The Aftermath (25 page)

Again and again Tamara would smile knowingly and say, “Leave that to me. I'll get us past the guards.”

“You'll get us killed,” Yuan groused.

He did not sleep with her anymore. He wanted to, but the realization that she'd been using him angered him too deeply. Instead he crooked his finger at one of the other crew members, a weapons specialist, young and slightly plump, but with silky dark hair and a willing smile. It's good to be the captain, Yuan told himself. But he was certain that Tamara was sleeping with Koop now.

“
APPROACHING VESSEL, IDENTIFY YOURSELF. THIS AREA IS PROPRIETARY TO HUMPHRIES SPACE SYSTEMS, INCORPORATED. NO UNAUTHORIZED VESSELS ARE PERMITTED HERE
.”

Yuan looked at Tamara, who pressed the
TRANSMIT
key on her console and said crisply, “This is HSS vessel
Viking.
Authorization code delta four six nine.”

“
ONE MOMENT. VERIFYING AUTHORIZATION CODE
.”

Tamara glanced over her shoulder at Yuan, a self-satisfied smile curving her lips.

The main screen abruptly showed a square-jawed man with iron gray hair cropped close to his skull. He wore a pale blue tunic with a high choker collar.

“I am Commander Hugh Bolestos,” he said in a gravelly voice. “Your authorization code is out of date.”

“We've been on special duty in the Belt,” Tamara answered smoothly. “We haven't updated our comm codes for several months.”

Commander Bolestos's stern expression did not change by a millimeter. “I've had no word from headquarters to expect you.”

“As I told you, we're on special duty. My name is Tamara Vishinsky. Check your personnel files.”

Bolestos's eyes shifted away for a moment, widened noticeably, then returned to his main screen.

“Says here you report personally to Mr. Humphries himself.”

“Yes, I do,” said Tamara. “May I come aboard your vessel, please, commander?”

“Certainly, Ms. Vishinsky! Of course!”

*   *   *

Valker approached
Hunter
cautiously. The vessel certainly looked abandoned. No tracking beacon, no telemetry signals, no reply to his repeated calls.

Elverda Apacheta, he had discovered from a computer search, was a famous sculptress. But very old. She had bought
Hunter
on a whim, apparently, and disappeared into the depths of the Asteroid Belt several years earlier.

A dotty old lady, Valker concluded. Maybe she came out here to carve more statues out of asteroids.

“Vectors matched,” his navigation officer announced. “Close enough to board her.”

Valker nodded. “I'll go aboard.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.” He pointed to two of the crewmen who had crowded into the bridge. “Nicco and Kirk, stand by to come aboard when I give the signal.”

The two crewmen went to the airlock with Valker, where they all pulled on nanofabric space suits that had been taken from the same luxury yacht that the captain's oversized desk had come from.

“Wait here. If there's trouble, I'll holler.”

“Right,” they said in unison.

And if there isn't trouble, Valker thought as he stepped into the airlock chamber, I want to look through that ship and see if there's anything worth taking for myself.

*   *   *

Yuan was shocked at the ease with which Tamara disposed of the guards protecting the artifact's asteroid.

She, Koop, and four crew members transferred to Commander Bolestos's vessel. Less than an hour later her image appeared on
Viking
's main screen, smiling smugly. “You can come aboard now. No need for weapons.”

Feeling puzzled, uneasy, Yuan went to the airlock and floated through the spongy plastic tunnel that connected
Viking
's airlock with that of the security guards' orbiting vessel.

On the bridge he found Koop sitting in the command chair with Tamara bending over him, spraying a bandage on his upper arm. A laser beam had burned through Koop's sleeve and seared his flesh. Then Yuan saw Commander Bolestos and his guts heaved: the older man lay crumpled like a rag doll in a corner, his chest soaked with blood, his wide-eyed face looking very surprised.

“You killed him?” Yuan gasped.

“Change of command,” said Tamara. She pointed to the control panel that spanned one side of the bridge. “Now I've got all his authorization codes. I'm in charge of security for the artifact now. The grunts on the other ships are taking my orders, like good little corporate robots.”

Yuan understood her tone clearly. I'm under her command now, too.

“Bring the woman and the freak here,” Tamara said. “I want them to lead us down to the artifact.”

Yuan couldn't take his eyes off the corpse. He'd never seen a dead body before. All his kills had been at a distance, clean, impersonal.

“You didn't have a gun with you. How did you…?”

Tamara flicked her right wrist and a wire-thin blade slid into her hand. “With this,” she said. “Close up and personal.”

Then she added, “There are four other crew members down in the galley. And one of our people. The crew tried to make a fight of it.”

“They're all dead?” Yuan asked, his voice squeaking, his insides quaking.

With a quick nod Tamara replied, “Can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

Yuan wanted to throw up.

“Now get the woman and her cyborg friend over here. We're going down to the asteroid.”

THE ARTIFACT

“You're making a mistake,” Dorn warned.

The four of them—Tamara, Yuan, Elverda and Dorn—were walking down the sloping tunnel inside the asteroid that led to the chamber where the artifact was housed. Tamara had placed Koop and a crewman at the tunnel's opening, up on the surface, inside the glassteel dome that protected the hatch.

“Don't be stupid,” Tamara shot back, walking beside Dorn. “You can't change my mind.”

“The artifact won't give you control over Humphries,” Dorn insisted. “You have no idea—”

“Shut up!” she snapped.

He walked in silence for several paces, then turned to Elverda and asked in a lower voice, “Do you want to see it again?”

“Yes,” she said, with only a little trepidation. “And you?”

“I see it every night in my dreams.”

Bringing up the rear of the little group, Yuan felt a mix of anticipation and dread. This asteroid was weird: it was one of the rocky type, but it seemed to be honeycombed with burrows that were apparently natural. Less than a kilometer in length, still the gravity here inside this tunnel was at least half an Earthly g: definitely
not
natural. And it was warm down in this tunnel, too; something, someplace was heating the area. Overheating, Yuan thought, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

What if this alien contraption actually does give us power over Humphries? Yuan wondered. The cyborg says it won't but what if it does? We'll be in control of the richest, most powerful man in the solar system! But then he thought, Humphries isn't a man to be fooled with. If he finds out what we're doing he'll have us all killed. If we can't control him, what we're doing here is writing our own death warrants.

I've played plenty of computer games, he said to himself, but nothing like this. Tamara's a real gambler. She's willing to risk all of our lives for this. His throat felt dry, his insides fluttery.

Still, he followed Tamara along the downward sloping tunnel. The rock walls narrowed; the ceiling got so low that Yuan began to stoop slightly. The old woman had slowed down so that she now walked beside him, her eyes bright and eager in her aged, withered face. Up ahead, the cyborg matched Tamara stride for stride.

Tamara. She killed Bolestos, he reminded himself. She stood right next to the man and stabbed him in the heart. She's a murderer, a cold-blooded killer. Yuan realized that she'd been in charge of this mission all along. I only thought I was the captain; she pulled my strings and reported my every move back to Humphries himself. Now she's rebelling, gambling for the chance to seize all of Humphries's power. And I'm being towed along; she hasn't even asked me what I want to do. She's in charge and there's nothing I can do about it.

The tunnel ended abruptly at a blank stainless steel wall.

“Open it,” Tamara said to Dorn.

“It slides open by itself,” Dorn told them.

“When?”

“On its own schedule. When the artifact was first discovered I was in command of the security detail Humphries sent here. I knew the gate's timing down to the second. But I've been away so long that its schedule may have changed.”

“We'll have to wait, then,” said Elverda.

“It might take days,” Dorn said.

“We could blast the door down,” Tamara said.

“No,” said Dorn. “You can't.”

“Why not?”

“The gate is protected by some sort of energy field,” he replied. “Besides, an explosion might damage the artifact, if it was powerful enough to blast the gate open.”

“All right,” Tamara decided. “We'll wait.”

Elverda took the colorful shawl from her shoulders, folded it into a makeshift pad, and sat on the stone floor. Dorn stood beside her like a protective guard.

Tamara turned to Yuan, her face shining with anticipation.

“We could still turn back,” he said. “It's not too late to forget this whole scheme.”

“Never!” she snapped. “This is the biggest opportunity of them all and I'm playing it out, all the way.”

Yuan nodded. He knew she'd say something like that. Still, he wished he were a trillion kilometers away from here.

“Whatever happened,” Elverda asked no one in particular, “to the scientists who were studying the artifact?”

“Humphries never allowed the universities to send scientists here,” Tamara replied. “The IAA was furious, but Humphries had a legal claim to utilization of the asteroid's resources, and that gave him the right to restrict visitors. He moved the 'roid out of its original orbit just to make it more difficult for anyone to reach it.”

Dorn said, “I would have thought he would destroy it.”

“He wanted to,” Tamara said. “He still might, if we give him the chance.”

“That's too much power for one man to have,” Elverda said.

Tamara smirked at her. Yuan could read the expression on her face: soon one woman will have all that power.

*   *   *

At the other end of the tunnel, inside the glassteel dome built on the asteroid's surface, Koop's communicator buzzed. He flicked it open and saw the face of a security guard in one of the ships orbiting the asteroid. The woman looked upset, apprehensive.

“We just received a message from headquarters. They want to know what your ship,
Viking,
is doing at this location.”

Koop frowned back at the guard. “How's headquarters know
Viking
's out here? Who told 'em?”

“There's an automated identification system planted on the 'roid's surface. It reports any vessel that comes within our perimeter back to headquarters.”

Koop grunted. Headquarters was on the Moon, he knew, which meant that messages took half an hour or more to go one way.

“I'll relay the message to Commander Vishinsky,” he said. “She's inside the rock right now, out of range of my handheld.”

“Headquarters sounded pretty antsy,” the comm officer said. “And they also want to know who put Vishinsky in command.”

“Whatcha tell them?”

“Same thing she told me: Commander Bolestos died and she took over for him.”

Koop thought it over for a second or two. “Good enough,” he said. “For now.”

*   *   *

“It's opening!” Tamara breathed.

Noiselessly, the metal gate was sliding upward.

Elverda began to clamber to her feet. Dorn lent her a supporting hand.

Yuan felt perspiration beading his lip. Once Tamara takes a step past the gateway we're all in this for keeps, one way or another.

“You first,” he said to Tamara.

She hesitated. “No.” Turning to Elverda, “You go first.”

“Me?”

“You've seen it before. I want you to see if it's the same as it was then.”

Yuan thought, Or if it causes the old woman harm.

Elverda nodded, looking slightly anxious. “Very well,” she said.

She handed her folded shawl to Dorn, then stepped firmly past the thin groove in the dusty floor that marked where the gate had rested.

Yuan saw a diffuse light coming from beyond the gateway. Elverda walked toward it, her frail figure erect, unbent. Then she turned a corner and disappeared from his view.

Dorn stood like a stolid figure carved from ironwood. Tamara was on tiptoes, her arms extended as if she were about to take flight. Yuan heard his pulse thumping in his ears.

No one spoke a word. The tunnel was absolutely silent.

Elverda stepped toward the light, her own pulse racing. The only other time she had seen the artifact it showed her a vision of her own life, of the mother who bore her and loved her, of the baby she had never had. It transformed her from a bitter old woman ready for death into a companion for the man-machine Dorn, willing to ply the cold emptiness of the Asteroid Belt to help him find his atonement.

Now she ducked into the grotto where the light glowed coolly. She stopped and stared into the radiance. Its brightness softened, and she saw vague shapes forming and dissolving over and over again, like waves lapping up on a beach, like clouds wafting through the summer sky. She wanted to see her mother again, wanted to hold her and tell her what she'd never been able to say in real life, that she'd always loved her.

But when the shapes coalesced it was not her mother who faced her: it was Dorn, half human, half machine, reaching toward her with both his arms. Like a helpless baby. Like a boy reaching toward his mother. Like a man who felt lost and despairing, desperate for a helping hand. And she knew that she had to sculpt this semi-human, make his heroic statue for all the world to see, make it out of metal and stone, etch every fine tracery on his metal side, make the stone glow like the living flesh of his other half. That was her task, her duty, her goal, to immortalize this man and make his final atonement a memorial to human conscience.