The Silent War

Stavenger turned back to his wall screen. “Phone, get Nobuhiko Yamagata. Top priority.”

Leeza Chaptal was back in her space suit, but this time it was covered in slick, shining oil. Still, she was trembling inside it as the airlock hatch swung open.

The metal cladding of the circular shaft was obviously eaten away down almost to the level of her eyes. But no further, she saw. In the twelve hours since she’d last been in the shaft, the nanomachines had progressed only a meter or so down the shaft.

“I think they’ve stopped,” she said into her helmet microphone.

“How can you be sure?” came the reply in her earphones.

Leeza unhooked the hand laser from her equipment belt. “I’m going to mark a line,” she said, thumbing the laser’s switch. A thin uneven line burned into the steel coating. She realized that her hands were shaking badly.

“Okay,” she said, backing through the hatch and pushing it shut. “I’ll come back in an hour and see if they’ve chewed past my mark.”

She clumped in the ungainly suit back to the next hatch and rapped on it. “Fill the tunnel with air and open up,” she ordered. “I’ve got to pee.”

“They’re leaving,” Edith saw. Still standing in the bridge of Elsinore with the captain and Big George, she saw the ship that had destroyed the habitat accelerate away from the area, dwindling into the eternal darkness, its rocket thrusters glowing hotly.

“Running away from the scene of the crime,” said the captain.

George said nothing, but Edith could see the fury burning in his eyes. Suddenly he shook himself like a man coming out of a trance. Or a nightmare.

He started for the hatch.

“Where are you going?” the captain asked.

“Airlock,” George replied, over his shoulder. Squeezing his bulk through the hatch, he said, “Space suits. Gotta see if anybody’s left alive in Chrysalis.”

Edith knew there couldn’t be any survivors. But George is right, she thought. We’ve got to check.

And she stirred herself, realizing that she had to record this disaster, this atrocity. I’ve got to get this all on camera so the whole human race can see what’s happened here.

SELENE: PEACE CONFERENCE

Three days after the Chrysalis atrocity, the conference took place in Doug Stavenger’s personal office, up in the tower suite that housed Selene’s governing administrators and bureaucrats. It was very small, very private, and extremely well-guarded.

Only four people sat at the circular table in the center of the office: Pancho, Humphries, Nobuhiko Yamagata and Douglas Stavenger himself. No aides, no assistants, no news reporters or anyone else. Selene security officers were stationed outside the door and patrolled the corridors. The entire area had been swept for electronic bugs.

Once the four of them were seated, Stavenger began, “This meeting will be held in strict privacy. Only the four of us will know what we say.” The others nodded.

“None of us will leave this room until we have come to an agreement to stop this war,” Stavenger added, his face totally grim. “There will be no exceptions and no excuses. There’s a lavatory through that door,” he pointed, “but the only way out of here is through the door to the corridor and no one is leaving until I’m satisfied that we’ve reached a workable understanding.”

Humphries bristled. “What gives you the right to—”

“Several thousand dead bodies scattered across the Asteroid Belt,” Stavenger snapped. “I’m representing them. You are going to stop this damned war or you are going to starve to death right here at this table. There is no third option.”

Yamagata smiled uneasily. “I came here voluntarily, at your request, Mr. Stavenger. This is no way to treat a guest.”

Gesturing in Pancho’s direction, Stavenger replied, “Ms. Lane was your guest at the Nairobi base at Shackleton crater, wasn’t she? And you damned near killed her.”

Nobuhiko’s brows knit momentarily. Then he said, “I could call for help, you know.”

Without any change in his expression, Stavenger said, “There’s no way to get a message out of this room. I’ve had it shielded. Your handhelds won’t get a signal past these walls.”

Pancho leaned back in her chair and stretched her legs beneath the table. “Okay, then. Let’s start talking.”

Harbin had spent the three days since the attack on Chrysalis drifting in and out of a drug-induced stupor. His executive officer ran the ship while he slept and dreamed eerily distorted fantasies that always ended in blood and death.

By the time they reached Vesta, he had run out of medications and was beginning to sober up.

He was washing his bearded, pouchy-eyed face when someone tapped at his door.

“Enter,” he called, mopping his face with a towel.

The exec slid the door back and stepped into his compartment. Harbin realized the bed was a sweaty, tangled mess, and the cramped compartment smelled like the hot insides of an overused gym shoe.

“We’re about to enter a parking orbit around Vesta, sir,” she said stiffly.

“The base is back in operation?” he asked. As he spoke the words he realized that he didn’t care if the base was operating again. It meant nothing to him, one way or the other.

“Yes, sir. The nanomachine attack was limited to the surface installations, for the most part. No one was killed or even injured.”

Harbin knew from the look on her face that there was more to come. “What else?”

“I have received orders to relieve you of command. Mr. Humphries personally called and demanded to know who was responsible for the destruction of the Chrysalis habitat. When he found out it was you he went into a rage. Apparently he knows you from an earlier experience.”

Harbin felt as if he were watching this scene from someplace far away. As if he was no longer in his body, but floating free, drifting through nothingness, alone, untouched, untouchable.

“Go on,” he heard himself say.

“He wants you brought to Selene to stand trial for war crimes,” the exec said, her words stiff, brittle.

“War crimes.”

“The Chrysalis massacre. He also said that you murdered an employee of his, several years ago.”

“I see.”

“I’ve been ordered to relieve you of command and confine you to your quarters. Sir.”

Harbin almost smiled at her. “Then you should follow your orders.”

She turned and grasped the door handle. Before she stepped through the doorway, though, she said, “It’s on all the news nets. They’ve been playing it for the past two days.”

She left him, sliding the door shut. There was no lock on the door. It didn’t matter, Harbin thought. Even if it were locked the accordionfold was so flimsy he could push through it easily. If he wanted to.

Harbin stood in his musty, messy compartment for a moment, then shrugged. The moving finger writes, he thought. Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

Why can’t I feel anything? He asked himself. I’m like a block of wood. A statue of ice. The Chrysalis massacre, she called it. Massacre?

Shrugging his shoulders, he told the wall screen to display a news broadcast.

A woman’s shocked, hollow-eyed face appeared on the screen, her name—Edie Elgin—spelled out beneath her image. She wore no makeup, her hair was disheveled, her voice little more than a shaky whisper.

“… been working for several hours now,” she was saying, “trying to determine if there are any survivors. So far, none have been found.”