The Phobos Maneuver by Felix R. Savage

little fingers burned.”
    He tended to be cynical about the UN. They’d let his home asteroid get slagged.
    “This time is different! This is no hollow PR campaign. They’re planning a war.” A shrewd look came over Dr. Hasselblatter’s face. “The President’s hand must have been forced. She’s not a risk-taker. Her job’s on the line now—”
    “Oh, Abdullah,” the boss-man said. “The President’s problems aren’t your problems anymore.” He said it kindly. For just a moment, he was not the boss, he was just an older brother setting a younger brother straight. Kiyoshi knew that tone of voice because he used it himself sometimes. “It’s a mess, but it’s four hundred million kilometers away. Anyway, Insha’Allah and all that. Allah will sort it out.”
    Junior Hasselblatter’s flying goat crashed into the tea party, breaking it up. Dr. Hasselblatter’s wife spoke sharply to her stepson. Sullen, he hugged his goat, and Dr. Hasselblatter hugged all three of them. The real Pashtun men went to put their spacesuits on, embarrassed by this public display of affection.
    Kiyoshi caught up with the boss-man outside. “‘Allah will sort it out’?”
    Certain privileges came with being the boss’s right-hand man. Kiyoshi could talk to him like this, at least on a private suit-to-suit channel.
    “Hey,” the boss-man said. “There is a definite upside. The ISA is much less likely to come chasing after me in the middle of an all-out war.”
    “Naw, it’s the Allah talk that gets me.”
    “Hey,” the boss-man said. “Call it God if you want. Call it fate, call it luck. Long as it’s on my side, I don’t care what you call it. There are a thousand ways to gain popularity, and all of them are right in the right circumstances.”
    “In the name of Jesus Christ, may you be forgiven for lying your ass off.”
    “I’m heading over to visit the Amish. Wanna come and hear me lie my ass off about how fusion energy isn’t a worldly convenience?”
    Kiyoshi let out an involuntary laugh. Wished he could take it back. “Someday,” he said into the gunky mic in his helmet, “I want to hear you tell the Pashtuns—hell, everyone—that you and Dr. H. are from California; that you aren’t even Pashtuns, but half Iranian and half German or something; and that you never cracked open the Koran, much less the Bible or the Mormon scriptures or whatever else until you got interested in preserving minority cultures.”
    “Oh, most people are already aware,” the boss-man said. They were puttering away on small blasts of gas from their mobility packs. Behind them, the Pashtuns clung like flies to the nearly-invisible web of strands that would become one-eighth of the Salvation. “They just don’t care. Same as the war. It doesn’t matter a lick way out here. There’s a disconnect this far out from civilization. You should know that all too well.”
    It will matter if the ISA comes for you, Kiyoshi thought. “Even our cynical bunch might be interested enough to know your real name.”
    “I doubt it.”
    His real name was Qusantin Hasselblatter—but that wasn’t what Kiyoshi was referring to. He meant the boss’s old nom de guerre: Konstantin X.
    “You have my permission to share that tidbit … later. When it’s too late for anyone to have second thoughts. Sinister chuckle.”
    “Aw, go and chuckle sinisterly at the Amish,” Kiyoshi said, laughing.
    They split up. Kiyoshi had a long trek back to his ship. For half an hour, he floated on his fragile jet of ionized gas, with no external proof he was moving at all, relative to the fragments of 99984 Ravilious which were the only things big enough to see. A radio beacon in his HUD guided him towards the Monster. He stared glumly at the distant sun, tinted by his faceplate to a putrid shade of green. So, revealing the boss’s real name wouldn’t give him any leverage. He’d had a feeling it wouldn’t, but it was worth a shot. Maybe if he knew more of the