The younger man bobbed his head up and down.
“And closed off the suit arm,” George added.
Fuchs said, “He also went out EVA and recovered your arm. I thought for a few minutes that we would lose him altogether.”
“Did you now?” George said, feeling stupid, muffled. “Thanks, mate.”
Nodon looked embarrassed. He changed the subject. “You must have hit the other ship a damaging blow. It left at high speed.”
“That’s good.”
“We’ll be in Ceres in another fourteen hours,” said Fuchs.
“That’s good.” George couldn’t think of anything else to say. Somewhere, in a deep recess of his mind, he knew that he should be screaming. Prosthetics be damned, I’ve lost my fookin’ arm!
But the drugs muted his emotional pain as well as the physical. Nothing really seemed to matter. All George wanted was for them to leave him alone and let him sleep.
Fuchs seemed to understand, thank god. “You rest now,” he said, his tight slash of a mouth turned down bitterly. “I have a long report to send to the IAA as soon as we can repair one of the antennas.”
“Not this Fuchs person again,” complained Hector Wilcox.
Erek Zar and Francesco Tomasselli were sitting in front of Wilcox’s desk, Zar looking decidedly uncomfortable, Tomasselli almost quivering with righteous indignation.
Wilcox’s office was imposing, as befitted the Counsel General of the International Astronautical Authority. Slim, sleek, impeccably clothed in a somber charcoal business suit and dapper pearl-gray tie that nicely set off his silvery hair and trim moustache, Wilcox looked every centimeter the successful administrator, which he believed himself to be. He had arbitrated many a corporate wrangle, directed teams of bureaucrats to generate safety regulations and import duties on space manufactures, and climbed the slippery slope of the IAA’s legal department until he sat at its very top, unchallenged and hailed by his fellow bureaucrats as an example of patience, intelligence and—above all—endurance.
Now he had a charge of piracy to deal with, and it unsettled him to his very core.
“He sent in a complete report,” Tomasselli said, lean and eager, his dark eyes flashing.
Zar interrupted. “Fuchs claims his ship was attacked.”
“He reports,” Tomaselli resumed, laying emphasis on the word, “not only that his own ship was attacked, but another as well, and one of the men seriously injured.”
“By a pirate vessel.”
Zar’s ruddy, fleshy face colored deeper than usual. “That’s what he claims.”
“And the evidence?”
“His ship is damaged,” Tomasselli said before Zar could open his mouth. “He is bringing the injured man to Ceres.”
“Which ships are we talking about?” Wilcox asked, clear distaste showing on his lean, patrician face.
Zar put out a hand to silence his underling. “Fuchs’s ship is named Starpower. The other ship that he claims was attacked is Waltzing Matilda.”
“Is that one on its way to Ceres, too?”
“No,” Tomasselli jumped in. “They had to abandon it. The three of them are coming in on Starpower: Fuchs and the two men from Waltzing Matilda.”
Wilcox gave the Italian a sour look. “And Fuchs has charged Humphries Space Systems with piracy?”
“Yes,” said both men simultaneously.
Wilcox drummed his fingers on his desktop. He looked out his window at the St. Petersburg waterfront. He wished he were in Geneva, or London, or anywhere except here in this office with these two louts and this ridiculous charge of piracy. Piracy! In the twenty-first century! It was ludicrous, impossible. Those rock rats out in the Asteroid Belt have their private feuds and now they’re trying to drag the IAA into it.
“I suppose we’ll have to investigate,” he said gloomily.
“Fuchs has registered a formal charge,” said Tomasselli. “He has requested a hearing.”
Which I will have to preside over, Wilcox said to himself. I’ll be a laughingstock, at the very least.
“He should arrive at Ceres in a few hours,” Zar said.
Wilcox looked at the man’s unhappy face, then turned his gaze to the eager, impetuous Tomasselli.
“You must go to Ceres,” he said, pointing a long, manicured finger at the Italian.
Tomasselli’s eyes brightened. “I will conduct the hearing there?”
“No,” Wilcox snapped. “You will interview this man Fuchs and the others with him, and then bring the three of them back here, under IAA custody. Bring two or three Peacekeeper troopers with you.”