Elverda settled back in the galley chair. “You’re certain?”
“Yes. Thank you anyway.”
“De nada,” she said. She picked up the mug of tea again, then asked, “Did your radar sweep turn up anything?”
“Nothing.”
“No bodies?”
“Not even any debris.”
“Are you sure we’re at the right location?”
He nodded ponderously. “I checked with Ceres. The battle took place here. I wasn’t in it, but I was given to understand that at least a dozen mercenaries were killed.”
“Which corporation did they serve? Astro or Humphries?”
The human half of Dorn’s face frowned slightly. “What difference does it make?”
“We could check their corporate headquarters. Perhaps they’ve already picked up the bodies.”
“No,” he said, flexing the leg again. “The corporations never picked up their dead. They simply wrote them off their accounting ledgers.”
“Inhuman,” Elverda murmured.
“Humans often perform inhuman acts. I myself am the foremost example of that sorry fact.”
“That wasn’t you,” Elverda said quickly. “That was someone else. Another person. Not you, not who you are now.”
“Still…” He bowed his head briefly, as if uttering a swift prayer. Then, “The fact remains that there are no bodies to be found at this location.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that they have drifted much farther than I anticipated.”
“Or they were destroyed in the battle.”
Dorn seemed to consider that for a moment. “We’ll do a spiral search pattern.”
“For how long?”
“A few days, at least. If we don’t find anything we’ll move on to the next battle site.”
“That would be the last one, wouldn’t it?”
“The last one that I know of. I’m certain there are others.”
Elverda hesitated, then plunged ahead. “What if there aren’t any others? What if we’ve found all the bodies that there are to find? What then?”
He stared at her, one eye an unblinking red camera lens, the other all too human.
“Then my mission is finished,” he said.
“And what do you do then?”
He didn’t answer. He can’t, Elverda said to herself. He’s built his life around this mission and once it’s over his life will have no purpose, no meaning.
Then she realized, Nor will mine, once I finish his sculpture.
With Nicco beside him in his nanosuit, Theo hung at the end of his safety tether and surveyed the gashed length of hull where
“Hafta patch that up,” Nicco said over the suit-to-suit radio link, “before we transfer any fuel to ya.”
“We have other fuel tanks,” said Theo. “Undamaged. On the other side of the wheel.”
“Oh. Okay, good. But the antennas come first,” Nicco said. “Skipper wants them antennas workin’ before we do anything else.”
Nodding inside his bubble helmet, Theo said, “Fine with me. But we can’t put them here, the skin’s too torn up.”
“Where, then?”
Pointing with an extended arm, Theo said, “Over on that section, by the command pod. That way gives us the shortest path for the circuitry.”
“Show me,” said Nicco.
Theo felt distinctly nervous about disconnecting his safety tether. The suit’s propulsion pack can jet you around the ship for hours, he told himself. You can always jet back to an airlock, the tethers are just an extra safety precaution. He knew it, but he still felt edgy about being outside the ship with this scavenger.
And Mom’s in the pod with their skipper, he realized.
“I’m coming out,” said Kirk’s voice in Theo’s helmet earphones.
“Wait,” he replied. “We’re moving to the next section of the hull. Bring the supplies there.”
“What the hell am I supposed to be, a donkey or something?” Kirk complained. “How come I have to carry all this junk?”
“Too heavy for you?” Nicco jeered.
“Just ’cause it’s weightless don’t mean it’s easy to handle, wiseass,” Kirk shot back. “Come on down here and give me a hand.”
“Okay, okay,” said Nicco. Theo could see his teeth grinning.
“I’ll be over at the next section, by the pod,” Theo said, pointing. “I’ll see you both there.”
“Yeah.” Nicco pulled himself hand over hand along his tether, heading for the open airlock hatch where Kirk waited with the materials to paint a new antenna set onto the undamaged section of the hull.
Theo unclipped his tether and squeezed the control stud at his waist. The jet pack surged against his back and he lunged across the slashed section of hull, heading toward the backup control pod.
Once there he clipped the tether to a cleat and looked inside the pod. His mother and Valker seemed to be in earnest conversation. Wish I could hear what they’re saying, Theo thought. If he tries anything with Mom I’ll…
You’ll what? he asked himself. What can you do? Bitterly, he thought that it would have been better if they’d never seen Valker and his crew of scavengers. If I hadn’t been in this suit when they hailed us…
Suddenly an idea popped into his head. The suit radios don’t have much range, but we’re closer to Ceres now. If these scavengers found us there might be other ships close enough to hear me!
But so would Valker’s crew. So what? Theo asked himself. We can’t be in more trouble than we are now.
Realizing that he had to act fast or not at all, Theo raised his gloved hands before his face so he could see the keypad built into his suit’s left wrist. He punched up a different frequency from the suit-to-suit freak he’d been using with Nicco and Kirk.
He licked his lips, then said, “This is ore ship
He saw Nicco and Kirk sailing toward him, towing a mesh net bulging with cans and tubes: the materials to spray new antennas onto the hull.
Kirk came up close enough almost to touch helmets with him. “That wasn’t smart, kid,” he snarled.
Back on
“I’ve been thinking about your question,” he said slowly. “About what to do once we’ve recovered the last of the bodies.”
Elverda looked at him questioningly. “What will you do?” she asked.
The human side of his face almost smiled. “I suppose what I will do is try to find a way to die.”
“No!” she snapped. “You mustn’t!”
“What point—”
The comm computer’s message light began blinking. Elverda touched the receive key.
“This is ore ship
