The Aftermath (42 page)

“Then don't kill those other men, either,” Dorn said softly.

Theo looked up at the screen again and saw that Valker and his crew were marching along the passageway to the next hatch.

“Dad!” he called.

Victor seemed in a daze. His father stared at the main screen but didn't seem to understand what he was seeing.

“Dad, now!” Theo called.

Dorn turned toward Theo. “Don't murder them.”

Sudden rage boiled through Theo. They tried to murder me. They want to rape Mom and Angie.

Dorn repeated, “Don't—”

“The hell I won't!” Theo yelled, and he slammed his fist onto the control key that ignited the grenades.

*   *   *

In the airlessness of the passageway the detonations made no sound, but the scavengers were jolted off their feet as the bulkhead around the closed hatch in front of them was torn apart by sudden flashes of explosion.

Through his suit radio Valker heard his men shouting and swearing as he struggled to his knees. Weight seemed to be dwindling, as if he were suddenly floating. Kirk and others were sprawled in a heap, drifting up off the deck, arms and legs thrashing. The entire section of the passageway had been blasted loose, tearing itself out of the ship's wheel-shaped structure and lumbering off into empty space.

Nicco was tangled beneath the laser welder, but in the sudden near-weightlessness he pushed it off with a grunt and a string of curses.

“They've torn this whole section out of the ship!” Kirk yelled, pushing himself to a standing position. The effort made him float off the deck altogether; his hooded head bounced off the overhead.

Hovering in a weightless crouch, Valker realized there was enough light to see by. The passageway sections must have individual battery-powered emergency lights, he reasoned.

“Anybody hurt?” he asked.

“Fuck that! We're drifting away from the ship.”

“We're headin' for friggin' Pluto or someplace!”

“Calm down,” Valker said, making a soothing motion with both hands. “Calm down. We ain't dead yet.”

“Won't be long, though.”

“Bullshit!” Valker snapped. “We've got more than an hour's worth of air in our tanks and enough fuel in our jet packs to get back to the ship.”

“This time we blow a hole in their bridge first off,” Kirk snarled. “No more pussyfootin' around.”

*   *   *

Victor dashed to the control board and clapped his son on the back. “You did it, Thee! Good work!”

Theo stared at the main screen. The outside cameras showed the torn section of
Hunter
's hull spinning slowly away from the ship.

“Now let's get ourselves out of here,” Victor said.

“We have no propulsion,” Elverda reminded him. “They disabled our fusion thruster.”

Theo jabbed a finger on the key that opened the suit-to-suit radio frequency.

“… got more than an hour's worth of air in our tanks and enough fuel in our jet packs to get back to the ship.”

Valker's voice, Theo recognized.

Then Kirk's snarling, “This time we blow a hole in their bridge first off. No more pussyfootin' around.”

Theo turned to his father. “They're coming back!”

“But now they're vulnerable,” Victor said. “They're floating in vacuum, in space suits.” He brandished the laser pistol.

“You think the gun has enough charge to get them all?” Theo wondered.

“All we need to do is puncture their suits. A pinhole will do.”

“No,” Dorn said. “Please!”

Victor glared at him. “Listen. Just because I couldn't shoot you in cold blood doesn't mean that I'll allow those cutthroats to get back to this ship.”

“Don't murder them,” Dorn begged. “Choose life over death.”

“Tell that to them!” Victor snapped.

“There must be another way.”

Theo looked into the cyborg's half-human face. “Maybe there is another way,” he said.

*   *   *

Pauline hardly recognized the fiercely bearded man who had come aboard
Hunter
as her gentle, thoughtful husband—until the moment he failed to kill Dorn. Victor, she thought. Despite everything, despite the years of anguish, he couldn't kill the man who's caused all our troubles. Not in cold blood. Not Victor. He couldn't.

But she saw that Victor was perfectly ready to do whatever he had to in order to protect her and Angela. What would he do if he knew that I've slept with Valker? How will he feel about me?

She looked at Angela, standing beside her, and at the elderly woman who tried to save Dorn from his own guilt-ridden death wish. Angie knows about Valker now, Pauline told herself. But she won't tell her father; she won't breathe a word about it, not to Victor or even to Theo. It's our secret. I'll have to talk to her about it, explain what happened. Make her understand. If I can. If I can.

She realized Theo was asking something of Dorn. With an effort, she forced her thoughts aside and focused on the others on the bridge.

“Do you have suits for yourselves?” Theo was asking Dorn.

Elverda replied, “Nanosuits, yes. There are several in the locker by the main airlock.”

“Why should they need suits?” Victor demanded.

Theo jabbed a thumb at the main screen. The scavengers were floating out of the twisted wreckage of the severed hull section.

“They're going to be coming here. We'd better get off this vessel and into
Pleiades.
”

Victor grinned with understanding. “
Pleiades
has propulsion. Her fusion engine works and she's got enough fuel to get back to Ceres.”

“Right,” said Theo. “Let those dog turds have this ship. It can't move. It's a derelict, thanks to them.”

“And we'll get away on
Pleiades,
” said Victor.

“But we've got to be quick,” Theo urged.

“Wait,” Pauline said.

The men turned toward her.

“They've got their own ship:
Vogeltod.
Its main engine works and they've got fuel for it in her tanks.”

“I know,” Theo said. “I'll have to take care of that.”

Victor bent over the control panel. “We've got to put some distance between us and those scavengers.”

Dorn came up beside him. “With only the maneuvering jets, we can't go far.”

Theo told him, “Move us toward
Syracuse.
”

“Syracuse?”
his father demanded. “You mean
Pleiades.
”

“Syracuse,”
Theo replied. “And their ship,
Vogeltod.
”

SPACE RACE

“Anybody hurt?” Valker asked again.

He was clinging by one hand to a cleat on the outer skin of the broken hull section, spinning slowly in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the emptiness of the universe all around him. Along the curve of the section he could see his men pulling themselves out of the wreckage, slowly, still in shock from the explosion.

“Well?” he demanded. “All you huskies in one piece?”

“My hand still hurts,” Nicco complained.

“I twisted my leg.”

“My insides don't feel so good.”

“That's the zero-g,” Kirk's scornful voice countered. “Don't upchuck in your hood.”

A scattering of snickering laughs.

The broken hull section turned enough for Valker to see the rest of
Hunter
gleaming in the sunlight, one section of its wheel-shaped hull gone, the shattered ends blackened by the explosions.

“All right, all right. Pull yourselves together. We've got to get back to that ship and give those pissants what they deserve.”

*   *   *

Once they got to the auxiliary airlock, Theo saw how simple it was for Dorn and Ms. Apacheta to get into nanosuits. Just like pulling on a set of coveralls. He hefted the new backpack that Dorn had given him, feeling its weight settled on his shoulders, then went to his sister.

“I'll check out your backpack,” Theo said to Angela.

“Let your mother do that,” Victor said. He was still in his nanofabric suit, its hood pushed back against his shoulders.

“You sure you know what you're doing?” Victor asked as he checked Theo's backpack.

“Yes, sir.”

“I ought to be doing this myself,” Victor muttered. “If anything goes wrong…”

“Nothing's going to go wrong, Dad. It's my idea; I'll do it. You take care of Mom and Angie.”

Despite his father's beard Theo could see the uncertainty, the anxiety in his face.

“I can do it, Dad,” he insisted. “You can trust me.”

Victor looked up into his son's eyes, then clasped him on the shoulder of his bulky hard suit. “I know you can do it, son. It's just that … if anything should go wrong—”

“Then you'll be with Mom and Angie, protecting them.”

Theo lowered his bubble helmet over his head, sealed it to the suit's collar, but left the visor open. Dorn had volunteered to stay aboard
Hunter
in Theo's place, but neither Theo nor his father completely trusted the cyborg. He's too fond of death, Theo said to himself. This job needs somebody who wants to live through it.

“It shouldn't take long to wreck the controls,” Victor said.

“I know,” said Theo.

“They'll come straight to the bridge as soon as they see you're ramming
Hunter
into their ship.”

“If they're smart they'll jet back to their own ship and get out of here before
Hunter
smashes into them.”

“No, they'll come after you. They'll want to prevent the collision so they can keep
Hunter
for salvage.”

“I'll zip out before they can get to me.”

Victor nodded minimally.

Theo could feel the eyes of his mother and sister on him. And the cyborg and the old woman, too. He remembered a word from his history lessons:
kamikaze.

*   *   *

“Is it just my eyes, or is
Hunter
moving away from us?” Kirk asked.

The ten scavengers had floated free of the torn-out section of
Hunter.
Gripping their makeshift weapons, they were jetting back toward the vessel. Valker had appropriated the laser pistol that one of the men had carried.

“Hard to judge distance out here,” he muttered.

Then he saw three glittering puffs of gas from the maneuvering thrusters on one side of
Hunter
's broken hull.

“They're moving her!”

“Towards
Syracuse!
” Nicco bellowed, pointing at the distant wheel shape of the battered cargo ship.

“And
Vogeltod!
” Kirk snarled. “The bastards're going to ram us!”

“Power up, boys,” Valker commanded. “We've got to stop
Hunter
before it hits our ship!”

“Look! They're leavin'
Hunter!
”

“Headin' for
Pleiades!
”

“Let's get them!”

“First things first, boys,” Valker said, his voice high with excitement. “We've gotta stop
Hunter
from plowing into our ship.”

“But they'll get away on
Pleiades!
”

“Let 'em,” Valker insisted. “We've got to save our own ship first. Nicco, take Ross and Turk and get back to
Vogeltod.
Disconnect her from
Syracuse
and get her the hell out of the way. The rest of you come with me.”

We'll take
Hunter
before she rams our ship, but we'll lose our best prize, Valker admitted silently:
Pleiades,
an intact, first-rate ship. And the two women. He saw Pauline in his mind's eye: beautiful and strong. With her I could become anything I want to be. But I'd have to get rid of these apes first. And even before that I'd have to take care of the people with her.

That includes her daughter, Valker realized. Or maybe I could take them both. He grinned, inside the bubble of his nanosuit hood. Both of them. Mother and daughter. Maybe I could …

He shook his head. Forget that. If you don't move fast you're going to lose your own ship and die like a chump out here.

*   *   *

Jetting between Angela and Victor, Pauline saw
Pleiades
looming larger as they approached.

“It's working.” She heard Dorn's heavy voice in her helmet earphones. “Some of them are racing back to their own ship.”

Victor said, “But the rest of them are reboarding
Hunter.
”

“Theo's still on
Hunter!
” Pauline cried out. “Alone!”

SMELTER SHIP
HUNTER
: BRIDGE

Sitting awkwardly in his hard suit on the bridge's command chair, Theo heard the scavengers' suit-to-suit radio chatter as he worked frantically to dismantle the navigation program and controls.

I've got maybe five minutes, he told himself as he feverishly pecked at the navigation keyboard.

“Navigation program cannot be erased,” said the computer's maddeningly calm voice, “without authorization from the ship's captain.”

“Erase it!” Theo shouted. “Emergency override!”

Coolly, the computer replied, “Voiceprint identification does not match the captain's. Emergency command not valid.”

Theo was already out of the command chair before the computer's stubborn refusal was finished. He rummaged through the tool bin built into the end of the control console. The best he could come up with was a hand-sized laser welder, similar to the one his father had brandished earlier, good for spot welds on electronics equipment and not much else.

“It'll have to do,” Theo muttered to himself.