Ben Bova - The Silent War

Humphries bristled. “What gives you the right to—”

“Several thousand dead bodies scattered across the Asteroid Belt,” Stavenger snapped. “I’m representing them. You are going to stop this damned war or you are going to starve to death right here at this table. There is no third option.”

Yamagata smiled uneasily. “I came here voluntarily, at your request, Mr. Stavenger. This is no way to treat a guest.”

Gesturing in Pancho’s direction, Stavenger replied, “Ms. Lane was your guest at the Nairobi base at Shackleton crater, wasn’t she? And you damned near killed her.”

Nobuhiko’s brows knit momentarily. Then he said, “I could call for help, you know.”

Without any change in his expression, Stavenger said, “There’s no way to get a message out of this room. I’ve had it shielded. Your handhelds won’t get a signal past these walls.”

Pancho leaned back in her chair and stretched her legs beneath the table. “Okay, then. Let’s start talking.”

Harbin had spent the three days since the attack on Chrysalis drifting in and out of a drug-induced stupor. His executive officer ran the ship while he slept and dreamed eerily distorted fantasies that always ended in blood and death.

By the time they reached Vesta, he had run out of medications and was beginning to sober up.

He was washing his bearded, pouchy-eyed face when someone tapped at his door.

“Enter,” he called, mopping his face with a towel.

The exec slid the door back and stepped into his compartment. Harbin realized the bed was a sweaty, tangled mess, and the cramped compartment smelled like the hot insides of an overused gym shoe.

“We’re about to enter a parking orbit around Vesta, sir,” she said stiffly.

“The base is back in operation?” he asked. As he spoke the words he realized that he didn’t care if the base was operating again. It meant nothing to him, one way or the other.

“Yes, sir. The nanomachine attack was limited to the surface installations, for the most part. No one was killed or even injured.”

Harbin knew from the look on her face that there was more to come. “What else?”

“I have received orders to relieve you of command. Mr. Humphries personally called and demanded to know who was responsible for the destruction of the Chrysalis habitat. When he found out it was you he went into a rage. Apparently he knows you from an earlier experience.”

Harbin felt as if he were watching this scene from someplace far away. As if he was no longer in his body, but floating free, drifting through nothingness, alone, untouched, untouchable.

“Go on,” he heard himself say.

“He wants you brought to Selene to stand trial for war crimes,” the exec said, her words stiff, brittle.

“War crimes.”

“The Chrysalis massacre. He also said that you murdered an employee of his, several years ago.”

“I see.”

“I’ve been ordered to relieve you of command and confine you to your quarters. Sir.”

Harbin almost smiled at her. “Then you should follow your orders.”

She turned and grasped the door handle. Before she stepped through the doorway, though, she said, “It’s on all the news nets. They’ve been playing it for the past two days.”

She left him, sliding the door shut. There was no lock on the door. It didn’t matter, Harbin thought. Even if it were locked the accordionfold was so flimsy he could push through it easily. If he wanted to.

Harbin stood in his musty, messy compartment for a moment, then shrugged. The moving finger writes, he thought. Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

Why can’t I feel anything? He asked himself. I’m like a block of wood. A statue of ice. The Chrysalis massacre, she called it. Massacre?

Shrugging his shoulders, he told the wall screen to display a news broadcast.

A woman’s shocked, hollow-eyed face appeared on the screen, her name—Edie Elgin—spelled out beneath her image. She wore no makeup, her hair was disheveled, her voice little more than a shaky whisper.

“… been working for several hours now,” she was saying, “trying to determine if there are any survivors. So far, none have been found.”

The scene suddenly changed to show the shattered remains of the Chrysalis habitat: broken, crumpled cylinders of metal glinting against the blackness of space, jagged pieces floating nearby, bodies drifting.

And Edie Elgin’s voice, choked with sorrow and horror, nearly sobbing, was saying, “Nearly eleven hundred people were living in the habitat when it was attacked. They had no weapons, no defenses. They were methodically slaughtered by their unidentified attacker.”

Harbin sank down onto his bed, staring at the screen. The icy armor that had surrounded him began to melt away. For the first time in many days he felt an emotion. He felt pain.

“Yamagata Corporation is not responsible for the Chrysalis tragedy,” Nobuhiko said sternly. “Our employees were working under a contract with Humphries Space Systems.”

“I never ordered them to attack the habitat,” Humphries replied, with some heat. “I just wanted them to find Fuchs.”

Pancho said, “Lars is somewhere in the Belt by now. You’ll never find him.”

“Yes I will. He tried to kill me!”

“That wasn’t my doing,” Pancho said.

Stavenger slapped a palm on the table, silencing them. “I don’t care who did what to whom. The past is over and done with. We’re here to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. I want an end to this fighting.”

“Sure,” Humphries said easily. “I’m willing to stop it. But I want Fuchs’s head on a platter.”

“What you want,” said Pancho, “is total control of the Belt and all its resources.”

“Isn’t that what you want, too?” Humphries countered. Turning to Yamagata, he added, “And you, as well?”

Keeping his face expressionless, Nobuhiko replied, “Now that you have introduced nanomachine processing to mining the asteroids, there is good economic sense in having one corporation establish a monopoly in the Belt.”

“But which corporation?” Humphries asked.

The three of them stared at each other.

“Wait a minute,” Stavenger interrupted. “You’re all forgetting something that’s important.”

They turned toward him.

“There’s more to mining the asteroids than making profits,” he said. “More involved in this than acquiring power.”

Humphries smirked. “I can’t imagine what it could be.”

But Pancho’s face lit up. “It’s what Dan Randolph wanted in the first place! Back when we made the flight out to the Belt in the old Starpower!”

“And what was that?” Nobuhiko asked. “To help the people on Earth,” said Pancho. “Help ’em recover from the greenhouse cliff. Bring ’em the raw materials for rebuilding. Bring ’em the fuels for fusion power generators. That’s what Dan started out to do!”

“And that’s what you’ve all lost sight of,” said Stavenger.

“Well, that’s our principal market, I agree,” Humphries said. “But that doesn’t mean—”

Pancho cut him off. “We oughtta be selling the ores from the asteroids at the lowest possible price. And the fusion fuels, too.”

“And building more solar power satellites,” Stavenger added.

“To help rebuild Japan,” Yamagata murmured.

“To help rebuild the world,” said Pancho.

Stavenger smiled gently. “And to help expand human habitats on the Moon and elsewhere, in deep space.”

“We can do that!” Pancho agreed eagerly.

“But not with the three of you cutting each other’s throats,” Stavenger said.