stolen. Its captain and owner, Cheena Madagascar, had even posted a hefty reward for the ship’s return. Big George Ambrose had declared the thief, somebody named Victor Zacharias, to be an outlaw and placed a modest price on his head.
The other men on the bridge grinned at him.
“The rewards don’t add up to all that much,” he continued, “but the good will could be helpful.”
“He’s no fool, though,” said the man at the nav console. “He sprinted away and now he’s shut down his main engine.”
“Trying to be invisible,” Valker muttered.
“And doing a good job of it. Radar ain’t picking up anything.”
Valker nodded absently. “You’re right: he’s no fool.” He pecked out a command to the ship’s computer on the keyboard set into the armrest of his chair. Let’s see what Ceres has on file about this thief. Know your customer, he said to himself. That’s the first rule of marketing.
ATTACK SHIP
BRIDGE
Everything stopped as Koop brought the cyborg and the old woman onto the bridge. The two crewmen who were still working at repairs of the equipment Dorn had smashed glanced at him warily, as did the officers at their consoles, two of them with spraytape covering their broken noses. Elverda’s face was drawn tight with tension. It was impossible to read any expression on the cyborg’s half-metal face.
Tamara, at the comm console, half turned in her chair as Koop led them in. Yuan glared at her, a warning to keep her mouth shut. I’m the captain, he said silently to her, I’m in charge.
“Harbin,” he began, “I want—”
“My name is no longer Dorik Harbin. Please call me Dorn.”
Yuan grimaced. “All right. Dorn. I want you to give my navigation officer the coordinates for the asteroid where the artifact is located.”
Elverda saw that all of them were staring openly at Dorn now: the three bridge officers, the captain, the pair of technicians, even the strapping Hawaiian. For a long moment Dorn said nothing; the bridge was absolutely silent except for the hum of electrical power and the whisper of air from the ventilation ducts.
“It will be very dangerous to go there,” Dorn said at last.
Yuan waved a hand impatiently. “That’s for me to worry about, not you. Give my nav officer the coordinates.”
“He may have moved the asteroid to a different orbit, or even destroyed it completely.”
“Just give the coordinates to my nav officer,” Yuan insisted.
Again Dorn hesitated. Then, “I want your promise that Ms. Apacheta will not be harmed.”
“The coordinates, dammit!” Yuan shouted. “Now!”
“I don’t care what happens to me, but I want her to be safe.”
Tamara said, “Do you want us to start pulling her fingernails out?”
Clenching his metal fist, Dorn said, “The rest of this bridge will be destroyed if you try that. Some of you will die.” His voice was flat, unemotional, but the others on the bridge shot uneasy glances at one another.
Before anyone could reply, Yuan broke into a forced chuckle. “All right. All right. I won’t touch a hair of her head. Does that satisfy you?”
“No,” Dorn said calmly. “I want your guarantee that no harm will come to her, neither by you nor any other member of this ship’s crew.”
Elverda complained, “Stop talking about me as if I’m not here.”
Ignoring her, Dorn said to the captain, “You are under orders to kill us both. You can kill me, but let her go free.”
“And what happens when Mr. Humphries finds out I’ve let her go?”
Dorn smiled with the human side of his face. “Once I give you the coordinates you will go to the asteroid and try to gain control of Humphries through the alien artifact.”
Yuan glanced at Tamara, who nodded minutely.
“If you succeed in getting the upper hand with Humphries, then allowing Ms. Apacheta to go free will be of no consequence. If you fail we will all be killed.”
“Including you,” said Yuan.
“I will die one way or the other. That doesn’t matter. The life of this woman does matter. Very much. To me.”
Moving beside him, Elverda said softly, “Dorn, I can’t let you throw your life away—”
“If you finish the work we’ve started, if you find the other bodies and give them decent death rites, then my life doesn’t matter. It never did, except to cause agony and death. You can complete my atonement.”
“Atonement?” Tamara blurted. “Is that what you’re after?”
“Atonement,” Dorn repeated.
Yuan said, “All right. Ms. Apacheta won’t be harmed in any way. Now give the coordinates to my nav officer.”
Without another word, Dorn turned and stepped to the navigation officer’s console, then leaned over his shoulder and began pecking on his keyboard with both his hands.
Turning to Tamara, Yuan commanded, “Notify
She arched an eyebrow. “You don’t want them to go with us?”
“No,” he said. “Do you?”
She thought it over for all of two seconds. “No, you’re right. We do this by ourselves.”
Elverda, still standing next to the captain’s chair, asked, “What about our ship, the
“We don’t need it now. Let it drift.”
Valker whistled softly as he read Victor Zacharias’s dossier from the computer screen built into the bulkhead at the foot of his bunk.
He was sitting up with the pillows bunched behind his back. His quarters were small but as sumptuous as he could make them, crammed with furniture and fixtures scavenged from salvaged vessels: a massive desk of actual teak filled one corner of the compartment, elephants and monkeys carved into its flanks and front; colorful draperies hung from the overhead; the entire lavatory had been ripped out of a luxurious corporate torch ship and shoehorned into place, gold faucets and all; the rich dark faux leather recliner that had been rammed into the other corner of the compartment had been taken from a prospector’s ship, the one luxury its late owner had possessed.
Valker took all that for granted, including the fact that he had to maneuver carefully around his pilfered treasures to get across the jam-packed compartment. His attention was fully focused on Zacharias’s dossier. The man had a family—wife and two teenagers—but they’d been lost after being attacked by the same monster who’d wiped out the original
So what’s he doing in a stolen ship this deep in the Belt? Valker asked himself. Searching for his family? Valker shook his head. Can’t be. It’s three years and more since his family disappeared. They’re dead by now. Have to be. Only a fool or a madman would still be searching for them. Only an idiot would steal a ship, make himself an outlaw with the rock rats, to go searching through this wilderness for his wife and kids.
“Only a fool or a madman,” Valker repeated aloud, softly.
Why track after a madman? Even if you find him you’ll have to kill him; he won’t give up that ship without a fight. And even if we do take the ship, once we bring it back to Ceres its rightful owner will claim it. We’ll get the
