The Silent War

COMMAND SHIP SAMARKAND

Since the battle that shattered Gormley’s fleet, the HSS base at Vesta had been busy. Ships were sent out in groups of two or three to hound down Astro freighters and logistics vessels. Although Astros crewed ships were armed, they were no match for the warships with their mercenary crews that Humphries was pouring into the Belt.

Sitting in the command chair of Samarkand, in charge of three attack ships, Dorik Harbin wondered how long the war could possibly go on. Astro’s vessels were being methodically eliminated. It was clear that Humphries’s mercenaries were on the verge of sweeping Astro entirely out of the Belt. Astro’s pitiful effort to stop HSS freighters from delivering ores to the Earth/Moon region had backfired hideously with the Starlight fiasco.

Yet the rumor was that more Astro ships were heading for the Belt. Better-armed ships, vessels crewed by mercenaries who were smart enough to avoid massed battles. The war was settling down to a struggle of attrition. Which corporation could better sustain the constant losses of ships and crews? Which corporation would decide the war was costing too much and call it quits?

Not Humphries, Harbin thought. He had met the man and seen the tenacity in his eyes, the dogged drive to succeed no matter what the cost. It’s only money to him, Harbin realized. He isn’t risking his neck, he’s in no danger of shedding his own blood. What does he care how many are killed out here in the empty silence of the Belt?

His communications technician flashed a red-bordered message onto the bridge’s main screen. A solar flare warning. Scanning the data, Harbin saw that it would be several days before the cloud reached the Belt’s inner fringes.

“Run a diagnostic on the radiation shield system,” he commanded, thinking, Make sure now that the shield is working properly, and if it’s not you’ve got three or four days to repair it.

“We have a target, sir!”

His weapons tech’s announcement stirred Harbin out of his thoughts. The flare warning disappeared from the main screen, replaced by three small blips, nearly nine thousand kilometers away, too distant for their telescopic cameras to resolve into a clear optical image.

With the touch of a fingertip on his armrest keypad, Harbin called up the computer’s analysis. Their trajectory was definitely not the Sun-centered ellipse of asteroids; they were moving in formation toward Ceres. Not HSS ships, either; the computer had all their flight plans in its memory.

“Three on three,” he muttered.

As Samarkand and its two accompanying warships sped toward the Astro vessels, the display screen began to show details. One of them was a typical dumbbell-shaped freighter, toting a large, irregularly shaped mass of ores. The other two were smaller, sleeker, obviously escorts designed to protect the freighter. Both the escorts were studded with asteroidal rock, armor to absorb and deflect laser beams.

Harbin’s ships, including Samarkand, were also covered with asteroidal rubble, for the same reason. He saw that the Astro freighter was not so armored. They probably hope to use their cargo as a shield, he thought.

“Parallel course,” he commanded. “Remain at a distance of fifteen hundred klicks. No closer, for the present.”

“It’s a long shot for the lasers,” his weapons tech said, her heavy, dark face looking decidedly unhappy. “And they’re armored, too.”

Harbin nodded. “It’s the freighter we want. I don’t care about the escorts.”

The weapons technician gave him a puzzled frown, then returned her attention to her screens.

Harbin studied the image on the main screen. The Astro escort vessels look more like rock piles than warships, he thought. I suppose we do too. He smiled grimly. Between the two corporations, we must be using more ores as ship’s armor than we’re selling to the markets on Earth. Well, that will end sooner or later. No war lasts forever.

Unbidden, a couplet from the Rubaiyat came to his mind:

“We’ve been pulsed by search radar,” his pilot reported.

Harbin nodded. “They know we’re here.”

“They’re making no move toward us.”

“No,” Harbin replied. “Two escorts are not going to come after the three of us. They’ll stick close to their freighter and wait for us to make a move on them.”

“What move shall we make, sir?”

“Just continue the parallel course at this distance.” Turning to the communication tech, seated beside the pilot, Harbin added, “Make certain that our two other ships follow me closely.”

As the comm tech relayed his orders, Harbin thought, How to separate those two escorts from the freighter? If we go in to attack we’ll be moving into their massed fire. I’ve got to find a way to split them apart.

For long, nerve-stretching minutes the two little formations flew in parallel, too distant for either to waste power on laser shots that would be absorbed by the ships’ protective shields of asteroidal rubble. The Astro ships were hurrying out of the Belt, heading Earthward, to bring the freighter’s massive load of ores to the waiting markets.

“We’ll be reaching fuel bingo in forty-five minutes, sir,” the pilot announced.

Harbin acknowledged the warning with a nod. Fuel bingo: the turn-back point. The farthest distance from their refueling base at Vesta that Samarkand and its two accompanying ships could safely go.

How to separate those escorts from the freighter? Harbin asked himself, over and over. He played one scheme after another in his mind. He riffled through the tactical computer’s preset plans. Nothing that he could use. He was pleased to see that the computer’s data bank included his own tactics against Gormley.

And that gave him the idea he needed.

“You two,” he said, jabbing a finger at the communications and weapons technicians. “Get to the main airlock and suit up. Now!”

They unbuckled their seat harnesses and scampered to the bridge’s hatch. Once they announced that they were in their space suits, Harbin went back to the airlock to brief them on what they had to do. Neither of them relished the idea of going outside, he could see that on their faces even through the thick visors of their helmets. That didn’t matter to Harbin. There was no other way for his scheme to work.

He made his way back to the bridge and resumed his position in the command chair. The executive officer monitored the two technicians as they left the airlock and followed Harbin’s orders. Within half an hour they reported that they had successfully discharged the electrostatic field that held the rocks of their armor shield tightly around the hull of the ship.

“Some of the rocks are floating loose now,” the weapons tech reported, her voice tense. “Most of ’em are holding in place against the hull, though.”

“Good,” Harbin said tightly. “Come back aboard.”

“Yes, sir.” He could hear the relief in their voices. They were technicians, not trained astronauts. Working outside was not a chore they enjoyed.

While they were wriggling out of their space suits back at the airlock, Harbin commanded his pilot to turn and commence a high-speed run at the Astro ships. The other two HSS vessels were to remain on their courses.

The two technicians struggled back into their seats as Samarkand’s fusion engines accelerated the ship to a full g and then even beyond. Harbin heard metal groaning and creaking as the trio of Astro ships grew visibly bigger in the main screen.

The loosened rocks of the rubble shield were being pushed mechanically by the bulk of the accelerating ship. They were no longer held to the hull by the electrostatic field. Harbin heard thumps and bangs as some of the rocks separated entirely from the ship, but most of them obediently followed Newton’s laws and hung on the ship’s hull.

Harbin could see the Astro warships deploying to meet his solo attack. He felt sweat trickling down his ribs, cold and annoying. Once we let loose the rocks we’ll have no protection against their lasers, he knew. But they’ll be too busy to fire on us. He hoped.

“Decelerate,” he ordered. “Reduce to one-half g.”

The pilot tried to slow the ship smoothly, but still Harbin felt as if his insides were being yanked out of him. The comm tech moaned like a wounded creature and the entire ship seemed to creak and complain, metal screeching against metal.

As the ship slowed, though, the thousands of rocks of her rubble shield—fist-sized and smaller— kept on moving in a straight line, blindly following their own inertia as they hurtled toward the Astro vessels.

“Turn one hundred eighty degrees,” Harbin snapped.

The sudden lurching turn was too much for the comm tech; she retched and slumped over the armrest of her chair. Samarkand was no racing yacht. The ship turned slowly, slowly toward the right. Some of the remaining rocks ground against the hull, a dull grating sound that made even the pilot look up with wide, frightened eyes.

Harbin paid no attention to anything but the main screen. The Astro vessels were in the path of a speeding avalanche of stones as most of Samarkand’s erstwhile shielding came plunging toward them.

“Keep the stones between us and them,” Harbin told the pilot. “We can still use them to shield us.”

The display screen was filled with the rubble now. Harbin saw a brief splash of laser light as one of the Astro warships fired into the approaching avalanche. With his armrest keyboard he widened the scope of the display.

The Astro captains knew what had happened to Gormley, too. For a heartstopping few seconds they maintained their formation, but then their nerve broke and the two escorting warships scattered, leaving the bigger, more ponderous freighter squarely in the path of the approaching stones.

The freighter tried to maneuver away from the avalanche but it was too slow, too cumbersome to escape. Its captain did manage to turn it enough so that its bulky cargo of asteroidal ores took the brunt of the cascade.

Harbin watched, fascinated, as the blizzard of rocks struck the freighter. Most of them hit the massive cargo of ores that the ship carried in its external grippers. Harbin saw sparks, puffs of dust, as the stones struck in the complete silence of airless space.

“I wouldn’t want to be in that shooting gallery,” the executive officer muttered. Harbin glanced away from the screen momentarily, saw that the weapons tech was tending to the comm technician, who was sitting up woozily in her chair.

The rocks continued to pound the freighter. Harbin saw a flash of glittering vapor that quickly winked out. Must have hit part of the crew module, he thought. That was air escaping.

“Where are those two escort ships?” he asked aloud.

The pilot chuckled. “On their way back to Selene, from the looks of it.”

Why not? Harbin thought. They don’t have a ship to escort anymore. Why risk their butts in a three-against-two engagement?

He called his two other ships and told them to stand by in case the two Astro warships returned. Then he commanded his pilot to move Samarkand closer to the crippled freighter.

“We’ve got to finish her off,” he said.

The pilot asked, “Do you want me to open a frequency to her? I can take over the comm console, sir.”

Harbin shook his head. He had no desire to talk with the survivors, if there were any still alive aboard the freighter. His job now was to complete the destruction of the ship, which meant that anyone still breathing aboard her was going to die.

“No need to talk to them,” he said to the pilot. Then, to the weapons tech, “Get back to your post and arm the lasers. Time to finish this job.”