormone enhancement. Some thought that she had taken nanomachines into her body, like her husband, but Edith found no need for that; cellular biochemistry was her fountain of youth.

She had served as news director for Selene for a while but, at her husband's prodding, semi-retired to a consultant's position. Doug Stavenger wanted no dynasties in Selene's political or social structure and Edith agreed with him, almost completely. She clung to her consultant's position, even though she barely ever tried to interfere with the operation of the news media in Selene.

But now she had a reason to get involved, and she waited with growing impatience for the head of the news department to finish the scene he was personally directing.

The young model took off her fishbowl helmet and collapsed the transparent inflatable fabric in her hands. Then she unsealed her soft-suit, peeled it off her arms and wriggled it past her hips. She'd be kind of sexy, Elgin thought, if she weren't wearing those coveralls.

At last the scene was finished, the crew clicked off their handheld cameras, and the news director turned and headed for the door.

"Edie!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know you'd come up here."

"We've got to talk, Andy."

The news director's name was Achmed Mohammed Wajir, and although he traced his family roots back to the Congo, he had been born in Syria and raised all over the Middle East. His childhood had been the gypsy existence of a diplomat's son: never in one city for more than two years at a time. His father sent him to Princeton for an education in the classics, but young Achmed had fallen in love with journalism instead. He went to New York and climbed through the rough-and-tumble world of the news media until a terrorist bomb shattered his legs. He came to Selene where he could accept nanotherapies that rebuilt his legs, but he could never return to Earth while he carried nanomachines inside him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.