The Aftermath

“You need major maintenance,” Elverda said as she sank wearily into the chair on the opposite side of the galley table.

Dorn puffed out a grunt. “That is an understatement.”

Theo took the chair at the end of the narrow table. “I need to get back to Syracuse,” he said. “My mother and sister are in danger there.”

“Danger?” Elverda turned toward him.

“A gang of scavengers has attached themselves to my ship,” Theo explained. “I hate to think of what they’ll do to my mother and sister if we don’t get there fast.”

Dorn’s human eye closed briefly. Then he said, “Their ship is named Vogeltod?”

“You know them?”

“We know them. They’re undoubtedly waiting for us to rendezvous with your ship so that they can board us and take over this vessel.”

“We should get away,” Elverda said, “as quickly as possible.”

“But my mother!” Theo protested. “My sister!”

“What good could we do?” Elverda asked.

“We can’t just leave them in the hands of those bastards!”

Dorn said, “He’s right. We must to do what we can.”

“With one hand?” Elverda scoffed.

“I can help you repair the arm,” Theo offered. “While we’re on our way to Syracuse.”

Dorn contemplated him for a silent moment. Then, “What do you know about bioelectronic circuitry? Micromechanical systems?”

“Some,” Theo replied. “Not much, I admit. But if you’ve got manuals, instruction vids, I can learn while we’re on our way back to my ship. At least…” He stopped himself from going on.

Dorn almost smiled. “At least you have two working hands. I understand.”

* * *

Pacing the narrow confines of Pleiades’s bridge Victor saw that Hunter was heading for Syracuse. Good, he said to himself. Then he recalled that the half-machine creature on Hunter had wanted him to head back to Ceres and turn himself in. Screw that, he thought.

They heard Pauline’s signal, Victor knew. They’ll get to her before I do. He nodded to himself. Good. Fine. The sooner Pauline gets help the better.

Then his comm screen showed the seamed, aged face of the old woman. “Attention Syracuse,” she said. “This is Hunter. We have been diverted temporarily. We estimate rendezvous with you in approximately five hours.”

Five hours, Victor thought. He returned to the command chair and pecked out his navigation program. At the rate I’m moving I’ll be there in a little more than six hours.

For the first time in months, Victor smiled.

ORE SHIP SYRACUSE: BACKUP COMMAND POD

Valker stopped his descent and, clinging to the rungs in the shadows of the dimly lit tube tunnel, he listened to Pauline and her daughter. He could clearly hear their voices echoing up the tube, even though the two women were speaking in hushed whispers.

“Fire off the pod?” the daughter asked. “But—”

“We’ve got to get away from those men,” Pauline said urgently. “We can escape in the pod and let the people in Hunter pick us up.”

“But what good would that do?” the daughter demanded. “They’ll just come after us, whether we’re in Hunter or here.”

Impatiently, Pauline answered, “We’re alone here. Alone against ten of them. At least aboard Hunter we’ll have a better chance.”

Valker could make them out, down at the end of the tube. Pauline was working the bulkhead-mounted pad that controlled the hatch into the command pod.

“That Captain Valker isn’t so bad,” the daughter was saying. “He wouldn’t let them hurt us.”

“Angela, for god’s sake!” Pauline snapped. “Don’t be a fool.”

“But—”

“We can’t trust him.”

Valker sighed philosophically. The woman’s right. Even if I want to protect her and her daughter, the roughnecks behind me won’t leave them alone. Too bad. I might have changed my whole life with a woman like Pauline at my side. Too bad.

As soon as the hatch slid open Valker called to them. “Hello ladies! Good to see you’ve recovered, Angela.”

Staring up at him, they looked up like a pair of guilty waifs suddenly caught in a police spotlight.

Pauline pushed her daughter through the hatch and started into the command pod herself. Valker clambered down the rungs as swiftly as a monkey, then dropped the final few meters and slammed his palm against the hatch’s control panel, stopping Pauline from shutting it.

“You weren’t thinking of leaving, were you?” he asked, stepping into the cramped little pod.

Pauline backed away from him until her hip bumped against the control board. Angela stood off to one side, half smiling at him.

“Please don’t go,” Valker said, with exaggerated courtliness. “The fun is just beginning.”

* * *

“This is weird,” Theo muttered as he lifted Dorn’s prosthetic arm out of its shoulder socket.

The cyborg was sitting stolidly on a stool by the workbench. An interactive maintenance vid was running on the wall screen of the workshop. The arm felt heavy in Theo’s hands; he put it down carefully on the workbench’s top, littered with tools.

“Can you feel any of this?” Theo asked.

Dorn nodded slightly. “It isn’t pain, but the sensation isn’t pleasant, either.”

Jabbing a thumb toward the wall screen, Theo said, “According to the vid, this shoulder joint should be self- lubricating.”

“Pressurized air lubrication, I know,” said Dorn. “But the shoulder seizes up. The lubrication fails.”

Theo asked the voice-activated program for a list of possible failure modes.

“Air leakage,” he said, studying the list. “That must be it.”

“Or erosion of the bearings.”

“I can test the bearings,” Theo said. Pointing, he asked, “That’s an electron microscope, isn’t it?”

“The maintenance program should have a subroutine for testing the bearings.”

“Right.”

Half an hour later, as he was replacing the bearings in the shoulder ring of Dom’s arm, Theo said, “The bearings are all well within specification.”

“Then it must be a pinpoint leak in the air lubrication,” said Dorn. “We don’t have the equipment to find a microscopic hole in the seal.”

Theo thought a moment. “Maybe we can—”