The Aftermath gt-16

by Ben Bova

That’s a laugh and a half, Theo said to himself. The ship’s on automatic and I’m in command of nobody. Plus I’m not supposed to touch anything. Some responsibility.

  Misunderstanding his son’s silence, Victor said, “It’s a dangerous world out there, Thee. There’s a war going on.”

  “I know,” Theo muttered.

  “Ships have been attacked, destroyed. People killed.”

  “Dad, the war’s between the big corporations. Nobody’s bothered independent ships, like us.”

  “True enough,” Victor admitted, “but there are mercenaries roaming around out there and out-and-out pirates like Lars Fuchs—”

  “You told me Fuchs only attacks corporate ships,” Theo said. “You said he’s never bothered an independent.”

  Victor nodded gravely. “I know. But I want you to keep your wits about you. If anything unusual happens—anything at all—you call me at once. Understand?”

  “Sure.”

  “At once,” Victor emphasized.

  Theo looked up at his father. “Okay, okay.”

  With a million doubts showing clearly on his face, Victor reluctantly went to the command pod’s hatch. He hesitated, as if he wanted to say something more to his son, then shrugged and left the pod.

  Theo resisted the impulse to throw a sarcastic two-fingered salute at the old man.

  At least, he thought, it’s a beginning. I’ll just sit here and let him take over once we’ve entered Ceres-controlled space. It’s a beginning. At least Mom got him to let me babysit the instruments.

  Slightly more than an hour later, Theo sat in the command chair, his brows knitted in puzzlement at the fuzzy image displayed on the ship’s main communications screen.

  Syracuse was still more than an hour away from orbital insertion at Ceres. But something strange was happening. Theo stared at the crackling, flickering image of a darkly bearded man who seemed to be making threats to the communications technician aboard the habitat Chrysalis, in orbit around Ceres, where the rock rats made their home. The image on the display screen was grainy, the voices broken up by interference. The stranger was aiming his message at Chrysalis: Theo had picked up the fringe of his comm signal as the ore ship coasted toward the asteroid.

  “Please identify yourself,” said a calm, flat woman’s voice: the comm tech at Chrysalis, Theo figured. “We’re not getting any telemetry data from you.”

  The dark-bearded man replied, “You don’t need it. We’re looking for Lars Fuchs. Surrender him to us and we’ll leave you in peace.”

  Lars Fuchs? Theo thought. The pirate. The guy who attacks ships out here in the Belt.

  “Fuchs?” The woman’s voice sounded genuinely puzzled. “He’s not here. He’s in exile. We wouldn’t—”

  “No lies,” the man snapped. “We know Fuchs is heading for your habitat. We want him.”

  Theo realized that something ugly was shaping up. Much as he hated to relinquish command of Syracuse—even though his “command” was nothing more than monitoring the ship’s automated systems—he reluctantly tapped the intercom keyboard.

  “Dad, you’d better get up here,” he said, slowly and clearly. “Something really weird is going on.”

  It took a moment, then Victor Zacharias replied testily, “What now? Can’t you handle anything for yourself?” There was no video: voice only.

  “You gotta see this, Dad.”

  “See what?” He sounded really annoyed.

  “I think we’re sailing right into the middle of the war.”

  “Ceres is neutral territory. Everybody knows that and respects it.”

  “Maybe,” Theo said. “But maybe not.”

  Grumbling, Victor said, “All right. I’m on my way.”

  Only then did Theo notice that the blank display screen’s indicator showed his father was in the master bedroom. He felt his cheeks redden. He and Mom … No wonder he’s cheesed off.

  ORE SHIP SYRACUSE:

  CONTROL POD

  Theo sat in the command chair, watching and listening to the chatter between Chrysalis and the strangely menacing stranger.

  His father stepped into the control pod, dark face scowling.

  Theo swiveled the command chair and got to his feet, crouching slightly in the confined head space of the pod. Gangling, awkward Theo had his father’s deep brown eyes, but the sandy hair and tall, slender build of his mother. There was the merest trace of a light stubble on his long, narrow jaw. His denims were decorated with decals and colorful patches.”What’s got you spooked?” Victor asked in a heavy grumbling voice as he lowered himself gingerly into the command chair. He had injured his thigh months earlier while loading Syracuse’s cargo of ores from one of the rock rat miners deeper in the Asteroid Belt. The leg still twinged; Victor had scheduled stem cell therapy when they arrived at the Chrysalis habitat.

  Gesturing to the main display screen that covered half the curving bulkhead in front of them, Theo replied, “Take a look.”

  But the menacing stranger had apparently cut his communications with Chrysalis. To Theo’s dismay, the main screen showed nothing more than a standard view of the approaching asteroid and its environs. At this distance Ceres was a discernable gray spheroid against the star-spattered blackness of space. Circling in orbit about the asteroid, the habitat Chrysalis glittered light reflected from the distant Sun: a Tinkertoy assemblage of old spacecraft linked together into a ring to make a livable home for the rock rats. They had built the makeshift habitat to escape the dust-choked tunnels that honeycombed Ceres itself.

  Radar displays superimposed on the screen showed the images of nearly a dozen ships, mostly ore carriers like Syracuse or massive factory smelters, in orbit around the asteroid; their names and registrations were printed out on the screen. Two other ships were visible, as well. One was labeled Elsinore, a passenger-carrying fusion torch ship from the lunar nation of Selene. The other had no name tag: no information about it at all was displayed on the screen. From the radar image it looked like a sleek, deadly dagger.

  Victor Zacharias scratched absently at his stubbled chin as he muttered, “By god, that looks like a military vessel—an attack ship.”

  “She’s not emitting any telemetry or tracking beacons,” Theo pointed out.

  “I can see that, son.”

  “They were talking to Chrysalis before you came in,” Theo explained. “Sounded threatening.”

  Victor’s blunt-fingered hands played over the comm console. The main screen flickered, then the image of the bearded man came up.

  “Attention Chrysalis,” he said in a heavy, guttural voice. “This is the attack vessel Samarkand. You are harboring the fugitive Lars Fuchs. You will turn him over to me in ten minutes or suffer the consequences of defiance.”

  Theo said to his father, “Lars Fuchs the pirate!”

  “The rock rats exiled him years ago,” Victor muttered, nodding.

  The voice of Chrysalis’s communications center said annoyedly, “Fuchs? God knows where he is.”

  “I know where he is,” Samarkand replied coldly. “And if you don’t surrender him to me I will destroy you.”

  His image winked out, replaced by the telescope view of Ceres and the spacecraft hovering near the asteroid.

  Victor began to peck intently on the propulsion keyboard set into the curving panel before him, muttering, “We’ve got to get ourselves the hell out of here.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Before the shooting starts.”

  “Chrysalis is unarmed,” Theo said. “They don’t have any weapons. Everybody knows that.”

  “We don’t have any weapons either,” said his father.

  “But they wouldn’t shoot at an unarmed ship. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “You hope.” Victor’s fingers were flicking across the controls.

  Turning a massively laden ore ship is neither a simple nor a quick maneuver. It takes time and lots of space. Theo glanced at the control screens and saw that Syracuse was slowly, painfull
y slowly, coming about.

  Something flashed on the main screen.

  “He’s fired on her!” Victor shouted.

  Theo saw a red-hot slash cut through the thin metal hull of one of Chrysalis’s modules. A glittering cloud puffed out and immediately dissipated. Air, Theo realized. The module seemed to explode, shards of metal spinning out dizzily. And other shapes came tumbling, flailing into the airless emptiness of space. Bodies, Theo saw, his heart suddenly thundering, his guts clenching. Those are people! He’s killing them!

  “Stop!” screamed a voice from the habitat’s comm center. “Stop or you’ll kill—”

  The voice cut off. Theo watched with bulging eyes as invisible laser beams from the attack ship methodically sliced one module of the habitat after another, slashing, destroying, killing. A cloud of spinning debris and twisted bodies spread outward like ripples of death.

  “You’ve got to do something!” Theo shouted.

  “I am,” his father replied. “I’m getting us the hell away from here.”

  “Something to help them!”

  “What can we do? You want to join them?”

  As Syracuse slowly, ponderously turned away from its approach to Ceres, its telescopic cameras maintained their focus on the slaughter of the Chrysalis habitat. Module after module exploded soundlessly, corpses and wreckage flung into space.

  Tears in his eyes, Theo leaned over his father’s broad shoulder and shouted into his face, “You can’t just leave them there!”

  His eyes fastened on the carnage displayed on the main screen, Victor told his son, “The hell I can’t! I’ve got to protect you and your sister and mother.”

  “You’re running away!”

  Victor nodded bleakly. “Just as fast as I can get this ore bucket to fly.”

  Theo glanced up at the main screen once more, then down again to his father’s grimly determined face. He saw beads of perspiration on his father’s brow; his knuckles were white as he gripped the chair’s armrests.

  “But there must be something we can do!”

  The bearded man’s image appeared again on the main screen, sharp and steady. “Ore ship Syracuse,” he said, “just where do you think you’re going?”

  Theo’s blood froze in his veins.

  BATTLE FRENZY

  Are you harboring the fugitive Lars Fuchs?” asked the stranger, his voice dagger-cold.

  Victor replied evenly, “We’re inbound from the deeper Belt, carrying fourteen thousand tons of ore.” Then he added, “No passengers.”

  “How do I know that’s the truth?”

  “You’re welcome to come aboard and see for yourself.”

  The dark stranger lapsed into silence, apparently deep in thought. Theo thought his eyes looked strange, their pupils dilated wider than he had ever seen before.

  “Damn!” Victor growled. “The intercom’s down again.”

  “We just fixed it yesterday,” Theo said.

  “Not well enough.” Victor leaned on the comm console’s mute button and whispered urgently to his son, “Get down to the habitation module and get your mother and sister into suits. You suit up too.”

  “What about you?”

  “Do it!”

  Theo scrambled out of the control pod, nearly banging his head on the rim of the hatch, and clambered up the rungs set into the tubular passageway that ran the length of the three-kilometer-long buckyball tube. With each rung the feeling of weight lessened, until he let his soft-booted feet rise off the rungs and started scampering along the ladderway like a racing greyhound, his fingers barely flicking on the rungs. The closer he got to the ship’s center of rotation the less g force he felt: soon he was literally flying through the narrow tube.

  Meanwhile Victor sat alone in the control pod, his mind working in overdrive. He’s a killer. He’s wiped out the habitat, must have killed more than a thousand people, for god’s sake. The nearest help is days away, weeks. Hell, it takes more than half an hour just to get a message to Earth. We’re alone out here. Alone.

  The stranger aboard the attack vessel seemed to stir to life. “Well? Where is Fuchs?” he demanded.

  “Who am I speaking to?” Victor asked, stalling for time. “You know who I am but I don’t know who you are.”

  The man almost smiled. “I am your death unless you surrender Fuchs to me.”

  His fingers racing across the control keyboard like a pianist attempting a mad cadenza, Victor Zacharias answered, “Lars Fuchs isn’t aboard this ship. Send an inspection party if you want to. I assure you—”

  Syracuse shuddered. We’ve been hit! Victor realized. The bastard’s shooting at us!

  A bank of red lights flared angrily on the control panel. The main antennas. He’s silenced us. And the fuel tanks below the antennas; he’s ripped them open! With a swift check of his other diagnostics, Victor hesitated a heartbeat, then punched the key that released the ship’s cargo. Syracuse lurched heavily as fourteen thousand tons of asteroidal rock were suddenly freed from their magnetic grips and went spinning into space between the ore carrier and the attack vessel.

  That’s the best shielding I can provide, Victor said to himself as he punched up Syracuse’s propulsion controls and goosed the main fusion engine to maximum acceleration. In the main display screen above his curved control panel he saw glints of laser light splashing off the rocks that now floated between him and the attack ship. Come on, he silently urged the fusion engine. Get us out of here!

  “You can’t run away,” came the voice from the attack ship, sounding more amused than angry.

  I can try, Victor replied silently.

  * * *

  Theo banged painfully against the rungs protruding from the central passageway’s curving bulkhead. Dad’s accelerating the ship, he thought. Trying to get away. He grabbed a ladder rung and pulled himself along the tube. Within seconds he was no longer weightless but falling toward the habitation module, where his mother and sister were. Careful now, he told himself, remembering how he’d broken his arm a few years earlier in a stupid fall down the tube. He jackknifed in midair, banging his knee painfully against the rungs, and turned around so that he was falling feet first.

  He heard a hatch creak open down at the end of the tube and, glancing down, saw his sister Angie starting to climb upward toward him.

  “Go back!” he yelled at her. “Get into a suit! Mom too!”

  “What’s happening?” Angie shouted back, her voice echoing off the tube’s curving bulkhead. “The intercom isn’t working.” She sounded more annoyed than frightened.

  “We’re being attacked!” Theo hollered, scrambling toward her as fast as he dared. “Get into suits, you and Mom!”

  “Attacked? By who? What for?”

  The lights flickered and went out. The dim emergency lights came on.

  “Get into the goddamned suits!” Theo roared.

  Angie began backing toward the hatch. “No need to swear, Theo.”

  “The hell there isn’t,” he muttered to himself.

  He clambered down the rungs and dropped the final couple of meters through the open hatch and onto the bare metal deck of the auxiliary airlock. Long habit—backed by his father’s stern discipline—made him reach overhead to close the hatch and make certain it was properly sealed. Then he pushed through the inner hatch and entered the family’s living quarters.

  The accommodations were spare, almost spartan, but they were all the home that Theo remembered. A small communications center, crammed with electronics equipment; its deck was polished plastic tiles, its overhead decorated with a fanciful ancient star map that showed the constellations as the beasts and legendary heroes of old. When he was a little kid Theo loved to sneak in here at night and gaze at the glow of the fluorescent figures.

  No time for stargazing now. The next hatch led into the main living area, with its wide glassteel port that looked out into the depths of space. Well-worn comfortable sofas and cushioned chairs. Through the port Theo saw a jumble of
rocks spinning off into the distance, flashes of light glinting off them.

  Dad’s jettisoned our cargo, he realized. And that bastard’s shooting at us, whoever he is.

  The lighting was normal here. Theo hurried through the living area and into the equipment bay that fronted the main airlock. His mother was helping Angie into her space suit, sliding the hard-shell torso over his sister’s head and upraised arms. Angie’s head popped out of the collar ring; she looked as if she’d been swallowed by a robotic monster.

  Angie glared at Theo, more nettled than scared, he thought. She thinks this is all my fault, as usual, he said to himself.

  It was hard to tell if his mother was worried or frightened. Pauline Zacharias seemed calm, unruffled. Theo couldn’t imagine anything that would rattle his mother. She knows Dad wouldn’t tell us to get into the suits unless we were in deep spit, but she seems totally in control of herself.

  Angela was tucking her thick dark hair inside her suit’s collar, looking thoroughly annoyed. Funny, Theo thought, how Angie got Dad’s height and coloring and I got Mom’s light hair and long legs. Genes can be peculiar.

  His mother reached for the gloves resting on the locker shelf beside Angie’s helmet.

  “You can put these on yourself,” she said in a low, cool voice. “Quickly now. I’ve got to help Theo.”

  Angie took the gloves, her eyes still on Theo. “You sure that Dad wants us in the suits, Thee, or is this just one of your little stunts?”

  “Didn’t you feel the ship lurch?” he answered hotly. “We’re being attacked, for god’s sake!”

  “That’s stupid,” Angie said as she tugged on her gloves. “This old boat is always shaking and groaning. Besides, who’d want to attack us?” But she sealed her gloves to the cuffs of her suit’s arms and reached for her helmet.

  “Who’s attacking us?” his mother asked. “And why?”

  Pauline was a handsome woman with the steady gray eyes and firm jaw of someone who had weathered her share of troubles. She was slightly taller than Theo; he had always measured his height against her, not his stubby father. She wore her sandy blonde hair cropped short, not the stylish shoulder length that she allowed her daughter to flaunt.