The Rock Rats

CHAPTER 31

George awoke to see Fuchs and Nodon staring down at him, Fuchs looking grim, irritated. Nodon was wide-eyed with fright. Strange to see him with those fierce carvings in his face looking so scared, George thought.

“So I’m not in heaven, then,” he said, trying to grin. His voice sounded strained, terribly weak. “Not yet,” Fuchs growled.

George realized he was lying in one of Starpower’s privacy cubicles, his spacesuit removed. Either they’ve got me tied down or I’m so fookin’ feeble I can’t move. “What happened?” he asked.

Nodon glanced at Fuchs, then licked his lips and said, “The laser blast shattered our laser. The mirror assembly broke loose and… and took off your arm.”

He said the last words all in a rush, as if ashamed of them. George looked down, surprised at how much effort it took to twist his head, and saw his left arm ended just short of the elbow. The stump was swathed in plastic spray-bandage.

He felt more fuddled than shocked. Just the barest tendril of pain, now that he thought about it. Not scared. No worries. They must have me doped up pretty good.

“The rest of your arm is in the freezer,” Fuchs said. “We’re heading back to Ceres at high thrust. I will alert Kris Cardenas.” George closed his eyes and remembered seeing the spacesuited arm spiraling out the cargo hatch.

He looked at Nodon. “You shut off the bleedin’, huh?”

The younger man bobbed his head up and down.

“And closed off the suit arm,” George added.

Fuchs said, “He also went out EVA and recovered your arm. I thought for a few minutes that we would lose him altogether.”

“Did you now?” George said, feeling stupid, muffled. “Thanks, mate.”

Nodon looked embarrassed. He changed the subject. “You must have hit the other ship a damaging blow. It left at high speed.”

“That’s good.”

“We’ll be in Ceres in another fourteen hours,” said Fuchs.

“That’s good.” George couldn’t think of anything else to say. Somewhere, in a deep recess of his mind, he knew that he should be screaming. Prosthetics be damned, I’ve lost my fookin’ arm!

But the drugs muted his emotional pain as well as the physical. Nothing really seemed to matter. All George wanted was for them to leave him alone and let him sleep.

Fuchs seemed to understand, thank god. “You rest now,” he said, his tight slash of a mouth turned down bitterly. “I have a long report to send to the IAA as soon as we can repair one of the antennas.”

“Not this Fuchs person again,” complained Hector Wilcox.

Erek Zar and Francesco Tomasselli were sitting in front of Wilcox’s desk, Zar looking decidedly uncomfortable, Tomasselli almost quivering with righteous indignation.

Wilcox’s office was imposing, as befitted the Counsel General of the International Astronautical Authority. Slim, sleek, impeccably clothed in a somber charcoal business suit and dapper pearl-gray tie that nicely set off his silvery hair and trim moustache, Wilcox looked every centimeter the successful administrator, which he believed himself to be. He had arbitrated many a corporate wrangle, directed teams of bureaucrats to generate safety regulations and import duties on space manufactures, and climbed the slippery slope of the IAA’s legal department until he sat at its very top, unchallenged and hailed by his fellow bureaucrats as an example of patience, intelligence and—above all—endurance.

Now he had a charge of piracy to deal with, and it unsettled him to his very core.

“He sent in a complete report,” Tomasselli said, lean and eager, his dark eyes flashing.

Zar interrupted. “Fuchs claims his ship was attacked.”

“He reports,” Tomaselli resumed, laying emphasis on the word, “not only that his own ship was attacked, but another as well, and one of the men seriously injured.”

“By a pirate vessel.”

Zar’s ruddy, fleshy face colored deeper than usual. “That’s what he claims.”

“And the evidence?”

“His ship is damaged,” Tomasselli said before Zar could open his mouth. “He is bringing the injured man to Ceres.”

“Which ships are we talking about?” Wilcox asked, clear distaste showing on his lean, patrician face.

Zar put out a hand to silence his underling. “Fuchs’s ship is named Starpower. The other ship that he claims was attacked is Waltzing Matilda.”

“Is that one on its way to Ceres, too?”

“No,” Tomasselli jumped in. “They had to abandon it. The three of them are coming in on Starpower: Fuchs and the two men from Waltzing Matilda.”

Wilcox gave the Italian a sour look. “And Fuchs has charged Humphries Space Systems with piracy?”

“Yes,” said both men simultaneously.

Wilcox drummed his fingers on his desktop. He looked out his window at the St. Petersburg waterfront. He wished he were in Geneva, or London, or anywhere except here in this office with these two louts and this ridiculous charge of piracy. Piracy! In the twenty-first century! It was ludicrous, impossible. Those rock rats out in the Asteroid Belt have their private feuds and now they’re trying to drag the IAA into it.

“I suppose we’ll have to investigate,” he said gloomily.

“Fuchs has registered a formal charge,” said Tomasselli. “He has requested a hearing.”

Which I will have to preside over, Wilcox said to himself. I’ll be a laughingstock, at the very least.

“He should arrive at Ceres in a few hours,” Zar said.

Wilcox looked at the man’s unhappy face, then turned his gaze to the eager, impetuous Tomasselli.

“You must go to Ceres,” he said, pointing a long, manicured finger at the Italian.

Tomasselli’s eyes brightened. “I will conduct the hearing there?”

“No,” Wilcox snapped. “You will interview this man Fuchs and the others with him, and then bring the three of them back here, under IAA custody. Bring two or three Peacekeeper troopers with you.”

“Peacekeepers?” Zar asked.

Wilcox gave him a wintry smile. “I want to show that the IAA is taking this situation quite seriously. If these men believe they have been attacked by pirates, then they should have some visible protection, don’t you agree?”

“Oh! Yes, of course.”

Tomasselli said, “One of the men is seriously injured, and all three of them have been living in low gravity for so long that they could not return to Earth unless they spend several weeks in reconditioning exercises.”

Wilcox let a small hiss escape his lips, his only visible sign of displeasure so far. Yet he knew that his control was on the fragile brink of crumbling into towering anger.

“Very well, then,” he said icily. “Bring them to Selene.”

“I will conduct the hearing there?” Tomasselli asked eagerly.

“No,” Wilcox replied. “I will conduct the hearing there.”

Zar looked stunned. “You’ll go to Selene?”

Drawing himself up on his dignity, Wilcox replied, “I have not risen this far in the service of the International Astronautical Authority by avoiding the difficult tasks.”

It was a bald-faced he, but Wilcox almost believed it to be true, and Zar was willing to accept whatever his superior told him.