The Rock Rats

CHAPTER 40

Oscar Jiminez was clearly worried as Fuchs led Nodon and four others of his employees up the tunnel toward the HSS warehouse.

“There’s only six of us,” he said, his voice low and shaky as he shuffled along the dusty tunnel beside Fuchs. “I know it’s after midnight, but they’ve probably got at least ten guys in the warehouse.”

Fuchs and Nodon carried hand lasers, fully charged. The others held clubs of asteroidal steel, pulled from the empty Helvetia warehouse shelves. All of them wore breathing masks to filter out the dust they were raising as they marched purposefully up the tunnel.

“Don’t worry,” Fuchs assured him calmly. “You won’t have to fight. If all goes as I’ve planned, there won’t be a fight.”

“But then why—”

“I want you to identify the man who murdered Inga.”

“He won’t be there,” the teenager said. “They took off. I told you.”

“Perhaps. We’ll see.”

“Anyway, they were wearing breathing masks and some kind of hats. I couldn’t identify the guy if I saw him.”

“We’ll see,” Fuchs repeated.

Fuchs stopped them at one of the safety hatches that stood every hundred meters or so along the tunnel. He nodded to one of the men, a life support technician, who pried open the cover of the hatch’s set of sensors.

Fuchs motioned his men through the open hatch as the technician fiddled with the sensors.

“Got it,” he said at last.

An alarm suddenly hooted along the tunnel. Fuchs twitched involuntarily even though he had expected the blaring noise. The technician scurried through the hatch just before it automatically slammed shut.

“Hurry!” Fuchs shouted, and he started racing up the tunnel.

A half-dozen bewildered HSS men were out in the tunnel in front of the entrance to their warehouse, looking up and down as if searching for the source of the alarm. They were clad in light tan coveralls bearing the HSS logo; none of them wore breathing masks.

“Hey, what’s going on?” one of them yelled as he saw Fuchs and the others rushing toward them, raising billows of dust.

Fuchs pointed his laser at them. It felt clumsy in his hand, yet reassuring at the same time.

“Don’t move!” he commanded.

Five of the six froze in place. Two of them even raised their hands above their heads.

But the sixth one snarled, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” and started to duck back inside the warehouse entrance.

Quite deliberately, Fuchs shot him in the leg. The laser cracked once, and the man yowled and went down face-first into the dust, a smoking charred spot on the thigh of his coveralls. A part of Fuchs’s mind marveled that there was no recoil from the laser, no smoke or smell of gunpowder.

They herded the six men inside the warehouse, two of them dragging their wounded companion. Two more HSS men were at the desktop computer, trying to determine what was causing the alarm signal when all the life support systems were solidly in the green. Completely surprised, they raised their hands above their heads when Fuchs trained his laser on them.

They looked disgruntled once they realized that they were prisoners. Fuchs made them sit on the floor, hands on their knees.

Four minitractors were sitting just inside the warehouse entrance. Fuchs detailed four of his men to rev them up; then they went through the aisles, pulling down anything that looked as if it had come from the Helvetia warehouse and loading it onto the tractors.

“There’ll be a couple dozen more of our people on their way up here,” said the man Fuchs had shot. He sat with his companions, both hands clutching his thigh. Fuchs could not see any blood seeping from his wound. The laser pulse cauterizes as it burns through the flesh, he remembered.

“No one will come here,” he said to the wounded man. “The alarm sounded only in this section of the tunnel. Your friends are sleeping peacefully in their quarters.”

Finally the laden tractors were parked out in the tunnel, heaped high with crates and cartons that bore the Helvetia imprint.

“I think that’s everything,” said one of Fuchs’s men.

“Not quite,” Fuchs said. Turning to Jiminez, he asked, “Do you recognize any of these men?”

The youngster looked frightened. He shook his head. “They were wearing breathing masks, like I told you. And funny kind of hats.”

“This one, maybe?” Fuchs prodded the shoulder of the man he had shot.

“I don’t know!” Jiminez whined.

Fuchs took a deep breath. “All right. Take the tractors back to our warehouse.”

Jiminez dashed out into the tunnel, plainly glad to get away.

“You think you’re going to get away with this?” the wounded man growled. “We’re gonna break you into little pieces for this. We’ll make you watch while we bang your wife. We’re gonna make her—”

Fuchs wheeled on him and kicked him in the face, knocking him onto his back. The others scuttled away. Nodon shouted, “Don’t move!” and leveled his laser at them.

Frenzied with rage, Fuchs rushed to one of the storage bins lining the wall and yanked out a length of copper wire. Tucking his laser back into its belt pouch, he wrapped one end of the wire several times around the groaning, half-conscious man’s neck, then dragged him toward the high stacks of shelving, coughing and sputtering blood from his broken teeth.

The others watched, wide-eyed, while Fuchs knotted the wire at the man’s throat, then tossed the other end of it around one of the slim steel beams supporting the shelving. He yanked hard on the wire and the wounded man shot up into the air, eyes bulging, both hands struggling to untie the wire cutting into his neck. He weighed only a few kilos in Ceres’s light gravity, but that was enough to slowly squeeze his larynx and cut off his air.

Blazing with ferocity, Fuchs whirled on the other HSS men, who sat in the dust staring at their leader thrashing, choking, his legs kicking, a strangled gargling inhuman sound coming from his bleeding mouth.

“Watch!” Fuchs roared at them. “Watch! This is what happens to any man who threatens my wife. If any of you even looks at my wife I’ll tear your guts out with my bare hands!”

The hanging man’s struggles weakened. He lost control of his bladder and bowels in a single burst of stench. Then his arms fell to his sides and he became still. The men on the floor stared, unmoving, openmouthed. Even Nodon watched in terrible fascination.

“Come,” Fuchs said at last. “We’re finished here.”