“Ceramic, looks like.”
The redhead checked her handheld. “Should be a closet, according to the floorplan.”
“How in the world do you get into it, though?” Quinlan looked for a door latch or a button but could see nothing along the soot-blackened door frame.
He tried to slide the door open. It wouldn’t budge. He tapped it, then rapped. “It’s locked from the inside, seems like.”
At that instant the door slid open so fast they both jumped back a startled step or two.
Martin Humphries stood tottering on uncertain legs, glaring at them with red-rimmed blazing in his eyes.
“About time,” he croaked, his voice bricky-dry.
“Mr. Humphries!”
Humphries staggered past them, looked at the ruins of his palatial bedroom, then turned back on them fiercely.
“Water! Give me water.”
Quinlan yanked the canteen from his belt and wordlessly handed it to the angry man. Humphries gurgled it down greedily, water spilling down his chin and dripping onto the front of his wrinkled shirt. Even through the breathing mask, Quinlan could smell the man’s foul body odor.
Humphries put the canteen down from his lips, but still held onto it possessively. Wiping his chin with the back of his free hand, he coughed once, then jabbed a finger at Quinlan.
“Phone,” he snapped, his voice a little stronger than before. “Give me a phone. I’m going to hang that murdering bastard Fuchs by his balls!”
ASTEROID VESTA
Although the military base on Vesta belonged to Humphries Space Systems, its key personnel were mercenaries hired by HSS from several sources. Leeza Chaptal, for example, was a Yamagata Corporation employee. She was now effectively the base commander, since the HSS man nominally in charge of the base was a business executive, by training and education an accountant, by disposition a bean-counter.
Leeza left him to shuffle paperwork (electronically, of course) and he left her to run the two-hundred-odd men and women who made up the military strength of the base: engineers, technicians, astronauts, soldiers. It was a wise arrangement. The HSS man dealt with numbers, while Leeza handled the real work.
With the solar storm raging, though, there was very little real work being done. Leeza had called in everyone from the surface. Huddled safely in the caverns and tunnels deep underground, there was little for the military to do other than routine maintenance of equipment and that oldest of all soldierly pursuits: griping.
In truth, Leeza herself felt uncomfortable burrowed down like a mole in its den. Even though she seldom went to the surface of Vesta, it unnerved her to realize that she could not go up to the surface now, could not get out of these cramped little compartments carved out of the asteroid’s rocky body, could not stand up on the bare pebbled ground—even in a space suit—and see the stars.
She paced slowly along the consoles in the base command center, looking over the shoulders of the bored technicians sitting at each desk. The storm was weakening, she saw. Radiation levels were beginning to decline. Good, she thought. The sooner this is over, the better. Four HSS vessels were hanging in docking orbits up there, waiting for the radiation to recede enough so they could begin shuttling their crews down to the base. And Dorik Harbin was approaching in his ship, Samarkand.
Dorik had been distant for weeks now; perhaps it was time to bring him closer. Leeza smiled inwardly at the thought. He doesn’t like the fact that I outrank him, she knew. But a few of the right pills and he’ll forget all about rank. Or maybe I should try something that will make him obedient, submissive. No, she decided. I like his passion, his ferocity. Take that away from him and there’s nothing special left.
“Unidentified vehicle approaching,” said the tech monitoring the radar.
Leeza felt her scalp tingle. Anything that the radar could spot through this radiation cloud must be close, very close.
“Two bogies,” the technician called out as Leeza hurried to his chair.
They were speeding toward Vesta, and so close that the computer could calculate their size and velocity. Too small to be attack ships, Leeza saw, swiftly digesting the numbers racing across the bottom of the display. Nukes? Nuclear bombs couldn’t do much damage to us while we’re buttoned up down here. For the first time she felt grateful for the solar storm.