The Rock Rats gt-11

by Ben Bova

  “Ready,” he said.

  George glanced at the control board, leaning slightly canted against the curving bulkhead of the cargo bay. All the lights in the green, he saw. Good. Looking up through the open cargo bay hatch he could see the distant speck of the attacking ship, a cluster of gleaming sunlit crescents against the dark depths of infinity.

  “Fire!” George said, leaning on the red button so hard he forced himself up off the metal deck. He raised a gloved hand to the overhead and pushed gently, felt his boots touch the deck plates again.

  The cutting laser was a continuous wave device, designed to slice through rock. Its aiming system was so primitive that George had to sight the thing by eye. Its infrared beam was invisible, and the red beam of the low-power guide laser disappeared in the emptiness of space. In the vacuum of the cargo bay there was no sound, not even a vibration that George could feel.

  “Are we hitting him?” Nodon asked, his voice pitched high.

  “How the fook should I know?” George snapped. “I’m not even sure the fookin’ kludge is workin’.”

  “It’s working! Look at the panel.” It’s working, all right, George saw. But is it doing any good?

  The first hint that Starpower was firing back at him came when Harbin’s control board suddenly sprung a half-dozen amber warning lights. Without hesitation, he hit the maneuvering jets to jink Shanidar sideways. It ruined his own shot, but it moved him out of harm’s way. Temporarily.

  Frowning at the displays, Harbin saw that one of his propellant tanks had been ruptured. He looked up at Starpower hanging out there and saw the big hatch of the ship’s cargo bay was open. They must have a laser in there, probably a cutting laser they use for mining. And they’re shooting at me with it.

  He maneuvered Shanidar away from the open cargo hatch while checking his ship’s systems. Fortunately, the propellant tank they holed was almost empty anyway. Harbin could afford to jettison it. Yet as he did, he began to worry that they might hit remaining tanks before he had the chance to finish them off.

  Staring at the dumbbell shape of Starpower rotating slowly against the distant, uncaring stars, Harbin’s chiseled features twisted into a cruel smile.

  “Kill or be killed,” he whispered to himself.

  CHAPTER 30

  It took only a few days of running Helvetia Ltd. by herself for Amanda to come to the conclusion that she didn’t need to hire a replacement for Niles Ripley. I can do the systems management job myself, she realized.

  With the habitat more than halfway finished, what was needed was a general overseer, a straw boss who understood the various engineering fields that contributed to the ongoing construction program. Amanda had learned a good deal of the technical skills in her training and experience as an astronaut. The only question in her mind was whether she had the strength, the backbone, to boss a gaggle of construction technicians.

  Most of them were men, and most of the men were young and full of testosterone. In general, men outnumbered women in Ceres by six to one. The balance on the construction project actually was better: three men to each woman on the team, Amanda saw as she carefully reviewed the personnel files.

  Sitting at her desk, she thought, If Lars were here there would be no problem. But if Lars were here he would take over the task, or hire someone to do it. Shaking her head, Amanda told herself, It’s up to you, old girl. You’ve got to do this for Lars, for all the people living here in Ceres.

  Looking into the mirror over the dresser of their one-room quarters, Amanda realized, No. Not merely for them. You’ve got to do this for yourself.

  She got to her feet and surveyed herself in the mirror. It’s the same old problem: the men will see me as a sex object and the women will see me as competition. That has some advantages, of course, but in this case the drawbacks outweigh the advantages. Time for baggy sweaters and shapeless slacks. Minimal makeup and keep your hair pinned up.

  I can do it, she told herself. I can make Lars proud of what I accomplish.

  She set a goal for herself: I’ll handle this project so well that when Lars returns he’ll want me to stay with it to completion.

  Despite her best control, though, she could not avoid hearing a fearful voice in her mind that said, if Lars returns.

  “He’s coming closer!” Nodon shouted.

  Wincing inside his bubble helmet, George hollered, “I can see that! And I can fookin’ hear you, too. No need to yell.”

  The two spacesuited men tugged at the big aiming mirrors of the cutting laser, clumsy in their suits as they tried to slew the coupled pair of copper slabs on their mounting. The mirror assembly moved smoothly enough; pointing it precisely was the problem. It had been designed for slicing ore samples out of asteroids, not hitting pinpoint targets that were moving.

  “Lars, you’ve gotta rotate us so we can keep ’im in our sights,” George called to the bridge.

  “I’m doing my best,” Fuchs snapped. “I’ve got to do it all by hand. The steering program wasn’t designed for this.”

  George tried to squint along the output mirrors’ focusing sight and bumped the curving front of his helmet against the device. Cursing fluently, he sighted the laser as best he could.

  “Hold us there,” he said to Fuchs. “Bastard’s coming straight at us now.”

  “Tell me when to fire,” Nodon said, hunching over the control board.

  “Now,” George said. “Fire away.”

  He strained his eyes to see if the beam was having any effect on the approaching ship. We can’t miss him, not at this range, George thought. Yet nothing seemed to be happening. The attacking ship bored in closer. Suddenly it jerked sideways and down.

  “He’s maneuvering!” Nodon stated the obvious.

  “Shut down the laser,” George commanded. To Fuchs, up on the bridge, he yelled, “Turn us, dammit! How’m I gonna hit him if we can’t keep the fookin’ laser pointin’ at him?”

  Another string of red lights sprang up across Harbin’s control panel. The propellant tanks. He’s sawing away at them.

  He was in his spacesuit now. Once he’d realized that Star-power was shooting back at him he’d put on the suit before bringing Shanidar back into the battle.

  His steering program was going crazy. The swine had hit a nearly-full tank, and propellant spurting from the rip in it was acting as a thruster jet, pushing him sideways and down from the direction he wanted to go. He had to override the unwanted thrust manually; no time to reprogram the steering to compensate for it. Besides, by the time he could reprogram the stupid computer, the tank would be empty and there’d be no more thrust to override.

  In a way, though, the escaping propellant helped. It jinked Shanidar in an unexpected burst, making it difficult for the enemy to keep their laser trained on him.

  But I can’t afford to lose propellant! Harbin raged silently. They’re killing me.

  The amphetamines he sometimes took before going into battle were of no use to him now. He was keyed up enough, stimulated to a knife-edge of excitement. What he needed was something to calm him down a little, stretch out time without dulling his reflexes. He had a store of such medications aboard his ship. But inside his spacesuit, his cache of drugs was out of reach, useless to him.

  I don’t need drugs, he told himself. I can beat them on my own.

  He called up the highest magnification his optical sensors could give and focused on the area where he’d briefly seen the red telltale light of their guide laser. That’s where the danger is. If I can see the beam of their aiming laser, they can hit me with the infrared cutter.

  Swiftly, he came to a plan of action. Fire the thrusters so that I jet up and across their field of view. As soon as I see the light of their guide laser I fire at them. I can get off a pulse and then be up past their field of view before they can fire back. Once I’ve disabled their laser I can chop them to pieces at my leisure.

  With the semicircle of display screens curving around him, Fuchs saw the attacking space
craft spurt down and away from them, a ghostly issue of gas glinting wanly in the light of the distant Sun. He could see a long thin slit slashed across one of the ship’s bulbous propellant tanks.

  “You’ve hit him, George!” Fuchs said into his helmet microphone. “I can see it!”

  George’s reply sounded testy. “So swing us around so’s I can hit ’im again!”

  Fuchs tapped at the control keyboard, wishing he was more adept at maneuvering a spacecraft. Starpower was not built for graceful turns. Pancho was right, he remembered. We turn slow and ugly.

  In the cargo bay, George stared out at emptiness.

  “Where the fook is he?” he wailed.

  “Still below your line of sight,” came Fuchs’s answer in his earphones.

  “So turn us toward him!”

  Nodon said, “The cooling system needs more time to recover. We have inadequate coolant flow.”

  “Just need a few seconds, mate,” said George, “once we get ’im back in our sights.”

  He stepped up to the lip of the cargo hatch and looked down in the direction he had last seen the attacking vessel.

  “There he is!” George saw. “Comin’ our way again.”

  The attacker was zooming up swiftly. George turned back toward the laser. “Fire her up!” he yelled to Nodon.

  “Firing!” Nodon shouted back.

  A blinding flash of light stunned George. He felt himself toppling head over heels and then something slammed into him so hard it spun him like an unbalanced gyroscope. Through blurry, tear-filled eyes he saw a spacesuited arm fly past, geysering blood where it had been severed, just above the elbow, rotating over and over as it dwindled out of his view. He heard someone bellowing in pain and rage and realized it was himself.

  I’m a dead man, Harbin told himself.

  Strangely, the knowledge did not seem to frighten him. He sat back in his spacesuit, relaxed now that the tension of battle had drained out of him.

  They’ve killed me, he thought. I wonder if they know it.

  His plan to silence the enemy’s laser had worked, after a fashion. He’d popped up into their field of view and fired off a full-energy burst as soon as he saw the red dot of their guide laser. They couldn’t have revved up their laser in time to hit him, he was certain of that.

  Not unless they already had their laser cooking and he’d walked right into their beam. Which is exactly what had happened.

  Harbin knew he had knocked out their laser with his one quick shot. But in doing so he had sailed Shanidar across the continuous beam of their mining laser. It had carved a long gash through two of the remaining propellant tanks and even sliced deeply into the habitation module itself.

  I’ll have to stay inside this damned suit, he growled to himself. For how long? Until the air runs out. Hours, perhaps a day or so. No longer than that.

  He pulled himself out of the command chair, thinking, Of course, I could tap into the ship’s air tanks. If the recycler hasn’t been damaged, the air could last for months, even a year or more. I’d starve before I asphyxiated.

  But what would be the point? I’m drifting, too low on propellant to reach a tanker or any other help. Leaning forward slightly so he could check the control displays through his suit helmet, he saw that the ship’s power generator was unscathed. He would have enough electrical power to keep his systems going. He could even patch the hab module’s hull, bring the air pressure back to normal, and get out of the suit.

  To what avail? To drift helplessly through the Belt until I starve.

  You could call the nearest tanker and ask for a retrieval, he told himself. The computer has their positions in its memory and you could contact them with a tight-beam laser signal.

  Would they come to my rescue? Not before they checked with HSS headquarters. Grigor will not be happy to learn that I failed to eliminate Starpower. By now Fuchs and his friends are probably screaming their heads off to the IAA. Would Grigor tell them to rescue me, or would he decide that it’s better if I just quietly die?

  Quietly. Harbin smiled. That’s the key. Do not go gentle into that good night, he quoted silently. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  On a clear channel, he put through a call to Grigor.

  CHAPTER 31

  George awoke to see Fuchs and Nodon staring down at him, Fuchs looking grim, irritated. Nodon was wide-eyed with fright. Strange to see him with those fierce carvings in his face looking so scared, George thought.

  “So I’m not in heaven, then,” he said, trying to grin. His voice sounded strained, terribly weak. “Not yet,” Fuchs growled.

  George realized he was lying in one of Starpower’s privacy cubicles, his spacesuit removed. Either they’ve got me tied down or I’m so fookin’ feeble I can’t move. “What happened?” he asked.

  Nodon glanced at Fuchs, then licked his lips and said, “The laser blast shattered our laser. The mirror assembly broke loose and… and took off your arm.”

  He said the last words all in a rush, as if ashamed of them. George looked down, surprised at how much effort it took to twist his head, and saw his left arm ended just short of the elbow. The stump was swathed in plastic spray-bandage.

  He felt more fuddled than shocked. Just the barest tendril of pain, now that he thought about it. Not scared. No worries. They must have me doped up pretty good.

  “The rest of your arm is in the freezer,” Fuchs said. “We’re heading back to Ceres at high thrust. I will alert Kris Cardenas.” George closed his eyes and remembered seeing the spacesuited arm spiraling out the cargo hatch.

  He looked at Nodon. “You shut off the bleedin’, huh?”

  The younger man bobbed his head up and down.

  “And closed off the suit arm,” George added.

  Fuchs said, “He also went out EVA and recovered your arm. I thought for a few minutes that we would lose him altogether.”

  “Did you now?” George said, feeling stupid, muffled. “Thanks, mate.”

  Nodon looked embarrassed. He changed the subject. “You must have hit the other ship a damaging blow. It left at high speed.”

  “That’s good.”

  “We’ll be in Ceres in another fourteen hours,” said Fuchs.

  “That’s good.” George couldn’t think of anything else to say. Somewhere, in a deep recess of his mind, he knew that he should be screaming. Prosthetics be damned, I’ve lost my fookin’ arm!

  But the drugs muted his emotional pain as well as the physical. Nothing really seemed to matter. All George wanted was for them to leave him alone and let him sleep.

  Fuchs seemed to understand, thank god. “You rest now,” he said, his tight slash of a mouth turned down bitterly. “I have a long report to send to the IAA as soon as we can repair one of the antennas.”

  “Not this Fuchs person again,” complained Hector Wilcox.

  Erek Zar and Francesco Tomasselli were sitting in front of Wilcox’s desk, Zar looking decidedly uncomfortable, Tomasselli almost quivering with righteous indignation.

  Wilcox’s office was imposing, as befitted the Counsel General of the International Astronautical Authority. Slim, sleek, impeccably clothed in a somber charcoal business suit and dapper pearl-gray tie that nicely set off his silvery hair and trim moustache, Wilcox looked every centimeter the successful administrator, which he believed himself to be. He had arbitrated many a corporate wrangle, directed teams of bureaucrats to generate safety regulations and import duties on space manufactures, and climbed the slippery slope of the IAA’s legal department until he sat at its very top, unchallenged and hailed by his fellow bureaucrats as an example of patience, intelligence and—above all—endurance.

  Now he had a charge of piracy to deal with, and it unsettled him to his very core.

  “He sent in a complete report,” Tomasselli said, lean and eager, his dark eyes flashing.

  Zar interrupted. “Fuchs claims his ship was attacked.”

  “He reports,” Tomaselli resumed, laying emphasis on
the word, “not only that his own ship was attacked, but another as well, and one of the men seriously injured.”

  “By a pirate vessel.”

  Zar’s ruddy, fleshy face colored deeper than usual. “That’s what he claims.”

  “And the evidence?”

  “His ship is damaged,” Tomasselli said before Zar could open his mouth. “He is bringing the injured man to Ceres.”

  “Which ships are we talking about?” Wilcox asked, clear distaste showing on his lean, patrician face.

  Zar put out a hand to silence his underling. “Fuchs’s ship is named Starpower. The other ship that he claims was attacked is Waltzing Matilda.”

  “Is that one on its way to Ceres, too?”

  “No,” Tomasselli jumped in. “They had to abandon it. The three of them are coming in on Starpower: Fuchs and the two men from Waltzing Matilda.”

  Wilcox gave the Italian a sour look. “And Fuchs has charged Humphries Space Systems with piracy?”

  “Yes,” said both men simultaneously.

  Wilcox drummed his fingers on his desktop. He looked out his window at the St. Petersburg waterfront. He wished he were in Geneva, or London, or anywhere except here in this office with these two louts and this ridiculous charge of piracy. Piracy! In the twenty-first century! It was ludicrous, impossible. Those rock rats out in the Asteroid Belt have their private feuds and now they’re trying to drag the IAA into it.

  “I suppose we’ll have to investigate,” he said gloomily.

  “Fuchs has registered a formal charge,” said Tomasselli. “He has requested a hearing.”

  Which I will have to preside over, Wilcox said to himself. I’ll be a laughingstock, at the very least.

  “He should arrive at Ceres in a few hours,” Zar said.

  Wilcox looked at the man’s unhappy face, then turned his gaze to the eager, impetuous Tomasselli.

  “You must go to Ceres,” he said, pointing a long, manicured finger at the Italian.