The giant corporations sold fusion fuels and solar energy to the wealthy of Earth. They sold metals and minerals from the asteroids to those who could afford it. How can I convince them to be more generous, to be more helping? Xianqing asked himself every day, every hour.
There was only one way that he could see: Seize control of the riches of the Asteroid Belt. The fools who plied that dark and distant region, the prospectors and miners and their corporate masters, were fighting among themselves. The ancient crime of piracy had reappeared out there among the asteroids. Murder and violence were becoming commonplace.
The world government could send an expedition of Peacekeepers to Ceres to restore order, Xianqing thought. We could stop the mayhem and bring peace to the region. And thereby, we could gain control of those precious resources. The prospectors and miners would grumble, of course. The corporations would howl. But what could do they do in the face of a fait accompli? How could they protest against the establishment of law and peace along that murderous frontier?
One thing barred such a prospect: Selene.
The people of the lunar community had fought for their independence and won it. They would not sit back and allow the world government to seize the Asteroid Belt. Would they fight? Xianqing feared that they would. It would not be difficult for them to attack spacecraft that were launched from Earth. We live in the bottom of a gravity well, Xianqing knew. While our vessels fight their way into space, Selene could destroy them, one by one. Or worse yet, cut off all supplies of energy and raw materials from space. Earth would be reduced to darkness and impotence.
No, direct military intervention in the Belt would be counterproductive—unless Selene could be neutralized.
So, Xianqing decided, if I cannot be a conqueror, I will become a peacemaker. I will lead the effort to resolve the fighting in the Asteroid Belt and gain the gratitude of future generations.
His first step was to contact Douglas Stavenger, in secret, through his beautiful mistress.
CHAPTER 46
“This isn’t going to work, Lars,” said Boyd Nielson. Fuchs muttered, “That’s my worry, not yours.”
“But some of those people down there are just construction workers,” Nielson pleaded. “Some of them are friends of ours, for god’s sake!”
Fuchs turned away. “That can’t be helped,” he growled. “They shouldn’t be working for Humphries.”
Nielson was an employee of Humphries Space Systems, commander of the ore freighter William C. Durant, yet he had been a friend of Fuchs’s in the early days on Ceres, before all the troubles began. Fuchs had tracked the Durant as the ship picked its way from one asteroid to another, loading ores bound back to the Earth/Moon system. With a handful of his crew, Fuchs had boarded Nielsen’s ship and taken it over. Faced with a half-dozen fierce-looking armed men and women, there was no fight, no resistance from Nielson or his crew. With its tracking beacon and all other communications silenced, Fuchs abruptly changed Durant’s course toward the major asteroid Vesta.
“Vesta?” Nielson had asked, puzzled. “Why there?”
“Because your employer, the high-and-mighty Mister Martin Humphries, is building a military base there,” Fuchs told him.
Fuchs had heard the rumors in the brief flurries of communications he received from Amanda, back at Ceres. HSS people were building a new base on Vesta. More armed ships and mercenaries were going to use the asteroid as the base from which they would hunt down Lars Fuchs and kill him.
Fuchs decided to strike them first. He ordered the compliant Nielson to contact Vesta and tell them that Durant had been damaged in a fight with Fuchs’s ship and needed to put in for repairs.
But now, as the two men stood at the command console on Durant’s bridge and Nielson finally understood what Fuchs was going to do, he began to feel frightened. He was a lean, wiry redhead with a pointed chin and teeth that seemed a size too big for his jaw. Nielsen’s crew were all locked in their privacy cubicles. Nodon and the other Asians were at the ship’s controls. Nielson was not the nervous type, Fuchs knew, but as they approached Vesta he started to perspire visibly.