The Aftermath

lounging at the inner airlock hatch, which was sealed shut. They stiffened at the sight of the approaching cyborg, gripped their weapons in their hands. One had a cordless power drill, the other an elaborately wicked-looking knife with a serrated blade.

“What’re you doin’ here?” asked the taller of the two, the one with the drill.

“Captain Valker sent me,” Dorn replied, shifting his steps slightly so that the one with the knife was on his prosthetic side.

“Valker? What for?”

“Why di’n’t he come himself?”

“Or call us on the intercom?”

Dorn was within arm’s reach of the pair of them. They seemed wary, distrustful. They both edged half a step backward as Dorn approached them.

The one with the knife lifted its blade so that its point was level with Dorn’s prosthetic eye.

“Why don’t I just carve you up here and now, ’stead of waitin’?”

Praying that his arm would work properly, Dorn grabbed the blade in his metal hand and twisted. The blade bent and the man holding it yowled in sudden pain. His partner, jaw dropped wide, fumbled for the power button on his drill as he backed away from Dorn.

Yanking the knife out of the first one’s hand, Dorn growled to the other, “Drop that toy before I shove it up your colon.”

For an instant both men stood frozen in shocked silence. Then Dorn heard Zacharias and his son running up the passageway. Seeing the weapons in their hands, the scavenger dropped his power drill to the deck with a dull clunk. The would-be knife wielder raised his hands over his head.

“Good work,” Victor said to Dorn. “That’s two of them.”

“There are seven more,” said Dorn.

* * *

Sitting in the bridge’s command chair, Elverda heard Kirk’s call from Pleiades, saw the angry irritation in his chiseled features. “Should we reply to him?” Pauline asked.

“No,” said Elverda. “Not until the men return.”

Angela stared at the frozen image of Kirk on the screen, but said nothing.

Elverda cut off the message and pulled up a view of the passageway where Dorn, Victor and Theo were leading the two scavengers back from the main airlock.

With Pauline standing on one side of her and Angela on the other, Elverda asked softly, “The men did not harm you?”

“No,” Angela said.

Turning to Pauline, Elverda dropped her voice to a near-whisper and asked, “Will you tell your husband?”

Pauline glanced at her daughter, then replied, “I suppose I will, sooner or later.”

“He’ll want to kill Valker.”

“Mother!” Angela blurted. “He raped you?”

Pauline pressed her lips together, then replied, “No, he didn’t rape me.”

“But…” Angela’s eyes went wide as she realized what her mother implied. “You mean… willingly?”

“Not willingly. I had no choice,” Pauline said, her voice flat and cold.

Angela’s mouth hung open but no words came out.

“Your husband will kill Valker,” Elverda repeated, “once he knows.”

Pauline said nothing.

* * *

“Look!” cried one of the scavengers. “That’s Nicco and the others comin’ over from Syracuse.”

Kirk and the three crewmen with him were jetting back to Hunter. He twisted in the emptiness and saw the three sunlit figures heading toward him.

“What’s goin’ on with you?” Kirk asked over his suit radio.

“Damn ship’s empty,” Nicco’s voice answered. “The women are gone.”

“They must be hiding.”

“They’re gone. And Valker ain’t answering us.”

Kirk nodded grimly inside his inflated helmet. “We can’t raise Valker either. Something’s gone wrong.”

The two groups of scavengers came together like gliding vultures, shifting clumsily in their flight.

“You think they got Valker?” Nicco asked.

“Don’t see how,” Kirk replied. “He had a pistol. The priest and the kid were unarmed.”

“The women musta gone aboard Hunter.”

“Or drifted into space.”

“What about the guy from Pleiades?” one of the crewmen asked. “Where’d he go?”

They coasted toward Hunter’s main airlock. Kirk saw that the hatch was open; the dimly lit airlock chamber looked empty.

“All right, hold it,” Kirk said as they glided to Hunter’s curving hull. “We gotta take stock before we go in.”

“Take stock of what?”

“The situation.”

“There’s seven of us against a priest, a kid, and an old lady.”

“And maybe the two other women.”

“And maybe the guy from Pleiades, too.”

“We got weapons and they don’t.”

Kirk sneered at them. “Weapons? You got a coupla power tools and some wrenches.”

“I’ve got a pistol,” Nicco pointed out.

“Yeah, and they prob’ly got Valker’s pistol. And the grenades he was carrying.”

That quieted them.

“Where’d you leave the heavy welder?” Kirk asked the two men who had disabled Hunters main thruster.

“We put it on a tether after we were done with it.”

“Go get it,” Kirk said. “We might need it to burn through some hatches.”

SMELTER SHIP HUNTER: BRIDGE

“So that’s how they disabled our fusion engine,” Dorn said, looking at Elverda.

She was still sitting in the command chair as they listened to the suit-to-suit talk between Kirk and the other scavengers.

“Maybe we can retrieve that heavy laser before they do,” Theo suggested.

“No.” Victor shook his head. “They’re already outside, suited up. They’ll get to it long before we can.”

“I’m still in my suit,” Theo pointed out. “So’re Mom and Angie. Angie and I could—”

“No,” Victor repeated firmly.

“Then what do we do?” Pauline asked.

More to Dorn than the others, Victor said, “Once they get that heavy laser they’ll be able to burn through any of the hatches we try to keep locked against them.”