The Silent War

HABITAT CHRYSALIS

Victoria Ferrer felt distinctly uneasy in the rock rats’ habitat, in orbit around the asteroid Ceres. Although she dressed as modestly as she could, she still felt that every move she made was being watched by men—and women—who focused on her the way a stalking leopard stares at its prey.

The habitat itself was comfortable enough. The gravity was the same as the Moon’s, or so close that she couldn’t notice any difference. As a visitor Ferrer had a small but well-appointed compartment to herself, and the adjoining cabin to use as an office. There was a galley in the next segment of the structure, and even a passably decent restaurant on the other side of the wheel-shaped assemblage. With her expense account, she could afford to take most of her meals in the restaurant.

Ferrer had expected the rock rats to be scruffy, feisty, hard-rock types. Prospectors and miners, existing at the edge of human civilization, independent individualists eking out their living in the vast dark emptiness of the Belt, surviving in a world of danger and loneliness. To her surprise, she found that most of the residents of Chrysalis were shopkeepers, accountants, technicians employed in the service industries. Even the actual miners and prospectors had technical educations. They operated complex equipment out in the Belt; they had to know how to keep a spacecraft functioning when the nearest supply or maintenance depot was millions of kilometers away.

But they stared at her. Even in plain coveralls buttoned up to her chin, she felt their eyes on her. Fresh meat, she thought. A new face. A new body.

Her mission at Ceres was twofold. She was recruiting more hands for the army of mercenaries that the war demanded out of the growing numbers of unemployed miners and prospectors. And she was waiting for the return of Levinson and his nanotech team, to see firsthand the results of their experiment on an actual asteroid.

It had been pathetically easy to keep Levinson on a string. Every time they met he stared at her with hungry puppy eyes. If he comes back with a success he’ll expect me to reward him, Ferrer thought. It won’t be so easy to put him off then. But if he’s successful I can let him down gently and maneuver him off to some other woman. God knows there are plenty here at Ceres who would be happy to get connected with a scientist who can take her back to Earth.

She tried to clear her mind of worries about Levinson and concentrate on the unemployed miner sitting on the other side of her desk. The clean-cut young man was trying his best not to ogle, but his eyes kept returning to the front of her shapeless turtleneck sweater. Momma and her damned genetic engineering, Ferrer thought. I should have brought sloppy old sweatshirts, or, better yet, a space suit.

She kept their discussion strictly on business, without a hint of anything else. Humphries had sent her here to recruit crews for HSS ships and she had no interest in anything else. “I don’t understand your reluctance,” she said to the miner. “We’re offering top salary and benefits.”

He looked a decent-enough fellow, Ferrer thought: freshly shaved and wearing well-pressed slacks and an open-necked shirt. His dossier, on her desktop screen, showed he had an engineering degree and had spent the past four years working as a miner under contract to Astro Corporation. He’d quit a month ago and hadn’t found a new job yet.

Fidgeting nervously in his chair, he answered, “Look, Ms. Ferrer, what good will all that salary and benefits do me when I’m dead?”

She knew what he meant, but still she probed, “Why do you say that?”

Making a sour face, the miner said, “You want to hire me as a crewman on one of your HSS ships, right? Everybody knows HSS and Astro are fighting it out in the Belt. People are being killed every day, just about. I’d rather bum around here on Chrysalis and wait for a real job to open up.”

“There are a lot of unemployed miners here,” Ferrer said.

“Yeah, I know. Some got laid off, like me. Some just quit, ’cause it’s getting too blamed dangerous out in the Belt. I figure I’ll just wait until you guys have settled your war. Once the shooting stops, I’ll go back to work, I guess.”

“That could be a long wait,” she pointed out.

With a frowning nod, he replied, “I’d rather starve slowly than get killed suddenly.”

Ferrer admitted defeat. “Very well. If you change your mind, please contact us.”

Getting up from the chair in a rush, as if happy to be leaving, the miner said, “Don’t hold your breath.”

Ferrer conducted two more interviews that afternoon with exactly the same results. Miners and prospectors were abandoning their jobs to get away from the fighting. Chrysalis was filling up with unemployed rock rats. Most of them had run through what little savings they had accumulated and were now depending for their living on the scanty largesse of Chrysalis’s governing board. Hardly any of them accepted employment aboard HSS ships. Or Astro’s, Ferrer found with some satisfaction. Of the fourteen men and women she had personally interviewed, only two had signed up, both of them women with babies to support. All the others had flatly refused her offers.

I’d rather starve slowly than get killed suddenly. That was their attitude.

Sitting alone in her office as the day waned, Ferrer sighed heavily. I’m going to have to report to Humphries, she told herself. He’s not going to like what I have to tell him.

Levinson was glad to be out of the space suit. In fact, he was whistling cheerily as he made his way from the airlock of the torch ship toward the compartment they had given him. In two days we’ll be back at Ceres, and then Vickie and I ride a torch ship back to Selene. I’ll bet we spend the whole journey shacked up together.

“Shouldn’t whistle aboard ship,” said one of the technicians, coming up the passageway behind him. “It’s considered bad luck.”

Levinson grinned at her. “That’s an old superstition,” he said.

“No it’s not. It dates back to sailing days, when orders were given by playing a whistle. So they didn’t want anybody whistling and messing up the signaling system.”

“Doesn’t apply here,” Levinson said loftily.

“Still, it’s considered—”

“EMERGENCY,” the overhead speaker blared. “PRESSURE LOSS IN MAIN AIRLOCK COMPARTMENT.”

The blood froze in Levinson’s veins. The airtight hatch up the passageway slammed shut. His knees went rubbery.

“Don’t piss yourself,” the technician said, smirking at him. “It’s probably something minor.”

“But the hatch. We’re trapped here.”

“Naw. You can open the hatch manually and get to your quarters. Don’t sweat it.”

At that instant the hatch swung open and two of the ship’s crew pushed past them, heading for the airlock. They looked more irritated than frightened.

Feeling marginally better, Levinson followed the tech through the hatch and toward his own compartment. Still, when the hatch automatically slammed shut again, he jumped like a startled rabbit.

He was opening the accordion-pleated door to his compartment when the overhead speaker demanded, “DR. LEVINSON REPORT TO THE BRIDGE IMMEDIATELY.”

Levinson wasn’t exactly certain where the bridge was, but he thought it was farther up the passageway that ran the length of the habitation module. With his pulse thumping nervously in his ears, he made his way past two more closed hatches and finally stepped into what was obviously the bridge. The ship’s captain was standing with his back to the hatch, half bent over between the backs of two side-by-side chairs, both occupied by crew members. All three men were peering at readouts on the instrument panel.

The hatch slammed behind him, making him flinch again. The captain, grim-faced, whirled on him.

“It’s those goddamned bugs of yours! They’re eating up my ship!”

Levinson knew it couldn’t be true. Pea-brained rocket jocks! Anything goes wrong, they blame the nearest scientist.

“The nanomachines are on the asteroid,” he said, with great calm and dignity. “Or what’s left of it. They couldn’t possibly be aboard your ship.”

“The hell they’re not!” roared the captain, jabbing an accusing finger at the displays on the instrument board. Levinson could see they were swathed in red.

“They couldn’t—”

“They were in that dust cloud, weren’t they?”

“Well, yes, perhaps a few,” he admitted.

“And the loose end of your fucking tether was flapping around in the cloud, wasn’t it?”

Levinson started to reply, but his mouth went so dry he couldn’t form any words.

“You brought the mother-humping bugs aboard my ship, damn you!”

“But… but…”

“They’re eating out the airlock compartment! Chewing up the metal of the hull, for chrissakes!” The captain advanced toward Levinson, hands clenched into fists, face splotched with red fury. “You’ve got to stop them!”

“They’ll stop themselves,” said Levinson, backing away a step and bumping into the closed hatch. “I built a time limit into them. Once the time limit is reached they run out of power and shut themselves down.”

The captain sucked in a deep breath. His face returned almost to its normal color. “They’ll stop?”

“Yessir,” Levinson said. “Automatically.”

“How soon?”

Levinson swallowed and choked out, “Forty-eight hours.”

“Forty-eight hours?” the captain bellowed.

Levinson nodded, cringing.

The captain turned back toward the two crewmen seated at the instrument panel. “Contact Chrysalis. Report our situation to them.”

The crewman in the left-hand seat asked, “Anything else to tell them, sir?”

The captain fumed in silence for a moment, then muttered, “Yeah. Read them your last will and testament. We’re going to die here. All of us.”

Levinson wet his pants.