Ben Bova - The Aftermath

“We’re on the approach course for Ceres. The controls are locked in, so you don’t have to worry about navigation. Are you sure you can handle the responsibility of being in command?” Victor asked anxiously.

That’s a laugh and a half, Theo said to himself. The ship’s on automatic and I’m in command of nobody. Plus I’m not supposed to touch anything. Some responsibility.

Misunderstanding his son’s silence, Victor said, “It’s a dangerous world out there, Thee. There’s a war going on.”

“I know,” Theo muttered.

“Ships have been attacked, destroyed. People killed.”

“Dad, the war’s between the big corporations. Nobody’s bothered independent ships, like us.”

“True enough,” Victor admitted, “but there are mercenaries roaming around out there and out-and-out pirates like Lars Fuchs—”

“You told me Fuchs only attacks corporate ships,” Theo said. “You said he’s never bothered an independent.”

Victor nodded gravely. “I know. But I want you to keep your wits about you. If anything unusual happens—anything at all—you call me at once. Understand?”

“Sure.”

“At once,” Victor emphasized.

Theo looked up at his father. “Okay, okay.”

With a million doubts showing clearly on his face, Victor reluctantly went to the command pod’s hatch. He hesitated, as if he wanted to say something more to his son, then shrugged and left the pod.

Theo resisted the impulse to throw a sarcastic two-fingered salute at the old man.

At least, he thought, it’s a beginning. I’ll just sit here and let him take over once we’ve entered Ceres-controlled space. It’s a beginning. At least Mom got him to let me babysit the instruments.

Slightly more than an hour later, Theo sat in the command chair, his brows knitted in puzzlement at the fuzzy image displayed on the ship’s main communications screen.

Syracuse was still more than an hour away from orbital insertion at Ceres. But something strange was happening. Theo stared at the crackling, flickering image of a darkly bearded man who seemed to be making threats to the communications technician aboard the habitat Chrysalis, in orbit around Ceres, where the rock rats made their home. The image on the display screen was grainy, the voices broken up by interference. The stranger was aiming his message at Chrysalis: Theo had picked up the fringe of his comm signal as the ore ship coasted toward the asteroid.

“Please identify yourself,” said a calm, flat woman’s voice: the comm tech at Chrysalis, Theo figured. “We’re not getting any telemetry data from you.”

The dark-bearded man replied, “You don’t need it. We’re looking for Lars Fuchs. Surrender him to us and we’ll leave you in peace.”

Lars Fuchs? Theo thought. The pirate. The guy who attacks ships out here in the Belt.

“Fuchs?” The woman’s voice sounded genuinely puzzled. “He’s not here. He’s in exile. We wouldn’t—”

“No lies,” the man snapped. “We know Fuchs is heading for your habitat. We want him.”

Theo realized that something ugly was shaping up. Much as he hated to relinquish command of Syracuse—even though his “command” was nothing more than monitoring the ship’s automated systems—he reluctantly tapped the intercom keyboard.

“Dad, you’d better get up here,” he said, slowly and clearly. “Something really weird is going on.”

It took a moment, then Victor Zacharias replied testily, “What now? Can’t you handle anything for yourself?” There was no video: voice only.

“You gotta see this, Dad.”

“See what?” He sounded really annoyed.

“I think we’re sailing right into the middle of the war.”

“Ceres is neutral territory. Everybody knows that and respects it.”

“Maybe,” Theo said. “But maybe not.”

Grumbling, Victor said, “All right. I’m on my way.”

Only then did Theo notice that the blank display screen’s indicator showed his father was in the master bedroom. He felt his cheeks redden. He and Mom … No wonder he’s cheesed off.

Theo sat in the command chair, watching and listening to the chatter between Chrysalis and the strangely menacing stranger.

His father stepped into the control pod, dark face scowling.

Theo swiveled the command chair and got to his feet, crouching slightly in the confined head space of the pod. Gangling, awkward Theo had his father’s deep brown eyes, but the sandy hair and tall, slender build of his mother. There was the merest trace of a light stubble on his long, narrow jaw. His denims were decorated with decals and colorful patches.”What’s got you spooked?” Victor asked in a heavy grumbling voice as he lowered himself gingerly into the command chair. He had injured his thigh months earlier while loading Syracuse ’s cargo of ores from one of the rock rat miners deeper in the Asteroid Belt. The leg still twinged; Victor had scheduled stem cell therapy when they arrived at the Chrysalis habitat.

Gesturing to the main display screen that covered half the curving bulkhead in front of them, Theo replied, “Take a look.”

But the menacing stranger had apparently cut his communications with Chrysalis. To Theo’s dismay, the main screen showed nothing more than a standard view of the approaching asteroid and its environs. At this distance Ceres was a discernable gray spheroid against the star-spattered blackness of space. Circling in orbit about the asteroid, the habitat Chrysalis glittered light reflected from the distant Sun: a Tinkertoy assemblage of old spacecraft linked together into a ring to make a livable home for the rock rats. They had built the makeshift habitat to escape the dust-choked tunnels that honeycombed Ceres itself.

Radar displays superimposed on the screen showed the images of nearly a dozen ships, mostly ore carriers like Syracuse or massive factory smelters, in orbit around the asteroid; their names and registrations were printed out on the screen. Two other ships were visible, as well. One was labeled Elsinore, a passenger-carrying fusion torch ship from the lunar nation of Selene. The other had no name tag: no information about it at all was displayed on the screen. From the radar image it looked like a sleek, deadly dagger.

Victor Zacharias scratched absently at his stubbled chin as he muttered, “By god, that looks like a military vessel—an attack ship.”

“She’s not emitting any telemetry or tracking beacons,” Theo pointed out.

“I can see that, son.”

“They were talking to Chrysalis before you came in,” Theo explained. “Sounded threatening.”

Victor’s blunt-fingered hands played over the comm console. The main screen flickered, then the image of the bearded man came up.

“Attention Chrysalis,” he said in a heavy, guttural voice. “This is the attack vessel Samarkand. You are harboring the fugitive Lars Fuchs. You will turn him over to me in ten minutes or suffer the consequences of defiance.”

Theo said to his father, “Lars Fuchs the pirate!”

“The rock rats exiled him years ago,” Victor muttered, nodding.

The voice of Chrysalis ’s communications center said annoyedly, “Fuchs? God knows where he is.”

“I know where he is,” Samarkand replied coldly. “And if you don’t surrender him to me I will destroy you.”

His image winked out, replaced by the telescope view of Ceres and the spacecraft hovering near the asteroid.

Victor began to peck intently on the propulsion keyboard set into the curving panel before him, muttering, “We’ve got to get ourselves the hell out of here.”