THE SILENT WAR Page 33

  Humphries looks worried, too, he realized. I've never seen him so uptight. Maybe being nearly killed has finally knocked some sense into his head.

  "This war has gone far enough," Doug Stavenger said, leaning forward earnestly. "Too far, in fact. It's got to stop. Now."

  Neither Pancho nor Humphries said a word. They look like two schoolkids who've been sent to the principal's office for discipline, Stavenger thought.

  He focused on Pancho. "Despite Selene's demands, and my personal request to you, Astro has used its facilities here to direct military operations."

  She nodded, lips tight. "Yep, that's true."

  "And you produced a disaster."

  Pancho nodded again.

  Turning to Humphries, he said, "And that fire in your personal preserve could have wiped out all of Selene."

  "I didn't start the fire," Humphries snapped. "It was that murdering sonofabitch Fuchs."

  "And why was he trying to get to you?" Pancho interjected.

  "He's a killer! You know that. Everybody knows it. He even killed one of my assistants, Victoria Ferrer!"

  "And how many have you killed?" Pancho retorted. 'You've tried to kill Lars more'n once."

  For the first time in long, long years Stavenger felt angry. Truly angry. These two stubborn idiots were threatening Selene and everyone living in it.

  "I don't care who started the fire," he said coldly, "the fact is that you're running your war from here. It was inevitable that the fighting would spread to Selene."

  "I'm sorry for that," Pancho said. "Really sorry. But I had nothing to do with Fuchs's attack on the mansion."

  Humphries glared at her. "Didn't you? You brought Fuchs here to Selene, didn't you? You protected him while he plotted to kill me!"

  "I brought him to Earth to save his hide from your hired killers," Pancho countered, with some heat.

  "Enough!" Stavenger snapped. "You want to fight your war, then fight it elsewhere. You're both leaving Selene."

  "What do you mean?" Humphries demanded.

  "Both Humphries Space Systems and Astro Corporation will move out of Selene. That includes the two of you, all your employees, and all your equipment. I want you both out, lock, stock and barrel. Within the week."

  "You can't do that!"

  "Can't I?" Stavenger said, meeting Humphries's angry gaze. "The governing council of Selene will formally declare both your corporations to be outlaw operations. If you don't move out by the deadline they will seize all your assets and forcibly exile any of your people still remaining here."

  "That's illegal," Pancho blurted.

  "It won't be by this time tomorrow," said Stavenger. "I guarantee it."

  Humphries jabbed an accusing finger at him. "You can't expect me to—

  "I do expect you to clear out of Selene. Now. Immediately. I don't care where you go. I don't care if you slaughter each other out in the Belt or in the pits of hell. But you will not drag Selene into this war. And you will not endanger this community. Is that clear?"

  Humphries glowered at him for a silent moment, then seemed to relax and lean back into the sofa's ample cushions.

  "So I'll go to Hell Crater," he said, with a smirk.

  Stavenger turned to Pancho. "And you?"

  She shrugged. "Maybe Malapert. Maybe we'll set up shop in one of the habitats at L-4 or L-5."

  Humphries sneered at her. "Good idea. I can wipe you out with a single nuke, then."

  Stavenger suddenly shot out of his chair, grabbed Humphries by the collar of his tunic and hauled him to his feet.

  "Why don't I just break your damned neck here and now and get this war over with?" he snarled.

  Humphries went white. He hung limply in Stavenger's grasp, not even able to raise his hands to defend himself.

  Stavenger pushed him back onto the sofa. "Martin, I can see that you're not going to stop this war of your own volition. It won't stop until you're stopped."

  Some color returned to Humphries's face. With a trembling hand he pointed to Pancho. "What about her? She started it!"

  "I started it?" Pancho yelped. "That's the biggest motherhumping lie I ever heard."

  "You started arming your ships!"

  "You tried to assassinate me!"

  "I did not!"

  "The cable car from Hell Crater, remember? You're saying you didn't do that?"

  "I didn't!"

  "Liar."

  "I didn't do it!"

  "Then who the hell did?"

  "Not me!"

  Stavenger's phone chimed, interrupting their finger-pointing.

  "Phone answer," Stavenger called.

  Edith Elgin's face appeared on the screen. She looked tense, worried, almost frightened. "Doug, I know you're going to hear about this one way or the other. The rock rats' habitat at Ceres is being threatened by somebody who wants Lars Fuchs. It must be a Humphries operation. I'm safe on the Elsinore so far, but we don't know what's going to happen. This could get ugly."

  The screen went blank.

  "Edith!" Stavenger called.

  The screen remained gray, but a synthesized voice said, "Transmission was interrupted at the source. The system will attempt to reconnect."

  Stavenger whirled on Humphries. "If anything happens to my wife I'll kill you. Understand me? I'll kill you!"

  TORCH SHIP ELSINORE

  "Well at least lemme get back to Chrysalis," Big George was saying to the image on the screen, "and show you that Fuchs isn't there."

  The fierce, dark-bearded man shook his head grimly. "No one will transfer from your ship to the habitat. How do I know that you won't smuggle Fuchs in with you?"

  With obvious exasperation, George replied, "Because Fuchs isn't here! Come and see for your fookin' self!"

  "I am not leaving my ship," said the intruder. "You will produce Lars Fuchs or face the consequences."

  Big George and Edith were in her quarters aboard Elsinor, trying to reason with the scowling image on the screen. As George fumed and attempted to explain the situation to the intruder, Edith surreptitiously went to the travel kit resting on the shelf above her bed. Hoping she was out of the comm screen camera's view, she slipped one of the micro-cams she had brought with her out of the kit and attached it to the belt of her dress. It looked like an additional buckle, or perhaps a piece of stylish jewelry.

  "I know Fuchs is with you," the dark-bearded man was saying, his voice flat and hard. "Don't try to tell me otherwise."

  "But he's not," George replied for the umpteenth time. "Send a crew over here and inspect the ship."

  "So that you can overpower them and cut my forces in half?" The man shook his head.

  He's paranoid, Edith thought as she stepped to George's side, hoping the microcam was focused on the wall screen.

  "Look," George said, straining to remain patient, "this ship isn't armed. The habitat isn't armed—"

  "You provide weapons to the rock rats," said the intruder.

  "No," George answered. "We provide mining equipment. If the rats get any weapons it's from logistics ships that the corporations send to the Belt."

  "That's a lie. Where is Fuchs? My patience is running thin."

  "He's not fookin' here!" George thundered.

  In truth, Lars Fuchs was aboard Halsey, cruising past the orbit of Mars, nearly 200 million kilometers from Ceres. At his ship's present rate of acceleration, he would reach the Chrysalis habitat in a little more than three days.

  He knew nothing of the circumstances unfolding at Ceres. As his ship traveled through the dark emptiness toward the Belt, Fuchs had plenty of time to think, and remember, and regret.

  A failure. A total failure, he accused himself. Humphries killed my wife, destroyed my life, turned me into a homeless wandering exile, a Flying Dutchman doomed to spend my life drifting through this eternal night, living off whatever scraps I can beg or steal from others. I talk of vengeance, I fill my dreams with visions of hurting Humphries again and again. But it's all futile. All in vain. I'm
a beaten man.

  Amanda, he thought. My beautiful wife. I still love you, Amanda. I wish it had all turned out differently. I wish ...

  He squeezed his eyes shut and strove with all his might to drive the vision of her out of his thoughts. You're alive, he told himself sternly. You still exist, despite all he's done to you. Humphries had driven you into a life of piracy. He's made me into an outcast.

  But I still live. That's my only true revenge on him. Despite everything he's done, despite everything he can do, I still live!

  Aboard Samarkand, Harbin stared with dilated eyes at the floundering, fuming image of the red-bearded George Ambrose.

  "You will produce the man Fuchs," Harbin said tightly, "or suffer the consequences. You have less than fifteen minutes remaining."

  He cut the connection to Elsinore. Turning to his weapons technician, sitting at his console to Harbin's right, he asked, "Status of the lasers?"

  "Sir, we have full power to all three of them."

  "Ready to fire on my command?"

  "Yessir."

  "Good," said Harbin.

  The executive officer, a blade-slim Japanese woman, suggested, "Perhaps we should send a boarding party to the ships parked around the habitat."

  "To search for Fuchs?" Harbin asked lazily. He was starting to feel calm, almost tranquil. The injection must be wearing off, he thought. Too much stress bums the drug out of the bloodstream. I need another shot.

  "If he's aboard any of those ships we can find him," the exec said.

  "How many troops could we send, do you think? Six? Ten? A dozen?"

  "Ten, certainly. Armed with sidearms and minigrenades. Those civilians in the ships wouldn't dare stand in their way."

  Harbin felt just the slightest tendril of drowsiness creeping along his veins. It would be good to get a full night's sleep, he thought. Without dreams.

  Aloud, he asked, "And what makes you think that there are nothing but civilians in those ships?"

  The exec blinked rapidly, thinking, then replied, "Their manifests show—"

  "Do you believe that if Elsinore, for example, were carrying a company of armed mercenaries they would show it on their manifest?"

  She gave Harbin a strange look, but said nothing.

  He went on, "Why do you think that red-bearded one is so anxious to have us search his ship? It's an obvious trap. He must have troops there waiting to pounce on us."

  "That's—" The exec hesitated, then finished, "That's not likely, sir."

  "No, not likely at all," Harbin said, grinning lopsidedly at her. "You would have done well against Hannibal."

  "Sir?"

  Harbin pushed himself out of the command chair. "I'm going to my quarters for a few minutes. Call me five minutes before their time is up."

  "Yes, sir," said the exec.

  Harbin knew something was wrong. If the drug is burning out of my system I ought to be feeling withdrawal symptoms, he thought. But I'm tired. Drowsy. Did I take the right stuff? I can't direct a battle in this condition.

  Once he popped open the case that held his medications he focused blurrily on the vials still remaining, lined up in a neat row along the inside of the lid. Maybe I'm taking too much, he considered. Overdosing. But I can't stop now. Not until I've got Fuchs. I've got to get him.

  He ran his fingertips over the smooth plastic cylinders of the medications. Something stronger. Just for the next half hour or so. Then I can relax and get a good long sleep. But right now I need something stronger. Much stronger.

  HABITAT CHRYSALIS

  Yannis Ritsos was the last of a long line of rebels and poets. Named after a famed Greek forebear, he had been born in Cyprus, lived through the deadly biowar that racked that tortured island, survived the fallout from the nuclear devastation of Israel, and worked his way across the Mediterranean to Spain where, like another Greek artist, he made a living for himself. Unlike El Greco, however, Yanni supported himself by running computer systems that translated languages. He even slipped some of his own poetry into the computers and had them translate his Greek into Spanish, German and English. He was not happy with the results.

  He came to Ceres not as a poet, but as a rock rat. Determined to make a fortune in the Asteroid Belt, Yanni talked a fellow Greek businessman into allowing him to ride out to the Belt and try his hand at mining. He never got farther than the Chrysalis habitat, in orbit around Ceres. There he met and married the beautiful Ilona Mikvicius and, instead of going out on a mining ship, remained at Ceres and took a job in the habitat's communications center.

  Sterile since his exposure to the nuclear fallout, totally bald for the same reason, Yanni longed to have a son and keep the family line going. He and Ilona were saving every penny they could scratch together to eventually pay for a cloning procedure. Ilona knew that bearing a cloned fetus was dangerous, but she loved Yanni so much that she was willing to risk it.

  So Yannis Ritsos had everything to live for when Dorik Harbin's ship came to the Chrysalis habitat. He had suffered much, survived much, and endured. He felt that the future looked, if not exactly bright, at least promising. But he was wrong. And it was his own rebellious soul that put an end to his dreams.

  "Sir," the comm tech called out, "someone aboard Elsinore is sending a message to Selene."

  Harbin, fresh from a new injection of stimulant, turned to his weapons technician. "Slag her antennas," he commanded. "All of them."

  The technician nodded and bent over his console.

  In her compartment aboard Elsinore, Edith Elgin stopped in mid-sentence as the wall screen suddenly broke into jagged, hissing lines of hash.

  "Something's wrong," she said to Big George. "The link's gone dead."

  George frowned. "He doesn't want us talkin' to anybody. Prob'ly knocked out the antennas."

  "You mean he attacked this ship?" Edith was shocked.

  Nodding, George said, "And he'll do worse in another fifteen minutes if we don't produce Lars."

  "But Fuchs isn't here!"

  "Tell it to him."

  Yannis Ritsos was alone on duty in Chrysalis's communications center when Harbin's ultimatum came through.

  It was a dull night shift; nothing but boringly routine chatter from the far-scattered ships of the miners and prospectors, and the coded telemetry sent routinely from their ships. With everything in the center humming along on automatic, and no one else in the comm center at this late hour, Yanni opened the computer subroutine he used to write poetry.

  He had hardly written a line when the central screen suddenly lit up to show a dark-bearded man whose eyes glittered like polished obsidian.

  "Attention, Chrysalis," the stranger said, in guttural English. "This is the attack vessel Samarkand. You are harboring the fugitive Lars Fuchs. You will turn him over to me in ten minutes or suffer the consequences of defiance."

  Annoyed at being interrupted in his writing, Yanni thought it was some jokester in the habitat pulling a prank.

  "Who is this?" he demanded. "Get off this frequency. It's reserved for incoming calls."

  The dark-bearded face grew visibly angry. "This is your own death speaking to you if you don't turn Fuchs over to me."

  "Lars Fuchs?" Yanni replied, only half believing his ears. "God knows where he is."

  "I know where he is," the intruder snapped. "And if you don't surrender him to me I will destroy you."

  Irritated, Yanni shot back, "Fuchs hasn't been here for years and he isn't here now. Go away and stop bothering me."

  Harbin stared at the comm screen in Samarkand's bridge. They're stalling for time, he thought. They're trying to think of a way to hide Fuchs from me.

  He took a deep breath, then said with deadly calm, "Apparently you don't believe me. Very well. Let me demonstrate my sincerity."

  Turning to the weapons tech, Harbin ordered, "Chop one of the habitat's modules."

  The man swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. "Sir, there are civilians in those modules. Innocent me
n and women—"

  "I gave you an order," Harbin snapped.

  "But—"

  "Get off the bridge! I'll take care of this myself."

  The weapons tech glanced at the others on the bridge, looking for support.

  "Chrysalis is unarmed, sir," said the pilot softly, almost in a whisper.

  Cold fury gripped Harbin. "Get out. All of you," he said, his voice hard as ice. "I'll tend to this myself."

  The entire bridge crew got up and swiftly went to the hatch, leaving Harbin alone in the command chair. He pecked furiously at the keyboards on his armrests, taking control of all the ship's systems.

  Fools and weaklings, he raged to himself. They call themselves mercenaries but they're no good for anything except drawing their pay and pissing their pants in fear. Chrysalis is unarmed? I'll believe that when pigs fly. They're harboring Fuchs and they're stalling for time, trying to hide him, trying to lure me into sending my crew over there so they can ambush and slaughter them. I've seen ambushes, I've seen slaughters. They're not going to do that to me or my crew.

  He called up the weapons display for the main screen, focused on the module of the Chrysalis closest to his ship and jabbed a thumb against the key that fired the lasers. Three jagged lines slashed across the thin skin of the module. Puffs of air glittered briefly like the puffs of a person's breath on a winter's day.

  "Give me Fuchs," he said to the comm screen.

  Yanni heard screams.

  "What's going on?" he asked the empty communications center.

  The face on the screen smiled coldly. "Give me Fuchs," he said.

  Before Yanni could reply, the comm center's door burst open and a woman in bright coral coveralls rushed in. "Module eighteen's been ripped apart! They're all dead in there!"

  Yanni gaped at her. She was from the life support crew, he could see by the color of her coveralls. And she was babbling so loud and fast that he could barely understand what she was saying.

  "We're under attack!" she screamed. "Call for help!"