Without any change in his expression, Stavenger said, “There’s no way to get a message out of this room. I’ve had it shielded. Your handhelds won’t get a signal past these walls.”
Pancho leaned back in her chair and stretched her legs beneath the table. “Okay, then. Let’s start talking.”
Harbin had spent the three days since the attack on Chrysalis drifting in and out of a drug-induced stupor. His executive officer ran the ship while he slept and dreamed eerily distorted fantasies that always ended in blood and death.
By the time they reached Vesta, he had run out of medications and was beginning to sober up.
He was washing his bearded, pouchy-eyed face when someone tapped at his door.
“Enter,” he called, mopping his face with a towel.
The exec slid the door back and stepped into his compartment. Harbin realized the bed was a sweaty, tangled mess, and the cramped compartment smelled like the hot insides of an overused gym shoe.
“We’re about to enter a parking orbit around Vesta, sir,” she said stiffly.
“The base is back in operation?” he asked. As he spoke the words he realized that he didn’t care if the base was operating again. It meant nothing to him, one way or the other.
“Yes, sir. The nanomachine attack was limited to the surface installations, for the most part. No one was killed or even injured.”
Harbin knew from the look on her face that there was more to come. “What else?”
“I have received orders to relieve you of command. Mr. Humphries personally called and demanded to know who was responsible for the destruction of the Chrysalis habitat. When he found out it was you he went into a rage. Apparently he knows you from an earlier experience.”
Harbin felt as if he were watching this scene from someplace far away. As if he was no longer in his body, but floating free, drifting through nothingness, alone, untouched, untouchable.
“Go on,” he heard himself say.
“He wants you brought to Selene to stand trial for war crimes,” the exec said, her words stiff, brittle.
“War crimes.”
“The Chrysalis massacre. He also said that you murdered an employee of his, several years ago.”
“I see.”
“I’ve been ordered to relieve you of command and confine you to your quarters. Sir.”
Harbin almost smiled at her. “Then you should follow your orders.”
She turned and grasped the door handle. Before she stepped through the doorway, though, she said, “It’s on all the news nets. They’ve been playing it for the past two days.”
She left him, sliding the door shut. There was no lock on the door. It didn’t matter, Harbin thought. Even if it were locked the accordionfold was so flimsy he could push through it easily. If he wanted to.
Harbin stood in his musty, messy compartment for a moment, then shrugged. The moving finger writes, he thought. Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
Why can’t I feel anything? He asked himself. I’m like a block of wood. A statue of ice. The Chrysalis massacre, she called it. Massacre?
Shrugging his shoulders, he told the wall screen to display a news broadcast.
A woman’s shocked, hollow-eyed face appeared on the screen, her name—Edie Elgin—spelled out beneath her image. She wore no makeup, her hair was disheveled, her voice little more than a shaky whisper.
“… been working for several hours now,” she was saying, “trying to determine if there are any survivors. So far, none have been found.”
The scene suddenly changed to show the shattered remains of the Chrysalis habitat: broken, crumpled cylinders of metal glinting against the blackness of space, jagged pieces floating nearby, bodies drifting.
And Edie Elgin’s voice, choked with sorrow and horror, nearly sobbing, was saying, “Nearly eleven hundred people were living in the habitat when it was attacked. They had no weapons, no defenses. They were methodically slaughtered by their unidentified attacker.”
Harbin sank down onto his bed, staring at the screen. The icy armor that had surrounded him began to melt away. For the first time in many days he felt an emotion. He felt pain.
“Yamagata Corporation is not responsible for the Chrysalis tragedy,” Nobuhiko said sternly. “Our employees were working under a contract with Humphries Space Systems.”