Ben Bova - The Aftermath

“Huh? Why?”

“Before the shooting starts.”

“Chrysalis is unarmed,” Theo said. “They don’t have any weapons. Everybody knows that.”

“We don’t have any weapons either,” said his father.

“But they wouldn’t shoot at an unarmed ship. That doesn’t make sense.”

“You hope.” Victor’s fingers were flicking across the controls.

Turning a massively laden ore ship is neither a simple nor a quick maneuver. It takes time and lots of space. Theo glanced at the control screens and saw that Syracuse was slowly, painfully slowly, coming about.

Something flashed on the main screen.

“He’s fired on her!” Victor shouted.

Theo saw a red-hot slash cut through the thin metal hull of one of Chrysalis ’s modules. A glittering cloud puffed out and immediately dissipated. Air, Theo realized. The module seemed to explode, shards of metal spinning out dizzily. And other shapes came tumbling, flailing into the airless emptiness of space. Bodies, Theo saw, his heart suddenly thundering, his guts clenching. Those are people! He’s killing them!

“Stop!” screamed a voice from the habitat’s comm center. “Stop or you’ll kill—”

The voice cut off. Theo watched with bulging eyes as invisible laser beams from the attack ship methodically sliced one module of the habitat after another, slashing, destroying, killing. A cloud of spinning debris and twisted bodies spread outward like ripples of death.

“You’ve got to do something!” Theo shouted.

“I am,” his father replied. “I’m getting us the hell away from here.”

“Something to help them!”

“What can we do? You want to join them?”

As Syracuse slowly, ponderously turned away from its approach to Ceres, its telescopic cameras maintained their focus on the slaughter of the Chrysalis habitat. Module after module exploded soundlessly, corpses and wreckage flung into space.

Tears in his eyes, Theo leaned over his father’s broad shoulder and shouted into his face, “You can’t just leave them there!”

His eyes fastened on the carnage displayed on the main screen, Victor told his son, “The hell I can’t! I’ve got to protect you and your sister and mother.”

“You’re running away!”

Victor nodded bleakly. “Just as fast as I can get this ore bucket to fly.”

Theo glanced up at the main screen once more, then down again to his father’s grimly determined face. He saw beads of perspiration on his father’s brow; his knuckles were white as he gripped the chair’s armrests.

“But there must be something we can do!”

The bearded man’s image appeared again on the main screen, sharp and steady. “Ore ship Syracuse, ” he said, “just where do you think you’re going?”

Theo’s blood froze in his veins.

Are you harboring the fugitive Lars Fuchs?” asked the stranger, his voice dagger-cold.

Victor replied evenly, “We’re inbound from the deeper Belt, carrying fourteen thousand tons of ore.” Then he added, “No passengers.”

“How do I know that’s the truth?”

“You’re welcome to come aboard and see for yourself.”

The dark stranger lapsed into silence, apparently deep in thought. Theo thought his eyes looked strange, their pupils dilated wider than he had ever seen before.

“Damn!” Victor growled. “The intercom’s down again.”

“We just fixed it yesterday,” Theo said.

“Not well enough.” Victor leaned on the comm console’s mute button and whispered urgently to his son, “Get down to the habitation module and get your mother and sister into suits. You suit up too.”

“What about you?”

“Do it!”

Theo scrambled out of the control pod, nearly banging his head on the rim of the hatch, and clambered up the rungs set into the tubular passageway that ran the length of the three-kilometer-long buckyball tube. With each rung the feeling of weight lessened, until he let his soft-booted feet rise off the rungs and started scampering along the ladderway like a racing greyhound, his fingers barely flicking on the rungs. The closer he got to the ship’s center of rotation the less g force he felt: soon he was literally flying through the narrow tube.

Meanwhile Victor sat alone in the control pod, his mind working in overdrive. He’s a killer. He’s wiped out the habitat, must have killed more than a thousand people, for god’s sake. The nearest help is days away, weeks. Hell, it takes more than half an hour just to get a message to Earth. We’re alone out here. Alone.

The stranger aboard the attack vessel seemed to stir to life. “Well? Where is Fuchs?” he demanded.

“Who am I speaking to?” Victor asked, stalling for time. “You know who I am but I don’t know who you are.”

The man almost smiled. “I am your death unless you surrender Fuchs to me.”

His fingers racing across the control keyboard like a pianist attempting a mad cadenza, Victor Zacharias answered, “Lars Fuchs isn’t aboard this ship. Send an inspection party if you want to. I assure you—”

Syracuse shuddered. We’ve been hit! Victor realized. The bastard’s shooting at us!

A bank of red lights flared angrily on the control panel. The main antennas. He’s silenced us. And the fuel tanks below the antennas; he’s ripped them open! With a swift check of his other diagnostics, Victor hesitated a heartbeat, then punched the key that released the ship’s cargo. Syracuse lurched heavily as fourteen thousand tons of asteroidal rock were suddenly freed from their magnetic grips and went spinning into space between the ore carrier and the attack vessel.

That’s the best shielding I can provide, Victor said to himself as he punched up Syracuse ’s propulsion controls and goosed the main fusion engine to maximum acceleration. In the main display screen above his curved control panel he saw glints of laser light splashing off the rocks that now floated between him and the attack ship. Come on, he silently urged the fusion engine. Get us out of here!

“You can’t run away,” came the voice from the attack ship, sounding more amused than angry.

I can try, Victor replied silently.

Theo banged painfully against the rungs protruding from the central passageway’s curving bulkhead. Dad’s accelerating the ship, he thought. Trying to get away. He grabbed a ladder rung and pulled himself along the tube. Within seconds he was no longer weightless but falling toward the habitation module, where his mother and sister were. Careful now, he told himself, remembering how he’d broken his arm a few years earlier in a stupid fall down the tube. He jackknifed in midair, banging his knee painfully against the rungs, and turned around so that he was falling feet first.

He heard a hatch creak open down at the end of the tube and, glancing down, saw his sister Angie starting to climb upward toward him.

“Go back!” he yelled at her. “Get into a suit! Mom too!”

“What’s happening?” Angie shouted back, her voice echoing off the tube’s curving bulkhead. “The intercom isn’t working.” She sounded more annoyed than frightened.

“We’re being attacked!” Theo hollered, scrambling toward her as fast as he dared. “Get into suits, you and Mom!”

“Attacked? By who? What for?”

The lights flickered and went out. The dim emergency lights came on.

“Get into the goddamned suits!” Theo roared.

Angie began backing toward the hatch. “No need to swear, Theo.”

“The hell there isn’t,” he muttered to himself.

He clambered down the rungs and dropped the final couple of meters through the open hatch and onto the bare metal deck of the auxiliary airlock. Long habit—backed by his father’s stern discipline—made him reach overhead to close the hatch and make certain it was properly sealed. Then he pushed through the inner hatch and entered the family’s living quarters.