The Aftermath Read Online Free PDF Page A

on a press gang building levees.
    There was plenty of work for builders, but little for young architects who wanted to create something more than barracks for flood victims or cookie-cutter new cities for refugees. Victor was attracted to the lunar nation of Selene, far from the miseries and despair of Earth: he heard there were plans afoot to build an astronomy complex on the Moon’s farside.
    He won a job over several other aspiring young architects and went to the Moon, spending the next four years of his life shuttling between the underground city of Selene and the complex of astronomical observatories and housing units being built on the farside. There he met Pauline Osgood, a Selenite by birth who had never been to Earth. They returned once, to get married, and stayed for the funerals of Pauline’s parents, victims of a food riot in Denver.
    Back on the Moon, Victor settled in to work on the slow but steady expansion of Selene’s underground accommodations. For more than a year he helped to design the resort complex at Hell Crater, then signed up with Astro Manufacturing when they began their new manufacturing base at the Malapert Mountains, near the lunar south pole. He’d become the father of a baby girl by then, and while still working on the Malapert designs Pauline became pregnant once more, this time with the son that he so badly wanted.
    Victor was dragged into the Asteroid Wars almost by accident. Pancho Lane herself, CEO of Astro Manufacturing, asked him to head a small design team working on a space habitat that could serve as Astro’s military headquarters. Flattered, Victor completed the design within three months. He was aboard the unfinished habitat in its L-2 libration point site when it was attacked by ships of Humphries Space Systems. Victor was not injured, but seeing his construction project slagged into twisted structural beams and shattered living compartments angered him beyond words.
    The Asteroid Wars had started as a personal feud between Martin Humphries and Lars Fuchs. An uneven battle: Humphries was the wealthiest man in the solar system, founder and master of Humphries Space Systems. Lars Fuchs was a lone individual, too proudly stubborn to bow down to Humphries. He had taken to piracy out in the dark depths of the Asteroid Belt as his only means of survival. The First Asteroid War ended in the only way it could, with Humphries triumphant and Fuchs exiled from the rock rats’ habitat at Ceres.
    With peace came unemployment. Astro Corporation was not building any new facilities and Selene’s expansion had been halted for no one knew how long. Victor cashed in his modest savings, borrowed a lot more, and leased an aged ore vessel from Astro, which he dubbed Syracuse. With his young family he headed out to the Belt.
    He became a rock rat, content to ply the Belt buying ores from the miners who worked the asteroids and transporting them to ships waiting at Ceres to carry the raw materials to the Earth/Moon system. While billions of international dollars changed hands, very little profit remained for Victor Zacharias’s pockets. Yet he was contented. His children were growing, his wife was happy. Life was serene.
    Until the Second Asteroid War broke out. This time there was no pretense: the war was a struggle for control of the Belt and its enormous resources, a struggle between Humphries Space Systems and Astro Corporation. Lars Fuchs was nothing more than an excuse for the two giant corporations to go to war.
    Now Victor Zacharias sat hunched in Syracuse ’s control pod, sweating hard as he desperately tried to maneuver the lumbering ore ship out of range of the attacker’s fire.
    The attacking ship, much more agile, was swinging clear of the jumble of rocks that Victor had released. In another few minutes, he saw, the attacker would have a clean shot at Syracuse; then it would be merely a matter of time before the ship was utterly destroyed and everyone