Then she saw the same minitractor she had ridden on heading across the cement-dusty floor toward her. Two men were squeezed into its cab alongside the driver.
He remembers me hitching the ride, Pancho realized, and he’s bringing the goons to search the area. She smiled. The tractor could serve as a power supply for the laser, she thought. All I have to do is get rid of those three guys. She unclipped her other earring and held it tightly in her palm.
Sitting on the bare concrete floor, her back pressed against the plastic crate, Pancho listened to the tractor coming up and stopping. Voices muttering in Japanese. They’re getting out, she knew. Poking around.
She clambered to her feet. The three saw her immediately. Pancho noticed with some surprise that the hard-hatted driver was a young woman. The other two, bareheaded, were stony-faced men. And armed with guns.
“You!” one of the men shouted in English, pointing a pistol at her. “Don’t move!”
Pancho slowly raised both hands above her head, the earring still clutched in her right palm. Wait, she said to herself, flicking the catch of the earring with her thumb. Let them get just a little closer.
Now! She tossed the earring at them and flung both arms over her eyes. The flash of light still seared through her closed lids and burned a red afterimage on her retinas. But once she opened her eyes she found that she could see well enough. The two goons were writhing on the ground, screeching in Japanese. The woman driver was staggering around blindly. Blinking painful tears, Pancho grabbed the laser in both hands, pushed past the dazed and groping driver, and dumped it into the back of the tractor. Even in one-sixth g, it was heavy.
Quickly she detached the cart and slipped into the tractor’s cab. She put it in gear and headed for the nearest ramp, up to the top level.
HABITAT CHRYSALIS
Big George scowled at the display splashed across his wall screen as he sat in his favorite recliner, feet up, a frosty mug of beer at his side. Solar storm, he said to himself. Big one.
The IAA forecasters were predicting that the storm would not reach Ceres. The cloud of ionized particles followed the interplanetary magnetic field, and the field’s loops and knots were guiding it across the other side of the solar system, far from Ceres’s position. George felt grateful. Chrysalis was protected by electromagnetic shielding, just as most spacecraft were, but George had no great ambition to ride out a storm.
Poor bastards on Vesta are gonna get it, he noted. Hope they’ve got the sense to get their arses underground in time. George shrugged and reached for his beer. At least they’ve got plenty of warning.
The display showed spacecraft traffic. Elsinore was the only vessel George was interested in. Edith Elgin was aboard, coming to Ceres to do a video report on the war out here. About fookin’ time somebody in the news media paid attention, George thought.
Elsinore was swinging clear of the radiation cloud, he saw. She’ll be here in four days and some, George said to himself. Good. We’ll be waitin’ for her.
He took a long swallow of beer. There was nothing else for him to do, except wait.
HUMPHRIES MANSION
Fuchs crouched behind the makeshift barricade jammed at the top of the stairs, peering into the shadows. Some light from the garden outside was leaking through the grills covering the upstairs windows. He could hear movement downstairs, but it was almost impossible to see anything with all the indoor lights off. Nodon has a hand torch, he knew, but to turn it on would simply give the guards a target to shoot at.
“Nodon,” he whispered, “pull down some of the drapes on the windows.”
The crewman scuttled away, and Fuchs heard ripping noises, then a muffled thud.
A strong voice called from the first floor, “Whoever you are, you can’t get out of here. You’re trapped. Better give yourselves up and let us turn you over to the authorities.”
Fuchs bit back the snarling reply he wanted to make. Nodon slithered up and pushed some bunched-up fabric into his hands. “Will this do, Captain?” he asked.