Privateers

by Ben Bova

  Clumsily, inside the bulky space suit, he reached out for Lucita and pulled her close. They could not kiss; the helmets made it impossible. But Dan held her for a long moment.

  “I love you, Lucita,” he said.

  “And I love you, Daniel.”

  Suddenly the ludicrousness of it struck Dan. He laughed aloud. “We must look like a pair of abominable snowmen trying to make love.”

  She laughed too. “Do they make space suits big enough for two?”

  “I’ll have one built,” he said, “just as soon as we …” The laughter died on his lips as he remembered where they were and what they were facing.

  But Lucita seemed totally unafraid. “I am ready to go with you.”

  With a nod, Dan opened another equipment locker and pulled out something that looked almost like an old-fashioned blunderbuss: a long slim rod with a flared nozzle at one end. The rod was taller than he was, even in his helmet and suit. Handgrips studded the upper half of its length, and there was a cluster of small cylinders fastened to the end near the nozzle.

  “They call this a broomstick,” he told Lucita as he tapped the control pad on the wall next to the airlock hatch with his free hand. “We’ll ride on it faster than the Wicked Witch of the West.”

  They stepped into the metal-walled airlock, Lucita clumping clumsily in boots that were far too large for her. Dan cycled the lock; the inner hatch closed, the air was pumped out and then the outer hatch slid open. They were not facing the Earth at the moment. All Dan could see were the unblinking pinpoint lights of the stars: the distant eyes of heaven watching him.

  He heard Lucita gasp.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said, reaching for her gloved hand. “I’m not afraid,” she replied. “It is so beautiful! It takes my breath away.”

  He smiled inside his helmet and they stepped out into nothingness. Like a swimmer, Dan kicked away from the lip of the hatch, the broomstick in one hand and Lucita in the other. He helped her to get a firm grip on the broomstick, then flicked open the safety catch that protected against accidental ignition of the rocket motor at its far end.

  Using the jetpack thrusters to maneuver, Dan turned himself and Lucita until they were facing the factory. Off in the distance it hung like a floating scrap heap, all angles and projections.

  “To the Emerald City,” he muttered, and thumbed the ignition button. The rocket flared soundlessly and they were suddenly hurtling toward the space factory.

  Malik crouched behind a flimsy partition, mentally ticking off ten seconds. The blast came at nine, loud and sharp as an unexpected clap of thunder.

  He got to his feet as twenty armed soldiers rushed, yelling, into the smoke where the doors to the visitors lounge had been blown apart.

  Gripping a machine pistol firmly in his right hand, Malik followed the soldiers. Their shouts died quickly. Waving at the lingering smoke as he entered the lounge, Malik saw that it was empty.

  “They’ve gone!” said a beefy-faced sergeant.

  “Check the airlock,” Malik ordered.

  Several of the soldiers began to pull grenades from their belts.

  “No explosives!” Malik roared. “If the outer hatch is open to space, we’d all be killed in a flash.”

  Ostrovsky came pounding up behind him, red-faced and perspiring. “Sir! Word from the communications center … it was empty when we stormed it.” His voice tailed off as he saw that the lounge was also empty.

  “Has anyone had the sense to check outside and see if our shuttle is still linked to this airlock?” Malik put acid into his voice. He knew he had been outsmarted. The devils had stolen his own ship and escaped.

  Ostrovsky’s tongue flicked across his lips before he replied, hesitatingly, “I’ll … I’ll check on that, sir.”

  Malik handed him the machine pistol with an angry snort. “They’ve slipped out of our fingers. And probably Randolph was with them.”

  “I don’t see how-”

  “You were going to check on where that shuttle might be, weren’t you, Major?”

  “Yessir! Immediately, sir!” Ostrovsky scuttled away.

  He’s gone, Malik realized. I don’t know how he did it, but he’s escaped. And taken Lucita with him. Burning with anger, he strode down the corridor toward the communications center. Halfway there, he saw Ostrovsky racing toward him, still red in the face and sweaty, but looking more optimistic.

  “Sir! The Yankee capitalist is at the factory. We have picked up his communications transmissions. He is trying to contact the President of the United States.”

  Jane Scanwell was aboard Air Force One when the message came through to her. Dan Randolph. Urgent. From the factory at Nueva Venezuela. Life and death.

  The President was returning to Washington after a dreary, depressing campaign swing through the West. No matter where she went, no matter how carefully her aides manipulated the crowds, no matter how tightly her security people controlled her route, she still saw the gaunt, empty-eyed specter of hopelessness among the people. Hordes of unemployed. Whole cities decaying. Tent cities of hungry families, ringed by barbed wire and hard-eyed, helmeted special security police.

  There were no demonstrations against her. No angry voices interrupted her optimistic speeches. She saw no rage or violence in the streets when her motorcade drove through the barren, grimy cities. She almost wished she had. The heart had been taken out of these people. Even in Salt Lake City, her own spiritual home, the people were weighted down with a sullen, unremitting despair.

  There was no doubt of her reelection. The opposition was scattered and weak. The people had no faith in their promises. Nor in mine, Jane knew. I’ll win because they have no other real choice. And if I want to ram through a constitutional amendment that will allow me to run again in four years, they’ll let me do that, too. But do I want to? Do I have to?

  Her secretary interrupted her bleak ruminations by standing before her. He was a frail, almost effeminate young man who seemed to have an affinity for self-abasement.

  Jane looked up into his soft; worried face. “What is it?”

  “Mr. Randolph is still trying to reach you, ma’am. He is calling from-”

  “I know where he’s calling from.”

  “But he says that the United States is being threatened by an attack. Something about a strike in the Midwest, worse than a nuclear missile.”

  Frowning, Jane snapped, “I told you to have his call channeled through State. If Dan Randolph has anything to say to me, it can go through normal channels.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But they-State, that is-they seem to feel you ought to talk to him.”

  Startled, annoyed, Jane swiveled her commodious chair to the curving console built into the plane’s bulkhead. Through the window above it she could see the brilliant fleecy white of clouds lit by the sun. Down below, on the ground, she knew that the weather was wet and gray and gloomy. But up here it was a beautiful, sunny, blue-skied afternoon.

  “Put him on,” she snapped. When Dan Randolph’s face appeared on the display screen, she smiled in spite of herself. Until she saw that he was unshaven, grim-faced. And there was a very sultry looking Latin girl standing behind him.

  Lucita knew that she was standing upright, even though her stomach was telling her otherwise. ‘She stood behind

  Dan, who was seated in front of a small display screen in the factory’s communications center. It was a crowded, narrow little room, barely as wide as an aisle, with electronics consoles lining the walls and hardly enough space in between for a few small plastic wheeled chairs. Even though Dan had ordered all the technicians out of the room, it still felt stifling and hot to Lucita. Her insides felt as if she were falling; she knew that was because the entire factory was in zero gravity and she was weightless. She forced herself to control the nausea that bubbled uneasily within her. She gripped the back of Dan’s chair tightly and tried to press her slippered feet onto the Velcro surface of the floor’s carpeting. Still, her palms were sweaty and
her stomach fluttered.

  “That’s as much as I know,” Dan was saying to the American President. “Have your people check with Zach Freiberg at my office in Caracas. He’s been tracking the rock since we first went out after it.”

  Lucita studied the older woman’s face. She was just as beautiful as all the photographs had shown her to be, but it was the remote, imperious beauty of a woman who allowed her head to rule her heart. And in the little screen of the factory’s communications center, the President’s cold green eyes flashed with anger, anger that was directed not at the Russians, but at Dan.

  “I told you it would cause trouble,” La Presidenta stormed. “I warned you against doing it.”

  Dan seemed angry too, but his temper was more from exasperation than hatred.

  “Jane, it’s done and those bastards are going to shoot that rock into the middle of the country just as hard as they can. But you still have time to do something about it.”

  “Do something? Do what? You’ve destroyed us, Dan. You’ve destroyed everything!”

  “Wake up, dammit!” Dan snapped. “You still have troops, don’t you? ! have rockets. I can put a dozen shuttles down at airfields in the States. You can load them with troops and send them off to catch the Soviet spacecraft. You can overtake them, if you act fast enough.”

  “And they’ll bomb us with their missiles instead,” the President said.

  “Not if you get the other nations to act with you. Venezuela, Japan, China, for Chrissake! The Africans. India - they’ll all act together on this, if you take the lead. They’re all threatened.”

  “You’ve rigged this, Dan Randolph!” she accused. “It’s all your fault!”

  “Even if I did, what difference does that make now?” Dan argued. “You’ve got to act, Jane. You’ve got to!”

  The arm and shoulder of a man appeared to one side of the President, leaning over her. She looked up. Lucita heard swift, muttered words. As the two of them talked and Dan sat tensely, hands gripping the edge of the communications desk, Lucita pondered what she was seeing and hearing.

  La Presidenta loves Dan, she realized. She could not be so angry and stubborn with him if she did not. She loves him, but knows that she cannot bend him to her will. And Dan, does he still love her? He did once, that is clear. Is it true that a man can love more than one woman at the same time? Lucita wondered.

  She knew many men who claimed to love both their wives and their mistresses. But Dan and La Presidenta were different. She would have to be the dominant one; he the kept man. He would have none of that, Lucita knew. But did he still love her, nevertheless?

  Dan was leaning forward in the flimsy plastic chair, straining to hear what was being said by the President and her aide.

  Jane Scanwell finally turned her face toward him again. “I’ve called a meeting of the Cabinet to convene as soon as I land in Washington.” she said, her face grim, bleak. “And I’ve instructed the Secretary of State to request an emergency meeting of the General Assembly in Geneva. …”

  “The United Nations?” Dan snorted.

  “I know what you think of the UN, but it’s got to be done.”

  “And military measures? Shall I send shuttles to-”

  “No!” the President snapped. “We are not going to turn this into a military confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Those days are gone.”

  He smiled wanly. “In that case, good-bye, Jane. I’ll be dead within a few hours, and so will everybody here.”

  “Not if you surrender.”

  “They won’t take any prisoners. Any more than they took prisoners among the unarmed men who were hijacking the ore freighter.”

  The President’s frown deepened. “Dan, I can put a call through to Moscow …”

  The picture on the phone’s small screen suddenly wavered and broke up into a wild scramble of jagged colored lines. The voice disappeared into a harsh grating hiss of static.

  Dan pushed several buttons on the console’s keypad, to no avail. He looked up at Lucita.

  “They’re jamming all the frequencies. We’re cut off from the ground.”

  Lucita placed a hand on his shoulder. “Then he knows we are here.”

  Dan nodded. “They’ll be coming here for us.”

  Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN

  Malik was already in a pressure suit when the message came through from Moscow. Frowning, he carried his helmet under his arm to the spartan room that had been Dan Randolph’s personal quarters aboard Nueva Venezuela and had the communications technicians feed the call to the phone there.

  It was the General Secretary himself, his face so gray and waxy that Malik feared he was about to suffer another stroke.

  Unable to sit comfortably inside the bulky space suit, Malik tilted the display screen upward and bent as far as he could to face his country’s leader.

  “What is happening up there, Vasily Maximovich?” asked the General Chairman.

  “Sir, we have destroyed the band of pirates who were attempting to steal our ore freighter, and we have taken control of the Venezuelan space station, all according to plan.”

  The General Secretary did not look pleased. “And the Yankee capitalist, this man Randolph?”

  “He has fled to the factory complex, a few kilometers from this station. I was just about to lead my troops there when your call came.”

  “Is it true that some of the capitalists managed to escape from the space station in one of our own ships?”

  Malik felt his jaws clench. His enemies had obviously placed an informer among the troops here. Perhaps Ostrovsky. More likely one of the junior officers.

  “A few of them did get away, after illegally stealing one of our shuttles, yes, sir, that is true. But they are of small consequence. Once we take Randolph, the others will fall into our hands quickly enough.”

  With a shake of his head, the General Secretary replied, “We are receiving messages from many governments, comrade. Angry messages. Demands, even.” The older man’s eyes flicked downward and Malik heard the rustle of papers. “Japan, Zaire, Angola, India, Indonesia, Britain, Canada … even the Americans have had the temerity to demand that we abandon our occupation of Nueva Venezuela.”

  “But the government of Venezuela has not objected, has it?” Malik countered. “As long as they do not object, we are well within our rights-”

  The General Chairman waved his good hand to silence him. “The Americans claim that we have altered the course of this asteroid, and that we are going to attack them with it. They have called for an emergency session of the United Nations’ General Assembly.”

  “Our men have not reached the asteroid yet.”

  The General Chairman stared at Malik wordlessly.

  “Sir, our plan is succeeding. In an hour or less we will have the capitalist Randolph in our hands. The protests from these other nations can be dealt with from a position of strength.”

  “I agree, Vasily Maximovich. The business of the asteroid bothers me, but I agree that we must put an absolute and final end to the pirates. We must occupy all the so-called Third World space facilities and make certain that they can never again be used as bases for piracy.”

  “That is our plan, sir.”

  “If necessary, Vasily Maximovich, I am prepared to use our antimissile lasers to destroy those facilities.”

  Malik felt a pang of alarm. “That won’t be necessary, sir!”

  “But if it becomes necessary, my young comrade, I will authorize it.”

  “Our plan is to occupy and utilize the space facilities, not to destroy them.”

  “I know, I know. But better to destroy them than to allow these thieving marauders to continue their depredations.”

  A vision of the space factory flashed through Malik’s mind. He saw the powerful deadly beams of antimissile lasers lashing out from Soviet satellites, slicing through the factory, burning through its flimsy metal walls, exploding the very air inside the modules where people lived and wo
rked, where Lucita stood beside the Yankee capitalist. He saw her dying, burning, exploding, her skin bursting in a shower of blood.

  “It will not be necessary, I assure you, Comrade Secretary. Not necessary at all.”

  The room was filled with smoke and nervous, frightened men. Rafael Hernandez surveyed them carefully, forcing himself to maintain at least the outward appearance of calm in the midst of the stormy emotions raging about him. A dozen men, the leaders of Venezuela, were arguing at the tops of their voices.

  They are terrified, Hernandez realized, watching them gesticulating wildly and pacing across the big, formal office of the president of Venezuela. It was an ornately decorated room: heavy, stiff brocade curtains at the windows, an elaborate chandelier dripping crystal from the paneled ceiling, portraits of heroes and statesmen lining the walls. But the frightened dozen men took no notice of the trappings of rank. The Russian bear was growling at them, and they were bewildered and afraid. It was well past midnight; they had been storming at each other for more than an hour, and still no one could agree on how to react to the Soviet seizure of Nueva Venezuela.

  The President, puffing fitfully on a Havana cigar, finally rapped his knuckles on the top of his desk.

  “Gentlemen!” he called out loudly. “Arguments and recriminations are of no use now. We must decide on a course of action.”

  Hernandez eyed the President through the haze of smoke from his own cigarette. A small man, soft and overweight. He enjoyed the good life that Hernandez had made possible for him. His face was bland and bloated. The man was weak, he always had been weak, and he always tried to cover up his weakness by demanding some form of action.

  “What action can we take?” shouted the Minister of Trade. “The Russians have troops up there. Soldiers armed with guns!”

  “We have troops,” said the Defense Minister. “And we have rockets to carry them to Nueva Venezuela, too, don’t we, Rafael?”

  Hernandez took the ivory cigarette holder from his lips before replying, “The Soviets might shoot down our rockets with the lasers they have in their satellites.”