The Silent War

TORCH SHIP ELSINORE

The wall screen in Edith’s compartment lit up to show the ship’s captain. He looked shaken.

“You’d better come up to the bridge and see this,” he said, his voice trembling. “They’re destroying the habitat.”

Big George boiled out into the passageway and charged up toward the bridge, Edith running hard behind him.

The captain and the two crew members on the bridge looked ashen, dazed.

Through the observation port Edith could see Chrysalis; three of its modules were ripped apart, chunks of metal and structure floating aimlessly. As she watched, invisible laser beams began slicing through another module. Air burst into the vacuum of space in glittering wisps of ice and dissipated in an eyeblink. All in silence: total, deadly, complete silence. Shapes came tumbling through one of the gouges torn in the module’s skin. Bodies, Edith realized. Those are human bodies.

“The bloody fookin’ bastard,” George growled. He pounded both fists against the thick quartz of the observation port. “Bloody fookin’ BASTARD!” he bellowed.

“Can’t we do something?” Edith asked the captain.

He shook his head. “Not a thing.”

“But there must be something! Call for help!”

“Our antennas are out. Even if we had Fuchs aboard or knew where he is, we wouldn’t be able to tell him now.”

Edith felt the strength ebbing out of her. I’m watching a thousand people dying. Being killed. George looked on the verge of tears. The captain was a white-faced statue.

“There’s nothing we can do?” she asked.

“Nothing except wait,” said the captain. “We’re probably next.”

Once he realized what was happening, Yanni bolted from the useless comm center and down the habitat’s central passageway. Ilona! I’ve got to find Ilona! Their quarters were three modules down the passageway; at this time of night she should be in their bedroom, asleep.

He had to fight his way past a screaming mob at the module’s airlock, fighting to grab the pitifully few space suits stored there.

Why is this happening? Yanni asked himself as he ran toward the hatch that led to his wife. Why are they killing us?

Then the bulkhead ahead of him split apart and a blast of air like a whirlwind lifted him off his feet and out into the dark cold emptiness beyond. He had just time enough to understand that it didn’t matter why or who or anything else. He was dead and Ilona was too.

The exec simply stood by Harbin’s side as he carefully, precisely cut up the modules of the Chrysalis habitat. When the last unit was reduced to a broken shambles he looked up at her and saw fear in her eyes: fear and shock and disgust.

“There,” Harbin said, lifting both hands from the armrest keyboards. “It’s done. Fuchs is dead. I’ve accomplished my mission.”

The exec seemed to stir, as if coming out of a trance. “Are…” Her voice caught, and she coughed slightly. “Are you certain he was in the habitat?” Then she added, “Sir?”

Harbin ignored her question. “They’re all dead. Now we can go home and be safe.”

He got up from the command chair slowly, almost leisurely, and stretched his arms up to the metal overhead. “I’m rather tired. I’m going in for a nap. You have the con.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. As she watched him go to the hatch and duck through it, she thought about the ships in parking orbits around Chrysalis. Witnesses to the slaughter. And Fuchs might in reality be aboard any one of them.

She shook her head. I can testify that he did it on his own. He even dismissed the rest of us from the bridge. I returned to try to dissuade him, but he wouldn’t listen to me. I couldn’t disobey a superior officer, and I certainly couldn’t overpower the man. He acted alone, she rehearsed her testimony. It was entirely his doing.

She slipped into the command chair and summoned the rest of the bridge crew. One of the ships parked nearby was an HSS logistics vessel. We’ll refuel and reprovision from her, the exec thought, and then double back to Vesta.

Harbin saw several of his troopers idling in the galley, down at the end of the passageway from the bridge. Still in full armor, bristling with guns and grenades.

“Stand down,” he called to them. “We won’t be boarding the habitat.” And he giggled. There’s no habitat to board, he added silently.

As he entered his privacy compartment he seemed to recall that there was an incoming ship that might be harboring Fuchs. He shook his head foggily. No, that can’t be. I killed Fuchs. I killed them all. All of them.

He tottered to the lav and splashed cold water on his face. Drug’s wearing off, he realized. They wear off quicker and quicker. I must be building a tolerance to them. Have to tell the medics when we get back to Vesta. Need something stronger, better lasting.

He flopped onto his bed and closed his eyes. Sleep, he told himself. I need sleep. Without dreams. No dreaming. Please don’t let me dream.

Doug Stavenger would not allow either Pancho or Humphries to leave his living room. They sat there and watched him desperately trying to reestablish contact with his wife, at Ceres.

Pancho offered him the full resources of Astro Corporation. After checking with her handheld she told Stavenger, “We’ve got three ships docked at Ceres. I’ve sent an order for them to report to me here.”

“That will take an hour or more,” Stavenger said.

Pancho shrugged. “No way I can make it happen faster.”

Humphries remained on the sofa, silent, his eyes following Stavenger’s every move, every gesture. Pancho felt contempt for the man. And a certain tiny speck of pity. Doug’ll kill him, she knew, if anything’s happened to his wife. All of Humphries’s money can’t help him one little iota now. Doug’ll tear him apart.

They waited, Stavenger sending urgent, desperate messages to every ship in the Belt, Humphries sitting frozen with fear, Pancho churning the entire situation over and over in her mind, time and again, going over every detail she could think of, reliving the chain of events that had led to this place, this moment, this fearful point in spacetime.

“There’s somebody else who oughtta be here,” she said at last.

Stavenger froze the image on the wall screen and turned to look at her, obviously annoyed at her interruption.

“Yamagata,” Pancho went on, despite his irritation. “Nobuhiko Yamagata should be here, if you want to stop this war.”

Humphries stirred himself. “Just because his corporation provides mercenary troops—”

“He’s behind this whole thing,” Pancho said.

Stavenger gave her his full attention. “What do you mean?”

“Yamagata’s the money behind the Nairobi base at the south pole,” said Pancho. “He’s been renting mercenaries to Astro and HSS, both.”

“So?”

She jabbed a finger at Humphries. “You say you didn’t set up that accident with the cable car?”

“I didn’t,” Humphries said.

“Then who else would’ve done it? Who’s sittin’ fat and happy while you and me bleed ourselves to death? Who stands to take over if Astro and HSS go broke?”

“Yamagata,” Humphries breathed.

“Yamagata?” Stavenger echoed, still not believing it.

“Yamagata,” Pancho insisted.

Stavenger turned back to his wall screen. “Phone, get Nobuhiko Yamagata. Top priority.”

Leeza Chaptal was back in her space suit, but this time it was covered in slick, shining oil. Still, she was trembling inside it as the airlock hatch swung open.

The metal cladding of the circular shaft was obviously eaten away down almost to the level of her eyes. But no further, she saw. In the twelve hours since she’d last been in the shaft, the nanomachines had progressed only a meter or so down the shaft.

“I think they’ve stopped,” she said into her helmet microphone.

“How can you be sure?” came the reply in her earphones.

Leeza unhooked the hand laser from her equipment belt. “I’m going to mark a line,” she said, thumbing the laser’s switch. A thin uneven line burned into the steel coating. She realized that her hands were shaking badly.

“Okay,” she said, backing through the hatch and pushing it shut. “I’ll come back in an hour and see if they’ve chewed past my mark.”

She clumped in the ungainly suit back to the next hatch and rapped on it. “Fill the tunnel with air and open up,” she ordered. “I’ve got to pee.”

“They’re leaving,” Edith saw. Still standing in the bridge of Elsinore with the captain and Big George, she saw the ship that had destroyed the habitat accelerate away from the area, dwindling into the eternal darkness, its rocket thrusters glowing hotly.

“Running away from the scene of the crime,” said the captain.

George said nothing, but Edith could see the fury burning in his eyes. Suddenly he shook himself like a man coming out of a trance. Or a nightmare.

He started for the hatch.

“Where are you going?” the captain asked.

“Airlock,” George replied, over his shoulder. Squeezing his bulk through the hatch, he said, “Space suits. Gotta see if anybody’s left alive in Chrysalis.”

Edith knew there couldn’t be any survivors. But George is right, she thought. We’ve got to check.

And she stirred herself, realizing that she had to record this disaster, this atrocity. I’ve got to get this all on camera so the whole human race can see what’s happened here.