The Aftermath gt-16

by Ben Bova

  “Or perhaps,” she suggested, “we’ve been wrong all along and Humphries isn’t trying to find us.”

  Again Dom fell silent. Then he asked, “Do you really believe that?”

  “No,” she admitted. “He wants to silence us. I’m certain of that.”

  “Yet his ships are not pursuing us.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve spent much of the day scanning the region as deeply as our equipment allows. No radar blips, no ion trails, nothing.”

  “Have they given up?”

  “More likely they’ve returned to Ceres or Vesta to refuel and resupply.”

  Nodding, Elverda said, “That could be it.”

  “No matter,” said Dorn. “Our work here is finished. We’ve recovered all the bodies in the area. Now we move on to the next site.”

  “How far is it?”

  “A week, at one-half g.”

  Elverda knew that he kept the acceleration gentle to accommodate her; she had spent most of her life in low-g environments.

  “And how many sites after that?” she asked.

  He puffed out a sigh. “At least two, that I know of. There must be more, but we’ll need more information from Humphries or Astro to confirm that.”

  At least two more sites, she thought. And what will be waiting for us when we get to them?

  HABITAT CHRYSALIS II:

  CONTROL CENTER

  It took almost a month for Victor Zacharias to prepare for his escape. He thought of it as an escape. He was going to flee not only George Ambrose and the construction task he had imposed; he was going to get away from Cheena Madagascar and her demands as well.

  Not demands, he told himself. It’s not fair to call it that. You’re willing enough. Cheena’s a temptation, a siren that I’m not strong enough to resist. The only thing I can do is run away.

  It wasn’t easy. Big George knew that Victor was thoroughly unhappy with his forced labor on the rock rats’ new habitat. Security personnel watched Victor: not obviously, not as if he were under guard. But Victor knew his every move was scrutinized by security cameras, night and day. Even when he spent the night with Cheena, he saw the unavoidable red eye of a surveillance camera in the passageway leading to her door, and it was still watching when he left the following morning.

  Slowly and surely he drew his plans. Now, as he walked through the habitat’s control center, he was ready to set them in motion.

  The control center was Chrysalis II’s brain. It hummed with constant activity, alive with the buzz of electrical circuitry and the muted talk of the men and women who observed every aspect of the habitat. Along one sweeping wall of the low-ceilinged chamber was a row of display screens, each set of six monitored by a human observer equipped with a communications set clipped to one ear. Walking slowly down the line behind them, Victor could watch every section of the habitat, oversee the construction teams working on the unfinished areas, check on the status of the life support systems, the electrical power supply, the water recyclers, everything.

  On one set of screens he saw the docking ports where Pleiades and other ships were moored. A few screens down the row he could see an outside view of the maintenance robots installing new meteor bumpers on another ship’s hull.

  Victor glanced up at the master clock on the wall above the screens. Its digits read 15:44. A little more than eight hours to go, he told himself.

  At exactly 1600 hours he left the control center, as usual, and walked down the passageway to the main cafeteria, where he loaded a tray with his last meal aboard Chrysalis II. Or so he hoped. As he ate, an island of solitude at a small table in the midst of the bustling, noisy cafeteria, he thought that if his scheme didn’t work this might be the last meal of his life. Big George would probably be angry enough to kill him.

  He ate for sustenance, chewing without tasting the food. In his mind he went over every facet of his plan. It should work, he thought. He could find nothing wrong with it. If they’re watching you night and day, you have to blind them. It’s that simple. And that dangerous.

  As he left the cafeteria Victor wondered if he should visit Cheena Madagascar one last time. No, he told himself sternly. But her quarters are closer to the docking port than mine, he argued with himself. What of it? the other part of his mind answered. You’ve timed it all out. You’ll be able to get to the ship from your own quarters with minutes to spare.

  He knew he should avoid the temptation. Still, it was a struggle. He went to his quarters, glanced up at the unblinking red light of the security camera at the end of the passageway, opened his door and stepped inside. Now you stay here until 12:01, he told himself.

  * * *

  The working shift in the control center changed at midnight. Usually the incoming crew began filtering in, in ones and twos, a few minutes before the hour.

  As the relief crew started showing up at the control center, one of the observers at the security console frowned at a set of red lights that appeared suddenly on his board.

  “Damn,” he said to the woman sitting next to him. “Cameras are down in sections fourteen and fifteen.”

  “You’ve had trouble with them before, haven’t you?” she said.

  “Last friggin’ week,” he replied, tapping at his keyboard. “Guess I’ll have to roust maintenance.”

  “And security,” the woman reminded him. “There’s a special security watch in those sections.”

  “Yeah, right.” He frowned. “They’re gonna love getting goosed at midnight.”

  The woman shrugged. “You’ve gotta do it. Regulations. Can’t leave the surveillance cameras down.”

  He gave her a sour look. “Like somebody’s gonna steal something while the cameras are down? Most people are sleepin’, this time of night.”

  “It’s regulations,” she repeated.

  He reached for the communications link to the maintenance department, grumbling, “If I don’t report it I’ll catch hell.”

  The woman pushed her chair back and got to her feet. “Let the next shift call it in. Let them listen to the bitchin’.”

  At that moment, his relief sauntered over to the console, grinning casually. “You going to stay for my shift? I’ll go back to bed, then.”

  The man hopped to his feet. “Not bloody likely. I’m leaving. The cameras are down in fourteen and fifteen again.”

  “Again?” said the relief observer, sliding into the warm chair. “We had trouble with them last week. You call maintenance?”

  “Not yet. It’s all yours, pal.”

  “Thanks a lot!”

  “You gotta call security, too, y’know. Have fun.”

  “Shit!”

  * * *

  It was a mistake, Victor thought, to try to keep the man in charge of building this habitat from getting away. I know all the systems and how to finagle around them.

  The only question was timing. How long would it take the maintenance crew to bring the cameras back up? How quickly would security send a team to check on him? Victor hurried past the dead camera up on the ceiling of the passageway and made his way to the docking ports.

  The security guard at the entrance to the ports was frowning at the blank screen on his desk.

  “What’s the trouble?” Victor asked him.

  “Dunno. Goddamn screen just went blank on me. I can’t get anything on it.”

  “The system’s gone down before,” said Victor. “It usually comes up again in a few minutes.”

  “Yeah,” the guard said, his voice thin with uncertainty.

  Victor stepped around the desk to the seated guard’s side.

  “Uh, Mr. Zacharias,” the guard said uncertainly, “You’re not supposed to be in this area, y’know.”

  “I know. I just thought I could help you with your screen.”

  “Why’d it hafta go blooey just when I start my shift?” the guard grumbled. “I can’t get any calls in or out.”

  “Let me have a look at it…”

  Vict
or took in a deep breath, then chopped at the back of the guard’s neck as hard as he could. The man slid out of his chair, banged his chin on the desk top, and slumped to the floor.

  “Sorry,” Victor muttered. He dashed up the passageway that led to the docking ports. Undogging the hatch that led into Pleiades’s main airlock, he rushed straight to the ship’s bridge, slipped into the command chair, and began powering up the ship’s systems.

  No alarms yet. Good, he thought. Even if maintenance gets the cameras back on, there’s nothing for them to see in the passageways. I’m okay until the guard comes to. So far so good.

  Now comes the tricky part.

  Victor had filed a departure plan for Pleiades with the habitat’s flight control computer several days earlier. The flight controllers normally were not in the same loop as the surveillance cameras or security guards. Normally they seldom talked to one another. Victor hoped this was a normal night.

  He had made certain that all the maintenance and repair work on the ship had been completed. Cheena Madagascar had no intention of leaving Chrysalis II for another week, he knew. She had offered to take Victor with her, to search for his family. For six months. Victor knew it would take longer than that, and he didn’t want Cheena or any other distractions on the ship when he started out on his search.

  So he had updated Cheena’s own departure plan, hoping that the human flight controllers wouldn’t ask the ship’s captain why she had changed her departure date.

  Sitting in the command chair, Victor took a deep breath, swiftly reconfigured the electronic keyboard to handle the communications system, then pecked at the keys once they lit up.

  “Chrysalis flight control, this is Pleiades,” he said. “Ready for departure.”

  A wait that seemed endless, then, “Pleiades, you’re twelve seconds behind your schedule.”

  “So sue me,” he growled.

  The flight controller chuckled. “Okay. Lemme check you out. Right. Okay. You are cleared for undocking.”

  “Undocking,” he said, tapping the controls. He felt the ship shudder as it was released from the grapples that held it to the habitat’s dock.

  “Initiate separation maneuver,” said the flight controller.

  “Initiating separation,” Victor confirmed. Jets of cold gas nudged Pleiades away from the dock.

  “We need the captain to request final departure clearance,” the flight controller said.

  Voiceprint identification, Victor knew. He tugged out the palm-sized digital recorder he had been carrying in his coverall pocket. It had taken him weeks of talking with Cheena and editing her words to get the message straight.

  “Pleiades standing by for departure clearance,” said Cheena Madagascar’s voice. It sounded stilted to Victor, herky-jerky.

  But the voiceprint identification computer was not programmed to analyze the cadence of speech, merely the frequency pattern of the voice that was speaking.

  A wait that seemed endless. Then, “Pleiades, you are clear for departure,” said the flight controller.

  “Pleiades on burn,” Victor said. He clicked off the communications link, lit the ship’s main fusion engine, then howled an utterly triumphant, “YAZOO!” as Pleiades headed out into the Belt.

  ATTACK SHIP VIKING:

  WEAPONS BAY

  Yuan studied his first mate’s beefy face as they checked the laser’s double row of capacitor banks. The man was clearly unhappy, troubled.

  “What’s the matter, Koop?” The first mate’s name was Kahalu’u Kaupakulu’a. Everyone on the ship called him Koop. “Nothing,” he answered. He was almost as tall as Yuan, but much broader in girth, built like a fleshy brick. Before meeting Koop, Yuan had thought of Hawaiians as smiling, gracious souls, always relaxed and contented. Koop was just the opposite: moody, dark, always looking worried.

  The weapons bay was narrow, its overhead so low that Yuan hunched over as he squeezed through the equipment that crammed the compartment. With the blocky Hawaiian in it, the bay seemed on the verge of bursting.

  “Don’t try to con me,” Yuan said, keeping his tone light. “We’re alone in here, nobody’s going to hear you. What’s eating you?”

  Koop wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t want you to think I’m trying to second-guess you,” he said. His voice was a soft, gentle tenor.

  “You’re not after my job?” Yuan joked.

  The Hawaiian’s eyes flashed wide. “No! Honest! I just…” His voice trailed off.

  “You just what?” Yuan asked, trying to hide the irritation growing inside him. Do I have to drag it out of you? he wondered silently.

  “This business of running away,” Koop said.

  “Running away?”

  “Well, maybe not running away, but… I mean, how’s it going to look back at headquarters? We were on his track and then we backed off.”

  Yuan edged past the laser’s copper mirror mounting as he replied, “Why should we go chasing all over the Belt when we can make him come to us?”

  “We were on his track.”

  “And he spoofed us with an empty suit. So now we’re heading for a spot he’ll come to and we’re baiting a trap for him.”

  “With empty suits.”

  “That’s right. According to the crystal ball readers from headquarters, he’s out there picking up bodies from all the battles he fought in during the war. Must be crazy with guilt or something.”

  “Or something,” Koop muttered.

  “So we’ll give him some bodies to find.”

  “Decoys,” said Koop.

  “Bait.”

  Koop shook his blocky head slowly. “I don’t know. Most of the crew thinks it’s a mistake.”

  “You’ve been talking with the crew about this?”

  “Some of them. You know how it is. They’ll tell me stuff they wouldn’t say to the captain.”

  “And they think I’m making a mistake, do they?”

  “Sort of. Tamara says—”

  “Tamara?”

  “Yeah. You know, Cap, if you’re worried about somebody being after your job, worry about her, not me.”

  Yuan felt his brows rise. But he forced a smile. “Really?”

  Koop nodded unhappily.

  “Thanks for the input,” Yuan said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “You know, as comm officer she hasta make daily reports back to headquarters.”

  “Strictly routine,” Yuan said, thinking of the microsecond bursts of laser messaging that she sent every day, his only contact with HHS headquarters back on the Moon.

  “Maybe,” said Koop.

  There was a world of meaning in those two syllables, Yuan realized. Koop’s telling me that I can’t trust Tamara, that she’s been sleeping with me just to keep me from suspecting… suspecting what? That she wants to take the captain’s post away from me? That she’s a spy from headquarters?

  Looking into the Hawaiian’s dark, cheerless eyes, Yuan thought, Does Koop want Tamara for himself? Is that what’s going on here?

  “Thanks for letting me know,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

  “I’m loyal,” said Koop.

  Meaning, Yuan decided, that Tamara isn’t.

  * * *

  Elverda felt tired. Even sitting in the padded command chair her body ached sullenly. It’s the acceleration, she told herself. Half a normal Earth gravity has become more than my old bones can accept.

  Should I ask him to slow down? No, she decided, I shouldn’t. He wants to get to the next site, find the bodies left coasting through space after the battle, give them a decent death rite.

  And what happens after we’ve found them? she asked herself. He’ll want to search for others. Already he’s talking about other battles, other sites to search. He’ll never stop. Not until someone stops him.

  She looked up at the main display screen. It showed emptiness, cold dark vacuum lit only by the pitiless stars strewn through the endless black. So many stars! Elverda marveled. Why are there so many
of them?

  “Could you come down here to the workshop?” Dorn’s deep voice came through the intercom speaker. “I… I need your help, please.”

  “Of course.” Elverda got out of the command chair, winced at the twinge of pain from her hip, and headed down the passageway that led to the workshop and, beyond it, to the fusion reactor and propulsion system, deep in the bowels of the ship.

  The hatch to the workshop was open. She gasped as she stepped in and saw Dorn bent over his own left arm resting on the table. His left shoulder socket was empty; tiny telltale lights winked inside the open socket.

  He heard her and turned slowly on the swivel stool he sat upon. The human side of his face twitched with what might have been an apologetic grin.

  “I can’t get it back on again without help,” he said.

  “What happened? How did—”

  “The arm was malfunctioning. I couldn’t apply full power to my hand. It felt… weak, almost paralyzed.”

  Standing beside him, she couldn’t take her eyes off the disembodied arm. “We should get you back to Selene,” Elverda said.

  “Not necessary,” he replied. “I found the faulty circuit and repaired it. But I can’t reattach the arm without your help.”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  He nodded gravely. “One final test, first.”

  Dorn picked up an oblong metal box, about the size of a handheld remote control wand, and thumbed the keys on its face. The arm on the table top flexed slightly at the elbow. The fingers of the hand clutched and opened, clutched and opened. Elverda shuddered.

  “The power readout is fine,” Dorn said, his voice flat and emotionless. Turning to Elverda, he put down the remote and said, “Now let’s see if we can get the arm back where it belongs.”

  It was heavy, far heavier than she had expected it to be. Elverda could barely lift it. Dorn gripped it in his human right hand and held it steady for her.

  “Put it flush against the shoulder socket,” he told her, “then rotate it until it clicks into place. Please.”