THE SILENT WAR Page 30

  BALLISTIC ROCKET

  From her seat by the narrow window Pancho could see out of the corner of her eye the rugged lunar highlands gliding swiftly past, far below. She was the only passenger on the ballistic rocket as it arced high above the Moon's barren surface, carrying her from Astro's Malapert base back to Selene. Her ankle was set in a spraycast; she was heading for Selene's hospital, and injections of nanomachines that would mend her broken bones and repair the damage that radiation had done to her body.

  Pancho had precious little time to study the scenery. She was deep in conversation with Jake Wanamaker, whose craggy unsmiling face reminded her of the rocky land below.

  "... should be releasing the nanomachines right about now," Wanamaker was saying.

  "And everybody on Vesta is belowground?" Pancho asked.

  "Ought to be, with that radiation cloud sweeping over them. Anybody up on the surface is going to be dead no matter what we do."

  Pancho nodded. "All right. Now what's this about Humphries's mansion burning down?"

  Wanamaker grimaced with distaste. "A group of four fanatics infiltrated into the grotto down there on the bottom level. Why, we don't know yet. They're being held by Selene security in the hospital."

  "And they burned the house down?"

  "Set the whole garden on fire. The place is a blackened wasteland."

  "Humphries?"

  "No sign of him. Selene inspectors are going through the place now. Apparently the house is still standing, but it's been gutted by the fire."

  Strangely, Pancho felt no elation at the possibility that Humphries was dead. "Have they found his body?"

  "Not yet."

  "And the people who attacked the place are in the hospital?"

  "Under guard."

  Pancho knew only one person in the entire solar system who would be crazy enough to attack Humphries in his own home. Lars Fuchs.

  "Was Lars Fuchs one of the attackers?"

  Wanamaker's acid expression deepened into a dark scowl. "He gave his name as Karl. Manstein. I don't think Selene security has tumbled to who he really is."

  For an instant Pancho wondered how Wanamaker knew that Manstein was am alias for Fuchs. But she put that aside as unimportant. "Get him out of there," she said.

  "What?"

  "Get him out of the hospital. Out of Selene. Send him back to the Belt, to Ceres, anywhere. Just get him loose from Selene security."

  "But he's a murderer, a terrorist."

  "I brought him to Selene to help in our fight against Humphries," Pancho half-lied. "I don't want Stavenger or anybody else to know that."

  "How am I supposed to get him past Selene's security guards?" Wanamaker asked, clearly distressed.

  Pancho closed her eyes for a moment. Then, "Jake, that's your problem. Figure it out. I want him off the Moon and headed back to the Belt. Yesterday."

  He took a deep breath, then replied reluctantly, "Yes, ma'am." For an instant she thought he was going to give her a military salute.

  "Anything else?" Pancho asked.

  Wanamaker made a face that was halfway between a smile and a grimace. "Isn't that enough?"

  Ulysses S. Quinlan felt awed, his emerald-green eyes wide with admiration, as he stood in the middle of the huge downstairs living room of the Humphries mansion. Or what was left of it. The wide, spacious room was a charred and blackened desolation, walls and ceiling scorched, floor littered with burned stumps of debris and powdery gray ash.

  Born in Bellfast of an Irish father and Irish-American mother, Quinlan had grown up to tales of civil wars. To please his father he played football from childhood, which eventually brought him an athletic scholarship to Princeton University, back in the States—which pleased his mother, even though she cried to be separated from her only child. Quinlan studied engineering, and worked long years on the frustrating and ultimately pointless seawalls and hydromechanical barriers that failed to prevent the rising ocean from flooding out most of Florida and the Gulf Coast regions as far south as Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.

  He suffered a nervous breakdown when Houston was inundated, and was retired at full pension precisely on his fortieth birthday. To get away from oceans and seas and floods he retired to the Moon. Within a year he was working in Selene's safety department, as happy and cheerful as he'd been before the disastrous greenhouse floods on Earth.

  Now he whistled through his breathing mask as he goggled at the size of the mansion's living room.

  "The grandeur of it all," he said as he shuffled through the gray ash and debris.

  "Like the old Tsars in Russia," said his partner, a stocky redheaded Finnish woman. He could hear the contempt in her tone, even through her breathing mask.

  "Aye," agreed Quinlan, thudding the blackened wall with a gloved fist. "But he built solid. Reinforced concrete. The basic structure stood up to the flames, it did."

  His partner reluctantly agreed. "They could have contained the fire to one area if somebody hadn't allowed it to spread to the roof."

  Quinlan nodded. "A pity," he murmured. "A true pity."

  They wore the breathing masks to protect their lungs from the fine ash that they kicked up with each step they took. The grotto had been refilled with breathable air hours earlier. Quinlan and his Finnish partner were inspecting the ruins, checking to make certain that no hint of fire reignited itself now that there was oxygen to support combustion again.

  They spent a careful hour sifting through the debris of the lower floor. Then they headed cautiously up the stairs to the upper level. The wooden facings and lush carpeting of the stairway had burned away, but the solid concrete understructure was undisturbed by the fire.

  Upstairs was just as bad a mess as below. Quinlan could see the broken and charred remains of what had once been fine furniture, now lying in shattered heaps along the walls of the hallway. The windows were all intact, he noticed, and covered with metal mesh screens. He must have built with tempered glass, Quinlan thought. Bulletproof? I wonder.

  Following the floor plan displayed on their handhelds, they pushed through the debris at the wide doorway of the master bedroom suite. Quinlan whistled softly at the size of it all.

  "That must have been the bed," his partner said, pointing to a square block of debris on the floor.

  "Or his airport," muttered Quinlan.

  "Hey, look at this." The Finn was standing in front of an intact door panel. "The fire didn't damage this."

  "How could that be?" Quinlan wondered aloud, stepping over toward her.

  "It's plastic of some sort," she said, running her gloved had along the panel.

  "Ceramic, looks like."

  The redhead checked her handheld. "Should be a closet, according to the floorplan."

  "How in the world do you get into it, though?" Quinlan looked for a door latch or a button but could see nothing along the soot-blackened door frame.

  He tried to slide the door open. It wouldn't budge. He tapped it, then rapped. "It's locked from the inside, seems like."

  At that instant the door slid open so fast they both jumped back a startled step or two.

  Martin Humphries stood tottering on uncertain legs, glaring at them with red-rimmed blazing in his eyes.

  "About time," he croaked, his voice bricky-dry.

  "Mr. Humphries!"

  Humphries staggered past them, looked at the ruins of his palatial bedroom, then turned back on them fiercely.

  "Water! Give me water."

  Quinlan yanked the canteen from his belt and wordlessly handed it to the angry man. Humphries gurgled it down greedily, water spilling down his chin and dripping onto the front of his wrinkled shirt. Even through the breathing mask, Quinlan could smell the man's foul body odor.

  Humphries put the canteen down from his lips, but still held onto it possessively. Wiping his chin with the back of his free hand, he coughed once, then jabbed a finger at Quinlan.

  "Phone," he snapped, his voice a little stronger than before. "Give me a pho
ne. I'm going to hang that murdering bastard Fuchs by his balls!"

  ASTEROID VESTA

  Although the military base on Vesta belonged to Humphries Space Systems, its key personnel were mercenaries hired by HSS from several sources. Leeza Chaptal, for example, was a Yamagata Corporation employee. She was now effectively the base commander, since the HSS man nominally in charge of the base was a business executive, by training and education an accountant, by disposition a bean-counter.

  Leeza left him to shuffle paperwork (electronically, of course) and he left her to run the two-hundred-odd men and women who made up the military strength of the base: engineers, technicians, astronauts, soldiers. It was a wise arrangement. The HSS man dealt with numbers, while Leeza handled the real work.

  With the solar storm raging, though, there was very little real work being done. Leeza had called in everyone from the surface. Huddled safely in the caverns and tunnels deep underground, there was little for the military to do other than routine maintenance of equipment and that oldest of all soldierly pursuits: griping.

  In truth, Leeza herself felt uncomfortable burrowed down like a mole in its den. Even though she seldom went to the surface of Vesta, it unnerved her to realize that she could not go up to the surface now, could not get out of these cramped little compartments carved out of the asteroid's rocky body, could not stand up on the bare pebbled ground—even in a space suit—and see the stars.

  She paced slowly along the consoles in the base command center, looking over the shoulders of the bored technicians sitting at each desk. The storm was weakening, she saw. Radiation levels were beginning to decline. Good, she thought. The sooner this is over, the better. Four HSS vessels were hanging in docking orbits up there, waiting for the radiation to recede enough so they could begin shuttling their crews down to the base. And Dorik Harbin was approaching in his ship, Samarkand.

  Dorik had been distant for weeks now; perhaps it was time to bring him closer. Leeza smiled inwardly at the thought. He doesn't like the fact that I outrank him, she knew. But a few of the right pills and he'll forget all about rank. Or maybe I should try something that will make him obedient, submissive. No, she decided. I like his passion, his ferocity. Take that away from him and there's nothing special left.

  "Unidentified vehicle approaching," said the tech monitoring the radar.

  Leeza felt her scalp tingle. Anything that the radar could spot through this radiation cloud must be close, very close.

  "Two bogies," the technician called out as Leeza hurried to his chair.

  They were speeding toward Vesta, and so close that the computer could calculate their size and velocity. Too small to be attack ships, Leeza saw, swiftly digesting the numbers racing across the bottom of the display. Nukes? Nuclear bombs couldn't do much damage to us while we're buttoned up down here. For the first time she felt grateful for the solar storm.

  "They're going to impact," said the technician.

  "Yes, I can see," Leeza replied calmly.

  The two approaching missiles fired retrorockets at the last instant and hit the hard, stony ground almost softly. A crash landing, she thought. No explosion. Timed fuzing?

  She walked a few paces to the communications console. "Do you have a camera in the vicinity where those two bogies landed?"

  The comm tech already had the scene on her main display screen. It was grainy and dim, but Leeza saw the crumpled wreckage of two small missiles lying on the bare ground.

  "Is that the best magnification you can get?" she asked, bending over the technician's shoulder to peer at the screen.

  The technician muttered something about the radiation up there as she pecked at her keyboard.

  The display went blank.

  "Nice work," Leeza sneered.

  "It shouldn't have done that," said the technician, defensively.

  "Radar's out!" called the radar tech.

  Leeza straightened up and turned in his direction.

  "Radiation monitors have gone dead."

  "No response from the surface camera at the crash site," the comm tech said. "Hey, two more cameras have gone out!"

  Leeza turned slowly in a full circle. Every console was conking out, screens going dark while red failure-mode lights flared.

  "What's going on up there?" Leeza asked.

  No one answered.

  No less than fourteen Humphries Space Systems employees attended Martin Humphries between his burned-out mansion and the finest suite in the decaying Hotel Luna, four flights above the fire-blackened grotto. Flunkies and lackeys ranging from his personal physician to a perky blonde administrative assistant with a brilliant smile from HSS's personnel department were already waiting for their CEO as Quinlan and his surprised partner helped Humphries through the temporary airlock and into Selene's bottommost corridor.

  The head of his security department, the never-smiling Grigor, fell into step alongside Humphries as they started toward the powered stairs.

  "Your assistant, the woman Ferrer..."

  "What about her?" Humphries asked, suddenly worried that Victoria had survived the fire and was ready to tell the world how he had abandoned her.

  "They found her body in the upstairs hallway," said Grigor morosely. "Dead of smoke inhalation."

  Humphries felt a surge of relief flow through him. But he growled, "Fuchs. He's responsible for this. I want Fuchs's balls on a platter."

  "Yessir," said Grigor. "I'll see to it right away."

  "And fire that dumb sonofabitch who was in charge of security for my house!"

  "Immediately, sir."

  "You've got to rest, Mr. Humphries," the doctor said, placing a placating hand on Humphries's arm. "You've been through an ordeal that would—"

  "Fuchs!" Humphries raged, shaking loose of the doctor. "Find him! Kill the bastard!"

  "Right away, sir."

  Humphries fumed and ranted all the way up the power stairs and into the sumptuous hotel suite that the woman from the personnel department had reserved for him. A full dinner was waiting on a wheeled table set up in the sitting room. Humphries blurted orders and demands as he stormed into the suite and went straight to the lavatory. Even while he stripped off his sweaty clothes and stepped into the steaming shower he still yelled at the aides—including the blonde—swirling around him.

  "And another thing," he called from the shower. "Get my insurance adjusters down to the mansion and see to it that they have a complete list of its contents. Goddamned fire ruined everything in there. Everything!"

  Aides scurried and took notes on their handhelds. The doctor wanted to give Humphries an injection of tranquillizers, but he would have none of it.

  "But you've got to rest," the doctor said, backing away from his employer's raging shouts.

  "I'll rest when Fuchs's body is roasting over a slow fire," Humphries answered hotly while he struggled into a robe being held for him by the head of his public relations department.

  He stormed into the sitting room, glared at the dinner waiting for him, then looked up at the small crowd of aides, assistants and executives.

  "Out! All of you! Get the hell out of here and leave me alone."

  They hurried toward the door.

  "You!" He pointed at Grigor. "I want Fuchs. Understand me?"

  "I understand, sir. It's as good as done. He can't get out of Selene. We'll find him."

  "It's his head or yours," Humphries growled.

  Grigor nodded, looking more morose than usual, and practically bowed as he backed away toward the door.

  The doctor stood uncertainly in the center of the sitting room, a remote sensing unit in his hand. "I should take your blood pressure, Mr. Humphries."

  "Get OUT!"

  The doctor scampered to the door.

  Humphries plopped himself down on the wide, deep sofa and glowered at the covered plates arranged on the wheeled table. A bottle of wine stood in a chiller, already uncorked.

  He looked up and saw that everybody had left. Everybody exc
ept the blonde, who stood at the door watching him.

  "Do you want me to leave, too?" she asked, with a warm smile.

  Humphries laughed. "No." He patted the sofa cushion beside him. "You come and sit here."

  She was slim, elfin, wearing a one-piece tunic that ended halfway down her thighs. Humphries saw a tattoo on her left ankle: a twining thorned stem that bore a red rose.

  "The doctor said you should rest," she said, with an impish smile.

  "He also said I need a tranquillizer."

  "And a good night's sleep."

  "Maybe you can help me with that," he said.

  "I'll do my best."

  He discovered that her name was Tatiana Oparin, that she worked in his personnel department, that she was ambitious, and that she would be delighted to replace the late Victoria Ferrer as his personal aide. He also discovered that the rose around her ankle was not her only tattoo.

  Grigor Malenkovich noted, in his silent but keen-eyed way, that Tatiana stayed behind in Humphries's suite. Good, he thought. She is serving her purpose. While she keeps Humphries occupied I can start the search for Fuchs without his hounding me.

  The place to start is the hospital, he told himself. All four of the intruders have been brought there. They are under guard. One of them is undoubtedly Fuchs himself. Or, if not, then he knows where Fuchs is.

  He went directly to the hospital, only to be told by Selene's security officers that all the people taken from the fire scene were under protective custody.

  "I want to ask them a few questions," said Grigor.

  The woman in the coral red Selene coveralls smiled patiently at him. "Tomorrow, Mr. Malenkovich. You can be present when we interrogate them."

  Grigor hesitated a moment, then asked, "Why not now? Why wait?"

  "The medics say they need a night's rest. One of them was wounded, you know, and all of them have had a pretty rugged time of it."

  "All the better. Question them while they are tired, worn down."

  The woman smiled again, but it seemed forced. "Tomorrow, Mr. Malenkovich. Once the medics okay it. We'll talk to them tomorrow."

  Grigor thought it over. No sense getting into a quarrel with Selene security, he decided. Besides, Humphries is busy enjoying a good night's rest—or something of the kind.