Ben Bova - The Silent War

She tried to smile. “I guess the price of commodities from the Belt is gonna go up.”

George was surprised at Pancho’s message.

“Go full speed ahead on the nanoprocessing,” she said, her lantern-jawed face deadly serious. “It’s important that we bring down the costs of mining the rocks.”

George studied her image on the wallscreen of his sitting room, thinking, First she says nanoprocessing is gonna knock the bottom outta the market and now she’s hot to trot with it. What’s goin’ on with her?

Pancho’s next sentence explained it, at least partially. “Astro’s got some big expenses coming up, Georgie. Anything we can do to lower our costs will let us squeeze some extra profits out of the mining operations and help us pay for what’s coming up.”

“What’s coming up?” George asked Pancho’s image.

She couldn’t answer, of course, not for an hour or so, but George was afraid he already knew. They’re gonna fight it out, he figured. No more pokin’ here and there, they’re gonna fight a fookin’ full-scale war. And they’re gonna do it right here in the Belt.

“One more thing,” Pancho was going on, with hardly a pause for breath. “It’s going to be more dangerous out there for Lars than ever before. Tell him it’s time for him to come in from the cold. I can give him a new identity, let him live here in Selene if he wants to or even back on Earth. He’s got to get out of the Belt, for his own safety.”

George nodded at Pancho’s image. She looked grave, somber. Like a woman about to go to war, George thought. Then he realized, No. She looks more like a fookin’ avenging angel.

Victoria Ferrer watched Humphries’s reaction to the latest reports from his far-flung intelligence network.

“Astro’s arming ships,” he muttered, staring at the display hovering in midair above his desk. “And she’s pushing the nanoprocessing scheme.”

“She’s preparing to go to war,” Ferrer said. “Against you.”

He looked up at her, his face cold with fury. “With nanoprocessing, Pancho can cut her costs and give Astro an extra layer of profits to finance her war.”

“Then we’ve got to get into nanoprocessing, too.”

“Damned quick,” Humphries snapped.

“The scientist who perfected the process is here in Selene,” Ferrer pointed out. “He came in with Pancho.”

“Hire him away from Astro,” Humphries said immediately.

“He’s not an Astro employee,” she said. “Not legally, at least.”

“Then hire him. Give him whatever he wants. If he won’t come along with us, kidnap him. I want him working for me!”

“I understand,” Ferrer said.

Humphries rubbed his hands together. “By god, with nanoprocessing we’ll cut the costs of mining down to nothing, almost. Down to the cost of transportation, just about.”

“Nanotechnicians don’t come cheap.”

He sneered at her. “Cheap enough. We’ll only need a handful of them. We’ll have those little buggers not only mining the ores out of the asteroids, but refining them into pure metals while they do it. What more could you ask for?”

Ferrer looked less enthusiastic. “Lots of miners are going to be thrown out of work.”

“So what?” Humphries said offhandedly. “More recruits for the mercenaries.”

More cannon fodder, Ferrer thought.

Still in his quarters inside the asteroid Vesta, Dorik Harbin tried to think of the French phrase about the more that things may change, the more they remain the same. Instead, a quatrain from the Rubaiyat came to his mind:

Yesterday, this day’s madness did prepare:

Tomorrow’s silence, triumph or despair;

Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why;

Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

The irony is almost cosmic, Harbin thought. Humphries fires me because I’ve failed to kill Fuchs. Yamagata hires me to lead a squadron of mercenaries. Humphries hires Yamagata’s mercenaries and bases their ships on Vesta. I didn’t have to move, didn’t even have to pack a travel bag. Here I am in the same quarters, lower in rank but higher in pay. All I have to do is lead three ships into battle against Astro Corporation. Fuchs has become a sideshow.

His relationship with Leeza Chaptal had changed, though. She had emerged as Yamagata’s senior officer among the mercenaries hired by Humphries Space Systems. Now she outranked Harbin, and had little time for him. Which was just as well, Harbin thought. He had no enthusiasm for sleeping with a senior officer. It was one thing to take orders from a woman in battle; in bed, it was a totally different matter.

But Harbin had his consolations. In the travel bag that he didn’t have to pack rested a flat gray oblong medical kit that contained a subcutaneous microspray syringe and an array of specially designed medications.

Something for every mood, Harbin thought as he went to the bag and pulled out the kit. Sitting on his bed, he clicked open its lid and examined the vials lined up neatly, each in their clasps. Something to alleviate depression. Something to enhance sexual performance. This one smothers fear. That one speeds reaction times. Each one designed specifically for my metabolism. And Leeza says Yamagata can supply as much as I need.

Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where. He repeated the line over and again in his mind as he took a vial from the neat little row and inserted it into the syringe. Something to make me forget everything, he thought. Something for oblivion.

He rolled up the sleeve of his uniform and pressed the syringe to the bare skin of his forearm. Heard its gentle, soothing, reptilian hiss.

He looked up and saw that the wallscreen was displaying a view from the surface of Vesta. A sliver of bare rock, and then the black emptiness of infinity. Stars upon stars, all silent and grave, staring back at him. A barren wilderness of cold and dark.

The drug started to take effect quickly. Harbin lay back on his bed, thinking, Oh, wilderness were paradise enow.

He closed his eyes and begged the silent stars to keep him from dreaming.

Levi Levinson had never seen such a luxurious restaurant, except in videos. The main eating establishment of Hotel Luna, the Earthview was three levels deep beneath the floor of the crater Alphonsus, big enough to hold a hundred tables covered with heavy damask tablecloths and glittering with silver tableware and sparkling wine glasses and lit by real, actual flickering candles. The spacious room buzzed softly with muted conversations and the barest hint of elegant classical music purring from the overhead speakers. Real, live waiters moved among the tables wearing formal evening clothes. Levinson never gave a thought to the fact that he was wearing his usual coveralls; he had nothing better in his meager wardrobe. Nor did he realize that most of the restaurant’s tables were empty. His eyes went to the wide holoscreens mounted on the walls, each showing a real-time view of Earth, glowing blue and white against the endless blackness of space as it hung in the sky above Alphonsus’s ringwall mountains.

He was more than a quarter-hour early for his appointment with Victoria Ferrer, so the table that the maitre d’ led him to was empty. He sat ogling the well-dressed tourists and executives at the few other occupied tables, while a waiter poured water for him and left a wine list on the table. Levinson was satisfied with the water. He really wanted a beer, but he felt too self-conscious to ask for one.

After so many weeks in Selene, living in an apartment provided by Astro Corporation, Levinson felt a little guilty about accepting an invitation to dine with an executive from the rival Humphries Space Systems. But what the hell, he thought, I’m not an Astro employee and Pancho Lane has just totally ignored me since she brought me here. It’s like she wants me out of the way, hidden like some witness against a crime syndicate back on Earth. I’ve got nothing better to do until the Journal of Nanotechnology publishes my paper. And even there, they’ve been dragging their feet, like they don’t really want to publish it.