by Ben Bova
Even after knowing him for more than two years Elverda shuddered at the sight of the mechanical hand. She looked up at the main screen and saw that he was panning the cameras three hundred and sixty degrees, then up and down doing a complete global sweep around their ship.
“Nothing,” she said.
Dorn did not reply. The screen’s view climbed up, then swung downward.
“We’re alone.”
“Are we?” he countered. “Humphries’s people know that a battle was fought here. They know that we will come here to seek the dead and give them proper rites.”
She gestured toward the screen, empty except for the unblinking stars, so distant and aloof. “There are no ships out there.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But there is a small asteroid that does not appear on the nav charts.”
Almost feeling annoyed at his wariness, Elverda said, “Asteroid orbits change constantly. The charts are never up to date.”
“True enough,” he said. “But let’s check out that rock before we proceed further.”
“It’s barely twenty meters across,” Elverda objected. “It can’t be a camouflaged vessel.”
“I know.”
Elverda stared at him for a long, disquieting moment. Dorn looked back at her, his electro-optical eye unblinking, the overhead lights glinting on the etched metal of his skullcap. With a sigh that was half exasperation she punched in the commands that would bring Hunter to within fifty meters of the tiny asteroid.
They shared a modest lunch in the galley while Hunter cruised at minimum thrust and established itself in co-orbit near the asteroid. When they returned to the bridge, they saw that the object outside was a jagged chunk of debris, a shard torn from what had once been a spacecraft, probably an attack vessel. They trooped down to the main airlock, where she helped Dorn into a nanofabric space suit. When she had first met Dorn she’d been surprised at how agile he was: the metal half of his body was lithe and supple, not at all like a cumbersome clanking machine. Now, though, more than two years later, he seemed slower, more careful, as if his mechanical half were developing the robotic analog of arthritis.
At last she returned to the bridge to monitor his EVA. Within half an hour he was back from the airlock, a small black object in the palm of his prosthetic hand.
Elverda peered at it.
“A sensor,” said Dorn. “It was attached to the piece of debris out there. It must be programmed to detect the arrival of a ship in this area and send a message back to whoever planted it here.”
“They’ve been waiting for us?”
He nodded minimally. “I imagine they have planted such sensors at every site where there was a battle.”
“Humphries wants to find us.”
“He wants to kill us.”
Elverda knew it was true, yet she still found it hard to accept the idea in her heart, emotionally. The concept that someone wanted to kill her was so bizarre, so alien to her outlook, to her entire life, it was like being told that the world was flat.
Martin Humphries wants to kill us, she told herself. He wants to kill me. She had only known Humphries for the few weeks it had taken to fly to the asteroid where the alien artifact had been found. Where Dorn had transformed himself from a cyborg mercenary soldier to a cyborg priest. Where Humphries had gone insane with fear and guilt once he’d seen the artifact.
And now that he’s recovered, now that he knows we saw him in his terror and his shame, he wants to erase all memory of his collapse. He wants to eliminate the witnesses. He wants to kill us.
Under the pretense of preserving the artifact for scientific study, Humphries’s corporate minions had thrown a protective guard of ships and mercenary troops around the asteroid and sealed off the artifact itself—burrowed deep inside the rock—from all visitors. Not even scientists from the International Consortium of Universities were allowed to visit the asteroid. The news media had been totally stonewalled, to the point where it was widely believed that the reports of an alien artifact were nothing more than a legend concocted by some of the UFO crackpots among the rock rats.
Elverda Apacheta knew how powerful the artifact was. It had changed Dorn from a murderous mercenary soldier into a priest intent on atoning for his former life. It had shaken her own soul more profoundly than any experience in her long life. Before she had seen the artifact she had been ready for death, weary of the trials and disappointments of living, convinced that her talent had shriveled within her disenchanted soul. But once she looked upon that mystical, amorphous, shifting work of wonder she was overwhelmed with new purpose. Before the artifact she had regarded Dorn with a distaste that was almost loathing; after the artifact she realized that Dorn was the child she had never borne, the tortured soul who needed her solace, the man whom she would help and guide and protect even at the cost of her own existence.
The artifact had changed Martin Humphries, of course. His swaggering, self-confident ego had been shredded into a whimpering, pathetic figure huddled into a fetal ball, pleading for escape. But the effect had been only temporary; Humphries recovered. Now the wealthiest man in the solar system was determined to erase the two witnesses of his moment of weakness.
Staring at the sensor in his metallic hand, Elverda asked Dorn, “What do you want to do?”
Slowly, Dorn crushed the miniaturized sensor. It crunched like a crisp wafer. Then he answered, “Find the dead. Treat them with respect, if not honor.”
ATTACK SHIP VIKING:
COMMUNICATIONS CENTER
Thoroughly bored, Kao Yuan curled his lip at the image on his comm screen. Not that the woman who was speaking to him would see his expression. This was a one-way transmission: the latest orders from Humphries Space Systems headquarters on the Moon to Yuan and his three-ship formation. Besides, he was certain that the image he was watching was a computer-generated persona; Martin Humphries might not deign to speak to him personally, but he didn’t want any additional people to know about this mission he’d sent Yuan on, either.
“Mr. Humphries is pleased with your idea of seeding the battle sites with sensors,” the image was saying, “but he wonders if all the battle sites are recorded. Dorik Harbin did a lot more than attack the Chrysalis habitat, of course.”
“Of course,” Yuan murmured, feeling slightly bemused to be talking to a pile of computer chips. At least the woman’s image was voluptuously beautiful. Humphries has an eye for buxom young women, he thought.
“Mr. Humphries stressed once again that this matter must be handled very discreetly. The fugitive Dorik Harbin is not alone in his ship. There is at least one accomplice with him. Both of them—and anyone else with them—must be eliminated. They must disappear and never be found. There must be no way for anyone to discover that Mr. Humphries has ordered their executions. That must be clearly understood.”
Yuan’s bored smile grew slightly less tolerant. “I understand,” he said to the unhearing image on his screen. “My crew understands. The crews of the other two vessels also understand. Clearly.”
He had received these same instructions, or closely similar ones, from this computer persona at least twice a month for the past eight months. Humphries wants Harbin or Dorn or whatever he’s calling himself killed. And his accomplices with him. But he doesn’t want anyone to know about it. They must simply disappear out here deep in the Asteroid Belt. All of them. No sweat, Yuan thought. All I have to do is find them.
A strange mission, Yuan thought. Track down a mass murderer and his accomplices, but do it in secrecy. Why doesn’t Humphries want the credit for executing the man responsible for the Chrysalis massacre? And what’s Harbin doing out in the Belt, anyway? They claim he’s trying to recover the bodies of the mercenaries killed in battles. That sounds flaky. Maybe it’s just a hallucination that HHS intelligence dreamed up. Maybe the intel flunkies are popping the wrong pills.
Yuan had been hunting for the renegade for nearly eight months now, without success. He had planted sensors at most of
the old battle sites where HSS intelligence had told him that Harbin/Dorn was likely to visit. Now he simply waited for the fugitive to show himself.
“It’s only a matter of time,” he said to the screen as the image prattled on. “If your brain trust is right about him traveling to the old battle sites.”
Growing impatient, Yuan got to his feet, left the soundproofed booth that served as Viking’s communications center and stepped back onto the bridge. He was an imposing figure, even in his unadorned coveralls, nearly two meters tall in his softboots, broad of shoulder and narrow of waist. His inky black hair was brushed straight back from his forehead; it was long enough almost to touch his collar. No military buzz cut for him: Yuan preferred to look casually dashing. A dark little tuft of a Vandyke decorated his chin. He had deep brown eyes and a crooked little grin that he thought—no, he knew—that women found enticing.
Yuan had never intended to be a mercenary warrior. His father had been a chef in his native Jiangsu province; his restaurant was recognized as the finest in the region. And the gambling room in back was always filled with fools who thought they might beat the forbidden computer games the old man had smuggled past the government’s censors. “All this will be yours one day,” his father had told him so often that Yuan actually began to believe it. By the time he was ten, Yuan was not only a decent cook, he was the best computer gamer in the province. People signed in from as far away as Shanghai to play against the child prodigy. He let them win only often enough to assure that they’d return and spend more of their money.
But when the greenhouse warming shifted the rains and the province’s rice paddies turned to dust, his father’s restaurant was closed by the government and Yuan was drafted into the “volunteer” army that took possession of Vietnam and its invaluable rice bowl in the well-watered Mekong delta. Then the greenhouse floods swept over the delta and he was lucky to escape alive.
The strangest turn in his life, Yuan thought, was when the government sent him to the Chinese base on the Moon to help build the hydroponics farms there. He hated living underground. Trying to feed several thousand workers from the meager crops grown in the long hydroponics trays was a challenge, but not an enjoyable one. Better was the fact that he could jigger the base’s computers to run gambling games; better still, most of the women at Base Mao found him more attractive than the stolid soldiers and technicians who made up the base’s male population.
Yuan dreamed of returning to Earth once his tour of duty in the army was finished. But once he realized that the government back home would press an unemployed former cook into service wherever they wanted him to work, he signed up with Humphries Space Systems and became a mercenary soldier. Mercenaries had to eat, and Yuan was ready to feed them. HSS pay was far better than the army’s, the uniforms were smarter, and the selection of women was more diverse.
What he hadn’t expected was that he’d be forced to fight. And kill. Aboard the stripped-down attack vessels that battled for control of the Belt, even a cook had to take his turn at the weapons console. During the bitter years of the Second Asteroid War, Kao Yuan found that he was good at the cat-and-mouse chases in the dark emptiness of space. He had always been a winner at computer games; now he maneuvered a real ship and fired real lasers. The enemy vessels were little more than blips on a screen or distant clots in an observation port. They twisted and dodged but he always—almost—caught up with them and won the game. His youthful skills earned him rapid promotion from cook to captain.
This mission to find the renegade and whatever accomplices riding with him was strange, though. For some reason Martin Humphries himself wanted them erased. The war was over; this mission was a personal quest, an exercise in vengeance. God knows what they did to make Humphries so determined to kill them, Yuan thought. He had not the slightest interest in finding out what it was. I don’t want that powerful egomaniac after me, he told himself.
As he looked over the three crew members sitting at their posts on the bridge, Yuan thought, Find the renegades, destroy them, and earn the bonus Humphries has promised. Then you can go back to what’s left of Shanghai and open the best restaurant they’ve ever seen.
His goal was to own the best of restaurants. With a gaming room in back, a gaming room from which he could challenge the best gamers in the world. Maybe even play against the slickwillies of Selene, them and their smug airs of superiority to any flatlander on Earth. That was his goal. The means to reach it was murder in the depths of space.
Kao Yuan was quite content to have things this way.
His communications officer glanced up at him as he closed the soundproof door of the comm booth and went to his command chair.
“Sir,” she said, brushing a long lock of hair from her almond eyes, “the message from headquarters is still running.”
Yuan favored her with a grin. “Keep recording it. I’ll listen to the rest of it when I’ve got nothing better to do.”
The comm officer smiled back at him. “I mean, sir, that other messages are piling up in storage.”
“Other messages?” Yuan asked, surprised. “Who’s calling us out here?”
She glanced at her screen, pushing that stubborn tress from her face again. “A call for assistance from a miner whose propulsion system has malfunctioned.”
“Not our problem,” Yuan murmured. Viking was running silent, not emitting either a tracking bacon or telemetry. The vessel was built to return as small a radar profile as possible. Viking was virtually invisible and Yuan intended to remain that way.
“A medical emergency on another rock rat ship.”
Yuan shook his head. “I’m not interested in general chatter. Is there anything specifically for us?”
“One of the snoops reported a vessel in its area. Then it went dead.”
“What?” Suddenly alert, Yuan stepped to her comm console and bent over her to peer at the screen. “Where?”
The comm officer displayed the coordinates on her screen. Yuan couldn’t help noticing the subtle intoxication of her perfume. With the touch of a keypad, she had the computer pull up data on the sensor’s location.
“That’s where he wiped out Gormley’s fleet!” Yuan said, excited. He called to the man at the navigation console, “Set a course for these coordinates, top acceleration.”
Yuan didn’t believe that the renegade was visiting the sites of his old battles to recover dead bodies, despite what Headquarters claimed. But he didn’t press for more information, either. My job is not to know why, he told himself. My job is merely to find him and kill him. And whoever is with him.
SMELTER SHIP HUNTER:
BRIDGE
Out of the corner of her eye Elverda watched Dorn as he sat next to her in the ship’s bridge. He had been staring at the crushed remains of the round black sensor, still in the palm of his artificial hand.
She glanced at the screens and instrument readouts displayed on the panels curving around them and saw that the ship was functioning normally.
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
Dorn turned slowly toward her, his human eye looking sad, the other emotionless.
“Find the dead,” he answered.
“But they’ll be coming to find us.”
The human eye closed briefly. Then, “They are probably already on their way here.”
“Shouldn’t we get away, then? There are other sites, other locations where battles took place.”
“They’ll have planted sensors there, too.” Dorn’s voice sounded heavy with resignation.
“Then what should we do?” she repeated.
“I should speed you back to Earth at maximum acceleration. You would be safe there. Not even Martin Humphries would dare to harm you where you are surrounded by friends and admirers.”
“And you?”
“I will return to the Belt and try to complete my mission. As much of it as I can.”
“I could tell the news media about this. That might protect you.”
&
nbsp; Dorn’s lips ticked, as close to a smile as he could come. “You would tell them that you are trying to protect the monster who is responsible for the Chrysalis massacre? If the general public knew that Humphries was hunting me down they would give him an award.”
“I can’t let him murder you.”
“There is no way that you can stop it.”
Elverda felt as if she were locked in a closet with the walls closing in on her. “There must be something—”
Dorn shook his head slightly, a ponderous swiveling of that half-metal, half-flesh construction. “Besides, I will die anyway, soon enough.”
“Die? What are you talking about?”
“My systems are failing.” He raised his right arm slowly. “The power pack needs replacement. Joints need lubrication. I have the mechanical analog of old age.”
“We can go to Selene and get you overhauled, rejuvenated.”
“The monster responsible for Chrysalis? Who would even think of helping me?”
“They wouldn’t know. No one knows that—”
“Humphries knows. Returning to Selene would be a death warrant for both of us.”
Elverda stared at him for a long, silent moment. What can we do? she kept asking herself. What can we do?
Dorn broke the silence. “The bodies from this battle have spiraled outward from this site for hundreds of thousands of kilometers. We should find as many of them as we can and give them proper rites before Humphries’s assassins find us.”
“And then what?”
“And then we die, I suppose.”
She stared into his impassive face. When I met him, Elverda thought, I was ready for death. I thought my life was over, that I’d outlived my purpose. Now I don’t want to die! This man—this half-machine—has given me a reason for living.
He reached out with his human hand and touched her arm. “It’s all right. I’ll escort you back to Ceres. The rock rats are almost finished building their new habitat—”