“But the thruster’s bunged up, useless.”
“Perhaps we could repair it.”
“Besides, if we use the propellant for thrust we won’t have anything left for the power generator. No power for life support. lights out.”
“No,” Nodon corrected. “I have reserved enough of the remaining propellant to keep the power generator running. We are okay there. We won’t run short of electrical power.”
“That’s something,” George huffed. “When our corpses arrive back in Ceres space the fookin’ ship’ll be well lit.”
“Perhaps we can repair the rocket thruster,” Nodon repeated.
George scratched at his beard again. It itched as if some uninvited guests had made their home in it. “I’m too fookin’ tired to go out again and look at the thruster. Gotta get some shut-eye first.”
Nodding his agreement, Nodon added, “And a meal.”
Surveying the depleted list on the galley inventory screen, George muttered, “Such as it is.”
CHAPTER 22
Amanda looked up from her screen and smiled as Fuchs entered their one-room apartment. He did not smile back at her. He had spent the morning inspecting the ruins of Helvetia’s warehouse. The fire had turned the rock-walled chamber into an oven, melting what it did not burn outright. Before it consumed all the oxygen in the cave and died out, it reduced all of Fuchs’s stock, all that he had worked for, all that he had planned and hoped for, to nothing but ashes and twisted stumps of melted metal. If the airtight hatches hadn’t held, the fire would easily have spread down the tunnels and killed everyone in Ceres.
Fuchs trembled with rage at the thought. The murdering vermin didn’t worry about that. They didn’t care. So everyone in Ceres dies, what is that to Humphries? What does it matter to him, so long as he gets his way and removes the thorn in his side?
I am that thorn, Fuchs told himself. I am only a little inconvenience, a minor nuisance in his grandiose plans for conquest.
Thinking of the blackened, ruined warehouse, Fuchs said to himself, This thorn in your side will go deeper into your flesh, Humphries. I will infect you, I will inflame you until you feel the same kind of pain that you’ve inflicted on so many others. I swear it!
Yet by the time he trod back to his home, coughing in the dust stirred up by his strides, he felt more weary than angry, wondering how he had come to travel down this path, why this weight of vengeance had fallen onto his shoulders. It’s not vengeance, he snarled inwardly. It’s justice. Someone has to stand for justice; Humphries can’t be allowed to take everything he wants without being accountable to anyone.
Then he slid back the door to his quarters and saw Amanda’s beautiful, radiant smile. And the anger surged back in full fury. Humphries wants her, too, Fuchs reminded himself. The only way he’ll get Amanda is over my dead body.
Amanda got up from her desk and came to him. He took her in his arms, but instead of kissing him, she rubbed her fingers against his cheek.
“You have a smudge on your face,” she said, still smiling. “Like a little boy who’s been out playing in the streets.”
“Soot from the warehouse,” he said bleakly.
She pecked him on the lips, then said, “I have some good news.”
“Yes?”
“The insurance money was deposited in Helvetia’s account this morning. We can get started again without borrowing from Pancho.”
“How much?”
Amanda’s smile faded a fraction. “Just a tad less than half of what we applied for. About forty-eight percent of our actual loss.”
“Forty-eight percent,” he muttered, heading for the lav.
“It’s more hard cash than we had when we started Helvetia, darling.”
He knew she was trying to cheer him. “Yes, that’s true, isn’t it?” he said as he washed his face. His hands were grimy with soot, too, he saw.
He let the dryer blow over his face, noisy and rattling, remembering the luxury of having actual cloth towels at the hotel in Selene. We could do that here, Fuchs told himself. Vacuum clean them on the surface just as they do at Selene. It would save us electrical power, if we could keep the dust from up on the surface out of the laundry.
“Any word from Starpower?” he asked as he stepped back into the main room.
“She’s on the way in,” Amanda said. “She’ll be here when the lease is up, at the end of the month.”
“Good.”
Amanda’s expression turned grave. “Lars, do you think it’s a good idea for you to take Starpower out? Can’t you hire a crew and stay here?”
“Crews cost money,” he said. “And we’d have to share whatever we find with the crew. I can handle the ship by myself.”
“But you’ll be alone…”
He knew what she meant. Ships had disappeared out in the Belt. And he was marked for murder by Humphries.
“I’ll be all right,” he said. “They won’t know where I’m going.”
Amanda shook her head. “Lars, all they have to do is tap into the IAA’s net and they’ll see your tracking beacon. They’ll know exactly where you are.”
He almost smiled. “Not if the tracking beacon is coming from a drone that I release a day or so after I’ve left Ceres.”
She looked totally surprised. “But that would be a violation of IAA regulations!”
“Yes, it would. It would also make my life much safer.”
The work of cleaning up the charred mess of his warehouse took several days. It was hard to find men or women to do the menial labor; they demanded the same level of pay they could get working someone’s computer systems or crewing one of the prospecting ships. So Fuchs hired all four of the teenagers on Ceres. They were eager to have something to do outside of their school hours, happy to be away from their lesson screens, happier still to be earning spendable money. Still, Fuchs did most of the labor himself, since the kids could only work a couple of hours each day.
After several days, though, the four youngsters failed to show up for work. Fuchs phoned each of them and got a variety of lame excuses.
“My parents don’t want me working.”
“I got too much studying to do.”
Only one of them hinted at the truth. “My father got an e-message that said he could lose his job if he let me work for you.”
Fuchs didn’t have to ask who the father worked for. He knew: Humphries Space Systems.
So he labored alone in the warehouse cave, finally clearing out the last of the charred debris. Then he started putting together new shelving out of discarded scraps of metal from the maintenance bays.
One evening, as he scuffed wearily along the dusty tunnel after a long day of putting up his new shelving, Fuchs was accosted by two men wearing HSS coveralls.
“You’re Lars Fuchs, aren’t you?” said the taller of the pair. He was young, not much more than a teenager himself: his dirty-blond hair was cropped close to his skull, and his coverall sleeves were rolled up past his elbows. Fuchs saw tattoos on both his forearms.
“I am,” Fuchs answered, without slowing down.
They fell in step with him, one on either side. The shorter of the two was still a couple of centimeters taller than Fuchs, with the chunky build of a weightlifter. His hair was long and dark, his face swarthy.
“I’ve got a piece of friendly advice for you,” said the taller one. “Take your insurance money and leave Ceres.”
Still shuffling along the tunnel, Fuchs said, “You seem to know something about my business.”