The Aftermath (28 page)

“Now look,” he said. “That
Viking
was an attack ship. Do we want to tangle with a ship that can blow us away like
that?
” He snapped his fingers.

Nicco and several of the others shook their heads.

“Besides,” Valker went on, “it was a Humphries Space Systems ship. Even if we could've knocked it off we'd have HSS after us. You want that?”

“No…” Nicco said hesitantly.

“But what about the other one?” Kirk demanded. “
Hunter?
It wasn't armed. Nobody aboard her but that old woman and the cyborg.”

“A whole ship, intact.”

“And you let them go.”

“That's what we're after,” Valker said. “That's the one we're looking for.”

“For six goddamn months.”

Spreading his arms, Valker said, “It's been a lean six months, I know. If we'd run across something else we would've taken it. You know that. But this region's been pretty damned empty.”

“Then we oughtta move to an area where there's better pickin's.”

“You're right,” Valker said smoothly. “That's just what I intend to do. I hate to give up on
Hunter,
though. She could have fetched a pretty penny for us at Ceres.”

“Six months is long enough.”

“Too long.”

“Okay. I hear you,” Valker said to them. “Just give me another few days. If we don't find
Hunter
by then, we'll move to another sector.”

“Not in a few days,” Kirk said, baring his teeth. “Now.”

Valker broadened his smile. “You're not giving the orders on this ship, Kirk. I am.”

“Well maybe we oughtta change that.”

Slowly Valker got to his feet. He stood a good six centimeters taller than Kirk. “If you want to—”

“
CONTACT
,” boomed the computer's synthesized voice over the intercom speakers in the galley's overhead. “
CONTACT WITH AN UNIDENTIFIED SHIP
.”

Valker held up a clenched first. “There you are, guys! We've found her!”

CARGO SHIP
PLEIADES
: SOLAR STORM

Although Victor Zacharias cruised through the Asteroid Belt in silence, emitting no signals that another ship could detect except an occasional microsecond pulse of search radar, he still listened to whatever chatter
Pleiades
's antennas could pick up. Sometimes he thought the only thing that kept him from outright madness as he sailed alone through the empty months was the inane entertainment broadcasts from Earth and the Moon.

He was leaner now, harder. His years of enforced labor on
Chrysalis II
had toughened not only his outlook but his body as well. His arms were hard ropes of muscle, his midsection flat and firm. The midnight black beard he had grown made him look satisfyingly menacing, he thought. I'll shave it off when I find Pauline and the kids, he told himself.

He sat alone in the galley, his softbooted feet propped up on one of the swivel chairs, and watched an educational vid from Selene. An earnest young scientist was walking the viewer through the new liquid mercury optical telescope at the Farside Observatory. With a pang of memory, Victor saw the original Farside facility that he had helped to design: the ten-kilometer-square spread of dipole antennas that made up the main radio telescope, the old twenty-meter reflector spun from lunar glass, the labs and workshops and dormitory facility for the Farside staff.

But the scientist-narrator was pretty much of a bore, Victor thought, droning on about details of the new telescope. He switched to an entertainment channel from Earth.

“And what did these Godless scientists bring us?” thundered a florid-faced man in a white suit. “Floods! Drought! Storms that drowned whole cities! Those were the fruits of the secularists who brought on the greenhouse warming and the biowars and all the other horrors of our age! They brought down the wrath of God upon us!”

The preacher marched back and forth across his stage as he went on, “It was only when the Faithful returned to their God, only when the people of this great nation accepted the Lord as their salvation, that some measure of peace and stability returned to the land.”

Victor flicked through a dozen more channels before stopping at an erotic film. Two women, three men, clad in nothing but glistening perspiration. I wonder where this is broadcast from? Victor asked himself. Certainly nowhere in the United States, not with the New Morality in control of the media.

The scene shifted to a dimly lit Asian temple. Four, no five naked women were making love together. Victor leaned back in his galley chair and thought about moving to the bunk in his compartment. But then I might miss something, he rationalized. Suddenly a squad of barbarian warriors burst into the temple. The women squealed daintily as the men cast off their furs and weapons and delved into them.

“
WARNING
,” the ship's intercom blared emotionlessly. “
THIS IS A WARNING FROM THE INTERNATIONAL ASTRONAUTICAL AUTHORITY'S SOLAR WATCH. A FORCE-FIVE SOLAR FLARE HAS ERUPTED IN THE LOWER LEFT QUADRANT OF THE CHROMOSPHERE. RADIATION FROM THIS EVENT WILL REACH LETHAL LEVELS FOR ALL UNPROTECTED PERSONS AND EQUIPMENT. FURTHER BULLETINS WILL BE BROADCAST AS THE SOLAR STORM DEVELOPS. TAKE ALL NECESSARY PRECAUTIONS AND STAY TUNED FOR NEW INFORMATION AS IT DEVELOPS
.”

Switching to the IAA's dedicated information channel, Victor saw that the deadly radiation cloud from the flare would miss Mercury, but envelop Venus and Earth within a few hours.

No word yet on how intense it'll be when it reaches the Belt, he saw. The cloud of hard radiation belched out by a solar flare was guided through the solar system by the twists and kinks of the interplanetary magnetic field. A cloud that wreaks havoc on Earth's telecommunications might not come within a hundred million klicks of Mars even when the two planets were at their closest.

Plenty of time to get into the storm cellar, Victor thought as he switched back to the pornography. I just hope the storm doesn't foul up the signal from Earth.

*   *   *

Without any working antennas
Syracuse
was cut off from the storm warning. But the ship's radiation sensors pinged while the family was eating its meager breakfast. They were down to two meals per day: a breakfast of juices and protein bars, and a dinner that Pauline tried to make attractive and nourishing.

“Radiation alarm,” Theo said, his mouth half filled with the last of his morning's protein bar.

“Solar storm?” Angela asked.

Theo nodded. “Prob'ly. Might be the precursor wave of high-energy protons and heavier stuff.”

Pauline said, “We'd better get to the storm cellar, then.”

“Right,” said Theo. “I'll go up to the control pod, see what the instruments show, and check out everything. We might have to fly on remote for a few days.”

Looking at Angela, Pauline said, “You help Theo into his suit.”

“I won't need a suit,” Theo protested.

“It's extra protection and you'd be foolish not to take advantage of it,” Pauline said firmly. “I'll check the food stores in the storm cellar. If I recall from the last one we were almost out of juices there.”

“I restocked the juices,” Angela said, getting up from the galley table.

“Good.”

Theo got to his feet and followed Angela out to the airlock area, where the space suits were stored.

“I really don't need this,” he grumbled to his sister once they were out of Pauline's hearing. “Mom's being a tight-ass.”

“Don't let
her
hear you say that.”

“Tight-butt. Okay?”

Angela grinned as Theo sat on the bench in front of the lockers and began tugging on his suit's leggings.

“The suit gives you an extra layer of protection against radiation,” Angela recited from memory. “It could be the difference between life and death.”

“If we get so much radiation that the spittin' suit saves my life, half the equipment still running on this bucket will barf out,” Theo said sharply.

“You're always such an optimist, Thee.”

*   *   *

It'll be two days before the storm hits, Victor saw on the wall screen's display. He was exercising on the treadmill in
Pleiades
's gym, a small, almost claustrophobic metal-walled chamber jammed with equipment that Victor thought of as implements of torture. Necessary torture, though. It would be all too easy to bloat into a boneless slug aboard ship. Exercise was necessary, vitally so.

Two days before the cloud of high-energy protons and electrons smothers this region of space. There's lots of heavier ions in the cloud, too, he saw as he studied the latest IAA bulletin. The ship's magnetic field will deflect most of the crud, but rad levels will still go up in here. I'll have to spend a couple of days in the storm cellar.

Communications from Earth had fizzled out once the storm cloud reached the Earth/Moon region. For entertainment, Theo had to fall back on the chips that Cheena Madagascar had stocked in the captain's compartment. The woman had interesting tastes, Victor discovered. He knew from his own experience that Cheena was a vigorous heterosexual, but her assortment of entertainment vids was much, much broader.

I'd better bring some of the better ones to the storm cellar with me, he told himself. Not much else to do in there while I'm riding out the storm.

Then he remembered that Pauline and the kids would probably be hit by the same cloud of deadly radiation.
Syracuse
has a storm cellar, he thought. Pauline will make sure they're safe.

But how many storms has battered old
Syracuse
gone through? How many more can the ship take before its vital systems break down?

*   *   *

Like most deep-space ships,
Syracuse
's storm cellar was a tight little compartment lined with thick metal walls that held a heavy liquid mixture that absorbed incoming subatomic particles. After a storm, once it was safe to leave the cellar, the liquid was flushed into the propellant tank for the fusion torch engine; eventually the absorbed particles were fired out the engine's thruster.

Theo stared worriedly at the wall screen as he sat on the padded bench that ran along the cellar's oval interior. The screen showed the level of absorbent remaining in the supply tank.

“How does it look?” his mother asked. She was sitting beside him. Angela sat across the minicompartment, where the food locker stood.

Theo thought for a moment before answering, “Depends on how intense the storm is, Mom, and how long it lasts.” He didn't voice the rest of it: we might get through this storm, but we'll be out of luck if another one hits us.

Angela looked concerned, almost frightened. “We'll be all right, won't we, Thee?”

He made himself smile at her. “Sure, Angie. We'll be okay.” He wished he actually felt that way.

*   *   *

Valker worked hard to keep smiling. Cooped up with the rest of the crew in
Vogeltod
's minuscule storm cellar was a strain, by any measure.

And just before the storm's radiation blanked out the ship's communications there had been that tantalizing blip on the radar screen. A ship, Valker was convinced. It had to be a ship, not a rock. No asteroid gives a profile like that.

It wasn't
Hunter,
the ship they'd been seeking all these past months. But it was a ship. Valker was certain of it. It was running silent for some reason. No tracking beacon, no telemetry coming out of her. All the better. A derelict, most likely. But she was intact, as far as the radar profile could show. All in one piece, not busted up. It's a ship that we can take and sell back at Ceres for a pretty dollar.

Valker couldn't wait for the storm to subside. The smell of the other men crowded into the cellar gave him even more incentive to get out and take that ship, no matter who it belonged to or who might be aboard her.

SELENE: HUMPHRIES SPACE SYSTEMS HEADQUARTERS

As the flunky in the conservatively dark suit led them through the warren of cubicles filled with quietly busy HSS employees, Yuan thought that Tamara seemed strangely cool, confident. She looked quite calm, almost serene, as if she were looking forward to this meeting with Martin Humphries. Yuan tried to picture how Humphries would react when he admitted that he had let Dorik Harbin and the old woman go free. Humphries doesn't like to be disobeyed. This isn't going to be easy, he told himself.

Yet Tamara seemed unconcerned, almost at ease. He wondered if she really was that relaxed or whether it was all an act, a front of bravura that she really didn't feel.

There's nothing for me to worry about, Yuan told himself. He thought back to the vision that the artifact had shown him. You're going to live a long and fruitful life, he repeated in his mind over and again. Yeah, he replied silently. Maybe. But the instant they had presented themselves at the corporate headquarters' reception desk, the bountiful young redheaded receptionist's smile had evaporated.

“Mr. Humphries wants to see you both,” she'd said ominously. “Himself.”

Himself. Martin Humphries himself wants to see us, Yuan thought as the flunky in the dark tunic and slacks led them through the maze of cubicles. Report to him personally. Tell the most powerful man in the solar system that you not only failed to carry out his orders, you turned his intended victims loose, sent them on their way to wander through the Belt, free and unharmed. He's not going to like that.

Humphries Space Systems headquarters occupied one entire tower of the two that supported Selene's Main Plaza. Fifteen stories of offices and god knows what else. Yuan had heard that Martin Humphries once lived in a grandiose mansion built at the lowermost level of Selene, as deep as he could get, safe from the radiation and meteoroids that peppered the Moon's airless surface. But that mansion had been burned to ashes by Lars Fuchs, and Humphries nearly killed. Now the man lived over in Hell Crater, surrounded by the casinos and shopping arcades, the hotels and brothels of that resort facility.