The Aftermath (19 page)

“We have a chance,” Dorn said, “if we can accelerate quickly enough. He's starting from a standstill.”

“He was hiding behind the asteroid,” she said, puffing out the words.

“Clever. But we can outrun him.”

“If he's alone.”

He turned toward her again. “Yes. If he's alone.”

*   *   *

Yuan's two other ships were designated
Viking
2 and
Viking
3. They were smaller than
Viking
itself, each crewed by only three people.

Yuan bared his teeth in a feral grin as his main screen showed their quarry's vector racing away from the asteroid—and toward his other two ships, which were now accelerating to an intercept point on the renegade's extended track.

The screen was showing a holographic view now, allowing Yuan to see the game in three dimensions. It's not a game, he told himself. This is real. This is what Humphries is going to pay that bonus for. But he couldn't help smiling grimly as he watched the three-dimensional view. It's so simple. I played more complex games when I was a kid. This one's easy.

“He's increasing his distance from us,” the navigation officer said. Then she added, “Sir.”

“For the moment,” Yuan murmured. “We'll catch up with him.”

Tamara said, “Two and three report they're on course to intercept.”

“I can see that,” said Yuan, without taking his eyes from the main screen.

“Do you have any further orders for them?”

Despite his focus on the screen, Yuan noted that Tamara did not address him properly.

“Officer Vishinsky,” he said. “You will use correct military respect when speaking to your captain. Is that understood?”

“Understood, captain,” she replied instantly.

“Good.” The whole crew knows we're sleeping together, he said to himself. Can't have them thinking that our sex life gives her any special privileges. Can't allow discipline to get sloppy.

Glancing at her, he saw that Tamara was sitting rigidly at the comm console, looking neither right nor left. You don't have to call me captain in bed, he said to her silently. Then he turned his attention back to the game that was unfolding on the main screen.

*   *   *

“We're outrunning him,” Elverda said. It came out as a gasp, almost. The acceleration was weighing her down, making her bones ache, her chest almost too heavy to speak.

“Get into a suit,” Dorn said.

“Why? We're pulling away—”

Dorn raised his arm and pointed. Two new radar images were gleaming on the main screen.

“He isn't alone,” said Dorn.

“We're trapped!”

“It looks that way.” But his fingers were playing on the console keys. “I'm cutting our acceleration. Get into a suit, please.”

“What about you?”

“You first.”

Elverda struggled to her feet. The acceleration made her feel heavy, as if her legs were made of lead. But lead wouldn't hurt so much, she said to herself. She took three steps toward the hatch, then felt a red-hot searing pain flash through her chest. She turned back, groped for the chair and sank into it again.

“I can't…” she panted.

“If I cut the acceleration much lower they'll catch up to us in less than an hour.”

“Do what … you need … to do,” Elverda said through teeth gritted by pain.

“Strap in, then.”

She fumbled for the restraint straps from the seat's back and buckled them across her chest and lap. The pain was getting worse, flaring down her arm now, even along her jaw. Her thoughts swimming, she wondered if the chair's wheels were locked into their grooves on the deck. I should check that they're locked. But she could barely move her head.

“They'll be firing at us soon,” Dorn said. His voice was flat, as unemotional as ice.

Elverda could feel her heart clenching beneath her ribs. How many g's are we pulling? she asked silently.

The ship rocked. Red warning lights sprang up on the console.

“Good shooting,” Dorn muttered.

Elverda's vision was blurring. The radar images on the main screen looked like streaks to her, arrows hurtling toward her. It was all going gray and hazy.

Through the fog of agony she saw Dorn turn toward her, the human side of his face twisted with sudden alarm.

As if from a great distance she heard Dorn's voice: “Cease firing. We have a sick woman on board. She needs immediate medical assistance. We surrender.”

ATTACK SHIP
VIKING
: BRIDGE

“A sick woman?” Yuan echoed, startled by Dorn's plea, and shaken even more by the sight of the cyborg's half-machine face on his main screen.

“It's a ruse,” said Tamara.

Dorn's voice, taut with stress, came through the speaker again. “I have Elverda Apacheta with me. I think she's having a heart attack.”

“He's slowing down,” the nav officer reported. “Two and three have him boxed in.”

“They're requesting permission to fire,” Tamara reported.

“Permission denied,” Yuan snapped. “Who the hell is Elverda whatever-her-name? Sounds familiar, but—”

“The sculptress,” Koop said. “She's famous.”

Radiating suspicion, Tamara protested, “What would a famous artist be doing on that killer's ship? It's a trick. It has to be a trick.”

Yuan's mind was racing.

“Please!” Dorn urged. “She's dying!”

“Let me see her,” Yuan said to the screen.

The view enlarged to show a half-unconscious woman sitting beside the cyborg. She looked very old. Her face was gray and sheened with perspiration, her eyes half closed, her mouth hanging open slackly.

“I've seen pictures of her,” Koop said, his voice rising eagerly. “That looks like Elverda Apacheta.”

“But what's she doing—”

“You can't just let her die,” Koop urged. “She's famous! It'd start a shitstorm if anybody found out we let her die.”

If anybody found out, Yuan thought. Humphries's orders are to kill the renegade quietly. No fuss. No news reports. He's just to be erased, eliminated. And his accomplices with him.

But a worlds-famous artist? If we let her die how can it be kept a secret?
Somebody
must know she's out here in the Belt.

Tamara said, “I can message headquarters for orders on how to proceed.”

“It'd take an hour or more to get a reply,” Yuan muttered, as much to himself as to his crew. “She'd be dead by then.”

With a slight lift of her shoulders, Tamara replied, “Then the problem would be solved, wouldn't it?”

He glared at her.

“Sir,” she added belatedly.

Grimacing with a responsibility he never wanted, Yuan decided, “Take her on board.”

“Sir?” Tamara asked.

“Now,” he snapped. “Do it now.”

Koop smiled brightly, and jabbed a finger into the nav officer's shoulder. She began pecking out a rendezvous course.

To the screen, Yuan said, “We're going to rendezvous and give your companion immediate medical care. How many others are on your vessel?”

“Only the two of us,” said Dorn.

“Very well. Consider yourself my prisoner, then. No tricks or we'll execute you both.”

“No tricks,” Dorn repeated. Then he added, “Thank you, captain.”

*   *   *

Yuan sat alone in his compartment peering at the flow of information about Elverda Apacheta that was scrolling down his screen. The half-dead woman they had taken aboard was indeed the famous sculptress: her face matched the computer file's image and her DNA matched her medical record.

He called up images of
The Rememberer,
the asteroid that this woman had carved into a memorial to the history of her Andean people. He saw the ionospheric paintings she had produced, making artificial aurorae high in Earth's atmosphere with electron guns to paint ephemeral pictures that glowed with delicate shimmering colors briefly at twilight, then faded as the Sun went below the horizon: the
Virgin of the Andes,
the serenely beautiful
Heavenly Pastures,
the
Star Children.

What is she doing in a ship deep in the Belt with a mass murderer? Dorik Harbin had come aboard
Viking
peacefully and admitted that he was the man who had wiped out the
Chrysalis
habitat. Yuan's crew stood in awe of the cyborg, their hands on their sidearms as they marched the half-machine to one of the ship's empty storage bays and locked him in.

Yuan had sent a message to HSS headquarters on the Moon, informing them that he had captured Dorik Harbin and that the killer had been accompanied by Elverda Apacheta. Now, as he waited for their reply, he wondered all over again why Humphries wanted Harbin executed in the deep darkness of the Belt, rather than bringing him back to civilization and taking the credit for tracking down the criminal.

A gentle knock on his door startled Yuan out of his thoughts. He touched a key and his screen showed it was Tamara out in the passageway.

“Come in,” he said sharply, without getting up from his desk chair.

She slid the door back and stepped in to his compartment, a sheet of plastic flimsy in her hand, a self-satisfied little smile on her delicately boned face.

“Headquarters' answer,” she said, handing the sheet to him. “It's encrypted. For your eyes only.”

Yuan took the sheet and slid it into his scanner. Tamara turned to leave.

“Hold on a minute,” he said.

She turned and stood framed by the open doorway.

“Shut the door.”

She slid it closed and turned back to him, her smile a little more tentative now.

Without asking her to sit down, Yuan said, “You've been too informal with me on the bridge.”

“You told me so, in front of the others.”

“Discipline in small things is important. I can't have the crew think I'm showing favoritism toward you.”

Her brows arched.

“What we do in the privacy of this compartment is one thing. On the bridge is another.”

“I see.”

“I hope you do.”

The scanner had finished its decrypting task; its yellow
READY
light was blinking. Yuan swiveled his chair to face the display screen. Tamara made no move to leave.

He looked up at her over his shoulder. “You already know what this says, don't you?”

She didn't reply, but she didn't look surprised by his question, either.

“Headquarters assigned you to watch me?”

“Mr. Humphries assigned me to watch you. He considers this mission extremely important.”

“Humphries himself?”

“Yes. The message is from him, personally.”

Yuan was surprised that the news didn't startle him. He realized that he'd half expected something like this. Wheels within wheels. A labyrinth for the lab rats to run through.

He told the screen, “Display message, please.”

The letters glowed bright red against a yellow background:
ELIMINATE THEM BOTH IMMEDIATELY
.

ATTACK SHIP
VIKING
: INFIRMARY

Elverda's eyes fluttered open. A blank and featureless ceiling hung low over her, a pale cream color. She smelled the faint tang of disinfectant, heard a soft beeping sound. For long moments she lay still, trying to work up the courage to see if she could move her head. Slowly she realized that the pain was gone. Her entire body felt relaxed, languid.

Then she stiffened with the memory of her last waking moments. The agony flaming through her. And Dorn's words, tense and urgent:
“Cease firing. We have a sick woman on board. She needs immediate medical assistance. We surrender.”

He surrendered. He slowed the ship and surrendered to our pursuers because he wanted to save me. Have they already killed him? Are they going to kill me?

She turned her head and saw that she was in a hospital of some kind. More likely the infirmary aboard the ship that was chasing us. Her bed was surrounded on three sides by blank off-white partitions. The fourth side was a metal bulkhead, with a bank of sensors stacked against it; they were making the beeping sounds she heard.

Tentatively, Elverda tried to lift her head off the pillow. No pain. No dizziness. The beeping changed its tone slightly. She let her head sink back again into the softness of the pillows, too weak to even think about sitting up.

One of the partitions slid back and a bulky, blocky man stepped in. Suddenly the area was overcrowded. He was dressed in light gray coveralls, with marks of rank on his cuffs. His face was square, heavy-set, his skin a light brown, almost golden. Polynesian? Elverda wondered.

“You're awake,” he said, in a surprisingly light tenor.

“Yes.” Elverda realized that her throat was very dry, rasping.

“I'm Kahalu'u Kaupakulu'a,” he said, smiling gently. “Don't bother to try to pronounce it. Just call me Koop. Everybody calls me Koop.”

“You must be the ship's medical officer.”

“First mate,” he corrected. “We don't carry a medic.”

“I see. Where's Dorn?”

“Dorn?”

“The man who was with me. What—”

“He's Dorik Harbin, isn't he? We have his files. Even with half his body replaced by machinery he has the same DNA.”

“He was Dorik Harbin. Now he is Dorn.”

Koop shook his head. “Whatever he calls himself, he's locked up, waiting for the captain to make up his mind about him.”

“Don't hurt him! He's been hurt enough already.”

“Not my call, Ms. Apacheta.”

“You know my name.”

“I've seen
The Rememberer.
When I was a teenager. It knocked me out.”

She decided it was a compliment. “Thank you.”