With an understanding nod, Wanamaker replied, “Then you’re going to have to do some fighting, too, with your board. Just because you’re at the top of the chain of command doesn’t mean you don’t have to put your butt on the line, Pancho.”
She tried to smile. “I guess the price of commodities from the Belt is gonna go up.”
George was surprised at Pancho’s message.
“Go full speed ahead on the nanoprocessing,” she said, her lantern-jawed face deadly serious. “It’s important that we bring down the costs of mining the rocks.”
George studied her image on the wallscreen of his sitting room, thinking, First she says nanoprocessing is gonna knock the bottom outta the market and now she’s hot to trot with it. What’s goin’ on with her?
Pancho’s next sentence explained it, at least partially. “Astro’s got some big expenses coming up, Georgie. Anything we can do to lower our costs will let us squeeze some extra profits out of the mining operations and help us pay for what’s coming up.”
“What’s coming up?” George asked Pancho’s image.
She couldn’t answer, of course, not for an hour or so, but George was afraid he already knew. They’re gonna fight it out, he figured. No more pokin’ here and there, they’re gonna fight a fookin’ full-scale war. And they’re gonna do it right here in the Belt.
“One more thing,” Pancho was going on, with hardly a pause for breath. “It’s going to be more dangerous out there for Lars than ever before. Tell him it’s time for him to come in from the cold. I can give him a new identity, let him live here in Selene if he wants to or even back on Earth. He’s got to get out of the Belt, for his own safety.”
George nodded at Pancho’s image. She looked grave, somber. Like a woman about to go to war, George thought. Then he realized, No. She looks more like a fookin’ avenging angel.
Victoria Ferrer watched Humphries’s reaction to the latest reports from his far-flung intelligence network.
“Astro’s arming ships,” he muttered, staring at the display hovering in midair above his desk. “And she’s pushing the nanoprocessing scheme.”
“She’s preparing to go to war,” Ferrer said. “Against you.”
He looked up at her, his face cold with fury. “With nanoprocessing, Pancho can cut her costs and give Astro an extra layer of profits to finance her war.”
“Then we’ve got to get into nanoprocessing, too.”
“Damned quick,” Humphries snapped.
“The scientist who perfected the process is here in Selene,” Ferrer pointed out. “He came in with Pancho.”
“Hire him away from Astro,” Humphries said immediately.
“He’s not an Astro employee,” she said. “Not legally, at least.”
“Then hire him. Give him whatever he wants. If he won’t come along with us, kidnap him. I want him working for me!”
“I understand,” Ferrer said.
Humphries rubbed his hands together. “By god, with nanoprocessing we’ll cut the costs of mining down to nothing, almost. Down to the cost of transportation, just about.”
“Nanotechnicians don’t come cheap.”
He sneered at her. “Cheap enough. We’ll only need a handful of them. We’ll have those little buggers not only mining the ores out of the asteroids, but refining them into pure metals while they do it. What more could you ask for?”
Ferrer looked less enthusiastic. “Lots of miners are going to be thrown out of work.”
“So what?” Humphries said offhandedly. “More recruits for the mercenaries.”
More cannon fodder, Ferrer thought.
Still in his quarters inside the asteroid Vesta, Dorik Harbin tried to think of the French phrase about the more that things may change, the more they remain the same. Instead, a quatrain from the Rubaiyat came to his mind:
Yesterday, this day’s madness did prepare:
Tomorrow’s silence, triumph or despair;
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why;
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
The irony is almost cosmic, Harbin thought. Humphries fires me because I’ve failed to kill Fuchs. Yamagata hires me to lead a squadron of mercenaries. Humphries hires Yamagata’s mercenaries and bases their ships on Vesta. I didn’t have to move, didn’t even have to pack a travel bag. Here I am in the same quarters, lower in rank but higher in pay. All I have to do is lead three ships into battle against Astro Corporation. Fuchs has become a sideshow.