The Aftermath (37 page)

The youngster coughed, shuddered spasmodically, banged his nose against the glassteel bubble of his helmet.

But his eyes opened. “Wha … who are you?” The lad's voice was rasping, painfully dry.

“You're all right now,” Dorn said. “I'll bring you aboard our ship.”

“My mother! My sis—” Coughing overtook him.

Dorn said, “I'm taking you to our ship. Don't try to talk.”

Jetting back to the airlock, Dorn stood the youngster on his booted feet and turned to close the hatch. But his prosthetic arm would not move. It was frozen.

*   *   *

Valker floated into the zero-g hub of
Syracuse
and started “downhill” along the tube tunnel that led to the backup control pod, where he'd left Pauline. The going was easy at first: he merely had to flick his fingers against the rungs built into the tube's curving side. But as the feeling of weight grew he grabbed onto a rung, turned himself around, and started clambering down the rungs with the lithe agility of a circus acrobat.

Voices! Valker stopped for a moment, listening. Yes, there were voices echoing up the tube. Two women. Pauline and her pretty young daughter. Valker licked his lips and began descending the rungs even faster than before. But silently.

*   *   *

“I was afraid of this,” Dorn said sorrowfully as he eased himself into one of the galley chairs. His prosthetic arm was still jutting out from the shoulder, bent at the elbow, as if a cast had been wrapped around it.

Theo couldn't help staring at the cyborg. The old woman had introduced herself as Elverda Apacheta; the name meant nothing to Theo. But this half-man with one side of his face formed by etched metal, one eye an unblinking camera, one arm and one leg built of alloys and plastics and filled with bioelectronic circuitry—Theo couldn't take his eyes off Dorn.

“You need major maintenance,” Elverda said as she sank wearily into the chair on the opposite side of the galley table.

Dorn puffed out a grunt. “That is an understatement.”

Theo took the chair at the end of the narrow table. “I need to get back to
Syracuse,
” he said. “My mother and sister are in danger there.”

“Danger?” Elverda turned toward him.

“A gang of scavengers has attached themselves to my ship,” Theo explained. “I hate to think of what they'll do to my mother and sister if we don't get there fast.”

Dorn's human eye closed briefly. Then he said, “Their ship is named
Vogeltod?
”

“You know them?”

“We know them. They're undoubtedly waiting for us to rendezvous with your ship so that they can board us and take over this vessel.”

“We should get away,” Elverda said, “as quickly as possible.”

“But my mother!” Theo protested. “My sister!”

“What good could we do?” Elverda asked.

“We can't just leave them in the hands of those bastards!”

Dorn said, “He's right. We must to do what we can.”

“With one hand?” Elverda scoffed.

“I can help you repair the arm,” Theo offered. “While we're on our way to
Syracuse.
”

Dorn contemplated him for a silent moment. Then, “What do you know about bioelectronic circuitry? Micromechanical systems?”

“Some,” Theo replied. “Not much, I admit. But if you've got manuals, instruction vids, I can learn while we're on our way back to my ship. At least…” He stopped himself from going on.

Dorn almost smiled. “At least you have two working hands. I understand.”

*   *   *

Pacing the narrow confines of
Pleiades
's bridge Victor saw that
Hunter
was heading for
Syracuse.
Good, he said to himself. Then he recalled that the half-machine creature on
Hunter
had wanted him to head back to Ceres and turn himself in. Screw that, he thought.

They heard Pauline's signal, Victor knew. They'll get to her before I do. He nodded to himself. Good. Fine. The sooner Pauline gets help the better.

Then his comm screen showed the seamed, aged face of the old woman. “Attention
Syracuse,
” she said. “This is
Hunter.
We have been diverted temporarily. We estimate rendezvous with you in approximately five hours.”

Five hours, Victor thought. He returned to the command chair and pecked out his navigation program. At the rate I'm moving I'll be there in a little more than six hours.

For the first time in months, Victor smiled.

ORE SHIP
SYRACUSE
: BACKUP COMMAND POD

Valker stopped his descent and, clinging to the rungs in the shadows of the dimly lit tube tunnel, he listened to Pauline and her daughter. He could clearly hear their voices echoing up the tube, even though the two women were speaking in hushed whispers.

“Fire off the pod?” the daughter asked. “But—”

“We've got to get away from those men,” Pauline said urgently. “We can escape in the pod and let the people in
Hunter
pick us up.”

“But what good would that do?” the daughter demanded. “They'll just come after us, whether we're in
Hunter
or here.”

Impatiently, Pauline answered, “We're alone here. Alone against ten of them. At least aboard
Hunter
we'll have a better chance.”

Valker could make them out, down at the end of the tube. Pauline was working the bulkhead-mounted pad that controlled the hatch into the command pod.

“That Captain Valker isn't so bad,” the daughter was saying. “He wouldn't let them hurt us.”

“Angela, for god's sake!” Pauline snapped. “Don't be a fool.”

“But—”

“We can't trust him.”

Valker sighed philosophically. The woman's right. Even if I want to protect her and her daughter, the roughnecks behind me won't leave them alone. Too bad. I might have changed my whole life with a woman like Pauline at my side. Too bad.

As soon as the hatch slid open Valker called to them. “Hello ladies! Good to see you've recovered, Angela.”

Staring up at him, they looked up like a pair of guilty waifs suddenly caught in a police spotlight.

Pauline pushed her daughter through the hatch and started into the command pod herself. Valker clambered down the rungs as swiftly as a monkey, then dropped the final few meters and slammed his palm against the hatch's control panel, stopping Pauline from shutting it.

“You weren't thinking of leaving, were you?” he asked, stepping into the cramped little pod.

Pauline backed away from him until her hip bumped against the control board. Angela stood off to one side, half smiling at him.

“Please don't go,” Valker said, with exaggerated courtliness. “The fun is just beginning.”

*   *   *

“This is weird,” Theo muttered as he lifted Dorn's prosthetic arm out of its shoulder socket.

The cyborg was sitting stolidly on a stool by the workbench. An interactive maintenance vid was running on the wall screen of the workshop. The arm felt heavy in Theo's hands; he put it down carefully on the workbench's top, littered with tools.

“Can you feel any of this?” Theo asked.

Dorn nodded slightly. “It isn't pain, but the sensation isn't pleasant, either.”

Jabbing a thumb toward the wall screen, Theo said, “According to the vid, this shoulder joint should be self-lubricating.”

“Pressurized air lubrication, I know,” said Dorn. “But the shoulder seizes up. The lubrication fails.”

Theo asked the voice-activated program for a list of possible failure modes.

“Air leakage,” he said, studying the list. “That must be it.”

“Or erosion of the bearings.”

“I can test the bearings,” Theo said. Pointing, he asked, “That's an electron microscope, isn't it?”

“The maintenance program should have a subroutine for testing the bearings.”

“Right.”

Half an hour later, as he was replacing the bearings in the shoulder ring of Dorn's arm, Theo said, “The bearings are all well within specification.”

“Then it must be a pinpoint leak in the air lubrication,” said Dorn. “We don't have the equipment to find a microscopic hole in the seal.”

Theo thought a moment. “Maybe we can—”

Elverda's voice on the intercom interrupted him. “The navigation program estimates rendezvous with
Syracuse
within one hour. I can see another ship mated with her.”

“That's the scavengers,” Theo said.

“They'll want this ship,” said Dorn.

“They'll want to kill us all, including my mother and sister.”

Dorn gestured with his human arm. “We'd better get me back together, then, and hope the arm doesn't freeze up again.”

Lifting the arm in both hands and working its end into Dorn's prosthetic shoulder, Theo said, “Maybe we can use a quick and dirty fix.”

“Quick and dirty?”

“Yeah.” The arm clicked into the shoulder socket. As Theo reached for the air hose attached to the workbench's side, he explained, “We replenish the air in the bearings, get it up to the right pressure, then we spray a plastic sealant around the joint, so the plastic covers whatever pinhole might be in there.”

Dorn thought a moment. “Like spraying sealant on a leaking tire.”

“Right. It ought to hold, at least for a while.”

Dorn nodded. “It's better than nothing.”

*   *   *

Valker disabled the circuit that fired the explosive bolts that would separate the backup command pod from the main body of
Syracuse,
talking to Pauline and Angela nonstop as he bent over the console.

“My crew's drooling with anticipation over you two,” he said, his usual smile replaced by a tight-lipped, unhappy frown. “It's not going to be easy to keep you out of their hands.”

“Then let us get away from here,” Pauline urged.

Valker shook his head. “No. That won't work. They'll go chasing after you. And when they catch up with you, nothing will stop them. Not even me.”

“Then what are you going to do?” Angela asked, her voice trembling.

“They'll be busy taking
Hunter
once it gets here. But after they've got her, they'll want to celebrate.”

“Leave my daughter alone,” Pauline said. “Give me to them.”

“Mother!”

“That might work,” Valker said, “for a while. But only for a while.”

Pauline swept the cramped pod with her eyes, looking for a tool, a weapon, something, anything.

Valker straightened up, the disconnected firing keys to the separation bolts in his hands. “Ladies, I'm afraid you're in for a rough time.”

CARGO SHIP
PLEIADES
: BRIDGE

Victor called up the nav program for the eighth time in the past half-hour. “Estimate rendezvous with
Syracuse
in ninety-three minutes,” he read aloud from the screen. “Ninety-three minutes. I'll see Pauline and the kids again in a little more than an hour and a half.”

Punching up the radar image, he saw the wheel shape of
Syracuse
clearly enough, although there seemed to be a strange sort of bulge on one side of the vessel's hub. And there was the blip of
Hunter,
also heading toward Pauline. His fingers worked the keyboard and the screen showed that
Hunter
would arrive at
Syracuse
's position in less than an hour.

They're thirty-some minutes ahead of me, Victor thought. I'll get there half an hour after they do.

He checked the comm program. No messages from
Syracuse
since Pauline's call. Why not? Victor asked himself. You'd think they'd be beaming out a steady call for help. Why aren't they?

He sagged back in the command chair, unwilling to believe what logic was telling him. That one message was their last gasp. They're dead now. All of them. Pauline. Theo. My little Angel.

He pounded both his fists on the chair's armrests. To come this close! And still be too late. Victor bowed his head. He wanted to weep.

But instead he raised his chin and glared at the radar image on the main screen. No. I won't give up. Not until there's not a shred of a chance that they're still living. Not until I see their dead bodies with my own eyes. Not until then. Not until then.

*   *   *

Valker's communicator buzzed in his tunic pocket. His eyes still on Pauline and Angela, he fished it out of his pocket and held it up to his ear.

“What?”

Nicco's voice answered, “Radar shows another ship heading this way. Running silent.”

Valker's brows knit. “Running silent?”

“And heading this way like a bullet, about half an hour behind
Hunter.
”

Breaking into a broad grin, Valker said into his comm unit, “What did I tell you, boys? This
Syracuse
is our good luck charm. She's like a magnet, drawing ships to us. Now we've got two vessels we can salvage.”

“I don't like it,” said Nicco. “Why's she running silent? Who is she?”

“Maybe another band of salvage operators, just like us,” Valker mused.

“That could be trouble.”

“Not if we're ready for 'em and they're not ready for us.”

Nicco said nothing.

“I'm coming over to
Vogeltod,
” Valker said. “We've got to take
Hunter
fast and be ready for this other ship when it gets here.”

“An old woman and a priest,” Nicco replied. “Shouldn't be much trouble.”

“Right. Let's nail them quick and clean.” He clicked the communicator shut and said to Pauline, “I've got to attend to business back on my ship. Don't do anything foolish while I'm gone.”