THE SILENT WAR Page 6

  Pancho had heard the same from her own intelligence people.

  "But why is he going to all that expense?" Stavenger wondered aloud.

  "To get control of Astro. To get control of everything," said Amanda.

  "Including Lars," said Pancho.

  "He's promised not to harm Lars," Amanda said. Without much conviction, Pancho thought.

  "You believe him?"

  Amanda looked away for a moment, then said bitterly, "I did once. I don't anymore."

  Pancho nodded. "Neither do I."

  "I thought we had this all settled eight years ago," Stavenger said. "You both agreed to stop the fighting."

  "Astro's lived up the agreement," Pancho said.

  "So has Humphries," replied Stavenger. "Until now."

  "But why?" Pancho demanded again. "Why start all this crap again? Is he so damn crazy he really wants to be emperor of the whole solar system?"

  "It's Lars," Amanda said. "He wants to kill Lars. He thinks I still love him."

  "Do you?"

  Amanda pressed her lips together tightly. Then she said, "That's why I'm here."

  "Here? You mean this med center?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't understand, Mandy."

  She took a deep breath. "The baby I'm carrying is Lars's, not Martin's."

  Pancho felt as if someone had punched her in the solar plexus. "Lars's? How in hell did you—"

  "We stored frozen zygotes years ago," said Amanda, "back when Lars and I first went out to the Belt on the old Starpower. We knew we could be exposed to dangerous radiation doses, so we fertilized some of my eggs and stored them at Selene."

  "And now you've implanted yourself with one of 'em," Pancho said, her voice hollow.

  Nodding slowly, Amanda said, "Martin thinks I'm carrying his son. But it's Lars's."

  "If he finds out he'll kill you both."

  "That's why I had it done here. Doug made the arrangements for me, brought together the proper medical personnel, even provided security."

  Pancho glanced at Stavenger with new respect. "That's one way to spit in Humphries's eye," she muttered.

  He shrugged. "I did it for Amanda, not to spite Humphries."

  Yeah, sure, Pancho retorted silently.

  Aloud, she said, "You're playin' with nitroglycerine, Mandy. If Humphries even suspects—"

  Amanda silenced her with a flash of her eyes. "He won't rest until he's killed Lars," she said, her voice low but hard, determined. "But even if he does, I'll bear Lars's son."

  Pancho let the breath sag out of her.

  "It's the only way I can get back at him," Amanda said. "The only way I can express my love for Lars."

  "Yeah, but if Humphries even suspects—"

  "He won't," Stavenger said flatly. "Amanda's traveled here as part of my team, completely incognito."

  "Only the three of us know about it," said Amanda.

  "What about the medics?"

  Stavenger answered, "They don't know who Amanda is. I fly the team up from Earth and then back again. They don't stay here."

  "Only the three of us know about it," Amanda repeated.

  Pancho nodded, but she thought about Ben Franklin's dictum: Three people can keep a secret—if two of them are dead.

  LUNAR CABLE CAR 502

  Pancho had to grin as she walked up to the cable car along with the other passengers returning to Selene. Above the car's front windows someone had stenciled the car's route in blood-red letters: To Hell and Back. None of the other tourists or resident Lunatics seemed to pay any attention to the lettering. Pancho shook her head at their indifference to the unknown graffitist's sense of humor.

  Amanda had left the Hell Crater complex as she had arrived, as part of Douglas Stavenger's small, private entourage. She had slipped a beige snood over her golden hair, and an equally bland, shapeless mid-calf coat over her dress. No one would see the parade of animated figures circling her waist. She blended in with the rest of Stavenger's people. Unless someone was specifically searching for her, no one would notice her among the others who boarded Stavenger's special cable car.

  Pancho had decided not to go with them. The lantern-jawed face and tall, long-limbed figure of Astro Corporation's board chairwoman were known well enough that there was a small but real chance that she might be recognized by news reporters—or snoops from Humphries Space Systems. No sense taking unnecessary risks, she decided. So Pancho spent the rest of the afternoon playing in the casinos, enjoying herself. For an hour or so she piled up a considerable score on one of the computer games, but eventually the law of averages caught up with her. When she sank back to break-even, Pancho called it a day and strolled over to one of the better restaurants for a solitary dinner. Gambling was fun, she thought, but losing wasn't. And the longer you play, the better the odds favor the house.

  She always ate too quickly when she was alone. Feeling full yet unsatisfied, Pancho made her way back to the cable car airlock. "To Hell and back," she muttered to herself as she climbed through the cable car's hatch and strapped herself into a seat up front. She looked forward to watching the lunar scenery whipping past, and besides, with her back to most of the other passengers there was less chance of her being recognized. I'll get a good look at the Straight Wall, she thought.

  The overweight Asian-American who settled into the seat beside her, though, stared at her for a few moments after he clicked his safety harness over his bulky shoulders. Then, as the car jerked into motion and glided past the airlock doors, he said, "Pardon me, but aren't you Pancho Lane? I saw your picture in the financial news net a few days ago and..."

  Pancho didn't have to say a word. She couldn't. The man prattled on nonstop about his own small company and his great admiration for an executive as lofty as Pancho and how he had come up to Selene from the big refugee center at SeaTac, in the States, to try to clinch a deal with Astro Corporation.

  Pancho was almost grateful when the cable car suddenly lurched violently and then began to fall, slowly, with the inexorable horror of a nightmare, to crash nose-first into the dusty, cracked, crater-pocked ground.

  Martin Humphries leaned back as his desk chair molded itself to the contours of his spine. He sat alone in his office, just off the master bedroom in his mansion, squinting at the string of numbers and accompanying text that hovered in midair above his wide, expansive desk. He steepled his fingers before his face as he studied the reports from his accounting department. Profits were down slightly, but he had expected that. Four ships had been lost in the past quarter, three of them automated ore freighters, one of them a logistics ship that had been seized, looted, and then gutted by Lars Fuchs. The crew had been set adrift in their escape pod. The attack had taken place close enough to Ceres for them to be rescued within forty-eight hours.

  Humphries snapped his fingers and the report dissolved.

  "Fuchs," he muttered. The sonofabitch is still out there in the Belt, drifting around like some Flying Dutchman, getting his pitiful little jolts out of knocking off HSS vessels. And that damned greasemonkey Pancho is helping him.

  Humphries smiled to himself. Well, enjoy yourself while you can,

  Fuchs. The end is near. And meanwhile, I've got your ex-wife pregnant.

  Pancho is a different problem. Tougher nut to crack. But I'll get her. I'll bleed Astro white until their board of directors boots her ass out the door. Then I'll offer them a merger deal that they can't afford to refuse. I'll take Astro Corporation; it's only a matter of time.

  Getting up from the chair and walking slowly around his desk, Humphries laughed out loud. As soon as Amanda gets home from her shopping or whatever the hell she's doing today, I'll pop her into bed. Just because she's carrying my son doesn't mean I can't enjoy her.

  "Holowindow," he called out, "give me a view of the Asteroid Belt."

  The window on the left wall of the office immediately displayed a painting by Davis of a lumpy, potato-brown asteroid with a smaller chip of rock floating near it
.

  "No, a photo. Real-time telescopic view."

  The holowindow went blank for a second, then showed a stretch of star-flecked darkness. One of the pinpoints of light was noticeably brighter than any of the others. The single word ceres flashed briefly next to it.

  "He's out there somewhere," Humphries muttered to himself. "But not for much longer."

  Humphries went back to his desk and called up the latest progress report from his special security detail in the Belt. The base on Vesta was complete, and twenty-four attack craft were on their way to take up stations around the Belt. All of HSS's freighters were being equipped with military crews and weapons. The costs were draining the corporation's profits, but sooner or later Fuchs would be found and destroyed.

  In the meantime, Humphries thought, it's time to make my move against Astro. Time to take Pancho down. That greasemonkey's blocked my takeover of Astro long enough.

  She doesn't understand the first principles of economics, Humphries told himself. Supply and demand. Astro is cutting our throats, undercut-ting our price for raw materials from the asteroids. And that damned guttersnipe will keep on undercutting me until I wipe her off the board completely. There isn't room for two players out in the Belt. The only way to make economic sense out there is to have just one corporation in charge of everything. And that one's got to be Humphries Space Systems.

  Yet his thoughts returned to Fuchs. I've given the sonofabitch eight years. I promised Amanda I wouldn't harm him, and for eight years I've lived up to that promise. And what has Fuchs done? He sticks it to me every time he can. Instead of being grateful that I didn't kill him, he kicks me in the balls every chance he gets. Well, eight years is long enough. It's damned expensive trying to track him down, but I'm going to get that bastard, the sooner the better.

  He's smart, though. Clever enough to hide out in the Belt and let his fellow rock rats help him. And Pancho, too; she's helping him all she can. I've got to get him out of hiding. Out into the open, where my people can destroy him.

  Maybe the news that Amanda is pregnant will bring him out, goad him into making a mistake.

  Looking at his own faint reflection in the holowindows, Humphries thought, I'd like to see the expression on his shitty face when he finds out Amanda's carrying my son.

  MARE NUBIUM

  Passengers screamed as the cablecar plunged in lunar slow motion toward the ground, twenty meters below. It was like a nightmare. Strangely, Pancho felt no fear, only an odd sort of fascination. While she watched the ground coming up toward the car's windows she had time to think, If the windows crack we'll lose our air and die in less than a minute.

  The cable car's nose plowed into the ground with a grinding, screeching groan. Pancho was thrown painfully against the shoulder straps of her safety harness, then banged the back of her head against her seat's headrest.

  For a second or two there was complete silence. Then people began to moan, sob. Pancho's head buzzed painfully. Automatically, she started to unclick the safety harness. The Asian-American seated next to her was already out of his straps.

  "You okay?" he asked.

  Pancho nodded tentatively. "I think so."

  "They designed these cars to withstand a crash," he said.

  "Yeah."

  "They'll have a rescue team here shortly. There's enough air to keep us breathing for several hours, plus emergency tanks."

  Pancho stared at him. "Sounds like you swallowed the emergency procedures book."

  He grinned weakly, looking slightly ashamed. "I'm always a little nervous about traveling, so I read everything I can find about the vehicles I'm going to travel in."

  Pancho tapped on the glassteel window. "Ain't even cracked."

  "Good thing. There's no air outside."

  "What's going to happen?" a woman's voice demanded sharply.

  Pancho turned in her seat. The car's floor slanted upward, but otherwise everything inside seemed close to normal. A couple of the passengers had even stood up, legs a little shaky, looking around with wide, staring eyes.

  "Better to stay in your seats," Pancho said, in her most authoritative voice. "The car's got an automatic emergency beacon. They've prob'ly already started a rescue team from Selene."

  "How long will it take?"

  "Will our air hold out?"

  "The lights are dimmer, aren't they?"

  "We must be on battery power," said the Asian-American. "The batteries are designed to last for six hours or more."

  "Six hours? You mean we'll be stuck here for six hours?"

  "No, it's just—"

  The speakers set in to the overhead suddenly announced, "Cable car five-oh-two, this is the Safety Office headquarters. We will be launching a rescue hopper in less than thirty minutes. What is your situation, please?"

  A babble of voices rose from the passengers, some frightened, some angry.

  "Shut Up!" Pancho commanded. Once they were stilled, she said loudly and clearly, "We've crashed, but we're intact. All systems functioning. No major injuries."

  "My back is hurt!" a woman said.

  "I think I sprained my wrist," said one of the male passengers.

  The loudspeakers replied, "We'll have a medic aboard the rescue hopper. Please stay calm. Help is on the way."

  Pancho sat on her seat's armrest so she could look up the car's central aisle at the other passengers. They had all gotten back into their seats. No blood in sight. They looked shaken; a few of them were definitely angry, glaring.

  "How long is this going to take?" one of the men asked no one in particular. "I've got a flight back to Kansas City to catch."

  Pancho smiled inwardly. If they're in good enough shape to complain, she thought, we've got no major problems. Then she added, As long as the rescue team gets here before the batteries go flat.

  The Asian-American pressed his fingertips against the curved inner wall of the car's hull. "Diamond construction," he said, as much to himself as to Pancho. "Built by nanomachines."

  It sounded to Pancho as if he were trying to reassure himself. Then she noticed that he had a plastic packet in his lap. It contained two breathing masks and a small tank of compressed oxygen.

  Lordy lord, Pancho thought. He really came prepared for a calamity.

  LOGISTICS SHIP ROEBUCK

  "I still don't like it," said Luke Abrams as he studied the radar display.

  "You'll like the money," replied his partner, Indra Wanmanigee.

  Abrams shot her a sour look. They were sitting side by side in the cockpit of Roebuck's crew module. Normally the ship carried supplies from the habitat in orbit around Ceres to the miners and prospectors scattered around the Belt. This time, however, they were sailing deeper into the Belt than normal. And instead of supplies, Roebuck carried a team of mercenaries, armed with a pair of high-power lasers.

  Tired of eking out a living as a merchant to the rock rats, Wanmanigee had made a deal with Humphries Space Systems to use Roebuck as a Trojan horse, drifting deep into the Belt in the hope that Lars Fuchs would intercept the ship to raid it for supplies. Fuchs would find, of course, not the supplies he and his crew wanted, but trained mercenaries who would destroy his ship and kill him. The HSS people offered a huge reward for Fuchs's head, enough to retire and finally get married and live the rest of her life like a maharanee and her consort.

  "I still don't like it," Abrams muttered again. "We're sitting out here like a big, fat target. Fuchs could gut our crew module and kill us both with one pop of a laser."

  "He hardly ever kills independents," she replied mildly. "More likely he will demand to board us and steal our cargo."

  Abrams grumbled something too low for her to understand. She knew he worried about the six roughnecks living in the cargo hold. There were two women among them, but still Abrams feared that they might take her into their clutches. Wanmanigee kept to the crew module; the only mercenary she saw was their captain—a handsome brute, she thought, but she wanted no man except her stoop-should
ered, balding, potbellied, perpetually worried Abrams. She could control him, and he genuinely loved her. No other man would be worth the trouble, she had decided years earlier.

  Suddenly Abrams sat up straighter in his copilot's chair. "I've got a blip," he said, tapping a fingernail against the radar screen.

  Aboard Nautilus Lars Fuchs sat in his privacy cubicle, staring bitterly at Big George's image on the screen above his bunk.

  Over the years of his exile, Fuchs had worked out a tenuous communications arrangement with Big George, who was the only man outside of his ship's crew that Fuchs trusted. It was George who had commuted Fuchs's death sentence to exile; the big Aussie with the brick-red hair and bushy beard had saved Fuchs's life when Humphries had been certain that he'd seen the last of his adversary.

  Fuchs planted miniaturized transceivers on tiny, obscure asteroids. From time to time, George squirted a highly compressed message to one of those asteroids by tight-beam laser. Each coded message ended with the number designation of the asteroid to which the next message would be beamed. In this way Fuchs could be kept abreast of the news from the rest of civilization. It was a halting, limping method of communication; the news reports Fuchs received were always weeks out of date, sometimes months. But it was his only link to the rest of the human race, and Fuchs was grateful to Big George for taking the trouble and the risk to do it.

  Now, though, as he glowered at George's unhappy countenance, Fuchs felt considerably less than grateful.

  "That's what his fookin' party was for," George was saying, morosely. "He got up on the fookin' piano bench to tell all those people that he was gonna be a father. Pleased as a fat snake, he looked."

  Fuchs wiped George's image off the screen and got up from his chair. His compartment was only three strides across, and he paced from one side of it to the other twice, three times, four ...

  It was inevitable, he told himself. She's been married to him for eight years. She's been in his bed every night for all that time. What did you expect?