Ben Bova - The Silent War

She stared at the hologram imagery again. Flickering red dots representing HSS ships were spread through the Belt, with a particular clustering around Vesta. But a thinner trickle of red dots was plying the lanes between the Belt and the Earth/Moon vicinity.

They’ve gotta bring the goods back here, Pancho saw. That’s the whole point of mining the rocks. If we can knock off their ships coming Earthward, we can hit Humphries in the pocketbook, strangle his cash flow, cut his profits down to nothing.

She sat up straight in the desk chair and said aloud, “That’s the way to do it! Let him have the Belt for now. Stop him from bringing the ores to market.”

We don’t need naval tactics, she realized. We don’t need battles between fleets of warships. What we need is more like a gang of pirates. Like the old Sea Hawks from Queen Elizabeth I’s time. Privateers. Pirates.

And she knew just the man who could lead such a campaign. Lars Fuchs.

“All of them?” Humphries asked, as if the news was too good to be true.

Vicki Ferrer was not smiling, but it was clear from the pleased expression on her face that she was happy to be able to bring her boss a positive report.

“Every Astro ship was destroyed,” she repeated.

They were in the big library/bar on the ground floor of Humphries’s mansion, alone except for the robot bartender, which stood at its post, gleaming stainless steel reflecting the ceiling lights.

“You’re sure?” Humphries asked.

“The report came directly from the Yamagata team. Their idea about using the rocks worked perfectly. The Astro fleet charged right into them. No survivors.”

“This calls for champagne!” Humphries strode to the bar. The robot did not move. Nettled slightly at the machine’s obtuseness, Humphries called out, “Bartender! Champagne!” The gleaming dome-topped robot trundled sideways along the bar and stopped precisely at the wine cooler. Two slim arms extruded from its cylindrical body, opened the cooler, and pulled out a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. It trundled back to Humphries and held up the bottle so he could inspect the label.

“Fine,” said Humphries. “Open it and let me sample it.”

“How does it find the right bottle?” Ferrer asked, coming over to sit on the stool next to him. Even though it was dinner time for most people, she was still in her office attire, a miniskirted baby pink suit that hugged her curves artfully.

“There’s a sensor in each hand,” said Humphries, watching the dumb machine gripping the cork. If he drops that bottle, Humphries thought, I’ll run him through the recycler.

The cork came out with a satisfactorily loud pop and the robot set two champagne flutes on the bar top in front of Humphries, then poured a thimbleful of wine for him to taste.

Humphries tasted, nodded, told the robot to pour. Once it had, he lifted his glass to Ferrer and toasted, “To victory!”

She made a smile and murmured, “To victory.”

“We’ve got them on the run now,” Humphries said happily. “I’m going to drive Astro completely out of the Belt!”

Ferrer smiled again and sipped. But she was thinking, Thirteen ships destroyed. How many people did we kill? How many more have to die before this is over?

Pancho could not locate Fuchs. For two days she had her people search for him. They learned that under the false identity she had provided, Fuchs had spent a few days in his native Switzerland, then flown to Selene.

“He’s here in Selene?” she asked her security chief.

The man looked uncomfortable. “Apparently.”

“Find him,” she snapped. “Wherever the hell he is, find him. You got twenty-four hours.”

She had just returned to her suite when the phone told her the report on Fuchs came in. She glanced at her wristwatch. Eight minutes before midnight, Pancho saw. They’re working overtime.

The suite’s decor was set to Camelot, Pancho’s fantasy of what King Arthur’s fabled castle might have been like. She sat herself on one of the sofas in her bedroom and told the phone to play the report. Through a mullioned window she could see knights jousting on a perfect greensward beneath a cloudless blue sky, watched by a cheering throng standing before tented pavilions complete with colorful pennants that fluttered in the breeze of an eternal springtime.

The young man whose hologram image appeared in the middle of the room might have been one of knights of the Round Table, Pancho thought idly. He was a good-looking blond, strong shoulders, honest open face with sky-blue eyes, his hair stylishly long enough for ringlets to curl around the collar of his jacket. He was sitting at a desk in what appeared to be a smallish office somewhere in the Astro headquarters. The data line hovering to one side of the image identified him as Frederic Karstein, Astro security department.

Pancho listened to the brief report with growing incredulity. And annoyance.

“You mean he was right here in the Hotel Luna?” she asked the image.

The image flickered momentarily. Then the handsome Frederic Karstein said, “Ms. Lane, I’m live now. I can answer your questions in real time, ma’am.”

“Are you telling me that Fuchs was living just a couple hundred meters from my own quarters?” she demanded.

“Yes, ma’am, apparently he was.”

“And where is he now?” Karstein shrugged his broad shoulders. “We don’t know. He seems to have disappeared.”

“Disappeared? How can he disappear?”

“If we knew that, Ms. Lane, we’d probably know where he is.”

’You can’t just disappear! Selene’s not that big, and the whole doggone place is under surveillance all the time.”

Karstein looked embarrassed. “We’re certain he hasn’t left Selene. We’ve checked the passenger lists for all the outgoing flights for the past two weeks, and examined the surveillance camera records.”

“So he’s someplace here in Selene?”

“It would appear so.”

Pancho huffed. “All right. Stay on this. I want him found, and right away, too.”

“We’ll do our best, Ms. Lane.”

She cut the connection and Karstein’s image winked out. Dumb blond, Pancho groused to herself.

“Privateers?” Jake Wanamaker asked, his rasping voice croaking out the word. “You mean, like pirates?”

Pancho had invited him to a breakfast meeting in her suite. They sat in the tight little alcove off the kitchen, but the holowalls made it seem as if they were outdoors, beneath a graceful elm tree, with softly rolling grassy hills in the distance and the morning sun brightening a clear sky. She could hear birds chirping happily and almost felt a cool breeze ruffling their table linen.

Pancho took a sip of grapefruit juice, then replied, “Yep. Yo-ho-ho and all that stuff. Cut off Humphries’s ships as they’re bringing their payloads here to the Moon. Or to Earth.”

Wanamaker took a considerable bite out of the sticky bun he was holding in one big hand, chewed thoughtfully for a few moments, then swallowed. “They’ve beaten the crap out of us in the Belt, sure enough. It’ll be some time before we can build up enough forces to challenge them again.”

“But a few ships operating closer to home, outside the Belt…” Pancho let the suggestion hang in the air between them.

Wanamaker muttered, “Cut HSS’s pipeline to the market. Hit Humphries in the pocketbook.”

“That’s where it’d hurt him the most.”

After washing down his cake with a gulp of black coffee, Wanamaker said, “Set up a blockade.”

“Right.”

Absently wiping his sticky fingers with his napkin, Wanamaker broke into a wicked grin. “We wouldn’t even need crewed ships for that. Just automate some small birds and park them in wide orbits around the Earth/Moon system.”