The Aftermath

“Yours,” the Hawaiian answered without hesitation.

“You’re certain?”

“Sure, captain. You’re the captain and that’s it.”

“Even if she goes to bed with you?”

Koop’s face flamed red. Tamara actually smiled.

“We’ve already been in bed together,” she said, her smile turning into a self-satisfied smirk. “It was very enjoyable.”

“I see,” Yuan said tightly.

“That’s got nothin’ to do with who’s captain,” Koop said.

Yuan looked into his steady brown eyes. “This is important, Koop. I can’t have her going over my head.”

“You’ve made your point, captain,” Tamara said. “I’ll follow your orders without question.”

“No calling back to headquarters behind my back,” Yuan said.

Smiling again, she replied, “I won’t go over your head, or behind your back, or under your toes.”

“All right, then.”

“But we are going to find the artifact, aren’t we?” she added.

Yuan hesitated. He knew that she wouldn’t want to tell headquarters that she knew anything about the artifact. Humphries wants the renegade and the sculptress killed because they know about it. He’ll kill all of us if he knows that we know.

Impatient with his silence, Tamara went on, “We have Harbin and the artist. Our mission is completed once we eliminate them. But if we can get the artifact—”

“We could get ourselves killed,” Yuan snapped.

“Or be in control of the most powerful force in the solar system,” she purred.

CARGO SHIP PLEIADES: BRIDGE

Victor kept the fusion drive accelerating at one full g and watched Vogeltod dwindling in his wake. Nodding to himself, he thought, Scavengers like Valker aren’t looking for a long and difficult chase. They want easy pickings, and there must be lots of them scattered around the Belt: ships that were blasted in battle during the war, ships that are abandoned, or their crews killed.

It wasn’t until Vogeltod had disappeared altogether from his screen that the frightening thought hit him. What if a scavenger finds Syracuse before I do?

What if that bastard Valker follows me and finds Syracuse because I lead him to her?

No. He shook his head to clear the idea from his mind. It’ll take months, maybe years before I find Pauline and the kids. Valker won’t have that kind of patience. He’s looking for prey, he wants to feed himself and his crew, he can’t wait that long. His own crew would slit his throat first.

Still, Victor shut down the main engine and used the cold-gas maneuvering jets to shift Pleiades away from the outbound vector it had been following. He kicked Pleiades into a trajectory that climbed well above his original course. Most ships travel close to the ecliptic: that’s where the asteroids are. He might not think of looking up. Go silent again, don’t leave a trail for him to follow, he told himself. Don’t take any chances.

Once he had convinced himself that he had lost Vogeltod, he called up the navigation program and restudied his options.

I’ve got to stay farther away from the Ceres sector, he realized. Parasites like Valker must be combing the region, looking for derelicts to scavenge. But that means I’ll have to cover a wider arc to have any hope of intercepting Pauline and the kids.

He decided to cruise silently for at least three days before turning on the search radar. Then he decided to make it a week. He didn’t want to take any chances of giving Valker or anyone else a signal they could home in on.

* * *

Vogeltod’s bridge was a strange assortment of equipment, most of it taken from vessels that Valker and his crew had seized and retrofitted into the old bucket. Valker himself sat in a command chair that had once belonged to Admiral Gormley, the victim of a bloody ambush during the war.

Valker was a big man, almost two meters tall, broad in the shoulders, deep in the chest. He was almost always smiling, a bright devil-may-care smile that showed lots of teeth. Where another man might show tension, even fear, in a dangerous situation, Valker smiled and fought his way through. During the war he’d been a mercenary, first with Astro Corporation, then with Humphries Space Systems.

When the shooting stopped, most mercenaries were at a loss. For years there had been plenty of work for them, and good pay. Not that they fought all the time. Much of their work involved building bases or scouting through the cold emptiness of the Belt, looking for prey. They seldom engaged in battle against other mercenaries. No percentage in that. Instead, they swooped clown on hapless cargo ships and smelters, like hawks going after pigeons.

The official end of the war finished that. For the most part. Some mercenaries became outlaws, pirates, still attacking peaceful vessels. But they soon learned that no one would buy the cargoes they captured. Big George Ambrose and the other rock rats busily building their new habitat at Ceres had no time or money to hire a police force to go after the pirates. They simply saw to it that no one in the Belt bought stolen cargoes. The pirates soon realized there was little profit in their piracies. And there was always the risk that Big George’s people would execute you without delay.

Valker was smarter than that. When the Second Asteroid War broke out he had just graduated from the University of Pisa with a double degree in economics and marketing. He had been a star on the international soccer team he himself had helped to organize. His plan was to spend three years—perhaps as much as five—in the Belt, working as a prospector, locating asteroids rich in metals and minerals, claiming them as an independent corporation and then selling them to the highest bidder.

The Asteroid War made such ventures far too hazardous. Valker saw that either he joined one of the major corporations or he went back to Earth empty-handed. Or got himself killed. So he became a mercenary—until the war abruptly ended.

While most of the mercenaries found themselves out of work, and flooded back to the Earth/Moon region to look for jobs, Valker realized that there was an economic niche available in the Belt: salvage. There were plenty of vessels abandoned by their crews, drifting through the Belt, there for the taking. He could claim the vessels as salvage, then sell them back to the rock rats for a handsome profit.

He was a born salesman. With his rugged good looks and winning smile, he talked a banker into leasing him a small ship, Vogeltod. It wasn’t difficult to round up a crew: he picked nine men, all former mercenaries, all quite prepared to stretch the laws of salvage once they were out in the Belt and away from the prying eyes of Big George and the IAA.

They searched for abandoned vessels. Some were battered hulks, little more than junk. Most had equipment in them that could be scavenged. But the real money was in ships that were intact. Valker and his crewmates pounced on lonely vessels deep in the Belt, killed the crews and brought the ships back to Ceres for sale. There were always questions, raised eyebrows, lurking suspicions. Valker smiled his way through and sold the “abandoned” vessels to the highest bidder. There were always newcomers from Earth or the Moon with money in their accounts to invest in a new career in prospecting and mining.

Now Valker sat in Admiral Gormley’s old command chair and studied the data splashed on Vogeltod’s main screen. Pleiades was listed back at Ceres as