The Silent War

HOTEL LUNA: RESIDENTIAL SUITE

Pancho could not locate Fuchs. For two days she had her people search for him. They learned that under the false identity she had provided, Fuchs had spent a few days in his native Switzerland, then flown to Selene.

“He’s here in Selene?” she asked her security chief.

The man looked uncomfortable. “Apparently.”

“Find him,” she snapped. “Wherever the hell he is, find him. You got twenty-four hours.”

She had just returned to her suite when the phone told her the report on Fuchs came in. She glanced at her wristwatch. Eight minutes before midnight, Pancho saw. They’re working overtime.

The suite’s decor was set to Camelot, Pancho’s fantasy of what King Arthur’s fabled castle might have been like. She sat herself on one of the sofas in her bedroom and told the phone to play the report. Through a mullioned window she could see knights jousting on a perfect greensward beneath a cloudless blue sky, watched by a cheering throng standing before tented pavilions complete with colorful pennants that fluttered in the breeze of an eternal springtime.

The young man whose hologram image appeared in the middle of the room might have been one of knights of the Round Table, Pancho thought idly. He was a good-looking blond, strong shoulders, honest open face with sky-blue eyes, his hair stylishly long enough for ringlets to curl around the collar of his jacket. He was sitting at a desk in what appeared to be a smallish office somewhere in the Astro headquarters. The data line hovering to one side of the image identified him as Frederic Karstein, Astro security department.

Pancho listened to the brief report with growing incredulity. And annoyance.

“You mean he was right here in the Hotel Luna?” she asked the image.

The image flickered momentarily. Then the handsome Frederic Karstein said, “Ms. Lane, I’m live now. I can answer your questions in real time, ma’am.”

“Are you telling me that Fuchs was living just a couple hundred meters from my own quarters?” she demanded.

“Yes, ma’am, apparently he was.”

“And where is he now?” Karstein shrugged his broad shoulders. “We don’t know. He seems to have disappeared.”

“Disappeared? How can he disappear?”

“If we knew that, Ms. Lane, we’d probably know where he is.”

’You can’t just disappear! Selene’s not that big, and the whole doggone place is under surveillance all the time.”

Karstein looked embarrassed. “We’re certain he hasn’t left Selene. We’ve checked the passenger lists for all the outgoing flights for the past two weeks, and examined the surveillance camera records.”

“So he’s someplace here in Selene?”

“It would appear so.”

Pancho huffed. “All right. Stay on this. I want him found, and right away, too.”

“We’ll do our best, Ms. Lane.”

She cut the connection and Karstein’s image winked out. Dumb blond, Pancho groused to herself.

“Privateers?” Jake Wanamaker asked, his rasping voice croaking out the word. “You mean, like pirates?”

Pancho had invited him to a breakfast meeting in her suite. They sat in the tight little alcove off the kitchen, but the holowalls made it seem as if they were outdoors, beneath a graceful elm tree, with softly rolling grassy hills in the distance and the morning sun brightening a clear sky. She could hear birds chirping happily and almost felt a cool breeze ruffling their table linen.

Pancho took a sip of grapefruit juice, then replied, “Yep. Yo-ho-ho and all that stuff. Cut off Humphries’s ships as they’re bringing their payloads here to the Moon. Or to Earth.”

Wanamaker took a considerable bite out of the sticky bun he was holding in one big hand, chewed thoughtfully for a few moments, then swallowed. “They’ve beaten the crap out of us in the Belt, sure enough. It’ll be some time before we can build up enough forces to challenge them again.”

“But a few ships operating closer to home, outside the Belt…” Pancho let the suggestion hang in the air between them.

Wanamaker muttered, “Cut HSS’s pipeline to the market. Hit Humphries in the pocketbook.”

“That’s where it’d hurt him the most.”

After washing down his cake with a gulp of black coffee, Wanamaker said, “Set up a blockade.”

“Right.”

Absently wiping his sticky fingers with his napkin, Wanamaker broke into a wicked grin. “We wouldn’t even need crewed ships for that. Just automate some small birds and park them in wide orbits around the Earth/Moon system.”

“You can do that?”

He nodded. “They’d be close enough to be remotely operated from here at Selene. It’d be cheaper than using crewed ships.”

Pancho had only one further question. “How soon can we get this going?”

Wanamaker pushed his chair back from the table and got to his feet. “Real soon,” he said. “Very damned real soon.”

Pancho watched him hurry away, thinking, So I won’t need Lars after all. Doesn’t matter where he’s hiding. I won’t need him now.

Later that morning, with some reluctance, Pancho slipped on the soft-suit and sealed the opening that ran the length of the torso’s front. Doug Stavenger was already in his suit. To Pancho he looked as if he’d been packed into a plastic-wrap food container, except for the fishbowl helmet he held cradled in his arms.

“This thing really works?” she asked, picking up her helmet from the shelf in the locker.

Stavenger nodded, smiling at her. “It’s been tested for months now, Pancho. I’ve worn it outside myself several times. You’re going to love it.”

She felt totally unconvinced. Never fly in a new airplane, she remembered from her first days as a pilot. Never eat in a new restaurant on its opening day.

Plucking at the transparent nanomachined fabric with gloved fingers, she said, “Kinda flimsy.”

“But it works like a charm.”

“That mean you gotta say prayers over it?”

Stavenger laughed. “Come on, Pancho. Once we’re outside you’ll wonder how you were ever able to stand those clunky cermet suits.”

“Uh-huh.” She could see the enthusiasm in his eyes, his smile, his whole demeanor. He’s like a kid with a new toy, she thought.

But he was right. It took roughly ten minutes to walk from the airlock at Selene to Factory Number Eleven, out on the floor of the giant crater Alphonsus. Before even five minutes were up, Pancho had fallen in love with the softsuit.

“It’s terrific,” she said to Stavenger, shuffling along beside her, his boots kicking up gentle clouds of dust. “It’s like being without a suit, almost.”

“I told you, didn’t I?”

Pancho held both hands before her and flexed her fingers. “Hot spit! Even the gloves are easy to work. This is like magic!”

“Not magic. Just nanotechnology.”

“And the radiation protection?”

“About the same as a hard-shell suit,” Stavenger said. “We could add electromagnetic shielding, but that would probably attract a lot of dust from the ground.”

She nodded inside her helmet.

“You’re okay for short time periods on the surface,” Stavenger went on. “Off the Moon an electromagnetic system can be added to the suits easily enough.”

Pancho asked, “Doug, ol’ pal, how’d you like to sign a contract with Astro to manufacture and distribute these softsuits?”

He laughed. “No thanks, Pancho. Selene’s going to develop this product. We’ll sell them at pretty close to cost, too.”

Pancho understood the meaning behind his words. If Selene signed up with Astro for selling the suits, Humphries would complain. If Selene gave a contract to HSS, Astro would fight it. She nodded again inside the fishbowl helmet. Better to keep this out of either corporation’s hands. Better to let Selene handle this one themselves.

The low curving roof of the factory loomed before them. Stavenger and Pancho climbed the stairs to the edge of the factory’s thick concrete slab, then stepped through the “car wash,” the special airlock that scrubbed their suits free of dust and other contaminants before they were allowed to enter the ultra-pure domain of the factory itself. Pancho felt the jets and scrubbers pummeling her brutally.

“Hey Doug,” she gasped. “You gotta reset these things to go easier.”

His voice in her helmet earphones sounded bemused. “We did reset them, Pancho. They would’ve knocked you flat if we’d left them at the same power level we used for the hard-shell suits.”

It took Pancho a few moments to catch her breath once she had stepped out of the “car wash” and onto the factory floor. As Stavenger came up beside her, also breathing heavily, she looked out at the two completed spacecraft. Their diamond hulls looked dark, like ominous shadows lurking beneath the curved roof of the factory.

“There they are,” Stavenger said tightly. “One for you and one for Humphries.”

She understood the tension in his voice. “Two brand-new warships. So we can go out and kill some more mercenaries.”

Stavenger said nothing.

“We’ve got six more under contract, right?” she asked.

After several heartbeats, Stavenger said, “Yes. And we’re building the same number for Humphries.”

“So no matter who wins, Selene makes money.”

“I don’t like it, Pancho. I don’t like any of this. If I could convince the governing council to renege on these contracts, I would.”

“I don’t like it either, Doug. But what else can we do? Let the Humper take over the whole danged solar system?”

He fell silent again.

As they trudged back in silence toward the airlock at Selene, Pancho said to herself: Deadlock. Selene doesn’t want either one of us to win. They don’t want one side to beat the other and become master of the whole solar system. Even if Astro wins, if I win, Selene’s scared shitless that they’ll be under my thumb. Doug wants to see Humphries and Astro fight ourselves into exhaustion, and then he’ll step in and be the peacemaker again.

So they’re doing their best to keep us even. They won’t make a warship for Humphries without making one for Astro. Keeps them neutral, Doug says. Keeps us in a deadlock, that’s what it keeps.

There’s gotta be some way out of this, some way to break through and beat the Humper before we’re both so broke and dead-flat exhausted that both our corporations go bust.

If I could get Lars to help us, she thought. He might just be able to tip the scales in our favor. But the l’il bugger has disappeared. What’s he up to? Why’s he gone to ground on me?

Shaking her head inside the fishbowl helmet, Pancho considered: We need an outside force, a partner, an ally. Somebody who can tip the scales in Astro’s favor. Outmaneuver Humphries. Overpower him. Some way to outflank HSS.

Then it hit her. Nairobi! That guy from Nairobi Industries wanted a strategic alliance with Astro. I wonder if he’s still interested? I’ll have to look him up soon’s I get back to the office, whatever his name was.