THE SILENT WAR Read online

  "And they're all dead?"

  Wanamaker nodded bleakly.

  Jesus sufferin' Christ, Pancho thought. Thirteen ships. A hundred and fifty people, just about.

  "I think I should tender my resignation," said Wanamaker.

  Pancho glared at him. "Giving up?"

  He flinched as though she'd slapped him. "No. But a defeat like this... you'll probably want a better man to head your war."

  Shaking her head slowly, Pancho said, "No, I want you, Jake. One battle doesn't mean we've lost it all."

  But inwardly she thought, I want you to keep on heading the military operations. But I'll take charge of this goddamned war. Humphries might have the edge on us militarily, with more mercenaries and more ships and better experience. But there's more than one way to fight a war.

  To Wanamaker, she said, "I'm not giving up. Far as I'm concerned, this war's just started."

  " 'I have not yet begun to fight,'" he muttered.

  "I heard that one," Pancho said. "John Paul Jones, wasn't it?"

  Wanamaker nodded.

  "Okay. You recruit more mercenaries, I'll buy more ships. For the time being, Humphries has the run of the Belt. He's gonna attack any Astro vessels he can find out there, try to drive us out of the Belt altogether."

  "Convoy them."

  "Convoy?"

  "Don't let them sail alone. Put them in groups. It's harder to attack a formation of armed ships than a single ship."

  "Makes sense," Pancho agreed. "I'll send out the word right away."

  "I think Yamagata Corporation can provide us with reliable mercenaries."

  "Good. Go get 'em."

  It took a moment for Wanamaker to realize he'd been dismissed. It only hit him when Pancho pushed her chair back from the conference table and got to her feet. He shot up and started to salute, then caught himself and reddened slightly.

  "I've got a lot of work to do," he said, as if excusing himself for leaving the room.

  "Me too," said Pancho.

  Wanamaker left, and Pancho returned to her desk. She called up reports on where the Astro ships were, and where Humphries's vessels were. A holographic representation of the vast space between Earth and the Belt took form in the air beyond her desk, a huge dark expanse with flickering pinpoints of light showing the positions of the ships, Astro's in blue, HSS's in red. There was a cluster of ships between the Earth and Moon; Pancho blanked them out to simplify the three-dimensional picture.

  Cripes, there's a lot of red ones out in the Belt, she said to herself. And those are just the ones we know about. The Humper's prob'ly got a lot more out there, moving around the Belt without any telemetry or identification beacons for the IAA to pick up.

  She had the computer identify the ore freighters, logistics carriers, and ships carrying miners to specific asteroids. Then she added the freelancers, the prospectors and miners who worked on their own, independent of the big corporations.

  Minutes ticked into hours as she studied the situation. We're outnumbered in the Belt two, three to one, Pancho saw. The Hump's been building up his fleet out there for years now. We've gotta play catch-up.

  But why should we play their game? she asked herself. That's what we were doing with Gormley and look what it got us.

  She leaned back in her softly yielding desk chair and closed her eyes briefly. What's the point of all those ships out in the Belt? To bring ores to the factories on Earth, or in Earth orbit, or here at Selene, she answered her own question.

  She stared at the hologram imagery again. Flickering red dots representing HSS ships were spread through the Belt, with a particular clustering around Vesta. But a thinner trickle of red dots was plying the lanes between the Belt and the Earth/Moon vicinity.

  They've gotta bring the goods back here, Pancho saw. That's the whole point of mining the rocks. If we can knock off their ships coming Earthward, we can hit Humphries in the pocketbook, strangle his cash flow, cut his profits down to nothing.

  She sat up straight in the desk chair and said aloud, "That's the way to do it! Let him have the Belt for now. Stop him from bringing the ores to market."

  We don't need naval tactics, she realized. We don't need battles between fleets of warships. What we need is more like a gang of pirates. Like the old Sea Hawks from Queen Elizabeth I's time. Privateers. Pirates.

  And she knew just the man who could lead such a campaign. Lars Fuchs.

  "All of them?" Humphries asked, as if the news was too good to be true.

  Vicki Ferrer was not smiling, but it was clear from the pleased expression on her face that she was happy to be able to bring her boss a positive report.

  "Every Astro ship was destroyed," she repeated.

  They were in the big library/bar on the ground floor of Humphries's mansion, alone except for the robot bartender, which stood at its post, gleaming stainless steel reflecting the ceiling lights.

  "You're sure?" Humphries asked.

  "The report came directly from the Yamagata team. Their idea about using the rocks worked perfectly. The Astro fleet charged right into them. No survivors."

  "This calls for champagne!" Humphries strode to the bar. The robot did not move. Nettled slightly at the machine's obtuseness, Humphries called out, "Bartender! Champagne!"

  The gleaming dome-topped robot trundled sideways along the bar and stopped precisely at the wine cooler. Two slim arms extruded from its cylindrical body, opened the cooler, and pulled out a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. It trundled back to Humphries and held up the bottle so he could inspect the label.

  "Fine," said Humphries. "Open it and let me sample it."

  "How does it find the right bottle?" Ferrer asked, coming over to sit on the stool next to him. Even though it was dinner time for most people, she was still in her office attire, a miniskirted baby pink suit that hugged her curves artfully.

  "There's a sensor in each hand," said Humphries, watching the dumb machine gripping the cork. If he drops that bottle, Humphries thought, I'll run him through the recycler.

  The cork came out with a satisfactorily loud pop and the robot set two champagne flutes on the bar top in front of Humphries, then poured a thimbleful of wine for him to taste.

  Humphries tasted, nodded, told the robot to pour. Once it had, he lifted his glass to Ferrer and toasted, "To victory!"

  She made a smile and murmured, "To victory."

  "We've got them on the run now," Humphries said happily. "I'm going to drive Astro completely out of the Belt!"

  Ferrer smiled again and sipped. But she was thinking, Thirteen ships destroyed. How many people did we kill? How many more have to die before this is over?

  HOTEL LUNA: RESIDENTIAL SUITE

  Pancho could not locate Fuchs. For two days she had her people search for him. They learned that under the false identity she had provided, Fuchs had spent a few days in his native Switzerland, then flown to Selene.

  "He's here in Selene?" she asked her security chief.

  The man looked uncomfortable. "Apparently."

  "Find him," she snapped. "Wherever the hell he is, find him. You got twenty-four hours."

  She had just returned to her suite when the phone told her the report on Fuchs came in. She glanced at her wristwatch. Eight minutes before midnight, Pancho saw. They're working overtime.

  The suite's decor was set to Camelot, Pancho's fantasy of what King Arthur's fabled castle might have been like. She sat herself on one of the sofas in her bedroom and told the phone to play the report. Through a mullioned window she could see knights jousting on a perfect greensward beneath a cloudless blue sky, watched by a cheering throng standing before tented pavilions complete with colorful pennants that fluttered in the breeze of an eternal springtime.

  The young man whose hologram image appeared in the middle of the room might have been one of knights of the Round Table, Pancho thought idly. He was a good-looking blond, strong shoulders, honest open face with sky-blue eyes, his hair stylishly long enough for ringlets to curl arou
nd the collar of his jacket. He was sitting at a desk in what appeared to be a smallish office somewhere in the Astro headquarters. The data line hovering to one side of the image identified him as Frederic Karstein, Astro security department.

  Pancho listened to the brief report with growing incredulity. And annoyance.

  "You mean he was right here in the Hotel Luna?" she asked the image.

  The image flickered momentarily. Then the handsome Frederic Karstein said, "Ms. Lane, I'm live now. I can answer your questions in real time, ma'am."

  "Are you telling me that Fuchs was living just a couple hundred meters from my own quarters?" she demanded.

  "Yes, ma'am, apparently he was."

  "And where is he now?"

  Karstein shrugged his broad shoulders. "We don't know. He seems to have disappeared."

  "Disappeared? How can he disappear?"

  "If we knew that, Ms. Lane, we'd probably know where he is."

  'You can't just disappear! Selene's not that big, and the whole doggone place is under surveillance all the time."

  Karstein looked embarrassed. "We're certain he hasn't left Selene. We've checked the passenger lists for all the outgoing flights for the past two weeks, and examined the surveillance camera records."

  "So he's someplace here in Selene?"

  "It would appear so."

  Pancho huffed. "All right. Stay on this. I want him found, and right away, too."

  "We'll do our best, Ms. Lane."

  She cut the connection and Karstein's image winked out. Dumb blond, Pancho groused to herself.

  "Privateers?" Jake Wanamaker asked, his rasping voice croaking out the word. "You mean, like pirates?"

  Pancho had invited him to a breakfast meeting in her suite. They sat in the tight little alcove off the kitchen, but the holowalls made it seem as if they were outdoors, beneath a graceful elm tree, with softly rolling grassy hills in the distance and the morning sun brightening a clear sky. She could hear birds chirping happily and almost felt a cool breeze ruffling their table linen.

  Pancho took a sip of grapefruit juice, then replied, "Yep. Yo-ho-ho and all that stuff. Cut off Humphries's ships as they're bringing their payloads here to the Moon. Or to Earth."

  Wanamaker took a considerable bite out of the sticky bun he was holding in one big hand, chewed thoughtfully for a few moments, then swallowed. "They've beaten the crap out of us in the Belt, sure enough. It'll be some time before we can build up enough forces to challenge them again."

  "But a few ships operating closer to home, outside the Belt..." Pancho let the suggestion hang in the air between them.

  Wanamaker muttered, "Cut HSS's pipeline to the market. Hit Humphries in the pocketbook."

  "That's where it'd hurt him the most."

  After washing down his cake with a gulp of black coffee, Wanamaker said, "Set up a blockade."

  "Right."

  Absently wiping his sticky fingers with his napkin, Wanamaker broke into a wicked grin. "We wouldn't even need crewed ships for that. Just automate some small birds and park them in wide orbits around the Earth/Moon system."

  "You can do that?"

  He nodded. "They'd be close enough to be remotely operated from here at Selene. It'd be cheaper than using crewed ships."

  Pancho had only one further question. "How soon can we get this going?"

  Wanamaker pushed his chair back from the table and got to his feet. "Real soon," he said. "Very damned real soon."

  Pancho watched him hurry away, thinking, So I won't need Lars after all. Doesn't matter where he's hiding. I won't need him now.

  Later that morning, with some reluctance, Pancho slipped on the soft-suit and sealed the opening that ran the length of the torso's front. Doug Stavenger was already in his suit. To Pancho he looked as if he'd been packed into a plastic-wrap food container, except for the fishbowl helmet he held cradled in his arms.

  "This thing really works?" she asked, picking up her helmet from the shelf in the locker.

  Stavenger nodded, smiling at her. "It's been tested for months now, Pancho. I've worn it outside myself several times. You're going to love it."

  She felt totally unconvinced. Never fly in a new airplane, she remembered from her first days as a pilot. Never eat in a new restaurant on its opening day.

  Plucking at the transparent nanomachined fabric with gloved fingers, she said, "Kinda flimsy."

  "But it works like a charm."

  "That mean you gotta say prayers over it?"

  Stavenger laughed. "Come on, Pancho. Once we're outside you'll wonder how you were ever able to stand those clunky cermet suits."

  "Uh-huh." She could see the enthusiasm in his eyes, his smile, his whole demeanor. He's like a kid with a new toy, she thought.

  But he was right. It took roughly ten minutes to walk from the airlock at Selene to Factory Number Eleven, out on the floor of the giant crater Alphonsus. Before even five minutes were up, Pancho had fallen in love with the softsuit.

  "It's terrific," she said to Stavenger, shuffling along beside her, his boots kicking up gentle clouds of dust. "It's like being without a suit, almost."

  "I told you, didn't I?"

  Pancho held both hands before her and flexed her fingers. "Hot spit! Even the gloves are easy to work. This is like magic!"

  "Not magic. Just nanotechnology."

  "And the radiation protection?"

  "About the same as a hard-shell suit," Stavenger said. "We could add electromagnetic shielding, but that would probably attract a lot of dust from the ground."

  She nodded inside her helmet.

  "You're okay for short time periods on the surface," Stavenger went on. "Off the Moon an electromagnetic system can be added to the suits easily enough."

  Pancho asked, "Doug, ol' pal, how'd you like to sign a contract with Astro to manufacture and distribute these softsuits?"

  He laughed. "No thanks, Pancho. Selene's going to develop this product. We'll sell them at pretty close to cost, too."

  Pancho understood the meaning behind his words. If Selene signed up with Astro for selling the suits, Humphries would complain. If Selene gave a contract to HSS, Astro would fight it. She nodded again inside the fishbowl helmet. Better to keep this out of either corporation's hands. Better to let Selene handle this one themselves.

  The low curving roof of the factory loomed before them. Stavenger and Pancho climbed the stairs to the edge of the factory's thick concrete slab, then stepped through the "car wash," the special airlock that scrubbed their suits free of dust and other contaminants before they were allowed to enter the ultra-pure domain of the factory itself. Pancho felt the jets and scrubbers pummeling her brutally.

  "Hey Doug," she gasped. "You gotta reset these things to go easier."

  His voice in her helmet earphones sounded bemused. "We did reset them, Pancho. They would've knocked you flat if we'd left them at the same power level we used for the hard-shell suits."

  It took Pancho a few moments to catch her breath once she had stepped out of the "car wash" and onto the factory floor. As Stavenger came up beside her, also breathing heavily, she looked out at the two completed spacecraft. Their diamond hulls looked dark, like ominous shadows lurking beneath the curved roof of the factory.

  "There they are," Stavenger said tightly. "One for you and one for Humphries."

  She understood the tension in his voice. "Two brand-new warships. So we can go out and kill some more mercenaries."

  Stavenger said nothing.

  "We've got six more under contract, right?" she asked.

  After several heartbeats, Stavenger said, "Yes. And we're building the same number for Humphries."

  "So no matter who wins, Selene makes money."

  "I don't like it, Pancho. I don't like any of this. If I could convince the governing council to renege on these contracts, I would."

  "I don't like it either, Doug. But what else can we do? Let the Humper take over the whole danged solar system?"

&nbs
p; He fell silent again.

  As they trudged back in silence toward the airlock at Selene, Pancho said to herself: Deadlock. Selene doesn't want either one of us to win. They don't want one side to beat the other and become master of the whole solar system. Even if Astro wins, if I win, Selene's scared shitless that they'll be under my thumb. Doug wants to see Humphries and Astro fight ourselves into exhaustion, and then he'll step in and be the peacemaker again.

  So they're doing their best to keep us even. They won't make a warship for Humphries without making one for Astro. Keeps them neutral, Doug says. Keeps us in a deadlock, that's what it keeps.

  There's gotta be some way out of this, some way to break through and beat the Humper before we're both so broke and dead-flat exhausted that both our corporations go bust.

  If I could get Lars to help us, she thought. He might just be able to tip the scales in our favor. But the l'il bugger has disappeared. What's he up to? Why's he gone to ground on me?

  Shaking her head inside the fishbowl helmet, Pancho considered: We need an outside force, a partner, an ally. Somebody who can tip the scales in Astro's favor. Outmaneuver Humphries. Overpower him. Some way to outflank HSS.

  Then it hit her. Nairobi! That guy from Nairobi Industries wanted a strategic alliance with Astro. I wonder if he's still interested? I'll have to look him up soon's I get back to the office, whatever his name was.

  ASTRO CORPORATION COMMAND CENTER

  Jake Wanamaker's command center was a cluster of offices set slightly apart from the rest of Astro Corporation's headquarters. With wry humor, Wanamaker mused that Humphries could do more damage to Astro, at far less cost, by attacking these offices and wiping out the corporation's military command. But even war has its rules, and one of the fundamental rules of this conflict was that no violence would be tolerated anywhere on the Moon. The side that broke that rule would bring Selene and its considerable financial and manufacturing clout into the battle as an enemy.