The Aftermath

Theo thought he should feel wonderful. Ecstatic. Triumphant. Instead he merely felt tired.

“Turn on the tracking beacon,” he said. “And the telemetry transmitter.”

“Yes,” Pauline replied. “Green lights! They’re working. At last, they’re working.”

“Good,” he said, feeling flat and somehow disappointed. “We’ll come in now.”

“You did it, Thee,” said his mother, her voice trembling slightly. “You did it.”

“I had help,” he replied, eying Kirk and Nicco, who were drifting closer to him.

He clicked back to the suit-to-suit frequency. “Okay, we can go back inside now.”

Nicco was close enough to see his toothy grin and crooked scar. Kirk had slid around behind him.

“We’re goin’ in, kid,” Kirk said. “You’re not.”

* * *

Aboard Pleiades, Victor cursed long and loud as he desperately tried to pick up the ion trail from the exhaust of Hunter’s fusion drive. I must have misjudged their distance, he said to himself between bouts of swearing.

“Maybe you got the motherhumping vector wrong,” he muttered to himself.

He set up the communications keyboard and checked the transmission he’d heard. No, the vector’s correct, he saw. They must have been farther away than I estimated.

The comm screen’s yellow message light was blinking. Automatically, Victor tapped the keypad to play it back.

“This is Syracuse, testing its communications system. Testing, testing, one, two, three.”

Pauline’s voice!

Suddenly Victor’s hands were shaking so badly he could hardly manage to work the keyboard. They’ve fixed the antennas! He thought. Theo did it. Or Pauline. They’re alive! She’s alive!

Sure enough, the strong steady signal of a tracking beacon came through on its normal channel. With tears in his eyes Victor read off the name and registration that appeared on his comm screen: Syracuse.

ORE SHIP: SYRACUSE OUTSIDE

Even though he half expected it, it happened so fast that Theo didn’t know what to do. At first.

Nicco suddenly wrapped him in a bear hug, pinning Theo’s arms to his sides. Behind him, he felt Kirk click open his tether and then start banging and yanking on his life support backpack.

He didn’t have to ask what they were doing. They’re going to kill me, he thought. And then they’ll go back into the ship and rape Mom. And Angie.

Theo struggled but Nicco was surprisingly strong and held his arms pinned. The scavenger was grimacing with the effort, though, his inflated helmet pressing against Theo’s glassteel bubble. Theo was bigger than he and flooded with adrenaline. The two of them grunted and strained. Theo could see sweat breaking out on Nicco’s face, see his lips pulling back over his mottled teeth in an angry snarl.

“C’mon,” Nicco grunted to Kirk. “Whatcha doin’ back there?”

“Got his radio. But the goddamn air hoses are inside the pack,” Kirk growled. “I gotta pull off the whole fuckin’ tank.”

“Punch a hole in it!” Nicco shouted.

“Yeah… yeah…”

Theo felt Kirk hammering on his air tank. They’ll kill me! roared a voice in his head. They’ll kill me!

The three of them were floating weightlessly away from the ship, twisting and spinning as they struggled. Theo rammed a knee into Nicco’s groin and heard a satisfying screech of pain. He pulled his arms free and punched Nicco in the face as hard as he could. His gloved fist bounced off the inflated helmet but Nicco sailed backward, away from him, as Theo recoiled in the other direction with Kirk still hanging on his back.

My suit’s like armor, Theo thought gratefully. Kirk was swearing at the top of his lungs, still banging away at the air tank behind him. Theo tried to twist around and get Kirk off his back, but the scavenger had locked his legs around Theo’s middle. Fumbling for the kit buckled to his waist, Theo pulled out the first tool his fingers clutched, a smallish wrench. With all his might he pounded it against Kirk’s knee.

“Sonofabitch!” Kirk yowled. Theo realized that the nanosuits were too soft to offer much protection against such blows.

Kirk unwrapped his legs from Theo. “You shitfaced little bastard! I’ve got you now, asshole!”

Theo felt something click in his backpack and suddenly he was whooshing away from the two other men, jetting madly away from Syracuse, spinning wildly out into dead empty space. He saw the ship whirling insanely with the figures of the two nanosuited scavengers hovering near it.

“I’m gonna fuck your mother!” Kirk’s voice taunted in his helmet earphones. “And then your sister!”

“Me too!” Nicco added gleefully.

Theo knew he was going to die. The oxygen was spurting out of his life support tank and Kirk had disabled his radio. But all he could think was, I’ve failed. I’ve failed to protect Mom and Angie. I’ve failed them. I’ve failed them.

* * *

Valker was at Syracuse’s airlock, waiting for them with his fists on his hips and a disgusted sneer on his face.

“You two sure blew that one,” he grumbled as Kirk and Nicco began to peel off their nanosuits.

“We got rid of the kid, didn’t we?” Kirk snapped.

“One kid, and he damn near beat you. And you shot off your stupid mouths good and loud. Now the mother’s locked herself into the command pod and the daughter’s hiding somewhere.”

Nicco shrugged elaborately. “We’ll find ’em. The ship ain’t that big.”

“What you’re going to do,” Valker said, with steel in his voice, “is get back to Vogeltod and help the crew when the Hunter gets here.”

“And what’re you gonna do?” Kirk asked, his voice heavy with suspicion.

“I’m going to try to sweet-talk the mother into coming out of the pod.”

“You could blast her out.”

Valker shook his head. “Two numbskulls. We want this ship as intact as possible when we sell her at Ceres. Don’t you think the rock rats’ inspectors might wonder why the control pod hatch has been blasted open? And where the ship’s original owners might be?”

“Yeah, well…”

“I keep telling you dim bulbs: you catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar.”

Nicco made an obscene gesture.

“She knows you killed her son. You made that clear enough for anybody this side of Ceres to figure it out. Now I’ve got to sugar that woman until she unlocks the pod hatch.”

“Come on,” Kirk growled to Nicco. “Let’s go find the daughter.”

“Get back to our ship,” Valker insisted, “and get ready to take Hunter. The girl will still be here after we’ve taken it.”

Nicco nodded reluctantly. “Okay. You’re the skipper.”

Kirk grinned nastily and said to Valker, “Well, after you’ve sweet-talked the mother out of the pod,” he snickered, “save some for us.”