The Silent War

SELENE: LEVEL SEVEN

It’s getting warmer in here, Humphries thought. Then he told himself, No, it’s just your imagination. This space is insulated, fireproof. He pushed through a row of suits hanging neatly in the closet and touched one hand to the nearest of the three green tanks of oxygen standing in a row against the back wall. I’ve got everything I need. They can’t burn me out.

Slowly he edged past the suits and slacks and jackets and shirts, all precisely arranged, all facing the same direction on their hangers, silent and waiting for him to decide on using them. He brushed their fabrics with his shoulder, was tempted to finger their sleeves, even rub them soothingly on his cheek. Like a baby with its blanket, he thought. Comforting.

Instead he went to the door, still sealed with the cermet partition. Tentatively, he touched it with his fingertips. It wasn’t hot. Not even very warm. Maybe the fire’s out, he supposed. Ferrer wasn’t pounding on the door anymore. She gave up on that. I wonder if she made it out of the house? She’s tough and smart; could she survive this fire? He suddenly felt alarmed. If she lives through it, she’ll tell everybody I panicked! She’ll tell them I crawled into my emergency shelter and left her outside to die!

Humphries felt his fists clenching so hard his fingernails were cutting painfully into his palms. No, the little bitch will threaten to tell everything and hang that threat over my head for the rest of her life. I’ll have to get rid of her. Permanently. Pretend to give her whatever she wants and then get Harbin or some other animal to put her away.

His mind decided, Humphries paced the length of his clothes closet once more, wondering how he would know when it was safe to leave his airtight shelter.

At least the flames aren’t advancing as fast as they were, Fuchs thought as he lay sprawled on the brick pathway in front of the airlock. The grotto was a mass of flames and smoke that seemed to get thicker every second. Their heat burned against his face. Nodon had lapsed into unconsciousness again; Amarjagal and Sanja lay on the grass beside him, unmoving, their dark almond-shaped eyes staring at the fire that was inching closer. The black-clad security guards sprawled everywhere, coughing, their guns thrown away, their responsibilities to Humphries forgotten.

One of the women guards asked, “How long…” She broke into a racking cough.

As if in answer to her unfinished question, the voice from the other side of the hatch boomed, “We’ve got the airlock set up. In thirty seconds we’ll open the hatch. We can take two people at a time. Get your first two ready.”

Fuchs pawed at his burning eyes and said, “Amarjagal and Nodon.”

The woman slung Nodon’s good arm around her bulky shoulders and struggled up to her feet, with Sanja helping her. Some of the security guards stirred, and Fuchs reached for the laser pistol on the ground next to him.

“We’ll all get through,” he said sternly. “Two at a time.”

The guards stared sullenly back at him.

“Which of you is in charge?” Fuchs asked.

A big-shouldered man with his gray hair cut flat and short rolled over to a sitting position. Fuchs noted that his belly hung over the waistband of his trousers.

“I am,” he said, then coughed.

“You will decide the order in which your people go through the hatch,” said Fuchs, in a tone that brooked no argument. “You and I will be the last two.”

The man nodded once, as the heavy steel hatch clicked and slowly swung open.

Stavenger stood out in the corridor beyond the emergency airlock and watched the survivors of the fire come out, two by two.

Like Noah’s Ark, he thought.

Most of them were Humphries security people, their faces smudged with soot as black as their uniforms. There were three Asians, one of them in the gray coveralls of Selene’s maintenance department.

“The last two coming through,” said one of the emergency team.

An odd couple, Stavenger thought. One tall and broad-shouldered, the other short and thickset. Both in black outfits. Then he recognized the dour face of the shorter man. Lars Fuchs! Stavenger realized. That’s Lars Fuchs!

“Anybody else in there?” the emergency team’s chief asked.

“Nobody alive,” said the Humphries’ security chief.

“Okay,” the chief called to his team. “Seal the hatch and let the fire burn itself out.”

Stavenger was already speaking into his handheld, calling for a security team to arrest Lars Fuchs. There’s only one reason for him to be here in Humphries’s private preserve, Stavenger knew. He’s killed Martin Humphries.

If it weren’t so infuriating it would almost be funny, Humphries thought as he sat huddled in his closet.

The idiotic architect who designed this for me never bothered to install a phone inside the shelter because everybody carries handhelds or even implants. I don’t have an implant and I hate those damned handhelds beeping at me. So now I’m sitting here with no goddamned way to let anybody know I’m alive. And I don’t dare go outside because the fire might still be burning. Even if it isn’t, it’s probably used up all the oxygen out there and I’d suffocate.

Damn! Nothing to do but wait.

Humphries detested waiting. For anything, even his own rescue.