Devil to the Belt

CHAPTER 8

HARD day?” Villanueva asked, at the dessert bar, “Could say.” The one claim you could make for Earth’s vicinity was more varieties of sweet and spice than a man could run through in a year. And Graff personally intended to try during his tenure here—a tenure in which combat was beginning to look preferable. “What’s this one?” he asked of the line worker, but Villy said, “Raisin cake. Allspice, cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg—” “You have it down,” Graff was fencing. He was sure Villy wasn’t here entirely for the dessert. He didn’t want the lecture. He didn’t want the inquiry. He was, however, amazed at Villy’s culinary expertise.

Villy shrugged. “You guys always ask. —How’s Dekker doing?”

“All right till the colonel clipped him.” He weighed asking. He couldn’t stand the suspense. “Did he send you?”

Hesitation. “Could say that.”

“What’s he after?”

“He’s saying put the boy back into lower levels. Use Mitchell’s crew, use me and mine. He says he takes your point, no command substitutions, no crew subs until we get this thing operating.”

“Why doesn’t he make his own offers?”

“Seems us pi-luts talk better to each other, at least where it concerns capabilities. You want the truth—I suggested he lay off the substitutions.”

“Wish you could have done that earlier.”

Villanueva gave him a look back. “Truth is, I did.”

Graff picked up his tray and tracked Villy to the tables in the officers’ mess, said, “Do you mind?” and sat down opposite him before he had an answer.

“Be my guest,” Villy said.

There had to be looks from other tables, assessing their expressions, the length of their converse. Graff said, urgently, “It’s no deal, Villy. I can’t. Your colonel’s got no right to pull him—”

Do him credit, Villy didn’t even try to defend the technicality. “Mitchell’s crew and mine. No subs. When Dekker passes the medicals and the reaction tests—ask the colonel then. He’ll put him back on. Just wait till the boy quiets. For his own sake. For the program’s.”

“Whose medicals? Yours or ours?”

Villy evidently hadn’t considered that point. “I’ll talk to the colonel. Maybe we can arrange something. We can’t afford another set-back. You know it and I know it. We’ve got to pull this thing together before we lose it.”

“I’m willing. But I want the heat o/Dekker’s tail. The kid’s had enough.”

“No argument here.”

A bite of cake. Time to reflect. “Captain Villy, —do you personally know what happened in the pod access?”

Villy didn’t answer that one straightaway either. “If I knew it was us I wouldn’t say. If I didn’t know anything, I wouldn’t have an answer. What does that tell you?”

“You dance well.”

Villy laughed, not with much humor. Tapped the table with his finger. “We got the senatorial and the techs out of here. We’ve got the program back in our hands. We’re not going to get another design. That’s the word.”

First he’d heard. Had they won one? “No redesign?”

“That’s the whisper going down the line. Heard it from the Old Man, We don’t get the AI. Rumor is, we’re going for another run in the sims, try to build a stricter no-do into the pilot, not the machine.”

Graff leaned back, heart thumping. Took a breath. He couldn’t tell whether Villanueva was happy with that situation or not. “So what’s your opinion?”

“Go with it. That’s what I’m saying. Your best. And ours. We try to set the tape, best we can. Then we fly with it. —You won it, J-G. Enjoy it.”

The nickname was traveling. And he wasn’t sure he’d won anything: he’d gotten extremely wary of concessions from Tanzer’s office. But Villy said:

“We’re not happy with the situation—I don’t trust your tape-teaching, and that’s evidently what they’re leaning on, heavier and heavier. I don’t like the damn system, I still don’t think drugging down and walking through any situation is any cure for some kid hitting his personal wall—we can’t guarantee your reflexes, or mine, are going to be in every guy that’s ever going to run through this program.”

Old argument. Graff said softly, delicately, “That’s why we’re getting them where we’re getting them.” But he didn’t say, And we’ll fill out the primary pilot list outside Sol System. You didn’t say that. On the captain’s orders you didn’t. Earth didn’t want to know that.

No.

“Listen,” Villy said, “you know and I know we’re reaching the bottom of the barrel. People don’t go out to be miners and Shepherds because they’re upstanding citizens. They’re ex-rab, they’re asocials ... These two girls you got in—-both of them have records...”

The rab was some kind of Emigration movement. Pro-space. Anti-Company. It had turned violent, ten years ago, big blow-up, company police had panicked, opened fire on a crowd...

“Dekker has a record,” he reminded Villy. “He’s also popular in the Belt. The Company system out there was crooked. He beat it. You know what the UDC’s setting up, making his life difficult? It’s certainly not the best PR move the UDC could make. And Kady and Aboujib were part of Dekker’s crew out there, such as survived—another pilot and a numbers man, as the Belters call it: good ones, for what the record shows.”

Villy made a wry expression, took a sip of coffee. “May be. We’ll see—once the boy’s back in the sims. Personally, I hope he makes it. He’s a son of a bitch, but Chad didn’t dislike him.”

“Wasn’t any animosity on either side, that I know. Dekker got along with Wilhelmsen.”

A pause. “J-G, off the record—between you and me: do you really buy it that Chad’s crew dumped him in that pod?”

“I don’t buy it that Dekker went crazy when he saw the ship blow. Not till the MPs tried to make him leave mission control, get him away from the senators and the VIPs. After that, no, he wasn’t highly reasonable. Would you be? So he said something that wasn’t politic—people do that. Other people don’t necessarily try to kill them in cold blood. No, I’m not accusing the crew. I find it almost as unlikely as Dekker doing it to himself. You’ve got to understand, Villy: this kid spent a couple of months in the dark, in a tumble, in the Belt—bad accident. He couldn’t get the ship back under control. This isn’t a guy who’s going to suicide that way, of all the ways he could pick. And no Belter’s going to do that to him. Not the way they did it. So you tell me what happened.”

Villy thought about that one, thought about it very seriously, by all he could tell. Then; “Let me tell you about Chad’s crew. They’re professionals, Rob’s got a father he’s supporting, guy got caught in a tractor accident, insurance won’t pay anything but basics; Kesslan and Deke are real close with Rob—they’re not going to risk it, for one thing, even if they were that mad, which I don’t think they were. I think they understood Dekker’s outburst. Might not have liked it, but understood it. Murder just doesn’t add.”

Made some sense—granted the father had no means of support; which he personally didn’t know—nor understand, inside Earth’s maze of cultures and governments, any more than he understood the motives and the angers that bred in the motherwell.

“Won’t say,” Villy added, “that there aren’t some others Dekker could’ve touched off. But don’t try to tell me it was Chad’s crew.”

“I respect your judgment.” Mostly, that was the truth. “But what do we do? Dekker doesn’t deserve what’s happened. His crew didn’t deserve what happened. Wilhelmsen—didn’t deserve what happened. Let me tell you, in that hearing, I never tried to suggest that Wilhelmsen was primarily at fault, because I never believed it. He was good. It was exactly what I said: that substitution killed him and it killed the rest of them.”

Villy was listening, at least. Maybe it was something in the coffee. Reason seemed possible of a sudden and he hammered it home. “It’s not possible, it’s not the way things work at light speed, Villy, it can’t be, you can’t treat people like that. An ops team is a living organism. You don’t split it and expect it to perform with anything like efficiency.”

Long silence. A sip of coffee. “We’ve changed the damn specs so often it’s a wonder anything mates with anything. The mechanics are overworked, they can’t do the maintenance in the manufacturers’ specs, on the schedule they’re being handed, with the staff they’ve got. That’s the next disaster waiting to happen and nobody wants to listen to them. We’ve got a program in trouble.”

“We’ve got a human race in trouble, Villy. I’ve been there, I’ve seen what we’re fighting—I don’t want that future for the species, I don’t happen to think that social designers can remake the model we’ve got—”

But when you thought about it, just trying to talk to Villy—you began asking yourself—however we, haven’t we, already? Hasn’t distance, and hasn’t time?

Like to take you outside the well, like to open your eyes, Captain Villy, and let you feel it when you drop out and in. They’d never get you back here again....

Because the part of Villanueva there was to like, came alive when he was talking about his job. You saw that sometimes in his face.

“You have no attachment,” Villanueva said, “no feeling for being from this planet.”

“I’ve met what isn’t,” Graff said.

Interest from Villy. Quirk of a brow. “What are they like?”

“They’re them. We’re us. Sociable fellows. They don’t fight wars.”

“So why are you in this one?” Villanueva asked. “Earth didn’t ask for this—not our business, a plane clear to hell and gone away from us. Earth Company brought us this thing. The old bottom line. They rooked us into it. Rooked you in too? Or what made you enlist?”

Good question. Complicated question. “Our ship’s routes. The ship I was born to. Polly d’Or. Didn’t ask for trouble, but they tried to cut us out, wanted to regulate where we came and went—retaliation for the Earth Company’s visas. Economics on one scale. Our ship on the other.”

Villy still looked confused, still didn’t get it.

“We’d lose everything. The Fleet’s what keeps those routes open. Only thing that does. They can’t enforce their embargo.”

“Hell and away from us.”

“Now. Not forever. Lucky you have us. It’ll come here— eventually it’ll come here.”

“Not everybody believes that.”

“Nobody outside this system doubts it. You’ll deal with Cyteen—on your terms. Or on theirs. Their technology. You want your personality type changed? They can do it. You want your planet re-engineered? They can do that. They are doing it—but we can’t get close enough to find out what. We don’t get into that system anymore.”

“We.”

“The merchanters they don’t own.”

“You ever been down to a planet?”

He shook his head.

“Ever thought about it?”

“No.”

“What are you afraid of?”

The question bothered him. He was in a mood right now. Maybe it was Tanzer. Maybe it was because he’d never really thought about it.

“Maybe all those people. Maybe being at the bottom of the well, knowing I can’t get myself out of it.”

Villanueva frowned, said, finally, “I grew up under blue sky. But if they get me down there I can’t get out either. Trying to retire me to the damn HQ. I want this ship to fly. It’ll be the last one I work on. I want this one to fly. That’s my reason.”

“We got a few slots, Captain Villy.”

A glance, a laugh. “Old guy like me?”

“Time’s slower out there. Remember I’m in my forties.”

Villanueva pushed back from the table, leaned back in the chair. “Damn you, you’re trying to seduce me.”

He felt a tight smile stretch his mouth. “We’re the only game there is. You don’t want to the in the well. Take you out. Captain Villy. Don’t let them send you down....”

“Damn you.”

“Think on it.”

Villy set his elbows on the table. “About the Dekker business—”

He was merchanter—before he was militia, before he was Fleet. And you did try to get it screwed down tight, whenever you talked deal.

“Dekker’s back in the program.”

“Marginally back in the program. Contingent on the medicals.”

“Our medicals.”

“Coffee could use a warm-up. Yours?”

Rec hall, the term was, but it was the same messhall, they just pulled the wall back and opened up the game nook next door dinner started at 1800h, canteen and a bar opened at 2000h if you could keep your eyes open that late, which Dekker didn’t think he could, even if it was one of the rare shifts his duty card wouldn’t show a No Alcohol Allowed. He was walked out, talked out—”Get the man a sandwich and shove him in bed,” was Meg’s advice; and he was in no mind to argue with it.

There were a few empty tables left in the middle. They drew their drinks. “Stake out a table,” Dekker advised them. “Nobody’ll take it if your drinks are sitting.”

Ben was in the lead; Ben stopped and hesitated over the choice of seats in front of them. “They got a rule where you sit or what?” Ben asked, with a motion of his cup forward. Dekker looked, numbly twigged to what was so ordinary a sight it didn’t even register: all UDC at the one end of the hall, from the serving line; all Fleet at the other.

“This end,” he said.

“There some rule?” Ben repeated.

“They just do.” Sounded stupid, once you tried to justify it. “Not much in common.” But you didn’t sit at the other end. Just didn’t.

“Plus §a change, rab.” Sal gave a shake of her metal-capped braids, set down her drink and pulled back a chair. “You sit, Dek. We’ll do. What shall we get? Cheese san? Goulash? Veg-stew?” Fast line or the slow one, was what it amounted to.

“Dunno.” He hadn’t known how sore he was till he felt a chair under him, and now suddenly everything ached. The walking tour of the facility was a long walk, and bones ached, shoulders ached, head ached—he said, “Chips and a chicken salad—automat, if you don’t mind.” Do them credit, the cooks kept the stuff as fresh as you could get on the line; or the rapid turnaround did. Something light sounded good, and come to think of it, sleep began to. He wasn’t up for a long evening. In any sense. He hoped Meg wouldn’t take offense.

They’d done all the check-ins, gotten Meg and Sal scheduled for Aptitudes tomorrow—Ben had outright refused to sign up, declaring they could damned well get his Aptitudes from the UDC, or court-martial him for failure to show for tests: not an outright show of temper with the examiners, no, just a perfectly level insistence they look up his Security clearance, Ben said; turn up his assignment to Stockholm ... Benjamin Pollard wasn’t taking any Fleet Aptitudes until they showed him his old ones or put him in court.

Damned mess, he reflected, sorry for Ben, truly sorry for what had seemed to a pain-hazed mind his only rescue. Ben’s talk about court-martial upset him. Ben’s situation did. And all the lieutenant would say, when he had in fact gotten a phone call through to him, was: We’ll work with that. Let me talk to the examiners, all right?

He ground at his eyes with the heels of his hands, listened to the dull buzz of conversation and rattling plates over the monotone of the vid, and wondered if there was anything unthought of he could do, any pull he personally had left to use, to get Ben back where he belonged—as much as that, if there was anything he could do to send Meg and Sal back home—no matter that Meg really wanted her chance at the program. He’d been on an emotional rollercoaster since this morning, he’d been ready to go back to routine and they’d stopped him; they’d told him the lieutenant was fighting that, and he’d been ready to come from the bottom again—

til, God, Meg hit him with the business about flying either with him or against him.

He didn’t want her killed, he didn’t want to lose anybody else—he didn’t want to be responsible for any life he cared about. He kept seeing that fireball when he shut his eyes; in the crowd-noise, he kept hearing the static on Cory’s channel, in the tumbling and the dark—because Meg’s threat had made it imminent, and real.

The hall seemed cold this evening. Somebody had been messing with the temperature controls, or the memories brought back the constant chill of the Belt. He sat there rebreathing his own breath behind his hands, knowing (Ben had a blunt, right way of putting it) knowing he was being a spook, knowing he hadn’t any right to shove Meg around, or tell her anything—no more than he’d had any right to take Ben’s name in vain or ask for Meg and Sal to come here—he supposed he must have asked for Meg, too, since they were here, even if he couldn’t figure why the Fleet had gone to that kind of trouble—

Except the captain had wanted him to testify in that hearing Ben had told him about, the one it was too late to testify in, even if he could remember—which he couldn’t.

So he’d let the captain down, he’d let the lieutenant down—in what cause he didn’t know; he only knew he’d disrupted three lives.

So Meg hadn’t been happy where she’d been, so the Hamilton wouldn’t let her right to the top of the pilot’s list: you didn’t get into that chair just walking aboard, Meg had to have known that, Meg must have known what to expect, coming in on a working crew with its own seniorities and its own way of doing things...

So you took a little hell. So you stuck it out. Everybody took hell. He hadn’t been all that good at keeping his head down and taking it, but, God, he’d started a police record when he was thirteen: he’d been a stupid kid—and Meg had done a stupid thing or two, run contraband, something like that, that had busted her from the Earth shuttle to the Belt; but he and Meg were both older, now, Meg ought to know better and do better—he’d made it in the Belt; so had Meg—so she had to have damn-all better sense than she was using—

“You all right?” Meg asked. They were back with the sandwiches. He took a drink of the cola, wished he hadn’t gotten an iced drink.

“Yeah,” he said, chilled. He took his sandwich and unwrapped it while they sat down with their trays. Something on the vid about the hearings. ‘Missile test,’ they called it. That was Hellburner’s cover story. They talked about hearings adjourning on Sol One.... He wished they’d change the channel. Watch the stupid rerun movies. Had to be better. The message net had to be better.

“What else do we need?” Meg was asking. “What about these tests tomorrow? Is there anything we can do to prep ourselves?”

“Nothing but a lot of sleep. Relax. They put you through anything on the carrier? They did, me.”

“Didn’t see a damned soul on the carrier, except at mealtimes. We played gin most of the way.”

“Nice guys,” Sal sighed, “and the reg-u-lations said we couldn’t touch ‘em.”

That got a frown out of Ben. And Sal’s elbow hi Ben’s ribs.

Meg said, “So what do we do? What’s it like?”

“They hook you up to a machine, like medical tests, eye tests, response tests, hand-eye, that sort of thing.”

“Hurt?” Sal asked.

“Yeah, some.”

“You going to study up?” Sal asked Ben.

“I’m telling you, I’m not taking them. I’m not showing. Let them court-martial me, it’s exactly what I want.”

“Ben,—”

Guys stopped by the table. C-Barracks. Techs. Mason, among them, nudged his shoulder with his tray. “Dek,” Mason said. “How you doing?”

“All right,” he said, “pretty tired.”

“Good to see you. Real good to see you....”

“Pop-u-lar,” Ben said when Mason and his guys had moved on. “Just can’t figure how. All these people get to know you and they haven’t broken your neck.”

“Ben,” Sal said, defending him. But it didn’t sting, couldn’t even say why, just—it didn’t. Ben didn’t ask for help, Ben didn’t ask for anything—Cory had been a lot like that. Ben was going to fight his way out of this mess on his own, and that was at least one piece of karma he wouldn’t have to worry about.

“Best—” he started to say. And caught a name on the vid, sounded like Dekker. He picked up Sol Station, and... lodging a complaint—

“Ms. Dekker, what specifically are you alleging?”

God. It was. She looked—

“Dek?” Meg asked, and turned around to look where he was looking, at the vid, at a woman in a crowd of reporters. Blond hair was faded. Face was lined. She didn’t look good, she didn’t look at all good...

Something about MarsCorp, something about threats, an investigation into phone calls ... Some organization backing a suit—

Sal said: “What’s going on?” and Meg: “Shhh.”

He couldn’t track on it. Didn’t make sense. Something about losing her job, some civil rights organization launching a lawsuit in her name—

“It’s his mother,” Ben said; he said, “Shut up, dammit, I can’t hear—” But he could see the background, see the MarsCorp logo, he knew that one—MarsCorp offices on Sol Station, police, reporters, some guy who said he was a lawyer—something about her son—

Picture jumped, tore up. The local station cut in with the channel 2 program information crawl—but he wasn’t finished yet, wasn’t damned finished yet...

“They cut it off!” He shoved the chair around to get up, get to a phone, saw the shadow of the tray and the sense of balance wasn’t there. He staggered, hit it, food went everywhere, cup bounced—”Shit!” He was flat off his balance, elbowed the guy trying to hold his feet, guy grabbed at him and he didn’t want a fight, he just wanted the phone. “Get out of my way!”

“You son of a bitch!” The guy had his arm. Ben and Meg and Sal grabbed for him, Ben saying something about Let him go, the man’s upset; but the guy wasn’t letting him go, the guy swung him and he grabbed for a handhold on the UDC uniform, about the time there were a whole lot of other chairs clearing, and Fleet was all around them. A high voice yelled, “You damn fools, stop it—”

Wasn’t any stopping it. The UDC guy hit him, and he hit the guy with everything he had, figuring it was the only blow he was going to get in—couldn’t hear anything, with guys coming over the tables, guys pushing and shoving and punches flying past his head—he didn’t want to be here, he wanted the damned phone, wanted the truth out of the station, that was all—

Lights were flashing on and off, shouting filled his ears, fist rattled his skull and gray and red shot across his vision as arms came around him and hauled him out of it.

He wasn’t breathing real well, couldn’t half see: he yelled after Meg and Sal in the melee, couldn’t tell who he was hitting when he tried to break free—

“Dekker!” That was the lieutenant. So he was in deeper shit; but more imminently of a sudden, he had his wind cut off as they bent him over a table. Something cold clicked shut around his wrists. That scared him: he’d felt that before... and it got through to his brain that the guys holding him were the cops, and Graff s voice made him understand that help was here, the fight was over, and the lieutenant wanted him to stand still. He tried to; which meant they got the other wrist, locked the cuff on, and at least pulled him back off the table so he could get a breath...

“The guy shoved him.” Meg’s voice rang out loud and dear. “Wasn’t Dek’s fault, he was just trying to get up — it was an emergency, f God’s sake. This ass wanted to argue right of way!”

Guys started shouting all around, one side calling the other the liars.

“Clear back!” Voice he knew but couldn’t place. His nose was running and he sniffed. Couldn’t say anything, just tried to breathe past the stuffy nose and the clog in his throat.

“What happened here?” the Voice asked — he blinked the haze mostly clear and saw a lot of MPs, a lot of angry guys standing along the wall with more MPs and soldiers. What Happened Here? drew shouting from all around, Meg and Sal profane and high-pitched in the middle of it, how the guy’d bumped him, how his mother was in some kind of trouble on the news . . .

Had to talk about his mother, God, he didn’t want an audience, didn’t want to talk about his mother in front of everybody. He tried to look elsewhere, and meanwhile the lieutenant was saying they’d better move this out of here, he’d take him in custody —

Please God. Anywhere, fast.

The other voice said: “I think we’d both better get this moved out of here,” and he made out the blurry face now for Captain Villy, with a knot of UDC MPs and a whole lot of trouble. They were holding Meg, and Sal, and Ben, among a dozen mixed others. “Move ‘em,” Villy said, and there were Fleet Security uniforms among the lot. He started to argue for Meg and Sal and Ben; but: “Dekker,” Graff said sharply, and said, “Do it.”

He did it. He kept his head down and walked where they wanted him to, he heard Graff at the top of his lungs chewing out the rest of the guys in the messhall and Villanueva doing the same, telling them they were all dunned fools, telling them how they were on the same side.

Yeah, he thought. Yeah. Tell ‘em that, lieutenant.

Himself, he didn’t want to think what was going on back at Sol Station, didn’t want to think what he’d just done back there in the messhall; he kept his mouth shut all the way to the MP post, and inside; him, and Ben and a whole crowd of their guys and the UDC arrestees; but when they tried to take Meg and Sal into the back rooms:

“I want Fleet Security—laissez, laissez, you sumbitch —ow!”

And Sal screamed how she was going to file complaints for rape and brutality....

The MPs got real anxious then. “Where’s Cathy?” one asked, and a guy got on the phone and started trying to scare up a female officer, while Meg argued with them about holding on to him, “Dammit, let him go, he’s just out of hospital, for God’s sake—man got up and bumped a tray, his mother was on the news—”

God. “Meg, shut up. It doesn’t matter!”

“That sumbitch shoved you!”

At which the sumbitch with the custard all over him started yelling at Meg, somebody shoved, Sal started yelling, and he couldn’t do anything, he was cuffed, same as Ben was, same as the UDC guy was, except they’d made the mistake of not doing that with Meg and Sal.

“Meg,” he yelled, “Afeg!”

They got rough with Meg, they got rough with Sal, he kicked a guy where he saw a prime exposed target and they shoved him up against the wall, grabbed him by the hair and by the collar and shoved him into a chair.

“She didn’t do anything,” he said, but nobody was listening to him. He said, “None of them did anything....”

They got Meg and Sal out of the room. Ben and the other guy, too, and left one guy to stand and watch him. He was dizzy, the adrenaline still had his head going around, and his nose dripped a widening circle on his shirt. He tried to sniff it back, breathing alternate with that disgusting sensation; and in his head kept replaying as much as he’d heard on the vid about what was going on with his mother....

A lawsuit, for God’s sake—but she wasn’t anybody to show up on vid, with lawyers from—what the hell organization was it?

The Civil Liberty Association? He didn’t know who they were, but she’d looked like hell, hair stringing around her ears, makeup a mess. He kept seeing her blinking at the strong lights and looking lost and angry. He knew that look. She’d worn it the last time she’d bailed him out of juvenile court.

.../ don’t need any more trouble, she’d written him. Stop sending me money, I don’t want any more ties to you. I don’t want any more letters....

He had never taken leave back to Sol One: there was a serious question, Legal Affairs had warned him from the beginning of his enlistment, whether once he came onto Sol Station where lawyers could get to him with papers, he could escape a civil process being served... or whether the Fleet could prevent him being arrested. The Fleet had put him behind a security wall only because having him on trial wouldn’t sit well with the Belt, where they mined the steel; and the EC cooperated because letting Cory Salazar’s case get to the media would raise questions about a whole long , laundry list of things about ASTEX and MarsCorp the Earth ‘ Company itself didn’t want washed in public. Anything to keep him out of court—

Because damned right there was a connection between his mother and MarsCorp, it was Aim, it was Cory Salazar’s mother, who’d wanted to have a daughter, had one solo and tried to run that daughter’s life and now her afterlife as a personal vendetta against the pusher-jock who’d romanced her collegiate offspring out of her hands.

Hell if that was the way it had been. Cory had dreamed of starships, Cory’d hated her mother’s laid-out course—college to a MarsCorp guaranteed success track—so much that Cory Wouldn’t run fast enough or far enough to escape it. Maybe starships had only been a kid’s romantic answer—but Cory had come to the Belt because she’d thought she could double and triple her money free mining—she’d lured him along for a pilot, and they’d nearly done it, until Cory ran head-on into the corrupt System her mama had wanted her to sit at the top of—and it killed her.

That was the bloody truth. That was the thing Alyce Salazar wouldn’t see. He’d wanted to tell her so: he’d imagined how he’d say it if he got the chance, maybe talk to her sanely, maybe just grab her and shake some sense into mama, so she’d do something about the system that had killed Cory.

But Legal Affairs had nixed any such move, said plainly, Don’t communicate with her. Don’t attempt to communicate with her. And made it an order.

So now Alyce Salazar had communicated with his mother he knew that was the case, because his mother wasn’t dedicated to finding trouble, his mother was the absolute champion of Never get involved...

The side door opened. A team of medics came in, with: “Let’s have a look at you,” so he sat where they wanted and let them look at his eyes with lights, and into his ears, and his mouth. They got the nosebleed stopped, at least, then said they’d better have him down in the clinic for a thorough go-over.

“No,” he objected, suddenly panicked. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

But they took him anyway.

Aboujib, assault with a weapon, incitement

Basrami, assault

Bissell, assault

Blumgarten, assault, assault on an officer

Brown, assault with a weapon

Cannon, assault, incitement

Dekker, instigation of riot, assault

Franklin, assault with a weapon

Hardesty, assault

Hasseini, assault, verbal abuse of an officer

Jacoby, assault with a weapon

Kady, assault, assault on an officer

Keever, assault, destruction of government property

Mason, assault

Mitchell, assault, assault on an officer

Pauli, assault, incitement

Pollard, assault with a weapon

Rasmussen, verbal abuse; (hospital)

Schwartz, assault

Simmons, assault

Vasquez, assault; (hospital)

Zeeman, aggravated assault

Graff read the list, handed it to Petrie, the junior out of Legal Affairs. “I want interviews, any way you can get them. Record everything. I want them now, I want any releases you can get, I want them an hour ago. And I want condition, instigator and perpetrator on our hospital cases.”

“Yessir.” Petrie put the list in his case. The temper must be showing. Petrie didn’t stop for questions of his own. The door shut.

Demas, resting against the counter, said, “Doesn’t seem there was anything premeditated: the channel 3 news boss recognized a correspondence of names on the Sol One news feed, suddenly realized it was sensitive, and jerked the report off the air—bad decision. Dekker happened to be in the messhall, the vid happened to be channel 3. Charlie Tyson happened to be behind him with a tray; Dekker jumped up—bang into the tray. Tyson blew up, Dekker blew, the whole messhall blew.”

“I want a tape of that news broadcast, I want to know what’s going on with Dekker’s mother, I want to know what she’s involved in.”

“You want it in capsule now?” Demas asked. “I’ve got the essentials.”

“Go.”

“Dekker’s mother got fired two days ago. She was a maintenance worker—electrician—for SolCorp. The maintenance office claimed incompetence—the record is apparently inaccessible—she claimed she was a victim of MarsCorp pressure inside the EC, claimed Salazar’s agents had been harassing her on the phone. She showed up in front of the MarsCorp office with lawyers and reporters, MarsCorp called Security, and a MarsCorp spokesman went on camera to charge Ms. Dekker with sabotage and threatening phone calls—apparently Ms. Dekker had been doing some work inside the MarsCorp sector and got some phone numbers, by what Ms. Salazar charges. Ms. Dekker claims they’ve been harassing her—calls on her off watch, that kind of thing. Ms. Dekker’s got some civil rights organization on her side, they’re charging Ms. Salazar used pressure to get Ms. Dekker’s job on personal grounds. End report.”

“Harassing phone calls. Is Ms. Salazar on One?”

“She was eight days ago, at the time Ms. Dekker claims she got two of the calls. She’s in London at the moment. Ms. Dekker claims she asked for a trace on the calls. The station office claims there was no such request and says their records show no calls to Ms. Dekker’s residence.” Demas folded his arms. “Ask how sophisticated Ms. Salazar’s employees might be.”

“I take it there are ways to evade those records.”

“Abundant methods—limited only by the sophistication of the operator and the equipment. This is a woman who maintains apartments in two space stations and a couple of world capitals, on two separate planets. I would not match a station electrician against her technical resources.”

“We’ve been sleeping through this one. I need a structural chart of MarsCorp and the EC, With names and kinships.” Damn, the Security chief was—where else?—with the captain. “Can we get that through our own channels?”

“We can try. It’s going to be a maze. Kinships, I’m not sure are going to be systematized anywhere. They’re illegal, remember—where it regards government contracts. Personal friendships are illegal.”

“Are animosities?”

A humorless laugh. “Unfortunately there’s no such rule. Among those cards on your desk is the Alyce Salazar file such as we have it—with Saito’s compliments. Some of the information may be in there. It’s going to take Legal Affairs to—”

“—unravel the MarsCorp connections?”

Demas nodded. “If they can.”

“Meanwhile there’s the next shuttle to One. I want somebody on it. I want somebody to go personally to the captain’s office—if there still is an office—and get a report to him we’re sure isn’t intercepted. And I want some message back here that isn’t wearing a UDC uniform or Belter chain and claiming they don’t know a thing. I should have done it when Pollard came in here.”

Demas looked thoughtful. “I’ll look up the schedule.”

“Due in at 0900h on the 27 ^th, out at 2030h the 29 ^th, we’ve got a service hold for scheduled maintenance. They’re claiming it’s booked full outbound. There’s always some contractor holding seats. If we’ve got any pull—get one.”

He’d gotten used to being handled like a piece of meat. He’d gotten used to cameras and doctors and cops. They made a vid record of the new skin on his shoulder and the finger-marks on his arm. They asked him who’d hit him, he just shook his head, didn’t even have to come out of his haze to talk to them. They took samples of his hair, his skin, his blood, and whatever fluid they could wring out of his body; “Pulse rate just won’t go down,” one of them said. “That’s on his hospital records.”

“What do you expect!” he asked, only time he’d opened his mouth except for a tongue depressor, and one of them said he should calm down.

“Yeah,” he said. His stomach was upset from the poking around they were doing. He tried to go on timing out, just go away and blind himself with the lights and not to let his heart flutter, the way it felt it was doing. Couldn’t think about anything if you wanted to fake out the meds. Think of—

Sol One. His mother’s apartment. But that was no good. His mother was in trouble, thanks to him...

Way Out. But that ship was dead. Like Cory.

Think of stupid stuff. Name the moons of Saturn. Jupiter had used to work, but he’d learned that real estate too intimately.

Docking fire sequence for a miner ship. Range and rate of closing.

Finally one said, “Name’s Parton. Fleet Medical. How are you doing, Lt. Dekker?”

Fleet. He said, “The lieutenant agree with this?”

“The lieutenant doesn’t agree with fighting.”

So he was in trouble. With everybody. He slid a glance over to the wall, where he didn’t have to look at Parton or get in an argument, and wondered distractedly if he could get a word out of the news channel if he could just get permission to make a phone call. ...

But the medic, Parton, was talking with the other medics— said, of the blood pressure, “Yeah, he does that. Doesn’t like hospitals. Doesn’t like UDC medics, if you want the plain truth....”

Not real fond of any meds right now, —sir. Can I get up?

But he didn’t ask that, he didn’t think it was smart to ask, at this point. He got an elbow under him—they had him lying on a table freezing his ass off, and he only wanted to relieve the ache in his back. But a hand landed on his shoulder: it had a UDC uniform cuff. MP. He lay back and stared at the lights and froze in silence until the Fleet medic came back and stood over him.

“Lieutenant’s orders: you go where you’re told to go, you don’t argue, you don’t say anything about the incident to anybody but our legal staff, you understand?”

He said, burning with embarrassment, “Something about my mother on the news, can anybody for God’s sake find out what happened to my mother?”

“Lieutenant’s aware of that. He’s making inquiries.”

“What about the other guys? Pollard and Kady and Aboujib—”

“They’re fine.”

“They arrest them too?”

“Riot and assault.” Parton looked across him, over his head. “Lieutenant wants him with his unit. The three he named.”

“Kady and Aboujib are women.”

“They’re his unit, sergeant.”

Long silence. Then: “I’ll have to ask the major.”

Age-old answer. Dekker shut his eyes. Figured they’d be a while asking and getting no. “It’s protecting me from Kady you better worry about,” he told them. Bad joke. Nobody was laughing. He wasn’t amused either. Meg had a record of some kind. Meg had just gotten it cleared, got a chance to fly again. Ben had his assignment in Stockholm....

His mother used to say, You damned kid, everything you touch you break—

You messed up my whole life, you self-centered little brat—why can’t you do right, why can’t you once in your life do something right, you damned screw-up?

Long time he lay there freezing, with a knot in his gut, replaying that newscast for the information he could get out of it, telling himself they couldn’t prove anything on his mother, she’d at least got some kind of lawyer, so she wasn’t without help—

He’d got a little money ahead, he’d saved it out of his pay, he wasn’t spending anything. He’d tried to give it to her before, for what he’d cost her, but she hadn’t wanted it. Maybe he could get Ben to send it to her. Maybe she’d take it from Ben—she was going to need funds fast, if she wasn’t drawing pay, she never got that far ahead of the bills, and even if she had free legal help, it wouldn’t pay for food...

“Word is, he can’t go in a cell with the women,” the MP said. “Regulations. We can put him with Pollard....”

He didn’t argue. Parton only said he’d report that refusal to the lieutenant.

Parton left. The UDC medics got him up. The MPs locked a bracelet on his wrist that they said he wasn’t to mess with, and took him out and down the hall to the cells.

Guys from his barracks yelled out, along the way, “Hey, Dek!” and he looked numbly to the side. Mason and Chiv were mere. Pauli. Hardesty. And across the aisle—a guy he didn’t know, familiar face, who looked murder at him. So he didn’t look. He walked where they wanted him, they took the cuffs off when he’d gotten to Ben’s cell and they opened the door and put him in.

Ben gave him a sullen look. He didn’t figure Ben wanted to start a fight in front of the MPs. So he got over in the corner, mere being just a double bunk and a toilet, and Ben sitting on the bunk: he sank down on the floor with his back to the corner, feeling the bruises and feeling the silence from the bunk.

MPs stood there a moment more looking at him. He had the fanciful notion that after they left Ben was going to get up and come over and kill him. But he didn’t truly think so. Hit him—yeah. He expected that. He even wanted it. Anything to stop him thinking about the mess he’d made.

The MPs went away.

Ben said, “The place is probably bugged.”

Which meant Ben wouldn’t kill him—not in front of any cameras. He sat mere with his knees drawn up to his chest so tight he couldn’t move and felt numb.

“You going to sit there?”

He didn’t know what else to do. Didn’t care about climbing up to the top bunk. He was comfortable enough where he was—comfortable as he was going to get.

“You sure got a way of finding it, you know that?”

“Yeah,” he said. It cost to say, “Sorry, Ben,” but he did it, past the knot in his throat. He hadn’t said it often enough, maybe, over the years, and a lot of the people he should have said it to—it was too late to tell.

Ben didn’t say anything for a while. Finally: “You break anything?”

“No.” He wasn’t sure about the ribs, and the lately-broken arm and the shoulder ached like hell, but the meds hadn’t taped anything, or sent him back to hospital, so probably not. He just generally hurt.

“Son of a bitch,” Ben muttered. Ben might hit him after all. Ben’s chances of getting out of here and back to his security clearance had sunk, maybe, as low as they could go. Ben had nothing to lose.

Ben muttered, “Get out of the damn corner. You look like hell.”

He made a tentative move of his legs. But he was wedged in. Couldn’t do it without more effort man he wanted to spend. So he shook his head, just wanted to be left in peace a while. Didn’t want an argument... or he just wanted this one to play itself out and come to some distracting conclusion.

“Damn.” Ben got up, came over and grabbed him up by one wrist and the other, turned him back to the bunk and shoved him onto it.

Bang went his head against the wall. He just rested where he’d hit and stared at Ben, Ben with this thoughtful expression he couldn’t figure out. Mad, he expected. But he didn’t want to deal with complexities or have Ben trying to con him. And Ben’s frown didn’t look as angry as Ben should. “You sick? You want the meds?”

“I’ve had ‘em.” He curled into the corner where the bunk met the wall, tucked up and tried to project a thorough Leave me alone.

Ben sat down, put a hand on his ankle and shook him. “You all right?”

“Yeah.” He jerked his leg, Ben moved his hand, and he sat there with his arms across his gut, because he felt the pieces coming apart, the one reliable guy he knew was after him in a way that didn’t mean Ben had just gone friendly—oh, no, Ben had just changed the rules; Ben was after something, maybe his neck, maybe just after using him to get what he wanted: Belters were like that, that were born there. You could partner with them. You could deal with them. But you didn’t ever take for granted they thought the way you did.

“Your mama’s in some kind of trouble, is she?”

“Her trouble.”

Ben said, “Sounds to me like Salazar.”

They’d gotten altogether too friendly one watch, on the ship, on the trip out from the Belt. Their lives had been changing. Late one night he’d told Ben a lot of things he wished now he hadn’t. Early as the next wakeup, he’d known it was a mistake. “Leave it the hell alone, Ben. It’s not your business.”

“Not my business. You are a son of a bitch, you know that, Dekker?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been told.”

“Listen, Dekker, —”

“I said let it ride!”

“What else does your mama have to do with MarsCorp?”

“She fixes the damn circuits, all over Sol One. She’s an electrician—they don’t ask her politics or her religion before they send her into an office—maybe she screwed up a jot>—”

“MarsCorp? Come on, Dekker.”

“MarsCorp, the Vatican for all I know, I don’t know what she’s into, I don’t know what’s going on, they cut the damn news off, weren’t you listening?”

“Dekker, —I want you to say nice things to the cops, I want you to use your head, I want you to say I’m sorry to the nice UDC guys and yessir to the colonel and don’t the hell get us in any more heat, you understand me?”

“Yeah,” he said. Simple demands, he could cope with. He got his back into the corner and his knees tucked up out of Ben’s convenient reach. Didn’t like guys touching him. He was sure Ben didn’t mean it any way but Pay Attention, but he didn’t like it. “It’s my fault. The whole damn thing’s my fault, I got that loud and clear, all right? I’m sorry you got involved.”

Ben hit his foot. Another Pay Attention. “Dek-ooy, you are in deep shit here, have you noticed that? Stop thinking about your mama, you have got enough shit to occupy your time. I do not want you to screw up in front of the lieutenant, I do not want you to mouth off to the MPs, I do not want you to get us in deeper than we are. You copy that? Now, for all those watching, we are going to agree there is involved in this a Name that they won’t want in court, no more than they did when they the hell raked you into the Service and gave me my slot at TI. That Name is, let us agree, Salazar. So we are not going to court martial, we are not going to see any outside lawyers, we are behind the thickest fuckin’ security wall in the inner system, and I think it would be a most severely good idea not to antagonize the Fleet at this point, since the UDC is for some whimsical reason not all that happy with you. Do you follow?”

Jaw wasn’t working all that well. He nodded. He couldn’t stop thinking about his mother. He couldn’t help thinking how a lot of people would be alive if he’d never existed and how people connected to him might have better lives now if he was dead and Salazar didn’t have anybody to go after.

Ben said it right—Salazar couldn’t get a message to him through ordinary channels, so she sent one on the news. I’m here. I’m still waiting. I’ll get what you care about until I can get you....

He didn’t track on everything Ben said—but that, that, he understood. He wanted to get to a phone. He wanted permission from someone to get a call out.

Which was exactly what Salazar wanted. So he couldn’t do that. Couldn’t, dammit. Not without thinking more clearly than he was right now....

Let her have him, maybe, do something so the Fleet would throw him out and all the Belter and Shepherd types who’d protected him wouldn’t want to, wouldn’t give a damn if he went to trial....

Then, if they ever let him testify, he could tell mama Salazar to her face she’d killed her own kid. Only revenge Cory would ever have—unless you counted a few execs out of jobs. But they’d find others. The Company always found a place for the fools. Ben said so. And he believed it. They just promoted them sideways, somewhere they hadn’t a rep—yet. The Company took care of its own.

“Severe mess,” Sal said with a shake of her braids. Meg concurred with that.

“Sloppy place,” she said, looking around at a scarred, dirty cell. “The tank over at One is ever so nicer.” She felt a draft from a torn coat sleeve, and leaned her back against the wall, one leg tucked. They weren’t in prison coveralls. The Es-tab-lish-ment was still trying to figure what to do with them, she supposed, on grounds of her previous experience with such places. “D’ you s’pose the lieutenant has got a plan, or what-all?”

“I sincerely do hope,” Sal said. Sal had an eye trying to swell shut. A cut lip. Sal did not look happy with her situation. Sal looked, in fact, intensely scared, now the adrenaline rush was gone and they were sitting in a cell with a riot charge over their heads.

“It was a set-up,” Meg said. “Don’t you smell set-up? I never saw a room blow so fast. Just a skosh peculiar, they let Dek out and they run him back in, and MS so seriously important and all? We’re the ones they shagged a carrier to get here. Are they going to forget us? Nyet. Non.”

Sal was still frowning. “Amnesia’s been known. Strikes people in office, most often. I hear they got no vaccine.”

“Faith, Aboujib. Believe in justice.”

Sal snorted. Almost laughed.

“I believe, Kady, I believe we are in un beau de fuck-up here....”

Truth was, she was scared too. But scared didn’t profit you anything when it came to judges and courts, and she’d said it to Sal—the Fleet hadn’t gone to all this trouble to invite them to a messhall brawl.

“I believe in they hauled our asses a long, long way to haul Dek in out of the dark. That is a truly remarkable altruism, Aboujib.”

“Des bugs.”

“Bien certain they would. Bien certain someone’s playing games. Dekker’s mama lost her job. Does this rate news? Does this rate the peace movement lawyers giving interviews in front of the MarsCorp logo? Nyet. But there it was.”

“You think somebody made it up? Faked it?”

“Nyet. Peace movement, Aboujib. Peace movement is involved. Does not the antenna go up? Does not an old rab ask herself why and what if?”

There was a spark of interest in Sal’s dark eye. The one that showed. Sal didn’t say a thing, but: “Rab is. The Corp is. Amen.”

“That chelovek in the suit, that lawyer? That’s a plastic. You mark.”

“Why’s he with Dekker’s mama?”

Scary to think on. Truly scary. Sal looked at her. Sal as Belter as they came, and Shepherd; and how did you say the mother-well’s mind in Sal’s terms?

“Think of helldeck. Think of all those preachers, them that want to save your soul. And they each got a different way.”

Another snort. “Crazies.”

“On Earth they got their right. That’s why they got it still on helldeck. On Earth you got a right to say and do. So they say and do. On Earth you can say a straight-line rock won’t hit you. And maybe it won’t. It might be too heavy. Might fell. You understand?”

A straight-line rock was one thing to a Belter. Fall was a contradiction in terms. You didn’t have rocks on station, where things fell. And fall didn’t go straight-line. Thoughts and puzzlement chased through Sal’s expression, and rated a frown.

“What I said. Crazy.”

“A rock might fall on its own before it hit you. You got to know its size to know.”

“Why’d it move?”

“Because some crazy threw it at you. Bare-handed. But it might fall first.”

“So. On station, naturlich.”

“In the motherwell, everything’s like that. Gravity and friction are always in the numbers. Not a lot of blue-skyers can figure those numbers. Things just happen because they happen and sometimes they don’t happen and you don’t know why, so you were lucky or you weren’t. You don’t know. Very few can comp it. Ask a peacer what the answer is. He’ll tell you it’s not war. Ask him how you’ll get no war. He’ll say don’t make one. Half the time it works. You got, however, to convert the other side to this idea. Ask a peacer how to make peace. He’ll say, Don’t fight. Half the time that works too.”

“Guy was going to beat hell out of Dek.”

“Yeah, well, this rab did have such a thought. And I sincerely wasn’t going to sit and watch it.”

“So why’re the peacers paying for a lawyer for Dekker’s mama?”

“Peace on Earth’s like that rock. You got to calc things you don’t, in space. You got to ask, primarily, whose peace, whose way, how long? But Earthers don’t, generally. Blue-sky’s used to not caking all the factors.”

“Trez sloppy,” Sal said.

“The Corps don’t like you to calc all the numbers. Neither do the helldeck preachers. Listen all you like, you sojer-boys with the bugs. You sleep down with the Corp, you get up with fleas. How good’s your addition?”

“There is no excuse,” Tanzer said, “there is no mitigating circumstance except your personal decision to release Dekker from hospital without psychiatric evaluation, without appropriate procedures. The man’s a fuse, lieutenant. You knew that. Or don’t you read your personnel reports?”

Graff didn’t ask how Tanzer had. He said, patiently, standing in front of Tanzer’s desk: “Dekker didn’t do anything. He got up in a hurry and bumped a man he didn’t even know....”

“This is a finger you want on the trigger of the most sophisticated weapons system ever devised? Can’t navigate from a chair in the messhall? Is that his problem?”

“Your news service released a story without a next-of notice. Was that deliberate?”

“Is it a death situation? I think not. Your boy can’t tolerate a little stress? What in hell is he doing in this program? He blows and your whole side of the messhall comes out of the seats—”

“Your man did the grabbing and the shoving. Don’t try that one. It was simultaneous. There are too many witnesses.”

“Your witnesses were all in the middle of it. Your latest recruits were instigators. Is that what you call leadership? Is that what you call a cooperative relationship? Damned right, I don’t put all the blame on Dekker, / don’t blame the boy you dragged out of hospital and put into a high voltage situation, / blame the officer who made that boy a cause, which is damned well what you’ve done with your attitude and, for all I know, your direct statements to your command. You piled the pressure on that boy, you put those women in the middle of it, you set him up to draw fire—he was guaranteed to blow the first time he got any load more man he had. So his mama lost her job, damned right his mama lost her job—she was calling MarsCorp board members at two in the morning, threatening phone calls, you read me? She’s a spacecase—like mother, like son, if you want my opinion. It’s congenital!”

“You have no basis for any such conclusion.”

“Haven’t I? I’m telling you right now, right here, he’s never getting back in a cockpit and you aren’t giving any more orders in a UDC premise, not in the messhall, not the offices, not the classrooms, not the corridors or the hospital. Try that one, lieutenant. Take that one to your captain and see what he has to say.”

He had no instructions how to play that one. He wasn’t a lawyer. He didn’t know whether Tanzer could legally do that. He wasn’t in charge of policy. He didn’t know whether he should use Fleet Security to guarantee access. It was down to that. The phone rang—thank God for two extra seconds to think while Tanzer jabbed a button and growled an irritable, “I’m not to be disturbed.”

“Sir,” the secretary said, on intercom, “your line.”

Unusual. Tanzer picked up the phone to listen in private and his expression smoothed out and went completely grim.

“When?” Tanzer asked; and: “Any other information?” And, “Find out, dammit, however you have to.”

After which Tanzer hung up, glowered at him and said, “Get yourself and your crew up onto the carrier. Right now.”

“Incoming?” A strike at Sol? Union missiles?

Tanzer’s fist slammed the desk. “Get your ass out of this office, lieutenant, and get it the hell up to the carrier where you’re supposed to be competent!”

Incoming was no time to stand arguing, and arguing with Tanzer was no way to get information through the carrier’s systems; but if it was Union action there was no way he was going to make the carrier’s deck before criticality. “Phone,” he said, and reached for the one on the desk. The colonel made to stop him, and he held on to it with: “Dammit, they need a go-order. —Carrier-com,” he told Tanzer’s secretary. “Fast,” —after which the secretary muttered something and he heard the lighter, fainter sound of Fleet relays. “This is Graff,” he said the instant he had a click-in. “Status.”

“J-G,” Saito’s voice came back faintly. “You’re on a UDC line.”

“Yes.” Short and fast. “Colonel’s office.” It wasn’t an incoming—he knew that in the first heartbeat of Saito’s remark about his whereabouts and he knew in that same second that UDC was a codeword on its own. Saito said, calmly: “Stand by,” and the phone popped and went to com-noise.

“This is FleetCom Command. ECS4 ETA at Sol Two 2 hours 3 minutes. Command of Sol Two facilities has passed to Fleet Command. UDC personnel are being—”

The message went offline. Went on again. Somebody in the outer office had a nervous finger.

“—with Fleet personnel. This message will repeat on demand. Key FleetCom 48. Endit.”

He looked at Tanzer, who didn’t know. Who was worried, clearly. And mad. Tanzer’s secretary said, in his ear. “Lt. Graff, this is Lt. Andrews. The colonel has an urgent message. Would you turn over the phone?”

“For you,” he said, and passed the handset to Tanzer. Stood there watching Tanzer’s face go from red to white.

Number 4 carrier was incoming from Sol One, not at cap, but as much as they meant anyone’s optics to see at this stage. The captain?

“Get a confirm on that,” Tanzer said to whoever was on the line.

Tanzer wasn’t looking at him. He could ease things or complicate matters—here in this office. He could end up with what had happened in the messhall played out on dockside—at gunpoint, if he and Tanzer both wanted to be fools. He put on his blankest, most proper expression—was very quiet when Tanzer finally hung up and looked at him.

“I trust our messages were similar,” he said, with—he hoped—not a flicker of offense. “May I suggest, sir, we present this to personnel in a quiet, positive manner. I’d suggest a joint communiqué.”

Tanzer didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, with a palpable effort: “I’d suggest we keep this quiet until we can sort it out.”

“Colonel, I appreciate the difficulties involved. FleetCom is handling approach and docking. In the meanwhile my command has its own set of procedures, primarily involving dock access at this point. I’d suggest we move your security into a secondary position and move ours into supervision of debarkation facilities.”

“I’ve no authorization to do that. You’ll wait, you’ll bloody wait!”

“I’ll wait,” he said, trying to add up in his head what all the Alpha and Beta Points on this station were, and what he could do to secure records without creating an incident he was virtually certain FleetCommand didn’t want. “On the other hand, that carrier will dock in a little less than two hours, by which time I have to have a secure perimeter, colonel, that’s mandatory under our procedures.”

They’d done it at Mariner, they’d done it at Pell, and he had no doubt, now, that it was his mandate to secure that area here, as quietly and peacefully as possible. It was only now sinking in that a transfer of command had happened, but how it had happened, he had no idea. The thought even occurred to him that it might be a lie—a final, extravagant lie—that maybe things had gone critical—on Earth or at the front, and they were pulling what they had, while they had it. That was what the whisper had been, always, that mere might not be the time they needed to build the riderships or the full number of carriers; and then they could take their choice—let the Fleet the, let Earth fall, and lose themselves hi space or in the motherwell, anonymous and helpless; or run with what they had, and gather the marines and the trainees they knew would be targets...

And run and spend their lives running—

Danger-sense had cut in, for whatever reason: his brain was suddenly doing what it did when hyperfocus was coming up, no reason, except Saito’s evasion yesterday, and the colonel’s being caught completely by surprise. If negotiations had been underway—it was a shock to Tanzer, or Tanzer acted in a way that didn’t make sense.

So he took a quiet leave, out through the anxious secretary’s office—he stopped to say, “Andrews, for your own sake, don’t spread anything you may have heard,”—and saw nervousness pass to estimation and fear.

Into the corridors, then—feeling the air currents, sampling the ambient. No panic in the clericals, nothing evident. The carrier had left Sol, presumably with notice to insystem defenses—then word had flashed via FleetCom, and presumably a UDC message from some quarter had chased that transmission to the colonel. Maybe Saito and Demas hadn’t known what was about to happen.

Or maybe they had. Maybe they always had.

He walked quietly to his office, he checked in on FleetCom and asked Saito again: “Snowball, this is 7-All, status.”

“7-Att, that’s LongJohn, we’ve got a Code Six.”

Stand down but stand by. And LongJohn wasn’t any of their crew. LongJohn was Jean-Baptiste Baudree, Carina. Mazian’s Com Two. “That’s a copy,” he said; thinking: Damn. What’s he doing here? It’s not the captain, then. What aren’t they saying? “Status,” he insisted; and got the information he next most wanted:

“7-All, that’s Jack.”

Edmund Porey?

Lieutenant Edmund Porey?

He hung up and, with a pang of real regret, stopped trusting Saito and Demas.