The Rock Rats

“Lars,” said St. Claire, “it is impossible. Even for you, old friend, I can’t spare the fuel. I wouldn’t have enough left to get back to Ceres.”

Fuchs, dressed as usual in a black pullover and baggy slacks, took a long breath before answering.

“The difference is,” he said, “that you can send out a distress call and a tanker will come out for you. I can’t.”

“Yes, a tanker will come out for me. And do you know how much that will cost?”

“You’re talking about money. I’m talking about my life.”

St. Clair made a Gallic shrug.

Since the attack on Vesta Fuchs had survived by poaching fuel and other supplies from friendly prospectors and other ships plying the Belt. A few of them gave freely; most were reluctant and had to be convinced. Amanda regularly sent out schedules for the prospectors, miners, tankers and supply vessels that left Ceres. Fuchs planted remote transceivers on minor asteroids, squirted the asteroids’ identification numbers to Amanda in bursts of supercompressed messages, then picked up her information from the miniaturized transceivers the next time he swung past those rocks. It was an intricate chess game, moving the transceivers before Humphries’s snoops could locate them and use them to bait a trap for him.

Humphries’s ships went armed now, and seldom alone. It was becoming almost impossibly dangerous to try to hit them. Now and again Fuchs commandeered supplies from Astro tankers and freighters. Their captains always complained and always submitted to Fuchs’s demands under protest, but they were under orders from Pancho not to resist. The cost of these “thefts” was submicroscopic in Astro’s ledgers.

Despite everything, Fuchs was badly surprised that even his old friend was being stubborn.

Trying to hold on to his temper, he said placatingly, “Yves, this is literally a matter of life and death to me.”

“But it is not necessary,” St. Clair said, waving both hands in the air. “You don’t need to—”

“I’m fighting your fight,” Fuchs said. “I’m trying to keep Humphries from turning you into his vassals.”

St. Clair cocked an eyebrow. “Ah, Lars, mon vieux. In all this fighting you’ve killed friends of mine. Friends of ours, Lars.”

“That couldn’t be helped.”

“They were construction workers. They never did you any harm.”

“They were working for Humphries.”

“You didn’t give them a chance. You slaughtered them without mercy.”

“We’re in a war,” Fuchs snapped. “In war there are casualties. It can’t be helped.”

“They weren’t in a war!” said St. Clair, with some heat. “I’m not in a war! You’re the only one who is fighting this war of yours.”

Fuchs stared at him. “Don’t you understand that what I’m doing, I’m doing for you? For all the rock rats?”

“Pah! Soon it will be all over, anyway. There is no need to continue this… this vendetta between you and Humphries.”

“Vendetta? Is that what you think I’m doing?”

Drawing in a deep, deliberate breath, St. Clair said more reasonably, “Lars, it is finished. The conference at Selene will put an end to this fighting.”

“Conference?” Fuchs blinked with surprise. “What conference?”

St. Clair’s brows rose. “You don’t know? At Selene. Humphries and Astro are meeting to discuss a settlement of their differences. A peace conference.”

“At Selene?”

“Of course. Stavenger himself arranged it. The world government has sent Willi Dieterling. Your own wife will be there, one of the representatives from Ceres.”

Fuchs felt an electric shock stagger him. “Amanda’s going to Selene?”

“She is on her way, with Big George and Dr. Cardenas. Didn’t you know?”

Amanda’s going to Selene, thundered in Fuchs’s mind. To Selene. To Humphries.

It took him several moments to focus his attention again on St. Clair, still standing in the galley with him, a bemused little smile on his lips.

“You didn’t know?” St. Clair asked again. “She didn’t tell you?”

His voice venomously low, Fuchs said, “I’m going to take the fuel I need. You can call for a tanker after I’ve left the area.”

“You will steal it from me?”

“Yes,” said Fuchs. “That way you can make a claim to your insurance carrier. You’re insured for theft, aren’t you?”

DOSSIER: JOYCE TAKAMINE

Joyce was quite content living on the Moon. She lived alone, not celibate, certainly, but not attached to anyone, either. She had achieved most of what she had dreamed of, all those long hard years of her youth.

She was a mature woman now, lean and stringy, hardened by years of physical labor and cold calculation, inured to clambering up the ladder of life by grabbing for any rung she could reach. Now that she was at Selene, with a well-paying job and a secure career path, she felt that she could relax and enjoy life for the first time.

Except—she soon felt bored.

Life became too predictable, too routine. Too safe, she finally realized. There’s no challenge to this. I can run my office blindfolded. I see the same people socially every time I go out. Selene’s just a small town. Safe. Comfortable. Boring.

So she transferred to the Humphries operation on Ceres, much to her supervisor’s shock, and rode out to the Belt.

Ceres was even smaller than Selene, dirty, crowded, sometimes dangerous. Joyce loved it. New people were arriving and departing all the time. The Pub was rowdy, raucous. She saw Lars Fuchs kill a man there, just jam a power drill into the guy’s chest like an old-fashioned knight’s spear. The guy had admitted to killing Niles Ripley, and he tried to shoot Fuchs right there at the bar.

She served on the jury that acquitted Fuchs and, when the people of Ceres finally started to pull together a ragtag kind of government, Joyce Takamine was one of those selected by lottery to serve on the community’s first governing council. It was the first time she had won anything.

CHAPTER 49

Humphries gave a party in his mansion for the delegates to the peace conference. Not a large, sumptuous party; just an intimate gathering of the handful of men and women who would meet the next morning in a discreet conference room in Selene’s office tower, up in the Grand Plaza. Pancho Lane was the first guest to arrive. Humphries greeted her in the sprawling living room of his home, with Diane Verwoerd at his side. Diane wore a glittering floor-length sheath of silver, its neckline plunging almost to her waist. Pancho was in a lavender cocktail dress accented with big copper bangle earrings and hoops of copper at her wrists and throat.

Humphries, wearing a collarless burgundy jacket over a space-black turtleneck shirt and charcoal slacks, smirked to himself. Pancho had learned a lot in her years on the Astro board, but she was still gawky enough to show up at the party precisely on time, rather than fashionably late.

Soon enough the other guests began to arrive, and Humphries’s servants showed them into the lavishly furnished living room. Willi Dieterling came in with two younger men flanking him; his nephews, he told Humphries