The Aftermath (3 page)

“Huh? Why?”

“Before the shooting starts.”

“
Chrysalis
is unarmed,” Theo said. “They don't have any weapons. Everybody knows that.”

“We don't have any weapons either,” said his father.

“But they wouldn't shoot at an unarmed ship. That doesn't make sense.”

“You hope.” Victor's fingers were flicking across the controls.

Turning a massively laden ore ship is neither a simple nor a quick maneuver. It takes time and lots of space. Theo glanced at the control screens and saw that
Syracuse
was slowly, painfully slowly, coming about.

Something flashed on the main screen.

“He's fired on her!” Victor shouted.

Theo saw a red-hot slash cut through the thin metal hull of one of
Chrysalis
's modules. A glittering cloud puffed out and immediately dissipated. Air, Theo realized. The module seemed to explode, shards of metal spinning out dizzily. And other shapes came tumbling, flailing into the airless emptiness of space. Bodies, Theo saw, his heart suddenly thundering, his guts clenching. Those are people! He's killing them!

“Stop!” screamed a voice from the habitat's comm center. “Stop or you'll kill—”

The voice cut off. Theo watched with bulging eyes as invisible laser beams from the attack ship methodically sliced one module of the habitat after another, slashing, destroying, killing. A cloud of spinning debris and twisted bodies spread outward like ripples of death.

“You've got to do something!” Theo shouted.

“I am,” his father replied. “I'm getting us the hell away from here.”

“Something to help them!”

“What can we do? You want to join them?”

As
Syracuse
slowly, ponderously turned away from its approach to Ceres, its telescopic cameras maintained their focus on the slaughter of the
Chrysalis
habitat. Module after module exploded soundlessly, corpses and wreckage flung into space.

Tears in his eyes, Theo leaned over his father's broad shoulder and shouted into his face, “You can't just leave them there!”

His eyes fastened on the carnage displayed on the main screen, Victor told his son, “The hell I can't! I've got to protect you and your sister and mother.”

“You're running away!”

Victor nodded bleakly. “Just as fast as I can get this ore bucket to fly.”

Theo glanced up at the main screen once more, then down again to his father's grimly determined face. He saw beads of perspiration on his father's brow; his knuckles were white as he gripped the chair's armrests.

“But there must be
something
we can do!”

The bearded man's image appeared again on the main screen, sharp and steady. “Ore ship
Syracuse,
” he said, “just where do you think you're going?”

Theo's blood froze in his veins.

BATTLE FRENZY

“Are you harboring the fugitive Lars Fuchs?” asked the stranger, his voice dagger-cold.

Victor replied evenly, “We're inbound from the deeper Belt, carrying fourteen thousand tons of ore.” Then he added, “No passengers.”

“How do I know that's the truth?”

“You're welcome to come aboard and see for yourself.”

The dark stranger lapsed into silence, apparently deep in thought. Theo thought his eyes looked strange, their pupils dilated wider than he had ever seen before.

“Damn!” Victor growled. “The intercom's down again.”

“We just fixed it yesterday,” Theo said.

“Not well enough.” Victor leaned on the comm console's mute button and whispered urgently to his son, “Get down to the habitation module and get your mother and sister into suits. You suit up too.”

“What about you?”

“Do it!”

Theo scrambled out of the control pod, nearly banging his head on the rim of the hatch, and clambered up the rungs set into the tubular passageway that ran the length of the three-kilometer-long buckyball tube. With each rung the feeling of weight lessened, until he let his soft-booted feet rise off the rungs and started scampering along the ladderway like a racing greyhound, his fingers barely flicking on the rungs. The closer he got to the ship's center of rotation the less g force he felt: soon he was literally flying through the narrow tube.

Meanwhile Victor sat alone in the control pod, his mind working in overdrive. He's a killer. He's wiped out the habitat, must have killed more than a thousand people, for god's sake. The nearest help is days away, weeks. Hell, it takes more than half an hour just to get a message to Earth. We're alone out here. Alone.

The stranger aboard the attack vessel seemed to stir to life. “Well? Where is Fuchs?” he demanded.

“Who am I speaking to?” Victor asked, stalling for time. “You know who I am but I don't know who you are.”

The man almost smiled. “I am your death unless you surrender Fuchs to me.”

His fingers racing across the control keyboard like a pianist attempting a mad cadenza, Victor Zacharias answered, “Lars Fuchs isn't aboard this ship. Send an inspection party if you want to. I assure you—”

Syracuse
shuddered. We've been hit! Victor realized. The bastard's shooting at us!

A bank of red lights flared angrily on the control panel. The main antennas. He's silenced us. And the fuel tanks below the antennas; he's ripped them open! With a swift check of his other diagnostics, Victor hesitated a heartbeat, then punched the key that released the ship's cargo.
Syracuse
lurched heavily as fourteen thousand tons of asteroidal rock were suddenly freed from their magnetic grips and went spinning into space between the ore carrier and the attack vessel.

That's the best shielding I can provide, Victor said to himself as he punched up
Syracuse
's propulsion controls and goosed the main fusion engine to maximum acceleration. In the main display screen above his curved control panel he saw glints of laser light splashing off the rocks that now floated between him and the attack ship. Come on, he silently urged the fusion engine. Get us out of here!

“You can't run away,” came the voice from the attack ship, sounding more amused than angry.

I can try, Victor replied silently.

*   *   *

Theo banged painfully against the rungs protruding from the central passageway's curving bulkhead. Dad's accelerating the ship, he thought. Trying to get away. He grabbed a ladder rung and pulled himself along the tube. Within seconds he was no longer weightless but falling toward the habitation module, where his mother and sister were. Careful now, he told himself, remembering how he'd broken his arm a few years earlier in a stupid fall down the tube. He jackknifed in midair, banging his knee painfully against the rungs, and turned around so that he was falling feet first.

He heard a hatch creak open down at the end of the tube and, glancing down, saw his sister Angie starting to climb upward toward him.

“Go back!” he yelled at her. “Get into a suit! Mom too!”

“What's happening?” Angie shouted back, her voice echoing off the tube's curving bulkhead. “The intercom isn't working.” She sounded more annoyed than frightened.

“We're being attacked!” Theo hollered, scrambling toward her as fast as he dared. “Get into suits, you and Mom!”

“Attacked? By who? What for?”

The lights flickered and went out. The dim emergency lights came on.

“Get into the goddamned suits!” Theo roared.

Angie began backing toward the hatch. “No need to swear, Theo.”

“The hell there isn't,” he muttered to himself.

He clambered down the rungs and dropped the final couple of meters through the open hatch and onto the bare metal deck of the auxiliary airlock. Long habit—backed by his father's stern discipline—made him reach overhead to close the hatch and make certain it was properly sealed. Then he pushed through the inner hatch and entered the family's living quarters.

The accommodations were spare, almost spartan, but they were all the home that Theo remembered. A small communications center, crammed with electronics equipment; its deck was polished plastic tiles, its overhead decorated with a fanciful ancient star map that showed the constellations as the beasts and legendary heroes of old. When he was a little kid Theo loved to sneak in here at night and gaze at the glow of the fluorescent figures.

No time for stargazing now. The next hatch led into the main living area, with its wide glassteel port that looked out into the depths of space. Well-worn comfortable sofas and cushioned chairs. Through the port Theo saw a jumble of rocks spinning off into the distance, flashes of light glinting off them.

Dad's jettisoned our cargo, he realized. And that bastard's shooting at us, whoever he is.

The lighting was normal here. Theo hurried through the living area and into the equipment bay that fronted the main airlock. His mother was helping Angie into her space suit, sliding the hard-shell torso over his sister's head and upraised arms. Angie's head popped out of the collar ring; she looked as if she'd been swallowed by a robotic monster.

Angie glared at Theo, more nettled than scared, he thought. She thinks this is all my fault, as usual, he said to himself.

It was hard to tell if his mother was worried or frightened. Pauline Zacharias seemed calm, unruffled. Theo couldn't imagine anything that would rattle his mother. She knows Dad wouldn't tell us to get into the suits unless we were in deep spit, but she seems totally in control of herself.

Angela was tucking her thick dark hair inside her suit's collar, looking thoroughly annoyed. Funny, Theo thought, how Angie got Dad's height and coloring and I got Mom's light hair and long legs. Genes can be peculiar.

His mother reached for the gloves resting on the locker shelf beside Angie's helmet.

“You can put these on yourself,” she said in a low, cool voice. “Quickly now. I've got to help Theo.”

Angie took the gloves, her eyes still on Theo. “You sure that Dad wants us in the suits, Thee, or is this just one of your little stunts?”

“Didn't you feel the ship lurch?” he answered hotly. “We're being attacked, for god's sake!”

“That's stupid,” Angie said as she tugged on her gloves. “This old boat is always shaking and groaning. Besides, who'd want to attack us?” But she sealed her gloves to the cuffs of her suit's arms and reached for her helmet.

“Who's attacking us?” his mother asked. “And why?”

Pauline was a handsome woman with the steady gray eyes and firm jaw of someone who had weathered her share of troubles. She was slightly taller than Theo; he had always measured his height against her, not his stubby father. She wore her sandy blonde hair cropped short, not the stylish shoulder length that she allowed her daughter to flaunt.

“I don't know who's attacking us,” Theo said, “but he's smashed up
Chrysalis
pretty awful.”

“But Ceres is neutral territory!”

“Not anymore.”

Pauline opened her son's suit locker.

“Mom,” Theo said, stretching the truth only slightly, “Dad said I should help you with your suit before I get into mine.”

“What about me?” Angie snapped.

Theo smirked at her. “He knew Mom would have his precious little chubbo all suited up by the time I got here.”

“Mom!” she yowled.

Pauline sat down on the bench that ran in front of the lockers. “Don't you two start,” she warned. “This is no time for bickering.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Theo. But he saw Angie stick her tongue out at him behind their mother's back. As he pulled his mother's suit torso from its rack he thought that his sister might be two years older than he, but she was still nothing more than a bratty girl.

Dad had spoken more than once about buying new nanofabric space suits for them, the kind you could pull on like plastic coveralls and be suited up in a minute or less. But they cost too much. All they had aboard
Syracuse
were these old-fashioned cumbersome hard-shell suits, with their big ungainly boots and heavy backpacks and glassteel bubble helmets. At least the suits ran on oxygen at normal air pressure; you didn't have to spend an hour prebreathing low-pressure oxy like the earliest astronauts did.

They said little as they donned their suits. The ship shuddered and jolted a few times, whether from being hit by the attacker's laser beams or from Dad jinking to get away, Theo had no way of knowing. Dull booming noises echoed distantly. Angie's eyes widened with every thud and shake; their mother looked grim.

Leaving the visors of their helmets up, the three of them inspected each other's suits, making certain all the connections were in place and the seals tight. Theo noticed that his hands were trembling slightly.

“What do we do now?” Angie asked. Theo thought her voice sounded shaky. She's scared now, he realized. I am too, but I can't let them see it. I've got to be the man here.

Pauline said, “Now we wait. If the ship is badly punctured we can live inside the suits until we repair the damage.”

Theo pressed the stud on his left cuff. “Dad, we're suited up. Waiting for your orders.”

No answer.

“I told you the intercom wasn't working, chimpbrain,” Angie said.

“The suit radios are on a different frequency, dumbbutt,” Theo told her. “Dad, we're in our suits. What's your situation?”

Nothing but silence. Not even the crackle of the radio's carrier wave.

“Dad!” Theo shouted.

Angie's face went ashen. “Do you think…”

Theo turned from his sister to his mother. For the first time in his life she looked fearful.

VICTOR SULEIMAN ZACHARIAS