Ben Bova - The Silent War

“A peanut,” George said. “Just like what’s-’is-name.”

“Ida,” said Johannson. “Asteroid number 243.”

“Showin’ off your college education, Ossie?” asked George.

Johannson actually blushed.

Pushing past George, Pancho said, “I’ll go out and claim it. Give me something to do while we’re waiting for Lars to show up.”

George turned and ducked through the hatch after her. “I’ll give you a hand, Pancho.”

“I can do it myself,” she said, heading up the narrow passageway toward the main airlock, where the space suits were stored.

“You’ll need help gettin’ into a suit,” George called after her. “I’ll hafta suit up meself, too, y’know.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Safety regs,” George said firmly. “Somebody’s gotta be suited up and ready to go out in case of an emergency.”

Pancho hmmphed but didn’t object. Safety regulations had saved more than one astronaut’s butt, she knew. She allowed George to help her into the suit and check out her seals and systems. Then she helped George and checked him out.

“What’s funny?” George asked as he pulled the fishbowl helmet over his wild red mane.

Pancho hadn’t realized she was grinning. George seemed about to burst his suit’s seams. “Georgie, you look like a red-headed Santa Claus, you know that?”

“Ho, ho, ho,” he answered flatly.

Pancho was ready to step into the airlock when Johannson’s voice came over the ship’s intercom:

“A ship’s approaching,” he called out. “It’s coming up fast.”

“Lasers armed and ready, sir,” said the weapons technician.

Harbin nodded curtly, his eyes focused on the image of Mathilda II on the main screen of Samarkand’s bridge. Nothing else in range except a minor asteroid, some five hundred klicks away.

Samarkand carried two powerful continuous-wave lasers, adapted from the cutting tools the rock rats used, plus a high-energy pulsed weapon capable of blowing a centimeter-sized hole in the metal skin of a spacecraft from a distance of a thousand kilometers.

Mathilda’s crew module was out of position, Harbin saw; it had rotated away from his fast-approaching ship and was partially shielded by the bulk of the propulsion system, engines and big spherical fuel tanks.

“Stand by,” Harbin ordered quietly. The three crew personnel on the bridge with him sat tensely, waiting for the order to fire.

Just a little closer, Harbin said under his breath to the slowly rotating Mathilda. Just turn a little bit more.

There. The crew module was clearly visible.

“Fire,” Harbin said to the weapons tech. To make certain, he pressed the red button on the keypad set into his command chair’s armrest.

“We got her,” he whispered triumphantly.

Pancho was inside the airlock, ready to go out and claim the unnamed asteroid, when she heard a gurgling scream in her earphones and warning sirens begin an ear-piercing howl.

“What’s that?” she yelled into her helmet microphone.

“Dunno,” George’s voice replied. “Sounds like the emergency hatches slammed shut.”

Pancho banged the airlock control panel, stopping its pumps, then reopened the inner hatch. George was in his space suit, peering down the passageway, his shaggy face frowning with worry.

“Can’t get Johannson on the intercom,” he muttered.

Pointing to the control panel on the emergency hatch a few meters up the passageway, Pancho said, “We’ve lost air pressure.”

“Better stay in the suits, then,” said George as he started toward the closed hatch.

Pancho followed him through three hatches, past the ship’s galley and up to the hatch that opened onto the bridge. Red warning lights showed there was no air pressure along the entire way.

“Jesus!” George yelped once he pushed the hatch open.

Looking over the shoulder of George’s suit, Pancho saw that the bridge’s forward window had been punctured with a fist-sized hole and the control panel was spattered, dripping with bright red blood. Johannson was slumped in his seat, arms hanging, blood-soaked head lolling on his shoulders. George went to him and turned the pilot’s chair around slightly. Johannson’s eyes had blown out, and blood was still cascading from his open mouth.

For the first time in her long career as an astronaut and executive of a space-based corporation, Pancho vomited inside her fishbowl helmet.

“Hit!” said the weapons tech.

Harbin saw that they had indeed hit the crew module dead-on, probably at the bridge. Good.

“Slow to match the target’s velocity,” he commanded. “Move in closer.”

Now to slice the ship to pieces and make sure no one survives.

Suddenly the lights on the bridge went out. As the dim emergency lights winked on, Harbin saw that his pilot’s control board was glaring with red lights.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded.

“Malfunction in the weapons pod,” said the pilot, his fingers playing over the console keypads. “Electrical failure and—”

The lights blinked. This time Harbin felt the ship shudder slightly.

“We’ve been hit!” he snapped.

“Mathilda isn’t firing at us,” the navigator said, staring at the main screen. “That vessel isn’t armed. It’s only a—”

Samarkand lurched noticeably.

“We’re spinning!” the pilot shouted. “Number two propulsion tank’s been ruptured!”

“They’re firing at us,” Harbin shouted.

“But they can’t!”

“Somebody’s firing at us!” he insisted. “Get us out of here! Now!”

“I’m trying to bring the ship under control,” the pilot yelled, her voice edgy, nearing panic.

We should get into our suits, Harbin knew. But there’s no time for that now.

“Get us out of here!” he repeated, trying to sound calm, measured.

That asteroid, he realized. Somebody’s on that asteroid and shooting at us. It must be Fuchs.

Lars Fuchs stood behind his pilot’s chair, legs spread slightly, fists on his hips, eyes blazing with anger as he studied the display screen. They fired on George’s ship, he said to himself. Why? Did they think I was aboard? Or were they trying to kill Pancho? Probably both.

“The enemy is escaping,” Nodon said. He spoke softly, keeping his tone neutral, making as certain as he could not to anger Fuchs.

“Let them go,” Fuchs said. “The dog is whipped, no sense daring him to turn back and snap at us.”

None of the crew on the bridge raised any objection.

“Sanja,” Fuchs said to the man on the communications console, “see if you can contact the ship they attacked.”

Within a few minutes Big George’s face appeared on the screen, his brick-red hair and beard still stuffed inside the fishbowl helmet of his space suit.

“We lost one man,” George said grimly. “No damage to the ship’s systems.”

Past George’s broad shoulder Fuchs could see space-suited personnel smearing epoxy across the bridge’s forward window.

“We’ll have air pressure back in half an hour, maybe less,” said George.

“Pancho is with you?” Fuchs asked.

“Yep. She’s okay.”

“You said she wanted to speak with me.”

“I’ll get her on the line,” said George.

Fuchs waited impatiently, fighting the urge to pace the narrow confines of Nautilus’s bridge. Within a few minutes Pancho’s face replaced George’s on his screen. She was apparently in a privacy compartment, still in her space suit.

“He tried to assassinate you,” Fuchs said without any preliminaries.

“Humphries?” she replied.

“Who else.”

“Maybe he was trying to get you,” Pancho said.