The Silent War gt-11

by Ben Bova

  “Does Pancho know this yet?”

  “She gets a copy of my reports automatically.”

  “Any response from her?”

  “Not yet, sir. I just put out the report this morning. Not everyone reacts as fast as you.” She smiled slightly, then added, “Sir.”

  He allowed himself to smile back at her a little.

  “The real question,” she said, “is whether HSS is developing nanomachines for processing ores out of the asteroids or as weapons.”

  “Weapons?” Wanamaker’s gray brows rose.

  “If they can chew up rocks, they can chew up spacecraft, buildings, even people.”

  He sank back in the stiff metal chair. “Weapons,” he muttered. “My god.”

  “It’s a possibility, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “I suppose it is.”

  Tashkajian waited a heartbeat, then said, “I’ve been thinking about your request for a diversion, sir.”

  “Is this a change of subject?”

  “Not entirely, sir.”

  Looking slightly puzzled, Wanamaker said, “Go ahead.”

  “Suppose we attacked HSS’s base at Vesta,” she began.

  “Most of it’s underground,” said Wanamaker. “They’re well dug in. And well defended.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand. But they have certain facilities on the surface of the asteroid. Communications antennas. Launchpads. Airlocks to the interior. Even their defensive laser weapons. They’re all up on the surface.”

  “So?”

  “So we strew the surface with nanomachines that eat metals.”

  Wanamaker’s eyes flickered. She couldn’t tell from his stony expression whether he was impressed or disgusted.

  She plunged on, “The nanomachines would destroy metal structures, even eat into the asteroid itself. It might not wipe out the base but it would certainly disrupt their operations. It would be the diversion you’ve asked for.”

  He was silent for several moments. Then he asked, “And how do you get a ship close enough to Vesta to accomplish this raid? They’d blast the ship into molecules before it got close enough to be dangerous to them.”

  “I think I’ve got that figured out, too, sir.”

  He saw that she was deadly serious. She wouldn’t bring this up unless she thought she had the entire scheme in hand, he realized.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “We send the ship in when there’s a solar flare.”

  Wanamaker blinked. “Do you think…” His voice trailed off.

  “I’ve checked out the numbers, sir.” With growing confidence she went on, “A category four solar flare emits a huge cloud of ionized particles. Scrambles communications on all frequencies, including radar! A ship could ride inside the cloud and get close enough to Vesta to release the nanomachines.”

  Immediately, he countered, “Solar flare clouds don’t block laser beams.”

  “Yessir, I know. But laser sweeps aren’t generally used for spotting spacecraft unless the radar scans have found a bogie. They use laser scans to identify an unknown radar blip.” “Riding inside a radiation cloud is pretty damned hazardous.”

  “Not if the ship is properly shielded, sir.”

  He fell silent once again, thinking.

  “The radiation storm would drive all HSS personnel off the surface of Vesta. They’d all be deep underground, so our nanomachines would destroy their surface facilities without killing any of their personnel.”

  Wanamaker tried to scowl and wound up almost smiling, instead. “A humane attack on the enemy.”

  “A diversion that could cripple the HSS base on Vesta, at least temporarily, and check their domination of the Belt, sir.”

  “If there’s a big enough flare to give you the cloud you need,” he cautioned.

  “That’s what got me thinking about this idea in the first place,” she said, clearly excited. “We’re in the middle of a solar maximum period. Plenty of sunspots and lots of flares.”

  He nodded curtly. “Let me see the numbers.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  HABITAT CHRYSALIS

  Victoria Ferrer felt distinctly uneasy in the rock rats’ habitat, in orbit around the asteroid Ceres. Although she dressed as modestly as she could, she still felt that every move she made was being watched by men—and women—who focused on her the way a stalking leopard stares at its prey.

  The habitat itself was comfortable enough. The gravity was the same as the Moon’s, or so close that she couldn’t notice any difference. As a visitor Ferrer had a small but well-appointed compartment to herself, and the adjoining cabin to use as an office. There was a galley in the next segment of the structure, and even a passably decent restaurant on the other side of the wheel-shaped assemblage. With her expense account, she could afford to take most of her meals in the restaurant.

  Ferrer had expected the rock rats to be scruffy, feisty, hard-rock types. Prospectors and miners, existing at the edge of human civilization, independent individualists eking out their living in the vast dark emptiness of the Belt, surviving in a world of danger and loneliness. To her surprise, she found that most of the residents of Chrysalis were shopkeepers, accountants, technicians employed in the service industries. Even the actual miners and prospectors had technical educations. They operated complex equipment out in the Belt; they had to know how to keep a spacecraft functioning when the nearest supply or maintenance depot was millions of kilometers away.

  But they stared at her. Even in plain coveralls buttoned up to her chin, she felt their eyes on her. Fresh meat, she thought. A new face. A new body.

  Her mission at Ceres was twofold. She was recruiting more hands for the army of mercenaries that the war demanded out of the growing numbers of unemployed miners and prospectors. And she was waiting for the return of Levinson and his nanotech team, to see firsthand the results of their experiment on an actual asteroid.

  It had been pathetically easy to keep Levinson on a string. Every time they met he stared at her with hungry puppy eyes. If he comes back with a success he’ll expect me to reward him, Ferrer thought. It won’t be so easy to put him off then. But if he’s successful I can let him down gently and maneuver him off to some other woman. God knows there are plenty here at Ceres who would be happy to get connected with a scientist who can take her back to Earth.

  She tried to clear her mind of worries about Levinson and concentrate on the unemployed miner sitting on the other side of her desk. The clean-cut young man was trying his best not to ogle, but his eyes kept returning to the front of her shapeless turtleneck sweater. Momma and her damned genetic engineering, Ferrer thought. I should have brought sloppy old sweatshirts, or, better yet, a space suit.

  She kept their discussion strictly on business, without a hint of anything else. Humphries had sent her here to recruit crews for HSS ships and she had no interest in anything else. “I don’t understand your reluctance,” she said to the miner. “We’re offering top salary and benefits.”

  He looked a decent-enough fellow, Ferrer thought: freshly shaved and wearing well-pressed slacks and an open-necked shirt. His dossier, on her desktop screen, showed he had an engineering degree and had spent the past four years working as a miner under contract to Astro Corporation. He’d quit a month ago and hadn’t found a new job yet.

  Fidgeting nervously in his chair, he answered, “Look, Ms. Ferrer, what good will all that salary and benefits do me when I’m dead?”

  She knew what he meant, but still she probed, “Why do you say that?”

  Making a sour face, the miner said, “You want to hire me as a crewman on one of your HSS ships, right? Everybody knows HSS and Astro are fighting it out in the Belt. People are being killed every day, just about. I’d rather bum around here on Chrysalis and wait for a real job to open up.”

  “There are a lot of unemployed miners here,” Ferrer said.

  “Yeah, I know. Some got laid off, like me. Some just quit, ’cause it’s getting too blamed dangerous
out in the Belt. I figure I’ll just wait until you guys have settled your war. Once the shooting stops, I’ll go back to work, I guess.”

  “That could be a long wait,” she pointed out.

  With a frowning nod, he replied, “I’d rather starve slowly than get killed suddenly.”

  Ferrer admitted defeat. “Very well. If you change your mind, please contact us.”

  Getting up from the chair in a rush, as if happy to be leaving, the miner said, “Don’t hold your breath.”

  Ferrer conducted two more interviews that afternoon with exactly the same results. Miners and prospectors were abandoning their jobs to get away from the fighting. Chrysalis was filling up with unemployed rock rats. Most of them had run through what little savings they had accumulated and were now depending for their living on the scanty largesse of Chrysalis’s governing board. Hardly any of them accepted employment aboard HSS ships. Or Astro’s, Ferrer found with some satisfaction. Of the fourteen men and women she had personally interviewed, only two had signed up, both of them women with babies to support. All the others had flatly refused her offers.

  I’d rather starve slowly than get killed suddenly. That was their attitude.

  Sitting alone in her office as the day waned, Ferrer sighed heavily. I’m going to have to report to Humphries, she told herself. He’s not going to like what I have to tell him.

  Levinson was glad to be out of the space suit. In fact, he was whistling cheerily as he made his way from the airlock of the torch ship toward the compartment they had given him. In two days we’ll be back at Ceres, and then Vickie and I ride a torch ship back to Selene. I’ll bet we spend the whole journey shacked up together.

  “Shouldn’t whistle aboard ship,” said one of the technicians, coming up the passageway behind him. “It’s considered bad luck.”

  Levinson grinned at her. “That’s an old superstition,” he said.

  “No it’s not. It dates back to sailing days, when orders were given by playing a whistle. So they didn’t want anybody whistling and messing up the signaling system.”

  “Doesn’t apply here,” Levinson said loftily.

  “Still, it’s considered—”

  “EMERGENCY,” the overhead speaker blared. “PRESSURE LOSS IN MAIN AIRLOCK COMPARTMENT.”

  The blood froze in Levinson’s veins. The airtight hatch up the passageway slammed shut. His knees went rubbery.

  “Don’t piss yourself,” the technician said, smirking at him. “It’s probably something minor.”

  “But the hatch. We’re trapped here.”

  “Naw. You can open the hatch manually and get to your quarters. Don’t sweat it.”

  At that instant the hatch swung open and two of the ship’s crew pushed past them, heading for the airlock. They looked more irritated than frightened.

  Feeling marginally better, Levinson followed the tech through the hatch and toward his own compartment. Still, when the hatch automatically slammed shut again, he jumped like a startled rabbit.

  He was opening the accordion-pleated door to his compartment when the overhead speaker demanded, “DR. LEVINSON REPORT TO THE BRIDGE IMMEDIATELY.”

  Levinson wasn’t exactly certain where the bridge was, but he thought it was farther up the passageway that ran the length of the habitation module. With his pulse thumping nervously in his ears, he made his way past two more closed hatches and finally stepped into what was obviously the bridge. The ship’s captain was standing with his back to the hatch, half bent over between the backs of two side-by-side chairs, both occupied by crew members. All three men were peering at readouts on the instrument panel.

  The hatch slammed behind him, making him flinch again. The captain, grim-faced, whirled on him.

  “It’s those goddamned bugs of yours! They’re eating up my ship!”

  Levinson knew it couldn’t be true. Pea-brained rocket jocks! Anything goes wrong, they blame the nearest scientist.

  “The nanomachines are on the asteroid,” he said, with great calm and dignity. “Or what’s left of it. They couldn’t possibly be aboard your ship.”

  “The hell they’re not!” roared the captain, jabbing an accusing finger at the displays on the instrument board. Levinson could see they were swathed in red.

  “They couldn’t—”

  “They were in that dust cloud, weren’t they?”

  “Well, yes, perhaps a few,” he admitted.

  “And the loose end of your fucking tether was flapping around in the cloud, wasn’t it?”

  Levinson started to reply, but his mouth went so dry he couldn’t form any words.

  “You brought the mother-humping bugs aboard my ship, damn you!”

  “But… but…”

  “They’re eating out the airlock compartment! Chewing up the metal of the hull, for chrissakes!” The captain advanced toward Levinson, hands clenched into fists, face splotched with red fury. “You’ve got to stop them!”

  “They’ll stop themselves,” said Levinson, backing away a step and bumping into the closed hatch. “I built a time limit into them. Once the time limit is reached they run out of power and shut themselves down.”

  The captain sucked in a deep breath. His face returned almost to its normal color. “They’ll stop?”

  “Yessir,” Levinson said. “Automatically.”

  “How soon?”

  Levinson swallowed and choked out, “Forty-eight hours.”

  “Forty-eight hours?” the captain bellowed.

  Levinson nodded, cringing.

  The captain turned back toward the two crewmen seated at the instrument panel. “Contact Chrysalis. Report our situation to them.”

  The crewman in the left-hand seat asked, “Anything else to tell them, sir?”

  The captain fumed in silence for a moment, then muttered, “Yeah. Read them your last will and testament. We’re going to die here. All of us.”

  Levinson wet his pants.

  LAST RITES

  Levinson had never been so terrified. He stumbled back to his compartment, slid the door shut after three trembling tries, then yanked his palmcomp out of his coveralls, tearing the pocket slightly, and called up the numbers he needed to calculate how long the torch ship would last.

  The tiny corner of his mind that still remained rational told him the calculation was meaningless. He had no firm idea of how fast the nanomachines were disassembling the ship, and only the haziest notion of how massive the ship was. You’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, he told himself. But he knew he had to do something, anything, to try to stave off the terror that was staring him in the face.

  We could make it to Ceres in less than forty-eight hours, he thought, if the captain pushes the engines to their max. If the nanomachines don’t destroy the engines first. Okay, we get to Ceres, to the habitat Chrysalis. They won’t let us in, though, because they’d be afraid of the nanos damaging them.

  But the machines will shut themselves down in forty-eight hours, Levinson reminded himself. Less than that, now; it was about two hours ago that we dispersed them on the asteroid.

  How fast are they eating up the ship? he asked himself. Maybe I can make some measurements, get at least a rough idea of their rate of progress. Then I could—

  He never finished the sentence. The curving bulkhead of his compartment, formed by the ship’s hull, suddenly cracked open. Levinson watched in silent horror as a chunk of metal dissolved before his goggling eyes. The air rushed out of the compartment with such force that he fell to his knees. His lungs collapsed as he sank to the metal deck of the compartment, blood gushing from every pore. He was quite dead by the time his nanomachines began taking him apart, molecule by molecule.

  Martin Humphries was talking with his six-year-old son, Alex, in the family’s estate in Connecticut.

  “Van cries all the time,” Alex said, looking sad. “The doctor says he’s real sick.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” said Humphries, feeling nettled. He wanted to talk about ot
her things than his stunted younger son.

  “Can I come to see you?” Alex asked, after the three-second lag between Earth and Moon.

  “Of course,” Humphries replied. “As soon as your school year ends you can come up here for a week or so. You can take walks on the Moon’s surface and learn how to play low-games.”

  He watched his son’s face, so like the pictures of himself at that age. The boy blossomed into a huge smile when he heard his father’s words.

  “With you, Daddy?”

  “Sure, with me, or one of my staff. They can—”

  The amber light signaling an incoming call began blinking. Humphries had given orders that he was not to be disturbed except for cataclysms. He glared at the light, as if that would make it stop claiming his attention.

  “I’ve got to go now, Alex. I’ll call you again in a day or so.”

  He clicked off the connection, and never saw the hurt disappointment on his son’s face.

  Whoever was calling had his private code. And the message was scrambled as well, he saw. Scowling with impatience, Humphries instructed the computer to open the message. Victoria Ferrer’s features appeared in three dimensions in the hologram above his desk. She looked tired, depressed.

  “I’m on a torch ship on my way back to Selene,” she said. “Still too far out for a two-way conversation, but I know you’ll want to hear the bad news right away.”

  He started to ask what she was talking about, then realized that she wouldn’t hear his question for a good twenty minutes or more.

  “The nanomachine experiment backfired. The bugs got loose on the ship and totally destroyed it. Nothing left but a cloud of atoms. Everybody killed, including Levinson.” She gave a few more details, then added, “Oh, by the way, the recruiting was pretty much a flop, too. Those rock rats are too smart to volunteer for cannon fodder.”

  Her message ended.

  Humphries leaned back in his desk chair and stared at the wall screen that displayed a hologram of Jupiter’s colorful swirling clouds.