She nodded inside her helmet.
“You’re okay for short time periods on the surface,” Stavenger went on. “Off the Moon an electromagnetic system can be added to the suits easily enough.”
Pancho asked, “Doug, ol’ pal, how’d you like to sign a contract with Astro to manufacture and distribute these softsuits?”
He laughed. “No thanks, Pancho. Selene’s going to develop this product. We’ll sell them at pretty close to cost, too.”
Pancho understood the meaning behind his words. If Selene signed up with Astro for selling the suits, Humphries would complain. If Selene gave a contract to HSS, Astro would fight it. She nodded again inside the fishbowl helmet. Better to keep this out of either corporation’s hands. Better to let Selene handle this one themselves.
The low curving roof of the factory loomed before them. Stavenger and Pancho climbed the stairs to the edge of the factory’s thick concrete slab, then stepped through the “car wash,” the special airlock that scrubbed their suits free of dust and other contaminants before they were allowed to enter the ultra-pure domain of the factory itself. Pancho felt the jets and scrubbers pummeling her brutally.
“Hey Doug,” she gasped. “You gotta reset these things to go easier.”
His voice in her helmet earphones sounded bemused. “We did reset them, Pancho. They would’ve knocked you flat if we’d left them at the same power level we used for the hard-shell suits.”
It took Pancho a few moments to catch her breath once she had stepped out of the “car wash” and onto the factory floor. As Stavenger came up beside her, also breathing heavily, she looked out at the two completed spacecraft. Their diamond hulls looked dark, like ominous shadows lurking beneath the curved roof of the factory.
“There they are,” Stavenger said tightly. “One for you and one for Humphries.”
She understood the tension in his voice. “Two brand-new warships. So we can go out and kill some more mercenaries.”
Stavenger said nothing.
“We’ve got six more under contract, right?” she asked.
After several heartbeats, Stavenger said, “Yes. And we’re building the same number for Humphries.”
“So no matter who wins, Selene makes money.”
“I don’t like it, Pancho. I don’t like any of this. If I could convince the governing council to renege on these contracts, I would.”
“I don’t like it either, Doug. But what else can we do? Let the Humper take over the whole danged solar system?”
He fell silent again.
As they trudged back in silence toward the airlock at Selene, Pancho said to herself: Deadlock. Selene doesn’t want either one of us to win. They don’t want one side to beat the other and become master of the whole solar system. Even if Astro wins, if I win, Selene’s scared shitless that they’ll be under my thumb. Doug wants to see Humphries and Astro fight ourselves into exhaustion, and then he’ll step in and be the peacemaker again.
So they’re doing their best to keep us even. They won’t make a warship for Humphries without making one for Astro. Keeps them neutral, Doug says. Keeps us in a deadlock, that’s what it keeps.
There’s gotta be some way out of this, some way to break through and beat the Humper before we’re both so broke and dead-flat exhausted that both our corporations go bust.
If I could get Lars to help us, she thought. He might just be able to tip the scales in our favor. But the l’il bugger has disappeared. What’s he up to? Why’s he gone to ground on me?
Shaking her head inside the fishbowl helmet, Pancho considered: We need an outside force, a partner, an ally. Somebody who can tip the scales in Astro’s favor. Outmaneuver Humphries. Overpower him. Some way to outflank HSS.
Then it hit her. Nairobi! That guy from Nairobi Industries wanted a strategic alliance with Astro. I wonder if he’s still interested? I’ll have to look him up soon’s I get back to the office, whatever his name was.
ASTRO CORPORATION COMMAND CENTER
Jake Wanamaker’s command center was a cluster of offices set slightly apart from the rest of Astro Corporation’s headquarters. With wry humor, Wanamaker mused that Humphries could do more damage to Astro, at far less cost, by attacking these offices and wiping out the corporation’s military command. But even war has its rules, and one of the fundamental rules of this conflict was that no violence would be tolerated anywhere on the Moon. The side that broke that rule would bring Selene and its considerable financial and manufacturing clout into the battle as an enemy.