The Aftermath (20 page)

“We injected stem cell activation factor into your heart. It's repairing the damage.”

“How did you know…?”

“Med program. We have an up-to-date diagnostic program in the computer, and a good stock of medical supplies.”

“I see.”

“It's not a total fix, y'know. You oughtta see a specialist when you get back to Earth. Or Selene, whatever.”

Elverda nodded, knowing that it would be many months before she returned to the Moon, if ever, and she could never face the heavy gravity of Earth.

Glancing up at the sensors lining one side of her bed, Koop said, “Seems to be workin'. You should be able to get outta bed by tomorrow.”

“But Dorn? Dorik Harbin? What's going to happen to him?”

Koop shrugged his heavy shoulders. “That's for the captain to decide.”

*   *   *

Captain Kao Yuan stared at his prisoner. The crew had locked Dorik Harbin in an emptied storage locker. The man had come aboard
Viking
peacefully. Yuan had ordered a thorough search of his ship,
Hunter.
No one else was aboard. No weapons of any kind. Just ordinary stocks of food and replacement parts. Nobody but him and the old woman.

Now Yuan stood in the open doorway of the storage locker. Two of his biggest crewmen stood out in the passageway, sidearms strapped to their hips. Dorik Harbin stood in one corner, looking back at him.

Yuan felt distinctly uneasy. This isn't a man, his mind told him: he's more machine than human. Half his face is metal, etched metal covers the top of his head like a skullcap, one arm is prosthetic, and one leg. Does he have balls? What are his insides like?

“You can come in,” said the half-machine. “I won't attack you.” His voice was deep, calm. It made Yuan think of the huge lake he used to swim in when he was a child, before the greenhouse warming dried it out.

Yuan stepped fully inside the storage locker. It was small, meant to house medical supplies. The crew had emptied its shelves and moved the supplies to an unused bed space in the infirmary, where the old woman was being kept.

“You admit you are Dorik Harbin?” Yuan asked.

The lips on the half-face bent slightly. “I was Dorik Harbin. Now I am Dorn.”

“You are the man who destroyed the
Chrysalis
habitat?”

“I am the beast responsible for the
Chrysalis
slaughter, yes.”

Yuan licked his lips nervously. What more is there to ask? He admits it. My orders are to kill him.

“The woman who was with me,” the cyborg said slowly, as if he had to ponder each word. “She had nothing to do with Dorik Harbin's crime. I did not meet her until years after that.”

“Why is she with you?”

“I wonder.”

“Is she really a famous artist?”

“She is Elverda Apacheta, yes.”

“What made her come out to the Belt with you? For that matter, what in the name of hell are you doing out here?”

“You don't want to know.”

“Don't get smart with me! I'm the captain of this vessel. I can have you executed like that!” Yuan snapped his fingers.

“And I can kill you, too, if I choose.” Dorn's prosthetic hand flashed through the air and grabbed one of the empty storage shelves, ripped it out of the bulkhead and crushed it in his metal fingers.

Yuan jumped back. The crewmen pulled their pistols from their holsters.

“Relax, gentlemen,” said Dorik Harbin, scorn dripping from his tone. “That was merely a demonstration. I can make threats too.”

Yuan wished he'd carried a gun with him.

“I have no intention of resisting whatever sentence you pass on me,” Dorik Harbin went on. “But I would like your assurance that Elverda Apacheta will not be harmed. She has not done anything to be punished for.”

“Then why's she with you?” Yuan insisted.

The cyborg fell silent for several endless moments. Yuan felt its eyes boring into him: one human eye, dark, pained; the other an unblinking red, like a laser.

“I chose my words poorly a few seconds ago,” Dorik Harbin said. “It would be in your best interests not to know why she decided to accompany me.”

“My best interests?”

“Yes.”

“You'll have to explain that.”

Again the cyborg hesitated before answering. “My mission is to retrieve the bodies of those who were killed in the war and left to drift alone, unwanted, uncared for.”

“Retrieve the dead bodies?”

“And give each of them a proper death rite.”

Yuan stared at him. “That's what you've been doing?”

“Yes.”

It was impossible to read his half-metal face. Yuan started to ask, “But why—”

Dorik Harbin held up his human hand, stopping his question in mid-sentence. “Again, it would not be in your best interests to probe too deeply.”

And Yuan believed him.

ATTACK SHIP
VIKING
: CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS

“You believed him?” Tamara asked. “You swallowed his ludicrous story? You let him get away with this mysterious tripe?”

Sitting on the edge of his double-sized bunk, Yuan nodded unhappily. “I didn't want to believe him, but I really think he's telling the truth.”

Tamara Vishinsky stood by the compartment's closed door. She was in her off duty coveralls, with the front unzipped enough to show considerable cleavage. Ordinarily Yuan would have found this enticing, suggestive. Not now.

Planting her hands on her slim hips, Tamara scorned, “You actually believe that he's wandering through the Belt looking for bodies of dead mercenaries? It's a lie, and a pitiful one at that.”

Scratching his head, Yuan shot back, “What else could he be doing out here? Going from one battle site to the other?”

Tamara said, “What else indeed? Why don't we find that out before we get rid of him? He might know things that would be valuable to us.”

“Us?” Yuan asked. “Us, meaning you and me? Us, meaning the crew of this task force? Or us, meaning you and Humphries?”

She started to answer, caught herself, then replied, “He's searching for something out here in the Belt. I'd like to know what it is. Wouldn't you?”

“What in the name of all the dragons in hell could be out here?”

“That's what I want to find out.”

“My orders are to kill him. Immediately. You know that.”

“But we can interrogate him first.”

Yuan shook his head. “He won't be easy to pry information out of.”

“Maybe the woman will be easier.”

“No!” Yuan snapped. “It's bad enough we have to kill her.”

Tamara walked to the bed and sat down beside him, close enough for their shoulders to touch.

“They're out here in the Belt searching for something,” she whispered in his ear. “It must be something valuable, or else why would they be doing it? It might be something that could make us rich.”

“Buried treasure?” Yuan sneered.

“Information is the basis of wealth,” Tamara purred. “Information that we can sell or trade or use to make us rich.”

Yuan smelled the faint perfume she wore. He knew the places on her body where she daubed her skin with the scent.

“He says he's searching for bodies,” he muttered, “to give them proper last rites.”

“But what is he
really
doing?”

“Do you actually think he's up to something else?”

“He's got to be,” she said.

“I … I don't know.”

“Let me interrogate him. We're going to eliminate them both anyway. Let's find out what they've been doing, first.”

“I don't like it,” Yuan said.

“I'll take care of it. You can question the woman and be as gentle as you like.”

“Let me talk to her first. Maybe I can get what we want out of her.”

Tamara got to her feet and headed for the door. “All right,” she said. “You do that.”

And she left Yuan sitting on his bunk, alone.

*   *   *

“Whatever did you do to Martin Humphries to make him want you dead?” Yuan asked.

He had invited Elverda to his quarters for dinner. And some questioning. She had come hesitantly, wondering how well her heart had been repaired. But aside from a slight breathlessness when she first got out of bed, she felt all right. She thought she'd felt her heart skip a beat or two when she'd first stood up, but she put that down to her imagination.

Elverda looked up from the salad taken from the hydroponic tank that Yuan had built for the crew.

“It might be better if you didn't know,” she said softly.

Yuan studied the aged sculptress. Her face was seamed with years, her hair white and cut short: poorly, he thought. Yet there was strength in that imperious face, natural dignity in the firm set of her frail shoulders beneath the woven robe she wore.

“Mr. Humphries is a bad enemy,” Yuan said, trying to keep his tone casual. “He has a long reach.”

“And a longer memory,” said Elverda. Then she took a forkful of the salad. “Delicious. I missed fresh vegetables. We had nothing but prepackaged meals and supplement pills aboard
Hunter.
”

Yuan saw that she was trying to change the subject and decided to go along with her, for the moment.

“What were you doing on your ship?”

She looked at him from across the little table with onyx eyes of endless depths. “Didn't Dorn tell you?”

“He said you were searching for dead bodies.”

She nodded. “Mercenaries killed in the war and left to drift through space.”

“This … person you call Dorn, his real name is Dorik Harbin.”

“His name once was Dorik Harbin,” Elverda conceded. “But he has changed his life, his entire personality. So he's changed his name, as well.”

Yuan leaned back in his chair. “Do you expect me to believe that you were searching for bodies? Like a pair of ghouls?”

“That's what we were doing,” Elverda replied. A small smile bent her thin lips slightly. “Not like ghouls, though. More like priests. Missionaries, perhaps.”

Feeling his brows knit in a frown that he didn't want to display, Yuan said, “Mr. Humphries's orders are to execute you both.”

“I'm not surprised.”

“Which brings us back to my first question: What did you do to make him so angry with you?”

“He's not angry. He's afraid.”

“Of what?”

Elverda seemed to think about that question for a moment. Then she replied, “He's afraid of himself, I believe.”

Yuan picked up his napkin, started to daub his lips, but instead threw it onto the table in frustration.

“This is getting us nowhere!”

Elverda said nothing.

“I want to know why Humphries is out to get you,” Yuan said, his voice rising. “If you won't tell me, I'll have to pry it out of Harbin.”

“Dorn.”

“Don't play games with me, woman.”

She put down her fork. “Captain Yuan, have you considered the possibility that if you knew why Humphries wants to kill us, then he might want to kill you, too?”

Yuan blinked.

“In fact,” Elverda went on, “I would imagine that the chances are very good that once you do kill us, Humphries will have you murdered as well.”

Yuan's jaw dropped open.

ATTACK SHIP
VIKING
: COMMUNICATIONS CENTER

Tamara Vishinsky decided that the soundproofed comm center was the best place to interrogate Dorik Harbin. The booth was small, but it was adjacent to the bridge, and once its door was shut no one could see or hear what was going on inside it. So she had Koop and the burliest of the crewmen strap Harbin firmly into the chair while she searched through the ship's medical stores for the necessary drugs.

Now Harbin sat in the narrow booth facing her, his arms pinned tightly, his booted feet clamped to the deck. He had not struggled against being bound; he had not resisted in any way.

Standing in front of him, with a shelf full of hypodermic spray-guns at her side, Tamara eyed the cyborg. Harbin seemed impassive, the human half of his face as expressionless as the etched metal half.

“Now then,” she began coolly, “do you expect me to believe that you have been wandering through the Belt looking for the bodies of mercenaries killed in the wars?”

“That's the truth,” said Harbin. His voice was a deep, flat and calm baritone.

“You call yourself Dorn. Why?”

“I am a different person from Dorik Harbin. Suicide and death are life-changing experiences.” His lips did not curve in the slightest; he gave no indication that he appreciated the irony in his statement.

“You tried to kill yourself.”

“And failed.”

“When did you decide to search for the dead?”

For the first time, he hesitated. “After another life-altering experience.”

“What was that?”

Harbin stared at her steadily. Tamara felt uneasy under the gaze of those eyes, one human, one artificial, both burning intently.

“It would be better if I didn't tell you.”

“That's what you said to Captain Yuan.”

“Yes, it is.”

She picked up one of the hyposprays. “I'm not satisfied with that answer.”

His shoulders surged slightly against the restraining straps. Tamara reflexively flinched back, banged her hip against the booth's bulkhead. He can't break those straps, she told herself. Besides, there's an armed crewman outside and all three of the bridge officers on duty.

But Harbin seemed to relax. “I'm thinking of your welfare, not my own. What you want to know could put you in danger.”

“Danger? How?”

“Martin Humphries.”

“I work for Martin Humphries,” Tamara said. “I report to him personally.”