The Aftermath gt-16

by Ben Bova

  “That’s up in the command pod,” she replied.

  “You’d better lead me there.”

  Pauline shot a glance at Theo, who was pulling his glassteel bubble helmet over his head.

  “I’ll be all right, Mom,” Theo said.

  “Nicco will take good care of him, don’t worry,” Valker assured Pauline.

  Without another word, Pauline went through the hatch that led into the family’s living quarters and, beyond that, to the tube tunnel that connected with the command pod. Valker followed behind her, close enough for her to feel his breath on the back of her neck.

  SMELTER SHIP HUNTER:

  GALLEY

  Elverda held both her gaunt, bony hands around the mug of hot tea, feeling the warmth seep into her palms. She stared at her hands: all bones and tendons, like a bird’s claws, their skin mottled with age spots. Once, these hands carved monumental sculptures, she said to herself. Now they can barely lift a cup of tea.

  Rejuvenation therapies have their limits, she thought. So do old women who’ve outlived their usefulness. Then she recalled the vision the artifact had revealed to her. One last sculpture, she told herself. A final tribute to him. Can I hang on long enough to do it? How much longer can I go on? And once I’m dead, what will happen to Dorn?

  As if on cue, the cyborg stepped through the hatch and sat heavily in the chair at the head of the table. He stretched out his prosthetic leg and flexed it several times, slowly.

  “Are you all right?” Elverda asked.

  “The leg feels stiff. The bearings need lubrication.”

  She started to get up from her chair. “I’ll find—”

  “No need,” Dorn said, stopping her with one upraised hand. His hand of flesh. “I can handle it later.”

  Elverda settled back in the galley chair. “You’re certain?”

  “Yes. Thank you anyway.”

  “De nada,” she said. She picked up the mug of tea again, then asked, “Did your radar sweep turn up anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No bodies?”

  “Not even any debris.”

  “Are you sure we’re at the right location?”

  He nodded ponderously. “I checked with Ceres. The battle took place here. I wasn’t in it, but I was given to understand that at least a dozen mercenaries were killed.”

  “Which corporation did they serve? Astro or Humphries?”

  The human half of Dorn’s face frowned slightly. “What difference does it make?”

  “We could check their corporate headquarters. Perhaps they’ve already picked up the bodies.”

  “No,” he said, flexing the leg again. “The corporations never picked up their dead. They simply wrote them off their accounting ledgers.”

  “Inhuman,” Elverda murmured.

  “Humans often perform inhuman acts. I myself am the foremost example of that sorry fact.”

  “That wasn’t you,” Elverda said quickly. “That was someone else. Another person. Not you, not who you are now.”

  “Still…” He bowed his head briefly, as if uttering a swift prayer. Then, “The fact remains that there are no bodies to be found at this location.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means that they have drifted much farther than I anticipated.”

  “Or they were destroyed in the battle.”

  Dorn seemed to consider that for a moment. “We’ll do a spiral search pattern.”

  “For how long?”

  “A few days, at least. If we don’t find anything we’ll move on to the next battle site.”

  “That would be the last one, wouldn’t it?”

  “The last one that I know of. I’m certain there are others.”

  Elverda hesitated, then plunged ahead. “What if there aren’t any others? What if we’ve found all the bodies that there are to find? What then?”

  He stared at her, one eye an unblinking red camera lens, the other all too human.

  “Then my mission is finished,” he said.

  “And what do you do then?”

  He didn’t answer. He can’t, Elverda said to herself. He’s built his life around this mission and once it’s over his life will have no purpose, no meaning.

  Then she realized, Nor will mine, once I finish his sculpture.

  * * *

  With Nicco beside him in his nanosuit, Theo hung at the end of his safety tether and surveyed the gashed length of hull where Syracuse’s antennas used to be. He could see the ship’s innards through the long rip, the torn and empty fuel tanks that had once held hydrogen propellant for the fusion drive.

  “Hafta patch that up,” Nicco said over the suit-to-suit radio link, “before we transfer any fuel to ya.”

  “We have other fuel tanks,” said Theo. “Undamaged. On the other side of the wheel.”

  “Oh. Okay, good. But the antennas come first,” Nicco said. “Skipper wants them antennas workin’ before we do anything else.”

  Nodding inside his bubble helmet, Theo said, “Fine with me. But we can’t put them here, the skin’s too torn up.”

  “Where, then?”

  Pointing with an extended arm, Theo said, “Over on that section, by the command pod. That way gives us the shortest path for the circuitry.”

  “Show me,” said Nicco.

  Theo felt distinctly nervous about disconnecting his safety tether. The suit’s propulsion pack can jet you around the ship for hours, he told himself. You can always jet back to an airlock, the tethers are just an extra safety precaution. He knew it, but he still felt edgy about being outside the ship with this scavenger.

  And Mom’s in the pod with their skipper, he realized.

  “I’m coming out,” said Kirk’s voice in Theo’s helmet earphones.

  “Wait,” he replied. “We’re moving to the next section of the hull. Bring the supplies there.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to be, a donkey or something?” Kirk complained. “How come I have to carry all this junk?”

  “Too heavy for you?” Nicco jeered.

  “Just ’cause it’s weightless don’t mean it’s easy to handle, wiseass,” Kirk shot back. “Come on down here and give me a hand.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Nicco. Theo could see his teeth grinning.

  “I’ll be over at the next section, by the pod,” Theo said, pointing. “I’ll see you both there.”

  “Yeah.” Nicco pulled himself hand over hand along his tether, heading for the open airlock hatch where Kirk waited with the materials to paint a new antenna set onto the undamaged section of the hull.

  Theo unclipped his tether and squeezed the control stud at his waist. The jet pack surged against his back and he lunged across the slashed section of hull, heading toward the backup control pod.

  Once there he clipped the tether to a cleat and looked inside the pod. His mother and Valker seemed to be in earnest conversation. Wish I could hear what they’re saying, Theo thought. If he tries anything with Mom I’ll…

  You’ll what? he asked himself. What can you do? Bitterly, he thought that it would have been better if they’d never seen Valker and his crew of scavengers. If I hadn’t been in this suit when they hailed us…

  Suddenly an idea popped into his head. The suit radios don’t have much range, but we’re closer to Ceres now. If these scavengers found us there might be other ships close enough to hear me!

  But so would Valker’s crew. So what? Theo asked himself. We can’t be in more trouble than we are now.

  Realizing that he had to act fast or not at all, Theo raised his gloved hands before his face so he could see the keypad built into his suit’s left wrist. He punched up a different frequency from the suit-to-suit freak he’d been using with Nicco and Kirk.

  He licked his lips, then said, “This is ore ship Syracuse. We are damaged and need assistance. Three people aboard. Propulsion system down. We are adrift and need assistance urgently.”

  He saw Nicco and Kirk sailing toward him, towi
ng a mesh net bulging with cans and tubes: the materials to spray new antennas onto the hull.

  Kirk came up close enough almost to touch helmets with him. “That wasn’t smart, kid,” he snarled.

  * * *

  Back on Hunter’s bridge, Dorn sat heavily in the command chair. Elverda took the smaller seat beside him.

  “I’ve been thinking about your question,” he said slowly. “About what to do once we’ve recovered the last of the bodies.”

  Elverda looked at him questioningly. “What will you do?” she asked.

  The human side of his face almost smiled. “I suppose what I will do is try to find a way to die.”

  “No!” she snapped. “You mustn’t!”

  “What point—”

  The comm computer’s message light began blinking. Elverda touched the receive key.

  “This is ore ship Syracuse,” came a weak voice, barely audible over the crackling hiss of interference. “We are damaged and need assistance. Three people aboard. Propulsion system down. We are adrift and need assistance urgently.”

  “Syracuse?” Dorn gasped.

  “You know the ship?” asked Elverda.

  It was several moments before he replied, “Dorik Harbin tried to destroy it.”

  ORE SHIP SYRACUSE:

  FAMILY QUARTERS

  “He was using the alternate frequency on his suit radio to call for help,” Kirk said, his face set in an angry grimace.

  Theo stood between Kirk and Nicco like a prisoner under guard. Valker lounged, completely at ease, in the big armchair that had been his father’s. Pauline was on the sofa, sitting tensely, her fists on her knees, her eyes on her son.

  “I do that whenever I’m in the suit,” Theo improvised. “It’s my normal routine.”

  “Is it now?” Valker asked, one eyebrow cocked dubiously. “We didn’t hear any distress call from you when we found you,” Nicco said.

  “I was just about to send out a call when I heard your message,” Theo said.

  “Why call for help when we’re already here?” Kirk demanded.

  Valker answered before Theo could reply. “Because he’s scared of us, that’s why. Isn’t it, son? You see a gang of roughneck scavengers and you’re worried about your mother and sister. Right?”

  Theo hesitated, then admitted, “That’s part of it, I suppose.”

  “Can’t say I blame you,” said Valker. “Mighty courageous of you, really, trying to protect your mother and sister.”

  Nicco piped up, “Whatsamatter, kid, don’t you trust us?”

  Getting to his feet, Valker said, “I wouldn’t trust us, Nicco. Not if I was a young lad facing a shipload of desperados like us.”

  He placed a strong hand on Theo’s shoulder. “But you see, son, there’s a matter of salvage rights here. We found you, and it would complicate the situation if somebody else showed up.”

  “We’re not salvage,” Theo snapped. “We’re not abandoned or adrift. This ship is occupied by its rightful owners and we’re on a course that’ll take us back to Ceres in a few months.”

  “Are you now?”

  “Yes,” said Pauline. “We are.”

  “We’d only be salvage,” Theo said, “if the ship was abandoned.”

  “That can be arranged,” Kirk said, with a smirk.

  “None of that, now,” said Valker. “The boy’s right. This isn’t a salvage operation. We’re here to help these people.”

  Kirk started to reply, but caught the look in Valker’s eye and snapped his mouth shut.

  To Theo, Valker said, “You don’t have to be afraid of us, son.”

  “I’m not your son.”

  “Now listen,” Valker said, a little more iron in his voice, “I’m not your enemy. We can help you, but you’ve got to trust us, at least a little. We’re fixing your antenna problem, aren’t we? We’re going to transfer some of our fuel to you. What more do you want?”

  Theo had no answer for him. He simply glowered at Valker, sullenly.

  Pauline got to her feet. “Theo, you’re tired. Why don’t you go to the galley, make yourself some dinner, and then go to sleep.”

  He looked into his mother’s eyes and saw that her suggestion was really a command.

  Nodding, Theo said, “Okay, Mom.”

  “And take these gentlemen with you,” Pauline said, gesturing to Kirk and Nicco. “They must be hungry, too.”

  Tight-lipped, Theo repeated, “Okay, Mom.”

  He left the family room, Nicco and Kirk marching behind him like a pair of guards.

  Valker turned back to Pauline. “Alone at last,” he said, grinning.

  “I don’t want them to hurt my son,” Pauline said.

  “Now why would they do that?”

  “You know perfectly well. If you kill the three of us you can bring this ship back to Ceres and sell it as salvage.”

  Valker nodded. “True enough. Or we could put you into the command pod and send you off. No blood spilled that way.”

  “But you’d be murdering us just the same.”

  “That’s what they want to do.” Valker jerked a thumb toward the hatch that Kirk and Nicco had just gone through.

  Pauline’s chin rose a notch. “And what do you want to do?”

  “Me?” Valker’s grin faded a little. “I’m not a killer. I’m more of a lover.”

  Pauline said to herself, So there it is. Out in the open. He’s offering me our lives. But for how long?

  “Can you keep your crew under control?” she asked.

  He nodded wordlessly.

  “I don’t want any of them touching my daughter.”

  Valker puffed out a breath. “That will be a pretty tough assignment.”

  “Or hurting my son.”

  “Hell, we can let him join our crew. The boy’s got nerve; I like him.”

  “But my daughter’s got to be safe. From all of them, including you.”

  Spreading his arms in a gesture of complete agreement, Valker replied, “If you’re willing to let me share your bed, why would I be interested in your daughter?”

  She looked into his eyes: greenish blue, hazel eyes, the kind that changes color, the kind that can’t be trusted. But what else can I do? Pauline asked herself. What else can I do to keep Angela and Theo safe?

  * * *

  Aboard Hunter, Dorn stared at the communications screen as if he could make it light up by sheer willpower.

  “The message isn’t being repeated,” Elverda said.

  “No,” said Dorn. “And it was very weak, almost as if it was made from a space suit radio rather than a ship’s comm system.

  “No visual.”

  “I have a fix on it, through,” Dorn said, tapping on the comm keyboard with his mechanical hand.

  “You attacked their ship?”

  “Dorik Harbin did.”

  “When? How long ago?”

  “Just after Chrysalis,” Dorn said, his voice barely audible. “Nearly four years ago.”

  “We must go to their assistance.”

  He nodded slowly as he opened a comm channel and said, “Attention Syracuse, this is Hunter. We’ve heard your message and are coming to your assistance.” Glancing at the navigation display, Dorn added, “Estimated time of arrival at your position, thirty hours. Please confirm.”

  No response. Nothing but the hiss from the Sun and stars.

  Dorn looked at Elverda. “They don’t reply.”

  “If their message came from a suit radio…”

  “Perhaps they didn’t get our message.”

  “Perhaps they can’t reply,” she suggested.

  “You take over the comm console,” Dorn said. “Tell the computer to repeat our message, with updated ETAs.” He turned to the navigation console. “I’ve got to plot a course to their position.”

  * * *

  Strangely, Pauline felt neither apprehension nor excitement as she led Valker to her sleeping compartment. She felt numb. I’m doing what I have to do to protect the ch
ildren, she told herself. I’m doing what I have to do.

  As she started to slide the compartment door open, Valker’s pocket communicator chimed.

  “Damn!” he muttered, fumbling it out of his tunic pocket.

  Pauline could hear Kirk’s voice from the tiny speaker. “Somebody’s answering the kid’s distress call. It’s the Hunter! They’ll be here in thirty hours.”

  “Hunter? Check it out with Ceres and—”

  “Already did. It’s the same Hunter. Two people aboard, one of them a woman. No weapons registered.”

  Valker broke into a wolfish grin. “Good! Let ’em come! Like flies to honey.”

  He clicked the communicator shut and jammed it back into his pocket. “Your boy’s bringing fresh meat to the table, Pauline.”

  She knew what he meant, but she asked anyway, “You’re going to take that ship?”

  “Why not? Only two people aboard her. They can disappear and we can bring her in for salvage. Get a good price for her, I’m betting.”

  “But—”

  “No buts,” Valker said, silencing her with a finger on her lips. “This is business.”

  He slid the compartment’s door all the way open, saw her oversized bed neatly made against the far bulkhead of the compartment. “But pleasure before business,” Valker said, ushering Pauline in to her own compartment. “We have thirty hours. Plenty of time to get to know each other.”

  CARGO SHIP PLEIADES:

  BRIDGE

  The message electrified Victor.

  “Attention Syracuse, this is Hunter. We’ve heard your message and are coming to your assistance. Estimated time of arrival at your position, thirty hours. Please confirm.”

  “Syracuse!” he shouted. “They’re talking to Syracuse! My ship! Pauline and the children!”

  He banged his comm key. “Hunter, this is Pleiades. Can you give me a navigational fix for Syracuse? My wife and children are aboard her.”

  Several minutes dragged by. At last his comm screen lit up to show the bizarre image of a man whose face was half flesh, half finely etched metal. A gaunt, aged woman sat beside him.