The Silent War

HUMPHRIES MANSION

The house was huge, Fuchs realized, and divided into two sections. On one side of the hallway that extended from the entrance there seemed to be a warren of offices and laboratories. Fuchs and his crew glanced into a few of them; they were unoccupied, quiet, dark. Offices for his staff, Fuchs guessed, empty at this time of night.

Impatiently he waved his three aides back to the hallway.

“Sanja,” he directed, pointing down the hall, “you find that woman. She must know where Humphries is. “We’ll look through the other side of the house.”

Humphries was upstairs, in the master bedroom suite, sitting at his computer desk. The war is going well, he said to himself as he studied the latest figures on battle casualties. In another couple of months we’ll have booted Astro out of the Belt altogether.

Yet when he turned to his intelligence department’s latest assessment, his face contorted into a frown. Astro’s building more ships, gearing up for a counterattack. That damned greasemonkey doesn’t know when she’s beaten.

He heard a muffled clatter from downstairs. One of the servants must have dropped something. Leaning back in his yielding desk chair he realized that he had ordered a snack more than half an hour ago. Where the hell was it?

With a shake of his head he returned to his musings about the war. They claim Pancho’s disappeared. More likely she’s down at that Nairobi base trying to get their support. And I’ve got a board of directors meeting coming up. They’ll yell bloody murder about the p-and-l figures. This war’s bleeding us. But once we win it, they’ll all shut up. They’ll have to.

His thoughts returned to Pancho. The little guttersnipe. If she’s building a new fleet of warships here at Selene it makes sense to attack the factories where they’re being built. But that would bring Stavenger into the war on her side. I don’t want Selene coming in against—

“The water turned off.”

Annoyed, Humphries turned to see Victoria Ferrer standing in the doorway to his office, wrapped in a white full-length robe, its sash cinched around her waist. Her hair was glistening wet.

“What?” he snapped.

“The water turned off,” she repeated, “right in the middle of my shower.”

At that moment the report hovering above his desk abruptly disappeared, replaced by the intense face of his chief security guard.

“Sir, we have intruders on the premises.”

“Inside the house?”

“Yessir. Downstairs. I suggest you go to top security mode immediately.”

“Damned right! And you get them! Call everyone you’ve got. Get them!”

Down in his basement office, the security chief clicked off his phone, thinking furiously. Only twelve guards on night duty, he knew. Still, he glanced at the screen showing the duty roster. They’ve already knocked out four of them. He told the phone to call up every guard on the payroll —another two dozen of them—and get them to the mansion immediately.

Humphries has his suite sealed off, so they can’t get to him unless they can cut through three centimeters of reinforced cermet, he thought. Even with laser pistols that will take some time. The boss is safe enough. He called for a view of the master suite and saw that Ferrer was in there with Humphries. He grinned to himself. Hell, he might even enjoy this, as long as she’s sealed into the bedroom with him.

Then he turned his attention to the screen showing three of the four intruders making their way up the main staircase to the upper floor.

Fuchs was leading Nodon and Amarjagal cautiously up the main stairway, peering intently at the upper landing to see if any more security guards were up there. Suddenly he heard the heavy slamming of doors. A voice blared from speakers hidden in the ceiling:

“WE HAVE YOU ON CAMERA AND ARE AUTHORIZED TO USE LETHAL FORCE IF NECESSARY. THE HOUSE IS SEALED AND THERE IS NO WAY FOR YOU TO ESCAPE. DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEADS.”

Fuchs hesitated for barely a fraction of a second, then rushed up the stairs, the two others behind him. As they reached the landing, Sanja started up the steps behind them.

“The front doorway has been sealed with a metal slab!” he called.

The windows, too, were covered with heavy metal grillwork, Fuchs saw as he glanced around the upstairs hallway. The hall was lined with real wooden furniture: tables and chests and sideboards. Actual paintings hung along the walls.

They think we’re burglars or thieves, Fuchs thought. They’re trying to make certain we can’t get away. But I don’t want to get away, I want to find Humphries.

“Where are you, Humphries?” he shouted at the ceiling. “Show yourself, coward!”

Nodon, his eyes so wide that Fuchs could see white all around the pupils, said in a tight whisper, “They must be sending more guards. We’re trapped!”

All the lights went off, plunging them into almost total darkness. Within an instant, though, Nodon pulled a hand torch from his coverall pocket. Its feeble beam made the hallway look eerie, mysterious.

Fuchs rushed to a heavy walnut table against the wall. With one sweep of his arm he sent the flower vase and smaller porcelain pieces atop it crashing to the carpeted floor.

“Help me turn this thing over and drag it over to the top of the stairs. We can stop them from getting up here.”

Sanja and Amarjagal tipped the table over with a heavy thud, and the four of them pushed it to the head of the stairs and wedged it there between the wall and the staircase railing. Down below they heard the pounding of running feet and saw the shadowy figures of security guards coming along the downstairs hall. They must have been stationed in the basement, Fuchs thought, straining to make out how many of them there were. No more than six, he estimated.

He whispered to the two men, “Get the statues, the chairs, anything you can lift and bring them here. Amarjagal, go down the hallway a few meters so you can fire on them as they come up the stairs.”

If they think we’re going to surrender, they have a big surprise coming, Fuchs thought grimly. I’m not leaving this house until I see Humphries dead at my feet.