“He’s punctured the hull!”
“Turn, dammit!”
Hoping the controls still worked, Fuchs heard a startled voice in his head say, Mein gott, we’re in a space battle!
This might work out after all, Harbin told himself.
His first shot had disabled Starpower’s main communications antenna. And just in time, too. Fuchs had already put in a call to the IAA back Earthside.
His second shot had holed their habitation module, he was certain. They were swinging their ship around, trying to protect the hab module by moving it behind their cargo bay. Harbin studied the schematics of Starpower while he waited for his laser to recharge.
No sense wasting time or energy. Hit the propellant tanks, drain them dry and then leave them to drift helplessly deeper into the Belt.
He shook his head, though. No, first I’ve got to disable their antennas. All of them. They could scream their heads off to the IAA while I’m puncturing their tanks. They could tell the whole story before they drift away and starve to death. If they had any sense, they’d be broadcasting on all frequencies now. They must be panicked, too terrified to think clearly.
You have much to be terrified of, Harbin said silently to the people aboard Starpower. The angel of death is breathing upon you.
“What’s he doin’?” George asked.
“He’s hit us several times,” Fuchs replied into his helmet microphone. “He seems to be concentrating on the hab module.”
“Goin’ for the antennas, just like he did to us.”
“The antennas?”
“So we can’t call for help.”
Fuchs knew that was wrong. What good would it do us to call for help? It would take ten minutes or more for our signal to reach Ceres. How could anyone possibly help us?
“I can see him!” Nodon shouted.
“Now we can shoot back at ‘im,” George said excitedly. “Hold us steady, dammit.”
Working the reaction jets that controlled the ship’s attitude,
Fuchs’s mind was racing. He’s not worried about our calling for help, he realized. He doesn’t want us to tell anyone that we’re under attack. He wants us to simply disappear, another ship mysteriously lost out in the Belt. If we get a distress call off then everyone will know that ships are being deliberately destroyed. Everyone will know that Humphries is killing people.
He called up the comm system diagnostics. Every last antenna was gone, nothing but a string of baleful red lights glowering along the display screen.
What can we do? Fuchs asked himself. What can we do?
George blinked at the sweat that stung his eyes maddeningly.
“Are you ready?” he shouted at Nodon, even though the spacesuited crewman was hardly three meters from him. They were standing on either side of the bulky cutting laser, a collection of tubes and vanes and piping that looked too complicated to possibly work correctly. Yet George saw Nodon nod, tight-lipped, inside his bubble helmet.
“Ready,” he said.
George glanced at the control board, leaning slightly canted against the curving bulkhead of the cargo bay. All the lights in the green, he saw. Good. Looking up through the open cargo bay hatch he could see the distant speck of the attacking ship, a cluster of gleaming sunlit crescents against the dark depths of infinity.
“Fire!” George said, leaning on the red button so hard he forced himself up off the metal deck. He raised a gloved hand to the overhead and pushed gently, felt his boots touch the deck plates again.
The cutting laser was a continuous wave device, designed to slice through rock. Its aiming system was so primitive that George had to sight the thing by eye. Its infrared beam was invisible, and the red beam of the low-power guide laser disappeared in the emptiness of space. In the vacuum of the cargo bay there was no sound, not even a vibration that George could feel.
“Are we hitting him?” Nodon asked, his voice pitched high.
“How the fook should I know?” George snapped. “I’m not even sure the fookin’ kludge is workin’.”
“It’s working! Look at the panel.” It’s working, all right, George saw. But is it doing any good?
The first hint that Starpower was firing back at him came when Harbin’s control board suddenly sprung a half-dozen amber warning lights. Without hesitation, he hit the maneuvering jets to jink Shanidar sideways. It ruined his own shot, but it moved him out of harm’s way. Temporarily.