Devil to the Belt

CHAPTER 15

SHOUTING in Percy’s office again. Dekker sat on the bench outside, between a couple of marine guards, and stared at the opposite wall, acutely aware of the traffic in the main corridor, people stealing glances hi this direction—you got a feeling for notoriety, and disaster, and you knew when you’d achieved it. Wake up to a stand-down and a see-me from Graff, who had nothing to tell him, except that somehow the Aptitudes in his unit were skewed, that they wanted to see Ben and Sal back in Testing, and Graff was due in a meeting with Porey, immediately. Which left him here, in the hall, listening to war going on in the office, and he hoped it didn’t aim at Graff. Mutiny in the Shepherd ranks, if that was the case—Graff was the only point of reason in their lives since the disaster of the last test; and personally, he wanted to kill Porey. They told him he was supposed to go fight rebels from a planet clear to hell and gone away from Earth and right now the targets he most wanted were Comdr. Edmund Porey and whoever had screwed up Ben and Sal, if that was what had happened.

Something crashed, inside the office. He tried not to twitch, found his hands locked, white-knuckled. The guards exchanged looks, dead expressionless.

Marines weren’t anxious to go in there either.

Weights rang back down into the pad, and Meg collapsed on her back on the bench, nerve-dead. Patterns still danced behind her eyelids, but the adrenaline was gone, it was only phosphenes.

Message came from the lieutenant, and Dek had been outright shaking when he’d read it. Bad shakes. Thank God Ben had done—whatever Ben had done. Sal was close-mouthed on it—but she had me idea it involved last night, phones, and messages Dek would have highly disapproved.

Weights banged, close to her head. Her eyelids flew open. Mitch was standing over her. Hell of a start, even if he was decorative: the son of a bitch. She had as little to do with Mitch as possible. Ben and Sal had gotten called in to Testing. Dek...

“What’s this about Dekker getting scrubbed?”

Mitch wasn’t alone. The other traffic in the gym wasn’t casual. A delegation gathered around—Pauli, Franklin, Wilson, Basrami, Shepherds, all of them on her case; Shit, she thought, and sat up, looking for a way to shut this action down. “Maybe you better ask the lieutenant. I dunno.”

“Word is there was a fight last night.”

Double shit. Damned thin walls. “Wasn’t any fight. A discussion. That’s our business.”

Pauli said, “Discussion that scrubs a crew?”

Basrami said, “Word is, the lieutenant gave him a mandatory stand-down. The lieutenant’s been climbing all over Testing. Saito’s still there, with Porey’s com chief. Now the lieutenant’s talking with Porey and Dek’s hanging outside with the guards. Doesn’t look arrested, but he doesn’t look happy.”

More information than she’d had. The grapevine in this place was efficient except in her vicinity.

Mitch asked, “So what’s going on, Kady?”

“All I know,” she said, “we got the stand-down before we got to breakfast. They wanted Ben, they wanted Sal in Testing, they wanted Dekker in Porey’s office. They didn’t want me, so I came here to blow it off.”

“Come off it, Kady.”

“It’s the truth! I don’t know a damned thing except Dek’s been severely pushing it. Could be a medical stand-down—I hope to hell it’s a medical. Porey’s been on his back. He hasn’t said, but we screwed a sim, he talked to Porey, and he’s run hard since. You want to tell me?”

Silence from the guys. Then Mitch said, “They giving any of this special tape to him?”

Nasty question. “Not that I hear. I don’t think so. —No. There’s been no time like that in his schedule.”

“Are they going to?”

Scary question. “Him, they don’t need to, do they? He knows what he’s doing.”

“Just asking,” Mitch said.

“Yeah,” she said, “Well, whose would they give to him? Tell me that.” Five on ten they made the same and only guess she could, and the idea scared hell out of her. “They took my mates into Testing. They told Dek report in. They didn’t tell me an effin’ thing. I’m either the only one right in the universe or I must be one of the problems.” Which shaded closer to her private anxiety than she wanted. She got up, picked up her towel, for the showers. “So if you got any news, you owe me.”

“Nothing,” Pauli said. “Except a serious concern for the program. And Dekker.”

Belters rarely said ‘friend.’ You didn’t say, I care, I love, I give a damn. They wouldn’t do that. But they came asking. Even that skuz Mitch. Made her think halfway better of Mitch, and that gave her another cause to worry.

“Yeah,” she said. “Thanks. If I hear anything, either.”

The door opened. Graff said, stone-faced, “The commander wants to see you.”

“Yessir,” Dekker said.

No questions. Graff was negotiating with an unreasoning, unreasonable son of a bitch and didn’t need trouble from another source. He got up and walked in, saluted, and Porey said, all too quietly, “You may have had a problem, mister. This whole damn program may have a problem. So I want an answer, I want a single, completely straight answer If you were second-guessing the Aptitudes, where would you have expected Pollard and Aboujib to fit in the crew profile?”

“Ens. Pollard’s a computer tech, theory stuff.” He had one sudden chance, maybe, to do something for Ben, which would drop the lot of them down the list, break Meg’s heart and save all their skins. He debated a split second, then: “UDC Technical Institute. I’d have thought he’d be handling the computers. —To be honest, sir, I’d have thought he’d go somewhere up in Fleet Ops—they were, going to send him to Stockholm. He’s got—”

Porey snarled, “We’ve got enough UDC hands in this operation right now. What about Aboujib? Co-pilot?”

He didn’t know what all this was about. Not enough to maneuver with. “Ben taught her numbers. I’d expect she’s good. Longscan or armscomp. She’s—” He flashed on Sal’s frustration with the scan assignment. “I don’t know— don’t know. What she wants—is the Fire button.” His mind was on what Porey had said about Ben. He thought he might have done Ben harm, bringing in the Stockholm business. He made a desperate, uninvited counter. “Sir, I haven’t got any doubts about Ben Pollard. He went UDC because they had his program, but he’s Belter. He wouldn’t do anything but a hundred percent for his partners.”

Porey left a cold, cold silence. He didn’t know what he was arguing for or against, or who was on trial. Porey just stared. “If,” Porey began, and the phone beeped. Porey grabbed up the handset, snarled, “This is a conference, damn you—” and the face went expressionless while Dekker had time to think, Something’s happened...

Graff was paying the same kind of attention. Porey said, “Procedures. Stat. —Estimate,” and looked grim as he hung up and stood up. “Pod’s hung.”

“God.” Dekker thought Porey wanted the door—grabbed for the switch.

“Dekker!”

“I can help, sir,...”

“No!” Porey said. And there was no argument.

Meg hauled clothes on, still wet—damn sweater hung on an earring. She finessed it loose the painful way and got her head through—

Mitch, the skuz, was standing in the locker room door.

She jerked the sweater down. “Getting your thrills, Mitch?”

“Serious talk, Kady. Question. Couple of touchy questions.”

Private, the man wanted. Hell of a way to get it; and time was, Mitch didn’t get two seconds, but Mitch didn’t look like trouble, Mitch looked like business, and curiosity was killing her. “So? Give.”

“What is their damn hurry with Dek, do you get any feel?”

She bit her lip. Shook her head. “Neg. No. What are you asking?”

“Is Ben on our side?”

“Absolute. No question, and Sal and I fly with him.”

Mitch ducked his head, looked up with the straightest eye contact she’d ever had out of him. “Ben made a phone call last night. Dek got pulled this morning. You know about that?”

“Yeah. Ben could have slipped it to the lieutenant—about two jumps ahead of me, you want the truth.”

“That schedule of his. Did he set it? Is it his choice? Or is Porey doing it?”

“Much as I know it’s his schedule.” It was sensitive territory. She wasn’t sure she wanted to discuss any crew business with Mitch, who was Dek’s competition in this place. But Dek had her scared to hell, that was what she had said to Sal and that was what made her confess now. “I can believe Ben might have stopped him. I just hope it didn’t land either of them in trouble.”

“Second touchy question. You apparently aren’t too damn bad. How much of it do you think is tape?”

“I was good before I came here, mister.”

Mitch held up a hand. “No offense. Straight q & a—they’re talking about shoving it on the rest of us, I want to know from the ones that know—does that damn thing really work?”

Sounded like an honest question. “Different way to learn, same way you guys learn, what I hear, this Neural Input stuff. I don’t know what’s the difference, except we trank deeper—by what I hear. How could I tell? I don’t get the other kind.”

“Rumor is they’re running you guys up to mission level sims. They’re saying they’re using you guys for guinea pigs because you came in cold, as far as these boards. That if it works with you—we’re next and we got no choice. Now they’re hauling Pollard and Aboujib back into Testing? Makes the rest of us damn nervous, Kady.”

Made her nervous when he put it that way.

“You know anything about Pete Fowler, you ever have any—weird feelings off that stuff?”

“I’m not being him, Mitch, I’m not any damn dead guy. That’s not what’s going on....”

“He was twenty-nine, he was a good, fast thinker, he was regular for Elly Sanders—she was the longscanner. You want any more? Pete’s faults? His virtues? I can tell you. He was a nit-picking sumbitch about the checklist....”

“I’m telling you I don’t know anything about Pete Fowler. I damn sure haven’t got a fix on Sal and I always was a stickler for doing—”

“Mitch!” somebody yelled, out in the sims. “They got a pod hung!”

“Oh, shit,” Mitch said, and he was running—she started running after him, scared as hell, no idea what they could do, why they were going—but it was somebody she knew in that damned thing, and she moved.

“What’s the status?” Porey asked, leaning over a tech— Security ops had eight monitors and four of them were black, except for green letters showing CORE-21, that was the sims area, anybody who worked up there knew that section, and Dekker knew it, made a guess what those black monitors showed before Porey got his answer.

“They cut the power, sir,” the ops tech said, “Chief Jackson got the spin shut down. Cameras are working, they’re on another generator, but all the pods are full crewed and frozen out there til they get power back on.”

The core was totally dark, even the access areas—requests for personnel movement going out over com, the same sequence that must have attended his own accident, Dekker thought glumly—like standing off and watching it happen to him.

“Do we have a recovery team out there?” Porey asked, and the tech answered that they were still trying to organize that—only way they had to haul you back if a pod had to totally crash was suit up and go out there; the construction workers that formed the rescue squad were coming in from their off hours and from work around the carrier—

“Too damned long,” he said, he didn’t care if he was out of turn: “I know the systems, sir, I’m used to a suit—”

“You’re not going out there,” Porey said, and adjusted the com in his ear, scowling, eyes showing the least anxiety while he listened to something elsewhere. “—You have one?” he asked someone invisible. “Suiting now?”

They’d found somebody closer. Dekker drew a controlled breath, then, still wanting to do something; but rescue was evidently getting into motion. Black monitors. No emergency lights—the fool engineers had put the viewport shutters on the main power. Power was cut, completely, complete black in the chamber, no ventilation in the pod, no heat, no filtration for anybody out there. God hope the mags weren’t all crashed.

“Patch through the suitcom,” Porey said. Graff said to the tech at the boards in simulation Control, “Give us audio, here. Are we getting anything out of the pod?”

“We don’t get anything. Whole core section’s on that generator.”

“What the hell kind of engineering is that, dammit to bloody hell, what kind of operation do we have here?”

“An old one,” Graflf said. “Lot of patch-jobs.”

“Piece of junk,” Porey muttered. “Nothing moves, does it?”

“Not the shutters, not the internal lights—there’s a requisition to get them on another circuit, but the engineers have found a problem doing that.”

“Can they power up with the rest of those pods sitting out there?”

“Should be able to,” Graff said, while Dekker kept his mouth shut. Should be able to, once they got the one pod clear. If it didn’t, if they were all crashed, everybody was in trouble. Imminent trouble.

“One man’s not enough out there,” he said tautly. “They’ve got no locators, those are all killed with the power.... Sir, in all respect, I know what I’m doing....”

“Shut down, Dekker, you’re not going up there.”

A dun seam of light showed at the edge of one monitor— lock door, he figured, on a leech and hand-battery. Audio cut in, unmistakably a suit com, heavy breaming, little else, and a white star appeared in both monitors: suit-spot shining in all that black.

Sim chiefs voice, then: “You’re going across the chamber, zenith climb about ninety meters.. . sensor range within—”

“Copy that.” Female voice, unexpectedly. Familiar voice that sent a sinking feeling to the pit of his stomach as the star shot off at a fair speed. Scary speed.

“Don’t hurry it, don’t hurry it...” from the chief. “Dammit, slow down.”

Meg didn’t. Meg was hotdogging it, scaring hell out of him and the sim chief—miner showout, but habitual: a miner knew his distance without his eyes, by reckonings they didn’t teach in construction, and she wouldn’t miss: blind in the dark, she wouldn’t miss: that was the push she was used to—and she was counting and caking.

“Shouldn’t argue with her,” Dekker muttered, sweating it. “She knows her rate, she’s feeling it.. .tell the chief that.”

“Is that Kady?” Graff asked. “Dekker, is that Kady out there?”

“Yessir.”

“Get her the hell out of there!” Porey said into the mike. “This is Comdr. Porey. Get her out of there. Now!”

Took a little relaying of instructions. Meg developed a problem with her mike. Didn’t fool Porey, didn’t fool anybody, but there wasn’t a thing Porey could do from here. Meg was closing into sensor range, you could hear the pings on audio and see the rate drop.

Then number two monitor showed a faint haze of detail. Chamber wall and a pod directly in Meg’s suit spot, he’d bet his life on it.

“She’s all right,” he said, feeling the shakes himself. “Sir, she knows her business.”

Porey wasn’t saying a thing about the transmission difficulties, wasn’t giving any orders now, he just muttered, “Kady’s on notice with me, you make that clear, Mr. Graff.”

“Yes, sir,” Graff said.

Word came from another channel that the Pod Rescue Unit was being deployed. At least some of the rescue squad had gotten there, and was launching the track-guided equipment that could tow the pod.

Meanwhile an engineer was giving instructions and Meg started identifying and freeing up the bolts that released it from its track.

“Shit...” came over the com; and froze his heart.

“What’s the matter?” the chief asked; but he could see it for himself, the pod’s number decal—number three. The pod they’d been scheduled for.

“That’s Jamil,” he said, to whoever cared, and looked for a chair free. But there wasn’t one. “Jamil and his guys took our slot—said they could use the time...”

Didn’t take much calc to find a lighted, open hatch, and Meg beelined for it, braked and took a shaky bent-kneed impact, another showout miner-trick, with a hand-up catch at the rim of the lock to stop the rebound. She cycled the lock on battery power, breath hissing with shivers—it wasn’t cold coming through the suit, not this fast, it was shock starting to work, in the loneliness of the airlock. Let the rescue crew do the maneuvering with the PRU, the chief had said, they wanted her out of there and that lock shut before they powered up the mags and she agreed, she didn’t know shit about the tow system: it was on now, it was moving, bound for a pod access lock where meds were waiting, and they weren’t going to need her unless the mags were definitively crashed.

Moment of intense claustrophobia then, just the ghostly emergency light, then a door opened into a brightly lit ready-room full of guys willing to help with the suit.

She got the helmet off, drew a breath of icy clean air and got a first welcome bit of news—power-up was proceeding, pods were answering; they for sure weren’t going to need her again out there, and she could unsuit and take the lift out to gravitied levels and the lockers. Good job, they told her, good job, but they were busy and she got herself out of the way, let them tend the suit, unaccustomed luxury for a miner-jock, and boarded the lift out of there.

Slow, slow business in the recovery of the pod, and they could only watch, in 1-dock Security ops. Dekker hung at draffs back and Percy’s, listened to the output from the rescue team on the open speaker.

They were working into dock now, at access 3. “That’s copy,” he heard a voice say, and flashed on cold, on dark, on inertia gone wild—

Enjoy the ride, Dekker....

“That’s him,” he said of a sudden—had everyone’s attention, and he looked to Graff, who understood what he meant, Graff surely understood.

“ID that man,” Graff snapped, “isolate that voice. —Mr. Dekker—” as he headed for the door. “Hold it.”

“Dekker!” Porey said atop Graff’s order, but he’d already stopped and faced them.

“I want you to listen,” Graff said. “I want you to pick out that voice, all the voices that might be involved.”

“Is he meaning the attack on him?” Porey wanted to know, and Graff nodded, leaning over the master com in ops. “Yes, sir, that’s exactly what he means. —Play it back, ensign.”

“That’s copy,” the recording said, among others, and Dekker said with absolute conviction, “Yes. That one.”

“Who’s carded to that area right now?” Porey asked. “Nobody’s leaving that area without carding out, hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” the com tech said; and relayed to Fleet Security.

“Not everybody’s carded in,” Graff said. “They probably let medics and techs in wholesale—anybody with a security badge...”

“Sir,” the tech said, “I think I’ve got it pinned. That output’s on e-com, I’ve got the serial number on the unit.”

“Track it.”

Time to indulge the shakes and the unsteady breathing, alone in the lift. “They’re getting telemetry,” Meg heard, on the com track that was probably going out to every speaker in the mast. “Four heartbeats.” Best news yet. Thank God, she thought, queasy in the steady increase of g against the deep fast dive the car was taking. She clenched her teeth and collected herself, watched the level indicator light plummet until the car came to rest and the door opened on warm air and bright light.

She expected Mitch and a handful of guys; but the room was packed, everybody who could cram themselves hi, all wanting news. “Four heartbeats,” she told them, which they might have heard, she couldn’t tell if the com was feeding through, there was so much racket. She wasn’t prepared to be laid hold of, wasn’t expecting Mitch of all guys to pat her heavily on the shoulder and say how miner-jocks had their use—other guys did the same, and all she could get out was a breathless, desperate: “Jamil. Janul took our sim slot... anybody seen Dek?”

Nobody had. She was shaking, embarrassing herself with that fact, but she couldn’t stop the chill now. A big guy whose name she didn’t even know threw his arm around her shoulders, hugged her against his side, and yelled out to get a blanket, she was soaked with sweat.

I’m all right, she tried to say, but her teeth kept chattering. Seeing that number out there had put a shock reaction into her—she wasn’t used to shaking; wasn’t used to time to think when she was scared, or, worst, to knowing there wasn’t a damned thing she could do personally to help those guys or Dek... .

The blanket came around her. “Tried to kill us,” she said between shivers. “Wasn’t any fucking accident, Dek was supposed to be in that pod. . . That was our slot Jamil took...”

“Sims tech Eldon A. Kent,” Graff said, reading the monitor, “out of Munich, trained in Bonn ...”

“I want a piece of him,” Dekker said. God, he wanted it, wanted to pound the son of a bitch so fine the law wouldn’t have pieces left to work with. “Just let me find him.”

“Certainly answers the questions about access,” Graff murmured, reading over the data on the monitor. “Free access to the pods, a lot of the techs let each other through, never mind the rules. He’s Lendler Corp, he comes and goes—what were you doing up there suited, Dekker? What were you doing with the mission tape?”

Piece suddenly clicked into place. Bad memory. Whole chunk of memory. “Wanted to look at the tape, just wanted to look at it—” The disaster sequence. The maneuver Wilhelmsen had failed to make. “Damned set piece. They wanted it to work, they kept training us for specifics. I told them that, I...”

“They.”

“The UDC. Villy.”

“So you went to the ready room, or up to the access?”

“The ready room. To run it on the machine there. They wouldn’t let me in the labs, I was off-duty. I just wanted to look at the sequence—”

“Where did this Kent come in?” Porey asked.

“While I was running the tape.”

“Alone?”

He shook his head. “Guy was with him. I know the face, I can’t remember the name—”

“And they came in while you were reading the tape. What did they say?”

“They said they were checking out the pods, they were looking for some possible problem in the sims. They wanted me to go up to the chamber and answer some questions...”

Graff asked: “Did you suit to fly? Was that your intention?”

“I—I hadn’t—no. I just had the coveralls. I hadn’t brought a coat.”

“You suited because of the cold, you mean.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You went up there,” Porey said. “What happened?”

“They said put the tape in, I did that, they hit me from the back. Said—said—’Enjoy the ride.’ Sir, I want these guys...”

“Absolutely not,” Porey said. “You don’t go after them. That’s an order, mister.”

“Commander, they’re up there right now with Jamil and his guys, they’ve got their asses to cover—”

“Mr. Dekker.”

“They’re with Jamil!”

“Mr. Dekker, shut up and believe there are reasons more important than your personal opinion. We have a program with problems, a ship with problems, and what happened to you and what happened up there isn’t the only thing at issue. They’re Lendler Corp technicians; and they didn’t take a spontaneous dislike to you, do you read that, Mr. Dekker? Lendler Corp has a multitude of Reel contracts, which has UDC contracts, which leaves us with serious questions, Mr. Dekker, does it penetrate your consciousness that there may be issues that have a much wider scope than your need for vengeance or my personal preferences? If things were otherwise, I’d turn you loose. As is, you keep your mouth shut, you keep it shut on this and let Security handle it. We’ll get them. It may take time, but we’ll get them. We want to know whether there’s a network, we want to know if there’s any damage we don’t know about, we want to know if there is a connection to you personally or if you just have incredible luck, do you understand that, Mr. Dekker?”

“Yessir,” he said, past a choking anger. “Yessir, I understand that.”

“Then you see you keep your mouth totally shut about what you know. You don’t even tell your crew; and believe me I mean that. —Mr. Graff?”

“Sir.”

“Escort Mr. Dekker to my office. I’m not through with him.”

“Walk slowly,” Graff said, on the way out of ops. Porey was back mere on com calling in senior Security, he was well sure: Fleet Police already had the pod 3 access as secured as it could be with medics at work; they had the answer they’d been looking for and the mess only got wider, with tentacles into God knew what, Lendler, any other corporation. You didn’t take a highly educated technical worker and suddenly turn him into a saboteur and hand-to-hand murderer, not overnight, you didn’t; which meant Kent was other than a peaceful citizen, Kent was skilled and malicious, and somebody in Lendler Corp had gotten him credentials and arranged for him either to get here or to stay here, at the time a lot of Lendler Corp had transferred out—Porey was right on this one. They had, as Villy was fond of saying, pulled a string and got a snake. Potential faults in the equipment, faults in the programming, faults in the assignments, and Porey still hadn’t closed on the monumental coincidence of his pulling Dekker from the test today in the first place, why he’d had sudden misgivings on this day of all days...

The message that had turned up in his personal file, with no identifying header or record, damned sure hadn’t been a spontaneous generation of the EIDAT system, and his stomach was increasingly upset, with guilt over the concealment of that security breach, and the conviction exactly who had inserted that message—along with a cluster of Testing Labs files nobody outside highest security clearances should have been able to access at all.

Bias in the tests, Earth-cultural bias in the Aptitudes, consequently in the choices and reactions trained into the UDC and the Shepherd enlistees—a bias that didn’t want aggression on the fire-button or command decisions out of the pilots: he’d only to run an eye down the questions being asked and the weight given certain answers to see what was happening; and before the accident phone calls had already been flying back and forth between Sol One and B Dock: Porey had already invoked military emergency on Intellitron in as fine a shade of a contract clause as a merchanter could manage—demanding access to programs Intellitron had held secret thus far: Pending mission. Medical question. Emergency. Credit Edmund for the nerve of a dockside lawyer... and meanwhile, aside from the possibility of active sabotage, they had to wonder how many other examples of mis-assigned crews they were going to find, they had a clear notion why the UDC crews had had problems, and knew, thanks to Pollard, why the whole program might have a serious problem—which he couldn’t, for Pollard’s sake, confess.

Friendliest Edmund Porey had ever been to him, after he’d broken the news and Porey had absorbed it. And, dammit, he didn’t want Percy’s kind of friendship—he didn’t want Porey deciding he could help Porey look good, and putting in a request for him on staff, God help him, even if it meant a promotion. Not at that price. And it looked that way now, it looked increasingly that way, with no word from his own captain, no evidence Keu was still in charge over at FSO.

Be careful, Demas had told him last night. Don’t succeed too conspicuously.

“Mr. Dekker.”

A breath. “Yessir.”

“Coincidence in this instance is remotely possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You don’t believe it.”

“No, sir. I absolutely don’t.”

“You’re probably asking yourself why you were so lucky— why I pulled you from tests.”

Another breath. Maybe Dekker hadn’t gotten that far. Maybe Dekker was still tracking on the past, pulling up damaged memory—maybe Dekker was thinking of revenge, or Porey, or the multitudinous accesses corporate connivance could infiltrate that a Fleet pilot wasn’t educated to suspect...

“The reason I did pull you—we found a bias in the Aptitudes. I’m telling you something that’s classified to the hilt, understand. If it gets to the barracks the wrong way, with no fix, it could affect performance. Fatally. You understand me? We’re on a knife’s edge here, right now. We don’t need loose talk. On any topic.”

A worried glance. “Yessir.”

“I’m telling you this because I suspect one of your crew made the discovery and communicated it to me, secretly, which is also not for general consumption, and when the commander briefs you, don’t let him know you know either—how I heard could bring one of your crew before a court martial, do I make myself absolutely clear on that?”

“Yessir.” Dekker’s voice was all but inaudible.

“The public story has to be that, having experience with this ship, we’re going to be re-evaluating certain crews for reassignment—”

“Break crews? Is that what we’re talking about?”

Damnable question. Touchy question, considering the Wilhelmsen disaster. He paused in the corridor short of the marine guards outside Percy’s office, outside their audio pick-up, he hoped, or their orders to eavesdrop on an officer. “Not by fiat. I’m asking for any crews who might want assignments re-evaluated—in the light of new data. No break-up of existing crews unless there’s a request from inside the crew. We recognize, believe me, we recognize the psychological investments you have.”

“Why in hell—” Dekker caught a breath, asked, in bewildered, betrayed tones: “Why didn’t you catch it before this?”

“Mr. Dekker, when we began this program, in an earlier, naive assumption of welcome here, we trusted the UDC to know Sol mindsets better than we did. We were absolutely wrong. We didn’t understand the prejudice involved, against the people we most needed. And your crew is the most foreign to their criteria. More so than Shepherds. Maybe that explains how it turned up with your group. But what I’ve told you can’t go any further. Hear me?”

Dekker drew a shaky breath. “Yessir.”

“I have to take your word, Mr. Dekker. Or, understand me—court-martial Ben Pollard.”

“I’m giving you a two-day stand-down, Mr. Dekker,” Porey said, the friendliest Dekker had ever seen the man, me quietest he’d ever imagined him. It still didn’t include warmth. “I don’t want you near the labs for forty-eight hours.”

Graff said, from the side of the room, “I’d recommend longer.”

Frown from Porey, who rocked back in the desk chair. “We haven’t got longer. You have a mother a great deal in the news... which you know. You may not know there’s a special bill proceeding through a JLC committee, that requires the military to surrender personnel indicted for major crimes, are you aware of that, Mr. Dekker? —Does that concern you?”

A complete shift of attack. Another assault on memory. Sometimes he thought he lost things. “My mother, sir,...”

“He’s not gotten the headlines,” Graff said. “His schedule’s been non-stop for days...”

“Your mother, Mr. Dekker, has a battery of very expensive peacer lawyers, your mother is a cause that’s burned a police station in Denmark and gotten a MarsCorp chartered jet grounded in Dallas on a bomb threat—do you know that?”

No, he didn’t. He shook his head and Porey went on, “The whole damned planet’s on its ear, there’s a lot of pressure on the legislative committee, and you’re essential personnel, mister. Your crew is an essential, high-tech experiment that through no particular fault of yours, has taken a direct hit from a damnably persistent woman and a nest of lying political fools in the UDC, who are in bed and fornicating with the politicians who appointed them to their posts, the same politicians who are fornicating with the shadow parliament and the peacers in Geneva. That bill is a piece of currency in this game. We have to avoid you becoming another piece of currency in this affair, a damned media circus if they extradite you, and that means getting anything done with this project has assumed a sudden certain urgency, do you follow me?”

He saw the lieutenant out of the tail of his eye. Graff wasn’t looking at him. Hadn’t told him... God, how much else had Graff kept from him?

Porey said: “We’re talking about a fault in the Aptitudes, and I want your well-considered opinion here, Mr. Dekker, whether you want a go-with as-is, or whether you personally want to make a personnel switch. Both your crewmembers are demonstrably capable in the seats they’ve trained for— but “capable” is a fragile substance in a Hellburner crew, you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” he managed to say. “Extremely well. Pollard and Aboujib?”

“Exactly.”

“Can I talk to them?”

THUMP of Percy’s hand on the desk. “You’re the pilot! Gut decision! Which?”

An answer fell out. “I’d ask them, sir.”

“Correct answer,” Graff muttered, looking at the floor.

Hard to argue with Porey. Hard to think in Percy’s vicinity. But there was Graff. Graff agreed with him... Graff handed him secrets that could mean Graff’s own career; and Graff had failed his promise to tell him if there was news from Sol One...

Porey said, “Then we’ll put the decision up to them, since that’s where you want it. No preferences. You’ve lost one crew. Let’s see if this one’s worth the investment. Meanwhile, Mr. Dekker, do some thinking about your own responsibilities—like executive decisions. Do you make executive decisions, Mr. Dekker?”

“Yessir.”

“Do you remember your instructions, regarding what you’ve seen and heard?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are they?”

“Silence. Sir.”

A hesitation. A cold, cold glance, as if he were a morsel on Percy’s plate. Then a casual wave of the hand. “Dismissed. Two-day stand-down.”

“Yessir.” Anger choked him of a sudden, out of what reserve of feeling he wasn’t sure. But it wasn’t at Graff. He refused at gut level to believe Graff had deliberately lied to him. The service had. The out-of-reach authorities had, and not for the first time in his life. He saluted, turned and reached for the door.

“Mr. Dekker,” Graff said, from the side of the room. “Excuse me, sir. —Mr. Dekker, outside, a moment.”

“Yessir.” He wasn’t enthusiastic. He didn’t want to talk. But Graff followed him outside, between the guards.

“Mr. Dekker, I failed a promise. —Do you want the information, on your mother’s whereabouts?”

He nodded. Couldn’t talk. He was acutely conscious of the guards on either hand; and Graff steered him well down the corridor, toward the corner, before he stopped. “Your mother is on Earth at the moment—everything funded by the Civil Liberty Association, as far as we can tell.”

“Why?”

“The peace movement finds the case useful—the Federation of Man, for starters—as I warned you might happen; there is a financial connection between certain of these organizations, the CRA, the Greens and a number of other organizations—”

“It doesn’t make sense! She’s not political!”

“I’m afraid it’s rather well left the original issue. It’s the power of the EC that’s in question. There’ve been demonstrations at the Company offices in Bonn, in Orlando, Tokyo, Paris—”

More and more surreal. “I don’t believe this....”

“There’s a great deal of pent-up resentment against the Company, economic resentments, social resentments—so Saito tells me: mass population effect: the case came along, it embodied a concept of Company wealth and power against a helpless worker. The Company is understandably anxious to defuse the situation; they’ve offered a settlement, but concession seems to have encouraged the opposition. Salazar’s plane was forced to land in Dallas because of a bomb threat, that’s what the commander was talking about: whether that was a peace group or a random lunatic no one knows. I can’t overstate the seriousness of what’s happening downworld.”

“She’s never been on Earth. She can’t have any idea what’s going on...”

“We certainly wish she had decided against going down.”

“Did she ever call back?”

“No: my word on that, Mr. Dekker, I swear to you. Most probably her lawyers advised her against it. Most probably— considering who funds them.”

“I’ve got to call her! I’ve got to talk to her—”

“Reaching her, now, through the battery of bodyguards and security around her, on Earth—I earnestly advise against it. I don’t think you can get through that screen. If you do it’s almost certainly going to be monitored, very likely to be placed back on the news, by one side or the other in this affair.”

“God. Where is she—right now, where is she?”

“Bonn, as of this morning. Mazian is in the same city. There are peacer riots and demonstrations. The news-services are crawling all over the city. If you want to communicate with her, you just about have to do it through news releases, and it’s not the moment for it. We’re imminently concerned about this extradition bill getting through. We don’t want the maneuvering going public, and it could if you make a move. One believes the legislators aren’t stupid. No one is spelling out to the media what effect the bill will have, no one is saying outright that it’s aimed at you in specific, incredibly the news-services haven’t put it together yet or don’t even know about it. It’s all proceeding in committee, so far; Salazar publicly making speeches on the fear of some ‘criminal element’ with a finger on the fire button. Earth is extremely worried about that point.”

“Do they know what we are? Do they understand this ship?”

“The general public knows now it’s no missile project: no one believed we could maintain cover after the bearings, yes, it’s leaked, what it is—senatorial aides, company representatives, nobody’s sure exactly what; but we’re completely public; and the program, with what we’ve found out in the last three hours, is in such disarray we can’t take another round of hearings. The coalition that put command of this facility in our hands is extremely shaky—as I understand it. If political reputations are threatened by the wrong kind of publicity, certain key votes could shift—and we could be massacred in the legislative committee. That, aside from your personal welfare, is why the Company and Fleet Command are extremely anxious to stop that bill; certain citizen lobbies are very fearful of wildcat attacks from the Fleet provoking a military strike at Earth; and even knowing it’s a certain faction in MarsCorp pushing that bill, certain key senators desperately need a success in this program to play against it or they can’t—politically—stand the heat of standing against the bill.”

“What do they want from us? I’m not a criminal! Jamil and his crew aren’t criminals! I want to know who’s trying to kill me that doesn’t fucking care if they get my crew along with me! Nobody’s going to do a damned thing about those guys that did this, are they—are they, sir?”

“Keep your voice down. The guards have audio. We don’t even know at this point that it wasn’t a simple mechanical. Those systems have been under heavy use. But FU grant you we don’t think that’s the case. That’s one problem. And I’ll tell you between us and no further, I had a real moment of doubt at the outset whether to make an issue of the Aptitudes with your crew or let it ride the way it was. The temptation to let it stand and save this program one more major setback was almost overwhelming— but I know, and I think you know, this system is operationally too sensitive and strategically too critical to accept half right. I hate what happened to Jamil. I wish I’d ordered a general stand-down-—but hindsight’s cheap. As it is, the pod sims are in stand-down, we’ve got a question of other sabotage possible—what you’ve given us is very valuable; but we’re running short of time to develop a case, and we’re going to have to find answers for a pack of legislators, it’s dead certain. Right now I don’t want you to think about any of this. I want you to take the stand-down, get a night’s sleep, and remember what you know is dangerously sensitive. You understand me on that point?”

“Yessir.”

“I have confidence in you,” Graff said, turned and walked him back to the marine guards, “Corporal. One of you take Mr. Dekker where he wants to go. Get him what he needs. —I suggest it’s a beer, Mr. Dekker. I strongly suggest it’s a beer. Tell galley I said so. Check with me if they quibble.”

“Yes, sir,” the marine said. “This way, sir.”

“Beer, sir,” the guard said, had even gotten it for him and brought it to him at a table back in the galley, quiet refuge in a flurry of cooks and a clatter of pans around them—and in consideration of the Rules around this place, and politeness, and the damned regulations—Dekker shoved the kid’s hand back across the table, with: “Sip, at least. Where I come from—fair’s fair.”

“Nossir,” the corporal said, and shoved the beer into his hand, “We can, any evening, and you guys can’t, and, damn, you guys earn it.”

Misted him up, he’d had no expectation of that, and he hid it in a sip of beer. Guy he didn’t know. Young kid who was going to ride that carrier out there with two thousand other guys and get blown to hell if he made a mistake.

Guy’s name was Bioomfield, T.

And if Graff could have done anything personal for him—he was grateful to the lieutenant for Cpl. Bioomfield, who didn’t know him, had no personal questions, didn’t chatter at him, just let him sip his beer. He felt the alcohol go straight for his bloodstream and his head: after months of abstinence he was going to be a serious soft hit. He thought about going back to barracks and catching some sleep, he thought about his crew and Jamil and the guys he knew; and he wanted quiet around him, just quiet, no one to deal with, and when they got to the changes they were going to make in assignments—that wasn’t going to happen.

He wondered where Meg was, most of all, finally said to Bioomfield, “You have a com with you. You think you guys could locate a female about my height, red hair, shave job, Reel uniform...?”

“That one,” Bioomfield said reverently. And kept any remark he might have to himself. “Yessir.” And got on the com and said, “This is Bioomfield. Anybody on the com know where the redhead is?”

Remarks came back, evidently. Bioomfield listened to something on the earplug, struggled for a sober face, and asked, looking at him: “You want her here, sir?”

He managed a laugh. “Tell her it’s Paul Dekker asking. Cuts down on casualties.”