The Aftermath gt-16

by Ben Bova

  Valker laughed. “What do you expect? The circuit’s been melted by a laser beam. Put your gloves back on.”

  Nicco scowled at the blackened hole in the bulkhead where the hatch’s control pad had been. Kirk pushed past him, wiggled his nanogloved fingers in the air, then reached in and found the manual switch.

  The hatch popped open a crack. Kirk kicked it all the way open, then made an exaggerated bow. “This way, gentlemen.”

  ”That’s three,” Nicco said, still wringing his burned hand as the scavengers trooped through the open hatch. “How many more?”

  Valker turned to the wall screen display of the ship’s layout, “Four… five… and then the galley and finally the hatch to the bridge itself. Six more to go, men.”

  “And then we’ve got ’em!” one of the crewmen exulted, waving the laser pistol he carried in the air.

  “And then we get the women!” shouted Kirk.

  * * *

  Back on the bridge, Theo saw his father’s jaw clench as he watched the main screen’s camera view of the scavengers advancing along the passageway. And then we get the women, Theo repeated silently. He’s one of the dog turds that tried to murder me. Dad’s perfectly right: Kill them or they’ll kill us.

  Dorn still stood with his arms locked across his chest, immobile as a statue, except that his head swiveled back and forth from watching the main screen to staring at Victor. What’s going through his mind? Theo wondered. He said he’d killed a lot of people and now he doesn’t want us to kill these scum. But what else can we do?

  Suddenly the cyborg let his arms drop to his sides and started toward the closed hatch.

  “Where are you going?” Victor demanded.

  “To them.”

  “What? What do you think—”

  “You’re going to kill them. Kill me, too.”

  Before he realized what he was saying, Theo blurted, “That’s crazy! You’re not one of them!”

  “I was, once. Just like them. Worse. I’ll die with them.” Dorn reached the hatch and started to tap out the command code with his prosthetic hand.

  Victor said, “You’re going to warn them?”

  “No,” Dorn replied. “I’ll simply join in their fate.”

  Elverda protested, “They’ll kill you as soon as they see you!”

  “What difference does that make?”

  Pushing herself up from the command chair, Elverda crossed the bridge to Dorn’s side. “I can’t let you kill yourself.”

  “I’m going to die anyway,” he said softly. “We all will, sooner or later. Why prolong the misery?”

  “Because I need you,” Elverda answered. “If you die, I’ll die too. I’ll have no reason to go on living.”

  Theo stared at them. The cyborg with his death wish. The old woman trying to save him from himself. His mother and sister, frozen speechless. And his father in that fierce beard he’d grown, looking as implacable as death itself.

  Turning to the main screen, Theo said loudly, “They’re through the third hatch. They’ll be entering the section we mined next.”

  Everyone turned to the screen.

  Theo went to the command chair. “Might be a good idea to pump the air out of the passageway before we blow the grenades,” he said, leaning over the control panel.

  * * *

  Valker himself was now taking a turn at lugging the laser welder. Trotting up the passageway behind him, Nicco toted the power pack.

  “How’re we doing on juice?” Valker asked over his shoulder.

  Nicco peered at the colored bar of the indicator. “ ’Bout halfway down. We can recharge off the ship’s current if we hafta.”

  Valker said, “That’d take some time. I don’t want to keep those ladies waiting.”

  Nicco laughed. Behind him, Kirk was leading the other seven men. They stopped at the closed hatch. Nicco lowered the power pack to the deck; Valker propped the bulky welder on one hip and aimed it at the control pad.

  “Warning,” said a deep voice. The men all looked up at the intercom speaker set into the overhead. “Warning. This passageway will be evacuated to vacuum in thirty seconds. Air pressure will be reduced to zero.”

  “Bastards!” Kirk snapped.

  Valker was grinning inside the inflated hood of his nanosuit. “Seal up or breathe vacuum, boys,” he said, almost cheerfully.

  “They think they can stop us?”

  “They’re gettin’ scared.”

  “Desperate.”

  “They can’t think of anything else to do, I guess.”

  Should be enough air in the suit tanks for an hour, at least, Valker thought. Plenty enough to get through the last of these hatches and into the bridge. I’ll let Kirk lead the charge: that guy with the beard took my pistol. Let Kirk go in first. He’s a hothead, he’ll charge right into the gun. Then we can cut the bearded one down and the kid and the cyborg, too.

  “Everybody okay?” Valker asked. They heard him through their suit radios and nodded.

  “Then let’s get through these frigging hatches!”

  * * *

  “The entire passageway is in vacuum,” Dorn announced, his eyes on the control board, his back to Victor.

  “Why’d you warn them?” Angela asked.

  Dorn glanced toward Elverda, but did not answer.

  “They’re going into the section where we planted the grenades,” Theo said, feeling perspiration trickle down his ribs.

  Dorn started toward the hatch again.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Victor demanded.

  “Dorn!” Elverda said sharply. “No!”

  “I have to,” the cyborg replied.

  Victor stepped between Dorn and the hatch. “Stay here. You can’t stop this.”

  For a long silent moment Dorn stood eye to eye with Victor, un-moving. Then he said, “I belong with them. Kill me too.”

  “I don’t want to kill you,” Victor said.

  “Yes you do. You simply don’t know it yet.”

  “They’re entering the section we mined,” Theo said, turning from the main screen to the two men confronting one another. “If we’re going to blow those grenades we’ve got to do it now.”

  Before Victor could reply, Dorn said, “I’m the man who attacked your ship. I am Dorik Harbin.”

  “What?”

  Theo felt his guts clench with shock. He saw his father reach for the pistol he’d tucked into his waistband.

  “He was Dorik Harbin,” Elverda said, rushing to Dorn’s side. “But he’s changed, he’s—”

  “I wiped out the Chrysalis habitat,” Dorn said, his voice flat, emotionless. “Then I attacked a ship named Syracuse.”

  Victor stared at the cyborg. He couldn’t get a word out of his throat. But his right hand pulled the pistol from his waist.

  “He’s not the same person!” Elverda pleaded. “He tried to kill himself. He’s spent his life atoning for his sins.”

  Victor raised the pistol to the level of Dorn’s eyes. “You attacked my ship? You nearly killed my whole family!”

  “So kill me,” Dorn said softly. “Release me from life.”

  Theo stood frozen at the control panel and stared at his father. His father held the gun at arm’s length, unwavering, pointed at the cyborg’s face. His mother and sister were clutching each other, still in their space suits, their faces torn with fear and uncertainty.

  “Please!” Elverda begged, pushing herself between Dorn and Theo’s father.

  Dorn grasped the old woman by her shoulders and lifted her off her feet. Placing her down gently to one side, he turned back to Victor.

  “So kill me,” he said.

  SMELTER SHIP HUNTER:

  BRIDGE

  “You attacked our ship,” Victor said, the words barely struggling past his gritted teeth. “You tried to kill us.”

  Dorn said nothing.

  “But you survived,” Elverda reminded. “You lived through it.”

  Victor grimaced. “No th
anks to this… this… monster.”

  “So kill me and get your revenge,” Dorn said.

  Victor stared at the cyborg. Kill him! urged a savage voice within his mind. Kill him. He deserves to die. He wants to die.

  Victor’s finger froze on the pistol’s trigger. He closed his eyes briefly, but when he opened them again Dorn still stood before him.

  “No one will blame you,” Dorn said.

  “Don’t do it!” Elverda pleaded.

  “I can’t,” Victor groaned, dropping the pistol to his side. “By all the fiends of hell, I can’t do it.”

  “Then don’t kill those other men, either,” Dorn said softly.

  Theo looked up at the screen again and saw that Valker and his crew were marching along the passageway to the next hatch.

  “Dad!” he called.

  Victor seemed in a daze. His father stared at the main screen but didn’t seem to understand what he was seeing. “Dad, now!” Theo called.

  Dorn turned toward Theo. “Don’t murder them.”

  Sudden rage boiled through Theo. They tried to murder me. They want to rape Mom and Angie.

  Dorn repeated, “Don’t—”

  “The hell I won’t!” Theo yelled, and he slammed his fist onto the control key that ignited the grenades.

  * * *

  In the airlessness of the passageway the detonations made no sound, but the scavengers were jolted off their feet as the bulkhead around the closed hatch in front of them was torn apart by sudden flashes of explosion.

  Through his suit radio Valker heard his men shouting and swearing as he struggled to his knees. Weight seemed to be dwindling, as if he were suddenly floating. Kirk and others were sprawled in a heap, drifting up off the deck, arms and legs thrashing. The entire section of the passageway had been blasted loose, tearing itself out of the ship’s wheel-shaped structure and lumbering off into empty space.

  Nicco was tangled beneath the laser welder, but in the sudden near-weightlessness he pushed it off with a grunt and a string of curses.

  “They’ve torn this whole section out of the ship!” Kirk yelled, pushing himself to a standing position. The effort made him float off the deck altogether; his hooded head bounced off the overhead.

  Hovering in a weightless crouch, Valker realized there was enough light to see by. The passageway sections must have individual battery-powered emergency lights, he reasoned.

  “Anybody hurt?” he asked.

  “Fuck that! We’re drifting away from the ship.”

  “We’re headin’ for friggin’ Pluto or someplace!”

  “Calm down,” Valker said, making a soothing motion with both hands. “Calm down. We ain’t dead yet.”

  “Won’t be long, though.”

  “Bullshit!” Valker snapped. “We’ve got more than an hour’s worth of air in our tanks and enough fuel in our jet packs to get back to the ship.”

  “This time we blow a hole in their bridge first off,” Kirk snarled. “No more pussyfootin’ around.”

  * * *

  Victor dashed to the control board and clapped his son on the back. “You did it, Thee! Good work!”

  Theo stared at the main screen. The outside cameras showed the torn section of Hunter’s hull spinning slowly away from the ship.

  “Now let’s get ourselves out of here,” Victor said.

  “We have no propulsion,” Elverda reminded him. “They disabled our fusion thruster.”

  Theo jabbed a finger on the key that opened the suit-to-suit radio frequency.

  “… got more than an hour’s worth of air in our tanks and enough fuel in our jet packs to get back to the ship.”

  Valker’s voice, Theo recognized.

  Then Kirk’s snarling, “This time we blow a hole in their bridge first off. No more pussyfootin’ around.”

  Theo turned to his father. “They’re coming back!”

  “But now they’re vulnerable,” Victor said. “They’re floating in vacuum, in space suits.” He brandished the laser pistol.

  “You think the gun has enough charge to get them all?” Theo wondered.

  “All we need to do is puncture their suits. A pinhole will do.”

  “No,” Dorn said. “Please!”

  Victor glared at him. “Listen. Just because I couldn’t shoot you in cold blood doesn’t mean that I’ll allow those cutthroats to get back to this ship.”

  “Don’t murder them,” Dorn begged. “Choose life over death.”

  “Tell that to them!” Victor snapped.

  “There must be another way.”

  Theo looked into the cyborg’s half-human face. “Maybe there is another way,” he said.

  * * *

  Pauline hardly recognized the fiercely bearded man who had come aboard Hunter as her gentle, thoughtful husband—until the moment he failed to kill Dorn. Victor, she thought. Despite everything, despite the years of anguish, he couldn’t kill the man who’s caused all our troubles. Not in cold blood. Not Victor. He couldn’t.

  But she saw that Victor was perfectly ready to do whatever he had to in order to protect her and Angela. What would he do if he knew that I’ve slept with Valker? How will he feel about me?

  She looked at Angela, standing beside her, and at the elderly woman who tried to save Dorn from his own guilt-ridden death wish. Angie knows about Valker now, Pauline told herself. But she won’t tell her father; she won’t breathe a word about it, not to Victor or even to Theo. It’s our secret. I’ll have to talk to her about it, explain what happened. Make her understand. If I can. If I can.

  She realized Theo was asking something of Dorn. With an effort, she forced her thoughts aside and focused on the others on the bridge.

  “Do you have suits for yourselves?” Theo was asking Dorn.

  Elverda replied, “Nanosuits, yes. There are several in the locker by the main airlock.”

  “Why should they need suits?” Victor demanded.

  Theo jabbed a thumb at the main screen. The scavengers were floating out of the twisted wreckage of the severed hull section.

  “They’re going to be coming here. We’d better get off this vessel and into Pleiades.”

  Victor grinned with understanding. “Pleiades has propulsion. Her fusion engine works and she’s got enough fuel to get back to Ceres.”

  “Right,” said Theo. “Let those dog turds have this ship. It can’t move. It’s a derelict, thanks to them.”

  “And we’ll get away on Pleiades,” said Victor.

  “But we’ve got to be quick,” Theo urged.

  “Wait,” Pauline said.

  The men turned toward her.

  “They’ve got their own ship: Vogeltod. Its main engine works and they’ve got fuel for it in her tanks.”

  “I know,” Theo said. “I’ll have to take care of that.”

  Victor bent over the control panel. “We’ve got to put some distance between us and those scavengers.”

  Dorn came up beside him. “With only the maneuvering jets, we can’t go far.”

  Theo told him, “Move us toward Syracuse.”

  “Syracuse?” his father demanded. “You mean Pleiades.”

  “Syracuse,” Theo replied. “And their ship, Vogeltod.”

  SPACE RACE

  “Anybody hurt?” Valker asked again.

  He was clinging by one hand to a cleat on the outer skin of the broken hull section, spinning slowly in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the emptiness of the universe all around him. Along the curve of the section he could see his men pulling themselves out of the wreckage, slowly, still in shock from the explosion.

  “Well?” he demanded. “All you huskies in one piece?”

  “My hand still hurts,” Nicco complained.

  “I twisted my leg.”

  “My insides don’t feel so good.”

  “That’s the zero-g,” Kirk’s scornful voice countered. “Don’t upchuck in your hood.”

  A scattering of snickering laughs.

  The br
oken hull section turned enough for Valker to see the rest of Hunter gleaming in the sunlight, one section of its wheel-shaped hull gone, the shattered ends blackened by the explosions.

  “All right, all right. Pull yourselves together. We’ve got to get back to that ship and give those pissants what they deserve.”

  * * *

  Once they got to the auxiliary airlock, Theo saw how simple it was for Dorn and Ms. Apacheta to get into nanosuits. Just like pulling on a set of coveralls. He hefted the new backpack that Dorn had given him, feeling its weight settled on his shoulders, then went to his sister.

  “I’ll check out your backpack,” Theo said to Angela.

  “Let your mother do that,” Victor said. He was still in his nanofabric suit, its hood pushed back against his shoulders.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” Victor asked as he checked Theo’s backpack.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I ought to be doing this myself,” Victor muttered. “If anything goes wrong…”

  “Nothing’s going to go wrong, Dad. It’s my idea; I’ll do it. You take care of Mom and Angie.”

  Despite his father’s beard Theo could see the uncertainty, the anxiety in his face.

  “I can do it, Dad,” he insisted. “You can trust me.”

  Victor looked up into his son’s eyes, then clasped him on the shoulder of his bulky hard suit. “I know you can do it, son. It’s just that… if anything should go wrong—”

  “Then you’ll be with Mom and Angie, protecting them.”

  Theo lowered his bubble helmet over his head, sealed it to the suit’s collar, but left the visor open. Dorn had volunteered to stay aboard Hunter in Theo’s place, but neither Theo nor his father completely trusted the cyborg. He’s too fond of death, Theo said to himself. This job needs somebody who wants to live through it.

  “It shouldn’t take long to wreck the controls,” Victor said.

  “I know,” said Theo.

  “They’ll come straight to the bridge as soon as they see you’re ramming Hunter into their ship.”