The Aftermath gt-16 Page 33

  “If they’re smart they’ll jet back to their own ship and get out of here before Hunter smashes into them.”

  “No, they’ll come after you. They’ll want to prevent the collision so they can keep Hunter for salvage.”

  “I’ll zip out before they can get to me.”

  Victor nodded minimally.

  Theo could feel the eyes of his mother and sister on him. And the cyborg and the old woman, too. He remembered a word from his history lessons: kamikaze.

  * * *

  “Is it just my eyes, or is Hunter moving away from us?” Kirk asked.

  The ten scavengers had floated free of the torn-out section of Hunter. Gripping their makeshift weapons, they were jetting back toward the vessel. Valker had appropriated the laser pistol that one of the men had carried.

  “Hard to judge distance out here,” he muttered.

  Then he saw three glittering puffs of gas from the maneuvering thrusters on one side of Hunter’s broken hull.

  “They’re moving her!”

  “Towards Syracuse]” Nicco bellowed, pointing at the distant wheel shape of the battered cargo ship.

  “And Vogeltod!” Kirk snarled. “The bastards’re going to ram us!”

  “Power up, boys,” Valker commanded. “We’ve got to stop Hunter before it hits our ship!”

  “Look! They’re leavin’ Hunter!”

  “Headin’ for Pleiades!”

  “Let’s get them!”

  “First things first, boys,” Valker said, his voice high with excitement. “We’ve gotta stop Hunter from plowing into our ship.”

  “But they’ll get away on Pleiades!”

  “Let ’em,” Valker insisted. “We’ve got to save our own ship first. Nicco, take Ross and Turk and get back to Vogeltod. Disconnect her from Syracuse and get her the hell out of the way. The rest of you come with me.”

  We’ll take Hunter before she rams our ship, but we’ll lose our best prize, Valker admitted silently: Pleiades, an intact, first-rate ship. And the two women. He saw Pauline in his mind’s eye: beautiful and strong. With her I could become anything I want to be. But I’d have to get rid of these apes first. And even before that I’d have to take care of the people with her.

  That includes her daughter, Valker realized. Or maybe I could take them both. He grinned, inside the bubble of his nanosuit hood. Both of them. Mother and daughter. Maybe I could…

  He shook his head. Forget that. If you don’t move fast you’re going to lose your own ship and die like a chump out here.

  * * *

  Jetting between Angela and Victor, Pauline saw Pleiades looming larger as they approached.

  “It’s working.” She heard Dorn’s heavy voice in her helmet earphones. “Some of them are racing back to their own ship.”

  Victor said, “But the rest of them are reboarding Hunter.”

  “Theo’s still on Hunter!” Pauline cried out. “Alone!”

  SMELTER SHIP HUNTER:

  BRIDGE

  Sitting awkwardly in his hard suit on the bridge’s command chair, Theo heard the scavengers’ suit-to-suit radio chatter as he worked frantically to dismantle the navigation program and controls.

  I’ve got maybe five minutes, he told himself as he feverishly pecked at the navigation keyboard.

  “Navigation program cannot be erased,” said the computer’s maddeningly calm voice, “without authorization from the ship’s captain.”

  “Erase it!” Theo shouted. “Emergency override!”

  Coolly, the computer replied, “Voiceprint identification does not match the captain’s. Emergency command not valid.”

  Theo was already out of the command chair before the computer’s stubborn refusal was finished. He rummaged through the tool bin built into the end of the control console. The best he could come up with was a hand-sized laser welder, similar to the one his father had brandished earlier, good for spot welds on electronics equipment and not much else.

  “It’ll have to do,” Theo muttered to himself. On the main screen, above the control console, he saw Syracuse slowly, slowly growing larger as Hunter inched toward it. The scavenger’s ship was still attached to it. Good! Theo said to himself. Maybe I’ll get them both, after all. But he wished he could push Hunter faster.

  Then, on one of the auxiliary screens that displayed views of the ship’s interior, he saw Valker and a half-dozen of his men pushing through the open airlock and sprinting up the passageway toward the bridge.

  Knowing he had only moments, Theo used the butt end of the hand laser to smash the transparent covers on the navigation controls and then fired pulses of infrared energy to slag the circuitry.

  “It’s not much,” he said, “but it’s the best I can do.”

  He snapped his visor shut and clumped off the bridge toward the emergency airlock. He could hear the pounding footsteps of Valker and his crew approaching. Theo ducked into the airlock, fidgeted impatiently while it cycled down to vacuum, then stepped off the outer hatch’s rim into the nothingness of empty space.

  * * *

  Valker was the first of the scavengers to bolt into the bridge. He immediately saw that the key controls on the main console had been smashed, their circuits melted.

  “Sonofabitch!” he snapped. “The little bastard’s screwed us, but good.”

  Kirk came up beside him. “I can fix this. Rewire—”

  “How long?” Valker asked.

  “Huh?”

  “How long would it take you?”

  “Half an hour,” said Kirk. “Maybe a little longer.”

  Valker sneered at him. “And just how long do you think it’s gonna take this clunker to smash into Syracuse?”

  Kirk scowled back at him.

  “I’d say it’d be a lot less than half an hour,” Valker answered his own question.

  “Yeah. Guess so.”

  Valker bent over the communications console and tapped on its keys. “Nicco! You uncouple the ship yet?”

  A moment’s hesitation, then, “Got the access tunnel disconnected. Powering up the maneuvering jets right now.”

  “Good. Get our ship the hell out of the way. This bucket’s going to ram right into Syracuse in another ten-fifteen minutes.”

  “We’ll be outta the way, Skip.”

  Nodding with satisfaction, Valker turned back to Kirk and the rest of his men.

  “So whattawe do now?” Kirk asked.

  “Get to Pleiades as fast as we can,” Valker replied. “She’s our prize. Her, and those women aboard her.”

  * * *

  Standing in Pleiades’s open main airlock in their nanofabric space suits, Victor and Dorn could see the lone figure of Theo in his hard-shell suit floating across the gulf that separated the ship from Hunter.

  And behind him, seven nanosuited scavengers erupted from Hunter’s airlock.

  “They’re not returning to their own ship,” Dorn said calmly.

  “No,” Victor agreed. “They’re heading here.”

  “Your son has a good lead on them.”

  But Victor was thinking, Seven of them. And we’ve only got this one pistol. The hand welder’s useless in this kind of fight: its range is too short.

  “Once Theo comes aboard,” he said to Dorn, “we’ve got to power up and get away from them.”

  “You’d better go to the bridge, then,” Dorn replied.

  “Not until Theo gets here.”

  “That may be too late.”

  * * *

  “Wow,” said Angela, glancing around at the spacious, well-appointed bridge of Pleiades. “Talk about luxury.”

  Pauline said, “Your father lived here alone for all those months.”

  “How could he control such a large ship by himself?” Angela wondered aloud.

  Elverda said, “Dorn reconfigured Hunter’s controls so that one person could handle it. Your father must have done the same here.”

  With a small smile of appreciation, Pauline started to say, “I didn’t think
Victor knew how—”

  “Pauline!” her husband’s voice blared over the intercom. “We’ve got to power up the main drive and get away from here.”

  She looked at Elverda. “Do you know how?”

  The sculptress shook her head. “I could do it on Hunter, but these controls are strange to me.”

  “Pauline, did you hear me?” Victor’s voice sounded strained with tension.

  “Victor, I don’t know how to do it!” Pauline said.

  Angela plunked herself down on the command chair. “Talk me through it, Dad,” she called out. “I’ll do it.”

  * * *

  “Talk you through it?” Victor shouted.

  “I’m in the command chair,” Angela’s voice replied, bright and eager. “There’s an electronic keyboard in front of me.”

  Theo was almost within arm’s reach; the scavengers close behind him and coming up fast. Victor closed his eyes momentarily, trying to visualize the command keyboard.

  “Extreme right end,” he said. “The key’s labeled ‘propulsion.’ ”

  “I see it,” Angela said. “Oh, good! The whole keyboard’s changed to the propulsion program.”

  Dorn reached out with his prosthetic arm and helped Theo to remain standing as he glided into the airlock.

  “Made it!” Theo said, exultant.

  “But not soon enough,” said Dorn, pointing to the scavengers, barely a hundred meters away.

  CARGO SHIP PLEIADES:

  MAIN AIRLOCK

  Standing at the open airlock hatch, Victor watched the seven space-suited figures approaching Pleiades. They’re going to get here before we can get the fusion drive going, he realized, then added, If Angie can figure out how to do it.

  Turning to Theo, he commanded, “Get up to the bridge and power up the fusion drive! Now!”

  Without even lifting the visor of his helmet Theo banged the wall control that opened the airlock’s inner hatch. Alarms hooted and emergency hatches farther up the passageway slammed shut as Theo dashed out, heading for the bridge.

  Victor looked down at the pistol in his hand. The indicator along its barrel showed it was fully charged.

  “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes,” said Dorn.

  “Don’t try to stop me,” Victor warned.

  “You can prevent them from boarding this ship without killing them.”

  “Can I now?” Victor’s voice echoed the scorn he felt.

  “Warn them. Remind them of how vulnerable they are.”

  “Men don’t always behave logically, especially when their lives are at risk.”

  “Warn them,” Dorn insisted.

  Victor stared at the cyborg for a long, silent moment. At last he said, “Words won’t stop them.”

  Dorn reached out his prosthetic hand. “Let me have the pistol, then.”

  “No!”

  Patiently, Dorn explained, “I’m a good enough shot to hit that big laser welder they’re carrying. Perhaps a warning from you and a disabling shot from me will discourage them. In any event, you don’t want them to use the laser to ruin the fusion drive’s thruster, as they did to Hunter.”

  Victor thought it over for half a second. Maybe all he wants is to get the gun away from me. He could probably crush it in his metal hand. Then we’d be totally defenseless.

  “I don’t want them here any more than you do,” Dorn said, his metal hand still extended. “But we at least should warn them that we’ll defend ourselves if they don’t leave us.”

  He could take the gun from me, Victor was thinking. And probably break every bone in my hand while he’s doing it.

  “Killing should be our last resort,” Dorn said.

  Reluctantly, Victor handed him the pistol. Then he clicked on the radio frequency that the scavengers were using.

  “Don’t come any closer,” he said sternly. “We’re armed and we’ll defend ourselves.”

  The seven approaching figures did not waver. They were close enough now to see the weapons they were brandishing.

  Valker answered, “We’re armed too. And we outnumber you.”

  Dorn raised his prosthetic arm and, holding the pistol in his human hand, cradled it in the metal one.

  “You’re hanging out there like targets in a shooting gallery,” Victor said. “One puncture of your suit and you’re a dead man.”

  The scavengers kept coming.

  Using both hands, Dorn raised the pistol to eye level. He pressed its infrared finder with his thumb, walked the red spot in the IR scope center to the flank of the welder that Valker carried cradled in his arms. He squeezed the trigger.

  The welder flared as the laser pulse punched a hole of molten metal into its side. Valker twitched and yelped and let go of the bulky tool. It floated weightlessly for a moment, then jerked as the cord connecting it to its power pack pulled it short. The smaller man carrying the power pack let go of it, and the two pieces floated away from him.

  Victor heard the scavengers cursing and muttering.

  “Go back to your ship,” Victor told them. “Leave us alone.”

  * * *

  Valker hung in emptiness, watching the laser welder and its power pack tumble slowly away. Kirk was beside him, an arm’s length away, the five other members of his crew hovering around them.

  “Go back to your own ship while you can,” he heard Victor’s voice in his suit’s radio speaker. “You can have Hunter and Syracuse. Leave us alone.”

  “You’re willing to give us two ships that are gonna mangle each other while you take the one that’s in perfect condition?” Valker shot back. “A sweet deal—for you.”

  “Go back to your own ship,” Dorn said. “My next shot will kill you.”

  Valker heard the cyborg’s threat, as calmly unemotional as an ocean wave surging onto the shore.

  “I thought you were a priest,” he shot back.

  “Don’t push me,” Dorn said. “The killer inside me can break through and cause havoc.”

  The airlock of Pleiades was close enough for Valker to clearly make out the two men standing inside its open hatch. One of them—the cyborg, he guessed—was holding a pistol rock steady in both hands.

  He’s pointing it straight at me, Valker realized. One puncture of this suit and I’m a dead man. The freak’s right: we’re exposed out here. He could kill four or five of us before we got to the hatch.

  “All right,” he said, fingering his jetpack controls. “All right. You win. For now.”

  Kirk growled, “You’re gonna let them go?”

  Valker made a toothy grin for Kirk. “You want to go in and be a hero? Go right ahead. Be my guest.”

  But Kirk had slowed down, too. All seven of the scavengers hovered in the emptiness, close enough to Pleiades almost to touch it, while Dorn stood inside the airlock with that one pistol locked in his unwavering hands.

  “A whole fucking ship!” Kirk whined.

  “You gotta know when to fold your tent, boys,” said Valker, “and silently steal away.”

  With enormous reluctance, the scavengers started back toward Vogeltod, which now was separated from Syracuse and slowly edging farther away from it.

  “We’ll get them,” Valker assured his men. “Once we’re back in Vogeltod, we’ll power up and—”

  “And chase us all the way back to Ceres,” Victor’s voice cut in. “Good. Do that. I’m sure the rock rats will be glad to see you, after what we’ll tell them about you.”

  Valker scowled and started to reply, “Oh yeah, well you just might—”

  “Hey!” Kirk yelled. “They’re gonna hit!”

  * * *

  As Theo ducked through the hatch of Pleiades’s bridge, still awkward in the clumsy hard suit, he saw Angie—also in her hard shell—sitting at the command chair, his mother and the elderly sculptress on either side of her.

  Lifting off his bubble helmet as he went to the command console, Theo said, “Dad wants me to—”

  “I think I’ve got it al
l set up, Thee,” Angela said happily. “All I’ve got to do now is press this key, the one that says ‘ignition.’ ”

  Theo swiftly scanned the electronic keyboard. “I think you’re right, Angie. I think you’ve done it.”

  “So let’s light the fusion torch and get out of here,” Angela said.

  Theo glanced up at the main screen. “Oh, for the love of god— they’re going to crash!”

  They all stared at the screen as Hunter slowly, inexorably, plowed into Syracuse. In the vacuum of space there was no noise, but Theo saw the two ships smash together in a rending, pulverizing collision that tore both ships into mangled shards of metal.

  That was our home, Theo realized. He saw Syracuse tear apart, whole sections of its wheel-shaped structure ripping loose, the tube-tunnels where he went diving as a kid breaking apart, pipes and pumps from the cranky old water recycler flung into space, a shape that looked like the old sofa from their living quarters spinning end over end.

  “It’s gone,” Pauline whispered. “Our home… it’s gone.”

  “Hunter, too,” said Elverda Apacheta, her voice almost reverent. “Dorn will never finish his quest now.”

  “But we’re here,” Theo said. “We’re alive and we’re safe.”

  “And we’re heading for Ceres,” Angela added, pressing her forefinger on the ignition key.

  Pleiades surged into acceleration as its fusion torch drive lit up.

  HABITAT CHRYSALIS II:

  COUNCIL CHAIRMAN’S OFFICE

  Big George Ambrose sat behind his desk like a smoldering red-haired volcano. The unpretentious office seemed crowded to Theo, with his parents and sister, Dorn and the sculptress taking up every available chair.

  “There’s nothing illegal with salvaging,” George said guardedly, after listening to their story.

  Victor had shaved his beard and looked more normal, Theo thought. Grayer, his face thinner, but now he looked like the father Theo remembered.