Wanamaker nodded.
“Okay. You recruit more mercenaries, I’ll buy more ships. For the time being, Humphries has the run of the Belt. He’s gonna attack any Astro vessels he can find out there, try to drive us out of the Belt altogether.”
“Convoy them.”
“Convoy?”
“Don’t let them sail alone. Put them in groups. It’s harder to attack a formation of armed ships than a single ship.”
“Makes sense,” Pancho agreed. “I’ll send out the word right away.”
“I think Yamagata Corporation can provide us with reliable mercenaries.”
“Good. Go get ’em.”
It took a moment for Wanamaker to realize he’d been dismissed. It only hit him when Pancho pushed her chair back from the conference table and got to her feet. He shot up and started to salute, then caught himself and reddened slightly.
“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said, as if excusing himself for leaving the room.
“Me too,” said Pancho.
Wanamaker left, and Pancho returned to her desk. She called up reports on where the Astro ships were, and where Humphries’s vessels were. A holographic representation of the vast space between Earth and the Belt took form in the air beyond her desk, a huge dark expanse with flickering pinpoints of light showing the positions of the ships, Astro’s in blue, HSS’s in red. There was a cluster of ships between the Earth and Moon; Pancho blanked them out to simplify the three-dimensional picture.
Cripes, there’s a lot of red ones out in the Belt, she said to herself. And those are just the ones we know about. The Humper’s prob’ly got a lot more out there, moving around the Belt without any telemetry or identification beacons for the IAA to pick up.
She had the computer identify the ore freighters, logistics carriers, and ships carrying miners to specific asteroids. Then she added the freelancers, the prospectors and miners who worked on their own, independent of the big corporations.
Minutes ticked into hours as she studied the situation. We’re outnumbered in the Belt two, three to one, Pancho saw. The Hump’s been building up his fleet out there for years now. We’ve gotta play catch-up.
But why should we play their game? she asked herself. That’s what we were doing with Gormley and look what it got us.
She leaned back in her softly yielding desk chair and closed her eyes briefly. What’s the point of all those ships out in the Belt? To bring ores to the factories on Earth, or in Earth orbit, or here at Selene, she answered her own question.
She stared at the hologram imagery again. Flickering red dots representing HSS ships were spread through the Belt, with a particular clustering around Vesta. But a thinner trickle of red dots was plying the lanes between the Belt and the Earth/Moon vicinity.
They’ve gotta bring the goods back here, Pancho saw. That’s the whole point of mining the rocks. If we can knock off their ships coming Earthward, we can hit Humphries in the pocketbook, strangle his cash flow, cut his profits down to nothing.
She sat up straight in the desk chair and said aloud, “That’s the way to do it! Let him have the Belt for now. Stop him from bringing the ores to market.”
We don’t need naval tactics, she realized. We don’t need battles between fleets of warships. What we need is more like a gang of pirates. Like the old Sea Hawks from Queen Elizabeth I’s time. Privateers. Pirates.
And she knew just the man who could lead such a campaign. Lars Fuchs.
“All of them?” Humphries asked, as if the news was too good to be true.
Vicki Ferrer was not smiling, but it was clear from the pleased expression on her face that she was happy to be able to bring her boss a positive report.
“Every Astro ship was destroyed,” she repeated.
They were in the big library/bar on the ground floor of Humphries’s mansion, alone except for the robot bartender, which stood at its post, gleaming stainless steel reflecting the ceiling lights.
“You’re sure?” Humphries asked.
“The report came directly from the Yamagata team. Their idea about using the rocks worked perfectly. The Astro fleet charged right into them. No survivors.”