The Aftermath gt-16 Read online

  Worse were the poor devils who had been blown out of their ships without a space suit. Their lungs exploded in showers of blood. Their eyes burst out of their sockets. Elverda vomited the first time Dorn had brought such a corpse aboard.

  “Where there is one body,” Dorn said as he clumped to the airlock’s hatch, “there must be others. They’ve scattered, but they’re out there waiting to be found.”

  “Be careful,” she said as she always did.

  With the swipe of his human fingers, Dorn sealed the helmet to the collar of his suit. She saw him nod. “Of course,” he said.

  Then he stepped over the hatch’s sill and touched the control button that slid it shut. He raised his other gloved hand in what might have been a hesitant wave.

  Elverda watched the lights on the airlock panel cycle from green through amber to red as the lock pumped down to vacuum and the outer hatch opened. Nodding to herself, she hurried along the passageway to the bridge to monitor Dorn’s EVA.

  He had been a soldier all his life, from childhood. This she knew from what little he had told her about himself. Most of his revelations were confessions. As calmly as if he were talking about someone else, he told her that while in a drug-heightened rage of jealousy he had murdered a woman who claimed she loved him. Later, his mind again boiling in drugs that his employer distributed freely to enhance the mercenaries’ battle prowess, he methodically wiped out the habitat Chrysalis. And attacked another ship, Syracuse, immediately afterward.

  Now he lived a life of atonement, searching for the dead who’d been left to drift through the Asteroid Belt after the war’s battles. But Elverda knew that it was more than atonement that Dorn sought: he was waiting for death. He had tried to kill himself and been prevented from succeeding at that. Now he waited for death’s hand to reach him.

  And it was coming, Elverda knew. Martin Humphries’s assassins were tracking through the Belt searching for them. His own cyborg body was beginning to break down, as was her human one.

  How can I save him? she wondered. How can I protect him? How can I heal him?

  * * *

  “Its gone, sir.”

  Kao Yuan planted his fists on his hips as he loomed before the two crewmen who’d gone out to find the tiny chunk of debris on which they had planted the sensor many months earlier.

  “Gone?”

  They stood in the compartment just outside the ship’s main airlock, where the suit lockers stood in a silent row. The two crewmen were peeling off their nanofabric space suits as they reported to their captain.

  “Gone, sir. He must have found the sensor on it.”

  Yuan nodded. “That explains why it stopped transmitting its signal.”

  He turned abruptly and strode back toward the bridge. The renegade found my sensor. He knows he’s being tracked. What will he do now? Which way will the mouse jump?

  By the time he reached the bridge and slid into his command chair he’d made up his mind. “Navigator, program a search spiral course. He can’t be far from here.”

  The navigator said, “Search spiral. Aye, sir.”

  Yuan grinned inwardly. It still gave him a special pleasure to realize that he was actually captain of this ship. This isn’t a computer game, he told himself. It’s real! I’m captain of an actual attack ship. I’ve got two other ships under my command.

  And once I’ve destroyed the renegade, I’ll have enough money to go back to Shanghai and open the best restaurant the city’s ever seen.

  Life is good, thought Kao Yuan. Life is good.

  * * *

  The body was in an old-fashioned hard-shell space suit. Thank god, Elverda thought gratefully. Until Dorn slid its helmet visor open and she saw the agonized expression on its shriveled, wrinkled face. Lips pulled back over its teeth in terror, eyes wide and staring as if to ask, “Why me? Why is this happening to me?”

  Dorn stared into those blank, dead eyes. “I wonder what I will look like when death reaches me.”

  Elverda had no answer for him.

  Working together, they laboriously removed the space suit from the stiffened corpse. Dorn put the suit together again and tossed it back into the airlock, then popped it out into space again.

  “Maybe our pursuers will follow it,” he said, “and give us a little more time to continue our work.”

  Elverda smiled weakly.

  Then Dorn tenderly lifted the corpse in his strong arms and carried it to the cremation chamber. He had personally built this oven, modified from the ship’s standard smelting furnace, the kind that the rock rats had once used to refine the ores they pried out of metallic asteroids. Elverda always felt uneasy in this part of the ship, as if she were trespassing in a haunted house. The spirits of the dead hover around us here, she thought. This is a chamber of desolation.

  Yet Dorn seemed to smile as he carefully placed the desiccated body in the exact center of the oven. He had to stoop inside the low-ceilinged chamber; when he stepped back outside it and stood beside her his face looked satisfied, at ease, almost happy.

  “Your atoms will rejoin the cosmic dust,” he intoned as he swung the metal door shut and primed the heaters. “The substance of your body will someday help to build a new star, new worlds.”

  Elverda knew it was Dorn’s desperate attempt at salvation, his belief that the universe recycles constantly, that nothing is ever wasted, not even the tiniest atom.

  The smelter furnace roared to life. Elverda felt its heat, welcomed it warmth on her aged bones. Inside the star-hot oven the corpse was quickly vaporized, flesh boiled into gases. Finally Dorn shut down the smelter and pressed the buttons that exhausted its gases out of the ship, into the interplanetary void.

  “It is finished,” he said.

  As if in counterpoint, the ship’s synthesized computer voice announced, “Radar contact.”

  They both hurried to the bridge.

  ATTACK SHIP VIKING:

  BRIDGE

  “Sir, there’s nobody inside this suit.”

  Kao Yuan’s brows knitted as he stared at the main display screen. The three other officers on the bridge were also focusing their attention on the view of two crewmen outside the ship in nanofabric space suits grasping an empty hardshell suit. They had unfastened the suit’s helmet as they floated in the vacuum: one of the crewmen had tucked it under his arm, like a severed head.

  We’ve been tracking an empty suit, Yuan said to himself. He’s damned clever, this Dorik Harbin or whatever he calls himself now. Send out the suit as a decoy to lead us on a wild goose chase.

  “Bring it inside,” he commanded. To his navigation officer he asked, “Can you backtrack the suit’s trajectory? I want to know where his ship is.”

  The woman looked uncertain. “I can try, sir.”

  “Do so.” Turning to his propulsion officer, Yuan said, “Minimum power. Communications, I want a full sweep at all frequencies. That ship of his can’t be too far away from here.”

  But a nagging voice in his head countered, Yes it can. He could have released that suit days ago. He got you to chase after it while he’s heading off in a different direction altogether.

  Where would he be heading? According to the intelligence from HHS headquarters he’s on some fanatical mission to recover the bodies of all those killed in the war’s battles. That’s most likely dope smoke, but he was at this site, I’ve got to admit. We’ve got the other battle sites pinpointed, but the bodies hurled out of exploding ships could fly fifty, a hundred thousand kilometers over the years since the battles were fought. Farther, even. And they won’t all be near the ecliptic, either; some of those bodies might have gotten flung out at high inclinations.

  Lips pressed together in a troubled, almost angry line, Yuan realized, Crap! I might have to spend years chasing after this nutcase.

  Then he realized that the other officers on the bridge were all watching him, waiting for his next orders. He straightened up in his command chair and put on a careless grin.

  �
�We’ll find him,” he said. “We’ll find him.” Suddenly a new realization popped into his mind. Cheerfully he told them, “And I know how to do it!”

  * * *

  The radar contact turned out to be a shard of metal, a fragment of a ship destroyed long ago.

  Dorn leaned over Elverda’s shoulder as she sat in Hunter’s command chair and traced a finger along the navigation screen. She wished he were on her other side, with the human half of his face toward her. Even though she admired its workmanship, his metal half felt cold, heartless to her.

  “A body here,” his flesh-and-bone finger tapped the screen, “and a fragment of a ship here. We must be approaching a cloud of debris.”

  “And bodies?” she asked.

  “And bodies,” he confirmed. “Yes, there will be bodies.”

  Elverda pursed her lips, then heard herself ask, “Would it be possible to retrieve some of the debris?”

  She could see no expression on the metal side of his face, but she heard the puzzlement in his voice. “You want to pick up pieces of debris?”

  “Nothing too large,” she said.

  For several heartbeats Dorn said nothing. Then, “You wish to create a sculpture.”

  “I didn’t realize it until just now. Yes, a sculpture. Nothing grand. Just a small monument that we can leave drifting through the Belt.”

  He made a sound that might have been a chuckle. “I should have expected it.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  Dorn turned like a machine pivoting and went to the hatch. “I’ll suit up.”

  “You don’t have to take this piece. Later, when you’re going out anyway for the bodies. There’ll be scraps of metal there, won’t there?”

  “Very likely,” he said, his prosthetic leg already through the hatch. “But we might as well take this one. It will give you something to start with.”

  * * *

  Yuan said to his navigation officer, “Plot a course for the next nearest battle site.”

  “Sir?” she asked, uncertainty in her voice, her face.

  Smiling patiently, Yuan said, “Break off the pursuit course we’ve been on and get us to the next nearest battle site.”

  His first mate, a chunky dour Hawaiian sitting at the propulsion console, said, “Captain, he’s not at that site. He’s—”

  “I know he’s not there yet,” Yuan said, still smiling but with an edge of steel in his voice. “But he will be. And when he gets there we’ll be waiting for him.”

  All three officers were clearly unhappy with their captain’s order.

  Yuan asked, “How many hard-shell space suits are we carrying?”

  “We haven’t used the cermet suits since we were issued the nano—”

  “I didn’t ask that,” Yuan snapped. “How many of the old suits are still in storage?”

  His first mate tapped into the logistics program. “Six, sir,” he said grudgingly.

  “Check with the other two ships and see how many they’re carrying.”

  Plainly perplexed, the first mate asked, “Sir, why do you want—”

  His smile turning smug, Yuan said, “Our quarry used an empty suit to lure us away from him. Well, two can play at that game. Only, we’ll use empty suits to lure him toward us. Like bait for our trap.”

  HABITAT CHRYSALIS II:

  GEORGE AMBROSE’S OFFICE

  “No,” said Big George. “Not until the fookin’ construction job’s finished.”

  Sitting in front of George’s desk, Victor tried to hold on to his temper. “All the design work is done. There’s nothing more for me to do but supervise the work crews. You don’t need me for that.”

  It was difficult to tell George’s expression beneath all that flaming red hair, but Victor heard the inflexible tone of his voice. “Look, Vic, gettin’ the habitat finished isn’t the most important thing. It’s the only thing! You’re not leavin’ Ceres until the last weld’s welded and the last pisser’s plumbing is workin’.”

  “That’s my reward for helping you for more than three years?”

  “Listen, mate: You’re alive because we picked you up and saved your bloody butt. You’d be floatin’ into the Sun, already dead, if it weren’t for me. You owe your life to me and the people of this habitat, what’s left of ’em.”

  Victor clenched his jaw so hard that pain shot through his head.

  “The people of this habitat?” he snapped. “The original people of this habitat were slaughtered by the same madman who attacked my ship.”

  “There are plenty of newbies streamin’ in. We need Chrysalis II to house ’em. Prob’ly have to enlarge the fookin’ habitat before we even finish it.”

  “My family’s out in the Belt,” Victor insisted. “I’ve got to find them!”

  “Your family’s dead, Vic. Admit it. It’ll simplify your life.” Every impulse in his body was urging Victor to leap over the desk between them and squeeze George’s windpipe until his eyes popped out. But his rational mind told him that the giant redhead would pull him loose like a gorilla flicking off a flea. And then where would I be? he asked himself.

  George leaned forward, resting his beefy arms on the desktop. “Look, Vic, I’m not bein’ unreasonable. Another six months, a year at the most, and you’ll be free to go wherever you want.”

  “The habitat will be finished in six months,” Victor muttered. “Seven, at most.”

  “There y’are,” said George. “Then you’re free as a bird.”

  “Unless you decide to start enlarging the place.”

  George shrugged massively.

  His innards trembling with rage, Victor slowly rose to his feet. “As soon as the habitat’s finished I’m leaving.”

  “You’ll need a ship, of course.”

  “I’ll get a ship.” Mentally he added, One way or the other.

  George got to his feet, too, like a ruddy jagged mountain rising out of a geological fault. He stuck out his hand. “Till the habitat’s finished.”

  Victor kept his hands at his sides, balled into fists. “Until my sentence is served out.”

  He turned his back to George and went to the door.

  “Don’t go gettin’ any ideas about skippin’ outta here,” George warned. “I’m puttin’ security on notice. Nobody’s gonna allow you anywhere near a dockin’ port.”

  His back still to George, Victor nodded. “So be it,” he muttered.

  * * *

  Elverda pushed up her goggles with one hand and clicked off the handheld laser welder with the other. The work was not going very well, she thought.

  For three weeks Dorn had been recovering bodies left drifting in space, and bringing back scraps of metal and plastic, the twisted remains of spacecraft that had been shattered in battle.

  The trouble is, she said to herself, that you have no clear vision of what you want this monument to be. She glared critically at the coiling column that was growing from the deck plates of her makeshift workshop. The compartment had once been the ship’s loading bay, where asteroidal ores were brought aboard before being fed into the smelter. Now it was a grimy, empty, low-vaulted echoing chamber of gray metal, darkly shadowed except for the brilliant pool of light that Dorn had rigged for her. Broken chunks of metal lay scattered on the deck around her and her unfinished construct, looking hopelessly useless.

  The column itself seemed just as utterly pointless to Elverda. It’s going nowhere, she told herself. It says nothing. Your talent has left you, long years ago. There’s nothing remaining: no imagination, no inspiration, no soul.

  “Do you need more material?”

  Dorn’s voice startled her. She hadn’t heard him enter the capacious bay.

  Turning, she saw that he was eying the misbegotten sculpture intently.

  “I need more ideas,” Elverda said unhappily. “I need more talent.”

  Dorn shook his head slowly, a ponderous shift from side to side. “No,” he said. “You need more time.”

  She placed the hand las
er carefully down on the deck. “I’ve put enough time into it today.”

  “Are you ready for dinner, then?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He seemed to smile. It was sometimes difficult for her to tell. “Will you join me, though? It’s depressing to eat alone.”

  She grinned at him, widely. “You’re trying to psych me into eating, aren’t you?”

  “A little broth,” he coaxed. “It will do you good.”

  Once in the galley she sipped at the broth, then forked down the slivers of pseudomeat that he put on the table in front of her.

  “Do you feel better now?” Dorn asked as he took their dishes to the sink.

  “I feel full,” she admitted. “How about you?”

  “I feel puzzled.”

  “Puzzled? About what?”

  He returned to the table and sat down heavily. “The ship that is tracking us…”

  “We haven’t seen a ship.”

  “No, but there is one following us. Perhaps more than one.”

  Elverda nodded. Yes, she thought, Humphries must have sent someone to track us down.

  “It hasn’t approached us.”

  “They haven’t found us yet,” she said.

  “Why not? They must know the locations of the old battles just as well as we do. They know what we are doing. Why haven’t they reached us?”

  Elverda said, “We’ve been retrieving bodies. That takes us on an erratic course. It makes us harder to find.”

  He seemed to think about that for several moments. At last he muttered, “Perhaps.”