Theo felt his guts clench with shock. He saw his father reach for the pistol he’d tucked into his waistband.
“He was Dorik Harbin,” Elverda said, rushing to Dorn’s side. “But he’s changed, he’s—”
“I wiped out the
Victor stared at the cyborg. He couldn’t get a word out of his throat. But his right hand pulled the pistol from his waist.
“He’s not the same person!” Elverda pleaded. “He tried to kill himself. He’s spent his life atoning for his sins.”
Victor raised the pistol to the level of Dorn’s eyes. “You attacked my ship? You nearly killed my whole family!”
“So kill me,” Dorn said softly. “Release me from life.”
Theo stood frozen at the control panel and stared at his father. His father held the gun at arm’s length, unwavering, pointed at the cyborg’s face. His mother and sister were clutching each other, still in their space suits, their faces torn with fear and uncertainty.
“Please!” Elverda begged, pushing herself between Dorn and Theo’s father.
Dorn grasped the old woman by her shoulders and lifted her off her feet. Placing her down gently to one side, he turned back to Victor.
“So kill me,” he said.
SMELTER SHIP
BRIDGE
“You attacked our ship,” Victor said, the words barely struggling past his gritted teeth. “You tried to kill us.”
Dorn said nothing.
“But you survived,” Elverda reminded. “You lived through it.”
Victor grimaced. “No thanks to this… this… monster.”
“So kill me and get your revenge,” Dorn said.
Victor stared at the cyborg. Kill him! urged a savage voice within his mind. Kill him. He deserves to die. He
Victor’s finger froze on the pistol’s trigger. He closed his eyes briefly, but when he opened them again Dorn still stood before him.
“No one will blame you,” Dorn said.
“Don’t do it!” Elverda pleaded.
“I can’t,” Victor groaned, dropping the pistol to his side. “By all the fiends of hell, I can’t do it.”
“Then don’t kill those other men, either,” Dorn said softly.
Theo looked up at the screen again and saw that Valker and his crew were marching along the passageway to the next hatch.
“Dad!” he called.
Victor seemed in a daze. His father stared at the main screen but didn’t seem to understand what he was seeing. “Dad, now!” Theo called.
Dorn turned toward Theo. “Don’t murder them.”
Sudden rage boiled through Theo. They tried to murder me. They want to rape Mom and Angie.
Dorn repeated, “Don’t—”
“The hell I won’t!” Theo yelled, and he slammed his fist onto the control key that ignited the grenades.
In the airlessness of the passageway the detonations made no sound, but the scavengers were jolted off their feet as the bulkhead around the closed hatch in front of them was torn apart by sudden flashes of explosion.
Through his suit radio Valker heard his men shouting and swearing as he struggled to his knees. Weight seemed to be dwindling, as if he were suddenly floating. Kirk and others were sprawled in a heap, drifting up off the deck, arms and legs thrashing. The entire section of the passageway had been blasted loose, tearing itself out of the ship’s wheel-shaped structure and lumbering off into empty space.
Nicco was tangled beneath the laser welder, but in the sudden near-weightlessness he pushed it off with a grunt and a string of curses.
“They’ve torn this whole section out of the ship!” Kirk yelled, pushing himself to a standing position. The effort made him float off the deck altogether; his hooded head bounced off the overhead.
Hovering in a weightless crouch, Valker realized there was enough light to see by. The passageway sections must have individual battery-powered emergency lights, he reasoned.
“Anybody hurt?” he asked.
“Fuck that! We’re drifting away from the ship.”
“We’re headin’ for friggin’ Pluto or someplace!”
“Calm down,” Valker said, making a soothing motion with both hands. “Calm down. We ain’t dead yet.”
“Won’t be long, though.”
“Bullshit!” Valker snapped. “We’ve got more than an hour’s worth of air in our tanks and enough fuel in our jet packs to get back to the ship.”
“This time we blow a hole in their bridge first off,” Kirk snarled. “No more pussyfootin’ around.”
Victor dashed to the control board and clapped his son on the back. “You did it, Thee! Good work!”
Theo stared at the main screen. The outside cameras showed the torn section of
“Now let’s get ourselves out of here,” Victor said.
“We have no propulsion,” Elverda reminded him. “They disabled our fusion thruster.”
Theo jabbed a finger on the key that opened the suit-to-suit radio frequency.
“… got more than an hour’s worth of air in our tanks and enough fuel in our jet packs to get back to the ship.”
Valker’s voice, Theo recognized.
Then Kirk’s snarling, “This time we blow a hole in their bridge first off. No more pussyfootin’ around.”
Theo turned to his father. “They’re coming back!”
“But now they’re vulnerable,” Victor said. “They’re floating in vacuum, in space suits.” He brandished the laser pistol.
“You think the gun has enough charge to get them all?” Theo wondered.
“All we need to do is puncture their suits. A pinhole will do.”
“No,” Dorn said. “Please!”
Victor glared at him. “Listen. Just because I couldn’t shoot you in cold blood doesn’t mean that I’ll allow those cutthroats to get back to this ship.”
“Don’t murder them,” Dorn begged. “Choose life over death.”
“Tell that to them!” Victor snapped.
“There must be another way.”
Theo looked into the cyborg’s half-human face. “Maybe there is another way,” he said.
