Ben Bova - The Silent War

“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.

Three days after the Chrysalis atrocity, the conference took place in Doug Stavenger’s personal office, up in the tower suite that housed Selene’s governing administrators and bureaucrats. It was very small, very private, and extremely well-guarded.

Only four people sat at the circular table in the center of the office: Pancho, Humphries, Nobuhiko Yamagata and Douglas Stavenger himself. No aides, no assistants, no news reporters or anyone else. Selene security officers were stationed outside the door and patrolled the corridors. The entire area had been swept for electronic bugs.

Once the four of them were seated, Stavenger began, “This meeting will be held in strict privacy. Only the four of us will know what we say.” The others nodded.

“None of us will leave this room until we have come to an agreement to stop this war,” Stavenger added, his face totally grim. “There will be no exceptions and no excuses. There’s a lavatory through that door,” he pointed, “but the only way out of here is through the door to the corridor and no one is leaving until I’m satisfied that we’ve reached a workable understanding.”