THE SILENT WAR Page 21

  Stavenger looked into his wife's earnest eyes and knew he couldn't stop her.

  "I'll go with you, then," he said.

  "Oh no! You've got to stay here!"

  "I don't think—"

  "You're my protection, Doug. What happens if we both get killed out there? Who's going to lead Selene?"

  "The duly elected governing council."

  "Oh, sure," she sneered. "Without you pulling their strings they'll dither and shuffle and do nothing, and you know it."

  "No, I don't know that."

  She smiled again. "I need your protection, Doug, and I can only get it if you're here at Selene, keeping things under control."

  "You give me more credit than I deserve."

  "And you're the youngest eminence grise in the solar system."

  He laughed. It was an old standing joke between them.

  "Besides," Edith went on, "if you come out to Ceres all the attention will be on you. They'll fall all over themselves trying to show you that everything's all right. I'll never get a straight story out of anybody."

  He kept the argument going for nearly another half-hour, but Stavenger knew that his wife would do what she wanted. And so would he. Edith will go to Ceres, he realized, and I'll stay here.

  Nobuhiko was brimming with excitement when he called his father to tell him that Pancho Lane was walking into the Nairobi base on the Moon.

  The elder Yamagata was in his cell in the monastery, a fairly sizable room whose stone walls were covered now with bookshelves and smart screens. The room was furnished sparsely, but Nobu noticed that his father had managed to get a big, square mahogany desk for himself.

  Saito was sitting on his haunches on a tatami mat, however, directly under the big wallscreen that displayed an intricate chart that Nobu guessed was the most recent performance of the Tokyo stock exchange.

  "She's going into the Nairobi base voluntarily?" Saito asked.

  "Yes!" gushed Nobu. "I've ordered an interrogation team to get there immediately! The Africans can drug her and the team wring her dry and she'll never even know it!"

  Saito grunted. "Except for her headache the next day."

  Nobu wanted to laugh, but held back.

  His father said nothing for long, nerve-racking moments. Finally, "You go to Shackleton. You, yourself."

  "Me? But why—"

  "No interrogation team knows as much about our work as you do, my son. You can glean much more from her than they could without you."

  Nobu thought it over swiftly. "But if somehow she recognizes me, remembers afterward..."

  "Then she must be eliminated," Saito answered. "It would be a pity, but it would be quite necessary."

  COMMAND SHIP SAMARKAND

  Since the battle that shattered Gormley's fleet, the HSS base at Vesta had been busy. Ships were sent out in groups of two or three to hound down Astro freighters and logistics vessels. Although Astros crewed ships were armed, they were no match for the warships with their mercenary crews that Humphries was pouring into the Belt.

  Sitting in the command chair of Samarkand, in charge of three attack ships, Dorik Harbin wondered how long the war could possibly go on. Astro's vessels were being methodically eliminated. It was clear that Humphries's mercenaries were on the verge of sweeping Astro entirely out of the Belt. Astro's pitiful effort to stop HSS freighters from delivering ores to the Earth/Moon region had backfired hideously with the Starlight fiasco.

  Yet the rumor was that more Astro ships were heading for the Belt. Better-armed ships, vessels crewed by mercenaries who were smart enough to avoid massed battles. The war was settling down to a struggle of attrition. Which corporation could better sustain the constant losses of ships and crews? Which corporation would decide the war was costing too much and call it quits?

  Not Humphries, Harbin thought. He had met the man and seen the tenacity in his eyes, the dogged drive to succeed no matter what the cost. It's only money to him, Harbin realized. He isn't risking his neck, he's in no danger of shedding his own blood. What does he care how many are killed out here in the empty silence of the Belt?

  His communications technician flashed a red-bordered message onto the bridge's main screen. A solar flare warning. Scanning the data, Harbin saw that it would be several days before the cloud reached the Belt's inner fringes.

  "Run a diagnostic on the radiation shield system," he commanded, thinking, Make sure now that the shield is working properly, and if it's not you've got three or four days to repair it.

  "We have a target, sir!"

  His weapons tech's announcement stirred Harbin out of his thoughts. The flare warning disappeared from the main screen, replaced by three small blips, nearly nine thousand kilometers away, too distant for their telescopic cameras to resolve into a clear optical image.

  With the touch of a fingertip on his armrest keypad, Harbin called up the computer's analysis. Their trajectory was definitely not the Sun-centered ellipse of asteroids; they were moving in formation toward Ceres. Not HSS ships, either; the computer had all their flight plans in its memory.

  "Three on three," he muttered.

  As Samarkand and its two accompanying warships sped toward the Astro vessels, the display screen began to show details. One of them was a typical dumbbell-shaped freighter, toting a large, irregularly shaped mass of ores. The other two were smaller, sleeker, obviously escorts designed to protect the freighter. Both the escorts were studded with asteroidal rock, armor to absorb and deflect laser beams.

  Harbin's ships, including Samarkand, were also covered with asteroidal rubble, for the same reason. He saw that the Astro freighter was not so armored. They probably hope to use their cargo as a shield, he thought.

  "Parallel course," he commanded. "Remain at a distance of fifteen hundred klicks. No closer, for the present."

  "It's a long shot for the lasers," his weapons tech said, her heavy, dark face looking decidedly unhappy. "And they're armored, too."

  Harbin nodded. "It's the freighter we want. I don't care about the escorts."

  The weapons technician gave him a puzzled frown, then returned her attention to her screens.

  Harbin studied the image on the main screen. The Astro escort vessels look more like rock piles than warships, he thought. I suppose we do too. He smiled grimly. Between the two corporations, we must be using more ores as ship's armor than we're selling to the markets on Earth. Well, that will end sooner or later. No war lasts forever.

  Unbidden, a couplet from the Rubaiyat came to his mind:

  One Moment in Annihilation's waste,

  One moment, of the well of life to taste—

  "We've been pulsed by search radar," his pilot reported.

  Harbin nodded. "They know we're here."

  "They're making no move toward us."

  "No," Harbin replied. "Two escorts are not going to come after the three of us. They'll stick close to their freighter and wait for us to make a move on them."

  "What move shall we make, sir?"

  "Just continue the parallel course at this distance." Turning to the communication tech, seated beside the pilot, Harbin added, "Make certain that our two other ships follow me closely."

  As the comm tech relayed his orders, Harbin thought, How to separate those two escorts from the freighter? If we go in to attack we'll be moving into their massed fire. I've got to find a way to split them apart.

  For long, nerve-stretching minutes the two little formations flew in parallel, too distant for either to waste power on laser shots that would be absorbed by the ships' protective shields of asteroidal rubble. The Astro ships were hurrying out of the Belt, heading Earthward, to bring the freighter's massive load of ores to the waiting markets.

  "We'll be reaching fuel bingo in forty-five minutes, sir," the pilot announced.

  Harbin acknowledged the warning with a nod. Fuel bingo: the turn-back point. The farthest distance from their refueling base at Vesta that Samarkand and its two accompanying ships could safely go.<
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  How to separate those escorts from the freighter? Harbin asked himself, over and over. He played one scheme after another in his mind. He riffled through the tactical computer's preset plans. Nothing that he could use. He was pleased to see that the computer's data bank included his own tactics against Gormley.

  And that gave him the idea he needed.

  "You two," he said, jabbing a finger at the communications and weapons technicians. "Get to the main airlock and suit up. Now!"

  They unbuckled their seat harnesses and scampered to the bridge's hatch. Once they announced that they were in their space suits, Harbin went back to the airlock to brief them on what they had to do. Neither of them relished the idea of going outside, he could see that on their faces even through the thick visors of their helmets. That didn't matter to Harbin. There was no other way for his scheme to work.

  He made his way back to the bridge and resumed his position in the command chair. The executive officer monitored the two technicians as they left the airlock and followed Harbin's orders. Within half an hour they reported that they had successfully discharged the electrostatic field that held the rocks of their armor shield tightly around the hull of the ship.

  "Some of the rocks are floating loose now," the weapons tech reported, her voice tense. "Most of 'em are holding in place against the hull, though."

  "Good," Harbin said tightly. "Come back aboard."

  "Yes, sir." He could hear the relief in their voices. They were technicians, not trained astronauts. Working outside was not a chore they enjoyed.

  While they were wriggling out of their space suits back at the airlock, Harbin commanded his pilot to turn and commence a high-speed run at the Astro ships. The other two HSS vessels were to remain on their courses.

  The two technicians struggled back into their seats as Samarkand's fusion engines accelerated the ship to a full g and then even beyond. Harbin heard metal groaning and creaking as the trio of Astro ships grew visibly bigger in the main screen.

  The loosened rocks of the rubble shield were being pushed mechanically by the bulk of the accelerating ship. They were no longer held to the hull by the electrostatic field. Harbin heard thumps and bangs as some of the rocks separated entirely from the ship, but most of them obediently followed Newton's laws and hung on the ship's hull.

  Harbin could see the Astro warships deploying to meet his solo attack. He felt sweat trickling down his ribs, cold and annoying. Once we let loose the rocks we'll have no protection against their lasers, he knew. But they'll be too busy to fire on us. He hoped.

  "Decelerate," he ordered. "Reduce to one-half g."

  The pilot tried to slow the ship smoothly, but still Harbin felt as if his insides were being yanked out of him. The comm tech moaned like a wounded creature and the entire ship seemed to creak and complain, metal screeching against metal.

  As the ship slowed, though, the thousands of rocks of her rubble shield—fist-sized and smaller—kept on moving in a straight line, blindly following their own inertia as they hurtled toward the Astro vessels.

  "Turn one hundred eighty degrees," Harbin snapped.

  The sudden lurching turn was too much for the comm tech; she retched and slumped over the armrest of her chair. Samarkand was no racing yacht. The ship turned slowly, slowly toward the right. Some of the remaining rocks ground against the hull, a dull grating sound that made even the pilot look up with wide, frightened eyes.

  Harbin paid no attention to anything but the main screen. The Astro vessels were in the path of a speeding avalanche of stones as most of Samarkand's erstwhile shielding came plunging toward them.

  "Keep the stones between us and them," Harbin told the pilot. "We can still use them to shield us."

  The display screen was filled with the rubble now. Harbin saw a brief splash of laser light as one of the Astro warships fired into the approaching avalanche. With his armrest keyboard he widened the scope of the display.

  The Astro captains knew what had happened to Gormley, too. For a heartstopping few seconds they maintained their formation, but then their nerve broke and the two escorting warships scattered, leaving the bigger, more ponderous freighter squarely in the path of the approaching stones.

  The freighter tried to maneuver away from the avalanche but it was too slow, too cumbersome to escape. Its captain did manage to turn it enough so that its bulky cargo of asteroidal ores took the brunt of the cascade.

  Harbin watched, fascinated, as the blizzard of rocks struck the freighter. Most of them hit the massive cargo of ores that the ship carried in its external grippers. Harbin saw sparks, puffs of dust, as the stones struck in the complete silence of airless space.

  "I wouldn't want to be in that shooting gallery," the executive officer muttered.

  Harbin glanced away from the screen momentarily, saw that the weapons tech was tending to the comm technician, who was sitting up woozily in her chair.

  The rocks continued to pound the freighter. Harbin saw a flash of glittering vapor that quickly winked out. Must have hit part of the crew module, he thought. That was air escaping.

  "Where are those two escort ships?" he asked aloud.

  The pilot chuckled. "On their way back to Selene, from the looks of it."

  Why not? Harbin thought. They don't have a ship to escort anymore. Why risk their butts in a three-against-two engagement?

  He called his two other ships and told them to stand by in case the two Astro warships returned. Then he commanded his pilot to move Samarkand closer to the crippled freighter.

  "We've got to finish her off," he said.

  The pilot asked, "Do you want me to open a frequency to her? I can take over the comm console, sir."

  Harbin shook his head. He had no desire to talk with the survivors, if there were any still alive aboard the freighter. His job now was to complete the destruction of the ship, which meant that anyone still breathing aboard her was going to die.

  "No need to talk to them," he said to the pilot. Then, to the weapons tech, "Get back to your post and arm the lasers. Time to finish this job."

  SELENE: ASTRO COMMAND CENTER

  Admiral Wanamaker had expected his intelligence officer to be excited, or perhaps worried. Instead, she looked deadly calm. And determined.

  "Willie," he said, "I can't let you go on this mission. I'm sure you understand why."

  Tashkajian remained standing in front of his desk, her dark eyes unwavering. "This mission is my idea, sir. I don't think I should expect others to take risks that I'm not prepared to take myself."

  Gently, trying not to injure her pride, Wanamaker said, "But I need you here, Willie. You're my intelligence officer, and a damned good one. I can't afford to risk you."

  Her steadfast pose faltered just a little. "But, sir, it's not right for me to stay here while the crew dashes out to the Belt inside that radiation cloud."

  He smiled slightly. 'You assured me it was perfectly safe, Willie."

  "It is!" she blurted. "But... well, you know, there's always a chance..." Her voice trailed off for a moment, then she snapped, "Dammit, sir, you know what I mean!"

  "Yes I do," he admitted. "But you're not going. You've picked a crew and the ship is ready to go out inside the radiation cloud to attack the HSS base at Vesta. You are staying here, where you belong. Where I need you to be."

  "That's not fair, sir!"

  "I have no intention of being fair. This is a war we're fighting, not some playground game."

  "But—"

  "The ship goes without you," Wanamaker said, as firmly as he could manage. "That is final."

  "Welcome to Shining Mountain Base," said Daniel Tsavo, beaming so widely Pancho thought she could see his molars.

  He was standing at the end of the flexible tube that had been snaked out to the hopper from the airlock of the base structure.

  Shifting the travel bag on her shoulder, Pancho took his extended hand, smiling back at him, and looked around. The interior of the Nairobi facility look
ed bare-bones, no-nonsense efficiency. Undecorated metal walls. Ribbed dome overhead. Tractors scuffed and grimy with lunar dust.

  "Nice of you to invite me," Pancho said, knowing that she had actually invited herself.

  "I'm glad you got here before the solar storm strikes. We'll be safely underground before the radiation begins to mount."

  "Sounds good to me," said Pancho.

  Tsavo led her to a pair of gleaming metal doors. They slid open to reveal an elevator.

  "Most of our base is underground, of course," he said as he gestured her into the cab.

  "Just like Selene."

  "Just like Selene," he agreed as the doors slid shut and the cab began dropping so fast Pancho's stomach lurched.

  Wanamaker had been dead-set against this visit. When Pancho had told him she was going to look over the Nairobi base, his holographic image had turned stony.

  "Pancho, the head of the corporation shouldn't walk into a potential enemy base all by herself."

  "Enemy?" Pancho's brows had shot up. "Nairobi's not an enemy of ours."

  "How do you know?" Wanamaker had demanded. "You're at war, Pancho, and anybody who isn't an ally is potentially an enemy."

  Pancho didn't believe it.

  "At least take a security team with you," Wanamaker insisted.

  "I can take care of myself."

  As Tsavo guided her along the tunnels of the Nairobi base, though, Pancho began to wonder about her bravado. The place was larger than she had expected, much larger. Construction crews in dark blue coveralls seemed to be everywhere, drilling, digging, hauling equipment on electrically powered minitractors, yelling to each other, lifting, banging. The noise was incredible and incessant. Tsavo had to shout to make himself heard. And everything smelled brand new: fresh paint, concrete dust, sprays of lubricants and sealants in the air.

  Pancho smiled and nodded as Tsavo shouted himself hoarse explaining what they were walking through. Living quarters would be there, offices on the other side of that corridor, laboratories, storerooms, a big conference room that could be converted into a theater, the base control center: all still unfinished, raw concrete and lunar rock and plans for the future.