The Aftermath gt-16 Read online

That’s something, he told himself. Not enough to save your own pitiful life, but at least I tried to stay my hand from murder.

  Slowly he clambered to his feet and, for the first time, took a good look at his surroundings. Power generator, he saw. It feeds off the hot plasma ejected from the fusion reactor. He smiled to himself. Even in a blood-red rage your rational mind led you here, where the crew will be afraid of firing lasers at you for fear of damaging their power equipment.

  He saw that he was in a narrow aisle between man-tall bulkheads that housed machinery. They’d have to come at you one at a time, he said to himself. I could slaughter them like Samson against the Philistines. I wouldn’t even need the jawbone of an ass.

  Turning, he saw that this narrow aisle widened into, a small chamber fitted with a diagnostics console. They could come at me from both sides, front and back. Unless they have to come through this aisle to get to the console station.

  He heard footsteps approaching. They were trying to be stealthy, tiptoeing, but the scuff of boots on the deck plates was easy enough to hear, even over the steady hum of the generator.

  He retreated with soft, lithe steps to the diagnostics chamber. There was a hatch at its far end. They’ll be able to come at me from both directions. It’s too roomy in here, he decided. Better to fight in the narrow aisle.

  Why fight at all? he asked himself. Why not just surrender to them? Would they accept that? Or will they be so frightened of me that they’ll try to kill me straight off? It would be easier for them in the diagnostics chamber. But why should I make it easy for them? Or for myself?

  “Dorn!”

  Elverda’s voice. High, quavering with tension.

  “Dorn, come out. Show yourself. They won’t harm you. I have the captain’s word.”

  He grunted. The captain’s word. He’s under orders to kill us both, Harbin replied silently to the old woman.

  “Dorn, come out. It will be all right, I promise you.”

  She treats me as if I’m a child. Her little boy. Harbin thought back to his own mother, raped and crucified by the soldiers sent to cleanse his village.

  They’ll kill us both, he thought. They’ll kill you, Elverda. They’ve got to.

  Unless I can prevent it, he told himself.

  That was a new thought. Can I prevent them from killing her? Can I save her life? Could saving her one life possibly balance the scales for all the lives I’ve snuffed out?

  Could she be the path to my atonement, my final peace?

  “Dorn!” she called again.

  “I’m here,” he called back. “I’m coming out.”

  CONFRONTATIONS

  Koop was leading a squad of four crew members, two of them women, down the passageway that led to the power generator bay. The ship’s surveillance cameras showed Harbin huddled behind the generator itself, sitting on the deck plates with his knees pulled up in front of his face. He was unarmed, but Koop had seen what the freak could do with his bare hands.

  Elverda Apacheta had insisted on coming with them. Now she stood beside Koop, calling out to Harbin. She called him Dorn.

  He stopped his little team at the hatch that led into the generator bay. It was open. “Okay,” he told them, “we wait here until the captain signals.”

  Yuan was leading the rest of the crew members who were able to walk, a total of five men and women, around the long way through the ship’s wheel to come up behind the generator bay. His plan was to trap Harbin between the two squads.

  “I’ll go in and talk to him,” Elverda said.

  Koop shook his beefy head. “Orders are to wait here. I don’t want you in the line of fire when the shooting starts.”

  “I can make him come out without shooting,” she insisted.

  “No,” said Koop. “You stay here with us.”

  She tried to stare him down, but Koop grasped her bony wrist in his massive paw and said gently, “I don’t want you to get hurt. Stay here. Please.”

  Elverda almost smiled. Instead she turned and shouted through the open hatch, “Dorn, come out. Show yourself. They won’t harm you. I have the captain’s word.”

  No response. I can’t blame him, Elverda said to herself. He knows they want to kill him. Kill us both.

  Koop checked the charge on his laser pistol. He had seen the carnage Harbin had unleashed on the bridge, watched the security camera’s playback of the mayhem. Gonzolez hit him square in the chest with a laser shot and all it did was burn a hole in his shirt.

  “If we have to shoot,” he muttered to his crew, “go for his face, or his human arm. The metal half of him splashes laser beams like a stream of water.”

  “You’ll kill him!” Elverda hissed.

  “If I have to,” said Koop, as the others checked their pistols. He wished he had a more powerful weapon: a high-velocity rifle, maybe, or an armor-piercing missile.

  Elverda cupped her hands to her mouth and called again, “Dorn!”

  From somewhere in the generator bay he called back, “I’m here. I’m coming out.”

  Koop’s team stiffened and gripped their guns tighter.

  * * *

  Yuan had led his team halfway around Viking’s wheel-shaped main body and then down the connecting tunnel that opened on the far side of the generator bay. He wished he had more crew members and heavier weapons, but these five officers and crew were all that were left unhurt. They all looked nervous, frightened, as they hefted their pistols in trembling hands.

  Tamara Vishinsky had stayed on the bridge, at Yuan’s orders. Ostensibly, she had the ship’s con. In reality, Yuan didn’t want her anywhere near the renegade.

  “I don’t want him to see you,” Yuan had told her. “It might set him off again.”

  She hadn’t argued the point. In fact, she looked relieved. The three other members of the crew were in the infirmary, two with broken noses, the third heavily sedated, his jaw shattered.

  Now Yuan raised his free hand to bring his little team to a halt. The hatch that opened onto the generator bay stood before them. It was shut. Holstering his pistol, Yuan pulled out his palmcomp. Its tiny screen showed the surveillance camera’s view of the bay from up in the overhead. He could see Harbin crouched behind the generator, his back to the hatch that was no more then five meters from Yuan and his squad. He was pulling a cover plate off the generator, using one finger of his prosthetic hand as a screwdriver.

  Thumbing the palmcomp’s keyboard, Yuan called in a low voice, “Koop?”

  A moment’s delay, then the first mate’s face filled the screen. “Sir?”

  “We’re in position, ready to go in.”

  “He says he’s willing to come out, captain.”

  “He’ll surrender?”

  “He wants us to guarantee we won’t hurt Ms. Apacheta.”

  Yuan grunted like a man who’s just received news that could be both good and bad.

  “I’ll have to talk to him,” he said.

  * * *

  Dorik Harbin—Dorn—realized that there must be surveillance cameras throughout the ship. Peering up into the shadows of the overhead support beams, he spotted the unwinking red eye of a camera. They can see me, he said to himself.

  He got slowly to his feet and raised his hands above his head.

  “I’ll come out,” he said to the open hatch in front of him. He could see Elverda standing there in her threadbare robe, and several members of the crew, all of them armed with pistols.

  “I’ll come out,” he repeated, “under one condition. You must promise that you won’t hurt my companion.”

  The big, burly Hawaiian stepped in front of Elverda. “That’s a decision that only the captain can make,” he said.

  “Then I’ll stay here until the captain decides.”

  It took several minutes and a flurry of chatter into handheld communicators. At last Koop told him, “The captain’s in the passageway behind you. He’s going to open the hatch so he can talk to you.”

  “I understand,” said Dor
n.

  “Nobody’s going to come any closer than these hatches,” Koop assured him.

  “I understand,” Dorn repeated, knowing that with laser pistols they could shoot him quite easily from the open hatches. The laser beams weren’t powerful enough to do more than singe his metal skin, but they would of course aim for his flesh.

  The hatch behind him started to creak open, slowly. Dorn turned to face it.

  “I’m willing to surrender to you, captain, if you’ll guarantee that no harm will come to Ms. Apacheta.”

  Yuan frowned at Harbin. “You’re in no position to make demands.”

  “True enough, but that’s what I want. Otherwise you’ll have to come in here and get me.”

  “We’re prepared to do that,” Yuan said.

  Harbin lifted the plate he had removed from the generator and held it before him like a shield. “Are you prepared for the casualties you’ll take?”

  “Dorn!” Elverda shouted. “Stop this nonsense! Now!”

  He turned and looked at her with the human side of his face. She pulled loose from Koop’s restraining hand and stepped through the hatch, toward him.

  Harbin dropped his shield. It clattered to the deck.

  “No more fighting,” Elverda said, her tone softer.

  “No more fighting,” he agreed.

  * * *

  They marched the two of them to the galley, where Yuan offered them a meal. Elverda made herself a cup of tea. Harbin sat in brooding silence at the end of the table that ran the length of the narrow compartment.

  “You know I’m under orders to execute you both,” Yuan said, almost casually, as he poured a mug of tea for himself.

  “I understand,” said Harbin, “that Humphries wants us dead.”

  “I don’t have any choice in the matter.” Yuan sat himself at the head of the table.

  “None of us really do,” Harbin said.

  Elverda clutched her mug in both hands, soaking up its warmth. “Could you at least wait until our mission is finished?” she asked.

  Yuan turned toward her. “You mean picking up dead bodies? That could take years.”

  ‘Yes, but—”

  Tamara Vishinsky stepped into the galley. Harbin tensed at the sight of her and she froze where she stood.

  “There won’t be any more interrogations,” Yuan said hastily. “You can relax, both of you.”

  Tamara went to the urn and took a mug. “For what it’s worth,” she said without looking at Harbin, “I’m sorry I pumped you. I didn’t know what your reaction would be.”

  “I’m sorry also,” Harbin said. “The man with the fractured jaw…?

  “Koop injected him with stem cells. The medical computer predicts he’ll be recovered in six days.”

  “I regret injuring him.”

  Yuan said, “The two of you are under a sentence of death. I don’t like it, but those are my orders.”

  “And if you don’t carry them out, Humphries will send assassins after you,” Elverda said.

  Nodding, the captain said, “He sure as hell will.”

  A gloomy silence filled the galley. Yuan looked from Harbin to Apacheta to Tamara. He felt uneasy, almost sick to his stomach. It’s one thing to ping a ship, he thought. Like a computer game. Bang, he’s dead. But these are real, living people. Even Harbin : he’s half machine, but he’s a human being nonetheless. What am I supposed to do with them? Shoot them between the eyes? Give them lethal injections? Pop them out an airlock without suits?

  Tamara broke the silence. “Tell me more about this alien artifact, Harbin.”

  “His name is Dorn,” Elverda said.

  “I want to know more about the artifact.”

  “Artifact?” Yuan asked.

  Dorn fixed Tamara with a gaze. “Humphries wants us killed because we saw the effect the artifact had on him.”

  “You mean it’s real?” Yuan asked. “I’ve heard rumors, everybody has. Tales… but I thought—”

  “It’s real,” said Elverda.

  “It made Humphries crazy?” Tamara’s voice was brimming with anticipation.

  “Temporarily,” Elverda said, placing a hand on Dorn’s human arm to keep him silent.

  But Dorn added, “The artifact merely brought his underlying insanity into the open.”

  “And you saw him crumble?”

  “He won’t like finding out that you know what happened to him,” Elverda warned.

  Undeterred, Tamara asked, “You both saw the artifact, too, didn’t you? And it affected you, too, didn’t it?”

  “It did,” said Dorn.

  “It changed your lives,” Tamara said, her eyes glittering.

  “Yes,” Elverda admitted.

  Leaning across the table toward Dorn, Tamara asked, “Where is this artifact?”

  “It’s buried inside an asteroid.”

  “Which asteroid?”

  “IAA designation 67-046,” said Dorn mechanically.

  “What are its coordinates? Could you pilot us back to the asteroid where the artifact is?”

  CARGO SHIP PLEIADES:

  OUTSIDE

  Victor Zacharias paused in his work and looked up at the stars. He had pulled on one of the ship’s nanofabric space suits to go outside and repair a malfunctioning maintenance robot, thinking to himself, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will watch the watchmen? Or, in this case, who will maintain the maintenance robots?

  “I will,” he muttered from inside the inflated bubble that covered his head. “There’s nobody here to do it except me.”

  It was a lot easier to work in the nanofabric suit than in the old hard shells. The nanofabric gloves were thin and flexible, not like the stiff cumbersome gloves of the older suits. Even with miniature servomotors on their backs, it was hard to move your fingers in the old gloves; it was like wearing boxing mitts, almost. Victor lifted a hand to eye level and flexed his fingers easily.

  The stars dew his attention. Stars everywhere, spangled against the infinite blackness of space. Stars strewn so thickly that he could barely make out the constellations that he’d known as a child in the muted skies of Earth.

  Earth itself was out there, he saw: a warm point of blue. He couldn’t find Mars but Jupiter was so big and bright he thought he could see the flatness of its disk.

  And Pauline is out there, he told himself. Pauline and Angela and Theo. Somewhere out there.

  He had only the roughest idea of where they might be. When he’d separated from Syracuse, in the midst of that madman’s attack, he hadn’t had time for a careful navigational fix. They were rocketing outward, he knew, on a trajectory that would swing completely out of the Belt and then loop back again toward Ceres.

  So Victor piloted Pleiades across the sector that he guessed his family would return to, crisscrossing the region like a man groping blindly in a dark alley for a coin he had lost.

  I’ll find them, he told himself, again and again. I’ll find them.

  He had worked hard to upgrade Pleiades’s search radar so it could send a powerful probing pulse out into space. Syracuse was deaf and dumb, he knew. The attack had ruined the ship’s antennas. He could expect no call from his family, no signal to guide him to them.

  Unless…

  No, he said to himself. You can’t expect Theo to know enough to help you. He’s only a teenager. He can’t repair the antennas, they were too badly ripped up for repair. But is Theo smart enough to use the suit radios? Will he think of that?

  The radios built into the ship’s space suits were low powered, barely strong enough for crew members to chatter back and forth. Their signals faded away into the background hiss of the stars at only a few kilometers’ distance.

  But on Earth there are powerful radio telescopes, antennas that can pick out the microwatt signals from robot spacecraft way out in the Kuiper Belt and beyond. Antennas that had been listening for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations, until the religious fanatics that controlled most of Earth’s governments ha
d shut down almost all of them.

  But the antennas are still there, Victor thought, listening to the signals from the outposts orbiting around Venus and Jupiter and Saturn. Communicating with the power satellite project at Mercury. And some of those scientists were sneaking time to listen for ET signals, too, Victor was certain.

  If Theo was smart enough to use the suit radios to call for help, or just to identify Syracuse’s position … If, Victor thought. If.

  The timer on his wrist comm pinged, making him flinch with surprise. I’ve been out here two hours!

  He lifted the diagnostic tool from its magnetic grip on the ship’s hull and ran it over the squat little robot he’d been repairing. Its lights blinked green. Nodding, satisfied, Victor activated the robot itself. It trundled off along its track, spindly arms unfolding, ready to repair any damage to the meteor bumper from impacts. Just as if it had never malfunctioned, Victor said to himself. No memory at all. Almost, he envied the simple little machine.

  He clambered through the airlock hatch, unsealed the space suit and hung it up neatly in its rack, then went to the galley for a sandwich and a beer. Cheena set a good table, he thought. The galley’s well stocked.

  Ducking into the bridge, Victor was startled to see that the ship’s sensor log showed that Pleiades had been pinged by a powerful radar pulse seventeen minutes earlier. And the yellow message light was blinking on the communications console.

  “That can only be bad news,” he growled. He’d been running silent: no tracking beacon, no telemetry to identify himself. He hadn’t yet turned on the search radar he’d worked so hard to upgrade. He didn’t think Cheena Madagascar would be chasing him, but he was taking no chances.

  “No harm in listening to it,” he mumbled. He sat down in the command chair, the mug of beer still in his left hand, and touched the replay key.

  A handsome cheerful face smiled brightly from the display screen.

  “Hailing unidentified vessel,” he said, in a crisply confident tone. “This is the salvage ship Vogeltod. If you are in need of help, we will assist you. If we receive no reply, we will assume you are a derelict. In that case we will board you and claim you as salvage.”