The Silent War

ASTRO CORPORATION HEADQUARTERS

“Wiped out?” Pancho asked, her insides suddenly gone hollow.

“Every ship,” said Jake Wanamaker. “No survivors.” He looked grim, beaten.

“What happened?”

Wanamaker was standing before her desk like a man facing a firing squad. Pancho pushed herself to her feet and gestured him to one of the comfortably padded chairs arranged around the small oval table in the corner of her office. Feeling shaky, her knees rubbery, she went to the table and sat next to her military commander. “We’re not certain. We got a brief signal that they used small asteroids—some of them no bigger than a man’s fist—and rammed them into Gormley’s ships.”

“How could they do that?” Pancho asked.

“Attach a plasma rocket and a simple guidance system to the rock,” said Wanamaker. “It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just juice the rocks up to very high velocity and ram them into our ships. Like buckshot hitting paper bags.”

“And they’re all dead?”

Wanamaker nodded bleakly.

Jesus sufferin’ Christ, Pancho thought. Thirteen ships. A hundred and fifty people, just about.

“I think I should tender my resignation,” said Wanamaker.

Pancho glared at him. “Giving up?”

He flinched as though she’d slapped him. “No. But a defeat like this… you’ll probably want a better man to head your war.”

Shaking her head slowly, Pancho said, “No, I want you, Jake. One battle doesn’t mean we’ve lost it all.”

But inwardly she thought, I want you to keep on heading the military operations. But I’ll take charge of this goddamned war. Humphries might have the edge on us militarily, with more mercenaries and more ships and better experience. But there’s more than one way to fight a war.

To Wanamaker, she said, “I’m not giving up. Far as I’m concerned, this war’s just started.”

“ ‘I have not yet begun to fight,’ ” he muttered.

“I heard that one,” Pancho said. “John Paul Jones, wasn’t it?”

Wanamaker nodded.

“Okay. You recruit more mercenaries, I’ll buy more ships. For the time being, Humphries has the run of the Belt. He’s gonna attack any Astro vessels he can find out there, try to drive us out of the Belt altogether.”

“Convoy them.”

“Convoy?”

“Don’t let them sail alone. Put them in groups. It’s harder to attack a formation of armed ships than a single ship.”

“Makes sense,” Pancho agreed. “I’ll send out the word right away.”

“I think Yamagata Corporation can provide us with reliable mercenaries.”

“Good. Go get ’em.”

It took a moment for Wanamaker to realize he’d been dismissed. It only hit him when Pancho pushed her chair back from the conference table and got to her feet. He shot up and started to salute, then caught himself and reddened slightly.

“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said, as if excusing himself for leaving the room.

“Me too,” said Pancho.

Wanamaker left, and Pancho returned to her desk. She called up reports on where the Astro ships were, and where Humphries’s vessels were. A holographic representation of the vast space between Earth and the Belt took form in the air beyond her desk, a huge dark expanse with flickering pinpoints of light showing the positions of the ships, Astro’s in blue, HSS’s in red. There was a cluster of ships between the Earth and Moon; Pancho blanked them out to simplify the three-dimensional picture.

Cripes, there’s a lot of red ones out in the Belt, she said to herself. And those are just the ones we know about. The Humper’s prob’ly got a lot more out there, moving around the Belt without any telemetry or identification beacons for the IAA to pick up.

She had the computer identify the ore freighters, logistics carriers, and ships carrying miners to specific asteroids. Then she added the freelancers, the prospectors and miners who worked on their own, independent of the big corporations.

Minutes ticked into hours as she studied the situation. We’re outnumbered in the Belt two, three to one, Pancho saw. The Hump’s been building up his fleet out there for years now. We’ve gotta play catch-up.

But why should we play their game? she asked herself. That’s what we were doing with Gormley and look what it got us.

She leaned back in her softly yielding desk chair and closed her eyes briefly. What’s the point of all those ships out in the Belt? To bring ores to the factories on Earth, or in Earth orbit, or here at Selene, she answered her own question.

She stared at the hologram imagery again. Flickering red dots representing HSS ships were spread through the Belt, with a particular clustering around Vesta. But a thinner trickle of red dots was plying the lanes between the Belt and the Earth/Moon vicinity.

They’ve gotta bring the goods back here, Pancho saw. That’s the whole point of mining the rocks. If we can knock off their ships coming Earthward, we can hit Humphries in the pocketbook, strangle his cash flow, cut his profits down to nothing.

She sat up straight in the desk chair and said aloud, “That’s the way to do it! Let him have the Belt for now. Stop him from bringing the ores to market.”

We don’t need naval tactics, she realized. We don’t need battles between fleets of warships. What we need is more like a gang of pirates. Like the old Sea Hawks from Queen Elizabeth I’s time. Privateers. Pirates.

And she knew just the man who could lead such a campaign. Lars Fuchs.

“All of them?” Humphries asked, as if the news was too good to be true.

Vicki Ferrer was not smiling, but it was clear from the pleased expression on her face that she was happy to be able to bring her boss a positive report.

“Every Astro ship was destroyed,” she repeated.

They were in the big library/bar on the ground floor of Humphries’s mansion, alone except for the robot bartender, which stood at its post, gleaming stainless steel reflecting the ceiling lights.

“You’re sure?” Humphries asked.

“The report came directly from the Yamagata team. Their idea about using the rocks worked perfectly. The Astro fleet charged right into them. No survivors.”

“This calls for champagne!” Humphries strode to the bar. The robot did not move. Nettled slightly at the machine’s obtuseness, Humphries called out, “Bartender! Champagne!” The gleaming dome-topped robot trundled sideways along the bar and stopped precisely at the wine cooler. Two slim arms extruded from its cylindrical body, opened the cooler, and pulled out a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. It trundled back to Humphries and held up the bottle so he could inspect the label.

“Fine,” said Humphries. “Open it and let me sample it.”

“How does it find the right bottle?” Ferrer asked, coming over to sit on the stool next to him. Even though it was dinner time for most people, she was still in her office attire, a miniskirted baby pink suit that hugged her curves artfully.

“There’s a sensor in each hand,” said Humphries, watching the dumb machine gripping the cork. If he drops that bottle, Humphries thought, I’ll run him through the recycler.

The cork came out with a satisfactorily loud pop and the robot set two champagne flutes on the bar top in front of Humphries, then poured a thimbleful of wine for him to taste.

Humphries tasted, nodded, told the robot to pour. Once it had, he lifted his glass to Ferrer and toasted, “To victory!”

She made a smile and murmured, “To victory.”

“We’ve got them on the run now,” Humphries said happily. “I’m going to drive Astro completely out of the Belt!”

Ferrer smiled again and sipped. But she was thinking, Thirteen ships destroyed. How many people did we kill? How many more have to die before this is over?