The Aftermath gt-16

by Ben Bova

  “Can we get close enough?” she asked.

  Dorn got up from the command chair. “I’ll get into a suit and go outside for him. You take the con.”

  She nodded as she slid into the chair, warm from his body. “Couldn’t we use the grapples? Then you wouldn’t have to go outside.”

  “That would be tricky,” Dorn replied. “I can try, but I’d still better be suited up, so I can go out if I have to.”

  Elverda understood that standard safety procedures called for her to suit up, too, so she could serve as a backup, if necessary. But she knew she’d be no good at it: too old, too slow, too tired to be of any use. Dorn didn’t mention the subject and neither did she.

  * * *

  Pauline went with Valker down the tube tunnel to the ship’s zero-g hub, where the scavengers had set up the flexible connector to link Syracuse with Vogeltod.

  “I mean it about Ceres,” Valker said, his face utterly serious. “I want to start a new life with you.”

  She nodded. “As long as you protect my daughter.”

  “Of course,” he said. Then he grasped her by the shoulders and kissed her, hard.

  Taken by surprise, Pauline closed her eyes as he pressed against her lips. Then he let her go, grinned, and headed lightly along the spongy tube. At the hatch on the Vogeltod end he turned and waved, beaming a bright smile. Pauline made herself smile back at him.

  As soon as the hatch at the far end of the tube closed behind Valker, Pauline slammed shut the hatch on Syracuse and punched the intercom console on the bulkhead alongside it.

  “Angela!” she said sharply. “Angela!”

  “Mom?”

  Pauline felt a grateful sigh gust out of her. For once the intercom was working.

  “Get out of there and meet me at the hub. Right away. It’s urgent.”

  “But Theo said—”

  “Never mind what Theo said! Get here at once, do you hear me?”

  “Yes. I’m coming.”

  “Quickly!”

  * * *

  Elverda wished she were a better pilot. Dorn had set up a rendezvous plot on the navigation program, but a really sharp pilot would be able to edge Hunter much closer to the body that was spinning out there.

  They were close enough to use the cameras now, in addition to the radar. The image on her main screen was clear and sharp: a human body encased in one of the old-fashioned hard-shell space suits.

  Best not to touch anything, she told herself as she scanned the control board. We won’t get close enough to use the grapples; he’ll have to go out and retrieve the corpse. He’s done it before, hundreds of times. He knows what he’s doing.

  Still, she wished she could help, wished he didn’t have to leave the ship.

  Then she sat up straight in the command chair. “It moved!” Elverda said aloud. It moved both its arms!

  “Dorn!” she called into the intercom. “I think it’s alive.”

  For a moment he didn’t answer. Then, “Alive? How can that be?”

  “It moved its arms.”

  “I don’t believe—”

  “There! The arms moved again!” She pointed to the image on the main screen.

  “That’s impossible,” said Dorn.

  “It’s not a dead body,” Elverda insisted. “At least, it’s not dead yet.”

  * * *

  At first Theo thought he was hallucinating. Oxygen deprivation, he told himself. The brain’s starting to break down. He seemed to see a ship spiraling out there, a big wheel-shaped vessel. And it was drawing closer to him. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, took a deep breath of what precious little was left of his oxygen. When he opened his eyes again the ship was still there, swinging around against the background of stars as he pinwheeled. Could it be real?

  “Hey!” he yelled. “I’m here! Come and get me!” Then he realized how foolish it was. Kirk had ripped the radio out of his backpack. Theo began to wave at the oncoming ship, swinging both his arms frantically.

  * * *

  Pauline hovered in the zero-g hub of Syracuse, alongside the closed hatch of the connector tube. Valker could come back through that hatch at any second, she knew. Where is Angie? Why is she taking so long to—

  “Mom! Here I come!”

  Angie’s voice! Pauline pushed herself to the opening of the tube tunnel that led from the storm cellar and saw Angie diving toward her headfirst, arms flat by her sides, hurtling like a sleek dark-haired torpedo.

  “Look out, Mom!” Angie yelled, reaching out to the ladder rungs set into the tube’s sides.

  Pauline watched aghast as Angela neatly slowed her rush, tucked into a compact ball, and landed lightly on her softbooted feet at her side.

  “You told me to be quick,” she said before Pauline could open her mouth to speak.

  “You… you could have broken every bone in your body,” Pauline said, once she found her voice.

  Angie laughed lightly. “Tunnel diving. Theo showed me how to do it. It’s easy when you’re going upwards, weightless. Gets trickier when you’re going downhill, down to the rim.”

  Pauline nudged her daughter toward the tube that led to the backup command pod. “Come along, we don’t have any time to lose.”

  Grabbing one of the tunnel’s projecting rungs, Angie pulled herself lightly along. “Where’s that Captain Valker? And the other men? Where’s Theo?”

  Following behind her daughter, Pauline said, “Theo’s dead. Valker’s men killed him.”

  “Dead?” Angie’s wail echoed off the tube walls. “Theo’s dead?”

  Pauline swatted her daughter’s behind lightly. “Keep moving. We’ll be dead too if we don’t get to the pod before those murderers get back here.”

  “But what happened?” Angie asked as she resumed clambering along the rungs. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re going to do just what your father did,” Pauline said grimly. “We’re going into the pod and blast ourselves out of here before Valker and his crew can get their hands on us.”

  CAPTURE

  “She’s veered off,” said Nicco, scowling at the main screen on Vogeltod’s bridge.

  “I can see that,” Valker snapped from the command chair.

  “Something’s spooked her,” said the scavenger sitting at the navigation console.

  “Maybe,” Valker conceded. “Or maybe they’re just being careful.”

  “Should we hail them?” Nicco asked.

  Valker thought it over for a moment. “No. I don’t want them to know we’re here. Let them think Syracuse is alone and needs their help.”

  “But they’ll see us when they get closer.”

  “If they get closer,” Kirk growled. “They’re moving away from us now.”

  “But they’re slowing down,” Valker pointed out. “Strange behavior.”

  “What the hell are they up to?”

  “Wait and see,” said Valker. “Wait and—”

  The communications screen lit up to show an image of Elverda Apacheta’s arid, withered face. Nicco immediately put it on the main screen.

  “Attention Syracuse,” the old woman said. “This is Hunter. We have been diverted temporarily. We estimate rendezvous with you in approximately five hours.”

  “Diverted?”

  “By what?”

  Valker fought down an impulse to reply and ask the woman why they changed course. Instead, he made a soothing motion with both hands and said, “Calm down, boys, calm down. She’ll be here in five hours.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Kirk, go to the boys at the airlock and tell them they can stand easy for another four hours and more. We won’t be boarding Hunter until then.”

  He got out of the big padded chair, stretched his arms up to brush the overhead, then started for the hatch.

  “And where’re you going?” Kirk demanded.

  Valker grinned. “Back to Syracuse, to keep the ladies happy.”

  “How about taking us with you?” Nicco said. />
  “Not yet. You maniacs would scare that woman out of her skull. I need her to produce the daughter first. Then we’ll have them both.”

  “We can find the daughter without the mother’s help.”

  “You stay right here and keep an eye on Hunter. That’s our prize. The two women are just icing on our cake.”

  “Yeah,” Kirk sneered. “Looks like you’re going over there to lick the icing.”

  “You’ll get yours soon enough,” Valker said, grinning. Then he ducked through the hatch while the other crewmen snickered behind his back.

  * * *

  Theo was coughing so hard his eyes watered. Not much oxy left to breathe, he knew. But the ship was edging closer, close enough for him to make out the glassteel windowed bulge of what must be her bridge, and ports and other pods along her curving flanks. Airlock hatches, too. Through his tear-filled eyes Theo saw several of them as the ship rotated ponderously, drawing ever closer.

  “Come on,” he muttered, but the effort started a new fit of coughing. I’m breathing my own fumes, he realized. It’s only a matter of minutes until I choke to death.

  His vision was blurring badly, but he thought he saw one of the airlock hatches slide open. He could see the figure of a man standing at the lip of the hatch, outlined against the dim red lights of the hatch’s interior.

  He knew he couldn’t call to them; his suit’s radio was gone. But he waved both his arms frantically. He felt hot, beads of sweat trickling down his face, along his ribs. Coughing again. Can’t catch my breath!

  It all went gray, foggy. Don’t pass out! Theo commanded himself. Stay awake!

  But you need oxygen to stay awake, he said to himself. ’Sfunny, he’s so close, he can almost reach out his arm and grab me, but I’m gonna be dead by the time he gets his hands on me.

  Everything slid into blackness.

  * * *

  Sheathed in a nanofabric suit, Dorn stood at the lip of the open airlock hatch, his eyes riveted on the space-suited body spiraling out there in the emptiness. Its arms had been pumping until a few heartbeats ago, proving that the person inside the suit was still alive. But now the arms had stopped, slumped, extended motionless from the figure’s shoulders in a weightless crouch, like a drowned man floating facedown in the water.

  Dorn checked the control pad of the propulsion pack on his back. “I’m going out after him,” he told Elverda.

  “Are you tethered?” she asked.

  “He’s too far for a tether to reach,” Dorn said, stepping off the hatch’s rim and into nothingness. “This is a free-flight mission.”

  She said nothing, but Dorn could sense her apprehension. Squeezing the control rod, he felt a sudden thrust push at the small of his back. He jetted the few hundred meters to the inert body, wrapped his prosthetic arm around it, and looked into the transparent bubble helmet.

  “It’s a man,” he called to Elverda. “Very young. He seems unconscious.”

  “Or dead?”

  “We’ll see.” With his human arm Dorn fumbled with the oxygen hose from his own life support pack. He found the emergency port on the unconscious man’s suit and pumped fresh oxygen into it.

  The youngster coughed, shuddered spasmodically, banged his nose against the glassteel bubble of his helmet.

  But his eyes opened. “Wha… who are you?” The lad’s voice was rasping, painfully dry.

  “You’re all right now,” Dorn said. “I’ll bring you aboard our ship.”

  “My mother! My sis—” Coughing overtook him.

  Dorn said, “I’m taking you to our ship. Don’t try to talk.”

  Jetting back to the airlock, Dorn stood the youngster on his booted feet and turned to close the hatch. But his prosthetic arm would not move. It was frozen.

  * * *

  Valker floated into the zero-g hub of Syracuse and started “downhill” along the tube tunnel that led to the backup control pod, where he’d left Pauline. The going was easy at first: he merely had to flick his fingers against the rungs built into the tube’s curving side. But as the feeling of weight grew he grabbed onto a rung, turned himself around, and started clambering down the rungs with the lithe agility of a circus acrobat.

  Voices! Valker stopped for a moment, listening. Yes, there were voices echoing up the tube. Two women. Pauline and her pretty young daughter. Valker licked his lips and began descending the rungs even faster than before. But silently.

  * * *

  “I was afraid of this,” Dorn said sorrowfully as he eased himself into one of the galley chairs. His prosthetic arm was still jutting out from the shoulder, bent at the elbow, as if a cast had been wrapped around it.

  Theo couldn’t help staring at the cyborg. The old woman had introduced herself as Elverda Apacheta; the name meant nothing to Theo. But this half-man with one side of his face formed by etched metal, one eye an unblinking camera, one arm and one leg built of alloys and plastics and filled with bioelectronic circuitry—Theo couldn’t take his eyes off Dorn.

  “You need major maintenance,” Elverda said as she sank wearily into the chair on the opposite side of the galley table.

  Dorn puffed out a grunt. “That is an understatement.”

  Theo took the chair at the end of the narrow table. “I need to get back to Syracuse,” he said. “My mother and sister are in danger there.”

  “Danger?” Elverda turned toward him.

  “A gang of scavengers has attached themselves to my ship,” Theo explained. “I hate to think of what they’ll do to my mother and sister if we don’t get there fast.”

  Dorn’s human eye closed briefly. Then he said, “Their ship is named Vogeltod?”

  “You know them?”

  “We know them. They’re undoubtedly waiting for us to rendezvous with your ship so that they can board us and take over this vessel.”

  “We should get away,” Elverda said, “as quickly as possible.”

  “But my mother!” Theo protested. “My sister!”

  “What good could we do?” Elverda asked.

  “We can’t just leave them in the hands of those bastards!”

  Dorn said, “He’s right. We must to do what we can.”

  “With one hand?” Elverda scoffed.

  “I can help you repair the arm,” Theo offered. “While we’re on our way to Syracuse.”

  Dorn contemplated him for a silent moment. Then, “What do you know about bioelectronic circuitry? Micromechanical systems?”

  “Some,” Theo replied. “Not much, I admit. But if you’ve got manuals, instruction vids, I can learn while we’re on our way back to my ship. At least…” He stopped himself from going on.

  Dorn almost smiled. “At least you have two working hands. I understand.”

  * * *

  Pacing the narrow confines of Pleiades’s bridge Victor saw that Hunter was heading for Syracuse. Good, he said to himself. Then he recalled that the half-machine creature on Hunter had wanted him to head back to Ceres and turn himself in. Screw that, he thought.

  They heard Pauline’s signal, Victor knew. They’ll get to her before I do. He nodded to himself. Good. Fine. The sooner Pauline gets help the better.

  Then his comm screen showed the seamed, aged face of the old woman. “Attention Syracuse,” she said. “This is Hunter. We have been diverted temporarily. We estimate rendezvous with you in approximately five hours.”

  Five hours, Victor thought. He returned to the command chair and pecked out his navigation program. At the rate I’m moving I’ll be there in a little more than six hours.

  For the first time in months, Victor smiled.

  ORE SHIP SYRACUSE:

  BACKUP COMMAND POD

  Valker stopped his descent and, clinging to the rungs in the shadows of the dimly lit tube tunnel, he listened to Pauline and her daughter. He could clearly hear their voices echoing up the tube, even though the two women were speaking in hushed whispers.

  “Fire off the pod?” the daughter asked. “But—”
>
  “We’ve got to get away from those men,” Pauline said urgently. “We can escape in the pod and let the people in Hunter pick us up.”

  “But what good would that do?” the daughter demanded. “They’ll just come after us, whether we’re in Hunter or here.”

  Impatiently, Pauline answered, “We’re alone here. Alone against ten of them. At least aboard Hunter we’ll have a better chance.”

  Valker could make them out, down at the end of the tube. Pauline was working the bulkhead-mounted pad that controlled the hatch into the command pod.

  “That Captain Valker isn’t so bad,” the daughter was saying. “He wouldn’t let them hurt us.”

  “Angela, for god’s sake!” Pauline snapped. “Don’t be a fool.”

  “But—”

  “We can’t trust him.”

  Valker sighed philosophically. The woman’s right. Even if I want to protect her and her daughter, the roughnecks behind me won’t leave them alone. Too bad. I might have changed my whole life with a woman like Pauline at my side. Too bad.

  As soon as the hatch slid open Valker called to them. “Hello ladies! Good to see you’ve recovered, Angela.”

  Staring up at him, they looked up like a pair of guilty waifs suddenly caught in a police spotlight.

  Pauline pushed her daughter through the hatch and started into the command pod herself. Valker clambered down the rungs as swiftly as a monkey, then dropped the final few meters and slammed his palm against the hatch’s control panel, stopping Pauline from shutting it.

  “You weren’t thinking of leaving, were you?” he asked, stepping into the cramped little pod.

  Pauline backed away from him until her hip bumped against the control board. Angela stood off to one side, half smiling at him.

  “Please don’t go,” Valker said, with exaggerated courtliness. “The fun is just beginning.”