Privateers

by Ben Bova

  “I am going to marry him,” she said.

  He looked down at her lovely face: so serious, so grave. What would Malik do if he just tilted her chin up and kissed her?

  “Lucita,” he whispered.

  “Yes?” She looked up at him, her eyes gleaming with the beginnings of tears. Dan saw sadness in those eyes, a resignation to the inevitability of a life shaped by the ambitions of her father and Vasily Malik. Yet there was something else in her luminous dark eyes, a conflicting emotion: was it hope? A desperate plea for rescue? A silent scream for help?

  The music ended, the dance came to an end. Out of the corner of his eye Dan saw Malik pushing his way through the crowd toward them, with giant Georgi right behind him.

  “Lucita,” he said. “We’re all doing what we’ve got to do. All of us.”

  She blinked the tears away and took a deep, shuddering breath. “Yes, I see. I understand.”

  She turned away from Dan, held out her hand to Malik and let him lead her away.

  Dan stayed at the party only long enough to invite Kolwezi and the other Third World space industrialists to his office for lunch the next day. They all agreed immediately: they had all expected the invitation.

  That accomplished, Dan left the party long before midnight and the public announcement of Lucita’s engagement to Malik. Georgi accompanied him to his limousine.

  “Sorry to have troubled you,” Dan said to the young Russian.

  “Not to worry,” he replied. “If not for you, I would be standing guard outside and miss the party. Now I can go to the kitchen and inspect the caviar.”

  Dan laughed. The beefy young man waved good night as the limo pulled away.

  The lights were on in Dan’s bedroom when he got back there. Kristin must have come back for another session of marriage counseling, he thought sourly. He pulled his tie loose and unfastened his collar as he made his way across the living room. You can’t let some women into your bedroom once without them thinking they have squatter’s rights. Never let them take a toothbrush out of their handbag, he told himself.

  Kristin was lying naked on the waterbed. Her face was a rictus of shock and pain. Her blood soaked the sheets, still bright red and warm enough to drip onto the carpet. Her throat had been slashed very thoroughly, very brutally, very expertly.

  Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  Dan leaned back in his leather desk chair and examined the earnest, determined face of Nobuhiko Yamagata. Bright morning sunlight streamed through the big windows behind his desk. There were dark rings under Dan’s eyes. He had not slept; the night had been spent with his own security people and the police detectives of Caracas and the Venezuelan national government.

  Now, wearing an open-necked tan sport shirt and rumpled chinos, Dan regarded his old friend’s son carefully.

  “Nobo,” he said, “I want you to return to Japan. Immediately. Today.”

  If the young Japanese was surprised, he masked it successfully. “Has my work failed to-”

  “It’s got nothing to do with your work,” Dan said. “It’s for your own safety. Two people who were somewhat close to me have been murdered. I’m not going to take the chance that you might be next.”

  Nobo shook his head the barest fraction of an inch. “I will not go. Not voluntarily. You can fire me, of course. But I will not quit.”

  With a sigh, Dan replied, “Okay, you’re fired.”

  The faintest hint of a smile crossed Nobo’s face. “Very well, then, I shall stay in Caracas to organize a labor union among your engineers and astronauts.”

  Dan blinked, uncertain he had heard the younger man correctly.

  “If you are going to fire valued employees so arbitrarily,” Nobo said, his grin widening, “then a labor union is necessary to protect our rights.”

  “Now look …”

  “Sir-I know what has happened. I have spoken to my father about it. He predicted that you would try to bundle me off, for my own safety, and he instructed me to use my own judgment in the matter.”

  “Well, then use some judgment,” Dan snapped. “Malik is playing a goddamned cat-and-mouse game. He’s trying to terrify me, or make me feel guilty enough to surrender to him. His goons are methodically murdering the people around me. Maybe he’s trying to get my key people to run away.”

  “And your first reaction is to force me to run away?”

  “You are the son of my closest friend,” Dan said. “And in the few months you’ve been here I’ve come to think of you almost as my own son-or at least a close nephew. I don’t want you to be killed.”

  Nobo raised a long, slim forefinger. “Point number one: I too have become very attached to you, almost like an uncle.” A second finger. “Two: You risked your life to rescue me and the others when the Russians took us prisoner. …”

  “It was my responsibility. I sent you on that mission.”

  Ignoring Dan’s reply, Nobo lifted a third finger. “Three: You are having a meeting this afternoon with space industrialists from four other nations. My father agrees that it would be a good thing for me to represent Yamagata Industries and Japan at this meeting.”

  Dan rubbed his chin for a moment, thinking, If Saito can’t or won’t attend the meeting, it would be a good idea to have Nobo sitting in for him. Then the only power missing would be China, and in a way Yamagata almost represents the Chinese as well as Japan.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re welcome to stay for the meeting. But then I want you on your way back home, understand?”

  Nobo did not bow his head as he would if he agreed with Dan. Instead, he said, “I have often heard my father say that you are rushing toward death, like a Samurai warrior of olden times.”

  “Your father is sometimes given to exaggeration.”

  The young man shrugged. “That may be. But we are all moving toward our deaths. Death will come when it comes. It is part of life.”

  “So’s paying taxes,” Dan grumbled. “That doesn’t mean you can’t try to avoid it.”

  They make a motley crew, Dan thought. Kolwezi as tall and black as an American basketball star. Vavuniya looking like a brown pygmy next to him. Al Hashimi, the hawk-nosed sheikh even in a Western-style business suit. And Chalons, the golden Polynesian, with the blood of at least four different races in him.

  They sat around the marble dining table in Dan’s apartment. All morning long, Astro security personnel had combed the walls, the floors, the ceilings, even the adjoining buildings for listening devices. Metal mesh curtains shimmered across each window, letting the noonday sunlight in but foiling microwave beams that might catch the vibrations of the windows or the very air inside the apartment and translate them into the words being spoken. Uniformed guards patrolled every floor of the buildings, and half of the men and women in street clothes who roamed through the lobby and hallways were Astro security employees.

  More guards covered the roof and still more patrolled nearby in cruising unmarked cars and fluttering helicopters. Maybe Malik’s trying to get me to spend myself into bankruptcy, Dan thought as he contemplated the costs of such security. Each man and woman in his security forces had been thoroughly investigated when they had been hired, and checks of their loyalty went on all the time. But Dan knew from his own experience how easily someone could be bribed. And it was not always money that corrupted; just as often it was flattery, or revenge, or naked lust.

  One hand grenade in here would wipe out all the Third World space industry leaders, he thought. Malik could achieve his goal at a stroke. There’d be nobody left to operate in space except the Soviet Union.

  Luncheon was served by a trio of pretty young women who were trained bodyguards. Each man received a dish prepared especially for him, out of the detailed dossiers maintained by Dan’s computers. The aromas of roast goat and curried chicken dominated the room. Dan introduced Nobo, who sat at the far end of the table. The conversation during lunch was light, pleasant, guarded.

  But as the meal drew to its close, Dan tap
ped his fork against his water glass for their attention.

  “I think you all know what’s going on,” he said, putting the fork down on his emptied plate. “If any of you don’t, then you ought to fire your director of intelligence.”

  The men chuckled, somewhat uneasily, Dan thought.

  Al Hashimi, seated at Dan’s right, said, “I understand that a young woman was murdered here last night.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Regrettable,” murmured Chalons.

  “She was a victim of the war that the Soviets are waging against us.”

  “Us?”

  “All of us here at this table,” Dan said firmly.

  They glanced at one another. Vavuniya, his black eyes darting from one face to another, said in his singsong English, “But what has this unfortunate incident to do with us.?”

  “Everything,” replied Dan.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “The Soviet Union wants to be the only power operating in space. They have forced the United States and all the members of the old NATO alliance to renounce their space programs. …”

  “In the name of peace,” said Kolwezi, his deep bass voice taking on an edge of sarcasm.

  “Sure,” Dan replied. “The same kind of peace they imposed in Poland. And Afghanistan. And Greece.”

  “There are no lovers of the Soviet system here,” Kolwezi said. “You need not remind us of their atrocities.”

  Dan nodded an acknowledgment, then resumed, “The six of us here at this table-together with the People’s Republic of China-represent the only non-Soviet space efforts in existence.”

  Al Hashimi allowed a thin smile to cross his face. “The six of us here at this table are the only private entrepreneurs operating in space,” he corrected. “Each of us flies the flag of a nation, but we each represent large corporations more truly than we represent Venezuela, or Zaire, or even Japan.”

  The others nodded. Vavuniya was somewhat grudging about it, Dan saw. Nationalism was important to the Indian. Nobo easily agreed with al Hashimi: Yamagata Industries and the government of Japan were as thoroughly interlinked as the two twining spirals of a DNA molecule.

  “Do you believe,” Kolwezi asked, “that the Soviets are opposed to us because we are capitalists?”

  “Sure,” said Dan. “But there’s a hard pragmatic reason behind their philosophical opposition. If they can eliminate us, if they can attain a total monopoly of space industries-manufacturing as well as raw materials-they gain a further stranglehold on the world’s commerce.”

  Vavuniya shook his head in quick, disbelieving strokes, reminding Dan of the nervous movements of a frightened brown rabbit. “But why would Soviet Russia do such a thing? The Russians have no enemies to fear. They have cowed the United States into surrender without firing a shot; America has retreated into isolationism. Western Europe depends on the Soviets for oil and natural gas. Soviet Russia is the world’s most powerful nation, no one opposes her.”

  “But it’s not enough,” Dan said. “They want more.”

  “How could they?”

  “Greed. Philosophy. The natural momentum of growth. Sure, they’ve beaten the U.S. and Western Europe. They didn’t have to resort to nuclear war; the West just pissed away its power until the Cold War was over and the Russians were the winners. But there’s the rest of the world-China, Japan, the Third World nations.”

  “Russia has nothing to fear from them,” Vavuniya insisted.

  “I know that. And you know it. But maybe those men in the Kremlin don’t know it. Or maybe they want to control the whole world. Maybe they want even more: maybe they want to rule the whole world, turn the entire goddamned world into one big homogenized tightly controlled Soviet state.”

  Al Hashimi took a gold cigarette case from his jacket. “I haven’t heard such rabid American anti-Communist rantings in many years.” He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with a gold lighter. “It’s very amusing.”

  Dan smiled back at him. “It’s amusing as long as the Soviets are paying a decent price for Arab oil. What happens when they take over the existing solar power satellites and start building new ones to serve Europe and Africa? Who buys your oil then?”

  Al Hashimi leaned back in his chair and blew a long cloud of gray smoke toward the ceiling.

  “If and when the Soviets gain total control of space manufacturing,” Dan went on, “they will use that power to get total control of the nations we represent. Venezuela’s manufacturing and oil exports will be threatened. India’s exports of steel and automobiles …”

  “How can that be?” Vavuniya demanded.

  Dan replied, “Because I’ve shown them that they can get high-grade iron ore from asteroids, double-damn them to hell and back! They’ll undercut India’s prices for steel. And with zero-gravity processing, they’ll be able to make steel alloys that are twenty times stronger, weight for weight, than anything you can make on Earth.”

  The Indian’s swarthy face went ashen.

  “As the representative of Yamagata Industries,” Nobo said softly, “and Japan, I must admit that I find it hard to believe that the Russians could force Japan out of its space manufacturing operations.”

  Kolwezi chuckled, a deep throaty sound. “If Zaire had China’s protection, I would feel confident too.”

  But Dan disagreed. “China isn’t strong enough to challenge the Soviet Union head to head. And the Russians can afford to be patient with Japan. They’ll squeeze the smaller nations out first; they’re already after Venezuela. Then” -pointing to the men as he spoke-“Zaire and Polynesia will be the easiest to pressure. Then the Pan-Islam factories and India’s.”

  Nobo cocked his head slightly to one side in a gesture that said, “So?”

  “Once they’ve done that,” Dan continued, “they can squeeze Japan gently but continuously. Raise the price of raw materials. Cut down on their supply: after all, they’ll have all those newly acquired factories to feed, won’t they? Yamagata’s space operations will lose profitability; your products will have to sell at higher prices than the competing products manufactured by the Russians. They’ll use good old, tried and true, nineteenth-century robber baron tactics on you. And it will work, eventually. They can afford to operate at a deficit for as long as it takes. Yamagata can’t.”

  The young Japanese pursed his lips.

  “China will be the only other nation operating in space, then,” Dan said. “At that point the Russians wouldn’t be averse to using their muscle. They’ll force China out of the game as part of their long-range plan for bringing China under Soviet control here on Earth.”

  “The Chinese have not dismantled their nuclear arsenal,” Kolwezi pointed out. “Their missiles are still in their silos and still fully armed.”

  Dan felt his face freeze. With a conscious effort he kept his voice calm and even as he said, “If the Soviet antimissile satellites were good enough to make the American nuclear deterrent useless, how much do you think they fear from the Chinese nuclear force?”

  Al Hashimi, holding his cigarette straight up between thumb and forefinger, agreed. “Yes, the Russians still have their lasers in orbit. They can shoot down any missiles launched at them.”

  Chalons’ usually cheerful Polynesian smile had disappeared long ago. Bleakly, he reminded them, “Those lasers can also be used on our factories and space stations.”

  “That’s a comforting thought!” muttered Kolwezi.

  “They would not dare!” Vavuniya snapped.

  “They wouldn’t have to,” said Dan. “They won’t have to attack our facilities in space any more than they had to launch their missiles at the United States. Once you know that they can destroy you, and you have no way to defend yourself, they win. It’s like chess; you don’t fight to the last man once you’ve been checkmated.”

  “You believe, then,” al Hashimi said, squinting through his cigarette’s smoke, “that the Soviets will try to pressure us out of our spac
e operations through economic and political means.”

  “Right. This recent price increase of theirs is just the beginning. They have a monopoly on raw materials and they’re going to use it to squeeze the life out of us. That’s why they illegally stole my asteroid spacecraft and imprisoned the crew. They will not allow anyone to upset their monopoly on raw materials, no matter what they have to do to protect it.”

  “Then what can we do?” Vavuniya flapped his hands like a helpless man ready to give up. “If they are determined to destroy us, they certainly have the power to do so.”

  “We fight back.”

  The three words seemed to immobilize the five other men at the table. For a long moment they sat as if frozen: Chalons looking desperately unhappy, al Hashimi grimly amused, Vavuniya frightened, Kolwezi plainly disgusted with the state of affairs Dan was predicting, Nobuhiko more curious and expectant than anything else.

  Al Hashimi broke the silence. “Fight back? Against laser-armed satellites and nuclear missiles? With what?”

  “Our wits,” replied Dan.

  “Explain what you mean,” Kolwezi requested.

  Dan said, “The Russians aren’t supermen. They have weaknesses. The raid on Lunagrad showed that they can be surprised and overpowered by even a very small group of men, if those men are determined enough.”

  “And now the Soviets are stationing a battalion of armed troops at Lunagrad,” said al Hashimi in a bored, sardonic tone.

  Dan grinned at him. “There’s almost a quarter of a million miles between our factories and the Moon. Dozens of Russian ore freighters trundle back and forth across that distance every day. They are unmanned and unprotected.”

  “What are you saying?” Vavuniya gasped.

  “According to my lawyers’ reading of the international regulations, the ore in those freighters does not belong to the Soviet Union. It does not belong, legally, to any nation. Those resources are, and I quote from the law, ‘the common heritage of all humankind.’ ” Dan smiled broadly at them. “In other words, gentlemen, they are ours for the taking.”