Fuchs walked the laser beam toward him, watched its molten path as it burned across the asteroid’s gravelly surface.
“Waiting to trap me, were you?” he muttered. “You wanted to kill me. Now see what death is like.”
For an instant he wondered who was inside that spacesuit. What kind of a man becomes a mercenary soldier, a hired killer? Is he like my own crew, the castoffs, the abandoned, so desperate that they’ll do anything, follow anyone who can give them hope that they’ll live to see another day? Fuchs watched the spacesuited figure struggling, arms and legs pumping frantically as he drifted farther off the asteroid. He certainly had no experience in micro-gravity, Fuchs saw. And his comrades are doing nothing to help him.
You’re going to die alone, he said silently to the spacesuited figure.
Yet he turned off the cutting laser. His hand had touched the screen icon that deactivated its beam before his conscious mind understood what he had done. The red spot of the low-power aiming laser still scintillated on the asteroid’s surface. Fuchs moved it to shine squarely on the flailing, contorted body of the mercenary.
Kill or be killed, he told himself. It took an effort, though, to will his hand back to the high-power laser’s firing control. He held it there, poised a bare centimeter above it.
“Two ships approaching at high acceleration,” called the pilot. “No, four ships, coming in from two different directions.”
Fuchs knew he couldn’t murder the man. He could not kill him in cold blood. And he knew that their trap had worked.
It all fell in on him like an avalanche. They knew where the transceivers were hidden. Someone had told them. Someone? Only Amanda knew where the transceivers were located. She wouldn’t betray him, Fuchs told himself. She wouldn’t. Someone must have ferreted out the information somehow. And then sold it to Humphries.
“Six ships,” called the pilot, sounding frightened. “All approaching at high g.”
Trapped. They were waiting for me to show up. Six ships.
Nodon’s voice came over the intercom. “Lasers one and three ready to fire.”
I’ll get them all killed if I try to fight back, Fuchs realized. It’s me that Humphries wants, not my crew.
Suddenly he felt tired, bone tired, soul weary. It’s over, he realized. All this fighting and killing and what has it gained me? What has it gained anyone? I’ve walked my crew into a trap, like a fool, like a wolf caught in the hunter’s net. It’s over. It’s finished. And I’ve lost everything.
With a feeling of resignation that overwhelmed him, Fuchs touched the communications key and spoke, “This is Lars Fuchs aboard the Nautilus. Don’t fire. We surrender.”
Harbin heard the defeat in Fuchs’s voice. And he cursed Martin Humphries for saddling him with this oversized armada and company of troops. I could have done this by myself, he thought. Given the information about where he planted his transceivers, I could have trapped him by myself, without all these others—all these witnesses.
By himself, Harbin would have sliced Fuchs’s ship into bits and killed everyone aboard it. Then he would have carried Fuchs’s dead body back to Diane and her boss, so Humphries could glory in his triumph and Harbin could claim the immense bonus that would be rightfully his. Then he would take Diane for himself and leave Humphries to gloat over his victory.
But there were more than a hundred men and women aboard this fleet that Humphries had insisted upon. It was nonsense to believe that each of them would remain quiet if Harbin killed Fuchs after the man had surrendered. It would be too big a story, too much temptation. Someone would cash out to the news media, or to spies from Humphries’s competitors in Astro Corporation.
No. Against his instincts, against his judgment, Harbin knew he had to accept Fuchs’s surrender and bring the man and his crew back to Ceres. Then he smiled grimly. Perhaps once he’s on Ceres something might happen to him. After all, the man’s made many enemies there. They might even put him on trial and execute him legally.
CHAPTER 53
The implantation procedure was not as draining as Diane feared it would be.