The Aftermath

them together so that one man could operate all the controls from one console on the bridge.

It wasn’t easy. Unlike his rickety old Syracuse, Pleiades had been designed to be operated by a crew of six. Cheena Madagascar could sit in her command chair like a queen and have her lackeys run the vessel while she did nothing more than utter commands. Victor didn’t have lackeys: only himself.

He found himself wishing that he had Theo here to help him; even the teenager’s clumsy efforts would have been some relief. That started him thinking about Pauline and Angela and the three of them alone on Syracuse drifting out to god knows where and … He squeezed his eyes shut. Stop it, he commanded himself. Stop it or you’ll drive yourself crazy.

Hunger finally made him crawl out from under the consoles and climb stiffly to his feet, scratching at his sweaty beard. Pleiades was racing outward from Ceres under a full g acceleration. The ship’s main wheel had ceased its rotation and all the compartments inside it had pivoted on their bearings to orient themselves properly to the acceleration. If Victor closed his eyes it felt as if he were standing on Earth.

“I’ll cut the acceleration in an hour or so,” Victor said aloud as he headed for the galley. He was certain that no one was chasing after him. Cheena Madagascar was probably sputtering with anger, Big George was undoubtedly volcanic, but there was really nothing much that they could do. Send a ship after him? They’d have to be willing to spend the money for a ship and crew, and even then Victor had such a good lead on any potential pursuer that a chase would be fruitless.

Besides, he was running silent, emitting neither a tracking beacon nor telemetry reports on his condition. He didn’t want to be found. Not yet.

* * *

It had been a tricky maneuver, hunkering down so close to the pitted, boulder-strewn surface of asteroid 66 -059. Viking was almost as wide as the oblong, elongated rock’s breadth. The bridge was absolutely silent as Yuan piloted the wheel-shaped vessel to within a few meters of the asteroid’s grainy, dusty surface. It’s like a computer game, he told himself as he worked the fingertip controls on the armrests of his command chair with practiced delicacy. Easy does it. Easy.

“Close enough,” Yuan breathed as he cut the ship’s maneuvering jets. He saw that his officers had their eyes locked on him, then realized his face was beaded with perspiration.

“We’ll rotate with the rock,” he said. “If they probe with radar they won’t be able to distinguish us against the normal backscatter.”

“Their resolution will get better as they come closer,” Tamara countered, from her comm console.

“By then it’ll be too late for them,” Yuan snapped.

Koop nodded slowly, but the expression on his face said, I hope you’re right.

Yuan’s other two ships had dispersed to a distance of an hour’s flight, at one g acceleration, and gone silent. No communications now, Yuan told himself. Now we sit and wait, quiet as a tiger crouching in the reeds by a waterhole.

“Computer shows we’re drifting slightly,” the navigation officer said, almost in a whisper.

“Maybe we should grapple the rock,” Koop suggested.

Yuan shook his head. “No. I want to be able to jump out at an instant’s notice.” To the nav officer he asked, “How bad’s the drift?”

“One point four meters per minute. We can correct for it, captain.”

“Cold jets only. I don’t want to give them any signature that they can pick up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Better get yourselves a meal while we’re waiting,” Yuan said. Then he added, “One at a time. Fix a tray in the galley and bring it back here.”

Tamara got up from her comm console. “I’ll make a tray for you, captain.”

Yuan suppressed a pleased grin. “Do that,” he said.

* * *

The human half of Dorn’s face was frowning as he studied the image on Hunter’s main screen.

Sitting beside him on the bridge’s padded rolling chair, Elverda said, “It looks like bodies. Five… no, six bodies.”

“How could they still be so close to the asteroid?” Dorn asked. “The battle was more than four years ago. They should have dispersed far into space, like the others we’ve recovered.”

Elverda shrugged her frail shoulders. “Does it matter? The bodies are there.”

“Yes,” he murmured. Tapping on the keyboard before him, he called up the velocity vectors of the images on the screen.

“They all have the same velocity,” Elverda saw.

“Within a hair’s breadth.”

“Is that normal?”

“If they were all blasted into space at the same time, by the same explosion.”

Elverda felt a chill creeping along her spine. There is something eerie about this, she thought. We’ve never seen a group of bodies clustered together this way.

“If you multiply their velocities by the length of time since the battle was fought,” Dorn said, “they should be thousands of kilometers from the asteroid. Tens of thousands of kilometers.”

“But they’re not. They’re here.”

“Which means that they were placed here recently. Perhaps only a few days ago.”

“Could there have been another battle here?”

Dorn sank back in the command chair, his eyes never leaving the radar image on the screen with its superimposed vector numbers. Elverda looked at him, waiting for him to make a decision.

“I’ve sworn to recover all the bodies that have been left drifting through the Belt,” he said, as much to himself as to her.

“Humphries knows that,” she whispered.

“This could be a trap, then.”

“Do you think…?”

“There’s one way to find out,” Dorn said, tapping the keyboard to call up the propulsion program.

INTO THE TRAP

“He’s accelerating!” the nav officer shouted.

“I can see that,” Yuan said testily as he leaned forward in his command chair so hard that the meal tray slid off his lap and clattered to the deck.

“He’s turning away,” Koop said.

“Power up,” Yuan commanded. “Now!”

“He didn’t fall into your trap,” said Tamara. “He’s too smart for that.”

Feeling the surge of acceleration as Viking climbed away from the asteroid, Yuan said, “It doesn’t matter. He’s close enough for us to get him.”

Fingers flicking on the keyboards set into his armrests, Yuan called up the weapons display on the bridge’s main screen. “Comm, tell the other ships to power up and converge on the target’s vector.”

“Yessir,” Tamara said.

Yuan smiled as he peered at the main screen. The renegade’s ship was nothing but an electronic blip, accelerating away from him. But he knew how to play this game. His other two ships would close the trap while he moved in for the kill.

To his first mate he commanded, “Koop, activate the laser.”