The Rock Rats gt-11

by Ben Bova

  “But it’s what you’ve been telling me to do all along,” Joyce reminded him.

  “Yeah,” he admitted, crestfallen. “I just didn’t think you’d take my advice so literally.”

  Joyce stayed with the executive only long enough to win a position at HSS’s corporate offices in Selene. She left the tired old Earth at last, and moved to the Moon.

  CHAPTER 39

  Two days passed.

  Amanda spent the time trying to find out what her husband was up to, to no avail. It was clear to her that Lars was planning something; he was putting together some scheme to fight back against Humphries. But he would not tell her a word of it.

  Lars is a different man, she knew. I hardly recognize him. He’s like a caged animal, pacing, waiting, planning, looking for a way to break free. He’s dead set on wreaking vengeance on the people who looted his warehouse and killed Inga, but he won’t reveal his thinking to me.

  In bed he relaxed a little, but still he kept his own counsel. “The only law out here is the law we enforce for ourselves,” he said in the darkness as he lay next to her. “If we don’t fight back he’ll turn us all into his slaves.”

  “Lars, he’s hired trained mercenaries. Professional killers,” Amanda pleaded.

  “Scum,” her husband answered. “I know how to deal with scum.”

  “They’ll kill you!”

  He turned to her, and she could feel the heat radiating from his body. “Amanda, my darling, they are going to kill me anyway. That’s what he wants. Humphries wants me dead and he won’t be satisfied until I’m killed and you’re at his mercy.”

  “But if you’d only—”

  “Better for me to strike at him when and where he doesn’t expect it,” Fuchs said, reaching for her. “Otherwise, we just wait here like sheep ready to be slaughtered.”

  “But what are you going to do? What do you—”

  He silenced her with a finger on her lips. “Better that you don’t know, my darling. You can’t be any part of this.”

  Then he made love to her ardently, furiously. She reveled in his passion, but she found that not even the wildest sex could divert him from his aim. He was going to attack HSS, attack Humphries, extract vengeance for the killings that had been perpetrated. He was going to get himself killed, she was certain.

  His singlemindedness frightened Amanda to the depths of her being. Nothing can move him a centimeter away from this, she realized. He’s rushing toward his own death.

  The morning of the third day she found an incoming message from IAA headquarters on Earth. A ship had been dispatched to Ceres, carrying a squad of Peacekeeper troops. Their assignment was to arrest Lars Fuchs and return him to Earth for trial on a charge of piracy.

  Fuchs smiled grimly when she showed him the message.

  “Piracy.” He practically spat the word. “He destroys ships and loots and murders and they say I have no proof. Me they accuse of piracy.”

  “Go with them,” Amanda urged. “I’ll go with you. You can tell them that you were in a state of emotional distress. Surely they’ll understand—”

  “With Humphries pulling the strings?” he snapped. “They’ll hang me.”

  It was hopeless, Amanda admitted.

  Fuchs sat in the empty Helvetia warehouse, going over his plan with Nodon.

  “It all hinges on the people you’ve recruited,” he said.

  Nodon dipped his chin once in acknowledgment.

  The two men were sitting at the desk just off the entrance to the warehouse, in a pool of light from a single overhead fluorescent shining in the otherwise darkened cave. The shelves were empty. No one else was there. Beyond the entrance, the tunnel led in a slight downward slope toward the living quarters and life support equipment; in the other direction, to the HSS warehouse and the reception area where incoming personnel and freight arrived and outgoing flights departed.

  “You’re certain these men are reliable?” Fuchs asked for the twelfth time that evening.

  “Yes,” Nodon replied patiently. “Men and women both; most of them are from families I have known for many years. They are honorable persons and will do what you command.”

  “Honorable,” Fuchs murmured. Honor meant that a person would take your money and commit mayhem, even murder, to earn that pay. I’m hiring mercenary killers, he told himself. Just as Humphries has. To fight evil you have to do evil things yourself.

  “They understand what they must do?”

  Nodon allowed himself a rare smile. “I have explained it all to them many times. They may not speak European languages very well, but they understand what I have told them.”

  Fuchs nodded, almost satisfied. Through Nodon he had hired six Asians, four men and two women. Pancho had allowed them to ride to Ceres on an Astro freighter, and now they waited aboard the half-finished habitat orbiting the asteroid. As far as Pancho or anyone else was concerned, they had been recruited to restart construction of the habitat. Only Fuchs and Nodon—and the six themselves—knew better.

  “All right,” Fuchs said, struggling against the surge of doubts and worries that churned in his guts. “At midnight, then.”

  “Midnight,” Nodon agreed.

  With a sardonic smile, Fuchs added, “We’ve got to get this over and done with before the Peacekeeper troops arrive.”

  “We will,” Nodon said confidently.

  Yes, Fuchs thought, this will be over and done with in a few hours, one way or the other.

  The nearest thing to a restaurant on Ceres was the Pub, where mechanical food dispensers standing off in one corner offered packaged snacks and even microwavable full meals, of a sort.

  Fuchs made a point of taking Amanda out to dinner that night. The Pub was usually noisy but this particular evening the crowd was hushed; everyone seemed tense with expectation.

  That worried Fuchs. Had news of his planned attack leaked out? Humphries’s people could be waiting for him; he could be leading his men into a trap. He mulled over all the possibilities as he picked listlessly at his dinner.

  Amanda watched him with worried eyes. “You haven’t been eating right ever since you came back from Selene,” she said, her tone more concerned than accusatory.

  “No, I suppose I haven’t.” He tried to make a careless shrug. “I sleep well, though. Thanks to you.”

  Even in the dim lighting he could see her cheeks flush. “Don’t try to change the subject, Lars.” But she was smiling as she spoke.

  “Not at all. I merely—”

  “Do you mind if I sit with you?”

  They looked up and saw Kris Cardenas holding a dinner tray in both hands.

  “No, of course not,” said Amanda. “Do join us.”

  Cardenas put her tray on their table. “The place is crowded tonight,” she said as she sat on the vacant chair between them.

  “But awfully quiet,” Amanda said. “It’s as if everyone here is attending a funeral.”

  “The Peacekeepers are due to arrive tomorrow,” Cardenas said, jabbing a fork into her salad. “Nobody’s happy with the thought.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Fuchs, feeling relieved. “That’s why everyone is so morose.”

  “They’re worried it’s the first step in a takeover,” Cardenas said.

  “Takeover?” Amanda looked startled at the idea. “Who would take control of Ceres? The IAA?”

  “Or the world government.”

  “The world government? They don’t have any authority beyond geosynchronous Earth orbit.”

  Cardenas shrugged elaborately. “It’s their Peacekeepers that arrive tomorrow.”

  “Looking for me,” Fuchs said unhappily.

  “What do you intend to do?” Cardenas asked.

  Looking squarely at Amanda, Fuchs said, “I’m certainly not going to fight the Peacekeepers.”

  Cardenas chewed thoughtfully for a few moments, swallowed, then said, “We did at Selene.”

  Shocked, Amanda asked, “What are you suggesting, Kris?”

>   “Nothing. Nothing at all. I’m just saying that six Peacekeeper troops in their nice little blue uniforms aren’t enough to force you to go back Earthside with them, Lars. Not if you don’t want to go”

  “You mean we should fight them?” Amanda said, her voice hollow with fright.

  Cardenas leaned closer and replied, “I mean that I could name a hundred, a hundred and fifty rock rats here who’d protect you against the Peacekeepers, Lars. You don’t have to go with them if you don’t want to.”

  “But they’re armed! They’re trained soldiers!”

  “Six soldiers against half the population of Ceres? More than half? Do you think they’d fire on us?”

  Amanda looked at Fuchs, then back to Cardenas. “Wouldn’t they just send more troops, if these six were turned away?”

  “If they tried that, I’m willing to bet that Selene would step in on our side.”

  “Why would Selene—?”

  “Because,” Cardenas explained, “if the world government takes over Ceres, Selene figures they’ll be next. They tried it once, remember.”

  “And failed,” Fuchs said.

  “There are still nutcases Earthside who think their government should control Selene. And every human being in the whole solar system.”

  Fuchs closed his eyes, his thoughts spinning. He had never had the faintest inkling that Selene could become involved in his fight. This could lead to war, he realized. An actual war, bloodshed and destruction.

  “No,” he said aloud.

  Both women turned toward him.

  “I will not be the cause of a war,” Fuchs told them.

  “You’ll surrender to the Peacekeepers tomorrow, then?” Cardenas asked.

  “I will not be the cause of a war,” he repeated.

  After dinner, Fuchs led Amanda back to their quarters. She leaned heavily on his arm, yawning drowsily.

  “Lord, I don’t know why I feel so sleepy,” she mumbled.

  Fuchs knew. He had worried, when Cardenas sat at their table, that he wouldn’t be able to slip the barbiturate into his wife’s wine. But he had gotten away with it, Kris hadn’t noticed, and now Amanda was practically falling asleep in his arms.

  She was far too gone to make love. He helped her to undress; by the time she lay her head on the pillow she was peacefully unconsciousness.

  For a long time Fuchs gazed down at his beautiful wife, tears misting his eyes.

  “Good-bye, my darling,” he whispered. “I don’t know if I will ever see you again. I love you too much to let you risk your life for my sake. Sleep, my dearest.”

  Abruptly he turned and left their apartment, carefully locking the door as he stepped out into the tunnel. Then he headed for the warehouse and his waiting men.

  CHAPTER 40

  Oscar Jiminez was clearly worried as Fuchs led Nodon and four others of his employees up the tunnel toward the HSS warehouse.

  “There’s only six of us,” he said, his voice low and shaky as he shuffled along the dusty tunnel beside Fuchs. “I know it’s after midnight, but they’ve probably got at least ten guys in the warehouse.”

  Fuchs and Nodon carried hand lasers, fully charged. The others held clubs of asteroidal steel, pulled from the empty Helvetia warehouse shelves. All of them wore breathing masks to filter out the dust they were raising as they marched purposefully up the tunnel.

  “Don’t worry,” Fuchs assured him calmly. “You won’t have to fight. If all goes as I’ve planned, there won’t be a fight.”

  “But then why—”

  “I want you to identify the man who murdered Inga.”

  “He won’t be there,” the teenager said. “They took off. I told you.”

  “Perhaps. We’ll see.”

  “Anyway, they were wearing breathing masks and some kind of hats. I couldn’t identify the guy if I saw him.”

  “We’ll see,” Fuchs repeated.

  Fuchs stopped them at one of the safety hatches that stood every hundred meters or so along the tunnel. He nodded to one of the men, a life support technician, who pried open the cover of the hatch’s set of sensors.

  Fuchs motioned his men through the open hatch as the technician fiddled with the sensors.

  “Got it,” he said at last.

  An alarm suddenly hooted along the tunnel. Fuchs twitched involuntarily even though he had expected the blaring noise. The technician scurried through the hatch just before it automatically slammed shut.

  “Hurry!” Fuchs shouted, and he started racing up the tunnel.

  A half-dozen bewildered HSS men were out in the tunnel in front of the entrance to their warehouse, looking up and down as if searching for the source of the alarm. They were clad in light tan coveralls bearing the HSS logo; none of them wore breathing masks.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” one of them yelled as he saw Fuchs and the others rushing toward them, raising billows of dust.

  Fuchs pointed his laser at them. It felt clumsy in his hand, yet reassuring at the same time.

  “Don’t move!” he commanded.

  Five of the six froze in place. Two of them even raised their hands above their heads.

  But the sixth one snarled, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” and started to duck back inside the warehouse entrance.

  Quite deliberately, Fuchs shot him in the leg. The laser cracked once, and the man yowled and went down face-first into the dust, a smoking charred spot on the thigh of his coveralls. A part of Fuchs’s mind marveled that there was no recoil from the laser, no smoke or smell of gunpowder.

  They herded the six men inside the warehouse, two of them dragging their wounded companion. Two more HSS men were at the desktop computer, trying to determine what was causing the alarm signal when all the life support systems were solidly in the green. Completely surprised, they raised their hands above their heads when Fuchs trained his laser on them.

  They looked disgruntled once they realized that they were prisoners. Fuchs made them sit on the floor, hands on their knees.

  Four minitractors were sitting just inside the warehouse entrance. Fuchs detailed four of his men to rev them up; then they went through the aisles, pulling down anything that looked as if it had come from the Helvetia warehouse and loading it onto the tractors.

  “There’ll be a couple dozen more of our people on their way up here,” said the man Fuchs had shot. He sat with his companions, both hands clutching his thigh. Fuchs could not see any blood seeping from his wound. The laser pulse cauterizes as it burns through the flesh, he remembered.

  “No one will come here,” he said to the wounded man. “The alarm sounded only in this section of the tunnel. Your friends are sleeping peacefully in their quarters.”

  Finally the laden tractors were parked out in the tunnel, heaped high with crates and cartons that bore the Helvetia imprint.

  “I think that’s everything,” said one of Fuchs’s men.

  “Not quite,” Fuchs said. Turning to Jiminez, he asked, “Do you recognize any of these men?”

  The youngster looked frightened. He shook his head. “They were wearing breathing masks, like I told you. And funny kind of hats.”

  “This one, maybe?” Fuchs prodded the shoulder of the man he had shot.

  “I don’t know!” Jiminez whined.

  Fuchs took a deep breath. “All right. Take the tractors back to our warehouse.”

  Jiminez dashed out into the tunnel, plainly glad to get away.

  “You think you’re going to get away with this?” the wounded man growled. “We’re gonna break you into little pieces for this. We’ll make you watch while we bang your wife. We’re gonna make her—”

  Fuchs wheeled on him and kicked him in the face, knocking him onto his back. The others scuttled away. Nodon shouted, “Don’t move!” and leveled his laser at them.

  Frenzied with rage, Fuchs rushed to one of the storage bins lining the wall and yanked out a length of copper wire. Tucking his laser back into its belt pouch, he wrapped one
end of the wire several times around the groaning, half-conscious man’s neck, then dragged him toward the high stacks of shelving, coughing and sputtering blood from his broken teeth.

  The others watched, wide-eyed, while Fuchs knotted the wire at the man’s throat, then tossed the other end of it around one of the slim steel beams supporting the shelving. He yanked hard on the wire and the wounded man shot up into the air, eyes bulging, both hands struggling to untie the wire cutting into his neck. He weighed only a few kilos in Ceres’s light gravity, but that was enough to slowly squeeze his larynx and cut off his air.

  Blazing with ferocity, Fuchs whirled on the other HSS men, who sat in the dust staring at their leader thrashing, choking, his legs kicking, a strangled gargling inhuman sound coming from his bleeding mouth.

  “Watch!” Fuchs roared at them. “Watch! This is what happens to any man who threatens my wife. If any of you even looks at my wife I’ll tear your guts out with my bare hands!”

  The hanging man’s struggles weakened. He lost control of his bladder and bowels in a single burst of stench. Then his arms fell to his sides and he became still. The men on the floor stared, unmoving, openmouthed. Even Nodon watched in terrible fascination.

  “Come,” Fuchs said at last. “We’re finished here.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Diane Verwoerd was in bed with Dorik Harbin when her phone buzzed and the wallscreen began blinking with priority message in bright yellow letters.

  She disentangled herself from him and sat up. “It’s almost two,” he grumbled. “Aren’t you ever off-duty?”

  But Diane was already staring at the frightened face of her caller and listening to his breathless, almost incoherent words. Then the screen showed a man hanging by the neck, eyes bulging, tongue protruding from his mouth like an obscene wad of flesh. “Great god,” said Harbin.

  Verwoerd slipped out of bed and began to get dressed. “I’ll have to tell Martin about this personally. This isn’t the kind of news you relay by phone.”