The Silent War

HUMPHRIES MANSION

In his basement office, Humphries’s security chief watched the screens on the wall to one side of his desk with growing dismay. Four guys are holding off two dozen of my people. The dumb bozos are just sitting there like a bunch of petrified chipmunks. And now the back staircase is on fire. Humphries is gonna fry my ass for this.

Angrily he punched the keyboard on his desk. “What the hell are you punks doing, waiting for hot dogs so you can have a fuckin’ barbecue?”

He had only a voice link with his team upstairs, no video. “I got six people wounded here.”

“You got a dozen and a half untouched! Go get the intruders!”

“Why should we rush ’em and take more casualties? They’re not goin’ anywhere. We can wait ’em out.”

“While the fuckin’ house burns down?” the chief yelled.

“Then we’ll burn ’em out!”

The chief thought it over swiftly. Humphries is sealed into his master suite. They can’t get to him. The fire’s triggered the automatic alarms. That upstairs hallway is closed off by airtight doors. Windows are already sealed. Okay. We’ll let the fire do the job.

It was getting smoky in the upstairs hall. Leaning his back against the overturned table Fuchs peered down the hallway and saw flames licking at the carpet, spreading toward them.

“We must get out,” Amarjagal repeated.

The flames reached the drapes on the farthest window. They began smoldering.

Coughing, Sanja added, “It is useless to die here, Captain.”

Fuchs wanted to pound his fists on the floor. Humphries was a few meters away, cowering behind his protective cermet barrier. The coward! Fuchs raged. The sniveling coward. But he’s smarter than I am. He’s prepared for this attack, while I’ve led my people into a stupid assault that will gain us nothing even if we live through it. He pictured Humphries’s smirking face and felt the rage rising inside him even hotter than the flames creeping toward them.

“THE ENTIRE HALLWAY AREA IS SEALED OFF,” the loudspeaker voice declared. “THE FIRE’S GOING TO SUCK ALL THE OXYGEN OUT OF YOUR AIR. YOU HAVE THREE CHOICES: SUFFOCATE, ROAST, OR SURRENDER.”

Sitting cross-legged on his oversized bed, Humphries yelled at the wallscreen image of his security chief, “You’re letting them burn up the second-floor hallway? Do you have any idea of the value of the artwork on those walls? The furniture alone is worth more than your salary!”

The security chief looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Sir, it’s the only way to get them. They’ve wounded six of my people already. No sense getting more of them hurt.” “That’s what I pay them for!” Humphries raged. “To protect me! To kill that sonofabitch Fuchs! Not to burn my house down!”

Ferrer was sitting on an upholstered chair on the far side of the spacious room, her robe demurely pulled down below her knees.

The security chief was saying, “You’re perfectly safe inside your suite, Mr. Humphries. The walls are concrete and your door is fireproof reinforced cermet.”

“And my hallway’s going up in flames!”

“They started the fire, sir, my people didn’t. And now they either surrender or the fire kills them.”

“While your people sit on their asses.”

Stiffly, the security chief replied, “Yessir, while my people keep the rest of the house secure and wait for the intruders to give themselves up.”

Humphries stared at the chief’s image for a long moment, panting with frustrated rage. Then he snarled, “Don’t look for a bonus at Christmas.”

“We’re trapped here,” Amarjagal said, still as unemotional as a wood carving.

Fuchs saw the flames licking up the window draperies, heard them hissing, edging along the carpeting toward them. But the smoke was no worse than it had been before: annoying, but not suffocating.

“Where’s the smoke going?” he muttered.

“Captain, we must do something,” said Sanja, his voice tense. “We can’t stay here much longer.”

Fuchs scrambled to his feet and took a few steps along the hall. He saw the smoke curling up from the blazing drapes and streaming across the ceiling in a thin, roiling layer. It grew noticeably thinner halfway along the hall.

“Help me,” he called to Sanja as he grabbed a heavy chest of inlaid ebony. The two men wrestled it into the middle of the hall and Fuchs clambered up onto it.

A ventilator, he saw, its grillwork cleverly disguised to look like an ornamental design on the ceiling. It was closed, he realized, but not completely. Some of the smoke was being sucked up through it. He pushed against it with both hands. It gave, but only slightly.

Sanja immediately understood. He took a copper statuette from the nearest table and handed it up to Fuchs, base first. Fuchs pounded at the ventilator grill with the fury of desperation. It dented, buckled. With an animal roar he smashed at it again and the ventilator gave way with a screech of metal against metal. Immediately, the smoke slithering along the ceiling began pouring into the opening.

“It’s big enough to crawl through!” he shouted.

“Nodon,” said Amarjagal, on her feet now. “He’s unconscious.”

“Carry him. Come on.”

Fuchs hauled himself up into the ventilator shaft. It was filled with smoke and utterly dark inside. Coughing, he reached down for Nodon’s still-unconscious body. This shaft can’t be too long, he thought. We’re up near the roof. There must be an outlet nearby.

Crawling, coughing, eyes streaming with burning tears, he dragged Nodon’s limp body through the shaft. Its metal walls felt hot to his fingers, but he slithered along, knowing that either he found his way out of the building or he would soon die.

The security chief was peering at his display screens, straining to see what was going on in the dim shadows of the upstairs hall. The only light came from the flickering flames. The intruders were moving around, he felt sure, but it was almost impossible to make out anything definite in the smoke. Even the infrared cameras were virtually useless now. Several of the window draperies were blazing; the flames overloaded the surveillance cameras’ light sensitive photocells. All he could see was overexposed flickers of flame and inky black shadows shambling around.

The fire’s contained to the upstairs hall, he saw, checking the other screens. Thank god for small miracles. I’ll probably have to resign after this. If Humphries doesn’t fire me outright.

Pacing the length of the big bedroom, Humphries muttered, “I don’t like this. I don’t like being cooped up in here.” Victoria Ferrer suppressed an incipient smile. He’s really frightened, she thought. Normally, if we were locked in his bedroom together he’d peel this robe off me and pop me between the sheets.

“I don’t like waiting,” he said, louder.

“Think of it this way,” she suggested, not moving from the chair where she sat, “Fuchs is dying out there. When those fireproof doors open again you can go out and stand over his dead body.”

He nodded, but it was perfunctory. The thought of victory over Fuchs obviously didn’t outweigh his innate fear for his own life.

Fuchs’s lungs were burning. The metal walls of the ventilator shaft were scorching hot now as he crawled along blindly, dragging Nodon’s inert body with one pain-cramped hand. He couldn’t see Amarjagal or Sanja behind him. He didn’t even know if they were still there. His entire world had narrowed down to this smoke-filled, blistering hot purgatory.

Through tear-filled eyes he saw a light up ahead. It can’t be, he told himself. I’m starting to hallucinate. The garden outside is still in its nighttime lighting mode. There can’t be bright lighting out there—

His heart clenched in his chest. Unless the guards have turned up all the outdoor lights! Like a badger, Fuchs scuttled along the upward-slanting shaft, leaving Nodon and the others behind. Light! Air! He bumped his head against a metal grill, feeling blessedly cool air caressing his hot, sooty face. The smoke was streaming out. Fresh air was seeping in.

With his bare hands Fuchs battered the grill, punched it until his knuckles were raw and bleeding, butted it with his head, finally forced it open by wedging his feet against the sides of the shaft and leaning one powerful shoulder against the thin metal and pushing with all his strength. It gave way at last.

He took one huge gulp of fresh air, wiped at his eyes with grimy hands, then ducked back down the shaft to grab Nodon by the collar of his coveralls and haul him up onto the roof. Amarjagal’s head popped up behind Nodon’s booted feet. She too was grimy, soot-streaked. But she smiled and pulled herself out of the shaft.

“Stay low,” Fuchs hissed. “The guards must be patrolling the grounds.”

Sanja came up, and crawled on his belly to lay beside Fuchs. They looked out onto the splendid garden just beyond the mansion’s wall and, farther, to the trees and green flowering shrubbery of this artificial Eden planted deep below the surface of the Moon.

And there were guards standing out there, armed with assault rifles, ready to shoot to kill.