“Your honor, I am Mr. Humphries’s personal assistant, and on his behalf I categorically deny this charge. It’s ludicrous.”
Big George hopped to his feet and waved the stump of his arm over his head. “Y’call this ludicrous? I di’n’t get this pickin’ daisies!”
“Order!” Wilcox slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “Sit down, both of you. I will not have outbursts in this hearing. We will proceed along calm, reasoned lines.”
Verwoerd and George resumed their seats.
Pointing a bony finger at Fuchs, Wilcox said, “Now, sir, if you have evidence to sustain a charge of piracy, let us hear it. We’ll look into the responsibility for such acts after we ascertain that they have actually happened.”
Fuchs slowly rose, feeling a trembling anger in his gut. “You have the transcription of the battle between my ship, Starpower, and the ship that attacked us. You have seen the damage inflicted on Starpower. Mr. Ambrose, here, lost his arm in that battle.”
Wilcox glanced over his shoulder at the ruddy-faced IAA flunky, who nodded once. “Noted,” he said to Fuchs.
“That same ship earlier attacked Mr. Ambrose’s ship, Waltzing Matilda, and left him and his crewman for dead.”
“Do you have any evidence for this, other than your unsupported word?” Wilcox asked.
“Waltzing Matilda is drifting in the Belt. We can provide approximate coordinates for a search, if you wish to undertake it.”
Wilcox shook his head. “I doubt that such a search will be necessary.”
“Earlier,” Fuchs resumed, “several others vessels were attacked: The Lady of the Lake, Aswan, The Star—”
Verwoerd called from her chair, “There is no evidence that any of those ships were attacked.”
“They disappeared without a trace,” Fuchs snapped. “Their signals cut off abruptly.”
With a smile, Verwoerd said, “That is not evidence that they were attacked.”
“Quite so,” said Wilcox.
“In most of those cases, the asteroids that those ships claimed were later claimed by Humphries Space Systems,” Fuchs pointed out.
“What of it?” Verwoerd retorted. “HSS ships have laid claim to many hundreds of asteroids. And if you examine the record carefully, you will see that four of the six asteroids in question have been claimed by entities other than HSS.”
Wilcox turned toward the lean assistant on his left. The man nodded hastily and said, “Three of them were claimed by a corporation called Bandung Associates and the fourth by the Church of the Written Word. None of these entities are associated with HSS; I checked thoroughly.”
“So what this hearing boils down to,” Wilcox said, turning back to Fuchs, “is your assertion that you were attacked.”
“For that I have evidence, and you have seen it,” Fuchs said, boiling inside.
“Yes, yes,” said Wilcox. “There’s no doubt that you were attacked. But attacked by whom? That’s the real question.”
“By a ship working for HSS,” Fuchs said, feeling he was pointing out the obvious. “Under the orders of Martin Humphries.”
“Can you prove that?”
“No employee of HSS would take such a step without the personal approval of Humphries himself,” Fuchs insisted. “He even had one of my people killed, murdered in cold blood!”
“You are referring to the murder of a Niles Ripley, are you not?” asked Wilcox.
“Yes. A deliberate murder to stop our construction of the habitat we’re building—”
Verwoerd interrupted. “We concede that Mr. Ripley was killed by an employee of Humphries Space Systems. But it was a private matter; the killing was neither ordered nor condoned by HSS. And Mr. Fuchs personally dispatched the killer, in a violent act of vigilantism.”
Wilcox fixed Fuchs with a stern gaze. “Frontier justice, eh? It’s too bad that you executed him. His testimony might have supported your case.”
Feeling exasperated, Fuchs said, “Who else would benefit from all these criminal acts?”
With a wry smile, Wilcox said, “I was hoping you could tell me, Mr. Fuchs. That’s why we’ve gone to the expense and trouble of holding this hearing. Who is responsible here?”
Fuchs closed his eyes briefly. I don’t want to bring Amanda into this. I don’t want to make this seem like a personal feud between Humphries and me.
“Do you have anything else to offer, Mr. Fuchs?”