The Silent War

Sanja, on duty in the pilot’s chair, the son of a former Mongol tribesman, turned his shaved head toward Fuchs and asked, “Sir?”

“Nothing, Sanja,” said Fuchs. “Nothing. Once you’ve reached orbital velocity, cut power and let the ship coast.”

MATHILDA II

“We have arrived at the designated position,” said the pilot.

Pancho was sitting in the copilot’s chair of Mathilda II’s snug, efficiently laid-out bridge. The pilot, seated on her left, was a youngster she had met when she’d come aboard for this flight. He looked like a kid to Pancho, blond and soft-cheeked and scrubbed pink, but he ran the vessel well enough. Good square shoulders, she noticed. Pancho’s piloting skills were rusty, she knew, but inwardly she longed for a chance to fly this bucket, just for a little larking around. She couldn’t ask, of course. The chairman of the board of Astro Corporation isn’t supposed to be a fly-girl. One of the epithets that Humphries often threw at her was “greasemonkey.” Pancho had no intention of giving the Humper any ammunition.

Still, she thought as she watched the young man play his fingers over the control panel’s keyboard, it’d be fun to goose up the engines and see what this flying machine can do.

“This is the spot, is it?” George asked. Standing behind the pilot’s seat, he bent forward slightly to peer out the forward window. Nothing visible except the desert of dark empty space spangled with solemn, unblinking stars.

The pilot’s name was Oskar Johannson. Despite his youthful appearance, he was stiffly formal with George and Pancho.

“Yes, sir,” he said, pointing to the control panel’s main display screen. “These are the coordinates, in yellow, and this is our position, the blinking red cursor. As you can see, sir, they overlap. We are at the proper position.”

George nodded. Pancho admired Johannson’s strong jaw and gleaming white teeth. Wish he’d smile, she thought. I wonder what it’d take to ruffle his composure a bit.

“No ships in sight?”

“Nothing in view, sir, except a small asteroid about five hundred klicks off, in about the four o’clock position.” He tapped the keyboard once. “Five hundred seventeen kilometers, one hundred twenty-two degrees relative to our position, eight degrees elevation.”

Pancho grinned at the kid’s earnestness. “I thought this position was clear of rocks for at least a thousand klicks all round,” she said.

George scratched at his beard, answering, “Rocks get kicked into new orbits all the time, Pancho. Gravity resonances from Jupiter and the other planets are always scrambling the smaller chunks.”

Resisting the urge to run the display herself, she said, “An unnumbered rock. Might’s well claim it.”

“To do that one of us would hafta suit up and go out there and plant a marker on it.”

“Why not?” Pancho said, pushing herself up from her seat. “I’ll do it. Claim it for Astro.”

“Gimme a closer look at it, Oskar,” George said.

The radar image showed a dumbbell-shaped chondritic asteroid, slowly tumbling end over end.

“A peanut,” George said. “Just like what’s-’is-name.”

“Ida,” said Johannson. “Asteroid number 243.”

“Showin’ off your college education, Ossie?” asked George.

Johannson actually blushed.

Pushing past George, Pancho said, “I’ll go out and claim it. Give me something to do while we’re waiting for Lars to show up.”

George turned and ducked through the hatch after her. “I’ll give you a hand, Pancho.”

“I can do it myself,” she said, heading up the narrow passageway toward the main airlock, where the space suits were stored.

“You’ll need help gettin’ into a suit,” George called after her. “I’ll hafta suit up meself, too, y’know.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Safety regs,” George said firmly. “Somebody’s gotta be suited up and ready to go out in case of an emergency.”

Pancho hmmphed but didn’t object. Safety regulations had saved more than one astronaut’s butt, she knew. She allowed George to help her into the suit and check out her seals and systems. Then she helped George and checked him out.

“What’s funny?” George asked as he pulled the fishbowl helmet over his wild red mane.

Pancho hadn’t realized she was grinning. George seemed about to burst his suit’s seams. “Georgie, you look like a red-headed Santa Claus, you know that?”

“Ho, ho, ho,” he answered flatly.

Pancho was ready to step into the airlock when Johannson’s voice came over the ship’s intercom:

“A ship’s approaching,” he called out. “It’s coming up fast.”

“Lasers armed and ready, sir,” said the weapons technician.

Harbin nodded curtly, his eyes focused on the image of Mathilda II on the main screen of Samarkand’s bridge. Nothing else in range except a minor asteroid, some five hundred klicks away.

Samarkand carried two powerful continuous-wave lasers, adapted from the cutting tools the rock rats used, plus a high-energy pulsed weapon capable of blowing a centimeter-sized hole in the metal skin of a spacecraft from a distance of a thousand kilometers.

Mathilda’s crew module was out of position, Harbin saw; it had rotated away from his fast-approaching ship and was partially shielded by the bulk of the propulsion system, engines and big spherical fuel tanks.

“Stand by,” Harbin ordered quietly. The three crew personnel on the bridge with him sat tensely, waiting for the order to fire.

Just a little closer, Harbin said under his breath to the slowly rotating Mathilda. Just turn a little bit more.

There. The crew module was clearly visible.

“Fire,” Harbin said to the weapons tech. To make certain, he pressed the red button on the keypad set into his command chair’s armrest.

“We got her,” he whispered triumphantly.

Pancho was inside the airlock, ready to go out and claim the unnamed asteroid, when she heard a gurgling scream in her earphones and warning sirens begin an ear-piercing howl.

“What’s that?” she yelled into her helmet microphone.

“Dunno,” George’s voice replied. “Sounds like the emergency hatches slammed shut.”

Pancho banged the airlock control panel, stopping its pumps, then reopened the inner hatch. George was in his space suit, peering down the passageway, his shaggy face frowning with worry.

“Can’t get Johannson on the intercom,” he muttered.

Pointing to the control panel on the emergency hatch a few meters up the passageway, Pancho said, “We’ve lost air pressure.”

“Better stay in the suits, then,” said George as he started toward the closed hatch.

Pancho followed him through three hatches, past the ship’s galley and up to the hatch that opened onto the bridge. Red warning lights showed there was no air pressure along the entire way.

“Jesus!” George yelped once he pushed the hatch open.

Looking over the shoulder of George’s suit, Pancho saw that the bridge’s forward window had been punctured with a fist-sized hole and the control panel was spattered, dripping with bright red blood. Johannson was slumped in his seat, arms hanging, blood-soaked head lolling on his shoulders. George went to him and turned the pilot’s chair around slightly. Johannson’s eyes had blown out, and blood was still cascading from his