The Aftermath (34 page)

“The
Hunter,
” he said jovially. “We haven't lost her after all.”

“Only two people aboard her?” one of the crewmen asked.

The man on duty at the communications console looked up from the data displayed on his screen. “Two people,” he confirmed. “One's listed as a priest and the other's a woman.”

“A woman?”

“She's over a hundred, for chrissakes. Some famous artist named Elverda Apacheta.”

Hunching forward slightly in his command chair, Valker remembered, “I met her, back when that Humphries captain forced us to give the ship back to her.”

“That's the same ship that we've been looking for!”

“That's what I said: the
Hunter.
”

“The ship we let go,” Kirk said, throwing an accusing glare Valker's way.

With a widening smile, Valker said, “And now she's coming back to us, nice and sweet.”

“So whattawe do?” Nicco asked, standing to one side of Valker.

“We take her, boys. They're coming to help
Syracuse
but they're walking right into our hands. A priest and an old lady.”

“On a nice, fat, shiny ship,” said one of the crewmen.

“She'll bring a good price at Ceres. Better than this creaking old tub
Syracuse.
” Valker laughed. It was all working out beautifully, he thought. Maybe we can leave
Syracuse,
let her drift. I can bring Pauline and her daughter here aboard
Vogeltod.
The crew'll be happy with the daughter and I can keep Pauline for myself—if I can keep Kirk and Nicco away from her.

“Yes, sir,” he said aloud. “We ought to thank that kid for sending out his distress call. He's luring a good ship straight to us. What could be better?”

“You can have the old lady, skipper,” Kirk said, grinning. “We'll take the two tarts from
Syracuse.
”

“Yeah,” one of the crewmen chimed in. “I bet the daughter's still a virgin.”

“Not for long!”

They all laughed.

Holding up a hand, Valker said, “First things first, boys. First things first. I hope none of you has religious qualms about slitting a priest's throat.”

*   *   *

After posting his men for seizing the approaching
Hunter,
Valker got up from his chair, ducked through the hatch, and started down the passageway that led to his quarters. He didn't have to look behind him to know that Kirk and Nicco were trailing him.

“Come on in, fellas,” he said amiably, sliding open the door to his compartment. “Have a drink on me.”

They stepped in, Nicco carefully shutting the door behind him as Valker went to the cabinet where he kept his liquor. Not much left, he saw. Most of the bottles were perilously close to empty. He pulled out the fullest, brandy from one of the L-4 habitats between the Earth and Moon, and opened it with a satisfactory pop of its plastic cork.

“Good times coming,” Valker said, pouring three meager drinks.

As he accepted his glass from Valker's hand, Kirk said, “You banged the mother, didn't you?”

Valker grinned at him. “That I did, Kirk. That I did.”

“How was she?” asked Nicco.

“Not half bad. Kinda tense at first, but I soothed her well enough.”

Kirk swallowed more than half his drink with one gulp, then asked, “When's our turn?”

“In due time. We've got to grab
Hunter
first.”

“That shouldn't be much of a problem,” said Nicco. “An old woman and a priest.”

“What's a priest doing out here?” Kirk wondered.

“Isn't he the one who's supposed to be finding the dead bodies?” Nicco said.

“Yes, that's him,” said Valker. “Some sort of religious fanatic.”

“Well, he'll be a dead body himself in a few more hours,” Kirk said. Then he finished his drink with another swift gulp.

“Speaking of dead bodies,” Valker said, without offering to refill the drink, “we've got that boy to take care of.”

“We shoulda done that already,” Nicco grumbled.

“Naw,” said Kirk. “Let the kid finish swabbing the antennas. Let him do the work. Then we'll finish him.”

Valker took a genteel sip of his brandy, then mused aloud, “Maybe we ought to take care of the kid before
Hunter
gets here. No sense having him around when we take the ship. Get rid of him now.”

Kirk glanced at Nicco, then shrugged. “Wouldn't take much. We go out with him, finish the antenna job, then we yank out his air line and send him jetting into deep space.”

Nicco giggled. “He might be the first guy to reach Alpha Centauri.”

Valker saw that Nicco's glass was empty, too. Taking both glasses and putting them down on the cabinet, Valker turned and laid a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Good thinking, lads.” Gently he nudged them toward the door. “Now you go out there and take care of the boy. I want him out of our hair by the time
Hunter
gets here.”

*   *   *

Victor Zacharias unconsciously scratched at his thick beard as he scowled at his communications screen. The system displayed a graph showing the direction from which
Hunter
's message had come, but not the ship's distance from him.

That damned half-robot, he growled inwardly. Telling me to turn myself in to the authorities. Victor refigured the keyboard beneath his fingers to call up the propulsion controls, then lit
Pleiades
's fusion torch engine to full thrust, heading along the vector of
Hunter
's message.

They'll be gone by the time I get there, he realized. But maybe I can pick up their ion trail. If it hasn't diffused too much. Maybe I can track them and let them lead me to Pauline and the kids.

Maybe.

ORE SHIP
SYRACUSE
: PAULINE'S QUARTERS

She stayed in the shower until the ship's life support computer shut off the hot water. As she toweled dry, Pauline said to herself for the ten thousandth time, You did it to protect Angela and Thee. It's all right. You did what you had to do. You didn't have any choice, really.

Still she felt grimy.

As she dressed she thought that it could have been worse. Much worse. Pauline had wondered, as she watched him strip and climb into bed with her, grinning like a wolf, if she could actually allow another man to make love to her. She closed her eyes, picturing Victor in her mind. I'll fake it, she told herself. I'll please him as much as I can. It doesn't matter what he does to me. I've got to protect Angela.

To her surprise, Valker was a gentle lover, even thoughtful. All his swaggering, smirking attitude dissolved as he genuinely sought to bring pleasure to her. With some surprise, Pauline remembered what she had learned all those years ago, before she'd met Victor: you never know what a man is truly like until you're in bed with him.

Once dressed she walked absently into the family room. Everything was still the same. All the chairs in their places; the sofa, the lamps and wall screens. But I'm not the same, she told herself. I've been unfaithful to my husband. I allowed that grinning hyena to use me. Then the truth slapped her in the face: I enjoyed it! I enjoyed having sex after all these years. My body overpowered my mind.

She sank into the nearest chair, guilt flooding through her like a tidal wave, and burst into racking sobs.

A noise from the galley startled her.

Stanching her tears, she went to the hatch and saw Theo sitting at the table, his back to her, scraping the remains of a meal from his plate.

Pauline hurriedly wiped her face, rubbed her eyes. She had to swallow hard before she could get any words out. “Thee?”

He turned and smiled at her. “Hi, Mom. Where've you been?”

Ignoring his question, “How long have you been here? In the galley?”

His youthful face wrinkled slightly with thought. “Oh, ten, maybe fifteen minutes. I thought I heard the shower running.”

“Yes,” she said, sitting beside him, hoping he wouldn't notice her reddened eyes.

“I've got to go out again, finish the work on the new antennas.”

“Have you checked on Angela?”

“No, didn't get a chance to do that. Those two apes were with me all the time I was out. I just got rid of them no more than a half-hour ago.”

“I don't think anyone's aboard right now.”

“Yeah, but they'll be here in a few minutes to finish the antenna work. Maybe you can call Angie on the intercom while I start to suit up.”

Pauline nodded. “I'll do that.” Silently she added, If the intercom is working today.

*   *   *

Angela was startled by the intercom's sudden chime. She'd been pacing around the circular interior of the storm cellar, counting her steps: two hundred and fifty-three, two hundred and fifty-four … Nothing better to do, locked in the pod alone. Then the intercom chimed.

She touched the keypad and her mother's face appeared on the tiny wall screen.

“Are you all right?” they asked simultaneously.

Pauline broke into a tight smile. “I'm fine, Angela. What about you?”

“I'm bored out of my skull. There's nothing to
do
in here!”

“Good. Just stay there. It's the safest place in the ship for you.”

“But—”

“No buts, Angela. Stay in there. Stay where it's safe.”

The screen went blank.

Angela stared at it for long moments, thinking, If it's safe in here, that means it's not safe outside, where Mom and Theo are.

*   *   *

Despite his headband, sweat trickled into Theo's eyes, stinging, forcing him to blink. But through the glassteel of his helmet he looked with some pride at the finished antenna set that he and the two men from
Vogeltod
had painted along
Syracuse
's curving hull.

He hung at the end of his safety tether, Nicco and Kirk on either side of him. Battered old
Syracuse
swung slowly through the dark emptiness,
Vogeltod
still attached like some mechanical parasite. The steadfast stars looked down on Theo, unblinking, solemn, terribly far away.

“Try transmitting now, Mom,” he said into his helmet microphone.

In his earphones he heard his mother's calm, steady voice, “This is
Syracuse,
testing its communications system. Testing, testing, one, two, three.”

Turning to Kirk, hovering in his nanosuit alongside him, Theo switched to the suit-to-suit frequency and asked, “Did it work?”

Kirk grinned and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. “They heard her on
Vogeltod
loud and clear.”

Switching back to the ship's frequency, Theo said, “Sweep through the comm channels, Mom. See what you can pick up.”

For several moments he heard no reply. Then, “Thee! I'm getting Ceres! And video from Selene! And Earth! It works, Thee! It works!”

Theo thought he should feel wonderful. Ecstatic. Triumphant. Instead he merely felt tired.

“Turn on the tracking beacon,” he said. “And the telemetry transmitter.”

“Yes,” Pauline replied. “Green lights! They're working. At last, they're working.”

“Good,” he said, feeling flat and somehow disappointed. “We'll come in now.”

“You did it, Thee,” said his mother, her voice trembling slightly. “You did it.”

“I had help,” he replied, eying Kirk and Nicco, who were drifting closer to him.

He clicked back to the suit-to-suit frequency. “Okay, we can go back inside now.”

Nicco was close enough to see his toothy grin and crooked scar. Kirk had slid around behind him.

“We're goin' in, kid,” Kirk said. “You're not.”

*   *   *

Aboard
Pleiades,
Victor cursed long and loud as he desperately tried to pick up the ion trail from the exhaust of
Hunter
's fusion drive. I must have misjudged their distance, he said to himself between bouts of swearing.

“Maybe you got the motherhumping vector wrong,” he muttered to himself.

He set up the communications keyboard and checked the transmission he'd heard. No, the vector's correct, he saw. They must have been farther away than I estimated.

The comm screen's yellow message light was blinking. Automatically, Victor tapped the keypad to play it back.

“This is
Syracuse,
testing its communications system. Testing, testing, one, two, three.”

Pauline's voice!

Suddenly Victor's hands were shaking so badly he could hardly manage to work the keyboard. They've fixed the antennas! He thought. Theo did it. Or Pauline. They're alive! She's alive!

Sure enough, the strong steady signal of a tracking beacon came through on its normal channel. With tears in his eyes Victor read off the name and registration that appeared on his comm screen:
Syracuse.

ORE SHIP
SYRACUSE
: OUTSIDE

Even though he half expected it, it happened so fast that Theo didn't know what to do. At first.

Nicco suddenly wrapped him in a bear hug, pinning Theo's arms to his sides. Behind him, he felt Kirk click open his tether and then start banging and yanking on his life support backpack.

He didn't have to ask what they were doing. They're going to kill me, he thought. And then they'll go back into the ship and rape Mom. And Angie.

Theo struggled but Nicco was surprisingly strong and held his arms pinned. The scavenger was grimacing with the effort, though, his inflated helmet pressing against Theo's glassteel bubble. Theo was bigger than he and flooded with adrenaline. The two of them grunted and strained. Theo could see sweat breaking out on Nicco's face, see his lips pulling back over his mottled teeth in an angry snarl.