by Ben Bova
Big George and Edith were in her quarters aboard Elsinor, trying to reason with the scowling image on the screen. As George fumed and attempted to explain the situation to the intruder, Edith surreptitiously went to the travel kit resting on the shelf above her bed. Hoping she was out of the comm screen camera’s view, she slipped one of the micro-cams she had brought with her out of the kit and attached it to the belt of her dress. It looked like an additional buckle, or perhaps a piece of stylish jewelry.
“I know Fuchs is with you,” the dark-bearded man was saying, his voice flat and hard. “Don’t try to tell me otherwise.”
“But he’s not,” George replied for the umpteenth time. “Send a crew over here and inspect the ship.”
“So that you can overpower them and cut my forces in half?” The man shook his head.
He’s paranoid, Edith thought as she stepped to George’s side, hoping the microcam was focused on the wall screen.
“Look,” George said, straining to remain patient, “this ship isn’t armed. The habitat isn’t armed—”
“You provide weapons to the rock rats,” said the intruder.
“No,” George answered. “We provide mining equipment. If the rats get any weapons it’s from logistics ships that the corporations send to the Belt.”
“That’s a lie. Where is Fuchs? My patience is running thin.”
“He’s not fookin’ here!” George thundered.
In truth, Lars Fuchs was aboard Halsey, cruising past the orbit of Mars, nearly 200 million kilometers from Ceres. At his ship’s present rate of acceleration, he would reach the Chrysalis habitat in a little more than three days.
He knew nothing of the circumstances unfolding at Ceres. As his ship traveled through the dark emptiness toward the Belt, Fuchs had plenty of time to think, and remember, and regret.
A failure. A total failure, he accused himself. Humphries killed my wife, destroyed my life, turned me into a homeless wandering exile, a Flying Dutchman doomed to spend my life drifting through this eternal night, living off whatever scraps I can beg or steal from others. I talk of vengeance, I fill my dreams with visions of hurting Humphries again and again. But it’s all futile. All in vain. I’m a beaten man.
Amanda, he thought. My beautiful wife. I still love you, Amanda. I wish it had all turned out differently. I wish …
He squeezed his eyes shut and strove with all his might to drive the vision of her out of his thoughts. You’re alive, he told himself sternly. You still exist, despite all he’s done to you. Humphries had driven you into a life of piracy. He’s made me into an outcast.
But I still live. That’s my only true revenge on him. Despite everything he’s done, despite everything he can do, I still live!
Aboard Samarkand, Harbin stared with dilated eyes at the floundering, fuming image of the red-bearded George Ambrose.
“You will produce the man Fuchs,” Harbin said tightly, “or suffer the consequences. You have less than fifteen minutes remaining.”
He cut the connection to Elsinore. Turning to his weapons technician, sitting at his console to Harbin’s right, he asked, “Status of the lasers?”
“Sir, we have full power to all three of them.”
“Ready to fire on my command?”
“Yessir.”
“Good,” said Harbin.
The executive officer, a blade-slim Japanese woman, suggested, “Perhaps we should send a boarding party to the ships parked around the habitat.”
“To search for Fuchs?” Harbin asked lazily. He was starting to feel calm, almost tranquil. The injection must be wearing off, he thought. Too much stress bums the drug out of the bloodstream. I need another shot. “If he’s aboard any of those ships we can find him,” the exec said.
“How many troops could we send, do you think? Six? Ten? A dozen?”
“Ten, certainly. Armed with sidearms and minigrenades. Those civilians in the ships wouldn’t dare stand in their way.”
Harbin felt just the slightest tendril of drowsiness creeping along his veins. It would be good to get a full night’s sleep, he thought. Without dreams.
Aloud, he asked, “And what makes you think that there are nothing but civilians in those ships?”
The exec blinked rapidly, thinking, then replied, “Their manifests show—”
“Do you believe that if Elsinore, for example, were carrying a company of armed mercenaries they would show it on their manifest?”
She gave Harbin a strange look, but said nothing.
He went on, “Why do you think that red-bearded one is so anxious to have us search his ship? It’s an obvious trap. He must have troops there waiting to pounce on us.”
“That’s—” The exec hesitated, then finished, “That’s not likely, sir.”
“No, not likely at all,” Harbin said, grinning lopsidedly at her. “You would have done well against Hannibal.”
“Sir?”
Harbin pushed himself out of the command chair. “I’m going to my quarters for a few minutes. Call me five minutes before their time is up.”
“Yes, sir,” said the exec.
Harbin knew something was wrong. If the drug is burning out of my system I ought to be feeling withdrawal symptoms, he thought. But I’m tired. Drowsy. Did I take the right stuff? I can’t direct a battle in this condition.
Once he popped open the case that held his medications he focused blurrily on the vials still remaining, lined up in a neat row along the inside of the lid. Maybe I’m taking too much, he considered. Overdosing. But I can’t stop now. Not until I’ve got Fuchs. I’ve got to get him.
He ran his fingertips over the smooth plastic cylinders of the medications. Something stronger. Just for the next half hour or so. Then I can relax and get a good long sleep. But right now I need something stronger. Much stronger.
HABITAT CHRYSALIS
Yannis Ritsos was the last of a long line of rebels and poets. Named after a famed Greek forebear, he had been born in Cyprus, lived through the deadly biowar that racked that tortured island, survived the fallout from the nuclear devastation of Israel, and worked his way across the Mediterranean to Spain where, like another Greek artist, he made a living for himself. Unlike El Greco, however, Yanni supported himself by running computer systems that translated languages. He even slipped some of his own poetry into the computers and had them translate his Greek into Spanish, German and English. He was not happy with the results.
He came to Ceres not as a poet, but as a rock rat. Determined to make a fortune in the Asteroid Belt, Yanni talked a fellow Greek businessman into allowing him to ride out to the Belt and try his hand at mining. He never got farther than the Chrysalis habitat, in orbit around Ceres. There he met and married the beautiful Ilona Mikvicius and, instead of going out on a mining ship, remained at Ceres and took a job in the habitat’s communications center.
Sterile since his exposure to the nuclear fallout, totally bald for the same reason, Yanni longed to have a son and keep the family line going. He and Ilona were saving every penny they could scratch together to eventually pay for a cloning procedure. Ilona knew that bearing a cloned fetus was dangerous, but she loved Yanni so much that she was willing to risk it.
So Yannis Ritsos had everything to live for when Dorik Harbin’s ship came to the Chrysalis habitat. He had suffered much, survived much, and endured. He felt that the future looked, if not exactly bright, at least promising. But he was wrong. And it was his own rebellious soul that put an end to his dreams.
“Sir,” the comm tech called out, “someone aboard Elsinore is sending a message to Selene.”
Harbin, fresh from a new injection of stimulant, turned to his weapons technician. “Slag her antennas,” he commanded. “All of them.”
The technician nodded and bent over his console.
In her compartment aboard Elsinore, Edith Elgin stopped in mid-sentence as the wall screen suddenly broke into jagged, hissing lines of hash.
“Something’s wrong,” she said
to Big George. “The link’s gone dead.”
George frowned. “He doesn’t want us talkin’ to anybody. Prob’ly knocked out the antennas.”
“You mean he attacked this ship?” Edith was shocked.
Nodding, George said, “And he’ll do worse in another fifteen minutes if we don’t produce Lars.”
“But Fuchs isn’t here!”
“Tell it to him.”
Yannis Ritsos was alone on duty in Chrysalis’s communications center when Harbin’s ultimatum came through.
It was a dull night shift; nothing but boringly routine chatter from the far-scattered ships of the miners and prospectors, and the coded telemetry sent routinely from their ships. With everything in the center humming along on automatic, and no one else in the comm center at this late hour, Yanni opened the computer subroutine he used to write poetry.
He had hardly written a line when the central screen suddenly lit up to show a dark-bearded man whose eyes glittered like polished obsidian.
“Attention, Chrysalis,” the stranger said, in guttural English. “This is the attack vessel Samarkand. You are harboring the fugitive Lars Fuchs. You will turn him over to me in ten minutes or suffer the consequences of defiance.”
Annoyed at being interrupted in his writing, Yanni thought it was some jokester in the habitat pulling a prank.
“Who is this?” he demanded. “Get off this frequency. It’s reserved for incoming calls.”
The dark-bearded face grew visibly angry. “This is your own death speaking to you if you don’t turn Fuchs over to me.”
“Lars Fuchs?” Yanni replied, only half believing his ears. “God knows where he is.”
“I know where he is,” the intruder snapped. “And if you don’t surrender him to me I will destroy you.”
Irritated, Yanni shot back, “Fuchs hasn’t been here for years and he isn’t here now. Go away and stop bothering me.”
Harbin stared at the comm screen in Samarkand’s bridge. They’re stalling for time, he thought. They’re trying to think of a way to hide Fuchs from me.
He took a deep breath, then said with deadly calm, “Apparently you don’t believe me. Very well. Let me demonstrate my sincerity.”
Turning to the weapons tech, Harbin ordered, “Chop one of the habitat’s modules.”
The man swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Sir, there are civilians in those modules. Innocent men and women—”
“I gave you an order,” Harbin snapped.
“But—” “Get off the bridge! I’ll take care of this myself.”
The weapons tech glanced at the others on the bridge, looking for support.
“Chrysalis is unarmed, sir,” said the pilot softly, almost in a whisper.
Cold fury gripped Harbin. “Get out. All of you,” he said, his voice hard as ice. “I’ll tend to this myself.”
The entire bridge crew got up and swiftly went to the hatch, leaving Harbin alone in the command chair. He pecked furiously at the keyboards on his armrests, taking control of all the ship’s systems.
Fools and weaklings, he raged to himself. They call themselves mercenaries but they’re no good for anything except drawing their pay and pissing their pants in fear. Chrysalis is unarmed? I’ll believe that when pigs fly. They’re harboring Fuchs and they’re stalling for time, trying to hide him, trying to lure me into sending my crew over there so they can ambush and slaughter them. I’ve seen ambushes, I’ve seen slaughters. They’re not going to do that to me or my crew.
He called up the weapons display for the main screen, focused on the module of the Chrysalis closest to his ship and jabbed a thumb against the key that fired the lasers. Three jagged lines slashed across the thin skin of the module. Puffs of air glittered briefly like the puffs of a person’s breath on a winter’s day.
“Give me Fuchs,” he said to the comm screen.
Yanni heard screams.
“What’s going on?” he asked the empty communications center.
The face on the screen smiled coldly. “Give me Fuchs,” he said.
Before Yanni could reply, the comm center’s door burst open and a woman in bright coral coveralls rushed in. “Module eighteen’s been ripped apart! They’re all dead in there!”
Yanni gaped at her. She was from the life support crew, he could see by the color of her coveralls. And she was babbling so loud and fast that he could barely understand what she was saying.
“We’re under attack!” she screamed. “Call for help!”
“Call who?” Yanni asked.
The executive officer stepped through the hatch into the bridge.
“Sir,” she said crisply, her face a frozen expressionless mask, “I have a squad of twenty ready to board Chrysalis and search for Fuchs. They are armed with pistols and minigrenades, perfectly capable of dealing with whatever resistance the rock rats may try to offer.”
Harbin stared at her. Why are these fools trying to undermine me? I know what to do. You kill your enemies. Kill them all. Men, women, children, dogs, cattle, all and every one of them. Burn down their village. Burn their crops. Blast the trees of their orchards with grenades. Leave nothing alive.
“Sir, did you hear me?” the exec asked, stepping closer to him.
Harbin swiveled the chair slightly toward her. “My hearing is perfect,” he said calmly. “Tell your troops to stand down. I won’t need them.”
“They can search the habitat—”
“No,” Harbin said softly, almost gently. “That won’t be necessary. Why risk them when we can destroy the habitat from here?”
“But Fuchs—”
“Fuchs will die with the rest of the rock rats,” Harbin said. He wanted to laugh. It was all so simple. You killed your enemies and then they will never be able to hurt you again. Why can’t she see that? It’s so logical, so beautifully clear.
He dismissed the executive officer and began to calmly, methodically, thoroughly destroy Chrysalis and everyone in it.
TORCH SHIP ELSINORE
The wall screen in Edith’s compartment lit up to show the ship’s captain. He looked shaken.
“You’d better come up to the bridge and see this,” he said, his voice trembling. “They’re destroying the habitat.”
Big George boiled out into the passageway and charged up toward the bridge, Edith running hard behind him.
The captain and the two crew members on the bridge looked ashen, dazed.
Through the observation port Edith could see Chrysalis; three of its modules were ripped apart, chunks of metal and structure floating aimlessly. As she watched, invisible laser beams began slicing through another module. Air burst into the vacuum of space in glittering wisps of ice and dissipated in an eyeblink. All in silence: total, deadly, complete silence. Shapes came tumbling through one of the gouges torn in the module’s skin. Bodies, Edith realized. Those are human bodies.
“The bloody fookin’ bastard,” George growled. He pounded both fists against the thick quartz of the observation port. “Bloody fookin’ BASTARD!” he bellowed.
“Can’t we do something?” Edith asked the captain.
He shook his head. “Not a thing.”
“But there must be something! Call for help!”
“Our antennas are out. Even if we had Fuchs aboard or knew where he is, we wouldn’t be able to tell him now.”
Edith felt the strength ebbing out of her. I’m watching a thousand people dying. Being killed. George looked on the verge of tears. The captain was a white-faced statue.
“There’s nothing we can do?” she asked.
“Nothing except wait,” said the captain. “We’re probably next.”
Once he realized what was happening, Yanni bolted from the useless comm center and down the habitat’s central passageway. Ilona! I’ve got to find Ilona! Their quarters were three modules down the passageway; at this time of night she should be in their bedroom, asleep.
He had to fight his way past a screaming mob at the
module’s airlock, fighting to grab the pitifully few space suits stored there.
Why is this happening? Yanni asked himself as he ran toward the hatch that led to his wife. Why are they killing us?
Then the bulkhead ahead of him split apart and a blast of air like a whirlwind lifted him off his feet and out into the dark cold emptiness beyond. He had just time enough to understand that it didn’t matter why or who or anything else. He was dead and Ilona was too.
The exec simply stood by Harbin’s side as he carefully, precisely cut up the modules of the Chrysalis habitat. When the last unit was reduced to a broken shambles he looked up at her and saw fear in her eyes: fear and shock and disgust.
“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.
