The Aftermath (43 page)

On the main screen, above the control console, he saw
Syracuse
slowly, slowly growing larger as
Hunter
inched toward it. The scavenger's ship was still attached to it. Good! Theo said to himself. Maybe I'll get them both, after all. But he wished he could push
Hunter
faster.

Then, on one of the auxiliary screens that displayed views of the ship's interior, he saw Valker and a half-dozen of his men pushing through the open airlock and sprinting up the passageway toward the bridge.

Knowing he had only moments, Theo used the butt end of the hand laser to smash the transparent covers on the navigation controls and then fired pulses of infrared energy to slag the circuitry.

“It's not much,” he said, “but it's the best I can do.”

He snapped his visor shut and clumped off the bridge toward the emergency airlock. He could hear the pounding footsteps of Valker and his crew approaching. Theo ducked into the airlock, fidgeted impatiently while it cycled down to vacuum, then stepped off the outer hatch's rim into the nothingness of empty space.

*   *   *

Valker was the first of the scavengers to bolt into the bridge. He immediately saw that the key controls on the main console had been smashed, their circuits melted.

“Sonofabitch!” he snapped. “The little bastard's screwed us, but good.”

Kirk came up beside him. “I can fix this. Rewire—”

“How long?” Valker asked.

“Huh?”

“How long would it take you?”

“Half an hour,” said Kirk. “Maybe a little longer.”

Valker sneered at him. “And just how long do you think it's gonna take this clunker to smash into
Syracuse?
”

Kirk scowled back at him.

“I'd say it'd be a lot less than half an hour,” Valker answered his own question.

“Yeah. Guess so.”

Valker bent over the communications console and tapped on its keys. “Nicco! You uncouple the ship yet?”

A moment's hesitation, then, “Got the access tunnel disconnected. Powering up the maneuvering jets right now.”

“Good. Get our ship the hell out of the way. This bucket's going to ram right into
Syracuse
in another ten-fifteen minutes.”

“We'll be outta the way, Skip.”

Nodding with satisfaction, Valker turned back to Kirk and the rest of his men.

“So whattawe do now?” Kirk asked.

“Get to
Pleiades
as fast as we can,” Valker replied. “She's our prize. Her, and those women aboard her.”

*   *   *

Standing in
Pleiades
's open main airlock in their nanofabric space suits, Victor and Dorn could see the lone figure of Theo in his hard-shell suit floating across the gulf that separated the ship from
Hunter.

And behind him, seven nanosuited scavengers erupted from
Hunter
's airlock.

“They're not returning to their own ship,” Dorn said calmly.

“No,” Victor agreed. “They're heading here.”

“Your son has a good lead on them.”

But Victor was thinking, Seven of them. And we've only got this one pistol. The hand welder's useless in this kind of fight: its range is too short.

“Once Theo comes aboard,” he said to Dorn, “we've got to power up and get away from them.”

“You'd better go to the bridge, then,” Dorn replied.

“Not until Theo gets here.”

“That may be too late.”

*   *   *

“Wow,” said Angela, glancing around at the spacious, well-appointed bridge of
Pleiades.
“Talk about luxury.”

Pauline said, “Your father lived here alone for all those months.”

“How could he control such a large ship by himself?” Angela wondered aloud.

Elverda said, “Dorn recongifured
Hunter
's controls so that one person could handle it. Your father must have done the same here.”

With a small smile of appreciation, Pauline started to say, “I didn't think Victor knew how—”

“Pauline!” her husband's voice blared over the intercom. “We've got to power up the main drive and get away from here.”

She looked at Elverda. “Do you know how?”

The sculptress shook her head. “I could do it on
Hunter,
but these controls are strange to me.”

“Pauline, did you hear me?” Victor's voice sounded strained with tension.

“Victor, I don't know how to do it!” Pauline said.

Angela plunked herself down on the command chair. “Talk me through it, Dad,” she called out. “I'll do it.”

*   *   *

“Talk you through it?” Victor shouted.

“I'm in the command chair,” Angela's voice replied, bright and eager. “There's an electronic keyboard in front of me.”

Theo was almost within arm's reach; the scavengers close behind him and coming up fast. Victor closed his eyes momentarily, trying to visualize the command keyboard.

“Extreme right end,” he said. “The key's labeled ‘propulsion.'”

“I see it,” Angela said. “Oh, good! The whole keyboard's changed to the propulsion program.”

Dorn reached out with his prosthetic arm and helped Theo to remain standing as he glided into the airlock.

“Made it!” Theo said, exultant.

“But not soon enough,” said Dorn, pointing to the scavengers, barely a hundred meters away.

CARGO SHIP
PLEIADES
: MAIN AIRLOCK

Standing at the open airlock hatch, Victor watched the seven space-suited figures approaching
Pleiades.
They're going to get here before we can get the fusion drive going, he realized, then added, If Angie can figure out how to do it.

Turning to Theo, he commanded, “Get up to the bridge and power up the fusion drive!
Now!
”

Without even lifting the visor of his helmet Theo banged the wall control that opened the airlock's inner hatch. Alarms hooted and emergency hatches farther up the passageway slammed shut as Theo dashed out, heading for the bridge.

Victor looked down at the pistol in his hand. The indicator along its barrel showed it was fully charged.

“Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes,” said Dorn.

“Don't try to stop me,” Victor warned.

“You can prevent them from boarding this ship without killing them.”

“Can I now?” Victor's voice echoed the scorn he felt.

“Warn them. Remind them of how vulnerable they are.”

“Men don't always behave logically, especially when their lives are at risk.”

“Warn them,” Dorn insisted.

Victor stared at the cyborg for a long, silent moment. At last he said, “Words won't stop them.”

Dorn reached out his prosthetic hand. “Let me have the pistol, then.”

“No!”

Patiently, Dorn explained, “I'm a good enough shot to hit that big laser welder they're carrying. Perhaps a warning from you and a disabling shot from me will discourage them. In any event, you don't want them to use the laser to ruin the fusion drive's thruster, as they did to
Hunter.
”

Victor thought it over for half a second. Maybe all he wants is to get the gun away from me. He could probably crush it in his metal hand. Then we'd be totally defenseless.

“I don't want them here any more than you do,” Dorn said, his metal hand still extended. “But we at least should warn them that we'll defend ourselves if they don't leave us.”

He could take the gun from me, Victor was thinking. And probably break every bone in my hand while he's doing it.

“Killing should be our last resort,” Dorn said.

Reluctantly, Victor handed him the pistol. Then he clicked on the radio frequency that the scavengers were using.

“Don't come any closer,” he said sternly. “We're armed and we'll defend ourselves.”

The seven approaching figures did not waver. They were close enough now to see the weapons they were brandishing.

Valker answered, “We're armed too. And we outnumber you.”

Dorn raised his prosthetic arm and, holding the pistol in his human hand, cradled it in the metal one.

“You're hanging out there like targets in a shooting gallery,” Victor said. “One puncture of your suit and you're a dead man.”

The scavengers kept coming.

Using both hands, Dorn raised the pistol to eye level. He pressed its infrared finder with his thumb, walked the red spot in the IR scope center to the flank of the welder that Valker carried cradled in his arms. He squeezed the trigger.

The welder flared as the laser pulse punched a hole of molten metal into its side. Valker twitched and yelped and let go of the bulky tool. It floated weightlessly for a moment, then jerked as the cord connecting it to its power pack pulled it short. The smaller man carrying the power pack let go of it, and the two pieces floated away from him.

Victor heard the scavengers cursing and muttering.

“Go back to your ship,” Victor told them. “Leave us alone.”

*   *   *

Valker hung in emptiness, watching the laser welder and its power pack tumble slowly away. Kirk was beside him, an arm's length away, the five other members of his crew hovering around them.

“Go back to your own ship while you can,” he heard Victor's voice in his suit's radio speaker. “You can have
Hunter
and
Syracuse.
Leave us alone.”

“You're willing to give us two ships that are gonna mangle each other while you take the one that's in perfect condition?” Valker shot back. “A sweet deal—for you.”

“Go back to your own ship,” Dorn said. “My next shot will kill you.”

Valker heard the cyborg's threat, as calmly unemotional as an ocean wave surging onto the shore.

“I thought you were a priest,” he shot back.

“Don't push me,” Dorn said. “The killer inside me can break through and cause havoc.”

The airlock of
Pleiades
was close enough for Valker to clearly make out the two men standing inside its open hatch. One of them—the cyborg, he guessed—was holding a pistol rock steady in both hands.

He's pointing it straight at me, Valker realized. One puncture of this suit and I'm a dead man. The freak's right: we're exposed out here. He could kill four or five of us before we got to the hatch.

“All right,” he said, fingering his jetpack controls. “All right. You win. For now.”

Kirk growled, “You're gonna let them go?”

Valker made a toothy grin for Kirk. “You want to go in and be a hero? Go right ahead. Be my guest.”

But Kirk had slowed down, too. All seven of the scavengers hovered in the emptiness, close enough to
Pleiades
almost to touch it, while Dorn stood inside the airlock with that one pistol locked in his unwavering hands.

“A whole fucking ship!” Kirk whined.

“You gotta know when to fold your tent, boys,” said Valker, “and silently steal away.”

With enormous reluctance, the scavengers started back toward
Vogeltod,
which now was separated from
Syracuse
and slowly edging farther away from it.

“We'll get them,” Valker assured his men. “Once we're back in
Vogeltod,
we'll power up and—”

“And chase us all the way back to Ceres,” Victor's voice cut in. “Good. Do that. I'm sure the rock rats will be glad to see you, after what we'll tell them about you.”

Valker scowled and started to reply, “Oh yeah, well you just might—”

“Hey!” Kirk yelled. “They're gonna hit!”

*   *   *

As Theo ducked through the hatch of
Pleiades
's bridge, still awkward in the clumsy hard suit, he saw Angie—also in her hard shell—sitting at the command chair, his mother and the elderly sculptress on either side of her.

Lifting off his bubble helmet as he went to the command console, Theo said, “Dad wants me to—”

“I think I've got it all set up, Thee,” Angela said happily. “All I've got to do now is press this key, the one that says ‘ignition.'”

Theo swiftly scanned the electronic keyboard. “I think you're right, Angie. I think you've done it.”

“So let's light the fusion torch and get out of here,” Angela said.

Theo glanced up at the main screen. “Oh, for the love of god—they're going to crash!”

They all stared at the screen as
Hunter
slowly, inexorably, plowed into
Syracuse.
In the vacuum of space there was no noise, but Theo saw the two ships smash together in a rending, pulverizing collision that tore both ships into mangled shards of metal.

That was our home, Theo realized. He saw
Syracuse
tear apart, whole sections of its wheel-shaped structure ripping loose, the tube-tunnels where he went diving as a kid breaking apart, pipes and pumps from the cranky old water recycler flung into space, a shape that looked like the old sofa from their living quarters spinning end over end.

“It's gone,” Pauline whispered. “Our home … it's gone.”

“
Hunter,
too,” said Elverda Apacheta, her voice almost reverent. “Dorn will never finish his quest now.”

“But we're here,” Theo said. “We're alive and we're safe.”

“And we're heading for Ceres,” Angela added, pressing her forefinger on the ignition key.

Pleiades
surged into acceleration as its fusion torch drive lit up.

HABITAT
CHRYSALIS II
: COUNCIL CHAIRMAN'S OFFICE

Big George Ambrose sat behind his desk like a smoldering red-haired volcano. The unpretentious office seemed crowded to Theo, with his parents and sister, Dorn and the sculptress taking up every available chair.