“What’s this goddam parade of tractors for?” the woman demanded.
She was wearing a breathing mask, too. So was the skinny kid standing a few paces down the shadowy aisle of tall shelves.
“We’re here to empty out your warehouse,” Santorini said, strutting up to her.
“What the hell do you mean?” the woman asked angrily, reaching for the phone console.
Santorini swatted her to the floor with a backhand smack. The kid back in the stacks threw up his hands in the universal sign of surrender.
“Come on,” Santorini said, waving to the rest of them.
Harbin nodded his approval. They started to move in. The kid stood absolutely still, frozen in terror from the look on his ashen face. Santorini kicked him in the stomach so hard he bounced off the shelving and collapsed groaning to the floor.
“How’s that for martial arts?” Santorini shouted over his shoulder as the others revved up the minitractors and trundled into the warehouse, raising billows of black dust.
Swaggering little snot, Harbin thought, looking at the woman Santorini had knocked down. Her lip was bloody, but the look in her eyes proclaimed pure malevolent fury. She struggled to her feet, then lurched toward the phone console.
Harbin grabbed her by one shoulder. “Be careful, grandmother. You could get hurt.”
The woman growled and swung her free fist into Harbin’s temple. The blow surprised more than hurt him, but it triggered his inner anger.
“Stop it,” he snarled, shaking her.
She aimed a kick at his groin. Harbin twisted sideways to catch it on his hip but it still hurt. Without thinking he slid the electro-dagger out of its sheath on his wrist and slit her throat.
The old woman gurgled blood and collapsed to the floor like a sack of wet cement.
Fuchs’s black mood of frustration and anger deepened into an even darker pit of raging fury as he and Nodon boarded the Astro Corporation ship Lubbock Lights bound for Ceres. They had said a lingering goodbye to George at the Pelican Bar the night before.
“I’ll be back at the Belt as soon’s me arm grows back,” George had promised several times, over many beers.
Pancho had bought all their rounds, drinking with them in gloomy comradeship.
Now, with a thundering headache and a towering hatred boiling inside him, Fuchs faced the four-day journey back to Ceres with the exasperation of a caged jungle beast.
When the message came in from Amanda he nearly went berserk.
He was in his privacy compartment, a cubicle barely large enough to hold a narrow cot, trying to sleep. Each time he closed his eyes, though, he saw Martin Humphries sneering at him. And why not? Fuchs raged at himself. He has gotten away with murder. And piracy. No one can stop him; no one will even stand up to him except me, and I’m powerless: a pitiful, impotent, useless fool.
For hours he tossed on the cot, clad only in a pair of shorts, sweating, his hair matted, his jaw stubbled with a two-day growth of beard. Stop this fruitless nonsense! he raged at himself. It’s useless to pound your head against a wall. Think! Prepare! If you want revenge on Humphries you must out-think him, you must make plans that are crystal clear, a strategy that will crush him once and for all. But each time he tried to think clearly, logically, his anger rose like a tide of red-hot lava, overwhelming him.
The phone buzzed. Fuchs sat up on the cot and told the computer to open the incoming message.
Amanda’s face filled the screen on the bulkhead at the foot of the cot. She looked tense, even though she tried to smile.
“Hello, dear,” she said, brushing at a stray lock of hair that had fallen across her forehead. “I’m fine, but they’ve looted the warehouse.”
“What? Looted?”
She couldn’t hear or see him, of course. She had sent the message a good fifteen minutes earlier.
“They killed Inga. Out of pure bloodthirsty spite, from what Oscar told me. You remember him, Oscar Jiminez. He’s the young boy I hired to help handle the stock.”
She’s terrified, Fuchs realized, watching the lines of strain on her face, listening to her ramble on.