“What?”
“I’m sure it’s only temporary.”
“Lost contact?” Humphries’s voice rose a notch.
“It might be the solar storm,” said Grigor, almost to himself, “although the cloud is well past the Belt now.”
“Lost contact with the whole base?” Humphries shouted. “The entire base?”
“For more than twelve hours,” Grigor admitted, almost in a whisper.
Humphries wanted to scream. And he did, so loudly and with such fevered anger that Tatiana Oparin rushed into the sitting room. When she failed to calm him down she called the HSS medical department for Humphries’s personal physician.
COMMAND SHIP SAMARKAND
Harbin hated these one-way messages. I have to sit here like an obedient dog while my master speaks to me, he grumbled silently. Yet there was no other way. Grigor was at Selene, Harbin in his private compartment aboard Samakand, so deep in the Belt that it took light the better part of an hour to span the distance between them.
Grigor’s face, in the display screen, looked even dourer than usual. He’s worried, Harbin thought. Frightened.
“… completely wiped out Humphries’s home here in Selene and killed four security guards,” the security chief was saying, speaking rapidly, nervously. “They also killed Humphries’s personal assistant, the woman Ferrer. The attack was led by Lars Fuchs.”
Fuchs attacked Humphries in his own home! Harbin marveled. He felt some admiration for such daring. Strike your enemy as hard as you can. Strike at his heart.
Grigor was droning on, “Astro has apparently spirited Fuchs away. Most likely he’s on his way back to the Belt. He must have friends at Ceres, allies who will give him supplies and more crewmen. Your orders are to find Fuchs and kill him. Nothing else matters now. Bring Fuchs’s head to Mr. Humphries. He will accept nothing less.”
Harbin nodded. This isn’t the first time that Humphries has demanded Fuchs’s life, he recalled. But this will be the last time. The final time. Fuchs has frightened Humphries. Up until now Humphries has fought this war in comfort and safety. But now Fuchs has threatened him, terrified him. Now he’ll move heaven and Earth to eliminate the threat that Fuchs represents. Now it’s time for Fuchs to die.
“Something else,” Grigor added, his eyes shifting nervously. “The base on Vesta has gone silent. We don’t know why. I’ve diverted one of our attack ships to the asteroid to see what’s happened. You stay clear of Vesta. Head directly for Ceres and the habitat Chrysalis. Get Fuchs. Let me worry about Vesta.”
The security chief’s morose face disappeared from Harbin’s screen, leaving him alone in his compartment.
Let him worry about Vesta, Harbin thought sourly. And what do I do about supplies? Where do I get fuel and food for my crew? How do I get all the way over to Ceres on what’s left in my propellant tanks? I’ve stripped this ship’s armor, too. What if I run into an Astro attack vessel? Grigor can give orders, but carrying them out is up to me.
Doug Stavenger was also feeling frustrated about the long time lag between Selene and the Belt. Edith, aboard Elsinore, was approaching Ceres. She would be arriving at the Chrysalis habitat in less than twenty-four hours.
“… so it turns out that if you’d stayed here,” he was saying to her, “you’d have had a big story at your doorstep. Humphries isn’t letting any news media into his home, not even inside his garden, or what’s left of it. But from what the safety inspectors tell me the house is a burned-out shell and that big, beautiful garden of his is almost completely destroyed.”
He hesitated, leaned back in his recliner and tried to group his thoughts coherently. It was difficult speaking to a blank screen. It was like talking to yourself.
“Edie, this war’s gone far enough. I’ve got to do something to stop it. They’re fighting here in Selene now and I can’t permit that. If that fire had spread beyond Humphries’s garden it could have killed a lot of people here. Everyone, maybe, if we couldn’t get it under control. I can’t let them pose that kind of a threat to us. I’ve got to stop them.”