The Silent War

Her travel bag clutched under one arm, Pancho walked briskly along the corridor, trying to remember the route she had followed when Tsavo brought her down to this level. Cripes, she thought, it was only an hour or two ago but I’m not sure of which way we came. My memory’s shot to hell.

She thought about the stealth suit she had used so many years ago to sneak into Humphries’s mansion unseen. I could use a cloak of invisibility right about now, she told herself as she glanced up at the corridor’s ceiling, searching for surveillance cameras. She couldn’t see any, but she knew that didn’t mean there weren’t any watching.

She spotted a pair of metal doors at the end of the corridor. The elevator! Pancho sprinted to it and leaned on the button set into the wall.

Now we’ll find out if they’re watching me. If the elevator’s working, it means they don’t know I’m on the loose.

The elevator doors slid smoothly open and Pancho stepped into the cab. It wasn’t until the doors shut again and the elevator started accelerating upwards that she thought it might be a trap. Jeeps! They could have an army of guards waiting for me up at the top level.

TORCH SHIP ELSINORE

An ordinary passenger riding out to the rock rats’ habitat at Ceres would have been quickly bored in the cramped confines of the torch ship. Elsinore was accelerating at one-sixth g, so that its sole passenger would feel comfortable at the familiar lunar level of gravity. But like all the ships that plied between the Moon and the Belt, Elsinore was built for fast, efficient travel, not for tourist luxuries. There was no entertainment aboard except the videos broadcast from Selene or Earth. Meals were served in the neatly appointed but decidedly small galley.

Edith had dinner with the ship’s captain and one of his officers, a young Asian woman who said little but listened attentively to the ship’s passenger and her skipper.

“We’ll be vectoring out of the radiation cloud tomorrow,” the captain announced cheerfully, over his plate of soymeat and mushrooms. “Ceres is well clear of the cloud’s predicted path.”

“You don’t seem worried about it,” Edith said.

He made a small shrug. “Not worried, no. Respectful, though. Our radiation shielding is working, so we’re in no danger. And by this time tomorrow we should be out of it altogether.”

“Will the cloud reach the Belt at all?” she asked.

“Oh yes, it’s too big and intense to dissipate until it’s well past the orbit of Jupiter. Ceres is well clear of it, but a good half of the Belt is going to be bathed in lethal radiation.”

Edith smiled for him and turned her attention to her own dinner of bioengineered carp fillet.

After dinner, Edith went to her cabin, sent a laser-beamed message to her husband back at Selene, then started working on the first segment of the documentary she had planned.

Sitting on the tiny couch of her cabin with the video camera perched on its mobile tripod by the bed, she decided to forgo the usual Edie Elgin cheerleader smile. Covering a war was a serious matter.

“This is Edie Elgin, aboard the torch ship Elsinore,” she began, “riding out to the Asteroid Belt, where a deadly, vicious war is taking place between mercenary armies of giant corporations. A war that could determine how much you pay for electrical energy and all the natural resources that are mined in the Belt.”

She got to her feet and walked slowly around the little cabin, the camera automatically pivoting to keep her in focus.

“I’ll be living in this cabin for the next six days, until we arrive at Ceres. Most of the men and women who go out to the Belt to work as miners or prospectors or whatever travel in much less comfortable quarters.”

Edith went to the door and out into the passageway. The camera trundled after her automatically on its tripod as she began to show her viewers the interior of the torch ship. As she spoke, she hoped that this segment wouldn’t be too boring. If it is I can cut it down or eliminate it altogether, she thought. I don’t want to bore the viewers. That is, assuming anybody wants to watch the show once it’s finished.

Cromwell was cruising toward the Belt at a more leisurely pace, allowing the radiation cloud to engulf it. The ship’s five-person crew could not feel the radiation that surrounded the ship nor see it, except in graphs the computer drew from the ship’s sensors.

“The shielding is working fine,” the skipper kept repeating every few minutes. “Working just fine.”

His four crew members wished he’d change the subject.

Eventually, he did. “Set course thirty-eight degrees azimuth, maintain elevation.”

Embedded in the radiation cloud, Cromwell headed toward Vesta.

Suddenly panicked, Pancho stabbed at the panel of buttons in the elevator. The cab lurched to a stop and the doors slid open. The pounding, growling, roaring sounds of construction immediately blasted her ears but she paid them no attention as she walked briskly out into the unfinished expanse.

She saw that she wasn’t at the topmost level, the dome where there was an airlock that led to the rocket hoppers sitting outside. Must be a rampway that leads up, she thought hopefully. Better stay away from the elevators.

A construction worker driving an orange tractor yelled at her in Japanese. Pancho couldn’t understand his words, but she recognized the tone: What the hell are you doing here? Get back where you belong!

With a grin she hollered back to him, “That’s just what I’m trying to do, buddy. Which way is up?”

The head of base security was perspiring visibly. Nobuhiko glared at the black man and demanded, “Well, where is she? She has to be someplace!”

Yamagata had left his interrogation team in their silly green gowns and bustled off to the security chief’s office, tearing off the surgical gown they had given him and throwing it angrily to the floor as his own quartet of bodyguards hastened along behind him.

The security chief was standing behind his desk, flanked by a wall of display screens, most of them blank.

“She was here,” he said, punching a keypad on his desktop, “with Mr. Tsavo.”

One of the screens lit up to show Pancho and Tsavo in the bedroom. Nobu watched Pancho spill her champagne, go to the lavatory—and then the screen flared with painful brilliance.

Blinking, a red afterimage burning in his eyes, Yamagata said through gritted teeth, “I don’t want to know where she was. I want to know where she is now.”

The security chief wiped at his tearing eyes. “She must have gone up into the construction area. The surveillance cameras on those levels haven’t been activated yet.”

Before the exasperated Yamagata could say anything, the security chief added, “I’ve ordered all the airlocks sealed and placed guards at all the space suit storage areas. She can’t get outside.”

Nobu thought, That’s something, at least. She’s trapped inside the base. We’ll find her, then. It’s only a matter of time.

We make an unlikely invasion force, Fuchs thought as he and his three crew members walked purposively through the flowering garden toward Humphries’s mansion.

But that might be a good thing, he realized. The more unlikely we appear, the less seriously the guards will take us. We might still have surprise on our side.

Not for long, he saw. A pair of men were striding down the winding path toward them, both of them tall, broadshouldered, with the hard-eyed look of professional security guards. They were clad in identical slate-gray tunics and slacks: not quite uniforms, but close enough. Fuchs wondered what kinds of weapons they carried. “What are you doing here?” the one on the left called, raising a hand to stop Fuchs and his people.

“Emergency maintenance,” said Fuchs, slowing but not stopping. “Water stoppage.”

“We didn’t get any emergency call,” said the other one. He was slightly shorter, Fuchs saw, and looked