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WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1992 by C. J. Cherryh All rights
reserved.
Questar* is a
registered trademark of Warner Books, Inc.
Cover design by Don
Puckey Cover illustration by Don Maitz Hand lettering by Richard Nebiolo
Warner Books, Inc.
1271 Avenue of the
Americas
New York, NY 10020
IA Time Warner
Company Printed in the United States of America
Originally published
in hardcover by Warner Books. First Printed in Paperback: June, 1993
10 98765432 I
CHAPTER
1
STOCKHOLM Is a city of
islands and gardens, a stunningly eclectic architectural mix, from the
Wgsdagshus to the 23rd century Cariberg Museum, from the restored Riddarsholm
Kyrka to the Academy gardens...
Founded in the mid
13th century, the dry of Stockholm holds abundant evidence of a thousand years
of Baltic seafaring tradition, plus a lively nightllfe centered in modem
Gustavsholm—
Ben indexed through
the motile pictures and the text, the statistics about rainfall and mean
average temperature which the Guide cautioned a visitor did not in any sense
mean a constant temperature. Useless statistic—unless one contemplated Antarctica,
where a mean temperature of -57°
C and an average hours of sunlight only slightly better than Sol Station core
meant Ben Pollard had no interest in McMurdo Base. Ben Pollard had seen a good
deal of cold and dark and rock in his life. Old rock. This 13th century
business
• CJ. CHBWH
amazed him. The whole
damn human race dated itself in eighteenths of Jupiter's passes about the sun,
to the astonishingly recent number of about 10k such fractions, if you took the
oldest cities. ASTEX R2 out in the Belt had been a skuz old place and a friend
of his had sworn it had seen better days just in his lifetime, but when Ben
Pollard thought old, he thought in millions. The rock he'd handled out there
was old. Humankind was a real junior on those terms.
He sipped real orange
juice, imported up from the blue, cloud-swirled globe you could see at any hour
on channel 55, along with the weather reports anywhere in die motherweH.
Weather—was a novelty. Real weather. You got
weather in a station core when they were blowing cold rock down the chute. You
got condensation in your spacecraft and you swore like hell and wiped and dried
and tried to find the source of it. But in the motherweH condensation fell out
of the sky in frozen balls or slow flakes or liquid drops depending on the low
level atmospheric temperatures, and k-wide clouds threw out electrical
discharges that made it a very bad notion to stand (the Guide said) at the
highest point of the landscape.
Daunting thought.
The Guide said 70% of
the Earth was water.
The Guide said water
in the oceans was 10k meters deep in places, and because it wasn't frozen,
Luna's gravity pulled it up in a hump of a wave that rolled around the globe
and washed af every shore it met, enough to grind up rock into beaches.
AH that unfrozen
water. Gaseous nitrogen and liquid water mat made all mat sparkle when the sun
hit the wrinkles on it mat the Guide said were waves.
He planned to stand
on a beach and get a good close look at that unfrozen water. On a clear day,
when there were no lightnings. You could do it from the station. You could be
there while you were here, but VR was a cheat, you could be a whole lot of
places that weren't real. He wanted to
H ELIBURN E
stand at the edge of
the ocean and watch the real sun disappear behind the real world, at which
point he figured he would really believe he was standing on a negative
curvature.
The Guide said some
spacers got dizzy, with the horizon going the wrong direction. There were
prescriptions for vertigo. There were preparatory programs. But hell, he'd
monkeyed around the core at R2, and stared straight at the rotation interface.
That had to be worse.
The clock on the screen
said: 0843 June 14, 2324. And there was plenty of time this morning for coffee.
Dress maybe by 0930h. Exams were done, the last score was going up today, but,
hell, that was Interactive Reality Sampling and he had that one in his pocket,
no question, no sweat. Probably set the curve: him or Meeker, one or the other:
just let the UDC get that score, and Stockholm was in his pocket for sure,
motherweH assignment in the safest, softest spot in the service except Orlando.
Stockholm was where Ben Pollard was headed, yeah! soon as the interviewers
could get up to station.
Hell and away from
the Belt, he was. Here you didn't jam two guys into a fifteen by six, hell, no,
Sol Station and Admin? You got a whole effm' fifteen by six .9 g apartment by
yourself, with a terminal that could be vid or VR whenever you opted. If you
qualified into the Programming track in the UDC Technical Institute, you got an
Allotment that afforded you 2c/d Personals per effin' seven-day week, which
meant oj mat was real, coffee that was real, red meat that was real, if you had
the stomach for it, which Ben personally didn't—you lived like an effin1 Company exec
and had a clearer conscience. And if you could get that on world posting, your
tech/2 graduation rating equaled a full UDC lieu-tenancy in the motherweH, with
an Army first lieutenant's pay to start, full grade technical/1 promotion
guaranteed in a year, and access with a capital A to all the services that pay
could buy. You knew there was a war out in the Beyond, but it wasn't going to
get to Earth, that was
CJ CHBWH
HELLDUKNER
what they were
building that Fleet out there to stop—and
even if it did nobody was going to hit the motherwell, humans just didn't do
that. You were safe down there. You'd be safe DO matter what.
He'd got his
graduation With Honors, he was certain of it; he'd sweated his Security
verifications, but they'd come through months ago, and nobody had come up with
an objection; he'd sailed through the Administrative Service exams four weeks
ago, and the only complication in his way now was the formal interview, as soon
as the personnel reps from the various agencies could get seats on a shuttle up
here—funding time and some
legislative hearing in Admin had had the shuttle up-slots jammed with senators
and brass and aides for the last three days; but that was thinning out, thank
God. The agency interviewers might turn up by the end of the week, after which
time—
After which he could
book himself a seat for Earth on whatever assignment shook out—maybe even take his pick: Weiter had
dropped him a conspiratorial word mat he had three different computer divisions
fighting over him, including strategic supply modeling and intelligence, and
the prestigious A! lab in Geneva (which was for his personal ambitions a little
too scientific and academic—give
him something with a direct line to politics, God, yes. There was money in
that, and a protected paycheck).
Money. A nice
apartment down where you navigated a perceptually planar surface at a 300kph
crawl, when be was used to thinking in kps and nanosecond intersects. Life on
Earth went so much slower and death came so much later for a man who had money,
brains, and position.
He'd had a partner
back in the Belt, Morrie Bird, who had used to talk to him about Colorado, and
cities and sunsets and Shakespeare. Bird had set a lot of personal store by
Shakespeare. Bird had thought Shakespeare was important to understand. So when
it had turned out of all things that he was going to the inner system, he had
made it a certain point to see this Shakespeare guy—translated tapes.
of course. V-vids,
where you could wander around and watch the body language. And Bird had been a
hundred percent right: Shakespeare really helped you figure Earthers.
Blue-skyers. People who had never felt null-g, never seen (he stars all the way
to forever—different people,
with numbers hard to figure; people who thought they had a natural right to
orange juice and gravity, people who (the Guide maintained) felt the moon tides
in their blood.
Getting the right
numbers in a new situation absolutely mattered. On Earth air was free and ship
routes and energy were what the old Earthers had fought bloody wars over.
Sincerely skewed values—but
you had to think about that two-dee surface constantly, and it was limited mat
way. Finite. Finite resources. Shakespeare helped you see that— helped you see how certain old
Earthers in control of those resources had thought they could run your life,
the same as Company execs. And how these king-types always talked about God and
their rights, like the preachers on R2's helldeck, who snagged you with tracts
and talked to you about free-shares in their particular afterlife and argued
whether the aliens at Pell had souls. Only these old kings had been the
preachers and the law and the bank.
Long way to come,
from the Belt, from Company brat in a Company school learning nothing but
Company numbers— to figuring
Shakespeare and human history. But there it was, the motherlode of all living
stuff and the home of humankind back when humans had been as backward as the
Downers at Pell—Earth was full of
museums, full of artifacts, pots and tombs and old walls graffitied with stuff
that was supposed to make you live forever. The Guide said so.
Most of all, it was
the motherlode of information, data, old and new. And the right numbers and
enough data on the systems that ran the Earth Company and the United Defense
Command could make him rich; rich made a man safe, and got him most everything
Ben Pollard could put a name to.
CJ CHERRYH
Visitors to Stockholm
may be impressed with the Maritime Museum or the Zoological Garden in Haga
Pork....
A planet that wasn't
a radiation hell was a novelty. Earth with its completely outsized moon was a
novelty. And life thriving at the bottom of a gravity well was a radically
upside down way of thinking. Life that made good wine and food that wasn't
synth, a surface where plants grew and cycled the O2 and the CO2 on sunlight
and dark; the habitats where animals lived. Fascinating concept, non-human things
walking around where they decided to walk and looking at you with unguessable
thoughts going on behind their eyes. People searched the stars for life, and
there was all this life on Earth, that blue-skyers took for granted, and ate,
if it didn't look too much like people.
He wanted to see a
zoo. He wanted to look at a cow or a dog and be looked back at, when he'd never
expect to see any real thing more exotic than miners on R&R and bugs under
a lab scope.
Humans had existed
such a scarily short time. With this war going on in the Beyond they seemed
scarily fragile.
He wished he could
talk to Bird about that. Bird had had a peculiar perspective about things. He
wished he could really figure out what Bird had been, or recall half that Bird
had said over the years. There was so much blue-sky attitude he still couldn't
get the straight of. Baroque, was the word. Curves all over their thinking,
like gold angels on the old buildings, that didn't have a damn thing to do with
useful—
The message dot
flashed on the corner of the screen.
God, it could be the
interview notice. His fingers were on the Mod and the 1 to Accept Mail and the
Dv and the 3 to Print faster than he could think about the motion.
It said:
HELLBURNER
TECH/2 Benjamin J.
Pollard CTVSS/UDC 28 DAT 2 0652JUN14/24 SN P-235-9676/MLR Report to F5O-HQ,
0900h/ref/Simons
Fleet Strategic
Operations? Fleet Ops?
What in bloody hell?
MRL. Automatic log.
No way to pretend he hadn't gotten the message. No way to query the CO. Weiter
would tell him it was a report-to, he didn't have the answer, and he'd effin'
better answer it and find out what the Fleet wanted with a UDC lad, hadn't he?
It wasn't an
interview. God, no. Fleet Strategic Operations didn't need a UDC programmer
tech/2 with a Priority 10 for economic/ and strategic/supply modeling. Did
they?
Shit, no—the damn tight-fisted legislature
insisted on trying to interface the UDC EIDAT with the Heel's Staatentek system
through the EC security screen, that was what. The Fleet Staatentek system
tried to phone the UDCs EIDAT 4005 to ask for available assignees, and the
4005, behind (he EC's security cloak, spat up a UDC Priority One assignee for a
Fleet data entry post—
But you couldn't
ignore it. You didn't want to face the interviews with an interservice screw-up
or a Disciplinary in your record. Damn the thing!
No second cup of
coffee. He drank the half he had left while his fingers tapped up the station
map and asked it where in hell FSO-HQ was on the trans system from his
apartment in TI 12 for a 0930h appointment.
9:15 2 green to 14,
blue to 5-99: pass required for entry.
Hell and gone from
TI, and it was already 9 o'clock. Ten effin' minutes to shave, dress and find
his copy of his rating, which clearly said UDC Priority Technical/2, before the
CJ CHEIWH
HELLBURNER
Fleet grabbed him and
stuck him at Mars Base doing data entry in Supply.
He burned the beard
off, pulled on his dress blues: never wear fatigues to an interservice
glitch-up. He had to talk to officers, no question, before this one was
straightened out, maybe all the way up the effin' C/O/C in the UDC and the
Fleet. It could be a long day.
Envelope from UDC
Technical at Geneva in the briefcase, where it belonged. He put it in his
breast pocket.
Never a friggin'
situation without a last friggin' minute complication. God, he didn't know why
things like this happened to him. His interview appointment could come through
at any hour, he didn't want Meeker to grab the first slot—first effin' thing he was going to do
if they gave him Geneva was put the shove on that damned EC Software.
He checked his watch.
0908. Five minutes to walk to the trans. Orders in his pocket. Yes. And out the
door.
Trans was packed. A
whole wide-eyed batch of shiny new C-l's with their entry tags and their hand-baggage
occupied all the seats, and Ben clung with an elbow about a pole and punched
buttons on the hand reader, running down the applicable rules on interservice
transfer apps.
Wasn't any reason to
sweat it. Couldn't be. Weiter'd shoved him through three levels in a year....
He was Weiter's fair-haired baby, best Weiter had ever had in the department.
Him and Meeker, neck and neck all the way. No way Weiter wouldn't go up the
chain for him.
Green 14. He made the
transfer and lost the C-l's—thank
God. He got a seat, sat down and read.
Right of appeal. Ref:
Administrative Appeal, Sec. 14.... Through chain of command in service of
origin.
In service of origin.
Which meant the United Defense Command, which wasn't, never mind Fleet Captain
Conrad
Mazian's performance
at the UN, going to let the Fleet get its hands on whatever it wanted.
Blue line now.
Institution blue. The walls outside the spex in me doors grew skuzzier and
skuzzier and the air that sucked in when the doors opened was cold and smelled
of oil.
Descent into hell,
Ben thought. Like R2 all over again. He sat in his dress uniform and watched
the scenery, dark tunnel and grim flashes of gray-blue panels and white station
numbers as the trans shot past stops without a call punched. Thump of the section
seals. He could almost smell helldeck, all but hear the clash of metal and the
hard raucous beat of the music echoing down the deck. He smelled the peculiar
taint of cold machinery and kept having this most damnable feeling of—
—belonging in the dark
side, living on the cheap, getting by, scamming the Company cops and knowing he
could always slip through the system, knowing far more about the company
computers and access numbers than the Company thought he'd learned. Him and
Bud. —And Sal Aboujib.
Damn.
Helldeck wasn't a
place you'd miss. He was someone else now. Spiff uniform and a tech/2's collar
phi. Clean fingers—in all senses. He
didn't do a thing illegitimate with the computers he worked with. He didn't
know anybody who did, no, sir, didn't even dream about that h-word near the
Defense Command computers.
He'd got away with
it. Was still getting away with it. He'd dumped the card on R2, and it had
never surfaced; he'd gotten his security clearance. He'd gotten his rank.
Nobody was going to screw that up. Nobody could have found anything to screw
him now...
5-99. The sign
outside the doors said: SECURITY AREA.
RESTRICTED. SHOW
PASS.
He got up and got out
in a beige, plain hallway, warmer here, thank God, it wasn't going to freeze
his ass off or have him shaking when he was talking to the desk. He straight-
10
CJ CHERRYH
HELLBURNER
ened his coat,
clipped his fancy-tech reader onto his belt and walked up to the only door
available, under a security array that was probably reading his respiration
rate and taking notes.
He put his card in
the slot: the door clicked and opened. Reel Security occupied the solitary desk
in the foyer; beyond it was a potted silk palm, an abstract picture, and
another beige windowless door.
"Pollard,"
the officer said, with no attention to the protocols in the rulebook. Or his
face. Just the readout on his screen. "Benjamin J. You're carrying
electronics."
"Reader."
The officer held out
his hand. Ben surrendered it and watched the officer turn it on and punch buttons.
"Fancy."
Break his effin' neck
getting here and this cop-type stalled him playing games with a piece of
expensive and delicate equipment. He said, "I've got an appointment at
0930."
The guard said,
"HQ," and motioned with the back of his hand. "Lieutenant
Jackson."
Jackson, was it?
Fleet Lieutenant. Which, in the much-argued and protested Equivalencies, was a
rank just under Maj. Weiter's; and one over his. Ben drew himself up with a
breath, thinking, with part of his brain: Son of a bitch deep-spacer Attitude,
and minded for half that breath to make an issue of interservice protocols; but
the rest of his brain was still wondering if the Fleet could have any
legitimate interest in him and hoping all he had was a pocket full of
EIDAT-screwed orders. So he saluted, got a flip of the hand and walked to the
inner door, that clicked open on a long bar of a desk and a sober-faced clerk
who said (efficiency, at least) "Lt. Pollard?"
"Yes."
Manners. Finally. He took the offered escort to a side office. Jackson took the
salute, offered him a seat. Young guy. Pleasant, serious face.
Better, he thought.
"Thank you,
sir."
Jackson folded his
hands on the desk, "Lt. Pollard, —I'm
sorry to be the bearer of bad news: a friend of yours has been involved in an
accident."
"Friend of
mine?" That was a complete mental shift. He honestly couldn't think if he
had a friend. Not lately. Bird was dead. Sal?
"Name of
Dekker," Jackson said and Ben all but said, Shit! before he remembered he
wasn't in the Belt and swallowed it.
"Fatal?"
"Serious. He's
asking for you."
"For me?"
He was vastly relieved it wasn't Sal. Distressed if Dekker'd gotten in trouble.
He didn't hate Dekker. Not really. Dekker had enlisted with him, gone off into
some secret pilot training program... real hot piece of equipment, Dekker had
said.
Jackson said,
"His doctors fee! it might be some help, a familiar face...."
He thought. Oh, God,
I don't want to do this. I don't want to see the guy again—I hate hospitals... I don't like blood—
But there it was, the
brass had made a humanitarian move, no way to explain all the old business
between them—it could drag up too
much he didn't want on record; if Dekker had killed himself in some top-secret
operation he was sincerely sorry, and if he was all Dekker could dredge up for
a request—well, hell, the guy
had saved his neck, sort of, back in the Belt—
And cost Bird's life,
damn him, however indirectly.
"Sorry to drop
this on you," Jackson said.
"Not a problem.
Truth is, we weren't friends. —But
I guess I owe him to drop over there."
"I've got a
travel voucher for you."
"Travel
voucher."
"B dock."
"Oh, now, God,
wait a minute—" B dock wasn't
on Sol One, it was on an auxiliary station three and more days out,
12
CJ CHBWH
on Sol Two. Ben
reached for his pocket, right then. "I can't do that. I'm sorry. This is a
priority rating. There's an agency officer coming for an interview this week. I
can't leave."
Jackson laid an
envelope on top of his. "There's a B dock shuttle leaving at 1205. That's
your travel voucher and your leave. It's already signed and cleared."
"Sir, —that's six days even if I get a same
day turnaround," He gingerly eased his letter from underneath and laid it
gingerly to the side, in Jackson's view, where the United Defense Command logo
showed. "This is from HQ Geneva. It says I'm a military priority."
"This one's from
Captain Keu, in this office. On a classified priority. You're going."
"Dekker isn't a
friend of mine!"
"He's listed you
as next-of-kin."
"We're not
related! God, —he's got a mother
right here on the station, Astrid, Ingrid, something like that. Talk to
her!"
"He's in a
classified program. Only certain people are approved for contact in a
next-of-kin emergency. You're it. You're not to call anyone. You're not to talk
to anyone. Your CO will be advised simply that you're on humanitarian leave—"
"I'm UDC
essential personnel!"
"Show me an
assignment."
Shit!
"So you're
going."
"What about my
interview?"
"That's not my
information flow. I'll log it as a query."
"Look, this is
important. If I miss this slot I could wait six months!"
Jackson shrugged.
"We all have our hardships, lieutenant."
"Look, this is a
screw-up. It's an absolute screw-up. God, Dekker and I don't even like each
other."
H EL L BU
Cold as a rock.
"I don't have that information. Transport will pick up your baggage at
your quarters. Just leave it. Report to the shuttleport by 1145."
"It's near 1030
right now. It's twenty minutes to quarters—"
"I'd be on that
shuttle, Lt. Pollard. When you get to B •
dock, report directly to the FleetOps office on the dock, give them this pass
and they'll see you get straight to the hospital. Don't mistake that
instruction."
"Listen, —sir, you know what happened—Dekker wrote me in as a joke. He never
thought they'd be using that information. It's a damn joke!"
"If it is, I'm
sure they'll straighten it out at the other end. I'd be moving,
lieutenant." Jackson stood up and handed him the two envelopes as he rose.
"Good luck."
"Yes sir,"
Ben said, took his papers and his orders, saluted the son of a bitch and left.
Collected his reader
from the front desk, and made a fast, desperate consultation of the trans
schedule while he was walking to the doors.
Twenty minutes to his
apartment, thirty to the shuttle dock, ten to pack. If he risked a phone call
to Weiter to request a rescue, it was a 90% certainty that Weiter couldn't do a
damned thing against FSO before 1145 or later and he'd be screwed with Weiter
for putting him in a Position. You didn't crack a security screen. Not if you
hoped to keep your clearance in UDC computer tech.
They'd get him back
in maybe six days?
Hell. Six days too
late if he was on humanitarian leave on ' B dock when the UDC filled the
Stockholm post. He'd get the scraps, the cold left-overs after Meeker got
posted; and Hamid; and Pannelli—
The next best choice he had was to appeal to Weiter when he got back and hang
on as staff til something else came through, oh, six months, seven, eight
months on, who knew?
Dekker had screwed
up, the Fleet was evidently about to
14
CJ CHEKPYH
lose ite investment
in him—and, not in his most
copacetic state, Dekker had asked for him?
Ben thought, with
every thump of the trans on its homebound course: I'll kill him when I get my
hands on him, I'll fuckin' kill him.
CHAPTER
2
DEN hated
institutions, hated hospital smells and institution colors and most of all he
didn't look forward to this, in his first hour on B dock. He felt like hell,
he'd slept in a damn cubbyhole of a berth hardly larger than a miner-ship
spinner, his feet had swelled, he'd had sinus all the way: he'd spent too long
in the null-g hi his life and his body had a spiteful overreaction to the
condition. They didn't issue pills and stimsuits for a three-day shuttle trip,
no, that prescription's not on your records, lieutenant, sorry... If you'd just
checked with medical—
It was damned well
going to be on the record when he left Sol Two. Talk to the doctors in this
hospital, get some damn good out of this end of the trip... because he meant to
be on that shuttle on its turnaround tonight. Six hours was plenty of time to
see Dekker, and get out of here.
—after three days of
floating in a three-berth passenger module on a cargo shuttle, ahead of a load
of sanitation chemicals and spare parts. He'd had no one to talk to but a
couple of machinists who were into some vegetarian reli-
-15-
CJ CHEfWH
gion and hooked on
some damn VR game they wanted to explain to him; and he had had ample time to
drift weightless in the dark and think—too
much time to imagine this meeting, and what kind of damage a pilot could take
in an accident. Missing limbs. Blood. He hated blood. He really got sick at his
stomach if there was blood...
They'd had some sort
of missile test that had gone bad out here. Nobody said what. There'd been a
lot of long faces in Technical. A lot of emergency meetings last week. Dekker
couldn't have been involved in any missile test. A pilot trainee didn't have
anything to do with missile tests. Did he?
Jackson had done the
talking. But why in hell did a Fleet captain sign the order and bust him out
here? What was Dekker that the Fleet cared? The Fleet was fighting for its life
in the Appropriations Committee. Dumbass pilot cracked up and UDC Priorities
got overridden—for humanitarian reasons?
Not in the military
he knew. That was the tag end that had disturbed his sleep and his thinking
moments all the way out here. Their high-level interest in this affair was what
had his stomach upset, as much as the stink of disinfectant and pain and
helplessness in this place. He didn't like this. God, he didn't like this, and
if Dekker wasn't dead he was going to strangle him bare-handed for writing him
into that damned blank.
God, he was.
Reception desk. He
presented his orders to the clerk and got a: "Lt. Pollard. Yes, sir,"
that did nothing for his stomach or his pulse rate. The receptionist got him a
nurse, a doctor, and Dekker's attending physician, all in increasingly short
succession. "How is he?" Ben asked the last, bypassing long introductions.
"What happened to him?" and the doctor said, starting off down the
hall:
"No
change."
"So when did
this happen?"
"That's
classified."
H E L L DU
E R
17
More white coats.
More people leaning into his face. They wanted him to open his eyes, but Dekker
knew the game. They wanted answers to fill the blanks they had on their slates,
but they wanted their own answers, the way they wanted the case to be.
Company doctors. He'd
been here before. And they wouldn't listen. He asked, "Where's Cory?"
because sometimes he couldn't remember what had happened, or he did, but it was
all a dizzy blur of black and tights. The ship was spinning. He fought to get
to the controls, because he had to stop that spin, with the blood filling his
nose and choking his breath, and his hand dragging away with the spin, his grip
going—
"Cory? You
damned bastard, stop!"
But sometimes he came
loose from that time and he was in hospital, or he was going to be, scon as Ben
and Bird got him there, and they would lie to him and tell him there never had
been a 'driver ship and he never had had a partner named Cory.
The Company had lied
to him. They said he was hallucinating, but it was all lies. And sometimes he
thought the hospital was the hallucination, that it was all something his
conscience had conjured to punish him for losing his grip on the counter and
for losing the ship.
For losing Cory.
And Bird.
Sometimes he was back
in the shower, and sometimes tied to the pipes, because he was crazy, and he
couldn't figure out how the ship had come to the hospital.
Thirty days hath
September, March eleventh, and November. ...
There were green
coats now. Interns. He hoped for Tommy. But Tommy wasn't with them.
"Where's Tommy?" he asked. "Why isn't Tommy on duty? —God, it's afire, isn't it? Meg? Meg,
wake up, God, don't die on me—"
CJ CHEWH
HELLDURNER
19
"Ens. Dekker,
you have a visitor."
"I don't want
any fuckin' visitor. Get away from me. Get out of here."
"Ens. Dekker, —"
"Tell him to go
to hell! I don't want any damn Company lawyer! —Put Tommy back on duty, hear me? I want
Tommy back." They grabbed hold of his arms, they were going to put the
restraints on. Tommy wouldn't do that. Tommy would ask, Are you going to be
quiet, Mr. Dekker? and he would say, Yes, yes, I'll be quiet, and Tommy
wouldn't use them.
Wouldn't. But Tommy
wasn't with them. And they did. They told him then if he wasn't quiet they'd
have to sedate him. So he said, "I'll be quiet," and shut his eyes.
"Dekker,"
Ben said. And he opened his eyes. Ben was leaning over his bed. Ben was in
uniform. UDC. That was different. But odder things happened in mis place. He
didn't blink. Things changed if you did. Finally he said, "Ben?"
"Yeah."
There was a ship out
there. He remembered that. "Ben, we've got to go back. Please, we've got
to go back, Cory's still out there—"
Ben grabbed a fistful
of his collar, leaned close and said, in a low voice, "Dekker, shut it
down right now or I'm going to kill you. You hear me?"
He said, "That's
all right." He felt Ben's hand on him. He saw Ben's face. He knew where he
was men, Bird was asleep and Ben was about to beat hell out of him. But that
was all right. He really liked Ben, most of the time. And there hadn't been
much to like where he'd been.
What could a guy do?
Ben disengaged himself, and Dekker caught his hand. He pulled free and got out
of the door to get his bream.
The doctor was out
there, several doctors this time. "He knows you," Dekker's surgeon
said. Higgins was his name. "You're the first person he has recognized."
"Fuckin* hell!
Then he's cured. I'm out of here."
"Lt.
Pollard," another doctor said, and offered his hand. "Lt. Pollard, Fm
Dr. Evans, chief of psychiatry."
"Fine. Good. He
needs a psych. That's all that's going to help him!"
"Lt. Pollard, —"
"Look, what do
you want from him? The guy's schitz, completely off the scope. He doesn't know
where he is, he doesn't know what happened—"
"Lt.
Pollard." The psych motioned off down the farther hallway. "There's
coffee in the lounge. You've had a long flight."
The psych wanted him
to sit down and be reasonable, which he was in no mood to be. But coffee
appealed to his upset stomach and his sleep-deprived nerves. And it was not at
all a good idea to have a psych telling the local CO you'd been hysterical. You
didn't need that on a record behind another service's security screen. So he
went with the psych, he went through the dance—"White or black, sugar?"
"That's enough, thanks,"—until
he could get the weight off his feet, sink into a chair and try not to let
Evans see his hands shake while he was drinking.
"So what
happened to him?" he asked, before Evans could fire off his own questions.
"That's what we
want to know."
"So how'd he get
like this?"
"That's another
question."
Deeper and deeper.
Ben stared at the doctor and scowled. "So a door got him. Is that
it?"
"A simulator
did."
Flight simulator?
Dekker? "Hell of a simulation, doctor."
"Didn't lock the
belts, strong dose of sedative in his bloodstream."
Shit. Pills again.
Evans said:
"We'd like to know how he got there."
Or maybe not.
"You mean somebody put him there?"
"It's one
possibility."
20
C.J CHERRYH
"Guy has a
talent for making friends. Yeah. There's probably a dozen candidates."
"Why do you say
that?"
Psych question. He
thought, Because he's a fuck-up. Because he has this way of getting himself in
trouble and slapping the hand that helps him. But that led to more questions;
and screwed Dekker worse than he was with this guy, to whom he owed nothing
yet. He said, finally, "Say I didn't really know him that well."
"He listed you
as next-of-kin."
"It was a joke.
The guy's foil of them, tot of laughs."
"We don't rule
out suicide."
Dekker? he thought.
Dekker? Suicide? The idea was more than unlikely. It upset him. And he didn't
figure that, either why they could think mat—if they knew Dekker, which they might
not; or how Dekker could come to that—here,
in this place that swallowed people down without a word.
"You don't
agree?"
He shrugged.
"It's not him. It's just not him."
You didn't come from
where Dekker came from—didn't
survive what he'd survived—and
check out iike that—in
a damn sim. Something wasn't right, not with the questions, not with Dekker
lying in there thinking he was back in the Belt, not with this whole
max-classified operation that took a will to live like Dekker's and put him in
that bed, in that condition.
Dekker had looked at
him like he was what he'd been waiting for, and said, to his threat of killing
him barehanded, That's all right...
Every time you got
near the guy mere was a disaster, Dekker attracted disasters, you could feel
it, and, God of all the helldeck preachers, he wanted on that shuttle tonight.
Do this effin' job, get Dekker to figure out where he was, and when he was,
make him talk to the psychs, and get out of here while there was still a chance
of making that interview—and
getting out of this mess.
HELtBU RN ER
21
"I'll talk to
him," he said.
"You're sure
you're all right about that?"
Another psych quiz.
Correct answer: "A long trip with no information, run in here straight
from the mast, I was a little shaken up myself." He tossed off the rest of
the coffee, got up and pitched the cup into the bin. "I'm fine to talk to
him. What do you want out of him?"
"His
health,"
"Yeah, well,
he'll pull it out. Knock him down and he bounces."
"Don't stress
him, lieutenant. 1 really don't advise another confrontation. He's been
concussed. We want to keep mat blood pressure under control."
That was about worth
a laugh. Dek was already stressed. Dek was in an out-of-control ship in a
'driver zone with his partner lost. He said soberly, "I've no intention of
upsetting him."
The doctor opened the
door, the doctor walked him back to Dekker's room and signaled an orderly for a
word aside in the hallway.
Ben walked on in,
pulled a chair over and sat down by Dekker's bed. Dekker's eyes tracked his
entry, stayed tracked as he sat down, he wasn't sure how focused. Dekker had
been a real pretty-boy, a year ago, fancy dresser, rab hair, shaved up the
sides. Still looked to be a rab job, give or take the bandage around the head;
but the eyes were shadowed, one was bruised, the chin had a cut, lip was cut—not so long back. The hollow-cheeked,
waxen look—did you get that from
a bashing-about in a simulator a few days ago?
"You look like
hell, Dekker-me-lad."
"Yeah,"
Dekker said. "You're looking all right."
"So what
happened?"
Dekker didn't answer
right off. He looked to be thinking about it. Then his chin began to tremble
and Ben felt a second's disgusted panic: dammit, he didn't want to deal with a
guy on a crying jag—but
Dekker said faintly, shakily,
22
CJ CHBWH
"Ben, you'll
want to hit me, but I really need to know—I
really seriously need to know what time it is."
"What time it
is?" God. "So what'll you give me for it?"
"Ben, —"
"No, hell, I
want you to give me something for it. I want you to tell me what the hell
you're doing in here. I want to know what happened to you."
Dekker gave a shake
of his head and looked upset. "Tell me the time."
Ben looked at his
watch. "All right, it's 1545, June 19th—"
"What
year?"
"2324. That
satisfy you?"
Dekker just stared at
him, finally blinked once.
"Look, Dekker,
nice to see you, but you really screwed everything up. I got orders waiting for
me back at the base, I got a transfer that, excuse me, means my whole career,
and if you'll just fuckin' cooperate with them I can still catch a shuttle in a
few hours and get my transfer back to Sol where I can stay with my program. —Dek, come on, d' you sincerely
understand you're screwing up my life? Do me a favor."
"What?"
"Tell the
doctors what happened to you. Hear me? I want you to answer their questions and
tell them what they want to hear and I don't, dammit, 1 want to be on that
shuttle. You want me to call them in here so they can listen to you explain and
I can get out of here?"
Dekker shook his
head.
"Dekker, dammit,
don't be like that. You're a pain in the ass, you know that? I got to get
back!"
"Then go. Go on.
It's all right."
"It's not the
hell all right. I can't get out of here until you tell them what they want to
know! Come on. It's June 19th. 2324. Argentina's won the World Cup. Bird's
dead. Cory's dead. We came out here on a friggin' big ship neither of us
HELtDURNEP, • 23
is supposed to talk about
and Gennie Vanderbill is top of the series. Do you remember what put you
here?"
"I can't
remember. I don't remember—"
"Because you
climbed into a friggin' flight simulator tranked to the eyeballs—does that jar anything loose?"
A blank stare, a shake
of the head.
Ben ran a hand over
his head. "God."
"It's just gone,
Ben. Sometimes I think it's the ship again. Sometimes it's not. You're here.
But I thought you were before. What are they saying about the sim?"
"Dekker, —" He gave a glance to the door,
but the doctor-types were conferring outside. He said, in a low voice:
"You're not hooked on those damn pills again, are you?"
Dekker shook his
head. Scared. Lost. Eyes shifted about. Came back to him.
"Ben, —I'm sorry. Please tell me the time
again."
He didn't hit Dekker.
He leaned forward and took Dekker's hand hard in his despite the restraints and
said, very quietly, "It's June 19th. Now you tell me the year, Dek. I want
the year. Right now. And you better not be wrong."
Dekker looked
seriously worried. A hesitation. A tremor of the lips. "2324."
"Good. You got
it memorized. Now there's going to be a test every few minutes, hear me? I want
you to remember that number. This is Sol Two. You had a little accident a few
days back. The doctors want to know, mat's not so hard to hold on to, is
it?"
"I can't
remember. I can't remember, Ben, it's just gone..."
"Shit." He
had a headache. He looked at Dekker's pale, bruised, trusting face and wanted
ever so much to beat him senseless. Instead he squeezed'Dekker's hand.
"Dek, boy, listen. I got a serious chance at Stockholm, you understand me?
Nice lab job. I'm going to lose it if you don't come through. I really need you
to think about that simulator."
24
CJ CHEfWH
Dekker looked upset.
"I'm trying. I'm trying, Ben. I really am—"
Something was
beeping. Machine up there on the shelf. Doctors were in the door. Higgins said,
"Lt. Pollard. He's getting tired. Better leave it. —Ens. Dekker, I'm Dr. Higgins, do you
remember me?"
Dekker looked at him,
and said faintly, "Ben?"
"You do remember
him," Ben said. "Hear me? Or I'll break your neck!"
"Don't go."
"He'll be back
tomorrow."
"The hell,"
Ben said. "Dekker, goodbye. Good luck. I got to catch a shuttle. Stay the
hell out of my life."
"Lieutenant."
That was Evans. "In the hall."
He went. He got his
voice down and his breathing even. "Look, I've done my job. I'm no doctor,
you're the psych, what am I supposed to do?"
"You're doing
fine. This is the first time he's been mat sure where he is."
"Fine. I've got
orders waiting for me on Sol One. I haven't got time for this!"
"That's not the
way I understand your orders. You have a room assignment—"
"I haven't got
any room assignment."
"—in the hospice a level up. It's a small
facility. Very comfortable. We'd prefer you be available for him 24 hours. His
sleeping's not on any regular pattern."
"No way. I've
got a return order in my pocket, my baggage is still right back there in
customs. Nobody said anything about this going into another shift. That wasn't the
deal."
"Nobody said
anything about your leaving. You'd better check those orders with the issuing
officer."
"I'll check it
at the dock. I'll get this cleared up. Just give him my goodbyes. Tell him good
luck, I hope he comes out all right. I won't be here in the morning."
HELL DU RN ER
2S
"Hospice desk is
on level 2, lieutenant. You'll find the lift right down the corridor."
Ben had been there a
while. Ben had told him—
But he couldn't
depend on that. Ben came and Ben went and sometimes Ben talked to him and told
him—
Told him about an
accident in the sims. But if it was a sim then maybe people he thought were
dead, weren't, even if they told him so. The doctors lied to him. They
regularly lied, and Tommy didn't come back. They kept changing doctors,
changing interns, every time he got close to remembering....
Only Ben. Ben came
and he started to hope and he knew that hope was dangerous. You didn't hope.
You just lived.
Ben asked him was he
on drugs. He had been once. He had been crazy once, now and again, but Ben and
Bird had pulled him out. The ship was spinning. Cory was out there alone, and
somebody had to pull him out—
Ship was spinning.
Pete was yelling. And Cory—
Ben said he would
kill him if he was crazy and he hoped Ben would do that, if he truly was,
because he didn't want to live like that.
Ben said remember.
But he couldn't remember any specific time in the sims. He could remember an
examiner giving him his C-3. He could remember the first time he'd Men me
boards. Remembered pushing beams at Sol. Supervisor had said all right, he
could do that: he was under age, but they needed somebody who wouldn't ram a
mass into the station hull. His head was bandaged, his ribs were. His knees
ached like hell, he thought because he had hit the counter, trying to hit the
button, but he wasn't sure of anything. You blinked and you got green numbers
and lines, and if you followed mem too far you never came back. Midrange focus.
Back it up, all the way inside.
There'd been an
accident and the ship had blown up. And his partners were dead. Or maybe never
existed. It was a sim. Bright ball of nuclear fire. And he was here and they
26
CJ CHBWH
HELIBURNER
27
were in it, and it
was all green glowing lines out there, whipping and snaking to infinity.
He remembered faces
now. People he thought he liked—
Bird. Meg and Sal. Cory, and Graff. Pete and Elly and Falcone. Faces. Voices.
Falcone yelling, Hey, Dek, see you tomorrow.
But Falcone wouldn't.
Elly wouldn't. They never would.
"You damn
bastards!" he yelled. "Bastards!"
Interns came running,
grabbed hold of him. "No," he said, reminded what happened when he
yelled. "No. Tommy!"
"Get the
hypo," one said, and he got a breath, he got a little sanity, said,
"I'm not violent. I don't need it. It's all right. Let go, dammit! Get the
doctor!"
They eased up. They
stopped bruising his arms and just held him still.
"Just be quiet,
sir. Just be quiet."
"No shots. No
damn shots."
"Doctor's
orders, sir."
"I don't need
one. I swear to you, I don't need one."
"Doctor says
you're not getting any rest, sir. You better have it. Just to be sure."
He looked the intern
in the face. Big guy, red face and freckles, lying across him. Out of breath.
So was he. And two other large guys who were leaning on him and holding his
legs.
"Sorry," he
said, between breaths. "Don't want to give you guys trouble. I really
don't want to. I just don't want any shot right now."
"Sorry, too,
sir. Doctor left orders. You don't want to be any trouble. Right?"
"No," he
said. He shook his head. He made up his mind he had better change tactics.
Agreeing with them got him out of this place. It would. It had. He couldn't
remember. It was only the drugs he had to worry about.
"Just hold
still, sir. All right?"
"Yeah," he
said, and the hypo kicked against his arm. Stung like hell. His eyes watered.
He said, "You
fuckin' get off me. I can't breathe. Let me up, dammit."
"Soon's you shut
your eyes, sir. Just be quiet. You loosened a couple of John's teeth yesterday.
You remember?"
He didn't remember.
But he said, out of breath, "I'm sorry. Sorry about that. I'm better. A
lot better."
"That's good,
sir."
"Friend of mine
was here," he said. But the drug was gathering thick about his brain. He
said it again, afraid he might not remember when he waked. Or that it hadn't
happened at all.
He went to sleep when
they drugged him and he waked up and he never knew where or when. He was going
out now. He felt it happening. And he was scared as hell where he would wake up
or what would be true or where the lines would lead him.
"Ben," he
cried, "Bird. Ben, come back—
Ben, don't go— they killed my
partners, Ben, they fuckin' killed us—"
"This isn't
validated," the check-in clerk said, and slid the travel voucher across
the desk in the .6 g of 8-deck. "You need an exit stamp."
Ben took the voucher
with a sinking heart. "What exit stamp? Nobody said anything about an exit
stamp. There's no exit stamp in the customs information."
"It's
administrative, sir. Regulation. I have to have a stamp/'
"God. Look, call
Sol One."
"You do that
from BaseCom," the clerk said. And added without expression: "But you
need an authorization from your CO to do that, sir."
"And where do I
get that?" You didn't yell at clerks. It didn't get you anything to yell
at clerks. Ben said quietly, lestrainedly: "My CO's on Sol One—I need the UDC officer in charge."
"This is a Fleet
transport voucher."
26
CJ CHERPYH
"I know it
is," Ben said. "But this uniform is UDC. Is it at all familiar to
you? Where's the UDC officer in charge?"
The clerk got a
confused look, and focused behind him, where someone had come into the office,
to stand in line was Ben's initial reckoning; but whoever it was said, then,
"Lt. Pollard?"
Voice he'd heard
before. A long time ago. He turned around, a little careful in the .6g, saw a
blue uniform and a black pullover, a thin, angular face and nondescript pale
hair. Brass on the collar.
The trip out from the
Belt. The Hamilton. And Jupiter's well.
Graff. Fleet Lt.
Jurgen Graff. Carrier pilot, junior grade.
"There's an
office free," Graff said, meaning very evidently they should go there.
Now. Urgently. A Fleet lieutenant wanted to talk to him, and he was stuck on
Fleet orders in something that increasingly felt like a deliberate black hole?
"I've got a flight
out of here at 1800. They're talking about an exit stamp. I need some kind of
clearance."
"You don't have
a flight out of here. Not this one."
He slowed down, so
that Graff had to pull a stop and look at him. "Sir. I need this
straightened out, with apologies, sir, but I've got a transfer order waiting
for me back on Sol One, I was told not to communicate with my CO, I'm not Fleet
personnel. I understand the interservice agreements, but—"
"Five
minutes."
"I'm UDC
personnel. I want to see a UDC ranking officer. Sir. Now."
"Five
minutes," Graff repeated. "You don't want your friend screwed. Do
you?"
"My friend— Sir, I don't care what happens to my
friend. I've got an appointment waiting for me back on Sol One, and if I lose
it, I'm screwed. I'm just a little uneasy about this whole damn arrangement, —sir. This isn't what I was told."
HELLBURNER
29
• "There's another shuttle out the 22nd.
2100 hours."
Ben caught a breath.
Three days. But GrafTs moves meant business and you didn't argue a security
matter on the open dock—no.
Even if it was blackmail. Extortion. Kidnapping.
Graff waited. He came
ahead. He went with Graff into a freight office and Graff waved the lights on.
"Yes, sir?"
he said.
"We need
him," Graff said. "We need him to remember."
"Sir, I just
graduated from TI. If I'm not back there for the interviews they're going away.
They're going to assign those slots and I'm stuck teaching j-1 programming to a
class full of wide-eyed button-pushers, —sir.
Excuse me, but I've not been in contact with any officer in my chain of
command, I've gone along with this on the FSO's word it had notified my CO. I'm
not sure at this point I'm not AWOL."
"You're not.
You're cleared."
"I've got your
word on that. I haven't seen any order but the one that had me report to the
FSO on One. What have you done to me?"
"You have my
word. I'll get a message to your CO."
"You mean they
haven't?"
"I'll double
check. We've played poker, haven't we, Mr. Pollard?"
"Yes, sir."
Days of poker. Him. Dekker. Graff. No damn thing else to do on a half-built
carrier.
"This is
poker," Graff said. "For the major stakes. How is he?"
"What does it
matter? What's he into?"
"Say I need him
sane."
"He's never been
sane."
"Don't joke like
that. In some quarters they might take you seriously."
"I am serious.
The guy's good, but his tether on reality's just a little frayed."
"Maybe that's
what it takes to do what he does."
30
CJ CHEWWH
He stood there close
to Graff, looking into GrafTs sober face in this very unofficial office and
suddenly wondering who and what Graff was talking about and what Dekker did
regularly do that had put him where he was. He said, carefully, "Dekker
got lost out in the Belt. Banged around a lot. Real disoriented."
"We know
that."
And how much else?
Ben wondered. God, how much else? News didn't escape the Belt. Security didn't
let anything get out. Even yet. Everything about the mining operation out there
was under wrap. You didn't know how much the Fleet might know. Or what tiny,
inadvertent slip would let them guess what they'd done track there and what
they might have been involved in that might screw his security clearance for
good.
"I knew this man
a handful of months. I've seen him like mis before—when he Fust got out of hospital on R2.
I can't make him make sense til he wants to make sense. I couldn't then. Nobody
can."
"You made a good
advance on it. Three days, lieutenant. I want him to talk."
Bream came short.
"Do I get to beat it out of him?"
"Let's be
serious, lieutenant."
"What am I
supposed to be asking? Have I got a clearance to hear it? Or what happens when
he does talk? What am I looking for?"
"As much as you
can know—and it's not been
released yet—there was an
accident. Dekker wasn't in it. Friends of his were. Dekker's crew was
lost."
"Oh shit."
"Top command
subbed in another pilot with Dekker's crew on a test run. The test didn't go
right. Total loss. Dekker was hospitalized, treated for shock. The day he got
out—he either climbed
into a simulator under the influence of drugs or something else happened. It's
a matter of some interest—which.1'
Ben chewed his Up.
Missile test, they'd said on Sol One.
HELLDURNER
Tech committee
meetings. Place crawling with brass and VIPs. Hell. "So isn't there an
access record?"
"Computers can
be wrong. Can't they?"
Ben's heart rate
picked up: he hoped to hell there wasn't a monitor hearing it. He tried to
think of some scrap to hand Graff, for good will's sake. He finally said,
"Yes. They can be."
"I want him
functioning," Graff said. "Say you're on jnterservice loan—at high levels. It could be good. It
could be bad. To take maximum advantage of that... you need to deliver."
Graff pulled a thick envelope from his jacket and held it out to him. "He
listed you next-of-kin. So you have a right to see this."
"I'm not his
next-of-kin. He's got a mother—"
"She's
specifically excluded. Don't worry. There's nothing in this packet outside your
security clearance."
He took it. He didn't
want to.
"I wouldn't
leave that material lying about unattended," Graff said, "all the
same. —You've got your
quarters in hospital. I can't order you not to use the phone. But if you do, if
you contact anyone else, do you understand me, you're not behind our screen any
longer. Take my personal advice: get back to the hospital and stay there—and don't use that phone."
He looked at Graff a
long, long moment. Lieutenant j-g. Carrier command officer. A tech/1 to a
tech/2's rank. But he had the impression Graff was leaning on some executive
and clandestine authority to do what he was doing. It was in GrafTs tone, in
the clear implication he should avoid his own chain of command.
"Whose office
does this originate in, sir? You mind to tell me how official this is? Who's in
charge?"
"Ultimately, the
captain."
Two and two suddenly
made four. Keu. Sol FSO. He looked Graff in the eyes and thought—I don't like this. Damn, I don't. He
said,
"Is your captain
the only authority that's covering me?"
CJ CHEfWH
HELLDURNER
Graff said,
"No."
Conrad Mazian? The EC
militia commander who was romancing his way through the UN hearings? "In
which service, sir? I want to know. I need to know that. I want orders in
writing,"
"Ben. Take my
word. I'd go back to quarters, immediately, if I were you. I'd stay quiet. I'd
do everything I could to finish my job. If I were in your place." Graff
opened the door, and shut off the lights. "If you need me, for any reason—tell Dr. Evans."
The keycard worked,
at least. The room in the hospice was an institutional cubbyhole with a bunk, a
phone, an ordinary flat-vid.
And no baggage.
Delivered, customs
had said. Customs had showed him the slip. Delivered at 1500h. God only where.
He set down the soft
drink he had carried up from level 1. He looked at his watch. 1845h.
He picked up the
phone and went through hospital downside to call customs.
"This is Lt.
Benjamin Pollard. I was just there. My baggage isn't here. Is it still being
delivered?"
"Who did you
talk to?"
He sat down on the
bed. He pulled a vending machine sandwich from his pocket, laid it on the table
by the soft drink, and pulled out the customs claim ticket. "The claim
number is 9798."
A pause. "It's
been delivered, sir."
"You didn't
deliver it to HOS-28."
"That's whafs on
the ticket, sir."
"That's not
what's in HOS-28, soldier. I want to know where my baggage is right now."
' 'That's alt the
record I have, sir. You could check with Lost Baggage at 0700."
"This shift
doesn't find baggage, is that it? It just loses it?"
A moment of silence.
"/'// make a note of it, sir."
"Thank
you."
He punched out. He
did not break the phone. He took a sip of his soft drink and unwrapped the
sandwich.
No official
assignment, no cafeteria open at this hour, no card with food privileges. He
had fifty on him. Period. And Mr. Lieutenant j-g Jurgen Graff and his unnamed
captain hadn't seen to that detail.
God, he didn't like
the feeling he had. Bet that Graff had contacted Maj. Weiter? Hell if. Bet that
the UDC knew where he was right now?
He looked at the
phone and thought how he could call the UDC CO here. He could do that. He could
break this wide open and maybe be a hero to the UDC—or get caught in the middle of
something, behind a security screen that didn't have Stockholm anywhere inside
it. A screen confined to this place. Right now he could plead total ignorance.
Right now he had a transfer order signed by Keu and a Security stamp on it and
he could plead he had regarded the order exactly the way it said in the
Interservice Protocols. And he could do what they wanted and get out of here.
Dammit, he didn't
know why Dekker was crazy. Anybody who wanted to fly little ships and get shot
at was crazy. If even the simulator could half kill a guy—
He could have said
get Dekker off the drugs. He could have said don't sedate him—but Dekker knew too much about him,
damn him, Dekker knew enough to babble things that could end up on his record,
if Dekker got to talking to the psych; and if Dekker had told certain things to
Graff, God—Graff could have been
sifting everything he had said against information he had no idea Graff had,
and weighing it for truth. Graff could have had technical backup doing it,
bigtime, interactive logic stuff you had no good chance to evade without a
clearer head and a calmer pulse rate than he had had in that interview—
God only, what Dekker
had involved himself in. Or why someone might have wanted Dekker dead.
34
CJ CHERAYH
HELLDURNER
35
Or what might happen
if he picked up that phone right now and tried to get through to the UDC office—via hospital communications.
He didn't know enough
about how the lines were drawn here. He didn't want to know enough. Do what
Graff wanted and be on that shuttle on the 22nd, that was all. Any way he
could. And if the UDC did land on him—spill
everything immediately. Total innocence. No, sir, they showed me orders, they
said it was cleared—
Somebody subbed a
pilot on a test run? And somebody put Dekker into a simulator drugged out of
his mind?
Bloody hell.
He pulled out the
envelope, from inside his jacket. Opened it and pulled out cards and pictures,
a couple of licenses and old IDs.
Flight certification.
Picture of Dekker and three other people. Group shot. All in Fleet uniform.
Woman and two guys besides Dekker. All smiling. Arms over each other's
shoulders.
Old vid advert for a truly
skuz sex item. God. We all have our secrets, Dek-lad,...
Picture of Sol
Station. Picture of a couple of people outside a trans station. Picture of Mars
Base from orbit. If there'd been any of Cory Salazar, Dekker had lost those, a
long time ago.
Datacard. The phone
had a reader, but he shoved the card into his own. Personal card showed vid
rentals. Commissary charges. Postage charges. Bank records. Bits and pieces of
Dekker's life since they'd parted company. Lad had 5300.87cc to his account and
no debts. Not bad. Not rich either.
The other datacard
was old notes and mail. Not much of it. Notes from various people. One letter
months ago from Ingrid Dekker. Four, this last year from Meg Kady.
So Meg did write him.
He would never have figured Meg for the letter-writing kind.
Would never have
figured Meg for a lot else, either.
He keyed up Meg's
last letter, scanned at random through what must have cost a Shepherd spacer a
mint to send:
.. . can't complain.
Doing fine. I'm working into the crew, got myself onto the pilot list. ..
Sal and 1 dropped
into The Hole, just on a look-see. Maybe it's what we are now. Maybe it's just
the place is duller. It doesn't feel the same—
So what does? he
thought, and thought about Sal, and good times in the Hole's back rooms. But
Sal Aboujib probably had herself a dozen guys on a string by now, swaggering
about in rab cut and Shepherd flash, visiting pricey places like Scorpio's—if Scorpio's still existed. Sal had her
a berth, had her a whole new class of guys to pick from. And Ben Pollard never
had gotten a letter from Sal Aboujib. A hello from Dekker once, months ago.
He'd said hello back. Only communication they'd had. And it was on here. Hope
you're doing all right. Everything fine. Only longdistance letter he'd ever
gotten, tell the truth. And what did you answer, to people you didn't want to
be tied to? Good luck, goodbye, Dekker?
Bills. Note from one
Falcone—Dek, we don't like it
either. But nothing we can do right now. They want a show. We'll sure as hell
give them one.
He skimmed back to
the letter from Ingrid Dekker. A short one. Don't come here. I don't want to
see you. You went out there by your own choice and maybe it wasn't any of it
your fault what happened, but things are hard enough. Paul, and I don't need
any more trouble. Stop sending me money. I don't want any more ties to you. I
don't want any more letters. Leave me alone.
Shit.
He set the reader on
his knee, gave a deep breath, thinking—
Shit, Dek —He'd grown up on his
parents' insurance himself, both of them having been so careless as to take the
deep dive with their whole crew. At first he'd really resented them doing that,
thought if they'd given a damn about their kid they wouldn't have been that
careless,
CJ CHEIWH
but he'd stared into
Jupiter's well himself once—and
he knew how subtle and sudden that slope was, in the pit of his stomach he knew
it, now, and dreamed about it, on bad nights.
But his mama had
never written him a letter like this one, and in that cold little spot marked
Who's left to care, he guessed why Dekker might have written him as
next-of-kin: Meg with her letters about how she was working into the crew and
everything was going fine for her-^tekker wouldn't risk having another woman
writing him, saying, Get out of my life, you skuz. Dekker already knew what Ben
Pollard thought. And if Dekker was in trouble that needed a next-of-kin—whose life was he going to interrupt,
who might remotely even know him?
He cut the reader
off. He sat there in a cardboard cubby of a room with no damn baggage and for a
moment or two had remorseful thoughts about Paul Dekker. Wished maybe he'd
written a line or two more, back then, like—hell, he didn't know. Something polite.
What friggin' time is
it?
Two months in a
miner-ship with Dekker off his head asking him the time every few minutes. So
here he was back there again—locked
into a hospital with Dekker. One part of him felt sorry for Dekker and the
other panicked part of him still wanted to beat hell out of the fool and get
out of here....
Dammit, what am I
supposed to do with this damn card? Why didn't Graff give this stuff to the
psych?
Sub in another pilot,
did they? Why, if not Dekker's attitude? And who did it," if not the CO
who's supposed to want this stuff from Dekker? Real brand-new ship, Dekker said
once. That's why the Fleet had wanted him. He'd been real excited about it—wanted it more than anything in his
life—
And a crew's dead and
Dekker's screwed like that?
He sat there on the
side of the bed desperately, urgently, wanting off Sol Two, he didn't at the
moment care where. This whole deal had the stink of death about it
Serious death, Sal
would say.
No shit. Sal. What do
I do with the guy?
CHAPTER
0
MR. Graff, urgent
word with you. Down the hall. Sir. Please." 0645 and the breakfast line in
the green room was backed up to the door. Hardly time for coffee in the fifteen
minutes before he was due in Tanzer's office and Jurgen Albrecht Graff punched
white coffee instead of Mack for his stomach's sake. "Can it wait?"
he asked without looking at Mitch, and caught the cup that tilted sideways and
straightened it in time. Held it while it filled. "No, sir. A number of us
want to talk, sir. Urgent
business."
Spit and polish. From
Mitch. There was no one else in the rec nook of the mess hall and no reasonable
chance of being overheard in the clatter of trays. "Tanzer wants to talk,
too. I have an appointment in fifteen."
"Hell."
Mitch was Shepherd, aggressively Shepherd, shaved up the sides, couple of
earrings. Bracelet. "I swore you'd be there. Sir."
Graff lifted out the
cup, said, "All right, five," and stole ' -07-
38
CJ CHEIWH
a sip as he walked
with Mitch out the main door and down the hall to the conference rooms. Door to
6a was open. Mitch's tech crew was there, Pauli and Jacoby, Jamil and his
longscanner, Trace. Graff recognized a delegation when he saw it. Tanzer had
said, Don't discuss the hearings. Patently that was not the intention here.
Mitch shut the door.
"Sir. We're asking you to get one of us in front of the committee."
"Won't
happen," Graff said. "No chance. You want to get a haircut,
Mitch?"
"Hell if."
"That's an Earth
committee. Blue-sky as they come. They won't communicate."
"Yeah,"
Jacoby said. "Is that why Tanzer killed Pete and Elly? Couldn't let a
Belter pull it off?"
"Ease off,
Jacoby."
"They won't let
us in hospital. You seen Dekker? You seen him, lieutenant?"
Pauli muttered:
"Wouldn't be surprised if Tanzer ordered him put in that machine. Didn't
want him at the hearings."
"Shut that down,"
Graff said. "Right now."
Mitch folded his
arms, set a foot on a chair, and said, "Somebody better hear it. They
didn't want any Belter son of a bitch in front of the cameras. Dekker couldn't
fly it? Then why didn't they sub the crew, ask them that!"
"Mitch, I hope
somebody does have the brains to ask it. But there's nothing I can do. They're
not going to ask me that."
"Hell if, sir!
Tanzer's pets are killing us. You want me to shave up like a—" Mitch looked at him—him and his regulation trim, and shut the
epithet off unsaid. "You get me in front of that hearing and I'll look
like a UDC accountant."
"Mitch, I'm in a
position."
"You're in a
position. You're running safe behind shields— sir. We're the ones with our ass on
the line."
HELLDURNEK • 39
Pauli said: "And
they can't automate these sumbitches any further. Why don't they ask somebody
who knows?"
'•The designers will. Staatentek's here.
They'll ask. That much I'll get a chance to tell them."
"Ask *em about
the sim!"
Female voice: Trace.
"They're not interested. This is going to be a whitewash start to
finish."
"The designers
have to talk to us, Trace. We'll get our word in."
Mitch said: "The
engineers have to talk to us. The execs and the politicrats won't and they have
the say."
"Mitch, I can't
listen to this."
"Tanzer is a
hidebound blue-skyer son of a bitch who thinks because he grew up with a
rulebook up his ass is a reason to try to tell any spacer his business or to
think that the salute-the-logo dumbasses they've pulled in off the Guard and
the system test programs could do the job with these ships—"
"They can fly,
Mitch."
"Yeah, they can
fly. Like Wilhelmsen."
"Nothing wrong
with Wilhelmsen. Listen to me—
Shut it down, and listen: if we have a technical at work, we want to find it,
we don't want to whitewash that either. We have something more at issue here
than Wilhelmsen."
"Yeah,"
Pauli muttered. "Tanzer."
Mitch said,
"Nothing wrong with that ship. Everything wrong with the pilot. And they
aren't going to find the solution to what happened to Wilhelmsen in Tanzer's
fuckin* rulebook. Sir."
"Let's just find
out, shall we?"
"Just make the
point with them, lieutenant: Wilhelmsen
wasn't set with the
crew. Wilhelmsen should have said not
ready, he was the
pilot, he had the final say-so, demo be
• damned. It was his
responsibility to do mat."
\ "Yes, it was his responsibility, but it wasn't in
his
.jL judgment to do
it, or he would have done it—die
guy's
40
CJ CHEfWH
HELLBURNEK
41
dead. He got it the
same as the rest, Mitch. Let's give the experts a chance to figure out
what."
"What chance
have they got, if they're not getting the information? Their experts are
blue-sky as Tanzer is!"
Jacoby said:
"It's the At-ti-tude in the UDC brass. They murdered Wilhelmsen and
Wilhelmsen murdered that crew, that's what they need to hear!"
"All right! All
right! But there's nothing I can do to get you in there right now, and if you
act the fools and screw this, they'll pull those design changes and you'll be
flying targets. Now leave it! Get off my tail! Give me a chance! That's the
order. I've got a meeting."
There was quiet. It
wasn't a happy quiet. Graff handed the coffee to Mitch. "You drink
it." He started for the door in a dead silence and looked back. "It's
my life too, guys. You shit me, a carrier's gone. Program's gone. You
understand that?"
They weren't used to
hearing Helm Two talk, like that. Not at all. There were sober faces.
Mitch said, "No
offense, lieutenant."
Graff passed a hand
over his close-cropped hair. Said, "Hey, I have to deal with 'em,
guys," and ducked out, with an uncomfortable feeling of being square in
the middle— merchanter and
neither Shepherd nor regular UDC. Not part of the rab the EC had exiled to the
Belt, not part of the EC, either, in the sense the rab had resisted it—didn't even understand the politics in
the '15, but he was getting to.
Fast.
They'd hauled the
Shepherd pilots into the Program for their expertise. They weren't
eighteen-year-olds, and they damned sure weren't anybody's boys. You didn't use
that word with them. Didn't lead them, no way in hell. You fed them the
situation and showed them where it was different from what they knew. You
showed them the feel of it, and let it sink into their bones and they showed
the interactive systems new ways to conceptualize. They designed a whole
new set of controls
around the Shepherds, and software to display what they saw in their
insystem-trained heads.
Explain that to Col.
Glenn Evan Tanzer, of UDC R&D. God, he wished the captain were back here,
that one of the captains would turn up; Kreshov hadn't shown insystem for
weeks; and exactly how it happened that one of the captains wasn't here at B
Dock, at the same time a stray investigative subcommittee had outflanked Keu at
Sol and gotten here unchecked—he
didn't know. He couldn't even swear FteetCom was secure from the UDC code
experts. Shepherds thought so, but he wouldn't commit any more to it man he
had.
Not now. Not lately,
in Sol System, where the enemy was mindsets that wouldn't understand the
realities in the Beyond. The Belt was closer to The Beyond than it was to
Earth.
And closer to it than
Tanzer by a far shot. Always Tanzer—who'd
been sitting here in R&D so long they dusted him.
0657. By the clock on
the wall. He walked down the ^corridor, he walked into Tanzer's office, and
Tanzer's aide said, "Go right in."
He did mat. He
saluted, by the book. Tanzer saluted, they stared at each other, and Tanzer
said, "Lt. Benjamin J. Pollard. Does that name evoke memory?"
Shot across the bow.
Graff kept all expression off his face. "Yes, sir. Friend of Dekker's.
Listed next-of-kin on his card."
"Is that your
justification for releasing those records to Sol?"
"Captain Keu's
orders, sir. He sees all the accident reports."
"Is this your
justification for issuing a travel voucher?"
"I didn't issue
the travel voucher. Mr. Pollard's presence here isn't at my request."
"Lt. Graff,
you're a hair-splitting liar, you're a trouble-t. maker and I resent your
attitude."
*£
"On the record, sir, I hardly think I can be held '•r. accountable—"
42
CJ CHERRYH
HELLDURNER • 40
"That's what you
think. You're sabotaging us, you're playing politics with my boys' lives, and
you have no authorization to bring in any outsider or to be passing
unauthorized messages outside this facility to other commands."
"That is my
chain of command, sir. Dekker is my personnel, and Keu is my commanding
officer. Sir. I notify him on all the casualties. What Captain Keu does is not
in my control. And if the question arises, I will testify that in my opinion
Dekker was not in that simulator by choice. Sir."
Tanzer's fist came
down on the desk. "I'm in command of this facility, Lt. Graff. The fact
that your commander saw fit to leave a junior lieutenant in command of the
rider trainees and the carrier does not give you authority over any aspect of
this operation, and it does not give you authority to issue passes or to take
communications to anyone outside of BaseCom, do you understand me?"
"Where it regards
your command, yes, colonel. But I'm responsible to Captain Keu for the
communications he directly ordered me to make and which I will continue to
make, on FleetCom. Lt, Pollard is here on humanitarian leave in connection with
Fleet personnel. He's Prioritied elsewhere. He's here temporarily and he has
adequate Security clearance to be here."
"He's also UDC
personnel."
"He's under
interservice assignment. On leave. And not available to R&D."
"A friend of
Dekker's. Let me tell you, I've had a bellyful of your recruits, and I'm sick
and tired of the miner riffraff and psychological misfits washing up on the
shores of this program. Your own captain's interference with design has given
this program a piece of junk that can't be flown—''
"Not true."
"—a piece of junk that works in the sims
and not in the field, lieutenant, because it doesn't take into account human
realities. That
firepower can't be turned over to adrenaline-high games-playing freaks, Mr.
Graff, and that machine can't rely on the 50%'ers on the sims—how many ships are you going to lose on
that 50%? Four billion dollars per ship and the time to train the crew and
you're going to gamble that on 50% of the time the pilot's nerves hold out for
the time required? We're pushing human beings over their design limits, and
they're dying, Mr. Graff, they're ending up in hospital wards."
"Wilhelmsen
didn't die of fatigue, colonel, he died of communications failure, he died of
not working with his own crew. He schitzed—for
one nanosecond he schitzed and forgot where in hell he was in his sequence.
There's an interdict on mat move—it's
supposed to be in the pilot's head, and it failed, colonel, he failed, that's
the bottom line. Dekker—"
"Dekker ran that
same flight on sim and he's lying delirious in hospital. Don't let me hear you
use that word schitz again, lieutenant, except you apply it to your boy.
There's the problem in that crew. There's the troublemaker that had to prove
his point, had to shoot his mouth off—"
"Dekker didn't
run that sim. And the word is concussion, colonel. From the impact of an
unsecured body in that pod. He didn't forget to belt in."
"He was suited
up."
"The flightsuits
keep your feet from swelling, colonel: Dekker's been exposed to prolonged zero
g. The other crews say—"
"He was up there
on drugs, lieutenant! Read the medical report! He was high on trank, he was in
possession of a tape be had no business with, and he and his attitude got in
that pod together, let's admit what happened up there and quit trying to put
Dekker's smartass maneuver off on any outside agency. There wasn't one."
"I intend to
find out what did happen." ^
"Do you? Do you? Let me lay this word in your lap: U either you
come up with proof that'll stand up in court
44
cj CHEMYH
martial, or this
investigation is closed. Dekker climbed into that pod on drugs, because he has
an Attitude the same as all the other misfits this facility's been loaded with,
he believes he's cornered the market on right, he's a smartass who thinks his
reflexes make up for his lack of discipline, and if you drop that chaff in the
hearing you won't like the result. If you want this program to fly, and I
assume you do, then you'd better reflect very soberly what effect your
appearance and your testimony this afternoon is going to have on your captain's
credibility—on the credibility of
your service and the judgment of its personnel. Don't speculate. Keep to the
facts."
"The facts are,
Dekker saw what was happening, he called the right moves. It's on the mission
control tape.. .."
"You're so
damned cocksure what your boys can do, mister, but it's easy to call the right
moves when you're not the one in the pilot's seat. You won't sit those
controls. You won't fly those ships. Will you?"
Fair question, except
they'd been over that track before. "That's exactly the point. I'm not
synched to a rider crew. Cross-training would risk both ships."
"The truth is,
lieutenant, your Fleet doesn't want its precious essential personnel flying a
suicide ship, your Fleet won't let go of its hare-brained concept before it
stinks. Your Conrad Mazian isn't a ship designer, he isn't an engineer, he's a
merchant captain in a ragtag militia trying to prove it's qualified for
strategic decisions. This ship needs interdicts on a pilot that's stressing
out."
"That ship needs
its combat edge, colonel. If Wilhelmsen had had an AI breathing down his neck
he'd have had one more thing on his mind: Is the damned thing going to take my
advice or not? At what mission-critical split second that I happen to be right
is it going to cut me out of the loop? You can't cripple a ship with a damned
know-it-all robot snatching control away because the pilot pushed the £*s for a reason that, yes, might be
knowingly suicidal, for a reason that wasn't in the mission profile. Besides
which, longscan's
HELLBUKNER
45
after you, and what
are you going to do, give a Union longscanner a hundred percent certainty an
AI's going to interdict certain moves? If he knows your cutoffs, he knows your
blind spots. If he knows you can't push it and he can, what's he going to do,
colonel?"
"When the
physiological signs are there, you're going to lose that ship, that's a hundred
percent certainty, and nobody else is going to be exceeding that limit."
"Wilhelmsen was
leaning hard on the Assists. He could have declined that one target, that's
inside the parameters, that's a judgment a rider's going to have to make. But
he'd have looked bad for the senators. He wanted that target. That's an
Attitude. There's a use for that in combat. Not for a damned exhibition."
"Wilhelmsen was
saving the program, lieutenant, saving your damned budget appropriation, in
equipment that's got six men in the hospital and seventeen dead. You don't push
machines or human beings past the destruct limit, and you don't put equipment
out there that self-destructs on a muscle-twitch. The pilot was showing
symptoms. The AI should have kicked him out of the loop right then, but it
can't do that, you say he can't have it breathing down his neck—a four-billion-dollar missile with a
deadman's switch, that's what you've got—it
needs an integrative AI in there—"
"Watch the
pilots cut it off. Which you can't do with that damned tetralogic system you're
talking about, it's got to be in the loop talking to the interactives constantly,
and no matter the input it got after, its logic systems are exactly the same as
the next one's, same as the ships are. The only wildcard you've got is the
humans, the only thing that keeps the enemy longscanners guessing. The best
machine you've got can't outguess the human longscanner—why should you assume they're going to
outperform the pilot?"
"Because the
longscanner can't kill the crew."
"The hell he
can't!"
"Not in that
sense."
"Your tests
don't simulate combat. That's what we've
CJ CHERRYH
been telling you—you keep concentrating on the fire
rate, always the damned fire rate and you're not dealing with the reason we
recruited these particular crews. Nobody at Lendler Corp has been in combat,
none of your pilots have been, the UDC hasn't been, since it was founded—your tests are set up wrong!"
Not saying Tanzer
himself hadn't been in combat. Red in the face, Tanzer got a breath.
"Let's talk about exceeding human limits, lieutenant: what happened out
there was exactly why we've got men in hospital over there who can't walk a
level floor without staggering, it's why we've had cardiac symptoms in men
under thirty, and those aren't from four-hour runs." A jab of the finger
in his direction. "Let me tell you, lieutenant, I've met the kind of attitude
your command is fostering among the trainees. Show-outs and ego-freaks. And I
wish them out of my command. You may have toddled down a deck in your diapers,
and so may Mazian's ragtag enlistees out of the Belt, but how are you going to
teach them anything when they already know it all and you acquired your
know-how by superior genes? You can't lose 50% of your ships and crews at every
pass. 96% retrievability, wasn't that the original design criterion? Or isn't
that retrievability word going to be in the manual when we put this ship on the
line?"
"If a Union
armscomper gets your numbers you have zero retrievability, colonel, that's my
point. You have to exceed your own numbers, you have to surprise your own
interfaces in order to surprise that other ship's computers and mat means being
at the top of the architecture of your Adaptive Assists. The enemy knows your
name out there. Union says, That's Victoria, that's Btzroy or Graff at Helm,
because Victoria wouldn't go in with Helm Three. They know you and they know
your style, and it's in their double A's, but you innovate and they innovate.
One AI sitting on top of the human and his interfaces is like any other damn AI
sitting on top of the interfaces—there
aren't mat many models, the enemy knows them all, and the second its logic
HELLDURNER
47
signature develops in
the enemy's intelligence about you, hell, they'll have a fire-track lying in
wait for you."
"Then you'd
better damn well improve your security, hadn't you?"
"Colonel, there
are four manufacturers in friendly space for this tetralogic equipment and we
can't swear there's not an Eye sitting right outside the system right now. Any
merchanter who ever came into system could have dropped one, before the
embargo, and it's next to impossible to find it. Merchanters are your friends
and your enemies: that's the war the Company made, and that's what's going on
out there—they don't all
declare their loyalties and a lot of them haven't got any, not them and not us.
They'll find out the names. They'll find out the manufacturers and the software
designers. They'll learn us. That's a top priority—who's at Helm and who's in command, and
if it's even one in four brands of tetralogic—''
"All the more
reason for interchangeable personnel."
"It's doesn't work
that way! You don't go into an engagement with anybody who just happens to be
on watch. You try to get your best online. No question. You don't trade
personnel and you don't trade equipment. You haven't time at .5 light coming
down off jump to think about what ship you're in or what crew you're with. I'm
telling you, colonel, my captain has no wish to raise the substitution as an
issue against your decisions, but on his orders, as judiciously as I can, I am
going to make the point that it was a critical factor. We cannot integrate a
computerized ship into our operations. In that condition it is no better than a
missile."
"You haven't the
credentials to say what it is and isn't, lieutenant. You're not a psychiatrist
and you're not a computer specialist."
"I am a combat
pilot. One of two at this base."
A cold, dark silence.
"I'll tell you—if
you want to raise issues this afternoon, I'm perfectly willing to make clear to
the committee that you're a composite, lieutenant, a shell
46
CJ. CHERRYH
steered by
non-command personnel and an absentee captain, and you clearly don't have the
administrative experience to handle your own security, much less speak with
expert knowledge on systems you've never seen. I've held this office for thirty
years, I've seen all sorts of games, and your commanding officer's leaving that
carrier to subordinates and your own abuse of your commanding officer's
communications privileges is an official report in my chain of command. This is
not the frontier, this is not a bare-based militia operation, and if your
service ever hopes to turn these trainees into competent military personnel you
can start by setting a personal example. Clean up your own command and stop
fomenting dissension in this facility!"
"I do not accept
that assessment."
"Then you can
leave this office. And if you are called on to testify, you'll be there as one
of the pilots personally involved in the accident, not as a systems expert.
You'd be very unwise to push past mat position—or you'll find questions raised that
could be damned embarrassing to your absentee superior and your entire service.
I'm talking about adverse publicity, if you give grounds to any of these
senators or to the high command. Do you understand that? Because 1 won't pull
any punches. And the one security no one can guarantee is a senator's personal
staff."
"Are you
attempting to dictate my testimony, colonel? Is that what I'm hearing?"
"In no wise.
Give my regards to your captain. Good day, lieutenant."
Something had come
loose. Banging. The tumble did that. Dekker reached after the cabinet, tried to
get to the com.
Hand caught his arm.
Something shoved him back and he hit pillows.
Bang from elsewhere.
"Hey, Dek. You
want eggs or pancakes?"
HELLDURNER
49
He couldn't figure
how Ben had gotten onto the ship. Ben had rescued him. But he didn't remember
that.
"Eggs or
pancakes?"
"Eggs aren't
real," he said. "Awful stuff."
"They're real,
Dek-boy. Not to my taste, living things, but they're real enough to upset my
stomach. Eggs, you want? Orange juice?"
He tried to move.
Usually he couldn't. But his arms were
free. He stuffed
pillows under his head and Ben did some-
.thing that propped
the head up. Ben went out in-the hall and
came back and set a
tray down on the table, swung it over
him.
"Eat it. That's
an order, Dek-boy."
He picked up a fork.
It seemed foreign, difficult to balance in .9 g. His head kept going around.
His arm weighed more than he remembered and it was hard to keep his head up.
But he stabbed a bit of scrambled egg and got a bite down. Another. He reached
for the orange juice but Ben did it for him, took a sip himself beforehand and
said, "We got better at Sol One."
Maybe it was. Maybe
he was supposed to know that. Ben held the cup to his lips and he sipped a
little of it. It stung cuts in his mouth and it hit his stomach with a sugar
impact.
"Keep it up,
Dek-boy, and they'll take that tube out."
He didn't know there
was a tube. Didn't know how Ben had gotten here. Or where they were now. Didn't
look like the Hole at all. Didn't look like R2 hospital. He reached after the
fork, took another tentative nibble at the eggs. God, he was weak.
"Where's
Bird?" he asked.
"What year is
it, Dek-boy? I warned you there'd be a test this morning."
He shut his eyes.
Opened them and Ben was still there. In this room. He recalled something like
that. Ben was going to beat hell out of him if he missed.
"2324."
"Good boy. Have
some more oj."
50
CJ CHERKYH
HELLDURN ER
51
"Can't."
His stomach suddenly felt queasy, when he thought about that number. Number had
to be wrong. He waved the cup away and watched Ben drink it.
Ben, in a UDC
uniform.
He was going crazy.
It was 2324. Ben didn't belong here.
Ben said, "You
remember Meg and Sal?"
"Yeah.
Sure."
"Meg writes to
you, doesn't she?"
"Yeah,
sometimes."
"Real love
affair,"
"We're
friends."
"Yeah," Ben
said. "You looked it when you said goodbye. Remember saying goodbye?"
He took an envelope out of his pocket. Held up a handful of cards and pictures.
"Remember these?"
He'd seen them
before. They'd lied to him, the doctors had. They made all these things up.
They told him they were his, he'd thrown them across the room.
Now Ben had them. Ben
held up a picture of him with people he didn't remember and he couldn't look
at.
"What are their
names?"
He shook his head.
"Woman's
Elly?"
The name jolted. Elly
was dead. Pete and Falcone.
"Pete?"
Guy on the right. Big
grin. Pete smiled like that. Pete had his arm over the shoulder. But he
couldn't remember the photo.
"Which one's
Pete?"
"I don't
know." But it was a lie. Ben just didn't belong with them. Everything was
scrambled. Gory and Ben and Bird. He was afraid Meg was going to be in that
picture if he went on looking at it.
Blood. Exploding
everywhere. Beads floating, fine mist.
He squeezed his eyes
shut. The eggs didn't sit well at his stomach. Everyone in that picture was
dead. He was in mere too.
"Who's the other
guy?"
"Falcone."
"Said not to
worry about him. Didn't he? Left you a note? You remember?"
He shook his head. He
shoved the table away, tried to get up. Ben pushed him back against the pillows
and a stabbing pain went through his skull.
He grayed out for a
moment. When he came back Ben was quietly finishing his toast. Ben said,
"You ready to talk now?"
The cup hit the grid.
Sideways. Two out of five. Graff lifted the cover up and righted it before the
coffee hit, collected his overdue morning caffeine and turned in the general
noise of the end of breakfast, straight into Villy's intercept.
UDC Flight Chief. Captain
Alexandra Villanueva—senior
test pilot for the UDC, who said, all friendly, "Hear you and the old man
went one this morning."
Fast. Must have
ricocheted off Tanzer's wall, Graff thought, and shrugged in mid-sip while
Villanueva stuck his card in the slot and punched up a coffee. He said,
"We differed."
Villanueva rescued
his cup. "Damn thing."
"Ever since they
changed the cups."
Villanueva took the
coffee out and let the cover drop, said, quietly, "You know, back when we
were doing the A-89, we had one of these runs of trouble. Lost twelve guys in
six months. The old man just sat in that office and filled out the reports: you
never saw him crack—but
it broke him up. Same now. He wants to pull this program out. But we've got to
come out of this with an answer. A right answer."
"Redesign isn't
it." He got on well enough with Villanueva. Villanueva had started out
calling him son—never did think he'd
quite gotten the man out of the mindset. Gray hair on Captain Villy,
legitimately come by, rumor had it: handful of crack-ups and a few pieces of
luck—if dealing with
Tanzer
52
CJ CHERRYH
daily didn't do it.
They kept trying to promote him to a desk, God only wish he'd get Tanzer's post
and run the whole program, not just test ops—but Villy kept on making test runs
himself, one of the UDC pilots who had real respect among the Shepherds.
"Graff,"
Villanueva said, "dammit, we're vulnerable on this project, we're real
vulnerable. Politicians are gathering like sharks. I know the old man's hard to
deal with. But let's not hang the differences out in plain sight today."
He thought about
Mitch. About the frustration among the Shepherds, who wanted to fight Tanzer.
And that did no good. "They won't likely ask me anything but where I was,
where the targets were. That's all in the electronic record. Cut and dried,
isn't that the expression for it?"
Villanueva stood
there a moment. Just looking at him. He expected Villanueva to say something in
answer, but instead Villanueva walked off with his coffee and didn't look back.
Maybe he should have
given more back. Used a different expression. Read the signals otherwise. He
didn't dislike the man, God knew he didn't dislike him. The man had been trying
to say something, but somehow in the inevitable screw-ups between blue-skyer
and spacer—he had the feeling
the signals had gotten fuzzed.
Villanueva went over
to a table with his own men. Sat down. Graff walked over to the other side,
where a couple of the Fleet's own gray heads inclined together. Demas and
Saito. Nav One and Com One—no
credence at all to the Equivalencies that the Fleet had had settled on them.
Commdr. Demas, as happened. But Nav One meant it was Demas did the major share
of the course plots, with the backing of eighteen techs interfacing with scan
and longscan at any given instant, which meant that a prototype carrier on a
test run knew so precisely where it was and where everything else was that a
Lt. j-g at Helm couldn't screw up if he worked at it.
Except with a wrong
word to the UDC R&D chief.
H ELLDURN ER
53
"Think I just
picked a wrong word with Villy. Does 'cut and dried' describe what they're
going to ask at the hearings?"
Com One said, her
almond eyes half-lidded, "Probably. 'Rigged' might too. On, is the
man?"
Demas said, "A
lot On. Deep in. Drink your coffee, Helm. Present for you." Demas laid a
bolt on the table. Fat one.
Damn. "What is
that?"
"That, J-G, is a
bolt. It was lying next the wall in a dark little recess in the carrier's main
corridor. Where the construction crew just installed the number eighteen
pressure seal."
Thing was good as a
bullet lying there. "I want to see the count sheet. I want the last crew
that worked in there. Damn those fools!"
"Station labor.
Gravitied brains. What do you ask?"
Ben said, "You
remember Graff?"
"Yeah,"
Dekker said.
"What do you
remember?"
"The trip out
from the Belt. Here."
"Good boy. Where
are we?"
"Sol Two,"
he said. Ben told him so. He had to believe what Ben told him: Ben was the
check he had asked for. Ben was what he got and he had to believe everything
Ben told him—he told himself that,
this morning. Ben showed him pictures and showed him letters in the reader,
that he remembered reading. The ones from Meg, the note from Falcone, the
morning—
The morning they
pulled him off the demo and put somebody else in.
Nothing you can do,
Falcone had written. Left the note on the system. Came back like a ghost—after the accident. After—
"You remember
where the sims are?"
"Which
ones?"
"You tell
me."
54
CJ CHEfWH
He felt tired, wrung
out. He lay back in the pillows and said, "Couple downside. They're all
the procedurals." Tried to think of exact words and remembered Ben was a
licensed pilot too. "Ops stuff—stuff
you need your reflexes for—it's
in the core."
"Null-g
stuff."
"Null-g and
high-g." His eyes wanted to drift shut. His mind went around that place as
if it were a pit. He could see the chamber in the null-g core, the sims like so
many eggs on mag-lev tracks, blurring in motion. Lot of g's when they were
working. . ..
"When's the last
time you remember using the sims in the core?"
Difficult question
for a moment. Then not so hard. "Watch before the test. Wilhelmsen and I—"
"Wilhelmsen."
"He was my
backup."
"friend of
yours?"
Difficult to say.
"Chad..."
"Wilhelmsen?"
He nodded, eyes shut.
"Son of a bitch, but he was all right. Didn't dislike him. We got
along."
"So they subbed
him in. You watch the test?"
He didn't know.
Completely numb now. But the monitor on the shelf was showing higher points to
the green line.
"You went into
shock. They put you in hospital."
Wasn't the way he
remembered. Wasn't sure what he did remember, but not that shock was the
reason. No. He hadn't seen it.
"They give you
drugs in the hospital?"
He nodded. He was
relatively sure of that.
"Give you a
prescription when you left?"
"Dunno."
"They say they
did."
"Then I guess
they did."
"You guess. Were
you still high when you left the hospital? Did you have drugs with you?"
HELLBURNER
55
"I don't
remember."
"What time of
day was it?"
"Don't remember,
Ben, I don't remember." But something was there, God, a flare on the vid,
a light the cameras couldn't handle. Plasma. Bright as the sun. Pete and Elly,
and Falcone and the ship.
"You all
right?" The monitor was beeping. "—No! Let him alone. It's all right!
Leave him the hell alone."
Orderly was trying to
intervene. He opened his eyes and looked toward the door, trying to calm his
pulse rate, and Ben leaned over and put his hand on his shoulder. Squeezed
hard.
"You get in that
sim by yourself?"
"I don't
know."
"Somebody put
you there?"
"I don't know. I
honestly don't know, Ben. I just can't remember."
"Come on, Dek,
think about it. You got into the core. You remember that? You had to get that
far. What happened then?"
He shook his head. He
kept seeing dark. Hashing lights. Green lines and gold. Heard Cory saying,
Nothing you can do, Dek, nothing you can do...
They were back in The
Hole. In his room behind the bar. Had a drawerful of pills....
He put a hand over
his eyes, men stared at the ceiling and looked over at Ben again to be sure
where he was and when he was. But the black kept trying to come back and the
lines twisted and moved.
'Driver ship, a k
long. Loads of rock going to the Well at tremendous v.
Cory was dead. Dead a
long time. So was Bird. He thought that Bird was dead. Fewer and fewer things
were coming loose and drifting.
He pressed his hands
over his eyes until it made sparks of color in the dark of virtual space. Red.
Phosphenes. Was that what they said the lights were?
56
CJ CHE1WH
Spinning, of a
sudden. He grabbed the bed. Ben said, "God, watch it!"
Something was
beeping. Ben said, to someone at the door, "He had a dream, that's
all."
"Want you there
this afternoon," Graff said to his Nav One; and to Saito. Saito said,
"This won't be
like our procedures. An answer-what's-asked. This is Earth. Don't mistake
it."
Graff took a sip of
cooling coffee. "I couldn't. The old man hasn't sent us a hint, except
Pollard, and Pollard doesn't know anything. I don't know if that's a signal to
raise that issue or not—but
I can't understand the silence. Unless the captain's leaving me to take the
grenade. Which I'd do. Little they could do anyway but transfer me back. But he
should tell me."
"No
grenades," Demas said. "—No
chance of Dekker talking?"
"Pollard's
honestly trying. All I know."
"You sure he's
the captain's? He could be Tanzer's."
Graff remembered
something he'd forgotten to say, gave a short laugh. "Pollard's a native
Belter."
"You're serious.
Tanzer knows it?"
"Knows he's a
friend of Dekker's. That has him the devil in Tanzer's book. What's more, this
Belter claims he's a Priority 10 tracked for Geneva."
Demas* brows went up.
Graff said,
"Bright. Very bright. Computers. Top security computers."
"Tanzer can't snag
a Priority like that."
Saito said, "Not
without an authorization. I doubt Tanzer can even access that security level to
realize what he is."
"The captain set
up Pollard with a room in the hospital. I told him to stay to it and Dekker's
room and keep his head down. With a security clearance like that, he
understands what quiet means, I think. He's got an appointment waiting
HELLDUHNEK • 57
for him—if he can get out of here before he
becomes a priority to Tanzer."
"You signal
him?"
"Every word I
could prudently use. There were some I didn't. Maybe I should have. But he's
UDC. You don't know where it'll go, ultimately."
"No remote
chance on Dekker?"
"No chance on
this one. Too much to ask. They've requested the log. They're going to ask questions
on the carrier—they'll want to ask
questions about the trainees. But they won't talk to them. They're not
scheduled. Trainees don't talk to the EC. Trainees they're designing those
ships around don't talk to the committee because the committee is only
interested in finding a way that doesn't admit we're right. Another schitzy AI.
Another budget fight."
"The Earth
Company makes a lot of money on shipbuilding," Demas said. "Does that
thought ever trouble your sleep?"
"It's beginning
to."
The captain wanted to
bust Demas up to a captaincy. Demas insisted he was staying with Keu. The
argument was still going on. The fact was Demas hated administration and
claimed he was a tactician, not a strategist, but Demas saw things. Good
instincts, the man had.
Saito said, quietly:
"Committee will be predominantly male, predominantly over fifty, and they
won't understand why the captain didn't leave Fitz in charge and take me and
Demas with him. That's what you're dealing with.*'
Fitzroy, Helm One,
was answering questions for the committee at Sol One. Graff said, glumly:
"Tanzer's threatening to make an issue out of their command rules.'*
Demas shook his head.
"Let him make it. That'll get me to the stand surer than the nav stats
would. And I don't think he wants that."
One could wish. But
one couldn't get technical with the legislative types. With the engineers, yes.
"They'd talk to
CJ CHERRYH
HELLBURNER
59
Demas. But the
engineers couldn't talk policy to the legislators. Couldn't get through their
own management."
"I keep having
this feeling they're going to blindside us."
"You'll handle
it. No question. Easy done."
Keu's silence was
overall the most troublesome thing. Graff finished off his coffee, took the
bolt and pocketed it. "Paperweight. Every paperpusher should have one. —Tell the construction boss I want to
talk to him, in my office, right now."
"Ought to give
him the thing at max v," Demas said.
"When we find
the foreman who faked the parts count—
I'd be willing." Graff headed for the door, tossed his cup in the
collection bin.
Ben was back. Ben had
been in the hall a while. Ben sat down with his chair close to the bed, put his
hand on his shoulder.
"How're you
doing, Dek?"
"All
right."
"You were
remembering, you know that? Pete and Elly? You remember that?"
Ben scared him.
"I was dreaming. Sorry, Ben." If he was dreaming he could be in the
Belt. Or the ship. But Ben shook at his shoulder and said,
"Dek, how did
you get in the sim? What were you doing in there? I got to get out of here. I
got twelve hours, Dek."
Sim chamber. Pods
spinning around and around. Racket. Echoes. Everything tried to echo. And Ben
said he had twelve hours. He didn't want Ben to leave. Ben came and Ben went,
but as long as he knew there was a chance of Ben being there he knew what he
was waking up to.
He said, "It's
June 20th, isn't it? Isn't it, Ben?"
Ben took a fistful of
hospital gown, under his chin, and said, "Dekker, remember what fucking
happened. I got to be on that shuttle. It's my life at stake, you copy?"
He tried. Ben let him
go, smoothed the covers, patted his
shoulder. Didn't ask
him anything for a moment. Ben was upset and he earnestly tried to pull the sim
chamber out of the dark for Ben. But it wasn't there.
Just that fireball.
Second sun. They said it wasn't Wilhelmsen's fault. Maybe it wasn't. You died
when you overran your limits.
"Target,"
he said. Ben said, "What?"
He said,
"Target. Missed one...."
CHAPTER
4
THE hearing was set
up in A 109, not the biggest of the classrooms—dressed up with tables and a couple of
UDC guards with sidearms—to
do what, Graff asked himself bitterly, shoot down anybody who'd tell the truth
out of turn?
Limited seating, they
called it. No public access. That meant the workmen and the mechanics that
worked for the EC, the vendors and the man who sold meat pies on 3-deck were
barred, and those of them with security clearances still had to pass metal
detectors. It meant that any military personnel showed if the committee knew
they existed, and sent them passes: that meant ranking officers and the few
like himself whose names were on the duty list the hour of the disaster. But
there were passes issued for aides and for official representatives of the
several services. And that meant the Fleet had Saito and Demas.
And the Shepherd
trainees had Mitch and Jamil. They'd taken off the jewelry, taken off the
earrings—couldn't hide Jamil's
tattoos, but Jamil's single strip of black hair was
-60-
HELLDURNER
61
braided tight against
his scalp, and both of them were as regulation as die Shepherds could manage.
There were the
various heads of department, maintenance chiefs, the ones who had security
clearances. There was a big carrier schematic on one screen, others showing
details of the docking ports. And an undetailed model on the table. Just the
flat saucer shape. Mania shape, the blue-skyers called it. He'd seen a picture
of the sea-dwelling creature and he saw why. Thin in one aspect to present
minimum profile to fire or to high-v dust when it needed, broad and flat to
accommodate the engines and the crew, and to lie snug against a carrier's
frame.
Black painted model.
The real thing was grayer, reflective ceramic. But they didn't advertise the
coating. Thirty crew aboard when, please God, they got past the initial trials,
thirty crew, mostly techs, mostly working for the longscanner. Core crew was
four. The essential stations. The command personnel. The ones whose interfaces
were with the active ship controls and the ones they had to risk in the tests.
The carrier dropped
into a star-system and launched the riders—trusting
that real space ships, launched like missiles, with more firepower than ability
to maneuver at v, could do their job and make a carrier's presence-pattern a
far, far more diffuse element for an enemy's longscan computers.
And trusting the
human mind could keep going for four hours on intermittent hyperfocus at that v
with no shields, only a constantly changing VR HUD display and a fire-power
adequate to take out what threatened it—if
reactions were still hair-triggered after that length of time immersed in
virtual space; if human beings still had consistent right reactions to a
dopplered infostream of threat and non-threat and every missile launched and
potentially launched. A longscan of a fractional c firefight looked like a
plaid of intersecting probabilities, overlaid cones or tri-dee fans depending
on your traveling viewpoint; and you overran conventional radar, even orders
from your carrier all you had was calc, com, and emissions.
62
CJ CHERRYH
Put an Artificial
Intelligence above the human in the decision loop? Use a trained pilot for no
more than resource to his own Adaptive Assist systems, with no power to
override? Like hell. Sir.
He took a seat next
to Demas and Saito, he cast a look down die row at Mitch and Jamil, and let the
comer of his mouth tighten, surreptitious acknowledgment of their effort at
diplomacy.
The committee filed
in. Over fifty, Saito had said, and all male. Not quite. But the balance of the
genders was certainly tilted. There were a handful of anxious execs from the
designers and military contractors, from Bauerkraftwerke, who had designed the
rider frame and some of die hardware; Lendler Corp, simulator software;
Intellitron, which produced the longscan for both carriers and riders; Terme
Aerospatiale, which did the Hellburner engines; and Staatentek, responsible for
integrative targeting systems, computers and insystem communications. All of
which could be pertinent. Lendler and Intellitron and Terme Aerospatiale were
all Earth Company, but God only knew what side they were on. They'd doubtless
been talking up the military examiners since last night: there'd been a UDC
briefing.
"That's
Bonner," Saito whispered, indicating a white-haired shave-headed UDC
officer. Gen. Patrick Bonner, Graff understood. Tanzer's direct CO. Ultimate
head over R&D, not a friend. And what was he saying to an HI! contractor,
both of them smiling and laughing like old friends?
People got to their
seats. Bonner gave a speech, long and winding, a tactic, Graff thought,
designed to stultify the opposition. Or perhaps his own troops. Not here to fix
blame, Bonner said. Here to determine what happened and what caused it.
Introductions. Graff
found himself focusing on the walls, on the topographic details of Bonner's
receding hairline, the repeating pattern in the soundproofing, on the nervous
HELLBURNER
63
fingers of the rep
from Bauerkraftwerke, which tapped out a quiet rhythm on the table.
Statement of
positions: Bauerkraftwerke insisted there was no structural flaw, that its
engineers had reconstructed the accident and there was nothing to do with
failure of the frame or the engines. Terme Aerospatiale agreed. Lendler said
its simulation software wasn't at fault. Staatentek, the patent holder of the
local AI tetralogic, maintained that the random ordnance software, the
communications, the targeting software, had not glitched. Nobody was at fault.
Nothing was wrong.
But a redesign in
favor of the tetralogic control couldn't be ruled out.
Bangs and thumps
again. "Ben?" Dekker called out. Ben had said he would be there. But
he waked up in a corridor, on a gumey, with restraints he didn't remember
deserving. "Ben!"
A nurse patted his
shoulder and said, "It's all right, your friend's just outside."
He hated it when the
illusions started agreeing with him.
He lay still then,
listening to the rattle and clatter. Someone
said, from over his
head, "We're going to take you in
, now," and he didn't know where. He
yelled, "Ben! Ben!"
And somebody said,
"Better sedate him."
"No," he
yelled. "No." And promised them, "You don't need to."
"Are you going
to be all right?" they asked him.
"Yeah," he
said, and lay there getting his breath. But there was a whine of hydraulics and
a clank, and they shoved him into a tube, telling him: "You have to stay
absolutely still..."
Like a spinner tube,
it was. Like back in the belt, in the ship. He lay still the way they told him,
but it got harder and harder to breathe.
Flash of light. Like
the sun. He heard a beeping sound that reminded him—that reminded him—
64 • CJ CHERRYH
"Elly—Elly, Wilhelmsen, don't reorient, screw
it, screw it, you're past—"
"He's
panicking," someone said.
He screamed, at the
top of his lungs, "Wilhelmsen, you damned fool—"
Fifteen-minute
recess. Break for restrooms and the corridor and the hospitality table.
Mitch moved close
enough to say, "They're dithering, sir."
Graff said,
"Ease down. Not here."
"They're saying
it can't be flown. That's a damn lie."
"Ease down,
Mitch. Nothing we can do out here." He had Saito at his elbow. He could
see Tanzer down die hall with Bonner, in hot and heavy discussion.
Demas came back from
the phone in the office. Said: "A word in private."
Graff said,
"Mitch. Be good," and took Saito with him, farther up die hall.
"You get him?"
"Couldn't get
hold of Pollard. Talked to Higgins. The neurosurgeon wanted to run another
brain scan. Higgins and Evans agreed. Dekker went off the edge, he's under
sedation. Higgins says he remembers the accident. Nothing further. He may never
be able to remember how he got in that pod."
"Damn."
"You've got to
tell it plain, Helm."
"Break it wide
open? We don't know what the captain wants. We don't know and if it were safe
to use FleetCom he would."
Saito said, "It
can't be worse. At this point I'd advise going past protocol. Worst we can do
is alienate Bonner and a few handpicked legislators who came out here with him.
This is a set-up. But it has records. The contractors are here defending their
systems. And there may be a few line-straddlers in the senatorial party."
That was a point.
Bonner was already alienated. This was
HELLDURNER
65
likely a breakaway
group of legislators Bonner favored putting in here to hear what Tanzer put
together—but the fact that
they let him talk at all was either a try at getting something incriminating
out of him; or maybe, maybe there were members of the group that wanted more
than one view. "God only knows what we're dealing with. No Pollard, no
Dekker. It's a small hand we're playing. All right. I'll tell Mitch. Wraps are
off."
Past lunch and
beyond, and Ben paced the waiting room. He'd read all the damned articles
available to the reader, he'd become grudgingly informed in the latest in
microbiologic engineering, the pros and cons of seasonally adjusted light/ dark
cycles and temperature in station environments, the ethics of psychological
intervention, and the consequences of weather adjustment in the hurricane
season to the North American continent, not to mention five posture checks for
low-g workers. He'd occupied himself making changes in a program he had stored
on his personal card, he'd been four times at least to Dekker's room to see if
he was out from under sedation—he'd
lost count. You could hear the clangor and rattle of lunch trays being
collected—they had a damned lot
of hurt and sick: people in here, people that had let a welder slip or gotten
in the way of a robot loader arm, one guy who'd taken a godawful number of
volts closing a hydraulic switch—he
heard the gossip in the corridors coming and going, he was saturated with
hospital gossip on who was missing what and how the guy with peritonitis was
doing today and what was the condition of the limb rcattachment in 109?
While the orderlies were
having lunch.
Another trip out to
Dekker's room. Can't wake him, Higgins said. We've gotten the blood pressure
down now. But he's tired. He's just tired—
"I've got a
shuttle pulling out tonight—tell
the lieutenant I've done everything I can do. I want to see him. I've got to
get out of here."
66
CJ CHEiWH
Higgins said,
"He's involved in a hearing this afternoon. I don't know if I can reach
him. I've left two messages with his office,'*
'"Die hell!
Doctor, my luggage is still lost, I'm out of money for the damn vending
machines—I never got a
cafeteria authorization and I'm sick of potato chips—I never asked to come here, Dekker and
I never were friends, dammit, I don't know why I'm his keeper!"
Higgins lent him
five. Which wasn't the answer he wanted, but it was lunch, at least, and he
wasn't going to offend Higgins by turning it down. Supper, he wasn't even going
to think about.
Tanzer's turn with
the mike. Nobody from the Fleet on the panel and no chance, Graff thought, of
doing anything about that, except refusing to allow Fleet personnel to testify
and trying to make an issue of it—but
he was in a Position on that too, being one of the people on the list to
testify; and he hoped the sweat didn't show.
Demas' advice,
Saito's, Armsmaster Thieu's, for that matter, who might be called, was
unanimous, and that it agreed with his only confirmed that if he was wrong and
if he screwed this, the Fleet had to push him out the lock as a peace offering.
That was one thing. He understood that kind of assignment.
But the thought that
he could screw things beyond recall, offend the wrong senator, say something
the media could get hold of and kill the riderships or bring the Fleet under
UDC control—either of which would
kill any hope of preventing the whole Beyond being sucked into Union's widening
influence—that was the
possibility mat had his bands sweating and his mind chasing random imaginations
throughout Tanzer's performance: he kept thinking, I've got to counter that;
and, I've got to get that across to the committee, and, God, they're not going
to ask me the right questions.
No way Bonner's going
to let me answer those questions.
The general's no
fool. There's something he's got planned,
H E LL BURN
67
some grenade planted
and ticking, only where is it? With Tanzer?
Tanzer was saying:
"It's the task of this facility to evaluate prototype systems and to take
them to the design limits. The essential step before we risk human life is
advanced, exacting interactive assist simulation. The second step is automated
performance testing. And again, the simulations are revised and refined, and
procedures and checklists developed in hours of Control Integration Trials, a
process with which many of our distinguished panel are intimately familiar.
They are also aware that in the world of high-velocity craft we are exceeding
human capacities to cope with the infostream. We've overrun human reaction
time. We've long since overrun conventional radar. Hence the neural net AA,
which adapts and shapes itself threefold, for the pilot's past performance,
enemy's past, pilot's current behaviors—and
the longscan technique that extrapolates and displays an object's probability.
We've developed dopplered communications and communications techniques to
receive information faster than human senses can sort it, computer assemblies
to second-guess the pilot on multiple tasks. The faster we go, the more the
pilot becomes an integral component of the systems that filter information via
his senses and the Adaptive Assists into the ship's controls. Right now the
human is the highest vote in the Hellbumer's neural network; but we've long
been asking the question at what point the sophistication of the computers to
provide the information and the speed and power of the ship to react may finally
exceed the engineering limits of the creator— mat is, at what point of demand on
human capacity to react to data, do we conceive a technically perfect and
humanly unflyable machine?" '
The questioner,
Bonner, said, "Have we done that, in your opinion?"
Tanzer said,
"Yes. In my opinion, yes."
"Go on."
"The EC militia
came here with a design within the
CJ CHBWH
HELLBURNER
capabilities of the
shipbuilding industry, and within the skills of its own pilots to operate. And
the design for a companion ship they claimed could use off-the-shelf hardware
and software—"
Damn him, Graff
thought.
"—and serve as a high-velocity weapons
platform. It was not, of course, operable as designed. The fleet insists that
the unpredictability of human decisions without a tetralogic AI dominating the
pilot-neural net interlink is essential to bigh-v combat. And we have six men
in hospital and seventeen dead in the reaiworld discovery process."
Hell.
"We*re putting
crews into a ship that is in effect a high-v multilogic missile, with the sole
advantage that the equipment is theoretically recoverable."
There had been dead
silence in the room. There was a small muttering now. Don't blow, don't blow,
Graff wished Mitch and Jamil. We get our turn.
The gavel came down.
Tanzer went on:
"A pilot with twenty years' experience and no faults in the sims ran the
course successfully for three hours, forty-six minutes and 17.4 seconds. The
accident, which you've seen repeatedly, took place within seven tenths of a
second. In the 17th second Wilhelmsen missed one random ordnance target on the
approach and reoriented to catch it on the retreat, which he did. At this point
telemetry leaves us to guess what passed through his mind— perhaps the recollection he was
entering the probability fan of a target in his path. Pulse and respiration has
increased markedly over the previous ten minutes. The armscomper and the
co-pilot simultaneously indicated alarm as the maneuver started. The armscomper
fired off-profile as required and missed. In the next .7 of a second the
pilot's telemetry recorded three muscle twitches in conflicting directions
causing the craft to undergo successive shocks, and one extreme reaction which
caused the pilot and the crew to lose consciousness and sent the ship into a
tumble.
"Possibly—Dr. Helmond Weiss will provide more
specifics in his testimony—but
possibly prolonged hyperception to a microfocused event like the double miss
caused a spatial confusion...."
Pens on Translates
took rapid notes. Graff kept his notes in his head. And said to himself, on the
memory of his own system entries: Wilhelmsen panicked.
"Seven tenths of
a second," Tanzer said, "from first mistake to the ship entering a
fatal motion. 4.8 seconds later it clipped a targeting buoy at .5 light. There
is no recoverable wreckage. Our analysis of events rests entirely on telemetry—in which, ironically, the speed makes
the microgaps significant data fallouts."
"Meaning the
instruments couldn't send fast enough."
"Meaning our
data-gathering had two phases: an infosift rapid transmission and a more
detailed concurrent total transmission that was running 28 minutes behind the
condensed report. Machines can't transmit that fast. More Important, human
neurons don't fire that fast. We're using "" human brains to improve
a missile's kill rate at a sustained rate of decision that exceeds human
limits. Meaning we can't think that fast that long. We've tried an Assisted
handoff to a human co-pilot and it's not practical. The "psychological
stress is actually increased by the trade, and performance is critically
reduced. Either we put an unexcepted AI override on the observed physical
responses that preceded the incident, or we go back to design and put that ship
Under a tetralogic AI with the pilot at the interface—as the heart, not the head, of the
affair; or, unacceptably, we Outright admit that we don't give a damn for human
life, and we breed human beings to do that job and tape-train the fear and
humanity out of them, the way they do in Union Space. There are no other
choices."
" Down the corridor to the vending machines,
a cheese
fandwich and a soft
drink. Cheese was edible. The fish
^Wasn't even to
mention. It had something green scattered
70
CJ CHERKYH
HELLBURNER
71
through it. Ben sat
down, unwrapped the sandwich, tore the indestructible packaging on the chips
and sipped his drink.
A guy came in, put
chits in the machine. God, he didn't want a couple of orderlies discussing
kidney function during his sandwich....
But he caught the
haircut and the uniform, took a second look, and found the shave-job staring
back at him with sudden sharp attention.
"Pollard?"
The face almost rang
bells, but he couldn't place it. The haircut, pure rab, didn't agree with the
blue fatigues that said military. Civ docker, he thought. Then he thought;
Dekker. Shepherd. And had a sudden notion in what packet of memory mat face
belonged.
"Mason?" he
asked.
"Yeah!" the
guy said, hands full. "Word is you're here for Dekker, damn! How is
he?"
"Like
shit." He indicated the place opposite him at the table and Mason brought
his sandwich and his drink over and sat down. Ben asked, "What are you in
for?"
"Therapy."
Mason wiggled the fingers of his right hand. "Gym floor jumped up and got
me. —Dekker's still bad,
huh? He say anything?"
"Thinks he's in
the fuckin' Belt most of the time." Ben took a bite of cheese sandwich,
thought about that shuttle leaving at mainday end, and how there wasn't another
til next week, wondered if there was a shortcut to the memory Graff wanted, and
said, "Keeps asking for Bird and Cory Salazar. What in hell happened to
him? Anybody know?"
Mason pulled a long
face. "Just they pulled him out of a sim-pod bloody and beat all to hell.
But we'd lay odds—" Mason looked
at him about chest-high and stopped talking in mid-sentence. Mason filled his
mouth with sandwich instead.
"—lay odds, what?"
Mason looked at him
narrowly while he took time to chew the bite and wash it down with soft drink.
"Nothing."
"What, nothing?
What's that look mean?"
"You here as a
friend of Dekker's? Or officially?
"Look, I'm a
programmer, not a psych. I was minding my own business on Sol One. FSO hauled
my ass out here because Dekker named me next-of-kin. Lt. Graff hands me his
personals, doesn't tell me shit else, asks me find out what happened to him,
and that's where I am, trying to find out why he's lying there seeing ET's and
angels, so I can get back to Sol One before my posting's gone. What's that look
mean?"
Mason said slowly,
"You're not here on Tanzer's orders."
"I don't know
Tanzer. The FSO jerked me over on a hush-up and hurry. Humanitarian leave, on
account of Dekker wanted me. What's the UDC got to do with it?"
"Uniform you're
wearing isn't exactly popular in some quarters."
"So what are we?
Union spies? Not that I heard."
"Say Dekker
wouldn't be lying in that bed except for the UDC CO here."
Ben took a look at
the door. Nobody around. Nobody listening, unless they routinely bugged the
vending machines. "Mason. This is Ben Pollard. Ben who was Morrie Bird's
partner. Ben whose ass your ship saved once upon a while. You seriously mind to
tell me what the hell's going on and why Dekker rates all this shiz?"
Mason swallowed a bit
of sandwich and sat there looking at him and thinking about it. "Say it's
a real pressured environment."
"Yeah?"
"The UDC doesn't
like Belters. You must be the exception."
Belters who might be
old, exiled rab, Ben thought, Shepherds who looked like Mason—that haircut wouldn't get a security
clearance from the UDC, but he didn't say so. He said, carefully, "There's
some feeling, yeah, but I never ran into it. Went into Tl, computer stuff—in no pain until they snatched me here.
What's this about Dekker and the CO?"
72
CJ CHEIWH
HELLBURNER • 70
"Tanzer's run
the R&D for the UDC insystem stuff since Adam was an Earther, he's got his
System, and his friends in high places, til the Fleet signed us in to fly for
them. The UDC wanted to do the test and documentation through their facility—all right, they had the set-up and the
sims and the knowledge of the suppliers and the technical resources; which is
how R&D's got their hands on the ships and put their guys in the seats,
because the U friggin' DC is trying to get the Fleet demoted to a UDC
command."
"I've heard
that. Mazian's all over the news trying to get funds. The opposition wants it
with strings."
"You've seen the
big ships. But the secondary stuff the Fleet's building—top secret stuff, fast. UDC's never
flown anything this hot. Design screw-ups, spec screw-ups, materials failures.
They cut the budget which means they go to the drawing-board again and make
changes—no mind it costs
another 150 million for a study and an 80 mil legislative session that could've
made up the difference—no,
that's fine, that's going in the damn senators' pockets and feeding die
contractors. We had one glitch-up with a pump that wasn't up to specs, we got
another because security's so damn tight the company making a mate-up device
can't talk to the company writing the software, you figure that?"
"Must be the
programmer that did the EC security system."
"Listen."
Mason's finger stabbed the water-ringed table-top. "Right now they're six
months behind schedule and talking about one damn more redesign on the
controls. The UDC bitched and bitched about sim time, said Tanzer's 'boys' were
the ones to do the test runs because they had the hours and the experience—you want to talk to me about hours?
Shit, I'm twenty-seven, that's twenty fuckin' years I've lived on the Hamilton,
and they give me 200 hours at nav? 200 fuckin* hours, you believe that? They
won't log anything you ran up before you were licensable at your post. I was
nav monkey when I was seven, I was running calc when I was ten, I was sitting
relief on the edge of the
Well when I was
twelve, and then they say they're counting only a quarter of the time our ships
logged us—as a compromise
because it was civilian hours? Ninety days a tun, thirty heavy, and on call 24
fuckin' hours a day in Jupiter's lap for longer than these sim-jockeys would hold
up, and they give me 200 hours? I was 2000 plus on my last run out from
R2!" "That's crazy."
"Yeah, but mat's
UDC rules. You only get hours for the time you're logged on. Who logs on? Who
ever logs on? You do your fuckin' job, you're too busy to log on, with a load
coming and the watch rousting you out of your bunk at 2100 to check you're
where you think you are, because
. somebody thinks we
got a positional problem, shit if I'm going to log on as officer of record and
get my fuckin' hours for the UDC. Same shit they're pulling on the merchanters.
You know why they don't count real hours on us? Because the UDC's got four
pilots can claim real hours on a par with us, and last week they had
five." "The guy with Dekker's crew?" "Wilhelmsen."
Mason leaned closer, said, "Listen, —"
' And stopped as a
nurse came in and carded a soft drink. The nurse left. Mason said, "We've
got a lot of pressure. You
' got maybe four,
five hours at a run. Virtual space display. Neural net Assist. Real sensory
overload. Hyperfbcus, non-Stop. And you don't sub in some stranger in the last
twelve " hours before a run, you don't have bad feeling between the pilot
and the techs, you don't plug in a guy with a whole different visualization
system. You want to figure how much pressure Wilhelmsen was under to perform?
Shit, he missed a target. He could've let it go. But he was too hot for that.
He flipped back to get it, schitzed on where he was, and took three good guys
with him. You know why Dekker's in
I here? Dekker—Dekker told Wilhelmsen's crew to their
laces that he could have done it."
ft- "Shit."
74
CJ CHBWH
HELLBURNER
75
"No kidding.
Wilhelmsen's navigator took severe exception, there were words—"
"Before or after
they sent Dekker to hospital?"
"Let me tell you
about that, too. Yeah, Dekker was in shock. He was watching it in mission
control. But he didn't need any hospital. They wanted him quiet. They wanted
him not to say a thing in front of the senators and the VIPs they had swarming
around the observation area."
"They."
"The UDC.
Tanzer. They doped him down and let him out after they got the last of the VIPs
on the shuttle out of here. And twelve hours later they haul Dekker out of the
sim that's been running for six—"
Evans walked in.
Stood there a moment, then said, "Lt. Pollard. Getting the local
news?"
Ben remembered to
breathe. And shoved back from the table. "We knew each other, back when.
Old news. —Nice seeing you,
Mason."
"Nice seeing
you," Mason muttered, and got up himself, Ben didn't wait to see for what.
He chucked his plastics in the bin and walked out, with a touch of the pulse
rate and the cold sweats he'd used to feel in the Belt, when the Company cops
were breathing damned close to them.
Infighting with the
UDC? A major Reel project going down the chute and the blue-sky UDC fighting to
get its boys in the pilot seat and the Earth Company militia under its command?
He wished he were in
Stockholm.
"Lt. GraftY*
Bonner said, and Graff got up from beside Demas, walked quietly to the table
and swore to tell the truth.
"State your
name, rank, citizenship, service and age," the clerk said.
"Jurgen Albrecht
Graff, Fleet Lieutenant, EC Territories, ship merchanter Polly d'Or, assigned
militia ship Victoria,
under Captain Keu,
currently Helm Two on the ECS8, uncommissioned, age thirty-eight." Heads
perusing documents, drowsing on hands, came up
•nd looked at him with
dawning close attention.
Gen. Bonner said,
"Will you state your approximate actual age, for the record,
lieutenant?"
Son of a bitch, Graff
thought. "Actually, sir, I haven't calculated it since I was fifteen. But
I was bom in 2286, Common Reckoning, and the first EC president in my memory
was Padriac Melton."
"Would you agree
you're approximately early twenties, lieutenant, in terms of actual
years?"
"I've no access
to those records, sir. And it's not relevant to my experience."
"What is your
logged experience?"
"Since I was
posted to Helm—ten years, six hours
a Shift...."
"Logged hours,
lieutenant."
**—conservatively, 18000 hours, since
posting. Not counting apprenticeship. Not counting working during dock, which
is "never logged."
Bonner's face was a
study in red. "Logged records,
•i lieutenant. Answer
the question as asked or be held in contempt."
"As far as I
know, there are documents behind those hours, sir. The Polly d'Or is likely
somewhere between »Viking and Pell at
the moment, and she maintains meticulous log records. Victoria's whereabouts
the Fleet commander could provide, if you'd care to query—"
"I doubt mis
committee has the patience, lieutenant. And
.let's state for the
committee that your logged hours on Sol
" Two records
are substantially less. Can we at least agree that
^you're not a senior
officer, and you were in physical control
ef the carrier during
the test run?"
"General."
Salto's quiet voice from behind him, mild registered on the faces of the panel.
"Una Saito,
76
CJ CHEIWH
HELLDUKNER
77
Com One, protocol
officer on Victoria. —Lieutenant,
as a matter of perspective, where were you born?"
Bonner said,
"Ms. Saito, whatever your rank may be, you're in contempt of this
committee. Be seated before I have you ejected."
Graff said, looking
at all those frowning blue-sky faces, "Actually, sir, if it's relevant, I
was born on the sublighter Gloriana, on its last deep-space run."
There was a murmur
and a sudden quiet in the room. Graff sat there with his hands folded, not
provoking a thing, no, and Bonner, give him credit, gave not a flicker.
"So you would
maintain on that basis your experience is adequate to have managed the carrier
on a critical test run."
"I would
maintain, sir, that I am qualified to take a starship through jump, an
infinitely riskier operation."
"You're
qualified. Have you done it?"
"Yes, sir. I
have. Once on initiation, eighteen times on hand-off on system entry."
"Yourself.
Alone."
"Helm on
Victoria is backed by 49 working stations, counting only those reporting in
chain of command to Helm."
"I'll reserve
further questions. Senator Eriksson?"
"Thank
you." This from the Joint Legislative Committee rep. "Lt. Graff,
Eriksson from the JLC technical division. Medical experts maintain that
hyperfocus is not sustainable over the required hours of operation."
"It's routine
for us. If—"
"Let me finish
my statement, please. Medical experts have stated that the ERP Index indicates
mental confusion— stress was taking
its toll. As a starship pilot you have systems which defend against impacts.
You have an AI-asslsted system of hand-offs. You have a computer interlock on
systems to prevent accidents. Based on those facts, do you not think that
similar systems are necessary on these ships?"
"Senator, all of
those interlocks you describe do exist on
the rider, but let me
say first that a starship's autopilot override is at a 2-second pilot crisis
query in combat conditions, the rider's was set at 1 for the test, and that
while the carrier does have effect shields, the size of the rider makes it
possible to pass through fire zones in which the carrier's huge size makes such
passage far riskier. The armscomp override isn't necessary, of course, because
a rider's available acceleration isn't sufficient to overtake its own ordnance,
but it does have a template of prohibited fire to prevent its ordnance hitting
the carrier or passing through a habitation zone. The Al-driven autopilot did
cut on when it detected a crisis condition in the pilot, which, as I said, was
set at 1 second for this test. The AI queried the pilot—mat's a painful, attention-getting
jolt. It waited a human response—long,
in the AI's terms, again, 1 second before it seized control. It was already
tracking the situation on all its systems. It knew the moves that had caused
the tumble. It knew the existence of the next target. It knew it was off
course, but it had lost its navigation lock and was trying to reestablish that.
The buoy's existence was masked for the test, but the AI realized it couldn't
save the test: it entered another order to penetrate the virtual reality of the
test to sample the real environment, accessed information concealed from the
pilot and reckoned the position of the target buoy as potentially a concern,
and correctly assigned it as a hazard of equal value but secondary imminence to
the threat of the ship's high-v tumble. It reasoned that elimination of the
target required the arms function, while evasion of the target required the
engines, and that the motion exceeded critical demands of the targeting system.
A subfunction was, from the instant the AI had engaged, already firing engines
to reduce the tumble, and tracking other firepaths. It was doing all (hat, and
attempting to locate itself and its own potential ordnance tracks relative to
interdicted fire vectors—realspace
friendly targets. Fire against me target was not set for its first sufficient
window: the condensed telemetry of its calculations is a massive print-
76
CJ CHEfWH
out. The AI was still
waiting for the window when its position and the target's became
identical."
Took a moment for the
senator to Figure what that meant. Then an angry ftown. "So you're blaming
an AI breakdown?"
"No, sir.
Everything from the AI's viewpoint was coming optimal. A human with a clear
head couldn't have outraced the AI in targeting calculations or in bringing the
ship stable enough to get a window. A human might have skipped the math and
discharged the chaff gun and the missiles in hope of destroying the object by
sheer blind luck, but the AI had an absolute interdiction against certain
vectors. It didn't even consider that it could violate that— that range safety could have taken
care of the problem if it arose. Somebody decided that option shouldn't be in
its memory, and this being a densely populated system maybe it shouldn't have
been. But that ship was effectively lost from the moment the pilot reacted to
his crew's apprehension. That communications problem was the direct cause of
the accident—"
Bonner said,
"Excuse me, senator. The lieutenant is speculating, now, far outside his
expertise. May I remind him to confine himself to what he was in a position to
witness or to obtain from records?"
He didn't look at
Bonner. "A communications problem set up by a last-minute substitution of
pilots."
The committee hadn't
heard mat. No. Not all of them had, at least. And from Shepherds he knew were
back there in the room, there was not a breath, not an outcry, just a general
muttering, and he couldn't turn his head to see expressions.
The senator said:
"What substitution, lieutenant?"
"The crew
trained as a team. The Fleet pilot was replaced at the last moment by a UDC
backup pilot the colonel lifted out of his own crew and subbed in on Fleet
personnel. The Fleet captain in command objected in an immediate memo to Col.
Tanzer's office—"
HE LLDURN ER
79
Bonner said,
"Lieutenant, you're out of line. Confine yourself to factual
answers."
"Sir. That is a
fact upheld by ECS8 log records,"
Somebody yelled from
the back, "Do they show the Fleet laid those targets and set that random
ordnance interval?" Several voices seconded, and somebody else yelled,
"You're full of it, Jennings, you don't break an ops team! You never sub
personnel! Tanzer killed those guys sure as a shot to the head!"
The gavel came down.
Somebody shouted,
over the banging, "The Fleet set up the course. Check the records! The
Fleet had orders to set the targets closer together to screw the test!"
And from nearer the
front, as the MP's and Fleet Security moved in, "Wilhelmsen screwed the
test—those targets were
all right! He lost it, that's all!"
Bonner was on his
feet shouting, "Clear the room. Clear the room. Sergeant!"
Institution green.
Ben had seen green. Had eaten real lettuce, drunk lime (orange juice was
better) and had real margaritas the way they could make them on Sol One, but he
still wasn't sure why inner system liked that color that mimicked old
Tttnidad's shower paneling, whether that shade was what Earth really favored.
He sincerely hoped not. He honestly hoped not. But if Earth was that color wall
to wall he'd take it over B Dock hospital corridors and vending machine
suppers.
Dekker was still
hyperbolic—swung on an intern,
threatened the nurses, called the CO a psychopathic control junkie—
"How many
fingers?" the intern had asked, holding up two, and Dekker had held up his
own, singular—which was Dekker, all
right, but it hadn't won him points. The intern had checked his pulse, said it
was elevated—
Damned right it was
elevated. "You're being a fool," Ben said, while they were waiting
for the orderly with the trank. He grabbed Dekker by the arm and shook him, but
60
CJ CHBWH
Dekker wasn't
resisting. "You know that, Dek-boy? Use your head. Shit, get us out of
this place!"
"Sorry,"
Dekker said listlessly, "sorry." And stared off into space until Ben
shook him again and said, "You want to spend your life in here? You want a
permanent home here?"
Dekker looked at him.
But the orderly came in and gave him the shot. Dekker didn't fight it. And
after the orderly went away Dekker just lay there and stared past him.
*'Dek," Ben
said, "count their fingers. Walk their damn line. Remember how you got in
that damn sim. Maybe the lieutenant can get you out of here. Just play their
game, that's all."
And Dekker said,
while Dekker's eyes were glazing, "What's the use, Ben? What's the use
anymore?"
That wasn't like
Dekker. Wasn't like him at all. But Dekker was out men, or so far under as made
no difference. They said people drugged out could hear you, and that under some
kinds of trank maybe you didn't have the same resistance to suggestion: Ben
squeezed Dekker's arm hard and whispered, right in his ear, "You're going
to do what they say and get yourself out of here. Hear it?"
Dekker didn't give
any sign he did. So it was out to the hall again, 1805h, and no likelihood
Dekker was going to come around again this evening.
He might lie to the
doctors, Ben thought, he might tell mem Dekker had remembered, make something
up—prime Dekker with it and hope Dekker
had enough of his pieces screwed together to remember it. If he could figure
out what they wanted to hear. Say it was Wilhelmsen's crew that attacked him,
that was the signal he was picking up. That was what the Fleet wanted.
But not what the UDC
wanted. And what the Fleet wanted wasn't any ticket to Stockholm, no.
Damn, damn, and damn.
Meanwhile Dekker got
crazier, no knowing what drug they were filling him full of or what it was
doing, and if he
HELLBURNER
81
could get hold of
Graff he'd tell him check the damn medication for side effects, it wasn't
helping, it was making Dekker worse; he'd stopped trusting Higgins, and Evans
hadn't been available since yesterday—
He'd seen this
before, damn if he hadn't when an organization got ready to throw a man out
with the garbage—some skuz in power
had taken a position and bet his ass on it, and now the skuz in power had
stopped wanting the truth, since it didn't agree with the positions he'd taken—
So you trashed the
guy who knew what was going on; you pinned the blame on him as far as you
could; you shunted out anybody who might be sympathetic—Evans' departure from the scene—and from where Ben Pollard was standing
it didn't look as if Graff or the Fleet had any serious influence left in the
hospital—not enough at least
for Graff to get his ass in here and ask Dekker himself, which signal he should
have picked up from the beginning if he'd had any antennae up.
Not enough to do a
thing about the stuff they were shooting into Dekker, who, if the Fleet knew
it, wasn't outstandingly sane to start with.
Triple damn.
"Good
night," some nurse said to him. "G'night," Ben muttered, half
looking around. Good night was what Earthers said to each other. Good night was
where this guy had come from. The place of green and snow and rain. Tides and
beaches.
He'd seen growing
plants. Been into the herbarium on Sol One. Amazing sight. Guided tours, once a
week. Keep to the walkway, don't pick the leaves. But the Guides demonstrated
how some of them smelled. Flowers would take your head off. Leaves smelled
strange. He wasn't sure he liked it. Grease and cold metal smelled one way, and
that was home. This hadn't been, hadn't smelled quite edible, not quite
offensive, not at all smell like anything he'd known. The ocean was what he
wanted, not any damn woods full of
CJ CHERRYH
stinking plants: snow
that was water freezing, not methane, or the scary stuff you got when a seal
was chancy.
Snow was the result
of weather, which was the result of Coriolis forces, which he understood, and
atmospheric rollover, which he theoretically understood—he thought about that, pushing the
button for another damned cheese sandwich, he thought about a city that was
like helldeck without an overhead, with the tides coming and going against its
edges and snow happening—that
was what he thought about for company on the walk home.
Didn't think about
Dekker lying trank-dead in bed, or Dekker saying, What's the use, Ben? What's
the use anymore—
When Dekker had hung
on to life harder than any son of a bitch of his acquaintance. And when other
sons of bitches were playing games with a defense system they called important—dammit, the services played games, with
a war on? And the whole human race could find itself in a war zone if the Fleet
didn't keep the mess out past the Oort Cloud?
The Earth Company was
playing damn games again, that was what, in another of its corporate limbs, the
friggin' Company and the UDC and the Fleet, that couldn't find his luggage, was
politicking away as usual and throwing out a guy like Dekker who was sincerely
crazy enough to want to fly a ship like that into combat.
He'd fought fools in
administration before. And they were beatable, except there was such a supply
of them.
He'd fought Systems
before, and they were beatable, if you knew the numbers, or you could get at
them. But damn, he'd tried to stay clean. Even with that EIDAT system, that
begged for a finger or two in its works. Use the numbers he had to get to
Graff?
Graff couldn't do
anything or Graff would have done it. Possible even that Graff had screwed him
from the start of this.
HELLDURNER
Get to Keu's office?
Not damned easy. And no guarantee the Fleet even at that level could do
anything.
Go to the UDC CO and
screw Dekker by blowing his own service's hope of getting him back?
Walking the corridor
to his so-called hospice quarters, he thought how if going to Tanzer would get
him a pass out of here on the next shuttle, damned if it wasn't starting to
look like a good idea. Screw Dekker? Dekker was already screwed. So what was
one more, given he couldn't help the guy?
He held sandwich,
chips, and drink in one arm, fished his card out of his pocket with his right
hand and shoved it into the key slot.
The message tight was
blinking on the phone, bright red in the dark. He elbowed the button on the
room lights, shut the door the same way, and went to the nightstand to set his
supper down—
Found his luggage,
maybe. He couldn't think of a call else he had in, unless Dekker'd taken a
spell of something.
Couldn't be he'd
broken anybody's neck. They had him too far out for that. Please God.
He plugged in his
personal reader—never use a TI card
in an unsecure device—and
keyed up playback.
TECH/2 Benjamin J.
Pollard
CTVSS/UDC 28 DAT 2
CURRENTLOC: UDC
SOL2B-HOS28
1719JUN20/24 SN
P-235-9876/MLR 1923JUN20/24
TRANSFER TO: ACTIVE
DUTY: UDC SYSTEMS TESTING
RANK: TECH2/UDC
SOL2D-OPS/SCAN G-5: PILOT RATING C-3 WITH 200 EXPERIENCE HOURS LOGGED.
REPORT TO: 2-DECK
229, BARRACKS C: JUN21/24/ 0600h: ref/ CLASSIFIED: OUTSIDE COMMUNICATION
SPECIFICALLY DENIED.
CJ CHBWH
H ELLDURN Eft
85
He sat down. He had
that much presence of mind. He punched playback again with his thumb, and the
same damned thing rolled past.
Transfer? Systems
Testing? Pilot rating?
Shit!
The committee wanted
another go. Immediately. The shuttle was two days on its way from Sol One, due
in at maindawn, and, informed it wouldn't be held, senatorial demands
notwithstanding, the committee decided to keep going through maindark, if that
was what it took. You didn't snag a senator for a five-day to Sol Two—no famous restaurants, no cocktail
lounges, no 'faculties1 the way they legendarily existed downworld: the
senators had important business to do, the senators wanted out and back to Sol
One and down to Earth and their perks and their privileges, and they'd talk
with the company reps over gin and tonic the whole way back.
Graff had hoped, for
a while, after things went to hell, that some few members of the committee
might want to ask him questions over gin and tonic, if they had the clout to
ask him in for a go-over; or rec-hall coffee, if they had the clout just to get
past Bonner. He'd kept his phone free. He'd hoped until he got the notification
of the resumption of the sessions—the
committee wanted a chance to review testimony and wanted certain individuals to
'stand by' a call.
Demas and Saito
weren't on the list. Much and Jamil certainly weren't. No audience. No
guarantee mere would be any questions Bonner didn't set up. Graff sat there
tapping a stylus on the desk and thinking about a fast call to Sol One via
FleetCom; but that was still no use—if
the captain hadn't noticed a shuttle-load of senators, contractor executives,
and UDC brass headed to Sol Two's B Dock, there was no hope for them; and if
the captain hadn't known something about the character and leanings of said
senators and contractors and Gen. Patrick Bonner, Fleet Security was off its
game. So the lieutenant was still left out of the lock without a line, and the
lieutenant had to get his butt out
there right now and
give the senators what they asked as best he could.
So the lieutenant in
question put his jacket on, straightened his collar, and opened the door.
"Mr.
Graff."
Face to face with
Tanzer.
"I'd like a
word," Tanzer said as he stepped into the hall.
"About my
testimony?" He didn't have an Optex, didn't own one and it wasn't legal
for a private conversation; but he hoped Tanzer would worry.
Tanzer said,
"Just a word of sanity."
A trap? A smear, if
Tanzer was carrying a hidden Optex. He could refuse to talk; he could tell
Tanzer go to hell; but he had to face Tanzer after the committee was long gone.
"Yes, colonel?"
Tanzer said, quietly,
"You could screw mis whole project. You're a junior, you don't know what
you're walking into. And you could lose the war—right here, right in this hearing. I'm
advising you to answer the questions without comment—no, I'm not supposed to be talking to
you, and no, I can't advise you about your testimony. By the book, I can't. But
forget that business in the office. We both want that ship. We don't want it
canceled. Do we? —Can we have a word
inside your office?"
No, was his first thought.
There were aides milling about down the hall. There were potential witnesses.
But not knowing what Tanzer wanted to tell him could be a mistake too. Bugs,
there weren't, inside. Not unless the UDC was technologically one up, and he
didn't think so. He opened the door again, let Tanzer in and let the door shut.
Tanzer said,
directly, "The companies aren't going to
support finding a
basic design flaw; that's money out of
their pockets, do you
understand me? That's not what we're
'r- going to push
for."
», Tanzer and a 4-star? Politicking with a
Fleet j-g? What in
CJ CHERRYH
hell was going on at
Sol One? "I wasn't under the impression that was seriously at issue."
"You don't
understand me. Those companies don't want the blame. They're perfectly willing
to put the accident off on the service. To call it mishandling—"
Oh-ho.
"A control
redesign, existing technology—that,
they'll go for. As long as it's our design change, out of our budget. You
listen to me. This is critical. We've got some Peace-nows kicking up a fuss—they want to grab that appropriation
for their own programs. They're talking negotiation with Union. Partition of
the trade zones. They've got some tame social scientists down in Bonn and
Moscow talking isolation again."
They'd talked it off
and on for two hundred years. But Union was very interested in Earth's biology.
Very interested.
"They won't get
it."
"They can dither
this program into another five-year redesign with political deals. The Earth
Company can end up deadlocked with the UN. We need the AI on top to let us get
some successes with this ship—make
it do-able, so we can go public as soon as possible. The thing can have another
model, for God's sake, build the old design and lose ships to your heart's
content, after we've got the first thirty out of the shipyards and trained
pilots who know its characteristics. Prove your point and have your funerals,
it'll be out of our hands, but let's get this ship online."
"The effect will
be training your pilots to pull it short—to
worry when they're taking a necessary chance. Combat pilots can't have that
mindset; and you can't train with that thing breathing down your neck."
"You're not a
psychiatrist, lieutenant."
"I'm not an
engineer, either, but I know the AI you've got won't accommodate it, you're
talking about a very complicated software, a bigger black box, and that panel's
already crowding armscomp, besides the psychological factors—"
HELLDURNER
67
"Cut one seat.
One fewer tech. The tetralogic's worth it."
"That's ten
fewer objects longscan can track, and that's one damned more contractor with an
unproved software and another unproved interface to train to."
"That's nothing
getting tracked if the ship doesn't get built, lieutenant, come down to the
point. You're not going to get everything you want."
"If you want to
cut a deal, you need to talk to the captain, I'm under his orders."
"What are his
orders?"
"To keep that
ship as is."
"Or lose it? You
listen to me. You don't have to agree. Just don't raise objections."
"Talk to my
captain. I can't change his orders."
Tanzer was red in the
face. Keeping his voice very quiet. "We can't reach your captain."
"Why?"
"We don't know
why. We think he's in committee meetings."
"Go to Mazian's
office, colonel, I can't authorize a thing."
"We've been
trying to reach him, lieutenant, and we've got your whole damned program about
to destruct on us, out there—you'd
better believe you're in a hot spot, and I wouldn't take you into confidence,
you or your recruits, but we can't afford another shouting match for the
committee. We're trying to save this program, we're not arguing the value of
human hands-on at the controls: you know and I know there's no way Union's
tape-trained clones are any match for real human beings—"
"They're not
that easy a mark. Azi still aren't an AI with an interdict."
"They'll crack.
They'll crack the same as anybody else. Their program's going to have the same
limitations."
"They won't
crack, colonel, they're completely dedicated
86
CJ CHEMYH
HELLBURNER • 89
to what they're
doing, that's what they're created for, for God's sake—"
"You listen to
me, lieutenant. I was in charge of the program that put your Victoria out there
and I don't need to be told by any wet-behind-the-ears what a human pilot is
worth, but, dammit! you automate when you have to. You don't hold on to an idea
til it kills you—which this is going
to do if you screw up in there. You can lose the whole damned war in that
hearing room, does that get through to you?"
"Colonel, in all
respect to your experience—"
"You go on
listening. Yes, we had to have a show, yes, I subbed Wilhelmsen. Your boy
Dekker's got problems. Serious problems." Tanzer pulled a datacard from
his breast pocket.
"What's
that?"
"A copy of
Dekker's personnel file. It's damned interesting reading."
Damn, he thought. And
hoped he kept anxiety off his face. It couldn't be Reel records—unless mere was a two-legged leak in
the records system.
"Reckless
proceeding and wrongful death." Tanzer pocketed the card again. "You
want the reason I subbed him? There's a grieving mother out there that's been
trying to get justice out of that boy of yours. Rape and murder—"
"Neither of
which is true."
"I had, if you
want to know, lieutenant, specific orders to pull Dekker off that demo, because
Dekker's legal troubles were going to surface again the minute his name hit the
downworld media—and it would
have."
"On a classified
test. He lost a partner out in the Belt. The incident isn't a secret in the
Company. Far from it. Don't tell me you didn't know that, if you've got that
record."
"The name was
going to surface, take my word for it. He's politically hot, too damned hot to
represent this program—
that's why I pulled him from that demo, lieutenant, and you
had to ignore my
warning. Stick to issues you're prepared to answer and leave Dekker the hell
out of mis. Cory Salazar. Does the name mean anything to you?"
"ASTEX politics
murdered Salazar."
"Tell that to
the mother. Tell that to the mama of the underage kid Dekker seduced out
there."
"That wasn't the
way it happened, colonel."
"You want to
tell Salazar's mother that, —lieutenant?
You want to tell that to a woman who's on the MarsCorp board? I couldn't put
him in front of the media. I had to pull him off that team. You understand me?
I'm trusting you
• right now, lieutenant, with a critical
confidence, because, dammit, you've raised the issue in there and you'd better
have the good sense to back off mat point, waffle your way out of it and come
into line if you want to keep your boy , inside these walls. If he gets to be a
media issue, he's dead. You understand that?"
"I understand
Wilhelmsen died, I understand a whole ciew died for a damned politicking
decision—"
"You mink I
don't care, Lieutenant? Your boy Dekker's got a political problem and a mouth.
And we've got a ship mat kills crews and somebody's mother breathing down our
necks, wanting your boy's head on a platter. You hear me? I didn't screw
Dekker. Your captain put him in that position, I didn't. Damned right I pulled
him from what was scheduled to go public, and damned right I shut him up before
he got '• to the VIPs we had
onstation."
"By shoving him
into a pod unconscious?" "No, damn you. I didn't."
Not lying, if he
could rely on anything Tanzer said. Which he was far from sure of. "You
told him why you ^pulled him?"
"Trust that
mouth? No. And don't you. Hear me? He got 7 fato that pod on his own. Leave it at that. Attempted
-|" suicide. Who
knows? I won't contest mat finding. But you ;*htit it down with that. I know
he's popular with your emits. I know you've got a problem. But let's use our
90
CJ CHEWYH
HELLBUKNEP. • 91
heads on this and you
quieten matters down and get off that issue."
Damn and damn. Call
the captain, was what he needed to do. But they weren't sure the UDC wasn't
eavesdropping. And if Keu was currently caught up in committee at Sol—
Ask Tanzer if
FleetCom was secure? Hell if.
"We'd better get
in there," Tanzer said and opened the door and walked out.
Son of a bitch, Graff
thought, what do I do? Demas is on board, Saito's on her way up there....
He walked out, shut
the door. Tanzer was down at the corner of the hall with Bonner, the two of
them talking. He looked at his watch. One minute from late, the committee was
about to convene. He could no-show, he could send Bonner word he was going to
be late.
They could say any
damned thing without hindrance then, finish the meeting without him in the time
it would take to get FleetCom, let alone confer with the captain.
He'd faced fire with
steadier nerves. He'd made jumpspeed decisions easier with a ship at stake.
There was no assurance Tanzer had told him the truth, or even half of it. There
was no assurance they had ever tried to get Keu, or Mazian, mere was no assurance
it was anything but a maneuver to silence him and ram something through, and
there was not even absolute assurance they'd told the truth about political
influence stalking Dekker, but if it was, God, somebody had found a damned
sensitive button to push. If the Fleet didn't back Dekker, if the Fleet let
Dekker take a grenade—the
likes of Mitch and Jamil wouldn't stand still for it, there'd be bloodshed, no
exaggeration at all, the Belters would take the UDC facilities apart first and
work their way over to Fleet HQ. Betray them—and there was no trusting them, no
relying on them, no guarantee the metal and the materials were going to go on
arriving out of the Belt, and damned sure no crews to handle the ships.
Now he didn't know
what Bonner was going to do in that hearing room. Or Tanzer. And he wasn't in a
position to
object—he felt he was heading into a trap,
going in there at all, but he followed them in and sat down in a decimated
;ring.
Not a friendly face
in the room. Not a one.
Bonner called the
session to order, Bonner talked about high feelings over the tragic accident,
Bonner talked about the stress of a job that called on men to risk their lives,
talked about God and country.
Blue-sky language.
Blue-sky thinking. Up to an Earther didn't refer to phase fields, war was two
districts on a plane surface in a dispute over territory, and the United
Nations was a faction-ridden single-star-system organization trying to tell
merchanter Families what their borders were: explain borders to them, first.
You had to see a
planet through optics and think flat surface to imagine how ground looked. He
hadn't laid eyes on a planet til he was half-grown. He never had figured out
the emotional context, except to compare it to ship or station, but there was
something about being fixed hi place next to permanent neighbors that sounded
desperately unnatural. Which he supposed was prejudice on his side. Bonner
talked about a righteous war. And he thought about ports and ships run by
Cyteen's tape-trained humanity, with mindsets more alien than Earth's.
Bonner talked about
human stress and interactive systems, while he thought about the Cluster off
Cyteen, where startides warped space, and a ghosty malfunction on the boards
you hoped to God was an artifact of that space, while a Union spotter was close
to picking up your presence.
Bonner got Helmond
Weiss on the mike to read the medical report. Telemetry again. More thorough
than the post-mortem on the ship. Less printout. Four human beings hadn't
output as much in their last minutes as that struggling AI had. Depressing
thought.
Then the psych lads
took the mike. "Were Wilhelmsen's last decisions rational?" the
committee asked point-blank. And the psychs said, hauling up more charts and
graphs,
92 • CJ CHERRYH
"Increasing
indecision," and talked about hyped senses, maintained that Wilhelmsen had
gone on hyperfocus overload and lost track of actual time-flow—
... making decisions
at such speed in such duration, it was pure misapprehension of the rate at
which tilings were happening. No, you couldn't characterize it as panic....
"... evidence of
physiological distress, shortness of breath, increase in REM and pulse rate
activated a medical crisis warning with the AI—"
"The carrier's
AI didn't have time to reach the rider?" a senator asked.
"And get the
override query engaged and answered, no, there wasn't time."
Playback of the final
moments on the tape. The co-pilot, Pete Fowler, the last words on the tape
Fowler's, saying, "Hold it, hold it~"
That overlay the
whole reorientation and firing incident, at those speeds. The panel had trouble
grasping that. They spent five minutes arguing it, and maybe, Graff thought,
still didn't realize the sequence of events, or that it was Fowler protesting
the original reorientation.
You didn't have time
to talk. Couldn't get a word out in some sequences, and not this one. Fowler
shouldn't have spoken. Part of it was his fault. Shouldn't have spoken to a
strange pilot, who didn't know his contexts, who very well knew they didn't
altogether trust him.
The mike went to
Tanzer. A few final questions, the committee said. And a senator asked the
question:
"What was the
name of the original pilot?"
"Dekker. Paul
Dekker. TVainee."
"What was the
reason for removing him from the mission?"
"Seniority. He
was showing a little stress. Wilhelmsen was the more experienced."
Like hell.
"And the
crew?"
"Senator, a crew
should be capable of working with any officer. It was capable. There were no
medical grounds
HELLBURNER
93
there. The flaw is in
the subordination of the neural net interface. It should be constant override
with concurrent input from the pilot. The craft's small cross-section, its
minimum profile, the enormous power it has to carry in its engines to achieve docking
at highest v—all add up to
sensitive controls and a very powerful response...."
More minutiae. Keep
my mouth shut or not? Graff asked himself. Trust Tanzer? Or follow orders?
Another senator:
"Did the sims run the same duration as the actual mission?"
Not lately, Graff
thought darkly, while Tanzer said, blithely, "Yes."
Then a senator said:
"May I interject a question to Lt. Graff."
Bonner didn't like
that. Bonner frowned, and said, "Lt. Graff, I remind you you're still
under oath."
"Yes, sir."
The senator said,
"Lt. Graff. You were at the controls of the carrier at the time of the
accident. You were getting telemetry from the rider."
"Yes, sir."
"The medical
officer on your bridge was recorded as saying Query out."
"That's
correct."
"What does that
mean?"
"It means she'd
just asked the co-pilot to assess the pilot* s»condition and act. But the accident was
already inevitable. Just not enough time."
Blinks from the
senator, attempt to think through the math, maybe. "Was the carrier too far
back for safety?"
"It was in a
correct position for operations. No, sir."
"Was the target
interval set too close? Was it an impossible shot?"
"No. It was a
judgment shot. The armscomper doesn't
physically fire all
the ordnance, understand. He sets the
priorities at the
start of the run and adjusts them as the
.;-, situation changes. A computer does the
firing, with the pilot
94 • CJ CHERRYH
following the
sequence provided by his co-pilot and the longscanner and armseomper. Hie pilot
can violate the aimscomper's priorities. He might have to. There are unplotteds
out there, rocks, for instance. Or mines."
"Did Wilhelmsen
violate the priorities?"
"Technically,
yes. But he had that choice."
"Choice. At
those speeds."
"Yes, sir. He
was in control until that point. He knew it was wrong, he glitched, and he was
out. Cold."
"Are you a
psychiatrist, lieutenant?"
"No, sir, but I
suggest you ask the medical officer. There was no panic until he heard his
crew's alarm. That spooked him. Their telemetry reads alarm—first, sir. His move startled them and
he dropped out of hype."
"The lieutenant
is speculating," Bonnersaid. "Lt. Graff, kindly keep to observed
fact."
"As a pilot,
sir, I observed these plain facts in the medical testimony."
"You're out of
order, lieutenant."
"One more
question," the senator said. "You're saying, lieutenant, that the
tetralogic has faults. Would it have made this mistake?"
"No, but it has
other flaws."
"Specifically?"
"Even a
tetralogic is recognizable, to similar systems. Machine can counter machine.
Human beings can make decisions these systems don't expect. Longscan works
entirely on that principle."
"Are you a
computer tech?"
"I know the
systems. I personally would not go into combat with a computer totally in
charge."
The senator leaned
back, frowning. "Thank you, lieutenant."
"May I make an
observation?" Tanzer asked, and got an indulgence and a nod from Bonner.
Tanzer said:
"Let me say this is an example of the kind of mystical nonsense I've heard
^all too much of from this
H ELLDURN ER
service. Whatever
your religious preferences, divine intervention didn't happen here, Wilhelmsen
didn't stay conscious long enough to apply the human advantage. Human beings
can't defy physics; and the lieutenant sitting behind bis carrier's effect
shields can maintain mat spacers are somehow evolved beyond earthly limitations
and make their decisions by mysterious instincts that let them outperform a
tetralogic, but in my studied and not unexpert opinion, mere's been altogether
too much emphasis in recruitment based on entry-level skills and certain kinds
of experience— meaning a practical
exclusion of anyone but Belters. The lieutenant talks about some mysterious
unquantifiable mentality that can work at these velocities. But I'd like to
say, and Dr. Weiss will back me on this, that there's more than button-pushing
ability and reflexes that make a reliable military. There is, very importantly,
attitude. There's been no background check into volunteers on this project..."
Dammit, he's going to
do it—
"...in spite of
the well-known unrest and the recent violence in the Belt. We have a service
completely outside the authority of the UDC trying to exclude the majority of
Sol System natives from holding a post on weapons platforms of enormous
destructive potential, insisting we take their word—" Tanzer's knuckles rapped the
table. "—mat the policies and
decisions of the UN, the world governments, and even Company policy will be
respected and observed outside this system. It's imperative that these ships
not remain under the control of a cadre selected by one man's opinion of their
fitness for command, a man not in any way native to Earth or educated to
Earth's values. The Fleet is pushing qualifications arbitrarily selected to
exclude our own military in command positions, for what motive leaves me
entirely uneasy, sirs."
Some things a man
couldn't hear and keep his mouth shut. "General," Graff said.
"I'd like to make my own statement in answer to that."
"This isn't a
court of law, lieutenant. But you'll have
96
CJ CH0WH
H EL L D URN ER
97
your say. In die
meantime, the colonel has his. —Go
on, colonel."
Graff let go a breath
and thought, I could walk out, now. But to what good? To what living good? I'm
in it. The Captains can disavow what I say. They can still do that. But Tanzer
wanted to cut a deal. Tanzer wanted me to agree on the redesign and what good
is my agreement to them, what could it possibly influence if this committee's
already in their pocket?
Tanzer said,
"There are two reasons why I favor a tetralogic system. This ship is too
important and too hazardous to civilian targets to turn over to personnel in
whose selection our values have never been a criterion. I've been asked
privately the reason for the substitution—"
My God, here it goes.
"In the recess
I've also been asked the reason for the morale difficulties in this old and
time-tried institution. Gentlemen, it lies in the assumption that these
machines are flyable only by super-humans personally selected by Conrad Mazian
and his hand-picked officers. Earth is being sold a complete bill of goods.
Conrad Mazian wants absolute control of an armada Earth is sacrificing
considerably to build. What's the difference—control of the human race by a remote
group of dissidents—or
by a merchanter cartel with a powerful lobby in the halls of the Earth Company
administration? These ships and the carriers should be under UDC command and
responsible to the citizens of the governments that fund them, not to a
self-appointed committee of merchantmen with their own interests and their own
priorities."
Bang went the gavel.
The growing murmur from the committee and the aides and witnesses ebbed down,
and Tanzer went on:
"You've seen an
unfortunate incident in this hearing room, resultant from what the Fleet calls
discipline, beginning with the concept of command by committee and ending with
the uniform variances that permit Belter enlistees to
dress and act like
miners on holiday. The carrier that is allegedly on operational alert at this
moment for the protection of Earth itself doesn't even have its senior pilot at
this facility, while Captain Keu is on an indefinite leave to Sol One. Junior
lieutenant Graff insists he's qualified in an emergency—but his heads of station outrank him, a
prime example of merchanter command order, and if he says decisions have to
come at light speed, and he can't have an AI breathing down his neck, what does
he say about a committee of senior officers calling the shots for him on the
flight deck?"
He stood up. "I
object, general."
"Sit down,
lieutenant." The gavel banged. "Before I find you in contempt of this
committee and have you arrested."
He sat. He was no
good in the brig. The captain and the Number Ones needed to hear the rest of it.
Accurately.
Tanzer said: "We
need a disciplined system that can let us substitute a pilot, a tech, a scan
operator, anybody in any crew, because this isn't the merchant trade we're
running, ladies and gentlemen, it's war, in which there are bound to be
casualties, and no single man is indispensable. There has to be a chain of
command responsible to legitimate policies of the Defense Department, and in
which there is absolutely no leeway for personalities too talented and too
important to follow orders and do their job."
He couldn't stay
quiet. "You mean downgrade the ship until cargo pushers can fly it!"
Bang went the gavel.
"Lieutenant!"
Echoes in the core.
High up in the mast sounds came faint as ghosts; not like R2 where half-refined
ore shot through zero-cold, and thundered and rumbled like doom against the
chamber walls. In this vast chamber sims whirled around the chamber on mag-levs
and came like tame, dreadful flowers to the platforms, giving up or taking in
their human cargoes—
96
CJ CHEIWH
You carded in before
you launched. The pod's Adaptive Assists recognized you, input your values, and
you input your tape for the sim you were running. You fastened (he one belt
that locked the others. But something was wrong. The pod started to move and he
couldn't remember carding in, couldn't think through the mounting pain in his
head and the force pinning him to the seat—
"Cory!" he
yelled. Tried to yell. "Cory, hold on!"
But he couldn't reach
the Abort. Couldn't see it, couldn't reach it, and the damn sim thought the
belts were locked. "Mayday," he called over com, but it didn't
answer. Someone had said he'd earned it. Maybe Ben. Ben would have. But he
didn't think Ben would have done this to him...
"You're a damn
screw-up!" someone yelled at him. "You screwed up my whole damn life,
you son of a bitch! What'd I ever do to deserve you?"
Sounded like his
mother. But his mother never grabbed him by the collar and hit him. That was
Ben. Ben was the way out and he tried to listen to Ben, it was the only chart
he had that made any sense now...
Ben said, "What
day is it, damn you?" And he honestly tried to remember. Ben had told him
he had to remember.
"I object
vehemently," Graff said, calmly as he could, "to the colonel's
characterization of myself, my captain, my crew and my service. I challenge the
colonel's qualifications to manage this program, when he has had no deepspace
experience, no flight time at those speeds, no experience of system transit at
those speeds; and neither have any of the medics who've testified. This—" He clicked a datacard onto die
table, and remembered with a cold chill the one Tanzer was carrying. "This
is my personal medical record. I call that in evidence, on reaction times and
general qualifications.' *
The gavel came down.
"I'll thank you to reserve the theatrics, lieutenant. This committee is
not impressed. You've
HELLBURNER
asked to make a
statement. Make it. I remind you you're under oath."
"Yes, general. I
call the general's attention to the fact that he did not so admonish the
colonel. Can we assume it was an oversight?"
He expected the
gavel. Instead Bonner leaned forward and said very quietly, "The colonel
knows he's under oath. Make your statement."
"It's very
brief. The colonel ordered me not to tell the truth to this committee."
There was a moment of
silence. Bonner hadn't expected that shot. He should have. Bonner said, then,
"Are you through, lieutenant?"
"No, sir."
He thought of Dekker. And the bloodied sim-pod. And wondered if he would see
another day in this place. "I intend to answer the committee's questions.
If it has any."
A long silence,
subjective time. Then a senator asked, "You think you could have flown the
rider?"
"If I were
trained to do that, yes, ma'am."
"You couldn't,
say, step from the carrier into the ridership. Given the familiarity with the
interfaces."
"I've had years
of training for the mass and the characteristics of a large ship.
Cross-training could confuse me. Jump makes you quite muzzy. You're riding your
gut reactions quite heavily in those first moments of entry. Certainly so in
combat."
Another "You
think a training program can produce that kind of skill, here, in a matter of
months."
"No, sir. Not
without background experience, I don't. That's why the Fleet didn't recruit from
the local military. Test pilots like Wilhelmsen—he could have done it. I've no wish to
downplay his ability. He was good. We'd have taken him in a moment if the UDC
had wanted to release him. Or if he had wanted to go."
"Are you doing
the recruiting, now?" Bonner asked. "Or speaking for Captain
Mazian?"
100
CJ CHEIWH
HEILBURNEK
101
"I'm agreeing
with the colonel, sir, based on ray knowledge of Wilhelmsen's ability. But that
ability can't be trained in the time we need; we need prior experience. We
particularly need crews that can feel insystem space. The Shepherds and the
miners and insystem haulers aren't trainees as the term implies; and they're
not eighteen-year-old recruits who think a mass proximity situation is an exam
problem."
"What is a mass
proximity situation, lieutenant?"
God.
"A collision
alert, sir." It was the least vivid description that leapt to his mind. He
had no wish to offend the senator. The senator laughed, like a good politician,
and leaned back.
Another asked,
"Lieutenant?"
"Yes, sir."
"To what
government do you hold loyalty?"
A handful of days ago
he would have said something about historical ties, a center for the human
species. But he didn't want to get into abstracts. Or create any apprehension
of an outsider viewpoint. He looked the senator in the eyes and said quietly,
"To Earth, sir."
But the answer
appeared to take the man aback; and it struck him then for the first time that
he was looking at Earth, at this table: a row of incomprehensible special
interests. None of them could see Earth from the outside— the techs from subsidiaries of the
Earth Company; the senators from the Pan-Asian Union and Europe. Bonner, from
the Western Hemisphere. (Who first defined east and west? he wondered,
hyperfocusing, momentarily as bereft of referents as they were, taking in
everything. Politics of dividing oceans? And why not north and south—except the ice?)
The same senator
asked, "And these recruits from the Belt? To whom are they loyal?"
Touchy question. A
good many Belters were political exiles from Earth. He said, "I'm sure
they'd tell you,
individually,
whatever their concept is. The human race, certainly. The one that nature
evolved on this planet, not UK one from labs on Cyteen."
"Loyalty to
themselves, would you say?"
He quoted Bonner.
"Isn't mat the issue of the war, senator? Freedom of conscience?"
Silence from Bonner.
Deathly silence.
"If this design
goes AI," Graff continued quickly, wishing for Saito's eloquence, "so
the enemy can predict it; or if some legislative compromise replaces our
command with officers who don't know jumpspace tactics—we'll die, ship by ship. Then let the
UDC hold the line with no carriers, no deepspace crews. Lose us and you won't
have the merchanters. You won't have the far space stations. We're the ones
that have risked everything carrying out your orders, trying to hold the human
race together. What's on Cyteen isn't like us."
Bonner said,
"Lieutenant, tell me, what do you care if Earth ceases to exist?"
He said, halfway into
it before he remembered whose quote it was, " *If Earth didn't exist, we'd
have to create one.' "
Emory of Cyteen had
said, a now-famous remark: "We all need to be from somewhere. We need a
context for the genome. Lose that and we lose all common reference as a
species."
But the committee
didn't seem to recognize the source. Likely they couldn't recall the name of
Cyteen's Councillor of Science—or
conceive of the immense arrogance in that statement. Cyteen was terraforming,
hand over fist. Ripping a world apart. Killing a native ecology, replacing it—and humanity—with its own chosen design. He'd seen
the classified reports. And he wasn't sure Bonner had. Mazian was taking those
records to the highest levels of die Company and the UN.
A senator said,
"We're here to discuss technology. The fitness of a machine."
102
CJ CHEfWH
H ELLDURNER
103
"The fitness of
the men who fly it," Bonner said, "is also at issue."
The pod reoriented.
Flesh met plastics. Dekker tried to defend himself, but something grabbed his
collar, held him. Someone shook him, and said, "Straighten up, you damned
fool, or I'll hit you again."
"Trying
to," he told Ben's hazy image, and tasted blood in his mouth.
"Why in
hell?" Ben asked him. "Why in helTd you have to ask for me?"
"Dunno, dunno,
Ben." Blood tasted awful. He tried to get his breath and Ben shoved him
back against the pillows. Ben looked like hell.
Ben still had his
fist wrapped in his collar. Ben gave him another shove. "I can't blame
whoever shoved you in that simulator. You're a pain in the ass, you know that?
You're a damned recurring pain in the ass!"
"Yeah," he
said. He didn't want his lips to tremble, but they did, and tears stung his
eyes. A long, long time he'd been alone. There'd been others, but they'd died,
and Ben hadn't, Ben wouldn't, Ben was too hard to catch and Ben wouldn't get
himself killed for anybody. He trusted Ben that way. Ben was too slippery for
the sons of bitches.
Someone shadowed the
doorway.
"Need to check
his blood pressure, sir."
Somebody had said
something about Have a nice trip. Someone who'd told him go to hell....
He caught at the bed.
Caught at Ben's arm as Ben started to get up and turn him over to the nurse.
"No."
"Your blood
pressure's getting up, Mr. Dekker."
"Screw it. —Ben, —"
"Lieutenant."
He swung his legs off
the bed, made a try at getting up and the room went upside down. The nurse made
a grab after him, he saw the blue uniform, and he elbowed it aside. He caught
himself with a grip on the edge of the bed.
But Ben was gone. Ben
had left him, and the nurse got a hand on his shoulder and his arm. "Just
lie down, Mr. Dekker. Lie down. How'd he get in here, anyway? Visitors aren't
supposed to be in here."
He didn't know
either. But a lot of things happened here mat shouldn't. And he hadn't been
dreaming. Ben had been there. He had a cut inside his lip and a coppery taste
in his mouth that proved it, no matter what the nurse said about visitors. He
lay down and ran his tongue over that sore spot, thinking, through the shot and
everything, Ben's here, Ben's here... and knowing it was Sol Two where Ben had
found him: Ben hated him; but Ben had got here, Ben talked sense to him and
didn't confuse him. Even if Ben wanted to beat bell out of him. He liked that
about Ben—that for all ; Ben
wanted to go on beating hell out of him, Ben hadn't. Ben had held on to him.
Ben had shaken him and told him where rightside up was and told him to get
there. Only advice he'd trusted in days. Only voice he'd wanted to come back
to, since—
—since his crew died.
Died in a fireball he wasn't in. Couldn't have been in, since he wasn't vapor.
Somebody'd said,
later, Enjoy the ride, Dekker.
He couldn't remember
who. Someone he'd known. But the voice had no color in his mind. No sound. And
he couldn't recover it.
They said, shadows
leaning over him, "Need to keep that blood pressure down, Mr.
Dekker," and he said: "Screw all of you, I don't need your
help," and kept his eyes shut.
Whine of mag-Ievs.
You got that through the walls. There was light out there, but it didn't
diffuse, despite the distances across the huge sim chamber, where a solitary
pod was working. There was a safety stand-down in effect. Lendler Corp techs
were doing an inspection on this shift, remoting the pod from the number two
access. You could see the light on, far across the chamber.
Easy ways to get hurt
out there. Pods pulled a lot of g's,
104
CJ CHERRYH
positive and
negative. Graff touched the cold plastics of the dead panel, drifting in the
zero g, antagonizing an already upset stomach, and watched the pod, figuring
how hard a body could hit, repeatedly, dunng that gyrating course. Dekker was
strong for his slight frame. Only thing that had saved him. God only knew how
conscious he'd been, but enough he'd protected his head somehow. And his neck
and his back and the rest of his bones. The meds who hadn't seen the inside of
the pod had said the belts must have come loose. But the belts had been locked
together under Dekker, deliberately to fool the safety interlocks, by somebody who
hadn't left prints—unless it was the
last man to use the pod, and that was Jamil, who hadn't a motive that he knew.
Belts locked underneath Dekker—otherwise
the pod wouldn't have moved. The MP's report had said, Suicide is not ruled
out.
Suicide, to have a
MarsCorp councillor on your case?
Suicide, to call
Tanzcr a bastard?
Don't let it get to
you, Saito had said, when he'd called the carrier to tell them the hearing was
over. Midge had hand-carried his report to the ship and a long transmission had
gone out to the captain by now. Tanzer was going to rebound off the walls
tomorrow.
But the report was at
Sol One by now. So far as what he dared send the captain, the most urgent
matter was one name, of everything related to the accident: Salazar. The rest
was in Dekker's file. Beyond that, Keu needed to know how Bonner and Tanzer had
run the hearing; needed to know how his Helm Two had answered the questions,
right or wrong.
Helm Two had
underestimated Tanzer, that was the fact, Tanzer had thrown him a last-minute
set of choices in which his refusal to go against Keu's orders, and a lone
lieutenant's blind run through a mine-field, Tanzer had said it, might just
have lost the program tonight, lost the war for the whole human race,
literally, right in that hearing room this evening—if somebody wiser and better at
politics couldn't
HELLDUIXNER
105
somehow take the
pieces and put them together with more skill than he had mustered in front of
that committee.
He was tired, God, he
was tired, and he had had no business coming here. He wasn't doing entirely
rational things now, he'd sent word with Midge where he was going and put com
on alert, but he hadn't come to the Number Ones for aid and comfort and he was
refusing to, knowing nothing they could tell him was of any use, since they
didn't know any more than he did what was going on. He'd made some critical
judgments left and right of the course he'd hoped to hold in the hearing and in
his dealings with Tanzer, and he was avoiding their input til he'd mapped out
the sequence and sense of those judgment calls, mat was what he suddenly
realized was pushing his buttons right now—he
wanted to know the answers; and if he could shove Bonner and Tanzer into a move
of some kind, even an assassination attempt, he'd know, all right; he'd have
proof: more than mat, the senators might have it, before they left here at
maindawn: Explain that one, cover another attempted murder, Bonner, while the
committee's still on station...
Otherwise, if Tanzer
was only tracking him and more innocent than he judged, let Tanzer sweat what
he was up to—looking for clues,
maybe, trying to find something to prove Dekker's case, something politically
explosive. Legal troubles in Dekker's past—it
was all backgrounded, solved, just one of the connections Dekker had had and
left when he left the Belt. He didn't go off Sol Two, he took no leaves, but
there had been no particular reason for Dekker's name to rouse any anxieties in
Defense—certainly no reason
to fear him getting to the media. Dekker was allergic to cameras and
microphones, Dekker certainly didn't want publicity bringing his name up again,
any more than Defense did; and evidently there'd been a decision to take
Hellburner public if the test succeeded. So someone high in the Defense Department
had said pull him.
That being the case—the line certainly led to Salazar; and
Salazar lived behind the EC security wall, the same EC that
106
CJ CHEFWH
they were fighting
for. That was a worry, and a real one, if the woman had penetrated security
channels and found out what Dekker was working on, and where he was.
There was—top of the list regarding Dekker's
injuries— Wilhelmsen's crew.
Dekker hadn't been tactful. Dekker was, Pollard had said it, volatile. There
was a lot of that in the crews they'd recruited—including the UDC test pilots. You
could begin to wonder was it a pathology or a necessary qualification for this
ship—or was it the result
of ramming crews together in a handful of years, the few with the reflexes, the
mental quickness—the top of the
above-average in reaction time, who didn't, even on a family ship, necessarily
understand slower processers, or understand that such slower minds vastly
outnumbered them in the population? He'd told Tanzer, You can't train what we
need ... he hoped he'd gotten that across at least to one of the committee, but
there was no knowing—he'd
never excelled, himself, at figuring people: he'd certainly failed to realize
how very savvy Tanzer could be in an argument.
He had his pocket
com. The captain might send him word at any hour, please God, and give him
specific instructions, either for a bare-ass space walk or a steady-on as he
was bearing and he'd rather either right now than chasing might-have-beens in
circles. After a jump you got a solid Yes, you'd survived it. But right now he
could wonder whether the FSO was still operating on Sol One, or whether
something might have gone wrong at levels so high the shockwave had yet to hit
Sol Two. For all he knew the committee had been the shockwave of a UDC power
grab and he'd just self-destructed in it.
Or why else hadn't
they heard anything? Or why, according to the news that he had heard before
he'd left the office, was Mazian still smiling his way from council to council
in the European Union, and making no comment about the accident, except that a
'routine missile test' had had a problem.
The pod flashed by,
unexpectedly, filling the viewport.
HEILBUKNER
•107
His heart jumped. He
watched the pod whip across the far side and felt queasy after the visual
shock. Dekker's pod had been running on the mission tape. Dekker had seen the
accident. They'd treated him for shock, he'd gotten out of hospital and turned
up here, at shift-change, in a pod repeating the exact accident set-up. On
loop. Was there anything in that, but vindictiveness?
Higgins said only
that Dekker had lucid moments. No recollection, most times no awareness even
where he was. Cory Salazar had died out in the Belt. Dekker was back in that
crack-up. Over and over and over.
Check-in records had
listed no UDC personnel as in the area. The mission sims tape was checked out
to Dekker—as mission commander,
he'd had one in his possession. Dekker had been in hospital. One would have
expected that that tape had been with his effects. Security should have
collected it, with the tapes in all crews' possession, living and dead. But
Library hadn't checked Dekker's in: Dekker was alive, and unable to respond to
requests for the tape, Security said, they'd decided not to seek an order to
get it from his effects—which
would have had the Provost Marshal's staff going into Dekker's locker while
Dekker was alive, a violation of policy in the absence of charges.
A hatch door crashed
and echoed at the distant end of the access tube. The lift had just let someone
in. The Lendler Corp techs, maybe, moving up to this bay. But the light was
still on over there. And the pod was still running, the mag-levs whiting out
anything but the loudest sounds.
Damn, he thought,
Tanzer might be a fool after all. He might have his answer, all right: and if
he and his didn't make the right moves now, he might become the answer. He'd
gotten colder, standing here, and he had a sudden weak-kneed wish to be wrong
about Tanzer—he hadn't thought
through what he'd done in the hearing yet, he wasn't ready or willing to make
gut-level choices in a physical confrontation. He closed his fist around the
bolt in his pocket—he'd collected that
from the desk; he drifted
108
CJ CHEIWH
free and took out the
pocket com he'd collected too. "D-g, this is 7-A11, sim bay 2. QE, C-2-6,
copy?"
"7-All, this is
Snowball, C-2-6, on it, that's 03 to you, dammit, seat that door!''
Saito was on com.
Saito must be lurking over Dan Washington's shoulder and the pocket com was
wide open now and logging to files on the carrier. Saito wasn't as accepting of
harebrained excursions as Dan was, Saito must have gotten uneasy, and, onto
Helm Two's side excursion, was probably calling Demas in, besides having
Security closer than he'd set them. But they would or wouldn't come in,
depending on what Saito heard. Meanwhile he watched the hand-line quiver along
the side of the lighted tube. Someone was on it, now, below the curve of the
tube. Several someones, by the feel as he touched it.
First figure showed
in the serpentine of lights, monkeying along the line. Not UDC. Their own.
Flash of jewelry, light behind blond hair.
Friendly fire
incoming, then. Not UDC: Mitch. He drew a breath, focused down off the
adrenaline rush toward a different kind of self-protection, said to the com,
"Snowball, easy on," before Security came in hard. More of them
behind Mitch: Jamil, Almarshad.. .Pauli. A delegation. The Shepherds didn't
have access to query over com. Saito was sure to give him hell; the Shepherds
had tracked him, never mind Tanzer's 'boys' might have—it wasn't a good time he was having
right now; and he hoped it wasn't a breaking problem that had brought them
here. He couldn't take another.
He held his position
as the Shepherds gathered in front of the open door, drifting hands-off on the
short tether of their safety-clips, in the frosty-breathed chill and the low
rhythmic hum of the mags. "Hear it was bloody," Mitch said.
"How did you
hear? What's security worth in this place?"
Jamil shrugged,
tugged at the line to maintain his orientation. "2-level bar. Aerospattale
guys with a few under their belts. Saying Bonner's pissed. Tanzer's pissed.
Bonner told
HELLBURNER
109
some female committee
member it wasn't really important she understand the technicals of the accident,
or the tetralogic, she should just recommend the system go AI."
"Damn," he
said, but Jamil was grinning.
"Happens Bonner
mixed up his women and his Asians. Turned out she's Aerospatiale's number two
engineer."
He had to be amused.
He grinned. And he knew that via his open com, Bonner's little faux pas was
flying through the carrier out there, for all it was worth. So the J-G wasn't
the only one who could talk his way into trouble.
But mat was one
engineer and one company, with no part of its contract at issue: Aerospatiale
was the engines, and they weren't in question.
The Belter trash, as
they called themselves, wanted to
know how it had gone.
Correction, they knew how it had
gone. He didn't know
how they'd found him, didn't know
what they expected
him to say. He hadn't delivered. Not
•really. They couldn't
think he had.
"What are you
guys doing here?"
They didn't know how
to answer, evidently: they didn't quite look him in the eye. But maybe he
halfway understood what was in their minds—a
feeling they'd been collectively screwed, the way the Belters would say. And
that together was better than separate right now.
"How did you
find me?"
Mitch said,
"Phoned Fleet Security. They knew."
CHAPTER
5
2-DECK 229 was a
tacky little hallway in a tacky little facility that met you with a
security-locked, plastic-protected bulletin board that said things like
NO ALCOHOL IN
QUARTERS and REMEMBER THE 24-HR
RESTRICTIONS, along
with SIM SCHEDUUE and LOST CARD,
DESPERATE, BILL
H. SMITH.
Humanitarian transfer,
hell. You couldn't shoot a Fleet officer. Wasn't legal. Couldn't even kill
Dekker, who didn't know what was going on, who just looked at you and said,
Yeah, Ben. All right, Ben. Like you could do anything you wanted to him, the
worse had already happened.
Bloody hell.
He found Barracks C.
He walked in, where a handful of guys with a vid-game looked up and got up and
stared at him, a solid wall of hostility.
"Lost?" one
of them asked.
"I'm fuckin*
assigned here," he muttered, and got dismay and frowns.
-110-
HELLBURNER
111
"No such,"
one said, Belter accent thick and surly. "UDC shave-head? You got the
wrong barracks, loo-tenant."
Fine. Great. He said,
in deep Belter brogue, "Not my pick, mate, they do the numbers."
Wasn't what they
expected out of a UDC mouth. Postures altered, faces did.
"You wouldn't be
Pollard, would you?"
He'd hoped to get his
assigned bunk, nothing more. But mere was no good making enemies here. He said,
grudgingly, "Yeah. Benjamin J.," and saw expressions go on changing
for the positive. Not the reaction he generally got from people.
"Pollard."
The head troublemaker came over. "Almarshad." A gesture to left and
right, behind him. "Franklin and Pauli. What's the word on Dekker?"
Dekker didn't attract
friends either, not among people who really knew him; and when a guy introduced
himself the way Almarshad did you should worry about bombs. He shook
Almarshad's offered hand, said, conservatively, "Not the best I've ever
seen him," and watched reactions. Looked like they were friends of
Dekker's. And it was true Dekker was a Cause in the Belt. A Name—among people who didn't know him. Not
with Shepherds, much as he knew, and that was what this set looked to be—but it could be Dekker had found a
niche in this classified hell.
Franklin asked,
"He say who hit
him?"
Or these guys could
be the committee that put Dekker in hospital, for all he knew.
He said, again
carefully, "Bounced on his head too often. I don't know. He doesn't. —Friends of his, are you?"
Almarshad seemed to
comprehend his reserve, then, frowned and said, "He's got no enemies in
this barracks. You keeping mat uniform?"
He hadn't many
allegiances in his life. But, hell, the UDC fed you, gave you everything you
could dream of, held out the promise of paradise, until Dekker helpfully
H2 • CJ CHE1WH
HELLOURNER
113
dropped your name in
the wrong classified ears—which
landed you up to your ears in an interservice feud; and now some
Shepberd-tumed-bluecoat wanted to make an issue of your uniform? Hell, yes, you
could take offense at being pushed. "Yeah, I'm keeping it. Far as I
know."
"Shit,"
Pauli said with a roll of his eyes, and turned half away and back again with an
outheld hand. "Tanzer give you your orders?"
"I don't know
who gave me my orders. Captain over FSO Keu got me out here. The Fleet got me
out here. Humanitarian leave. Now it's a fuckin' humanitarian transfer, I can't
find my fuckin' baggage, I can't find my fuckin' bunk, I got no damn choice,
here, mister! I'm supposed to be in Stockholm! I'd rather be in Stockholm,
which I won't now! —I'm
a security Priority 10, and they got me in here for reasons I don't know, with
a damn classified order I'm probably securitied high enough to read. But you
don't question orders here, I'm certainly finding mat out!"
A hand landed on his
shoulder. Almarshad. "Easy. Easy. Pauli means to say welcome in. Tanzer's
a problem, we know who you are, we know damn well you're not his boy."
"I don't fuckin*
know Tanzer!"
"Better
off," Franklin said under his breath. "Where've they got you? What
room?"
"We got
rooms." Thank God. "Said just—here."
"You're
Dekker's, then. A-10. Demi-suites. If you count four bunks and a
washroom."
Personally he didn't.
But he'd been prepared for worse in the short term. He said,
"Thanks," and took the pointed finger for his guide.
Hell if, he kept
saying to himself. Hell if I'm going to stay here. Hell if mis is going to be
the rest of my life, —Mr.
Graff, sir.
He'd flunked his
Aptitudes for anything remotely approaching combat, deliberately and
repeatedly: he couldn't pass basic without a waiver for unarmed combat on
account
of a way-high score
in technical; he'd worked hard to clean the Belter accent out of his speech and
to fit in with blue-skyers and here he was resurrecting it to deal with some
sumbitch Shepherd who'd have walked over him without noticing, back in R2. Get
into technical, get his security clearance—get
connections and numbers, the same as he'd had in R2, that was his priority. His
CO back in TI, Weiter—Weiter
had connections, Weiter had let him make his rating in very fast order, and
George Weiter had had the discriminating good sense to screw the regs, bust him
past tire basics and into levels where he could learn from where he was and get
at those essential, top-ievel access numbers.
No guns, damned sure,
nothing to do with guns. He'd made sure of mat.
And here he was
busted to a pilot trainee rating? It was crazed. It was absolutely insane. It
was going to get fixed. Get to Weiter—somehow.
Get to somebody up in HQ. In Stockholm. Fast.
He located A-10, at
the corner of the hall, opened the door—
And found his lost
luggage in the middle of the darkened room.
"Shit! Shit,
shit, shit!"
The shuttle was in
Servicing, the politicians, the engineers, the corporate execs and the general
were tanking up in Departures, and now reality came due. Now it was back to
dealing with Tanzer on a daily, post-hearing basis, and the Fleet's
independence notwithstanding, when the UDC CO sent a See Me at OSOOh, the Fleet
Acting Commander had to show up.
"He's expecting
you," the aide said. Graff said a terse Thank you, opened the door and
walked into the fire zone.
"Lt.
Graff," Tanzer said.
"Colonel,"
Graff said and stood there neither at ease nor Ift attention while Tanzer
stared at him.
114
CJ CHEIWH
Tanzer rocked his
chair back abruptly and said, "I expect cooperation."
"Yes,
colonel."
" 'Yes,
colonel,* what?"
"Whatever's good
for the program, colonel."
"And what do you
think that is, now, would you say?"
"Colonel, you
know my opinion."
The chair banged
level. "Damn your opinion! What are you trying to do to this
program?"
"Trying not to
lose a carrier, when its riders fail, I'll be in it. You won't, colonel."
"I won't, will
I? I'm on the line here, you sonuvabiteh."
"Not for the
same stakes, colonel, forgive me."
"You son of a
bitch."
After a sleep-short
night mat opening was extremely welcome. Tanzer was angry. Tanzer wasn't
satisfied with what had gone down. That could be good news—if it wasn't the demise of the program
Tanzer was foreseeing.
Tanzer said, with a
curl of his lip, "Two more of your recruits are in from the Belt, I'm sure
you'll be delighted with that. And Lendler Corp is recommending the Fleet
change its security regulations with the sim tapes. And who in hell transferred
Pollard into your command?"
"My
command?"
"Your command,
your captain's command, your navigator's command for all I know, who knows
who's in charge in your office? You have a UDC trainee in your program, Mr.
Graff, do you want to tell me just how that happened?"
He wasn't sure
whether Tanzer was in his right mind. Or what in hell was going on. He said,
"I don't know. I'll look into it."
"I'm already
looking into it, I'm looking into it all the way to TI and Geneva. What do you
say to thai, Mr. Graff?"
"I don't know
either, colonel. I'll find out."
Tanzer gave him a
cold, silent stare. Then: "You find out and you come tell me. It's one of
those things I like to keep
HELLBURNER
115
up with, who's where
on this station. Just a habit of mine. I think you can understand that.
Hearing's over. I'd like to clear the record, just get everything back in
appropriate boxes. I think you can understand that too, can't you,
lieutenant?"
The passenger shuttle
was going out, that was the maddening thing. But there was absolutely no
question of Ben Pollard getting to it: it was ferrying the brass out from the
hearing, the hearing was evidently over, Dekker hadn't remembered a thing he
could take to Graff and get out of here, so evidently that wasn't his ticket
out—and, dammit! he
wanted to talk to Graff, wanted to ask Graff to his face what kind of a
double-cross had caught him in this damned illicit transfer. But Graff had been
'unavailable' during the hearing, GrafTs aides had only cared to ask if he had
any report yet. Of course he'd had to say no; so Lt. Graff hadn't seen fit to
return his calls yesterday; Lt. Graff wasn't in his office this morning—
While the transfer
orders he'd gotten said, Outside contact specifically denied.
So what was Outside?
Sol One FSO? Sol One UDC? —GrafFs
office?
In a moment of wild
fantasy he thought of risking his clearance, his career and a term in the brig,
getting to the Departure lounge by hook or by crook, snagging some UDC officer
bound out of this station and protesting he'd been kidnapped: contact Weiter on
Sol One.
But there were
serious problems with that scenario. Abundant problems. Chief among which was
not knowing what he was dealing with, or what Dekker was involved in, or how
much of that hearing had involved Dekker specifically and how much had involved
a program in trouble.
He didn't unpack.
He'd just looked for a change of clothes—he'd
been washing clothes in hospice laundry every day, wrapped in a hospice towel
while they dried, thank God he'd had his shaving kit and two changes of shirts
and
116
CJ CHEIWH
underwear in his
carry, but, God, he was glad to get his light station boots and his pullover,
and find the textcards he'd packed—
And his personal
computer, which thank God hadn't been damaged. They'd searched his luggage.
They'd probably searched his computer files. Probably had to call in the
station techs to read his to-do list, which now wasn't going to get done, if he
couldn't get out of this. He entertained dark thoughts of finding a phone and
using a handful of codes, but he didn't want the output directed to any
terminal he owned. Or to his barracks. He figured all he'd better do with the
phone was find out what was in his file right now, which would happen the
minute he used his card.
All right. But we're
not putting our only copy in, are we?
You couldn't copy a
personal datacard. Copying was supposed to screw it. EIDAT said. Writing
outside your personal memo area was supposed to screw it.
But EIDAT said a lot
of things about security to its customers that didn't apply to its programmers:
a few alterations to the 00 and die card would copy—if you had the Programming OS on the
card, which wasn't supposed to fit in the MEM area. But if you got creative
with the allocations it would. Not that be didn't trust the integrity of the
UDC command here, not as if they just might have a watch on a Priority 10 right
now mat might notice him going out to the Exchange and buying a card with his
remaining vending chits. But he could certainly sacrifice the chess gamecard—even in the paperless and
police-controlled Belt, Customs had never quite apprehended gamecards and
vidcards as write-capable media.
Yeah.
Quick sand-down of
the gamecard edge on the nailfile he carried, a little application of clear
nailpolish, available locally, at certain contact points—and you could write to it quite nicely.
The cheerful, bright commercial label said it was a patented gamecard, a lot of
worn-at-the-edges cards were out there that did show the critical contacts.
EIDAT
HELLDURNER
117
certainly didn't want
to advertise the procedure even to the police, because people with access to
EIDAT systems code didn't ever pirate gamecards. No. Of course not.
He stuck the datacard
in the second drive and had his datacard copy in a nice secure place in
quarters before he went out to the wall phone in the barracks main hall. He
stuck his datacard into the slot. The write-function clicked. "Hie new
readout said CAP, MKT and MSFUNC. PRIORITY MS was blinking.
He keyed MS and the
hash mark. It said, Report to Lt. Graff s office, 0900h.
And funny to say,
when he tried to call over to Graff s office on a level 10, his level 10
authorization wouldn't work. Son of a bitch, he thought, smug, amused, and
furious. He had to do it on a lowly level 3. They had fried his accesses. And
he was illegal as hell now, with that other card as a holdout. Question was—which service had pulled his security
clearance.
So Graff wanted to
talk to him. And it was 0848 right now. He had about time to get his ass over
to Graffs office, and find out such facts as Graff was willing to tell him
about his transfer—
Which he was about to
do when he caught sight of the two females lugging duffles into the barracks
main hall— one dark-skinned,
one light, one with a headful of metal-capped braids and one with a shave-strip
of bright red curls.
My God...
He hung up. He had
the presence of mind to take his card out of the slot. He stood there while two
of the most unlikely recruits in the solar system came down the center aisle to
the catcalls of the bystanders, saw them look right past him as if he was part
of the landscape.
"Sal!" he
called out. "Meg!" and saw two pairs of eyes fix on him, do a re-take
of him and the uniform. Baggage hit the floor. The two best-looking women he'd
ever slept with ran up, grabbed him, both, and kissed him breathless, one and
the other.
116
CJ CHERP.YH
Couldn't hurt a man's
reputation. Whistles and howls from the gallery. He caught his breath, besieged
with questions like what was he doing here, what was this about Dek, and how
was he?
Questions without an
easy answer. "What are you two doing here?" he asked, and got a
stereo account: they'd gotten the word Dekker was in some kind of accident,
they'd gotten word they were shipping a carrier out—
*'God, that thing
moves—" Sal said.
"So we rode it
in and transferred over on the shuttle," Meg said. "And these damn
MPs have got to stall us up with questions, shit! of-fi-cers and VIP's all over
the place. —How's Dek, for God's
sake, he got all his pieces?"
"Everything
you'd be interested in. —You
enlisted?" That didn't fit his expectations, didn't fit what he'd been
reading in Dekker's letter file.
"They hail us
down," Sal said, "in Jupiter's own lap, a carrier pulls up and says,
Have you got Kady? And wants to talk to us. Wants to talk to Meg. And Meg talks
to the Man, and we get this news Dek's in hospital—some kind of crack-up, they're saying,
and they'd kindly give us a ride insystem—''
Shepherds began to
ooze over. One said, "Well, well, look what pulled in. Hiya."
Meg looked. Sal did.
Ben didn't know the face, but Sal struck an attitude and said, "Well,
well, look at familiar faces—they
let you in, Fly-by?"
Laughter from all
about. Not a nickname Fly-by seemed to favor. "God, how'd you get
past?" Belter accent, Shepherd flash. "I thought they had
criteria."
"You skuz,"
Sal said, but it didn't have the edge of trouble. Sal put a hand on the skuz's
shoulder, gave his arm a squeeze. "Jamil's a sumbitch, but he's an all
right sumbitch. This is Ben Pollard."
"Got the whole
team, but Morrie," another said. "Damn on!"
"Ben, where d*
we sleep?" Meg asked. There were
HELLBURNEK
119
immediately other
offers. "Take you up later," Meg said. "I got a date at the
hospital, if I can get the pass they said I had—"
"Get you to the
room," Ben said, and, catching two elbows, hauled them along to 10-A.
Good-natured protest followed from the rear, but it died, and a couple of guys,
Jamil included, overtook them at the door, set down the baggage and made
themselves absent. "Thanks," he said; discretion was not dead here.
"Thanks," Meg called back, while he was opening the door. He put a
hand on Sal's back, got Meg's arm and got them inside, into privacy.
"What've we
got?" Sal said. "Is my radar working, or what?"
"It's
working," he said. "We got a sumbitch in charge, same damn sumbitch
switched Dekker out and some guy in on a test run and cracked up Dekker's crew,
Dek-baby minks he's in the fuckin' Belt looking for Cory, and / got a meeting
with Fleet Lieutenant J. Graff right on the hour." He had a sudden idea,
fished his temp hospital card out of his uniform pocket, and held it up in
front of Meg. "This is a pass. You're me, just put it in the slot at the
main desk, won't trigger an alarm and in the remote chance they should ask,
tell 'em Graff sent you. Dekker's hi room 114. They pulled him out of a
simulator beat to hell and concussed and there's some chance he didn't climb in
there on his own, by what I can guess. Tell him straighten up. Tell him where
he is, tell him I said so, tell him I'm going to break his neck next time I see
him—I've got five minutes
to make the lieutenant's office...."
"Somebody did it
to him?" Meg asked.
"Hey. You know
Dek. There's got to be a waiting list." He recalled the atmosphere
outside, and said, "We got to talk. Fast. Sit. The lieutenant can wait
five."
The sounds came and
went. 2324. 2324. Dekker tried to remember. He said it to himself to remember.
And maybe he was losing track of time, but it seemed to him breakfast
120
CJ CHEfWH
had come and gone and
Ben hadn't come this morning. That upset him. Ben kept saying he couldn't stay,
and maybe he'd just gone wherever Ben had to go to. He didn't even want to know
where that was. He just wanted to go back into the dark if they'd let him
alone, if there wasn't anybody going to come but doctors with tests and interns
and if there was nothing to do but lie here and listen to the halls outside.
"Dek?"
Female voice. "Dek?"
Voice he knew. Voice
that shouldn't be here. So he was losing it. But if he was starting to
hallucinate again maybe Ben wasn't gone. He came up out of the dark to see.
She was scarily real,
Meg was, leaning over him. "How you doing?" she asked, and he said,
"Dunno," because he didn't. She smelled real, she looked real, she
sounded real. She asked him, "Anything wrong with the jaw?"
"No," he
said, wondering why she asked, and Meg leaned down and kissed him the way she'd
kissed him goodbye once, which caught him short of breath and half-smothered
and no little dizzy as it went on, but if this was going to turn into one of
those dreams, he didn't mind, he'd go out cold this way.
He got a breath,
finally, he had Meg up close to his face, running a finger down his cheek,
saying, "You been through some severely bad business, Dek. But it won't
happen again. I'm here. Sal's here. Ben's here. We won't let the bastards get
to you."
Good news. He really
wanted to believe it. But he didn't let himself sink into the fantasy all the
way. He only flirted with the idea, asking warily, "How'd you get
here?"
She settled her hand
on his, gave his fingers a squeeze. "They sent to me in the Belt, said,
You got a friend in trouble, you want to come, and I said, Sure. Why not? I
could do with a change."
So she wasn't
leveling with him. That could only mean his subconscious couldn't think of an
answer. Second question: "What about Sal?"
HELIBURNEK
121
"Sal said she
couldn't trust me on my own, said she'd keep me honest."
Her fingers on his
felt warm and solid. She was in Shepherd civvies, she had this fondness for big
earrings and he didn't remember the ones she was wearing. He wasn't artistic,
he couldn't make up ones he didn't know, spiral and gold with some kind of
anodized bar down the middle. He couldn't make up the blue eyeshadow and the
pink. He wouldn't put those colors together with red hair. But it looked good.
She did. And her really, truly being here was crazier than his thinking she
was.
Third question.
"Where's Ben this morning?"
"Ben's in the
lieutenant's office. Ben's real pissed. Something about his security clearance
and him supposed to be in Stockholm—didn't
altogether make sense, but he was going to go complain. —What's this about you arguing with a
simulator?"
Panic hit him. But he
didn't know why he should be afraid of Meg. Or Ben. Or why mere was a gap
around his recollection of the sim room. Sounds. Mag hum and sudden motion.
Ominous. Something had happened under that sound.
"There's been a
hearing," Meg said, "senators all over the place. They're leaving.
Ben asks if you'd like to tell mem anything. Says if you could tell them how
you got banged up it might be a good idea."
Senators. Mission
control. Rows of instruments. Instruments on the sim panel, just the same.
"Shit," he
breathed, feeling a cold sweat come on him. But it was all right, the memory
was gone again. He willed his heart to slow down, stop fluttering like that:
they filled him full of drugs if they caught his pulse up, and if they caught
Meg here, Meg could be in trouble—Meg
might not come back. People went out the door and you didn't know if—
— the Company'd let
diem back.
No. Not the Company.
Tanzer. The UDC, that ran this place.... "Ben explained a skosh," Meg
said, rab-speak,
122
CJ CHERRYH
long time back, it
seemed now. The Inner System had changed so, even in the few years he'd been to
the Belt and back. "You don't got seriously to say: I know about the
accident. But you got to get out of here, Dek, you got to get yourself
straight. Ben said I should ask you the date."
"2324," he
said, and found it suddenly worth a laugh, with what breath he could find.
"2324." Meg didn't know why that message from Ben should be funny and
he couldn't explain, he hadn't the coherency to explain, he kept seeing the readouts
in the spex in front of him, green and red and gold, and, dammit, he could make
it, he could've made it, but when he tried to imagine past that point the
controls wouldn't work, weren't going to work again until he could get his
hands on them and change those numbers....
Meg shook his
shoulder. "Heads up, Dek. First thing you got to do, you got to get
straight. Ben said you didn't get into that pod on your own. That you should
remember for him. He really needs that, Dek."
Sim room. Noise. And
the memory just stopped. Got his pulse rate up again. "Can't. Can't get
hold of it, Meg. Meg, —"
She leaned close and
whispered in his ear, "You want to go back to barracks and you and me do a
little rec-time? Mmmn?"
Offer like that—from Meg—could raise a corpse. Meg's touch on
his cheek could. He thought about the barracks, had a sudden cold jolt,
thinking of Meg there, and Ben and Sal; and not the faces he remembered. A
whole puzzle-piece of his life just lifted out, gone, and another one clicked
in, not the same shape, there were still dark spots—there'd been another puzzle-piece
before that; but it was close, it was damned close. Pete and Elly and Falcone,
they wouldn't have understood Meg. Wouldn't have gotten on with her, not easy.
Might not get on with Sal or Ben. Cory either. He looked Meg in the eyes and
remembered his blood pressure, realized he wasn't wearing the sensor.
Several things
clicked into place. Where he was. How he
HELLDURNER • 123
hadn't gotten his
shot this morning, either. How he was clearer-headed now than he'd been since—
More panels.
Instruments red-lighting. Alarms screaming. Inner ear going crazy.
"You all right,
Dek?" Finger along his cheek. "You're white. You want me to call a
doctor? Dek?"
He shook his head,
suddenly sure of that. He sucked in a breath and got an elbow up under him, to
see if his head was going to spin. Weak, God. Meg was trying to help him,
saying he should lie down. But he didn't think so, he had a bad feeling about
lying down and letting Meg call a doctor, they'd give him shots again and he'd
go to sleep and go on sleeping—
He shoved up onto his
hands, swung his feet over tile edge. The room was tilting, felt like the pod,
but he kept his eyes on the line where the wall met the floor. He sat there
getting his breath and making the room stay steady.
"You sure you
better not get back in that bed?"
He moved his arm.
That shoulder had hurt. Didn't now, as much. He kept his eyes on that line and
said, "Want to get up, Meg. Just give me a hand."
She did that. He
didn't need it to lean on. He just needed it steady. Second reference point. He
made it to his feet, risked a blink, then shut his eyes and stood there a
moment. He opened mem and took a step, with Meg's help. "Shot to
hell," he muttered. "Too much zero g."
"Does that to
you," Meg agreed. "Going back to it?"
"Inner ear's
playing me tricks." Another step. A third. He took a breath, let go her
hand and took a fourth.
"They ought to
have had you walking. Especially a spacer. Especially you. What're the doctors
worth in this place?"
A moment of vertigo.
He got it back again. "Meg, how in hell'd you get here?" Months to
get in from the Belt. They'd told her he was in trouble? Time threatened to
unravel again. Except—
124
C.J CHERRYH
"Just caught a
passing carrier. You got people real worried about you, Dek. Important
people."
Carrier could make
that passage in a handful of days. Better than that, the rumor was. And a
carrier pulled Meg out of the Belt? Out of a berth she'd risked her neck to get?
"Meg, make 'em send you back, don't get mixed up in this, I don't want
you, I don't want you here—"
"Hell if,
boy-doll. Anyway, I signed the papers. Going to make me an officer—"
"Oh, shit. Shit,
Meg!" The room went spinning. He just stared at Meg's face for a reference
point and kept his feet and knees from moving. "You were where you
wanted."
"Yeah, well.
It's not all al-tru-istic. —You
want to sit down, Dek?"
"No." A
shake of his head that risked his balance. "No. I'm all right. I need to
stand up. They won't let me stand up. Have I got any clothes in mat
locker?"
Meg looked. He didn't
dare track on her. She said, "No."
"Meg, I want you
to go to the lieutenant...."
"Graff?"
"Graff. I want
you to go to him—" The place
could be bugged. But there was nothing else to do. "I want you to tell him
I need help. I don't trust what they're giving me. I want out of here."
"This then or
now, Dek? Who's doing this?"
He tried a step and
another one. His heart was pounding. Sounds came distant and strange. He walked
as far as the door, opened it, and gambled his stability on a look at Meg.
"You remember your way out of here?"
"Yeah."
"1*11 walk you
to the door. Five on ten I don't get that far. But you'll know, then, won't
you?"
"Shit,
Dek."
"Yeah." He
took her arm. She grabbed his hand. "Let's
walk, huh?"
* * *
HELLDURNER
125
"Aboujib,"
Graff said, and put out his hand for a non-reg handshake. Dark-skinned, exotic
as they came to Inner System eyes, and by Ben Pollard's recommendation and the
enlistment records, a Company-educated disciplinary washout who'd gotten
another kind of rep among the Shepherds. Jamil had been by to give him a quick
word. Pollard had shown up for his appointment with Aboujib in tow—one Meg Kady was 'visiting Dekker' on
Pollard's pass ("It'll work in the lock," Pollard had said, with airy
disregard of UDC security, but Pollard was not unconcerned, Pollard had just
smiled, put a thoroughly stripped personal card on his desk and said, "I'm
screwed, sir. Do you think you could just possibly get somebody to do something
about this? They just put me in your command, sir, I'm UDC, and I'm mortally
worried the colonel's going to want to talk to me,")
Hell in a handbasket.
As the Earthers said. And here was file rest of Dekker's former crew, in on the
Sol One shuttle without a word of explanation, warning, or advice what to do
with them?
He wasn't highly
pleased with the captain right now. Not pleased with Tanzer, not pleased with
the situation, and not pleased to know one of the pair was loose in hospital on
somebody else's Fleet pass.
But Jamil had been
damned cheerful, saying, "We got us a couple of recruits, lieutenant. —Mitch is going to die."
It could give a man
the feeling something was passing by him. And that things were careening out of
control. "Welcome in, Aboujib. Scan-tech, is it?"
"Yessir."
Aboujib had a solid grip, a steady eye, a distractingly quirky dimple beside a
pretty mouth—and she was outside
his crew and off limits, endit, right there. Not many women among the Shepherds
and a consequent shortage of women in the program; and one of Dekker's former
partners?
The captain had put
Dekker's unit together again. That was what was happening. Keu wasn't saying a
thing—so
• CJ. CHBWH
FleetCom wasn't
secure: the captain was just doing it, case by case: somebody had moved a
carrier in from the Belt, for God's sake, or Victoria was back in-system: no
other way to ferry Aboujib and Kady here since the accident.
Which could mean the
captain hadn't been on Sol One for the last week; could mean Mazian had
interrupted his diplomatic receptions to take a hand; or it might mean Keu had
help: cooperative command in action—Col.
Tanzer, sir.
He said, "Very
glad to have you aboard, Aboujib...." and the phone beeped. His calls were
routing through the carrier's board and that wasn't to be ignored. He picked up
the receiver, said, "Graff here," and heard:
"Lieutenant?"
Thin voice. Strained. "Dekker. Need some help, sir."
"Shove it!"
he heard in the background. Female voice. And something happened.
A hand came under
Dekker's arm. Pulled. The nurse took hold of Meg's arm and lost that grip.
Fast.
"You want those
fingers, mister, you keep 'em the fuck off my arm."
The nurse had hit an
alarm, or something: a light was flashing. But Dekker knew where he was, he
knew who was keeping his balance for him and he'd trust Meg in the black deep
of space. He said, "Door, Meg. Now."
"He's not
released," the nurse said. Other meds showed up. Higgins arrived at the
desk, looked at Meg and said, "Who are you?"
"Ben Pollard
right now," Meg said. "Ben's getting my pass straightened out."
"Get
security," Higgins said to someone in the hall. "Lt. Dekker, they'll
take you to your room."
"No such."
He held his feet. "I'm going." Head was killing him. But standing was
easier. "Where's my uniform?"
Security showed up,
MPs, UDC. An MP grabbed for Meg, and next thing he knew he'd grabbed the MP—the guy looked at him, he looked at the
guy with his fist doubled,
HELLDURNEI^
but the MP with a
fistful of his pajamas wasn't about to hit a hospital case. So he kept his hold
on the MP, the MP kept his hold on him, and they stared at each other while the
interns tried to drag him away. "You tell Tanzer fuck himself. Hear? —Meg? Get. Get out of here."
They told her,
"You're under arrest. You're not going anywhere," and Meg said,
"Hell if. Spiel
on, chelovek, a judge is going to hear every word of this. You seriously better
not bruise him."
"Now wait a
minute." Higgins pulled the MP off—tried
to: he wasn't about to let go his only anchor, and Higgins was upset. "All
right, all right, calm down. Everybody calm down. Lt. Dekker, let go of
him."
Things were graying
out. But he got a breath and held on, said, rationally, he hoped, "I'm
walking out of here and I'm going back to my barracks."
Meg said, "Dek,
calm down."
Her, he listened to.
Kept his grip the way the MP held on to him and listened to Meg say, "He
had a seriously bad time with Company doctors. Fed him full of prescription
drugs, while he was spaced. You let him go. He'll be all right."
"I'm not a damn
mental case, Meg."
Higgins said, smooth
as silk, "We're not maintaining that. He's had concussion and broken
bones. If you're a friend of his, persuade him back to bed."
"I've been in
bed too damned long. Won't let me up, won't let me walk—"
"You've been to
therapy, lieutenant. Don't you remember?"
Scared him. He wasn't
sure. He didn't argue with what they might be able to prove. Or fake records
for. He was afraid he was going to pass out, and end the argument that way.
"I want my release. Now."
Higgins frowned, bit
his lip. Finally, "I'll release you to your CO. Personally. If he wants
you. Ms. —?"
"Kady. Magritte
Kady. Meg, to whoever." She stuck out
120 • CJ CHEIWH
her hand. Higgins
looked confused and angry. "Higgins, is it?"
He ignored the hand,
"Do you mind explaining who the hell you are and where you came from?**
"Manners,"
Dekker said. Still with his grip on the MP, he looked the man close in the eyes
and said, "You want to let go? I want to let go."
Man wasn't amused.
Man said, "Doctor?"
"Let him
go."
Took a bit just to
get his hand unclenched. The MP's uniform had a circle of sweaty wrinkles. The
MP refused to straighten it. Man was cold and thin-lipped, and mad as hell. UDC
was full of those types. He reached for Meg's hand and said, "Let's
go."
"There are forms
to fill out," Higgins said. "And a physical."
"Had one,"
he said, walking—he hoped Meg knew
where the door was: he didn't. He halfway expected the MP was going to have his
way after all. He remembered he was in pajamas when he saw the door. He didn't
know any way back to the barracks but the Trans. Didn't know how he was going
to stay conscious through that ride. Little bit of g it pulled would wipe him
out.
But Meg steered him
for a bench by the door and set him down. "You just stay mere a minute.
I'm going to go back there and call your CO. Isn't anybody coming near you. —Is your CO going to pull you out?"
"Yeah, yeah, I
mink he's already got somebody coming."
"Then I'll stand
here and wait. If you're sure. —You
going to be all right?"
"Yeah," he
said. His teeth had started to chatter. He was barefoot. The pajamas weren't
worm much. Meg took off her coat, put it around his shoulders, and made him
hold on to it. She left him a moment and came back with a blanket, God knew
how.
She said,
"Higgins is severely pissed. He's on the phone.
HELLDUKNER
129
But the nurse is all
right. Nurse asked if you wanted a chair."
Nurse was the one
he'd hit. More than once. He shook his head, with some remorse for that—and regret for missing his chance at
Higgins. Meg tucked the blanket around him, and under his bare feet, and sat
down and offered him a warmer place to lean. They'd never been to bed together,
had just been letter writers, at 830 million k remote from each other. They'd
discovered they were attracted to each other too late to do anything about it,
except that goodbye kiss. And now a hello one, a hug and a place to lean on,
when he'd gotten to the absolute bottom of his strength. Meg never found him
but what he was a mess. And here she was, he'd no idea how. She hadn't come
straight with him. And maybe sitting here with her like this was all another
hallucination. If he was hallucinating this time he didn't want to come back
again, didn't want to fight them, didn't want to get even, didn't want to prove
anything to anybody. Just sit, long as he could, long as he could hold himself
awake.
Meg said, "Well,
well, blue uniforms, this time. That us?"
He focused stupidly
on figures the other side of the glass. On one young, fair-haired.. .Graff, for
God's sake. With Fleet Security.
He bit his lip til it
hurt enough. He said, "Don't let me fall, Meg," and stood up, letting
go the blanket, as Graff came through the Perspex doors. "Lt. Graff,
sir."
Graff looked at him,
up and down, Graff frowned—you
could never tell what Graff was thinking. Could have been of skinning him
alive, for all he could read.
Meg said,
"They've been drugging him to the gills, sir. He never did do well with
that."
Graff said to the
MPs, "Take him to the ship."
"Barracks,"
Dekker said, then was sorry he'd objected. He'd take anywhere but here. But he
didn't know the ship.
100 • CJ CHERRYH
CHAPTER
He wanted somewhere
he knew. He wanted people he knew, namely Meg, and Sal, and Ben.
"Just long
enough for a check-up," Graff said. "I want you on record, Dekker.
From the outside in. You behave yourself, hear? No nonsense."
"Yessir,"
he said. He let Security take hold of him, he sat down and they said they were
going to borrow a chair; he heard Graff tell Meg Welcome in; and:
"Hereafter, don't start a war. Wait for the UN to declare it."
"Yessir,"
Meg said. Which wasn't a word he ever recalled from Meg Kady. But Meg had
enlisted. The fool. The absolute fool, if that was the price of Meg's ticket
here. He felt tears in his eyes, thinking about that.
But damned if he
could figure out how she'd managed it, all in all.
Time had gotten away
from him again. It kept doing that. So maybe he was, the way Ben said, crazy.
6
\ \ /ELCOME
back," they said, "welcome back, \ \ / Dek." Jamil and Trace,
Pauli and Almarshad \ A / and Hap Vasquez—they
intercepted him at the V V door when he was only calculating how much strength
he had to get to his own quarters and fall into bed. Jamil warned the rest
about grabbing hold of him, thank God, most of all thank God for Ben and Meg
and Sal Aboujib showing up out of the depth of the room to rescue him from too
much input too fast... he was tracking on too much: he knew and didn't know in
any detail what he'd said to the guys or what they'd said to him, and for one
dislocated moment he really thought Pete or Elly or Falcone was going to turn
up in the barracks; they always had... But they weren't going to do that ever
again, dammit, end report, o-mega; he was here on this wave of time, and by a
break of bad luck they weren't, and he was going to fall on his face if the
guys didn't let him get to his quarters. He'd spent hours out in a null g
sickbay, been prodded and probed and sampled and vid-taped from angles and in a
condition -131-
132 • CJ CHERRYH
HELLBURNER
103
he didn't want on the
evening news, and his imagination until now had only extended to lying down in
quiet, not running an emotional gauntlet of friends of dead friends— who could see how absolutely he'd been
screwed over, dammit, when he should at least have gotten some of theirs back.
He didn't know what had happened to him in hospital, not all of it; he didn't
know what he'd admitted to, most of all he couldn't remember what had put him
there, and by that, he'd evidently let the lieutenant down, too, in some major
way...
"Come on,"
Meg said, and he walked across a tilting, unstable floor, around a comer, down
a short hall to a familiar door and a room that had been—images kept flashing on him out of a
situation he didn't remember—cold
and empty the last time he'd left it, clothes in the lockers nobody was going
to use any more....
Now it was alive with
voices and faces out of a period of his life that never should have recrossed
his track, except it was like a gravity well, things didn't fly straight, they
kept coming around at you again and he didn't even know the center of mass.
That should be a calculable thing. He should be able to solve that problem,
with the data he had....
"Get him in
bed," Meg was saying, "he's severely spaced," and Ben said,
"Damned fool had to walk it, where's his head anyway?"
Ben never minced
words. He could cope with Ben far better than he could Sal Aboujib, who, after
Ben had got him onto his bunk, pinned him with hands on either side of him,
looked him in the face so close he was cross-eyed and said, "Oh, he's
still pretty. Dek, sincerely good to see you. So good you're in one piece—"
"Let him alone.
God!" Meg shoved Sal aside. "Man's severely had enough for a while.
Go get his supper. Do you mind?"
Numb at this point.
Completely numb. You hyped, and if things wouldn't calculate, what could you do
but handle the things you could? He said, "Not reg."
Sal said, "Nyet.
Lieutenant cleared it. Sandwich all right, Dek? Chips?"
*'Yeah, I
guess." Sandwich meant fish of some kind and that nauseated him. Then he
thought of what he did want. What he'd wanted in his lucid moments in the
hospital. "Hamburger and fries. —"
And simultaneously remembered what happened to Belters who ventured the quick
food in the cafeteria. "You watch the hamburgers, Sal. It's real stuff—"
"Dead
animals," Ben said, and shuddered.
"Fish are
animals," Meg declared.
"No, they're
not."
The argument went
completely surreal. The noise did. He was lying here and people promising to
get him a hamburger were arguing Belter sensibilities, enzymes and whether fish
were intelligent. "Milkshake," he said. But he was tired and he
wanted to get under the sheets he was lying on, which took far too much effort.
He just shut his eyes a moment and something warm settled over him. Blanket.
And a weight pressed the mattress beside him and an arm arched over him.
He focused blearily
on Meg. "Why in hell did you come here? You got no business here—"
"We'll talk
about it later."
"We'll talk
about it while there's still a chance, before you get into the security stuff—" The meds would say his blood
pressure was getting up again. His eyes were blurry. He made the effort to lean
on one arm, the one that hadn't been recently broken, and gathered all the
detail of a face he'd never thought he'd see again. He'd wanted her once. He
didn't know if he still did—didn't
want to want her. Didn't know if he could take another dead friend. "Damn
tiling's a meatgrinder, Meg, the colonel's an ass—"
"Yeah, so Ben
said. —Are you getting out?
Seems to me you got a serious excuse here. Thinking about a Medical?"
His mind went blank
on that. He couldn't see himself doing anything else. He couldn't see himself
shoving freight
134
CJ CHERAYH
H ELIEJU RN ER
105
around, going back to
pusher work. But the future he'd had before the accident was black and void in
front of him, just—not do-able now. For
the last year he'd chased after being the first pilot to run that course.
Making it. He'd believed that, even through the funerals of those who hadn't.
And that wouldn't happen, couldn't happen, now, everybody was dead but him—
"You want to get
out of the service?" Meg asked him.
He kept trying to
look at that dark ahead. And finally he shook his head. No, he didn't want out.
He didn't know what he was going to do, but he didn't want out of the Fleet—didn't know who might go with him next
run, didn't know what they could pull together into a crew that wouldn't take
another one apart—didn't want that.
Maybe that was why he couldn't see where he was going. Crew was gone, they
might well drop him back in training, let him shape up with Meg and Ben and Sal
from the beginning up—granted
Tanzer didn't kill the program.
Meanwhile some other
crew would make that first run; and the second; and the third—he'd take the controls after someone
else had flown the ship and it was documented and tame enough for the second
line to try.
And maybe that was
sanity. Forget his notions: maybe it wasn't what he'd trained for, wasn't what
he'd wanted, but it was a way back into the cockpit, forget the naive
confidence he'd had in his invincibility. He wasn't a kid any more. God hope he
wasn't a fool any more, who had to have that number one status or kill himself
and everyone with him.
He gave up the prop
of his arm, fell back again and gathered the bedspread and pillow under his
head. He looked in Meg's eyes and didn't see a woman who was young and mind-fried
with love—just a friend, a
sane, brave friend, who was older than he was, and whose reasons he didn't
honestly know.
"Meg, I'm
serious, don't want to oflfend you. Good to see you. Good you came. But if
you've got any loophole
out of enlisting, any
way in hell back to the berth you had, you should go back...."
"Five
hundred-odd million ft, I come for this man. What about those letters you
wrote? 'Getting along fine, a real chance at something, the first thing in my
life I know I want to do—'
"
"That was
bullshit. It's like anywhere else. We got a fool in charge."
"Yeah, well, we
dealt with fools before. Got no shortage of *em in the Belt. Some have even got
seniority."
"They got plenty
of it here. —Too damn many
funerals, Meg. I'm sick to death of funerals—"
"Death is, jeune
rab. Better to burn than rot."
Plasma spreading
against the dark. Whiteout on the cameras. He said, urgently, "Meg, go
back where you've got a life, for God's sake. You've got a berth—"
"—without shit-worth of seniority."
"Well, you won't
get any here. They won't count your hours, just give you a flat 200. Spend your
whole life out in the Belt and that's all it's worth. They'll screw you any way
they can."
"Mmmnn. Yeah.
Sal's seriously pissed about that—but
she's computers anyway. Straight quantifiable skills stuff. / was an EC shuttle
pilot, remember? Earth to orbit. LEO to Sol One. You name it, I ran it, four
years riding the gravity slopes. And it's all in the EC's own infallible
records. Here, I got seniority."
"Shit," he said,
cold inside, he didn't know why, except Meg was hell to stop when she had an
idea, and Tanzer was a damned fool. It'd be like the UDC, to look at just that
record of Meg's hours and do something seriously stupid. Like put a shuttle
jock on the combat line. "Meg, you don't know. We got innate stupidity
here, serious innate stupidity. The equipment's a real stress generator, you
understand me? They made the sims realtime to start, but the UDC guys won't
spend four, five hours in the sims, hell, no, we're too short on sim-time for
that, and we got guys too experienced
136
CJ CHEIWH
HELIBURNER
137
to need that, so what
do we do? We pitch the sims down to be do-able. Comfortable. Spread the time
around. You read that?" His head ached. His voice was going. The capacity
to care was. "They're killing us. Take guys with reflexes to do the job,
and then they fuck with the sims till you got no confidence in them. That's a
killer, Meg, that's a damn killer, ship's so sensitive you can screw the thing
if you twitch—"
"You fly
it?"
A memory chased
through his nerves, oxygen high and an adrenaline rush, hyperfbcused—
"Yeah," he
said, voice gone shaky with memory. "Yeah. Mostly the sims. But twice in
the ship." And he knew why he wasn't going to take a Medical. Better to
burn, Meg had said. And he did that. He did burn.
Door opened.
"Mustard or ketchup?" Sal's voice. "Got one each way...."
"Mustard,"
he said, grasping after mundane sanity. The smell ought to make him sicker than
hell, the hospital food hadn't smelled of grease and he'd all but heaved eating
it. But maybe it was the company: maybe it was the smell that conjured the
cafeteria and the sounds and shoptalk over coffee: he suddenly wanted the
burger. He took a real chance with his stomach and his head and hitched his
shoulders around against the wall so he could sit up to eat, and handle the
milkshake. A sugar hit, carbohydrates and salt, a guaranteed messhall
greaseburger with dill pickles, chili sauce, tomatoes and mustard—
"How can you eat
that?" Ben asked. "God!"
Meg said, "Shut
up, Ben," and took the ketchup burger herself.
Earth system, Meg had
to be, then. Rab, rad, and, Meg had said it once, falling behind the wave of
change on Earth: go out into the Belt and you stepped back a century at least—old equipment, a hodgepodge of antique
fads and fashion—rab-rad gone to
Shepherd flash and miner Attitude. But Meg was old genuine rab, he believed it,
the rab they'd
gunned down at the
Company doors when he was a kid. So Meg had come home to hamburgers and ideas
she was so far out of the current of, he hurt for her. And he was scared for
her.
Damn right she was a
pilot. The Fleet was raking up all the recruits they could beg or bribe away
from the Shepherds, and they'd evidently made her an offer, given her her hours—a fool friend, an almost-lover near
young enough to be her son, cracked up in hospital, needn't have been any part
of it. Couldn't go by what Meg said. Couldn't. She had a lot of virtues, but
strict accounts wasn't one of them. It was enough she'd come to the hospital to
get him. It was enough she'd stand there and risk arrest and losing everything
to get him out. Meg was like that. Might go, might stay. But if she stayed—
—if she stayed—
He got most of the
hamburger down. He got down half the shake and half the fries. He sat there in
a room with Ben and Sal talking about computers and the UDC, and Meg wolfing
down the first hamburger she must have had in years, and looking not a bit
changed—a few more lines
around the eyes, maybe. And when he had to put the rest of his shake aside, he
shut his eyes for just a moment and sat there, and thought about Cory. He
thought about Bird, and the Belt. He thought he was there for the moment, but
it wasn't a serious drift, just remembering. Safe.
Want to break his
damn neck, Ben thought. Skuz ate the mess and went out cold, no wonder. Poor
dead cow. Fish weren't intelligent. Thank you.
Sal leaned on his arm
and whispered a thoroughly indecent proposal, which reminded him what he hadn't
gotten in the last year, what with the course work and the computer time and
all—a proposal that
didn't make a man think all that clearly about the value of his life and the
necessity of getting out of this hellhole ...
"Yeah," he
said thickly, directing thoughts to getting his
138
CJ CHEIWH
HELLBURNER
139
ass out of here and
snagging Sal into the TI—and
down to Stockholm. Sal was damned good. In several senses. "Yeah. —Meg, hate to leave you with the skuz
there, —d' you mind sitting
on him?"
"Any way he can
make it," Meg said smugly. "Us freefallers are adaptable—how's yourself, Ben?"
He was out of
practice. Polite society did that. He actually felt his face warm. "Hell,
ask Sal in a while."
Sal hooked her arm in
his and said, "Details later. Serious interpersonal relations. —You got a notion where, mate?"
"Whole damn room
to ourselves," he said. And elbowed the door open.
Dek said, "You
want to dispose that?" and handed Meg the remnant of the milkshake. She
went to the bath to dump it and came back to find Dek on his feet rummaging a
locker—his, she figured, and
hoped he wasn't thinking of getting dressed. Her own back ached with the
g-shift off the shuttle—she'd
gotten soft, living on the Hamilton's c-forced decks. It was the little muscles
that hurt, the ones you used pulling your body around in freefall, a lot of
them in unusual places, and she seriously didn't want to face the guys
outside....
"You're not
going to walk," she said; he ignored the question, lifted a stack of
folders in the top of the locker and said, sounding upset, "The tape's
gone."
"What
tape?"
"Sim tape. I
guess they took it back to library. Damn sure they've been through here."
"They?"
"MPs. Crash
investigators. Whatever."
"They already
had the hearing, Dek. VIPs left this morning."
He was looking white.
He leaned one-handed against the locker frame and looked at nowhere. "I'm
tracking, Meg."
Meaning quit treating
him like a spacecase. Joli jeune
rab, face like a
painted angel and a body language that said Screw you—in any sense you wanted to take it.
A lot like herself,
truth was. But there had to come a moment in a lifetime when a person looked in
the mirror and knew age had happened; and Dek was her mirror—that body and that face that carried
all its worry-lines in muscle, not engraved permanently beside the mouth or
around the eyes. Age had sneaked up on her; and Dek's mama wasn't older, she'd
bet on it. So might be he didn't want any forty-year-old woman putting the push
on him. With his looks he'd have his pick of anybody out there, and probably
had had, all his life—probably
had damned well enough of everybody who saw him wanting him, and no few laying
uninvited hands on him—pretty
guy had that problem no less than anybody else; maybe more, because he was
supposed to like it.
So back off the kid,
Magritte Kady, and shut the hell up—
he's tired, he's probably sick to death of being hit on, probably thinking hard
how to finesse a middle-aged woman out of his bed tonight; and not doing real
well with the words, is he?
Dek didn't say
anything. He wandered into the bath, ran water, came out again with his face
and the front of his hair wet, and looked at her with eyes like a lost,
battered kid's.
She said,
"Nothing comes with the package. I came here to haul your ass out. Not
laying claim to it by any right. Isn't as if I didn't get something—I got back to inner system, didn't I?
So no debts. I owed you."
Disturbed him, that.
She saw the frown. He said, "How's title arm?"
Half-thinking, she
rotated the hand, lifted the arm. "Works."
"Reflexes?"
She shrugged, moved
the thumb that was a little stiff. "Age is, jeune rab. It does hit us
all."
"K?u aren't old,
Meg."
Gallant jeune fils,
too. She didn't let the face react. Just the gut felt pain. She told it shut up
and laid out the truth.
140
CJ CHERAYH
*'Still not saying I
should have been at the controls, on my best day. You pulled our asses out of a
bad one, Dek, you got what I never had: if you want me on your team, all right,
I'll back you; or if you want me or Sal off it, you say mat too, right now,
plain as plain, because I owe it to Sal. I'm forty and counting, arm isn't what
it used to be and it won't be again. Sal's young but she's got experience to
collect. That's what you get. Can't lie to you. No good doing that...."
He came closer.
Looking into his face was a send-off; looking into his eyes was the deep dive,
gravity well, painful as slow compression. His face went out of focus as he
leaned and kissed her on the cheek—deeper
hurt, that. But the jeune fils didn't, couldn't know....
"Call it
even," he said, then, "Paid is paid," —but his hands traveled down and behind
her. Came a light kiss on the mouth that shook a forty-year-old's good sense.
Another one that—
God.
"Don't do
that," she said shakily, when she had a breath, and meant to crack some
half-witted joke about their relative ages, but he said, "Bed, Meg,"
and pulled her down on the bunk with him.
Not real copacetic,
no, the jeune fils had far more ideas than substance left, but clothes and
covers went one way and the other, boots mumped out from under the sheets, and
a bunk that wasn't designed for two meant real caution about putting an elbow
into his sore spots. She did. But he said never mind, hell with the ribs, he
didn't care, if he was hallucinating he didn't want to wake up, she could fly
him to hell and gone, he'd take the nip—
Didn't care. That was
the operative word, that was the danger word she was hearing from him—but she didn't know what to say on the
instant but to punch him on the leg and say, "I'm damn well here, jeune
rab. Shut up."
Struck him funny,
somehow. Didn't recall as she'd ever seen him laugh like that, and there wasn't
much healthy
HELLDUKN ER
141
about it; but he sort
of snuggled down then, hugging her close, said, "Anything you want, Meg,
whatever you like," and started drifting out, little at a time.
Murmured, finally,
"Cory, —" But she didn't
take of-fense. Man'd busted his ass trying to save Cory Salazar, done
everything for his partner a man could do and then some, and what would you
want in a man—that he'd forget,
now, and switch Cory off like a light?
Not any partner she'd
ever give a damn for.
So she ruffled his
hair, said, "Hush, it's Meg," and he said, with his eyes shut,
"Meg, for God's sake get out, go back, don't get mixed up in this, dammit,
you had a berth—"
"Yeah. They were
going to make me senior captain. You got my knee pinned, you want to move over,
Dek?"
Bed with Aboujib was
a long, long experience. You didn't get away easy—tech-nique, Sal called it; and he didn't
know—he was here, where
the competition back at TI couldn't eavesdrop; and Sal wasn't a critic, Sal
just took what was—Sal was all over you
and kink as hell, maybe. You couldn't be ice with Sal, maybe that was why he
was thinking suddenly, amid his attentions to Sal, that he truly didn't want
Stockholm to see this side of Ben Pollard—
that wasn't real sincerely in his right mind, feeling as he did for the moment
that he'd actually missed R2's sleaze and neon, that he'd missed Mike Arezzo's
synth-egg breakfasts and the noise of helldeck—
Stockholm was a VR
image, Stockholm was special effects, there wasn't an Earth and you couldn't
get to it, the Company only made it up to explain the universe—got its Earth-luxuries out of fancy
tanks, it was all synth for all he knew, what the hell difference whether it
was a cow or a tank culture, he wasn't going to eat what had blood running
through it—hell, Earth was full
of eetees no less than Pell, and what was Ben Pollard doing trying to fit in
with people
142
CJ CHERKYH
who ate hamburgers
and ran a department that bought a damned EIDAT?
Ben Pollard was
trying to stay alive and stay out of the war, that was what he'd been doing.
Ben Pollard was back on helldeck, the bubble had burst, and what turned up but
Sal Aboujib, the Fleet's own damnable doing, screw the bastard who was
responsible for this—
Hell, when it came
down to it, Dekker was responsible for it, it didn't matter the UDC and the
Fleet had gotten their shot in, Dekker could reach out from the hereafter and
screw his life up with one little touch, the way he'd screwed Cory Salazar's—way he'd screwed the program up—
Off chance that part
wasn't his fault, but you didn't protect yourself by figuring a mess of this
magnitude that Dekker just happened to be in the middle of—didn't have Dekker's fingerprints all
over it. Wasn't mat the guy necessarily did anything, he didn't have to do it,
he just was. Like gravity and infall, things went wrong in his vicinity... .
Sal cut off his air,
and lights went off a while. When he came down he was halfway tranquil,
catching his bream, and said—it
still bothered him: "You know, you could've written once."
Sal didn't answer
that one right off. She came over on top of him and made a cage out of her
elbows beside his head. Her braids hit him in the face. Her lips brushed his
nose.
"That's no
answer."
"Didn't figure
you wanted one," Sal said.
Fair answer, one he
hadn't thought of. Fact was, when he was trying to settle in with inner-system
pets and sorting the threats from the bottom-enders he hadn't had but a few
twinges of regret for helldeck—tried
to clean the Belt out of his language, tried not to dream about it, just wanted
to see those clean green numbers in his head, different life, Aboujib.
Different aims... .
So he didn't answer
that. He just said, "Here's seriously screwed. Dekker's involved. Thought
you had better sense. Thought Meg had. I can understand her, maybe, got to be
HELLBUKNER *
143
hell getting
seniority out there, but you're Shepherd, you got the connections, you didn't
have to dump and come—"
Sal slid down, slid
over, rolled onto one elbow, all shadow, braid-clips a-wink in the dim light.
Eyes eclipsed and looked at him again.
"Weren't
treating her right, Ben. She took it. But, tell the truth, she wasn't seriously
happy on the Hamilton."
"Personalities?"
Sal traced something
with a long fingernail on the sheet between them. Second eclipse. And glanced
up. "Could say. Guys put the push on her. Guys said—" Shift of the eyes toward the
door and a lowered voice. "Said it was damned good she'd got shot, it put
Dek at the controls...."
"Shit."
Sal shrugged.
"Probably true. She says it is. But that's the Attitude, you understand?
She took the jokers. She took the shit. But they said she'd got an affinity for
gravity wells, didn't want her flying in Jupiter's pull—big joke, right?"
Severely big joke.
The idea of infalling a gravity well made him nervous as hell. Going down to
Stockholm, if he got mere, as happened, he intended to drink a lot of cocktails
before the dive—because he was
Shepherd—a Shepherd orphan, as
happened, thank God he'd been on R2 when the ship went. But sometimes, on his
worst nights, he dreamed of metal groaning, bolts fracturing, the sounds a ship
would make when compression began—
pop, and bang and metal shrieking—
Yeah, Shepherds made
jokes. Shepherds defended the perks and prerogatives they got from the Company
for flying where others couldn't. And Meg was insystemer, inner systemer, even
blue-sky; and there on Sal's ticket....
So Dekker got the
credit with the Shepherds, for one hell of a flight; and Meg, who'd nearly got
her arm blown off for the cause—got
the shit: Dekker hadn't asked for a post with the Shepherds, that was the
Attitudinal difference....
"She wanted to
come," Sal said. And gave a long breath. "Couldn't let her go
alone."
144 • CJ CHERRYH
HELLBURNER • 145
"To find Dekker?
She didn't effin' know him. She didn't—"
Pi-lut, he thought
then. Meg was a pilot same as Dekker, didn't care about anything but to fly.
And the Shepherds didn't want her at controls?
Double shit. But
things the other side of the wall still didn't make sense in that light.
"So she's in bed
with the guy?"
A movement of sheet,
shrug of Sal's shoulders. Silence a moment. Then: "Hormones."
"What kind?
That's the question."
"Like he's the
best, you know what I mean? Beating him'd—I
dunno, it'd prove a lot of things."
"God." He
fell onto his back to think about that a tick.
"I mean/* Sal
said, "if even the Fleet had offered her back then what they'd offered
Dekker—if they'd just
offered, she'd have been gone. But she was lying in pieces and patches, as was—couldn't blame them, really, but it
severely did hurt...."
Up on his elbow
again. He was hearing craziness he might have to fly with. "She's not any
damn twenty-year-old, Sal, if you want to talk hormones, here, you got to have
a whole different wiring. Reactions aren't there. They're not going to be there
for any sane human, Sal, the guy's flat crazy, it seems to be a pre-rec on this
ship—"
Silence a moment. Sal
was all shadow and maybe anger, you couldn't know when you were talking to a
cutout in the dark. Finally Sal said, with a definite edge to her voice,
"She's not any twenty-year-old, but she was damned good, Ben, you weren't
out there with us, you didn't see how she'd finesse a rock—and we got shit, Ben, the Company gave
us shit assignments, because we were worse than freerunners, we were freerunner
lease crew, and they were trying to run us broke, to crack the ship-owners,
that was what they were up to. We never got one good draw from that 'random
assignment procedure'—Meg
had a record on Sol, Meg was on the Company's hit list because Meg was rab, Meg
didn't dress by the codes, Meg didn't think by the
codes, Meg wouldn't
kiss ass and they screwed her, Ben, same as B.M. screwed her, same as the
Hamilton screwed her—
So here the damn Fleet comes in and says, By the way, will you come in and haul
Dek out of his mess? —Didn't
even say, You want to fly for us? Said, You want to come haul this chelovek out
of his funk and we'll cover your record? That's all, that's all they promised,
Ben. And she got this look—shit,
what was I going to do? She'd stuck by me. Maybe it's time somebody went with
her."
He'd never heard Sal
talk that way—Sal with an attack of
Obligations. But, shit-all, —
That thought led down
a track he didn't want to take, something about old times, about what they'd
had on helldeck, confidence that came of knowing the guy you were sharing a
ship with wasn't out to screw you—whole
damn universe might be out to do that, but your partner wouldn't, your partner
had to have the same interests you did, and you just didn't cheat on him.
You just didn't cheat
on him....
He rolled out of bed,
buck naked and cold in the draft from the vents, he walked over to tile other
bunk and leaned his arm against it, because if he stayed in that bed he was
going to start thinking about Morrie, and he didn't like to do that, not in the
middle of the dark.
So Sal was being a
fool. So Meg thought she could get the years she'd lost back again and the
system wouldn't screw them all.
Rustle from behind
him. Movement. Arms came around him, and the chill myriad clips of Sal's braids
rattled against his back.
"Cold out here,
Ben."
*'I want out of here,
dammit, I'm not aptituded for combat. I got a place in Stockholm..."
Sal said, holding him
tight, "What's Stockholm?"
CHAPTER
H ELLOURN ER
147
7
MAINDAWN and in the
office early, trying, before the mainday rush hit, to make sense of the reports
from the designers and the sims check. Graff took a slow sip of vending machine
coffee, keyed the next page on the desktop reader. The report writer liked
passives: 'will be effectuated,' 'will
be seen to have incremented,' and especially convolutions: 'may have
been cost-effective in the interim while result-negative in the longrange
forecast—*
Graff keyed the
dictionary for 'forecast.' It said something about 1) terrestrial weather
patterns and, 2) prediction. The latter, he decided, but keyed it up; and found
something, as he'd suspected, different than his own definition of
'prediction.' These were the people who designed the computers and the software
that ran the sims, for God's sake, and they were giving him messages about Old
Earth weather patterns and fortune-telling?
He tried to read
these reports out of Tanzer's staff. He felt responsible in the captain's
absence. He worried about -146-
missing something. He
worried about not understanding Tanzer face to face, and these were the only
lessons in blue-sky usage on his regular reading list.
'Effectuated/ he
could guess from particles. And he didn't have that small a vocabulary. He
didn't use that many semicolons in his reports; he wondered was his style out
of fashion; and he wished not for the first time that he'd had at least one of
the seminal languages—given
the proliferation of derived meanings, that was what Saito called the problem
words, cognates; and metaphor. All of which meant a connection between 'forecast,'
planetary weather, and the Lendler Corp techs who, between working on the sims
and writing reports, danced a careful and convolute set of protocols between
his office and Tanzer's—'effectuate,'
hell. *Obfuscate' and 'delegate' and 'reiterate,* but nothing effectual was
going to happen with that investigation except Lendler Corp gathering evidence
to protect itself against lawsuits from the next of kin.
Save them the
trouble. Stick to Belters. Belters didn't sue Corporations, Belters didn't have
the money or the connections to sue Corporations.
But come into their
territory—
Lendler didn't want
to do that. Didn't want to interview the Belters. Even when he had it set up.
The phone beeped. He
hoped it was Saito coming on-line: he could use a linguist about now—and he could wish Legal Affairs hadn't
left their office to a junior: the Fleet needed to enlist a motherworld lawyer,
was what they needed, maybe two and three of them, since they never seemed
unanimous— he'd had the UDC
counsel on the line last night, talking about culpabilities and wanting
releases from the next-ofs—
"Lt.
Graff?" Young male voice. Familiar male voice. "Col. Tanzer on the
line'1
He'd never been in
the habit of swearing. But association with the Belters did suggest words. He
kept it to: "Put him on, Trev."
Pop. "Lt.
Graff?"
•148
CJ CHERRYH
H ELLBURN ER
149
"Colonel?"
"I'm looking at
the file on Paul Dekker. Just wondered if you had any last-minute additions,
before we write our finish on this accident business."
"I'd appreciate
that, colonel, as soon as we finish our own investigation."
"Dekker's been
released from hospital, I understand, on your orders."
Possibility of
recorders. Distinct possibility. "Released to Fleet medical care. His
blood showed high levels of tran-quilizer and pain medication. My medical staff
says it was excessive. Far excessive. The word malpractice figured in the
report."
A moment of silence.
' 'Blood samples taken after he was in your doctors1 care, lieutenant. I'll
inquire, but you'll excuse me if I choose to believe our own personnel. File a
separate report if you like. Call the Surgeon General. It's completely of a
pattern with the rest of your actions. But you may find some of those chickens
coming home to roost very shortly."
Another one for
Saito. But the gist of it got through, quite clearly.
Tanzer said:
"The phone isn't the place for this discussion. I'll see you in my office
in ten minutes. Or I'll file this report as is, without your inspection, and
add your objection in my own words."
Moment of silence
from his side. A moment of temptation to damn Tanzer for a bastard, hang up,
and call the captain on uncoded com. He might be a fool not to have done that:
Tanzer made little moves, niggling away at issue after issue, day after day;
damn the man, he could be recording the conversation right now. But caution
won. Follow the forms. "I'm on my way," he said.
The sojers had this
perverse habit called reveille, which meant after the com scared hell out of
you and you hauled yourself bleary-eyed awake, you ran for the breakfast line
before the eggs
disappeared—Meg had gotten into
that routine on the ship coming here, got a few days spoiled on the shuttle,
and here she and Sal were again—standing
in line, the only females in sight, with two guys who drew their own kind of
attention.
Orientation, the
lieutenant had told her, outside hospital. Keep him busy. Push him, but not too
hard. Don't let him off by himself.
Which meant they were
a kind of bodyguard, she supposed. Against what, she wasn't sure—against Dek's own state of mind, high
on the list: too much death, Sal put it, for anybody to tolerate. Everybody
he'd gotten really close to, except Ben and her, had died; he'd watched it
happen every damned time; and last night he was telling her to try to
de-enlist, get out of his life?
Only convinced her
how seriously she meant to follow the lieutenant's orders and keep a tag on
him.
So Dek was supposed
to show them around, get them acquainted with the classrooms and the VR labs
and the library, get their own cards picked up. Lab schedule, soon as they
could get settled, hell and away different than she'd learned flying, but that
was the way they did it in the Fleet: Dek said you took a pill and they hooked
you up to a tape and they fed the basics of the boards into you by VR display
like programming some damned machine—
"Confuses you at
first," Dekker was telling them, in the breakfast line, the other side of
Ben. "Reactions cross what you know, you face it the next day and you
don't remember learning something new—-your
hands know. They use it just to teach you the boards. The brain takes a while
to get used to it—a while to know it
knows. Handful of people can't take the pills. But it's rare."
She listened. She
tried to imagine it.
"They're
experimenting with that stuflf over at TI," Ben said. "Hell if
they're going to mess with my head. I'm a Priority 10. Programmer. Security
clearance. Damn chaff, feat's what's going on, it's mat screwed-up EIDAT
they're
150
CJ CHEIWH
H EL L6U RN ER
151
using—drop me in here and my level isn't in
the B Dock system, oh, no, all it knows is pi-luts and dock monkeys, so I got
to be one or the other, right? Right." Dollop of synth eggs onto Ben's
plate. "So it lets some damn keypusher screw with my assignment. Does
somebody over at Sol wonder where I am? Not yet. Personnel isn't supposed to
think, oh, no, they trust the EIDAT. I got a post waiting for me, God hope it's
still waiting. —What the hell is that
stuff?"
"Grits,"
Dek said.
"Was it
alive?"
"It wasn't
alive." Dek slid his tray to the end of the line and drew his coffee.
"You want me to
carry that?" Meg asked.
"I'm fine,"
Dek said, and stuck his card in the slot. "That's present and accounted
for. Laser scans the bottom of the containers, figures your calories and your
allotments— dietician's worse
than—hell." Reader's
read-line was blinking.
"You have a
message," the checkout robot said, as if Dek couldn't read.
"
"Scuse." Dek carried his tray over to a corner table, quiet spot, Meg
was glad to note, following him, while Ben waited for Sal to check through—a skosh too many Shepherd eyes in this
place for her personal comfort, all picking up every move they made. Hi, Dek,
they'd say soberly, sounding friendly enough. Giving her and Sal the eye, that
was a natural—women being severely
scarce here; and sort of glossing Ben.
But me UDC boys
looked at Ben and looked at them and heads sort of leaned together at tables,
she could see it going on all over that other corner of the hall, thick with
UDC uniforms.
Dek set his tray
down. "I'll check that message blinker. Probably your stuff. Hope it's
your stuff."
As Sal and Ben showed
up with their trays and set them down.
"What's he
doing?" Ben asked with a glance over his
shoulder. "You
don't ask what a message is before breakfast, you never ask what a message is
before breakfast—"
"Thinks it could
be our accesses." Meg set her tray down and cast a glance at Dek over by
the phone, a skosh anxious, she couldn't even tell why, except Dek had had this
edge in his voice: he was On about something, she read it in his stance and his
moves, and she hadn't been able to read all the codes that had popped up. She
said, still on her feet, "Ben? You capish the code on that blinker?"
"Accesses
stuff," Ben said, sitting down.
"Uh-oh,"
Sal said.
Understatement.
Serious understatement. Dek hit the phone with his open hand.
"Scuze," Meg said, and went that direction.
Dek snatched out his
card, and ricocheted into her path. "What is?" she asked, catching at
his arm. "Dek?"
"They clipped
me, Tanzer's fuckin' clipped me, the son of a bitch." Dek shoved her and
she didn't know whether to hang on or not—her
hand stung as he blazed past her. But that didn't matter. Dek going for the
door like a crazy man—that
seriously mattered. Dek knocking into guys inbound—
Mitch, for God's sake—
Dek got past. Hot on
his track she hit the same obstacle, who didn't give way a second time. Neither
did the other guys. "Kady," Mitch said, not friendly. "I heard
they'd gotten desperate."
*'I got a seriously
upset partner—out of my way,
dammit!"
"So what's with
Dekker?"
"Something about
getting clipped."
"Shit!"
Mitch said, and: "Pauli," to the big guy behind him, Shepherd from
the hall yesterday. She remembered. "Haul his ass back here. Fast."
"What's going
on?" Sal asked as she and Ben showed up with a handful of other curious.
"Dekker's been
clipped," Mitch said. "Just calm down, we're going to see what the
lieutenant says about this."
152
CJ CHBWH
HELLBURNER
153
Hell if she
understood 'clipped,1 she didn't know Pauli from trouble, she knew Mitch too
damn well, but Mitch's outrage at least sounded to be on Dek's side and
stopping Dek seemed to be a priority on their side too. Pauli-whoever took out
in the direction Dek had gone, and she went with, at a fast walk.
First comer showed an
empty hall; but Pauli broke into a jog for a side corridor as if he knew where
he was going, she caught up, and spotted Dek, all right, traveling at a fair
clip himself.
"Dek!" she
called out; and he stopped, took a damn-you stance and stared at them cold as
cold.
All right. That was
the surly young sumbitch she knew. She panted, "You got friends, chelovek,
capish? Slow down. Deal with people."
Dek looked half
poised to walk off. Pauli said, "Is it true? They pulled you?"
"Yeah."
Dek's mouth didn't look to be working real well, he clearly didn't want to
talk; but about that time Ben and Sal showed up with some of the other
Shepherds from the messhall, Ben with:
"What's going
on? —Dekker, are you being
a spook?"
"Ben," Meg
exclaimed. Sal said the same. But Dek made a disgusted wave of his hand and
managed to unlock his jaw.
"Nothing's
wrong, nothing's the hell wrong. Sorry I got you here. Sorry I got you into
this."
A sane woman had to
get things off personals. Fast. "Ben, Sal, this is Pauli, friend of
Mitch's; Pauli: Ben Pollard, Sal Aboujib. Say how-do, and somebody answer a
straight question, f God's sake. What's going on here?"
"The damn
UDC," Dek said, "that's what's going on. Tanzer's just tossed me out
of the program."
"He can't do
that," Pauli said. "Screw him. He can't do that."
Somebody else said,
"No way, Dek." And another one:
"Mitch is on his
way to talk to the lieutenant right now. No way that's going to stick."
Dek wasn't highly
verbal. He was white, and sweating. Sal said, quietly, with her arm in Dek's:
"You want to go back to the room, Dek?"
Ben said: "Screw
it, he's got a breakfast sitting back there, we all got breakfast back there,
if nobody's grabbed h."
Leave it to Ben. Sal
had a crazy man halfway turned around and stopped from strangling the colonel
and Ben wanted his effin' breakfast. Dek was looking at Ben like he was some
eetee dropped by for directions.
"You mind?"
Ben asked him impatiently.
"Yeah. All right,"
Dek muttered. And went with him.
God, both of them
were spooks.
"I'm looking at
Dekker's record," Tanzer said, tapping a card on his desk, "right
here: the medical report and his disciplinary record—including his violent behavior here in
hospital, his defiance of regulations in the sims—"
"His behavior,
colonel, was thoroughly reasonable, considering the level of drugs in his
system. Drugs with possible negative psychological impact considering his
history— which is in that
file. That from my medical experts. He has grounds for malpractice."
"This is the
accident report." Tanzer shoved a paper form across the desk at him.
"Sign it or don't, as you please. I'll spare you the detail. I'm not
calling the hospital records into question, I'm not charging him with flagrant
violations of security with that tape, I'm not charging him for disregard of
safety regulations. I am concluding there was no other person involved in the
sims accident but Ens. Dekker."
He kept every vestige
of emotion from his face. "How ate you proposing he got into that
pod?"
"I'm supposing
he got in there the ordinary way, lieutenant, the same as any fool can climb in
there. He just
154
CJ CHERKYH
happened to be on
trank. These are the records of his admission—he was flying before he got in
there."
"Was put in
there."
"He was in
illegal possession of a tape that should have been back in library—"
"He had license
to possess that tape, colonel. He'd been in hospital, he'd just been released,
in condition your medics knew when they let him out with a prescription drug in
his system—"
"Whatever drugs
were in his system, he put there, before he decided to go on a sim ride."
"Pardon me if I
don't rely on those doctors' word, colonel, or their records."
"Rely on
whatever you like. I'll tell you one thing: Dekker's barred from the
sims."
"He's going in
there on my orders, colonel."
"Check your
rules, lieutenant. The sim facility and its accesses are under UDC
direction."
"You restrict
one of my people from the sims, colonel, and the case is going clear to the
Defense Department."
"Then you better
start the papers moving, lieutenant, because he's barred. And if you give a
damn for your program you won't fife—that's
my unsolicited advice, because you don't want him in public. Take my word for
it you don't want him in public. But until I get cooperation out of your
office, you don't get cooperation out of mine."
"Do I understand
this as blackmail? Is that what you want? My signature, and Dekker's back
in?"
"I wouldn't put
it that way. But let's say it might signal a salutary change of attitude."
"No deal. No
deal, colonel. And you can stand by for FleetCom to be in use in fifteen
minutes."
"Good. About
time you woke up your upper echelons. Tell them they've got a problem with
Dekker. A serious problem."
HELLDURN ER
155
Trays were still
sitting. They came into the mess hall and guys stopped and stared in that
distant way people had when they were trying to spy on somebody else's trouble.
Talk stopped, mostly, and started again, and Dek didn't look at anybody, didn't
talk to anybody, just sat down at his place at table and put the straw in his
orange juice.
Ben gave her a
tight-jawed look. Table was still all theirs. Pauli and the guys had gone off
toward the breakfast line, but they hadn't made it: they'd gotten snagged,
talking to guys over by the wall, all Shepherd. There were UDC guys on the
fringes—tables were either
UDC or they were Shepherd, Meg marked that suddenly: there wasn't another mixed
table in the whole damned hall.
She didn't like the
quiet. Didn't like the feeling around them. Dek was having his eggs. Ben was
having toast. Sal gave her a look that said she was right, everybody else was
crazy but them.
Young woman, blond
hair in a shave-strip, came up, set her tray down, said, "You mind,
Dek?"
Dek shrugged. That
one sat down. "Trace," the interloper said, looking her way, and
offered her hand across the tray as a dark-skinned Shepherd kid took the seat
next to Sal: "Aimarshad. Friends of friends."
Pauli sat down, him
with no tray, and said, "It's us Tanzer's after. —Pollard, you mind to answer whose side
you're on?"
Hell of a question,
Meg thought. She watched Ben frown and think, then say, with a cold sweet smile
on his face: "Hell, I'm not in Tanzer's command. I'm Security-cleared. I'm
Computer Technical, out of TI. I'm due somewhere else, and if I get there,
frying Tanzer's ass'd be ever so little effort. So why doesn't somebody get me
out of here?"
"Hear you were a
good numbers man," Pauli said.
The frown came back.
"Damned good," Ben said. Ben wasn't lying. "But I'm not flying
with him. I'm not flying with you guys. I'm not friggin* going near
combat..."
"Small chance
you'll have in my company," Dek said
156
CJ CHBWH
WtLLDURNER
157
under his breath.
"If they get this mess cleared, it'll just be one more thing they find.
Dammit, Pete and Elly—what
in hell is it with me that—"
Pauli's hand came
down on Dek's wrist and shut him up. Thank God, Meg thought. She didn't know
the danger spots here, but her personal radar was getting back severe
oncomings.
Hadn't even gotten
back to the office before he had a hail from behind and a "Lieutenant,
we've got to talk to you—"
No doubt what it was
before Mitch and Benavides overtook him. Graff said, "Dekker's banned from
the sims, is that what this is about?"
"Tanzer's
doing?" Mitch asked—and
didn't ask was it his.
"Col.
Tanzer," he reminded them. "In the office, Mitch. Let's keep it out
of the corridors—"
"It's in the
corridors, sir, it's all over the messhall. The UdamnDC doesn't care where it
drops its—"
"Mitch. In the
office."
"Yessir,"
Mitch said meekly; and the delegation trailed him down the corridor and around
the corner to his own door. He could hear the phone beeping before he even got
the door open. He got to his desk, picked up the handset.
"Graff
here."
Saito's voice.
"J-G, we have a problem. Paul Dekker's been restricted."
*Tm aware, I assure
you. Word to the captain. FleetCom. Stat. Code but don't scramble. Tell the
captain we'd urgently like to hear from him."
"Aye."
He hung up. He looked
at Mitch. "Where is Dekker right now?''
"Messhall,"
Mitch said. "Granted Pauli and Kady could catch him."
"Catch
him."
"He wasn't
damned happy, and he was headed spinward."
"You catch him.
You sit on him if you've got any concern about this program."
Quiet from the other
side. Then: "We enlisted. We signed your contract. We've got plenty of
concern about this program, lieutenant, we're damned worried about this
program, —we're damned worried
about a lot of things."
"First time I've
asked this, Mitchell, Follow orders. Blind. Just do it."
Mitch looked at him a
long time. So did the others. Finally Mitch said,
"We'll follow
orders. —But what the hell are
they doing, lieutenant? D' you hear from the captain? Do we know anything?
What's happening at Sol?"
"You want it
flat on the table—I don't know what the
situation is, 1 don't know whether (he captain's tied up in Ihe hearings or
what. I'm asking you, I need you to go back to your labs, follow your orders, show
up for sims—get everybody back to
routine. Like nothing's going on. Like nothing's ever gone on."
Long silence then.
Long silence. And finally Mitch broke contact.
"Yeah,"
Mitch said. "You got it. You got it. But Dek's damned upset.*'
"Tell Dekker my
door's open, I know what happened and I'm on it. May take a bit. But he's going
back in there,"
Opened his mouth on
that one. If you made a promise like that to these men, you'd better plan to
keep it.
Like dropping into
system, he thought; sometimes you had to call one fast. He thought it over two
and three times, fee way you didn't have time to reflect on a high-v decision— bat the fallout from this one was
scattered all though the future, and he didn't know whether he was right to
promise a showdown—for one man.
Damned if not, he
decided. You could count casualties by the shipload—in an engagement. But if it was your
own service taking aim—damned
right one man mattered.
Whole roomful of
tranked-out fools sitting at consoles, making unison reaches after switches,
unison keystrokes, as
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CJ CHERRYH
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far as Ben could
tell. "Damn spacecases," he said, with a severe case of the willies.
Deepteach, they called it, VR with drugs and specific behaviors involved; and
hearing about it wasn't seeing thirty, forty people all sitting there with
patches on their arms and faces and elsewhere and in private places, for all he
knew: forty grown people making identical rapid moves like the parts of some
factory machine. "Talk about Unionside clones.,.."
"Just basic
stuff," Dekker said. They were in the observation room, looking out
through Spex that reflected their disturbed faces—disturbed, in his case, and Meg's and
Sal's. Dekker, professional space-out, tried to tell them it was just norm.
"Spooky,"
was Sal's word too. "Seriously spooky."
Ben asked uneasily,
"They do computer work that way?"
"Basic
functions," Dekker said. "Basic stuff. For all I know, they do;
armscomp, longscan—'motor skills/ they
call it. They teach the boards that way. Some of the sims are like that, when
there's one right answer to a problem. Anything you can set up like that—they can cut a tape. It's real while
you're seeing it. Damned real. But you move right. You do it over and over till
you always jump right."
Wasn't the answer he
wanted to hear. He said, '7'm not taking any damn pill. I'm already right.
Righter than any guy this halfass staff has got, I'll tell you. You let them
muck with your head?"
"Just for the
boards," Dekker said, and cut the lights as they left. "Just to set
the reactions. 'Direct Neural Input,' they call it. You do the polish in sims,
and you do that awake—at
least you're supposed to..."
Two years he'd known
the guy and he realized he'd never actually heard Dekker's sense of humor. He
decided that was a joke. A damned bad one.
Meg asked, "So
what if it sets a bias that's not right, once upon some time?"
"You aren't the
only one to worry about that. Yeah. It's a question."
"So what are
they doing? Set us up to jump on the average we're right?"
"That's part of
what they call 'documentation'—meaning
there's nobody who's flown the ship."
"Nobody?"
Sal asked; and Ben nearly managed unison.
"Docking trials,
yeah. They got that part. Straight runs. Milk and cookies. Rotate and reorient.
Do it in your sleep. But not with armscomp working. You got enough problem with
system junk."
"Like a damn
beam-push through the Belt."
"You got it. At
that v it's a lot like that. Only where we're going—there aren't any two-hundred-year-old
system charts. You get stuff off the system buoy when you drop into a known
system, where there's regular traffic, but out at the jump points, there's
chaff you just don't know's there. And maybe stuff somebody meant to dump—ship-killers, scan-invisible stuff, you
don't know."
"Shit."
Cold chill went down Ben's back. "These guys ever made a run with Mama
shoving you?"
"A lot of these
guys have done it—if you mean the
combat jocks. Yeah. That's what it's like. And we just run ahead and blow the
sumbitches they dump out of the carrier's path."
"You're
kidding."
"That's what she
does."
"That's the damn
stupidest thing I ever heard!"
"That's why they
like us Belter types. Shipkillers and rocks—no difference. Same gut feeling for how
rocks move— same thing that
makes a good numbers man or keeps a Shepherd out of the Well, that's what they
want."
"Hell if,
Dekker, hell if. Not this Belt miner!"
"You a good
miner?" Dekker had the nerve to ask.
"A live one! On
account of I never let MamBitch boost us like a missile—except once. In which you figured, you
son of a —"
Meg said, "Hell,
Ben, they give you guns...."
"Yeah, and it
won't work—that's what they're
doing in
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CJ CHERRYH
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161
there, they're
brainwashing those poor sods, they brainwashed him, for God's sake, blow rocks
out of the way, hell! They got that on those tapes?"
"Not yet,"
Dekker said, just as quiet and sober as if he was sane. "But they'd like
to. Get the reactions right on one run, so they can bottle it and feed it into
the techs— word is, that's what
they want to do, ultimately. Get one crew that can do it. And they'll teach the
others. Hundreds of others."
"God," Sal
said, and hooked a thumb back at the human factory. "Like that!"'
Dekker shrugged.
"That's what they think."
"That's what
they think," Ben muttered. The human race was shooting at each other.
Dekker said Union was building riderships, too—
"I thought the
other side was where they wired you to a machine and taught you to like getting
blown to hell. Not here. Not on this side, no way, Dek-boy. What the hell are
we fighting for? That's Union stuff in there!"
"They developed
it, what I hear."
"God."
" 'Not yet,'
" Meg quipped.
"Damn funny,
Meg."
Ben looked at Dekker,
looked at Meg and at Sal, with this sudden sinking feeling—this moment of dislocation, that said
he was surrounded by crazies, including the woman he went to bed with;
including every hotshot Shepherd tight-ass in this whole establishment, and the
CO, and the lieutenant.
"What's it do to
your reflexes?" Meg said.
Dekker said,
"Screws 'em to hell. Scares shit out of you. Like I said at breakfast.
Hands move, you don't know why, you threw a switch, you don't know why. Moves
are right. But you got to convince yourself they are. You can't doubt."
"Any chance it
came around on this Wilhelmsen?"
Dekker didn't answer
that for a second or so. Ben wasn't
sure about keeping
his breakfast. "Yeah," Dekker said. *'But that's the one thing you
never better think. You never mink about it. Not in the sims. Especially in the
real thing—"
Dekker's voice
wandered off. He stood there with his band on a door switch and looked off
somewhere, just stood there a breath or two—then drew a larger breath and said,
"Worst enemy
you've got—asking whether your
moves are right. You just can't doubt—"
"Yeah," Ben
said, with the sudden intense feeling they had to get him out of this hallway
before a guard saw him or something. "Yeah, right. Why don't we go tour
somewhere else? Like what there is to do on this station?"
Dekker looked at him
like he'd never thought of such a thing. "Don't know that there is. This
isn't One."
"What I've seen,
it isn't even R2. What do you do for life in this can? Play the vending
machines?"
"Not much time
for social life," Dekker said faintly. Which reminded him there hadn't
been outstanding much in TI, either. Even attached to Sol One, where there was
plenty.
"Not much where
we've been," Meg said. "Either."
They walked down the
hall in this place full of labs where human beings learned to twitch like rats,
to guide ships that moved too fast to think about, and you couldn't help
thinking that helldeck on R2, for all R2's faults, had been the good old
days....
"So what do you
want to do, Dek-boy? I mean, granted we all get our wants, —what's yours?"
Scariest question
he'd ever asked Dekker. And Dekker took a while thinking about it, he guessed,
Meg sort of leaning up against Dekker, one visible hand on his arm— where the other one was might have
something to do with his concentration....
But Dekker said, real
quiet, "I want to be the one cuts that tape. I want to be the one that
does it, Ben."
He wished he hadn't
asked. Sincerely wished he hadn't
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CJ CHERKYH
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asked. Sincerely
wished Meg would put her hand somewhere to disrupt the boy's concentration and
shake him out of his spook notions.
"There a
chance?" Meg asked, quiet too; and he thought. God, it's in the water,
they got to put it in the water—
Dekker didn't answer
that one right off. * 'If they let me back in the sims, there is..." And a
few beats later. "But I'm not doing it with you, Meg. I can't do it with
you."
Silence from Meg.
Then: "Yeah."
"I don't mean
that." Dekker stopped cold, took Meg by the shoulders and made her look at
him. "I mean I don't want to. I can't work with you...."
Meg didn't look real
happy. Meg was about as white and as tight-lipped as he'd ever seen her. Meg
shoved his hands off. "You got a problem, mister? You got a problem widi
me not being good enough, that's one thing, you got a problem about setting me
on any damn shelf to look at—
that's another. You say I'm shit at the boards, that's all right, that's your
damned opinion, let's see how the Aptitudes come out. I'll find a team and I'll
fly with somebody, we'll sleep together sometimes, fine. Or I'll wash out of
here. But you don't set me on any damn shelf!"
After which Meg
walked off alone down the hall, sound of boots on the decking, head down. Not
happy. Hell, Ben thought, with a view of Dekker's back, Dekker just standing
there. Sal was with him—he
wondered that Sal didn't go with Meg; he was still wondering when Dekker lit
out after Meg, walking fast and wobbling a little.
"You make sense
out of either one of 'em?" he asked Sal.
"Yeah," Sal
said. "Both."
Surprised him. Most
things came down to Belter and Inner-systemer. So maybe this was something he
just wasn't tracking. He asked, for his own self-preservation: "Yeah? I
know why he's following. I don't know why she's pissed."
Sal said, "Told
you last night."
"He didn't say
she couldn't fly. He said—"
"He said not
with him. Not on his ship. She'll beat his ass. That's what he's asking
for."
Talking was going on
down the hall, near the exit. Looked hot and heavy.
Sal said,
"She'll pass those Aptitudes. You never seen Meg mad."
He thought he had.
Maybe not, on the other hand. Meg was still lighting into Dekker—boy was a day out of hospital, shaky on
his feet, and he didn't look as if he was holding his own down there.
Then Dekker must've
said something, because Meg eased off a little.
Probably it was Yes.
Probably. Meg was still standing there. Meg and Dekker walked off together
toward the security door, so he figured they'd better catch up.
The other side of the
door, Meg said, "We got it worked out."
Ben said, "Not
fair, man's not up to this." Dekker looked as if he wanted holding on his
feet, as was. But Dekker said,
"Going to try
for that tape, Ben. You want to test in?"
He threw a shocked
look back at the doors, where roomfuls of walking dead were flying nonexistent
ships. 'To that? No way in hell. Non~com-ba-/a/H, do you read? No way the UDC
is risking my talent in a damn missile. I'll test for data entry before I do
that—"
"What's
Stockholm got?" Sal asked. "They say Pell's got a helldeck puts Sol
to shame. Got eetees and everything."
"Yeah?" He
was unmoved. "I've seen pictures. Can't be mat good in bed."
"Got real
biostuffs, just like Earth. There's Pell, there's Mariner Station—"
"Yeah, mere's
Cyteen going to blow us to hell or turn us into robots. Don't need to go to
Cyteen—our own service is
trying to do it to us..."
Seriously gave him
the willies, mat did. Get into his mind and teach him which keys to push, would
it?
A programmer didn't
need any damned help like that.
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CJ CHEMYH
No answer, no answer,
and no answer. Graff was beyond worrying. He was getting damned mad. And there
was no place to trust but the carrier's bridge, with the security systems
engaged—but workmen had been
everywhere, the UDC had very adept personnel as capable of screwing up a system
as their own techs were of unscrewing it—and
it was always a question, even here, who was one up on whom. "I know the
captain knows about Dekker," he said to Saito and Demas and Thieu—age-marked faces all; and the only
reassurance he had. "Pollard, Aboujib, Kady all shipped in here—you'd think if he is moving them,
they'd be couriering something, a message, two words from the captain—"
"Possibly,"
Saito said, over the rim of her coffee cup, "he feared some shift of
loyalty. Dekker is the key point. None of them have met in over a year. Friends
and lovers fall out. And Pollard is UDC."
"They came.
Dekker's leavetaking with Kady was—
passionate to say the least. Pollard joined him here. Protocol says none of mis
is significant?"
"They're not
merchanter. That's not what's forming here."
Puzzles, at the depth
of things. Silence from the captain, when a word would have come profoundly
welcome. He looked at Demas, he looked at Armsmaster Thieu, he looked at Saito.
Com One. If Victoria spoke officially, it was Saito's voice. If the Fleet spoke
to Union or to blue-skyers, it was Saito, who made a study of words, and
customs, and foreign exactitudes—and
psychologies and expectations.
"What is
forming?"
Saito shrugged.
"That's the question, isn't it? I only point out—you can't take our social structure as
the end point of their evolution. Blue-skyers and Belters alike— their loyalties are immensely complex.
Ship and Family don't occur here. Only the basis for them. Difficult to say
what they'd become.**
HELLDURN
165
"Prehistory,"
Demas murmured.
"Prejudice?"
Saito asked softly.
"Not prejudice:
just there's no bridge between the cultures. The change was total. Their
institutions are seminal to ours. But they don't need kinships, they don't need
to function in that context. Their ancestors did. We've pulled our resource out
of the cultural matrix—"
"Matrices.
Wallingsfordian matrices."
God, they were off on
one of their arguments, splitting theoretical hairs. Demas was a hobbyist, and
the carrier's bulletin board had a growing collection of Demas' and Saito's
observations on insystem cultures. He hadn't come shipside for Wallingsfordians
versus Kiimer or Emory.
"Saito. Is the
captain setting up something you know about?"
A very opaque stare.
"I'd tell you."
"Unless you had
other orders. Has the captain been in contact with you? Am I being set
up?"
A moment more that
Saito looked at him and never a flinch. "Of course not."
CHAPTER
6
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?"
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HELLDURNER
167
"He's saying put
the boy back into lower levels. Use MitcheH'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 il 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."
16fl
CJ CHERRYH
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. 1 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-
H ELLOURNER
169
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 mat, 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 mat 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
170
CJ CHERRYH
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
HELLDURNER
171
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—//oven'r
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."
172
CJ CHEIWH
"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 die 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
HELLBURNER
170
Fleet. And you did
try to get it screwed down tight, whenever you talked deal.
"Dekker's back
in the program."
"Marginally back
in die 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'11 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
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CJ CHEIWH
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 mat, and he'd been ready to come from the
bottom again—
HELLDURNEP,
175
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 mat, that had busted her from the Earth shuttle
to the Belt;
176
CJ CHEIWH
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?"
HELLDURNER
177
"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 mat. 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
178
CJ CHEFWH
HELLBURNEK
179
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
i everybody. He tried
to look elsewhere, and meanwhile the
-fieutenant was
saying they'd better move this out of here, ke'd take him in custody —
- „ Please God. Anywhere, fast.
The other voice said:
"I think we'd both better get mis moved out of here," and he made out
the blurry face now lor 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 VUlanueva doing
the same, telling them they were all dunned fools, telling them how they were
on the same
Yeah, he thought.
Yeah. Tell 'em that, lieutenant.
180
CJ CHERRYH
HELLBURNER
181
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 organiza-.tion 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 die 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 ber 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
Jtarships had only been a kid's romantic answer—but Cory had come to the Belt because
she'd thought she could
162
CJ CHEIWH
HELLDURNER
160
double and triple her
money freenmning—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 die 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 die'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
1S4
CJ CHERRYH
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."
HELLDURNER
165
"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 27th, out at 2030h the 29th, 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
166
CJ CHEfWH
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?"
HELLDURNER
167
"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:
'Til 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...."
186
CJ CHERRYH
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.
HELLGURNER
189
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
190
CJ CHBWH
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
HELLBURNEK
191
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
mat? 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 mat 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 mat 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
192
CJ CHEtWH
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
HELLBUKNEK
193
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 al'truism, 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 mat 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
194
CJ CHERBYH
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,
natiirlich."
"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
HEILBUKNER • 195
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
196
CJ CHERRYH
HELLBURNER
197
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-corn," 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.'1' 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 corn-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 communique*."
- 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
•198 • CJ CHERFWH
is handling approach
and docking. In the meanwhile my command has its own set of procedures,
primarily involving dock access at mis point. I'd suggest we move your security
into a secondary position and move ours into supervision of debarcation
facilities."
"I've no
authorization to do that. You'll wair, you'll bloody wait!"
"I'll
wait," he said, trying to add up in his head what all the Alpha and Beta
Points on mis 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, mat carrier will dock in a little less than two hours,
by which time I have to have a secure perimeter, colonel, mat'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 mat a transfer of command had happened, but how it had
happened, he had no idea. The thought even occurred to him mat 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 die, 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 mat didn't make sense.
So he took a quiet
leave, out through the anxious secre-
HEILDURNER
199
tary'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-A11, 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.
CHAPTER
9
Lt. J-G Jurgen
Albrecht Graff SB/Admin 2152h JUN24/23; FGO-5-9 Command of Sol B hos been
transferred to FleetOps. You ore hereby ordered to render all appropriate
assistance, including securing of files and records, under direction of Comdr.
Edmund Porey....
Commander. The hell!
And Jean-Baptiste?
Mazian's second-senior?
Thoughts ran down
very scattered tracks since that message. Thoughts needed to, on an operational
level: Tanzer was only marginally cooperative, communicating through his
secretary, BaseCom was a steady stream of query and scant reply from the UDC at
Sol One—one assumed: a great
deal of it was going in code one assumed ReetCom couldn't breach.
Tanzer had been
blindsided, that seemed evident. And maybe FleetOps had had to keep the junior
officer in the far -200-
HELLBURN ER
201
dark to carry it off,
but it was evident, at least as best he could put matters together, that the
business with the committee and the general had been a flanking action—try to stir up some chaff, maybe throw
a rock into the Sol One hearings. Who knew?
Certainly not the
junior lieutenant. Possibly the Number Ones had. Certainly the captain had—and kept silent in spite of his
repeated queries, which Saito of course had sent, the way he'd ordered Saito to
do...
Damn and damn.
The deception shook
him. You relied on a crew, you dumped all your personal chaff and trusted, that
was what it came down to. You assumed, in throwing open everything you had,
that you had some kind of reciprocity. Never mind the gray hair he didn't have.
The Fleet could decide he was expendable. The Fleet could use him any way it
had to. But they put you in charge, you made what you thought were rational
decisions and if the people who were supposed to be carrying out your orders
weren't doing that, you trusted they'd at least trust you enough to tell you—before you assumed you had a power you
didn't, and put yourself and them into a no-win.
You did the best you
could in a touchy situation and they promoted Edmund Porey two ranks in the
last year?
God, what did the man
do? The Captains had to know Porey. Had to. Were they blind?
But Nav Two on Carina
had a good head for Strategic Operations—Porey
was back and forth to the Belt, Porey was ferry-captain on the carriers as they
moved in for finish, which made him currently one of the most experienced with
the ships, and Porey was probably working tight-in with Outsystem and Insystem
Surveillance: that had to be where he got the merits. Clever man. Clever man,
Edmund Porey was, and, clearly now, command-track, which he himself would never
be: hyperfocus and macrofocus weren't the same thing—not by a system diameter they weren't.
202
CJ CHEIWH
So Porey had the
stuff. Clear now how desperately they needed a mind of Porey's essential
qualities.
Clear now whose
command he just might end up serving Helm for. The captain hadn't trusted him.
So they brought Porey in over his head?
He didn't want to
think about that. Instead, he arranged his priorities and issued his orders,
trusting they were getting through. It gave him the same surreal feeling he'd
had writing his will, for the handful of personal possessions he did own—that past the time those instructions
were carried out, his personal existence was going to be very much different.
He had ordered the
records secured. That first. There were a lot of extremely upset UDC security
personnel on the loose. There had very nearly been an armed stand-off. The UDC
ordered erasure on certain files, he was quite certain. He was equally certain
he had been too late to prevent that, during the time of the stand-off and
queries flying back and forth between his office and Tanzer's—he was sure UDC security had done
exactly what they should have done, and that he had not been able to prevent it
(although outside of going hand to hand with UDC personnel and cutting through
a lock he didn't know what he could have done) would be written down for a
failure on his part.
He had not let them
throw die database into confusion. That was a plus. He had not lost the library
tapes. That also. He had ordered personnel in detention transferred; he had
taken hospital and testing records under Fleet protection. He might order the
release of detainees, but the disposition of those cases as a policy issue was
not within his administrative discretion. He did not like the new commander.
He, however, did not personally approve of creating administrative messes,
which, counting his administrative style and Pbrey's, might be the worse for
the difference. He advised the UDC officers that all facilities were passing
under Fleet administrative command, and personally phoned the UDC provost
marshal and UDC Legal Affairs to be certain that all
H E L L DU RN ER
203
legal proceedings
were frozen exactly where they were: no sense letting anything pass into record
that need not.
Demas called, to say
that the carrier was braking, directly after ceasing acceleration. Demas said
that there was a contingent of marines aboard needing gravitied accommodations.
"I copy that.
What's the head count?"
"Two
thousand."
That was a carrier's
full troop complement. They wanted miracles. He called Tanzer, he listened to
the shouting, he calmly requested invention, and ordered an emergency galley
set up in an idle SoICorp module, ordered its power-up, ordered an Intellitron
communications center linked in as FleetCom relay for the marine officers,
ordered the Fleet gym given over to troop exercise, the Fleet exercise schedule
combined with the UDC, on alternate days; located every class-4 storage can in
Sol-2, shifted all class-4 storage to low-g and ordered station ops to
consolidate the remainder and clear section D-2 for set-up as habitation. Sol-2
civil Ops bitched and moaned about access-critical supplies.
"I assure
you," he said coldly and courteously, "I appreciate the difficulty.
But human beings have priority over galley supplies... That is a problem. I
suggest than you move your dispenser equipment to 3-deck to handle it. There
are bottles and carts available... —Then
get them from maintenance, or we'll order them. I'm sure you can solve
that...."
Meanwhile, die thin
nervous voice of approach control tracked the carrier's braking, in a tone that
said approach control wasn't used to these velocities. Inner system wasn't a
place merchanters ever moved at anything like that v. Merchanters drifted into
the mothersystem at a sedate, mind-numbing leisure, sir, while bored techs and
mechanics did whatever repair they'd had on backlist— days and days of it, because the
mothersystem with all its traffic had regulations, and a starship, which
necessarily violated standard lanes, made mothersystem lawyers very anxious.
The
204
CJ CHERRYH
mothersystem was a
dirty system. The mothersystem had a lot of critical real estate, the
mothersystem had never accurately figured the astronomical chances of
collision, and the Earth Company had made astronomically irritating
regulations. Which they now saw Exceptioned. That was the word for it.
Exceptioned, for military ships under courier or combat conditions.
The ECS4 wasn't even
at hard stretch. But station was anxious. If braking utterly failed
(astronomically unlikely) that carrier would pass, probably, fifty meters in
the clear. But tell them that in the corridors, where the rumor was, Security
informed him, dial the carrier was aimed straight at
them.
Porey, the bastard,
might shave that to 25 meters, only because he hated Earth system. But Porey
never said that in outside hearing.
Porey had other
traits. But leave those aside. Porey was a strategist and a good one, and that,
apparently, was the priority here. Not whether Edmund Porey gave a damn about
the command he'd been given. Not whether he had any business commanding here,
over these particular mindsets.
The Shepherds were
his crews, dammit, down to the last two women the captain or someone had
finagled in here.
Fingers hesitated
over a keypad.
The captain. Or
someone. Anyone in Sol System must have known more than he had. What in hell
was going on?
He had a call from
Mitch Mitchell on the wait list. He returned it only to ask, "Where are
you?"
"Sir?"
Mitch asked. "What's going on? What's—"
He said, "Where
are you?"
Mitch said,
"Your office in two minutes."
"You don't read,
Mitch. Where?"
"Coffee machine
in one."
Not that long to work
a carrier into dock, not the way they'd learned it in the Beyond, especially
when it was a tube link and a straight grapple to a mast. The carrier used
HELLDUKNER
205
its own docking crew—marines, who simply moved the regular
staff aside. More and more of them. A familiar face or two: Graff recognized
them, if he couldn't place them. Carina dockers. Mazian's own crew. A lot of
these must be.
Lynch, the
sergeant-major identified himself, close-clipped, gray-haired, with no ship
patch on his khaki and gray uniform, but Graff recalled the face. He returned
the salute, took the report and signed it for transmission of station Secure
condition.
More of them were
coming off the lift. "Sgt,-major," he said, with a misgiving nod in
that direction. "We've had a delicate situation. Kindly don't antagonize
the UDC personnel. We've got a cooperation going that should make your job
easier."
"The commander
said take the posts. We take 'em, sir."
He frowned at the
sergeant-major. Darkly. Kept his hands locked behind him, so the white knuckles
didn't show. "You also have to live here, Sgt.-major. Possibly for a long
while. Kindly don't disturb the transition we have in progress. That also is an
order."
A colder face. A
moment of silence. Estimation, maybe. "Yes, sir," Lynch said. Carina
man for certain. Dangerous man. Close to Mazian. Lynch moved off, shouted
orders to a corporal.
Steps rang in unison.
Breath steamed in the air in front of the lift. Marines were headed for the
communications offices, the administrative offices, the lifesupport facilities,
simultaneously.
The lift let out
again. Armored Security and a scowling, close-clipped black man in a blue dress
jacket.
Graff stood his
ground and made his own bet whether Porey would salute or put out a hand.
It was the hand.
Graff took it and said, "Commander."
"Lieutenant.
Good to see you." He might have been remarking on the ambient temperature.
"I take it the report is in our banks."
206
CJ CHDWH
"It should be. I
take it you heard about the interservice incident. We have personnel in the
brig..."
"The colonel's
office," Porey said, shortly, and motioned him curtly to come along.
Quiet in the cell
block, deathly quiet for a while. Then someone yelled: "Hey, Pauli."
"Yeah?"
"You know that
five you owe me?"
"Yeah?"
"Cancel it. You
got that sumbitch."
"That sumbitch
is in here!" another voice yelled. "That sumbitch is going to whip
you good, Basrami!"
"Yeah, you got a
big chance of doing that, Charlie-boy.
How was
dessert?"
"Your guy can't
navigate an aisle! What's he good for, him and his fe-male pi-luts? Couple of
Belter whores, what
I hear—"
Dekker stood at the
bars, white-knuckled, Ben could see it from where he sat. From down the aisle
Meg's high, clear voice. "You a pi-lut, cher, or a mouth?"
"You come in
here to save Dekker's ass? Bed's what you're for, honey. It's where you better
stay."
Ben winced. Meg's
voice:
"Fuck yourself,
Charlie-boy, but don't fuck with me. What are you, a tech or a pilot?"
"Pilot, baby,
and you better stay to rock-picking. You're
out of your
league."
Chorus of derision
from one side of the cell-block. Shouts from the other. Dekker hit the
cross-bar with his fist, muscle standing hard in his jaw, and from down the
row, Meg
shouted:
"You got a bet,
Charlie-boy."
Wasn't any way she
wouldn't take a challenge like that. Her and Sal. Ben felt his gut in a knot,
saw Dekker lean his head against the bars, not saying anything, that was the
HEILBURNER
207
danger signal in
Dekker. And somebody down the row yelled,
"Hey, Dekker!
You hearing this?"
Shouting over the top
of it. Dekker had to answer, had to, way the rules worked, and Ben held his
breath and crawled off the bunk, not sure what he was going to do if Dekker
blew.
"Dekker? You
hear?"
Man couldn't talk.
Ben added those numbers fast, yelled out: "He's ignoring you, mouth!
You're boring."
"Funny he had a
lot to say when Chad bought it! That right, Dekker? That right?"
Ben shoved his arm,
not hard. Dekker was frozen. Hard as ice. Staring into nothing. Other guys were
yelling. Something hit the middle of the aisle and rattled to a stop. And
Dekker looked like a guy hit in the gut, wasn't saying anything, wasn't
defending himself, was letting others do it. Another shove wasn't going to push
him into thinking. God only knew what it might do. He had the look of a man on
the edge of cracking and Ben didn't know what to do with him, he didn't know
how to answer the catcalls and the shouting that was going on, he hoped to hell
for the MPs to come in and break it up. Wasn't any more from Meg. He could hear
Sal's voice in the middle of it, but he had a desperate feeling he was in a
cell with half a problem and Sal had the other half...
"Hey, Custard
Charlie," somebody yelled. "You want to run the sims full hours? Take
you on."
That was a hit.
Belters tagged you and you stayed tagged until you burned it off—and then it could come back years
later.
"Take you on,
take Dekker and his women on, any day, any day—what about it, Dekker? You got a voice,
pretty-boy? Where's your ladies?"
'Ladies' included one
UDC shave-head in the mix, Ben figured, but he wasn't going to get into it,
wasn't his business, wasn't going to win a thing.
206
CJ CHEPAYH
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209
But Dekker came alive
then, shouting, "We got enough of that Attitude, mister, we got too damn
many dead with that Attitude. I liked Chad, you hear me, you son of a bitch? I
liked him all right, it was your own CO set him up." Dekker's voice
cracked. He wasn't doing highly well right now, but at least the jaw had come
unwired. He hit his fist on the bars, turned around and said to the ceiling or
the walls, Ben didn't think it was to him, "God, they're making me crazy—they're trying to make me crazy."
Wouldn't touch that
line, Ben told himself, and held his breath, just stood out of the way while
Dekker walked the length of the cell and back.
"Hey,
Dekker," another voice yelled. "You son of a bitch, was that your
mama on the news?"
Shit. Dekker was at
the bars and that knot was back in his jaw. "You want to discuss it? Is
that Sook?"
"No way,"
another voice yelled out. "Sook's not guilty. That was J. Bob."
Catcalls went one way
and the other. Shouting racketed up and down the hall, until starting with the
far end, it got suddenly quiet. Quiet traveled. Ben leaned against the bars and
tried to see what was going on, and all he could make out was UDC uniforms and
MPs.
"That's
better," someone said. "Keep
it quiet. Fleet personnel are being released—" A cheer went up.
"—to Fleet Security, for your own
officers to sort out. You'll file outside, you'll give the officers your full
name, your serial number, your rank, in that order. You'll be checked out and
checked off..."
"Where do /
go?" Ben muttered, suddenly with the notion he didn't necessarily want to
go into a pool of UDC detainees with a grudge. "Shit, where do / go?"
"You go with
me," Dekker said. "You're in our barracks, you go with me."
Doors had started
opening. You could hear the clicks and the guys moving out.
Their door clicked.
Dekker shoved it and they both walked out. Walked down the hall toward the MPs
and it was only UDC guys left in the cells on the right, staring at them.
They're not going to let me out, Ben kept thinking, they're not going to let me
out of here...
"Wrong flock,
aren't you?" an MP asked him; but the other said, "That's all right,
that's Pollard."
It wasn't highly all
right. Hell if it was. He was all but shaking when they got through the doors
and out of the cell block, into the outer hall where sure enough, a couple of
Fleet Security officers were waiting with a checklist. "Dekker,"
Dekker muttered, "Paul F...." and didn't get further than that before
the senior officer said,
"Dekker, go with
the man. —You Pollard?"
Ben nodded. Saw one
of the Security officers motion Dekker toward another set of doors, saw Dekker
look at him and had this panicked sudden notion that if he let Dekker off alone
something stupid was bound to happen—Keu
and the lieutenant had tagged him with Dekker, and the only way to ensure
Dekker didn't drag him into worse trouble was to stay with him. "Excuse
me," he said, "but I have orders to keep an eye on him—lieutenant's orders ..." Highest
card he knew.
But the guy said,
"You have the commander's orders to go to your barracks and stay put until
further notice. The lieutenant's not in command now. Comdr. Porey is."
He must have done a
take. He felt his heart stop and start. "Commander Porey?"
"Follow orders,
mister. This whole station's under the commander's orders. The UDC's command's
been set aside."
He wasn't the only
one in the area now. Mason and Pauli had shown up under escort. "Hot
damn," Mason said.
But Ben thought, with
a sinking feeling, Oh, my God....
Graff was extremely
glad he didn't have to hear what happened inside what had, until an hour ago,
been his office. Occasional words came through the closed door,
210
CJ CHEfWH
HELLBURNER
211
while he stood
outside in the hall with Tanzer's aide Andrews, neither of them looking at each
other, with MPs and Fleet Security at their respective ends of the corridor.
It was not a happy
situation. He didn't like Tanzer. But he felt only discomfort in seeing the man
finally walk out of the office white-lipped and red-faced. Tanzer swept up
Andrews and walked back the way he had come, with, as Graff understood Porey's
intentions, no transfer out of here, no resignation accepted, and a hardcopy of
an order from Geneva that in effect put Edmund Porey in charge of Tanzer's
office and Tanzer's program.
He still didn't know
how it had happened, or what might have shifted in the halls of power, as the
captain would put it. He hadn't talked to Demas or Saito in any informality,
hadn't exchanged anything with them but ops messages as they coordinated
internal security with the marine details and Porey's own Fleet Security force.
And not a word even
yet from the captain. Which might be because he didn't rate one in their list
of priorities. But which left him wondering again—what wasn't perhaps wise to wonder.
Since Porey had
issued no request for him, since Andrews and Tanzer were gone, he walked down
to the intersection of corridors and to the messhall, only observing the temper
of things. There were very few out and about, but Security, and aides.
Tone down the dress,
he'd advised Mitch. Between you and me; but pass it on—things are going to shift. Minimum
flash. Minimum noise for the next few days. Observe this man before you make
any push at him. Do you read me? I'm not supposed to be telling you this. If it
gets out mat I did, it will be to my damage. Do you understand me?
Longest solemn
silence he'd ever gotten out of Mitch. Then Mitch had tried to ask him
specifics—who is this guy? What
in hell—excuse me,
lieutenant, —but what in hell's
going on with the program?
Apparently, he'd
thought to himself, politics of a very
disturbing bent. But
he'd said to Mitch, I don't know yet. It's a wait-see. For all of us.
He went to the
messhall, as the most likely place to find anyone out of pocket, anyone who had
missed the barracks order, or thought he was the universal exception—an attitude more likely with Belters
than with UDC or merchanters, and he was resolved none of his trainees was
going to get swept up by Security—
None of his had met
Porey's idea of Security. None of his own Security people got nervous at a
joke. Ease off, they'd say. That's enough. They'd call the Belter in question
by name or nickname, like as not, and get a generally good-natured compliance—
Not now. Not with
these men, not with Lynch. He didn't know where they'd pulled this particular
batch of marines in from, but they didn't have the look of basic training—Fleet Command had pulled something in
from the initial set-up squads, he'd bet on it, though he'd have to get into
Fleet Records to find out, but these weren't eighteen-year-olds, they weren't
green and they sized up an officer they didn't know before they even thought
about following his orders.. ..
Merchanters, maybe.
But serving as line troops—when
the Fleet needed every skilled spacer they could recruit? His stomach was
upset. He carded a soft drink out of the machine and spotted a pair of marines
at the administrative entrance, the galley office. What did they think, the
cooks were going to take the cutlery to the corridors?
Exactly why those
guards were standing there. Damned right. Tell it to Porey that the guys
weren't going to go for the knives. Tell it to Lynch. A sight too much real
combat readiness and overreaction in the ambient, thank you. A sight too much
readiness in these troopers for any feeling that things were safe or under
control.
"J-G."
Demas. Behind him. He
took a breath and a drink, and disconnected expression from his face before he
turned around. "We're on standby," he said, disapproving Demas'
212
CJ CHEFWH
HELLBURNER
210
leaving the ship
unofficered, before he so much as realized they weren't the primary ship at
station any longer; Demas said, "LongJohn's on. We've got a while."
He nodded, tried to
think of somewhere pressing to go, or something he had else to do, rather than
discuss the situation with Nav One.
"You all right,
Helm?"
As if he were a
child. Or a friend.
"I'm
tired," he said, which might cover his mood; but it sounded too much like
a whimper. He didn't like that. He didn't like Demas conning him. He said,
point-blank: "How much of this did you know?"
Demas' face went very
sober, very quickly. It took a moment before he said, "Not who."
He hadn't expected
honesty. He hadn't expected that answer. So Demas wasn't happy with the new CO
either. And Demas was indisputably the captain's man. That came clear of a
sudden.
He asked, under the
noise of the heat pumps, "When did this get arranged?" and watched
Demas avoid his eyes. Or look anxiously toward the marines—who might have Security audio, he
realized that of a sudden. Damn, he wasn't thinking in terms of hostile action,
it was their own damned side, for God's sake. But Demas was clearly thinking
about it.
And Demas was the
captain's man.
said, in a low, low
voice, "The Company pulled every string it had, in every congress on the
planet. You want to go out to the ship, J-G?"
Of a sudden he had a
totally paranoid notion, that Demas and Saito might be reeling him in for good,
getting him where he couldn't get into trouble—where he couldn't cause trouble.
Arrest? he asked himself. —Have
I done that badly—or been that
completely a fool?
"Hear
this," the com said suddenly. "This station and all station
facilities, civilian and military, have passed under Fleet Tactical Operations,
by action of the Joint Legislative
Committee. Military
command has been transferred as of 1400H this date to the ranking Fleet
Officer.
"Let me
introduce myself. I am Comdr. Edmund Porey. I am not pursuing the interservice
incident that marred the station's record this afternoon. I am releasing all
personnel from detention with a reprimand for conduct unbecoming..."
The glove first.
"... but let me
serve notice that that is the only amnesty I will ever issue in this command.
There are no excuses for failure and there is no award for half-right. If you
want to kill yourselves, use a gun, not a multibillion-dollar machine. If you
want to fight hand to hand, we can ship you where you can do that. And if you
want to meet hell, gentlemen, break one of my rules and you will find it in my
office.
"Senior officers
of both services meet at 2100 hours in Briefing Room A. This facility is back
on full schedules as of 0100 hours in the upcoming watch. Your officers will
brief you at that time. Expect to do catch-up. If there are problems with this,
report them through chain of command. This concludes the announcement."
He looked at Demas,
saw misgiving. Saw worry.
He thought about that
request to go up to the ship, and said, "Nav, I understand these people.
I've worked with them. You understand? I don't want any mistake here."
Demas looked at him a
long moment—frowned, maybe
reading him, maybe thinking over his options, under whatever orders he had,
from the captain, from—God
only knew.
"J-G, —" Demas started to say. But there
were the guards, who might well be miked. Demas put a hand on his arm, urged
him toward the door, toward the corridor, and there wasn't an office to go back
to, unless he could get one through Porey's staff. Demas' hand stayed on his
arm. He had a half-drunk cup in his other hand. He finished it, shoved it in
the nearest receptacle as they passed.
214
CJ CHEMYH
H EL LQURNE
215
Demas said, in a low
voice, "Helm, be careful." Squeezed his arm til fingers bit to the
bone. "Too much to lose here."
"The
Shepherds'11 blow. One of them's going to end up his example. If you want to
lose the program, Nav—"
"Too much to
lose," Demas repeated; and a man would be a fool to ignore that cryptic a
warning. He let go a breath, walked with less resistance, but no more
cheerfully; and after a moment Demas dropped his hand and trusted his arrestee
to walk beside him.
"Ens.
Dekker," the man said, letting him into GraiF& office. But it wasn't
Graff at the desk. It was Porey, for God's sake—with a commander's insignia. Didn't
know how Porey was here, didn't know why it wasn't Graff standing there, but it
was Fleet, it was brass and he saluted it, lacking other cues. He'd dealt with
Porey before, had had a two-minute interview with the man on the carrier coming
out from the Belt and he didn't forget the feeling Porey had given him men;
didn't find it different now. Like he was somehow interesting to a man whose
attention you just didn't want.
"Ens. Dekker,"
Porey said, with his flat, dark stare. "How are you?"
"Fine,
sir."
"That's
good." Somehow nothing could register good in mat deep, bone-reaching
voice. "Hear you had a run-in with the sims."
"Yes, sir."
Long silence then,
while Porey looked him up and down, with a skin-crawling slowness a man
couldn't be comfortable with. Then: "Bother you?"
"I'm not
anybody's target, sir."
"And you lost
your crew."
"Yes, sir."
"Hear they were
good. Hear Wilhelmsen was."
"Yes, sir."
"So what are
you?"
Nerves recently
shaken, shook. He didn't know what the answer was, now. He said, "I want
to fly. Sir."
"What are you,
Dekker?"
"Good.
Sir."
"You're going
back in that chair. Hear me? You're going to go back in and you're going to
forget what happened here. You want to fly?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then you do
that. You take that crew we've put together for you and you get back in that
sim and you do it, do you hear me?"
He wasn't thinking
clearly. Nobody he'd ever been in a room with gave him the claustrophobic
feeling Porey did. He wanted this interview over. He wanted out of this
office... he wasn't up to this.
"Do you hear me,
Dekker?"
"Yes, sir,"
he said.
"Then you go do
that. I want results. You say you're the best. Then do it. Do you hear
me?"
"Yes, sir,"
he said.
"You're
dismissed."
"Yes, sir,"
he said again, and then remembered Meg; and Ben; and Sal. "But with
another crew, sir, than the one I've been given..."
"The Fleet's
assembled the crew you have at cost and expense, Ens. Dekker. We're told
they're good. We'll see it proved or we'll see it disproved—in the field."
"They're not
ready, sir." He shoved himself forward, leaned on the desk and stared
Porey in the face. "They haven't had the year I've had, they're not up to
this, they haven't flown in a year at least...."
Porey said,
"That's what the sims are for."
"What are you
after, a body count?"
People didn't talk to
Porey that way. He saw the slight surprise in Porey's eyes, and something else,
something that chilled him before Porey said,
"I'm after
whatever you've got. As much as you've got.
216
CJ CHERKYH
Or you die. And your
crew dies. That's understood, isn't it? We're Test Systems here. And you test
the systems. Do you want them to live? Then you don't question me, you do it,
mister. Do you have that?"
"It's not
reasonable!"
"I'm not a
reasonable man." Porey's eyes kept their hold. "I never have been. I
never take second best. Have you got it, Ens. Dekker? Or are you talk, and no
show?"
He trembled. No human
being had ever made him do that, but he shook and he knew Porey could tell it.
' 'We give you
everything you ask for, Dekker. Now you do what you say you can do, you pull
the Hellburoer out. You do it. Don't give me excuses. I don't hear them. Am I
ever going to hear your excuses?"
"No, sir."
"You're meat,
til you prove otherwise. Prove it. Or die. I don't personally care,
Dekker."
He couldn't get his
breath. He couldn't think, he wanted to strangle Porey so bad. He choked on it.
Finally: "Yes, sir. I copy that clear. Am I dismissed, —sir? Because you fucking need me, don't
you, .sir?"
Porey kept staring at
him. Looked him up and down. Said, "Aren't you the bitch, Dekker?"
and finally made a backhanded move that meant Get out. Dismissed.
He took it, saluted,
turned and walked out, oxygen-short, still on an adrenaline burn, and snaking,
while he was still remembering Porey from the ship, remembering that Graff had
said even then: Don't get close to him.
Then he hadn't been
able to figure whether Grarf had meant that literally or figuratively, but he
had a sinking feeling he'd just made a move that amused Porey—in the sense of defying Porey's
expectations. That was an intelligent man—maybe
the most intelligent man he'd ever met; maybe too intelligent to mind who lived
and who died. He believed what Porey had said—he believed lives didn't matter in
there, lives didn't matter in this station at the moment, law didn't matter...
HELLQURNER
217
Guards fell in with
him, the same that had brought him there. He hadn't even any notion where they
were taking him, but they escorted him to the main corridor and told him go to
barracks, everybody was confined to barracks.
Deserted corridor.
Deserted conference rooms. Guards posted line of sight along the curvature. The
vacancy of the corridors was surreal. The echoes of his own steps racketed
crazily in his ears. The downside of the adrenaline surge left him dizzy and
chilled.
several turns, more
empty corridors. Guards at die barracks section door asked for his ID.
"Dekker," he said, and pulled his card from his pocket, turned it
over numbly, all the rush chilled out of him. "Off duty. Just out of
detention."
The soldier guards
said go through. He went, through the corridor into a barracks main-room
crowded with people he knew, people he liked, guys who grabbed his arm and
wished him well. He thought,
If you only knew what
I've done to you ... ...
And almost lost
everything when Meg got through the crowd and flung her arms around him. Cheers
and catcalls from the company, egging her on for a kiss he didn't shy away
from, but all at once he was leaning on Meg, not certain which way was up. Dark
was around him, that hazed back to light and the faces—
You all right?
someone asked him, and he tried to say he was. Guy belongs in bed, somebody
else said, but he said no, and they shoved him at a chair and told him the
galley was sending food to barracks and in the meanwhile things had to be
better, they were under Fleet control, they were trying to straighten out the
duty roster and figure who was on what tomorrow...
Meg hauled a chair up
facing his, grabbed his hands and made him look at her.
"Dek. You
tracking, cher?"
"Yeah," he
said. He wanted a phone, he wanted—he
didn't know now whether he could cope with the news
215
CJ CHEfWH
station or his mother.
He kept hearing echoes, like the sim room. Someone saying, Enjoy the ride,
Dekker. But the voice never had any tone. It drowned in the echoes.
He kept seeing the
accident sequence on the tape. Not threatening, just a problem. He kept
thinking about his mother, the apartment, the dock at R2. He kept seeing
mission control, and a silent fireball. And the dizzy prospect down the core,
all lines gone to a vanishing point. Fire pattern in the sims. Intersecting
colors. Green lines. Track, and firepoints. He shook his head and took account
of the room again, guys he ought to love, if he had it left. But maybe he was
like Porey. Maybe he didn't have it, or never had had. More comfortable not to
have it. More comfortable to love the patterns more than people. Patterns
didn't die. They just evaporated. People went with so much more violence...
"God, he's
spaced. Get him on his feet."
"We're going to
fly with mis moonbeam?" Arm came around him, hauled him to his feet, and
he didn't resist it. "I tell you, I should've been in Stockholm, should've
got my transfer—I hate this
shit." Friends here. People he trusted. People he'd betrayed in there with
Porey, because he'd been a damned fool.
"Man's got to
eat."
"Somebody ought
to call me meds."
"No meds."
He'd had enough. He walked. He got to his room. He hit the bed.
"Didn't search
the room," he thought he heard Meg say. "Didn't mess up the drawers,
I mean, these MPs are politer than Company cops."
"Peut-et'
they're just neater," Sal said; and Ben:
"There wasn't a
search."
"How do
you?" Sal started to ask. And said: "Silly question. Trez dim of
me."
Electronics and
flash-scan assured privacy, even against fiber and remotes. Security swore so.
Graff could feel
HELLDURNEft • 219
secure in this cubbyhole
next the carrier's bridge, if he could trust present company.
Ask Demas and Saito
who they belonged to? They'd say—Captain
Keu. Of course. Saito would say it without a flicker. One preferred to hope and
reason that was the case, rather than ask a pointless question.
"Tanzer's
actually dispatched a resignation," Saito said, apropos of the situation
within the station, "but it came back negative out of Geneva. That means
the UDC wants him where he is. Which could be show of opposition: they could
replace him three days from now. Or they want him where he is because he knows
where the records are and what's in them, which could be useful to them here.
They lost a big one. Forces inside the JLC lost a big one."
"We didn't
know," Demas put in, doubtless reading minds, "when it would shift.
That it might—one hoped."
He considered a
question, shot a sidelong glance at Demas and asked pointblank: "And
Porey? Where does he fit?"
Demas broke eye
contact, just momentarily. Saito's face was absolutely informationless.
Saito said, then,
"Porey is highly successful."
"At whatl"
Anger betrayed him into that bluntness, anger and the memory of dealing with
them differently. "At covering his trail, evidently." If they were
Porey's or about to be, he was laying a firetrack in his own path, he knew he
was, but he had his personal limit of tolerance. And he disturbed them. Even
Saito flinched, looked down, saying:
"Some things are
excused, as long as the results are evident. Some patterns of behavior simply
do not come through in social context...."
"Other
things," Demas said with unexpected harshness, "are blindly ignored.
The captain is head of Strategic Operations. The captain is too valuable to
assign back to Hellburner, so says the EC. Porey is available. He could be
promoted into qualification. That is what happened, J-G, plain and
simple."
220
CJ CHERRYH
He looked at Demas,
saw fire-flags left and right of this conversation and knew he could
self-destruct here. He took a chance on them—a last chance. "Who wanted him?
Who?"
"—promoted him? Who does promote by
executive order these days?"
Mazian. Who wasn't
the best of the militia captains: Keu was; or Kreshov, maybe. But Mazian was
the promoter, Mazian was the one who could smile his way through corporate and
legislative doorways, Mazian could say things the way they needed to be said...
"The Earth
Company," Saito said, "has SolCorp, LunaCorp, ASTEX, all space-based
entities. But it also has its hands deep into the whole EuroTrust industrial complex— Bauerkraftwerke, Staatentek... the
list is extensive—that have very good
reasons to want extension of their facilities outside the reach of pressure
groups and watch committees—
meaning, into space. Those Earth-based companies give the EC an enormous
influence inside the Joint Legislative Committee. The citizen pressure groups
are enormously naive, usually single-issue. They think they move events. But in
general the JLC is riddled with influence-trading, purchase decisions made on
relationships, not quality...."
"Ancient
terrestrial lifeform," Demas said. "Dinosaur. Vast body. Little
brain. It flourished in an age of abundant food supply."
"I've heard the
word," Graff said.
"Not to
overwhelm you with local history," Saito said, "but the UDC is a composite
creature that never did function well. The Earth Company created us to oppose
Cyteen's secession; but it never imagined a splinter colony could raise a
population base of Union's size and it never imagined the light barrier would
fall so quickly."
"More,"
Demas said, "it didn't understand the shipbuilding capacity of an enemy
with no social debt. Ships cost Union nothing but sunlight, ultimately. Do you
want more facilities? Create more workers."
H ELLBURNER
221
"But now the EC
understands," Saito said, "at least enough to frighten them. The
special interests understand enough to see their interests are threatened. Now
everybody wants to manage the crisis. Everybody wants to safeguard their power
base. Everybody believes there's fault, but it's most certainly someone else's.
The free-traders are making headway."
"Union-run
merchanters," GraflF muttered. "Long we'd last. And they'd be nothing
to Union but a supply source. Cyteen manage Earth? There'd be short
patience."
"Possibly they'd
founder of bewilderment. —But
that is the truth, J-G: the Company brought us here because Earth doesn't
believe in star-travelers unless it sees us: and its own problems absorb its
attention. The EC needed the demonstrable presence, the face and the voice to
make the outside real to these people. And whether they've believed their own
myth, or simply view Mazian as manageable—he's
gotten far more important than we planned."
He was listening to
sedition. To conspiracy. The captains had sent Mazian downworld, they'd chosen
their spokesman— who excelled mostly
at salving over wounded egos, at getting the captains to make unified
decisions. It was merchanter command structure: Mazian was only the Fleet's Com
One....
"They're putting
him in single command," Demas said.
"God." He
didn't believe it. He couldn't believe it. But Demas went on:
"The EC stamps
his personnel choices as a matter of course. Yes, he does the things mat have
to be done. But he's not following the rules we laid down."
"Hellbumer has
all but foundered," Saito said, "on citizen groups that fear the EC,
who've insisted the UDC do what it doesn't have the personnel to do—"
"They've run us
out of time," Demas said. "So now, now the EC steps in and gets us
the power to do something—
but it's Mazian they give it to. The captain's still sitting at
222
CJ CHERAYH
Sol One with a mess
on his hands, the whole UDC administrative system suddenly shoved inside our
operations, but—"
"We begged
him," Saito said, "to break with Mazian, to repudiate his personnel
assignments, catch the commercial back here and take command of the carrier,
the hell with Mazian's reputation with the EC."
His heart was beating
faster and faster. He was sure what he was hearing, and surmised what must have
been passing, God, on FleetCom—
"But the captain
won't do it," Demas said, "won't expose dissent among the captains.
Not now, he says: with Earth, appearances and public belief are everything. If
we don't get the riders and the rest of the carriers funded in this legislative
session, we're back to the spooks and the rimrunners."
He was still reeling
from the first shock. Nerves wanted to hype and he tried to hold it. "What
in hell did the captain want me to do here? Was I supposed to foul it up so
badly he'd have to take it over? —Or
is Porey what I won us?"
"That rump
session of the committee wasn't supposed to come here," Saito said.
"You handled it as well as it could have been handled. You were sincere.
You were indignant. You were the epitome of the Fleet's integrity and professionalism.
You didn't know anything to the contrary."
"So now we've
got Mazian's hand-picked command here? Mazian's put Edmund Porey over a program
that's already self-destructing? Have you worked with this man? I have. I was
in the Belt with him."
"We're extremely
concerned," Demas said. "We're concerned about those carriers out in
the Belt, and at Mars, that have yet to have officers assigned. Yes, they'll
bring in our people. But fifteen of the captains will be UDC. That was the deal
that was cut."
His stomach turned
over. A second time. "You're serious."
"That is the
deal. Fifteen of the carriers—with
Earth-born command."
"Who do they
have?"
HELLBURNER
223
Saito made a ripple
of her fingers. "They'll have a selection process. Earth believes in
processes."
"That's fifteen
dead ships—first time they take
them past Viking."
"J-G, this is
the crash course on truth in this venue. Mazian projects well. As a strategist
he's even competent. But thank God for the Keus and the Kreshovs. They'll keep
us alive. They may even keep Mazian alive."
"I've got a—" —kid on the verge of insanity, he was
about to protest, when he recalled he didn't have anything, he didn't have a
command, so far as he knew. "Dekker's not going to work well with Porey.
Dekker's the best we've got. Mitch is not going to work well with Porey. He's
the next. We're going to lose this program."
"No, we're
not," Demas said. "Porey's in command of the program. Porey's put you
in charge of personnel."
"Me? Where did
you hear this?"
"Say it went
through channels."
"Did he do the
picking? Or was my selection—"
"Compromise.
Though in Mazian's view I think you're to keep us in line," Saito said.
"Technically, we equal his rank. But we're not command personnel. We're
not designated as such, by the captain. Consequently the captain can recall us
at will and Porey can't take us under his command—or get us assigned to that carrier. I'm
afraid that isn't your case."
"We're concerned
for that," Saito said. "But there's nothing we can do, but advise,
where our perspective is of use."
He was glad he'd not
had time for supper. He thougnt he might lose it, if that were the case.
"All
personnel?"
"All flight and
technical associated with the program. Tanzer's still there, of course, but
he's promoted sideways, still in charge of R&D, but Hellburner's being
lifted out of R&D—"
"Into whatT'
224
CJ CHETWH
HELLBURNER
225
"Fleet Ops. The
parts manufacturers and the yards are being given a go-ahead, on a promise of
funds tied to test success. They're pushing this ship for production, we're
funded for one carrier's full complement, but no further; and the plain fact
is, we're out of time. Latest projection is—we're going to see the first
carrier-rider system in the field in six, seven months. Theirs or ours.
Naturally we have our preference."
"What in hell
are they asking me to do with these people?"
"Mazian sets the
priorities. Porey carries them out. You keep the crews sane."
"You mean I
promise them anything. Have I got a shred of authority to carry it out?"
For the second time,
Demas evaded eye contact. "I'd say it's more than we can do. But, no, in
effect, you don't."
"Is he
asleep?" Ben asked quietly—made
a trip to the bathroom while Sal was drowsing and stopped for a look-see.
Dekker looked skuzzed, thoroughly, face down in the pillows. Meg was using his
reader, scanning through Dekker's manuals—there
was a lot of study going on in the barracks, over cold dead hamburgers and
breaded fish. The smell out there could gag you. And the atmosphere was crazed.
Guys glad they were going to fly this thing—the pilots and the lunatic lead techs
who made up the core crew.
He should have
counted, he told himself. He'd been a numbers man. He should have added it—and panicked when the number of him and
Dekker and Meg and Sal tallied four, same as the other core crew units out
there.
"He's out,"
Meg said. "Cold. Thank God. Man's seriously needing his sleep."
He came and sank down
on the edge of the other bunk, said, ever so quietly, "You like this
guy?"
Meg shrugged. You
never got unequivocal out of her or Sal. But she was here. She'd risked her
neck and her license for him. Partner, yeah. But Meg didn't do things for one
reason, or even two.
A solid part of it was in that datacard, was in the way Meg looked right now,
sharp and serious and On as he'd ever seen her.
He didn't say what
he'd sat down to say: Flunk that damn test. He slid a glance at Dekker and back
and said, "You know, you better carry a pocket wrench."
Any Belter knew what
a wrench was for, on heIIdeck. Meg's mouth quirked.
"The CO's
crazy," he said very quietly. "I flew out here with that guy."
"So did
we."
"That where they
got him? Belt garrison?"
She shook her head.
Whispered, "That carrier came in from deep. We dunno where. All the time
we were on there, we saw crew, never but once saw him."
"What'd you
think?"
Meg frowned.
"Didn't like the signals."
He said, under his
breath, "We got a serious warning. Don't know what that guy's problem is,
but it is. We saw him far more than once. Just watching us. The body language.
He wants his space, he wants yours. Smiles and laughs but he doesn't smile, you
know what I mean? He watched Dek real close. Dek didn't like him."
"Grounds?"
"Just
that." He didn't think the place was bugged. Events hadn't proven it and
it was too egocentric to mink Pdrey's security had made a straight line to
their quarters. But he got uneasy with the topic. He said, "Helldeck
radar, maybe. Guys you'd insist do the EVA, if it was the two of you in a miner
can, you know what 1 mean?"
Meg got real dead
grim. "Ask Sal about that kind." And then bit her lip like she'd said
too much of Sal's business. "Yeah. Same signals. You ever ship with Sammy
Wynn?"
Awful thought. Guy
with some serious personality faults, mat wouldn't get better on a long, lonely
haul. "I wouldn't share a bar table with Sammy Wynn. Whatever happened to
him?"
226
CJ CHERRYH
"Spaced by now,
I hope." She stopped and looked aside as Dekker turned over and buried his
head in a pillow. Time to go, Ben decided, before they woke Ens. Moonbeam. He
stood up, stood still til he knew Dekker wasn't going to wake up.
"You going to
take the Aptitudes?" Meg asked him.
Sore spot, that.
"Yeah," he admitted. And went back into the room with Sal. He had
signed the assignment roster out there. He hadn't intended to tell them. But
what had happened here, with the UDC CO busted out of command, himself being
caught behind a Fleet Security wall... he didn't give a real thought to a
transfer right now. He could test into something administrative. Damned sure
the Fleet wouldn't want him going back under the UDC curtain with what he'd
witnessed here, if by any means they could finagle hanging on to him—and it certainly looked as if they had
the clout. He didn't have the instincts or the nerves for combat, he'd proved
that before, and that was bound to show. Drugged you down, they did, even for
the basic test. Hooked you up to a machine and read your responses and your
answers. You couldn't fake this one. They said.
He passed the door
back into his room, sat down on the bed carefully, so as not to wake Sal. Low
light, scatter of braids on the pillows, innoeent-as-a-babe profile with parted
lips, slight snub nose—dammit,
the conniving kid was his partner, he liked being with her, he'd found a piece
of himself clicked back into place when she'd come walking into the barracks—and being without her again was a
dreary thought. He earnestly, honestly liked Sal; and Meg; which he'd never
said about anybody but Morrie Bird; and God help him, he could even get
acclimated to Dekker, or just plain nerve-dead.
Fact was, skuz as
this whole place was, somehow the echo and the racket and the coming and going
in the barracks fit him like an old sock—fact
was, he liked the racket and the activity and the accent he'd grown up with
echoing off the bulkheads. Pressure here was from
HELLDURNER
227
fools higher-up,
different than TVs carpeted, high-voltage corridors, where competition was
cutthroat and constant.
But this wasn't any
damn mining run this group was prepping for. At TI your highest chance of fatal
injury was sticking your finger in a power socket or ODing on caffeine. Here—
God, they weren't
even sure the damn ship would work. Rumor out in the hall was that they were
going max v with the program and they still hadn't proved any crew could run it
once—let alone fly it in
combat.
That was crazy. And
he wasn't—even if insanity got
the rest of them.
Sal—go out there and turn herself into a
missile? Sal and Meg end up in a fireball? Hell if, if he could stop it. But he
didn't know how to; couldn't stop Meg, damn the woman, if Dekker couldn't. And
if Meg went, Sal went, and if Sal went—
Oh, hell, he was not
a fool. There were women in Stockholm. There'd be a way to get down there, even
through Fleet Command—if
he just got Aptituded into strategic technical.
Stockholm women
wouldn't ask stupid questions like What's the Belt? They'd have university
degrees and stand and watch the tide come in and the snow fall and... think it
was all damned ordinary.
Hell. Bloody hell
with women. Dekker was saner. At least Dekker knew what he wanted.
CHAPTER
10
Insert card
please," the neutral voice said. The phone clicked. Dekker held the
receiver and waited. And waited. Meg and Ben and Sal were in Testing. His day
didn't start until 1015, when he had an appointment with Evaluations.
Which meant he could go to the gym to try to settle his breakfast and his
nerves; or try a phone call, see if he could get a personal call through to Sol
One, on FleetCom, in spite of the security crackdown.
"Ens.
Dekker." Human voice this time. "Is this an official call?"
"I'm trying to
call my mother." He hated to sound like a strayed six-year-old. Mother
always felt strange to him. Mama he'd long outgrown, though it came naturally
to Belter ears. "It's a next-of. There was something on the news. —Look, can you put me through to Lt.
Graff? He knows the situation."
"—I'm not being obstructionist, Ens.
Dekker. I'm aware of your situation, but I am required to get an authorization
for personal calls."
-226-
HELLDURN ER
229
God, everyone in the
solar system knew his business. "Yeah, well, can you do anything,
FleetCom? The lieutenant's not outstanding easy to find this morning."
"/'// page
him."
"Everybody's
paged him," Dekker muttered. "I'll card in every little bit, I'm
going down to gym 3A."
"I'm sorry. The
gym is now off limits to Fleet personnel. Use the one on 3-deck, section
2."
"How do I get my
clothes out of the locker in 1A?"
"Check with the
office on 3-deck."
Everything was on its
ear. "Thanks," he said glumly, and went four sections and took a lift
in—it was about as much exercise as he
wanted, just walking it. But one thing he'd learned in his tour in the Belt, if
you could crawl to the gym, you crawled there and worked out; and if you got
the spooks or the nerves—you
went there and bumed the chill off, you didn't let your mind go in loops—never let that start, not when you
worked in cold, dark places, with things mat went bang all too commonly.
The office there had
his gym clothes, everything in sacks with old locker numbers. They had his name
on the gym records. They had lockers already assigned to him and his crew....
He hadn't had a run
of things that worked in weeks. It gave him a moment of ridiculous
cheerfulness. He had the whole gym to himself for the hour, everybody else
being in sims or in special briefings—he
wasn't fondly looking forward to his own session with the meds upcoming. Warm
up the sore spots and go in there with the adrenaline burned out of him, was
the plan—lunch on
carbohydrates and go into Evaluation at 1300 warmed-up and hyped, and blow hell
out of their damn tests... he could do it. The doctors had kept him flat on his
back too long, he'd dropped five kilos on the hospital food, and Custard
Charlie Tyson had gotten a couple of good hits in, but he could do it if he
could get the chill out of his bones.
Light workout with
the hand weights raised a sweat.
230
CJ CH0WH
Coordination was
shot. That wasn't good. He leaned on his knees a moment, trying to get his wind
back and the rubbery feeling out of his arms, getting madder and madder at the
meds, at the UDC, at the Fleet that had busted Graff over to a desk job and put
in a bastard with an Attitude—
Temper wasn't
helpful. Demas would say that. Calm down, Dekker. Use your head. Adrenaline's
for speed, not stomach acid.
Yeah. But it didn't
help when the knees wanted to cave in, when you had serious worries about three
fools who'd gotten themselves into a Situation for his sake, and had a CO who'd
flat warned him he didn't give a damn for their survival—
Stomach acid, hell,
he wanted to beat the shit out of Porey, that was why he was shivering. And if
he did that, with all the esoteric consequences of people he knew and didn't know,
it wouldn't stop bastards from being bastards, and wouldn't get Porey out of
here, he'd only make it worse.
He didn't want to be
in this situation. He didn't want to be anybody anyone else relied on for
anything: he was schitz as hell. He was crazy. Ben knew it. He didn't see why
Beet Command couldn't see it. He didn't know why he'd ever been made an issue,
or put where they'd put him, except the Shepherds had needed somebody crazier
than they were to press their differences with the insystemers— and people who wouldn't have given a
damn about him back in the Belt, found a use for him here. He wasn't Paul
Dekker to them: he was this to one group and that to another and nobody really
knew shit about him....
Hi, Dek, good to see
you, Dek, how you doing? He couldn't stand it any more—because Ben was right, they didn't know
him, didn't know he was a screw-up, a damn dumb pusher-jock who didn't think
before he opened his mouth. Only value he had to anyone, the fact that his
nerves jumped faster than average. Only thing he was good at, that ship—that was all that had mattered to him;
Pete and Elly
HELLBURNER
201
and Falcone had had
themselves, and they'd gone together—
the Fleet had thrown them together, they'd tested high, that was all. And they
were good and they'd worked together, but he was burned out this morning, he
didn't even know whether he'd ever felt anything with them but comfort, and mat
was cheap—
He didn't know why
Ben had decided to take the damn test this morning. Ben had skuzzed out on him.
If Ben had held out, Ben might have persuaded Sal and Sal might have reasoned
with Meg—
Like hell. He hadn't
seduced Meg out here. At least Meg and Sal weren't his fault. The ship had done
that. Some lying bastard in the Fleet had done that, who'd told Meg they'd give
her a chance—
Yeah. A chance.
Thanks.
Drug made you
seriously spaced. You had sensor spots patched all over you, in places that
made a body most emphatically wonder if it was procedure or the femme tech
having a few loose circuits of her own—
"Do it
where?" she remembered asking. But the examiner, that was a guy,
nice-looking greyheaded man, asked her to match up all these shapes and holes—God, she hadn't done this one in years.
"I'm not good at this," she said. *'I don't fly little cubes."
Neither did he, he
said. At least he had a sense of humor. So she ran the test and she tracked on
discrimination stuff that flashed on screens, they moved her to another station
and belted her in and the computer spun her around and around—easy piece, nothing hard at all. Til
the floor dropped out from under her and then the thing went through its paces.
Wanted you to draw a
straight line? Right.
Wanted you to get up
and walk one?
Yeah. Maybe.
Sit in the spin chair
again. Wait for the light and press the button while the chair spins?
232
CJ CHEIWH
Siren blast. Right
before the light flash.
Dirty trick,
sumbitch. Dirty trick. Flash again. Flash, flash. Pause. Flash.
Hold the yoke and the
toggles, make the VR lines meet? This was a good one. Hadn't done this one
before....
Weight escaped his
balance and bounced. Dekker ended up on one knee, caught a breath and waited
for the room to stop spinning before he went to pick it up and rack it and lock
it in. Good show he was going to make for the meds in an hour. He drew long
breaths, sat down and felt after the towel to mop his face.
Stars came out of a
vast dark. Lights on the panel glowed with information....
It was in his head,
the same as, in the Belt, you got to seeing rocks in your sleep, not rocks as
they existed in the deep dark, but the way they were in the charts, the courses
they ran, falling sunward, faster and faster, and then more and more slowly
outward—
He wiped the sweat
that stung his eyes. He heard somebody come in, challenged at the office for
numbers and names. "Yeah," he heard someone say, far away and a door
shut...
Echo. Door opening
and closing. He'd seen a shape. He'd talked to someone. But he couldn't
remember to whom. He chased the memory. But the voice mat came back lacked all
tone:
Just checking. Do
what you were doing....
Who in hell would he
take that answer from?
Piece of nonsense. He
could screw this test. They wanted him to discriminate a damn lot of advancing
lines and dots? Easier if the sensors didn't itch.
He muttered, ' 'Quick
way to solve this. Who programmed this?"
Examiner said,
"Don't talk."
HELLBURNER
230
"This is a piece
of shit, major. Begging pardon." Zap. "Damn arcade game."
"Watch that
one."
"This is fuckin'
armscomp! I'm not testing for this—"
Zap.
"You're not damn
bad, lieutenant... But you're not real modest, either."
"I'm damned
good. But I'm not killing things."
"You have a
moral objection?"
He put hands and eyes
on autopilot and left them to search for screen-generated threats. At definable
intervals. Random number generator in the virtuals, for God's sake. "I got
a moral objection. I got a moral objection to getting shot at."
"Exactly what
we're looking for."
He thought about that
reasoning. He thought about screwing the test, while he was zapping stupid
dots. Faster now. "Screw it, you severely got a pattern in here."
"I've been
telling them that."
"Tell you
something." Zap. "I'm supposed to be in Stockholm. Somebody skuzzed
my records." Zap. "Matched me up with the lunatic." Zap.
Zap-zap-zap. "Oh, hell."
"See? Not all a
pattern. You missed mat one. Getting cocky, were you?"
Faster now. "Son
of a bitch," he said.
"You have two
hands, two keysets. Brain can do both operations. Hands can. How good are
you?"
"Damned moonbeam
partner of mine," he muttered. "You give me programming. I'm telling
you—anywhere else is a
waste—" Zap. "I
don't want combat. —I
know what this mother's doing—"
Zap/zap/zap—
Hand on the other
pad. Interrupt to Command level and invoke the chaos o/i off the internal
generators. Obsolete as a security device, but certainly an improvement on this
antique.
234
CJ CHERRYH
H EL L BU
235
Resume. Let them
figure that one. Let their techs come in and patch it if they didn't like it.
"Where did you
get that code?"
"Telepathy,"
he said. "Sir. I told you. I belong in Stockholm."
Watch the lights,
track the dot, do you have any blurring of vision, Mr. Dekker?
Have you had any
headaches?
Stand here, stand
there, look at the light, bend over, Mr. Dekker...
He escaped with a
grudging Release on his card and an admonition to take his mineral supplements,
got to a phone outside the med station and put the card in to check the readout
for messages. Lunch, he thought, might bring people to check then- messages.
Might get a phone call, however muzzy, from Meg, telling him how she was doing.
None from Graff; none
from Meg or Ben or Sal. No authorizations. Just a reminder of his appointment
in Evaluations.
And a note from the
gym that he hadn't carded in his preferred time slot and was he interested in
team volleyball?
Hell.
Marine guards at
every intersection. Corridors everywhere had a decided chill. God, there were
even guards in the messhall....
He started in, saw
Mitch and Pauli and the guys at the tables and they saw him.
Upset him. He
couldn't say why. He walked by for politeness* sake—"Sit down," they said,
offering him a chair. But he couldn't face lunch of a sudden, in this place—too many faces in the room, too many
people trying to be friendly who didn't know all mat was going on with him, and
the guards and the UDC watching him from the other end of the room. He
muttered, "No, I'm on medicals right now, just time for a soft drink,
thanks."
"Got anything
back on the tests?"
Wasn't a thing
stirred in C-barracks but what everybody was in it. "No. Not yet." He
patted the back of Mitch's chair and made his escape to the rec-area foyer,
where he could card a soft drink and a granola bar that tasted like cardboard
and hit his stomach like lead.
They probably were
talking about him back mere. And he couldn't talk to them, couldn't deal with
them until he knew what he was, whether he was going to clear the tests
himself, whether his partners were passing theirs—he wasn't anyone, until he knew who he
was working with, what he was, where he'd be, what they'd assign him to—
Fly again, yeah.
Porey would see to that. Front of the line-up. Or the bottom—at Porey's discretion. He'd opened his
damned mouth, he'd forgotten for a critical second he had partners who could be
in danger from what he did or promised—
Couple of UDC guys
came over and carded a candy bar. Names were Price and McCain. Techs. They
hardly even looked at him, but he was sweating. He kept thinking, If I'd kept
my mouth shut, if I'd done what the colonel wanted, if I'd only once ducked my
head and played the game—
Tray banged
somewhere. The room felt cold. His mother had said, Paul, what is it with you?
Why do you always end up in the middle of it?
He wished to God he
knew that. He wished to God he could go over there with the other guys and sit
down and be what they wanted him to be, but he couldn't even tell them what
he'd done or what he was waiting to find out—
Please God, they'd
Aptitude somewhere down the list, somewhere out of immediate usefulness, and he
could go maybe to Chad's crew, patch things up with them, he couldn't think of
a match-up else he could make that might have a chance. He should have offered
that to Porey, Porey wasn't crazy—he
didn't want to lose another ship, for God's sake: Porey probably would have
called it a good idea—
good for morale, pull the program together. UDC and Fleet.
236
CJ CHERPYH
HELLBURNEP. • 237
He should still
propose that to Porey—talk
to Chad's guys himself in advance, if he could get them to talk to him...
God, why couldn't he
think about people? He was all right with machines, all right with anything
that reacted in just one way when you touched it—-he could understand that. He just—
—couldn't figure how
to stop himself before he said things. When he opened his mouth it was wrong,
when he didn't say anything it was wrong, he never got it figured out, some
people just understood him and most didn't, and the ones that did were always
in trouble because of the ones that didn't. Sum of his life, that. Evaluations
said he was smart. So why couldn't he get that right? Like go in there and
apologize to Porey and take what he had coming?
Because when he
walked up against a guy like that something went snap inside, he went hyper and
he couldn't think, that was the whole damn problem—
So calm down, don't
do that?
It was why the Fleet
had recruited him, it was what they trained him to do, split-second, hyped and
half crazy, and they wouldn't understand he didn't come with an off switch...
Except maybe Graff
understood. But Graff wasn't answering pages today...
Damn him.
A little hyped. They
said, You can relax now. But there wasn't any sleep. Just the boards, alive
with lights. Hands knew where to go and went there. Hell of a way to teach. But
they said, "This is a sim tape. Familiarization. It won't prioritize for
you. Just give you the handedness of the boards...."
"Got it, yeah.
No trouble."
"Don't fight the
sims, Kady. You want to bring that pulse down."
"Yeah. I'm not
fighting it." Happy as hell. God. I want this thing, don't want to screw
it up—God, I don't want to
screw it—
"Calm."
"Yeah,
yeah." So don't get excited, Kady, don't go after it, ride with it, just
float and enjoy it—
"Lot better, lot
better, Kady. How're you doing?"
She laughed. Laughed
like an idiot.
"You all right
there? You know what you're doing?"
Her hands were
reaching. She wasn't doing it. But she didn't object. The sequence made
complete sense. "Jawohl, mate, piece of easy, there."
Clumsy direction,
then. Her hand shook. "Shit!"
Boards went dark.
Direction stopped. She grabbed for the B-panel and the fuse conditions, and the
examiner said, "Abort, abort, it's all right."
"What did I
do?" Her heart was going half light. The drug made her light-headed and
she hated the sensation.
"Tape error. Not
yours. Relax."
Made her mad. They
had no right to screw up. But you didn't get mad while you were at the boards,
you paid attention. All attention. Save mad for later.
"Ms. Kady."
New voice. "That was a system abort. Don't worry about it. You can stand
down."
"Thank
you." Cold and calm. Same as you did when something went seriously wrong.
She flipped the board-standby switch. Habit. Fool, she thought. It was a
toy-board anyway.
"Thank
you." Another delay. "You can get up. Go to the room with the red
light showing. You are in .9 gravity."
"I think I can
remember that," she muttered.
"Some
don't."
"Thanks."
Anger was the immediate reaction. She was embarrassed to beg; but, putting her
foot off the platform: "Do I get another try on mat abort?"
A hesitation.
Somebody had blanked a mike. Then: "How are you feeling?"
"Good enough for
another try." Self-disgust. "If I can get one."
"Get back in the
chair, then."
236
CJ CHEWYH
H ELL BURN ER
209
Thank God. She was
all but shaking. And damped that down. Fast.
"Pulse is up,
Ms. Kady."
"Yeah.
Re-start."
"Hyped as
hell," came a mutter from the earplug. Faint. Then at normal volume:
"The yoke is an automated assist. It is changing its responses. Do you
perceive that?"
"Yeah."
Absolute relief. They hadn't told her the sim could do that. "But I got my
own numbers. Let's shorten this. What are you, IMAT?"
"IMAT or CSET. A
or B, select your format, input your actual license level."
"No
problem." She took B, ran her numbers in, hoping she remembered them,
hoping she was still that sharp, and watched the readout for response profiles.
"Shit! Excuse." 12.489 sudden g's on a tenth of the yoke range. She
cut it back, re-calced in her head, thinking she could have a seriously pissed examiner
if she dithered too long, but dammit, she needed the fine control on that
hairline correction in the sims and you had to have it wide enough if they
threw you an emergency. Hell of a thrust this sim was set for—different than shuttle controls by a
long way...
Forgot to ask if time
counted. Too late to spare a neuron. You did it right, that was all, you did it
real, hell with them... set the controls to your own touch and take the time it
took, they should have effin' said if there were criticalities not on the
instruments—it was a new kind of
adaptive assist, piece of nice, this was.... All kinds of interlocks and
analyses it could give you. Mining in the Belt, you adapted your jerry-built
and most egregiously not AI ship by whittling a new part out of plastic, and
what you saw on your boards was a whole lot of hard-to-read instruments, not an
integrated 360° V-HUD with the
course plot and attitudes marked in glowing lines. This thing was trying to
find out your preferences, arguing with you when its preconceptions thought it
knew you. But it would listen. —Damn
it, machine, soyez douce, don't get cheek with
me ... used one of
these things ten plus years ago, she had, but, God, that had been an antique,
against this piece...
"All
right." She calmed her breathing rate. Panel lights lit. Scopes lit.
"Go!"
Numbers hemorrhaged.
"God!"
"Nothing
yet?" Dekker asked the desk on his mid-test break; and the secretary in
Testing said, "No, sir. No result yet."
"Are they out
yet? Have they left?"
"1 don't think
so, sir."
He tried FleetCom. He
had a new comtech and had to explain everything again. "I just want to
know if the lieutenant's ever checked in."
"He's in a
meeting," FleetCom said.
"Has he gotten
his messages?"
"/ think He has.
Excuse me...."
On hold again, when
all he wanted to do was hang up; and he didn't want to offend FleetCom by doing
that before the tech got back to him. He wished he hadn't called. Five-minute
break from his own Evaluations, it was 1456 by the clock, the granola bar and soft
drink were wearing extremely thin, and he was regretting it. //he could get off
the phone, he could get down the hall to the vending machines.
No word on his
partners. Aptitudes was a four-hour session. You could take a little longer
coming out from under the trank if you reacted....
God, he didn't know
what to—
"Ens. Dekker?
Sorry to keep you waiting. I did get hold of the lieutenant. He says see him in
his office at 1400. That's 21a, Admin."
"I'm in
Evaluations til 1700. I'm in the middle of tests—"
"Excuse
me...."
Hell!
240
CJ CHE1WH
HELLBURNER
241
He put a hand over
his eyes, he leaned against the counter and waited. Looked pleadingly at the
secretary across the desk, then. "Do they ever take this long on
Aptitudes?"
"I don't know,
sir. I've only worked here for four..."
"Ens. Dekker?
I'm sorry.... the lieutenant says he can't talk at 1700, he's got another
meeting."
"Will he clear a
phone call for me to One? That's all I want."
"/ think he
wants to talk to you about that."
Shit. "Look—" He shut out the light and the
secretary's presence with the palm of his hand. Tried to think. But he kept
seeing fireballs. Hearing that door clank. "Is that all he wants? The
phone call? Or does he want—look,
can / talk to him online? Two minutes."
"He's in a
meeting, sir. Just a moment."
He was late by now,
by two minutes. You weren't late in Evaluations. You didn't antagonize the
examiners. Who were UDC to begin with.
"The lieutenant
says he needs to talk to you. He says at 2200."
"2200."
Graff didn't plan to sleep, maybe. "Right. Thanks. Yeah. I'll be
there."
"My partners
aren't out of Test yet," Dekker said. "They went in at 0600. It's
2202 and Testing doesn't answer questions...."
"They're all
right," Graff said, quietly, from the other side of the desk. "I can
tell you that much."
"So what do you
know?"
"That they're
being very thorough."
"They're not
reacting to the drug or anything—"
"No. They're all
right. I did check."
It wasn't regulation.
He wasn't convinced. He wasn't at all convinced.
GrafT said: "On
the other matter—"
"I just want to
call my mother. Make sure she's all
right." He kept
his frustration to himself. He didn't want to push Graff. He was running short
of friendlies in Admin.
Graff said, "I
got your message. I understand. There's a good possibility her phone calls are
being monitored by the police. Possibly by someone less official."
"Who?"
"All we
know," Graff said, "is the same thing you saw in the news. We're
investigating. I could wish this lawyer weren't involved—personally. Is your mother a member, a
contributor—of that
organization?"
"I don't know. I
don't think so. —Arc you asking me her
politics?"
"You don't have
to answer that."
"She hasn't got
any politics that I know of. She didn't when I lived there. I don't think she
would change."
"She was never
politically active. Never expressed any opinions, for or against the
government, or the Earth Company?"
Bit by bit the line
of questioning made him uneasy. It wasn't like Graff—at least as he knew Graff—to probe after private information. He
didn't think it was necessarily GrafFs idea—and that meant whoever was
investigating. So he offered a bit of his own reasons: "I was rab when I
was a kid, the clothes, the haircut—Kady
says I was a stupid plastic, and I guess I was; but I thought I was real. I
used the words. My mother—got
hot about it, said politics was all the same, didn't matter what party, all
crooked, she didn't want any part of it—told
me I was a fool for getting involved. They'd shot these people down on Earth. I
think—"
—Meg was there, he
almost said. But that was more than Graff needed to hear—if a deep spacer cared about the
Company, the Earthers trying to emigrate...
"Think
what?" Graff asked.
He couldn't remember
his thread for a moment. He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. She's just not the
kind. Works a full shift, mostly over, if you want extras you have to do that—and that was all she wanted. A nice
place. Maybe a
242
CJ CHERRYH
HELLBUKNER
243
station share.
Security. That kind of thing. You wouldn't get her involved in anything."
"You know the
Civil Liberty Association?"
"No, sir. I
never heard of them."
"They're the
ones funding your mother's lawyer. They're headquartered in Munich. They
support lawsuits in certain causes, that's mostly what they do. Their board of
advisers has some of the same associations as the Sun Party, the Peace Front,
the Karl Leiden Foundation—the
Party of Man—"
He shook his head.
"I don't know anything about them. I doubt she does."
"They're
Earth-based Internationals: of several related groups, only the Civil Liberty
Association and the Human Research Foundation maintain offices off Earth. They
apparently do each other's business. So I understand. I'm no expert in
terrestrial affairs. But I thought you should know, this organization does have
political overtones that aren't friendly to the program or to the Fleet."
"What do you
want me to do?"
"I only thought
you should be aware of the situation."
Deeper and deeper. He
thought of saying, I'm in no position to restrain her from anything. I can't do
your politics for you. But it was all on their side and nothing on hers. And
probably the lieutenant didn't want a blunt question, but it wouldn't be his
first ofiense this week. "So hasn't the Fleet got strings it might
pull?"
"Possibly."
"So what do you
want me to say to her?"
"Nothing.
Nothing on that score. I just want you to be aware of these things."
Why? In case of what,
for God's sake?
"Do you still
want to call her?" Graff shifted a glance toward the phone on his desk.
He had never believed
of himself that he was smart, no matter what Evaluations told him—if he was smart, he wouldn't be here
now, put on the spot to make an excruciatingly
personal phone call
in front of a man he'd thought he trusted, whose motives he didn't now entirely
understand.
And, God, he didn't
want to talk to her... he was fast losing his nerve.
"Do you want to
do that?"
"Yes, sir,"
he said, before all of it evaporated. "If you can get me through."
Graff took up the
handset and punched in. "FleetCom. Route this through our system, FSO, Sol
One. —Number there?"
"97...2849.
Dekker, Ingrid. Routing can find her." 2210 mainday and she ought to be
home. She didn't have a nightlife—at
least she hadn't had, when he'd been living at home.
"Takes a
bit," Graff said, and gave him the handset. "It's going through,
now."
He held it to his
ear. Listened to the clicks and the tones. His heart was beating fast. What in
hell was he going to say? Hello, mother?
Click. Click-click.
Beep.
"There's a noise
on the line."
"A beep?"
He nodded.
"Somebody's got
it monitored. FleetCom's picking that up."
Hell. It was going
through. He listened for the pick-up. But the answering service came on
instead. Ms. Dekker is out at the moment. Kindly leave your name and number....
You'd know.
"Mother. Mother, this is Paul. I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you're
having...." It was hard to talk coherently to a machine, hard to think
with that steady beep that meant the police or somebody else was listening. *'I
don't know if I can help, but if you just want to talk, I'm here. I'd like to
talk to you. I'd like to help—"
He wondered if he should mention money. But while he was thinking, it clicked
off and connections broke, all the way back along the route, leaving him the
sound of static.
244 • C.J. CHERRYH
"She wasn't
home," he said, and gave the handset back. "I left a message on the
machine."
"Anything that
comes through—you will get. I
promise you."
"Thank
you." They'd taught him to say thank you. Please. Yes, sir. No, sir. Stand
straight. Answer what you're asked. They'd told him he wouldn't fly if he
didn't. His mother hadn't had that advantage in dealing with him. He didn't
remember he'd ever said Yes, ma'am or Please or whatever boys were supposed to
answer to their mothers. Fuck you, he'd said once, in a fit of temper, the week
she'd bailed him out of juvenile court, and she'd slapped his face.
He'd not hit her.
Thank God, he'd held it back, he hadn't hit her. Only respect he'd ever shown
her, mat last year... and if they shipped him out from here—the only respect he might ever have a
chance to show, except that phone call.
"Forgive
me," the lieutenant said. "I have to ask this—in your judgment, is it possible—is it remotely possible she did make
threats against MarsCorp?"
Ingrid Dekker wasn't
a walkover. She wasn't going to stand and take it—not without handing it back. "If
they threatened her. But she wouldn't—wouldn't
just take it into her head to do that, no, I don't believe that." I have
to ask this...
At whose orders...
sir....
"Are you close
to your mother—still?"
God. He didn't want
to discuss it. But the lieutenant had been on his side, Graff if anybody was
still his lifeline. He didn't want to put his mother in a bad light. She was
the one in trouble and she needed all the credit she could get. He said,
looking at a spot on the front of GrafFs desk: "I was a pain in the ass,
sir. She said if I went to the Belt I didn't need to come back. I—was sincerely a pain in the ass, sir. I
was eighteen. I was in with a rough crowd. —I was stupid."
Graff didn't say
anything to that, except: "Have you corresponded with her?"
HELLGURNER
245
"No, sir."
He stared fixedly at that spot on the desk, wondering if they might search his
room and bleed his datacard for it, next use he made. Maybe they already had.
"Not recently. —I've
got about four, five k I'd like to send over to her account. If I could do
that. She's not working, she's going to need the money."
"I'll talk to
Legal. See what the procedures are. —As
I said, we're going to be looking into the case. If mere are strings to be
pulled, maybe we can pull them."
"I appreciate
mat, sir."
"Are you ready
to get back to work?"
"Yes, sir."
Graff keyed something
on the deskcomp. Glanced at it. "I don't know if they can get your friends
back to quarters mis watch. But you're their unit commander, you have access
there on any shift, if you want to check up on them."
Not back to quarters?
Not in this watch? His heart did a tic and a speed-up. He looked at Graff, met
a level, I-can't-tell-you kind of stare.
"What are they
doing?" he asked Graff. "They're hi there for Aptitudes—it's a four-hour test, for God's
sake..."
"You have access
there."
"I've been over
there. They wouldn't tell me a damn thing!"
Graff had never been
one to hold back information, not under Keu, and not under his own
administration. Now...
"I suggest you
go over there," Graff said. "That's all I can say."
Didn't like the
damned drugs. Didn't effin' like the floating feeling. Told you stuff you
didn't want to hear. Told you you'd effin die if you screwed it... and Ben
didn't want to die, he sincerely didn't want to die...
"Fire!"
His heart took a
jump, he felt neg g, he went spinning away—you
should feel blood pooling in your head and your
246
CJ CHERRYH
feet and he didn't,
didn't feel anything right except cold breeze on his face and his lungs getting
air again—
He could see light.
Felt somebody holding his sleeve. He was fiat on his back in g and Dekker was holding
on to him, saying, "It's all right, it's all right, Ben—"
Wasn't who he wanted
to wake up in the arms of. He stared at Dekker, with his heartbeat still
thumping away like explosions, and recalled they were surrounded by dots all
but six of which were trying to kill him—
—except he was in bed
and Dekker wasn't flying the ship.
He took slow
assessment of this fact. He took a look around the ceiling of a disgustingly
barren room, recalled signing his name, and them telling him Sal was in, and
him talking to the tech and screwing with the sim, because he'd been mad as
hell and wanting to get court-martialed and wanting to go to bed with Sal
Aboujib if he had to get shot at to do it—only
viewed backwards, as he had to see it now, that sequence didn't highly make
sense.
Neither did Dekker
sitting on his bedside. He'd come here to sit with Dekker. He wasn't in the
hospital. He was in the sims lab and Dekker, with this scared look on his face,
was holding him by the wrist.
"Ben."
"Yeah?" He
began to think he'd better wake up.
"Ben. You all
right?"
Dekker asking really
worried him.
"Don't agitate
him," somebody else said. "You know the rules."
"Trying to give
him a heart attack, what's the damn hurry?"
There wasn't any
answer. Dekker took hold of his hand. Said, "Shit..."
Dekker holding his
hand? He'd really rather not. Unless he was dying. He didn't feel like he was
dying. He stared at Dekker, made his fingers bend and his hand draw back and
HELLGURNER
247
decided in this
moment of clarity that he wanted his foot on the floor.
"Ben. Ben, —don't do that."
Froze right there.
Face down in the bend of Dekker's arm. And couldn't think how to get out of
that situation.
"Skuzzed,"
Dekker said. Light came back. Dekker swore at nothing in particular. That was
all right. Saved him the bother.
"Aboujib did
pass," he wanted to know.
"Yeah."
"Meg?"
"Yeah. I got
three of you. Same condition." With which Dekker got up and stalked out.
That was Dekker, all
right. Boy had a lousy temper.
"Shit!" he
heard from the hall.
CHAPTER
11
2345h and all Dekker
wanted was his own bed, didn't want to talk to anybody, just skuzzed through
the door into a darkened barracks, went straight to his quarters around the
corner and down the corridor, and got undressed on autopilot—wasn't even thinking clearly when he
heard the stir outside. A knock came at his door and he stared at it and
blinked.
Second knock. He
thought, What in hell? and opened it, on Mitch and Pauli and Trace and God-only
who else the shadows behind them were.
"Want to talk to
you," Mitch said, and Dekker leaned his forearm on the doorframe and
reasoned that even if he could talk them into leaving him alone now, it was too
late, the adrenaline he thought he'd run out of was up again, sleep was gone, leaving
just caffeine-ragged nerves and a body shaking with chill and exhaustion.
Didn't have a shred of embarrassment left, Trace there and all—he just said hoarsely,
"What?"
"The rest of
your guys didn't come in?" -246-
HELLBURNER
249
"No."
"Dek. What's going
on?"
"I don't know
what's going on, I don't know any more than the rest of you guys." Struck
him then, though, that a lot of the aforesaid guys had risen to his defense in
the messhalI, a couple of them had gone to hospital and a lot of them had suffered
serious inconvenience on his account—so
they had some right to knock on his door in the middle of his sleep and want a
piece of his hide.
Mitch asked: "Is
it true they're going to bust your guys right into active? They're going to put
Pollard and Kady and Aboujib straight in?"
Wasn't hiding any
damn thing around here. He'd been trying to get the same admission out of
Testing and he couldn't do it, or find out who the order came from that had
shoved his crew straight out of Aptitudes into the board-sims—he stared at Mitch a beat or two,
muttered, "Something like."
" 'Something
like.' They're going to take Kady's hours for legit?"
"Mitch, I don't
know what they're taking for anything, nobody's told me a damn thing, I don't
know what your source is, but it's more than I know..."
"So where are
they right now?"
"In the labs
sleeping it off. They started in at 0600 and they got through somewhere around
2200, that's all I know, except they're Aptituded in, that's the only official
word I have on anything." He got short. His temper was on the edge. But he
hadn't reassured anybody. And maybe they'd heard something: he hadn't been in
the rumor mill all day, he'd been chasing around in places rumors didn't get to— back and forth between offices and
Evaluations. And rumor was evidently saying for fact what he suspected and
couldn't get the labs or the techs to admit to....
Shove them up into
Mission Ready, with him?
God, Porey wouldn't
do that. Porey'd said himself that he
250
CJ CHEMYH
wouldn't lose another
ship: the Fleet couldn't afford it. They weren't going to do that.... They
couldn't do that....
"Rumor is,"
Jamil said, "the Fleet thinks your guys have the stuff, so they're just
going to go with them, put them right in on the pods—"
"They can't do that,"
Dekker said. It came out a thin, helpless kind of voice. "No way. They
haven't got ships to throw away on a notion like that—"
"Rumor is,"
Mitch said, "they were running some kind of new tape off Pete and the guys
during the mission, rumor is the Fleet thinks they can take that tape and sub
it for the whole damn training sequence—"
Legs nearly went out
from under him.
"Seems,"
Jamil said, "they wanted crew that hadn't been biased by all this prior
training—"
"Shit,
no...." He couldn't feel anything below the gut. He got a couple of
breaths and managed to stay on his feet. "This is shit, guys, I don't know
where you got this, but this is shit. No way are they going to do that..."
Trace said,
"First we got Tanzer, now we got a guy thinks he can program us like
computers?"
"Where'd you
hear this stuff?"
"In the slightly
off chance," Mitch said, "that we're dealing with bugs, we decline to
answer that in specific. But we thought you'd like to know."
"Shit—" He wasn't doing too well with
words. His teeth started chattering. "I got to talk to the
lieutenant...."
"It's Porey we
have to make a dent in."
"Good luck with
that," Trace said.
"We can not show
up tomorrow. The whole lot of us."
Dekker shook his
head, made a wave of his hand, suddenly struggling to get control of his jaw.
"N-no. This is a m-man m-makes ex-examples. Trust me that I kn-know."
"God, the man's
freezing," Trace said. "Get him a sheet or something."
"I kn-know what
I'm t-talking about. You don't pull a st-strike—he'll p-pick one of you—" Pauli got past him into
H ELLQURN ER
251
his room. But he kept
looking at Mitch. "Guy's a control freak. I m-met him. F-flew out here
with him..." A blanket settled around him. He made a stiff,
half-successful grab after it. But it did nothing for his chill. He let Pauli
pull him back toward the bunk, while Mitch said, "You guys go on. Let's
get his door shut...."
Mitch stayed, and
Pauli did, and Jamil and Trace. Dekker sat down on the bed, tucked the blanket
around him. Mitch said: "The man's making an example, all right—he's going to kill you, you understand
that? High team gets the next run. That's us or that's you, Dek. You can kill
yourself in sims, if one of those girls screws up."
"They aren't
damn b-bad..."
"Listen, Pollard
may know what he's doing, Pollard had a background, but they hauled these girls
in here for no other reason than they were with you in the action out there and
they're somewhat famous in the Belt. They've got no place in the program,
Fleet's listening to helldeck gossip, no solid background in hours—"
"They
survived."
"Yeah, they
survived whoring their way around helldeck. That's what they did for a living,
Dekker, I don't know if you heard, but that's the plain truth."
He didn't believe
he'd heard that. That was how it got as far as it did. "Screw you, Mitch,
you keep your opinions to yourself."
"All right, all
right, they're friends of yours, I'm sorry. But you came in there new. You ask
Pollard where these girls got their credit. With him, with Morrie, with any
ship they ever handled... no bad karma for it, but they didn't make their keep
with the runs they made—"
"You stow it,
Mitch. I worked with them."
"You never flew
with them. Never knew shit what they could do, and now because they were with
you, they got a rep the Fleet takes for granted—' *
"They passed the
Aptitudes, Mitch, the examiners shoved
252
CJ CHE1WH
them right into the
board sims, you're telling me any of us sailed through into the sims?"
"Hey. Maybe
their brain-tape works. Maybe you can program human beings to act just like a
robot—just like the damn AI
they tried to hang over our heads. They don't build one, they make us one. But
what happens under fire, Dek? What happens when the answer isn't in any damn
tape, and those girls don't know it? That's when it's going to make a
difference...."
"Meg's the
coolest head under fire I ever saw. Meg saved our asses on R2, and you weren't
mere, Mitch, you couldn't get to us, if you want me to bring that up—"
"Well, you can
thank God she caught a bullet, because if Meg Kady had been flying, she might
have taken out the Hamilton. Don't blind yourself, Dek. She was a second-rate
miner jock who got caught running contraband—she's got a helldeck rep and now
they're going to hype her and Aboujib and Pollard on some tekicie tape and put
you head to head with us. I don't want to see you crack up. I don't want to see
those girls hurt. I don't have a personal grudge against them, I just have a
real gut reaction when I see somebody running totally on rep and getting
somebody else fuckin' killed, Dek, and sending mis program down the
out-chute."
"Maybe we'll
see," he said, set his jaw and looked elsewhere, because he didn't have
anything left to say on the subject and he was too tired and too shaken to
punch Mitch out. There were things he could say, like firstly, Where were you,
Mitch, when we were depending on you? But he didn't honestly know that answer,
he'd been too charitable to ask; and he didn't want a war with Mitch.
Mitch is a mouth, he
told himself, Mitch was born with an Attitude—he wouldn't deal with me, except I'm
the competition, and he has to take me seriously. It's Shepherd, that's all it
is—Meg's insystemer and she's flash and
they don't like her style, that's the problem—
Jamil said,
"Dek, you have to protect yourself. I don't personally know whether Kady
and Aboujib have got it, I
HELLOURNER
253
think Pollard
probably does, but not the way they need to have it now. The examiners didn't
bust them through into the sims because they're good, they busted them through
because they were told to, that's the truth, Dek, and we're worried, we're
worried for you, we're worried for your crew, we're worried for the reason that
we signed up for this program in the first place, because we're in the center
of some serious games, here—we
got congresses playing games with a ship we could fly if they'd get the hell
off our backs and quit screwing with the way we work—"
"We don't want
to see you killed," Mitch said. "We don't want to see anybody else
killed. You better find out what's going on. You better find out what your
crew's capable of—before you put your
lives on the line out there, that's what I'm saying. The lieutenant hasn't got
any power to do anything about anything right now. But he might tell you the
truth and he might listen. And he might pass what he knows to the captain—who is the only authority we can think
of who might pull the plug on this damned tape—' *
"It's what they
use Unionside," Trace said. "That's where they got the tech. They
don't even know what they're doing with it, that's my guess, they just got it,
they can't eome up with a fix on the program, and now they're going to try
this, they're going to make you the guinea pigs. You've got to lay back, Dek.
Lay back and lay out and don't try to take those guys realtime..."
Mitch took Jamil's
arm, hauled him to the door. Trace lingered, just stood there, the only female
in the group, with, he suddenly uncharitably surmised, other intentions than
argument.
"Go on," he
said, "out."
"Dek, I know
they're friends of yours, that's what—"
"Trace. Get the
hell out. Now. And turn out the lights."
She turned out the
lights. She left. He fell back on the wreckage of the bedclothes and felt the
cold hit his chest and stomach—thought
about getting up and putting the bed back in order, but he didn't, right now,
have the fortitude.
254
C.J CHEFWH
He just rolled over
in the blanket and tried to fall unconscious, if sleep was out of reach; but
images rolled over and over like riot behind his eyes, the argument with Meg
about her flying, Graff sitting mere and telling him Get over to Testing, Porey
saying, You're meat, until you prove otherwise.... But the sequencing of events
didn't make sense. They'd brought Meg and Sal here to wake him up, they'd had
to start from the Belt directly after the accident, directly after he ended up
in hospital—-they'd brought Ben
from closer in and Ben had gotten here faster, that was all, but they must have
started at the same time.
They'd had the
hearing, Graff had said, and they'd wanted him to testify. But he hadn't. And
still Porey had come in to take the program over. And they had tapes. Tapes
they'd made off Pete and Elly and Falcone on the mission, leading up to the
wreck—
Union tech, then, the
same deep-drug tech that they'd sworn once they could beat—but the ship wasn't up to specs and the
program was screwed and they had to keep their funding going, had to keep
getting the ships built—
So the Fleet had
seized control and they had to have another pony show? They swore to somebody
they'd get the program turned around and to do that they had to hold out some
brand new tekkie trick that was going to win the war so they couid get the
money?
They wanted to try
out the tech on unbiased crew—and
for that, they hauled in Meg and Sal clear from the Belt, pulled in Edmund
Porey and a carrier, blasted away from Sol Station like a bat out of hell an
hour after the riot in the messhall landed him and half the program in the
brig?
Then Porey had wanted
to talk to him, personally, when he hadn't, that he knew, talked to Mitch, or
any of the other recruits in any private interview?
Porey knew him—personally, at least insofar as they'd
met during his trip out from the Belt in the first place; Porey had ferried him
out from the Belt—it wasn't impossible
that Porey had had his hand on his career long before this ... maybe
HELL BURNER
255
even suggested him
for the program when they enlisted him: he had no idea, but Porey had been in a
position to have done that. Maybe that was why the interview in the office,
that had gone so badly; maybe Porey was justifiably angry that he'd been in the
center of controversy, when Porey had brought him here specifically to keep him
out of media attention, because of the Salazar mess—
Then his mother,
devoutly noninvolved, got fired—and
went after MarsCorp; and peacer groups showed up with lawyers to back her suit?
He lay shivering in
his bed, thinking, Why? on the frenetic edge of exhausted sleep. Everything
looped back, as if he was the gravity well nothing could escape....
There were so many
things that didn't make sense. There were so many pieces of his life being
gathered up and shaken—everything
that went wrong from here to Pell seemed to have his name on it, in bright bold
caps. Paul F. Dekker.
A guy couldn't have
that kind of luck, no way in hell one stupid miner-jock could just chance to be
where carriers moved and officers intervened—
And Graff just
happened to care so much he went to all the trouble to collect his friends to
rescue him?
Like hell. Like hell,
lieutenant, sir.
. "What was I
going to say to him?" Graff asked. "Ask these people and they might
give you what you want, but dammit, you don't deal with them like that."
Demas said, in his
null-g unmonitored sanctuary in the heart of the carrier, "Nothing you can
do, J-G. No way to stop it even if you'd known in advance. This was decided at
much higher levels."
"Did you know?
What do you know?"
Demas shook his head.
"I don't and I didn't. I would guess there was consultation. I would hope
there was consultation of more man Porey with his own captain, but knowing what
Mazian decides these days, I have some
256
CJ CHERRYH
trepidation on that
account. But who knows? Tape-tech works for Union."
"Not at the
cost," Graff said, and looked left at a sound that in no wise belonged in
this place. "Saito, —"
"Medicinal,"
Saito said. The bottle. Saito had just uncapped broke five regulations Graff
could think of immediately: it was glass, it was private property in an ops
area storage, it was liquid, it was alcoholic and it probably hadn't passed
local customs.
It was, however,
null-stopped, and Saito sailed it his direction. "You're not on call.
Jean-Baptiste is on the line, we're still on stand-down. You need your sleep
and your morality won't let you. So join the rest of us and turn it in."
"So where do you
do that? Fleet HQ? There must be a waiting line. It seems a damned busy traffic
this year."
"There's nothing
we can do. No help to the boy, ruining yourself. If we were attacked this
instant you're worthless. Best you know it beyond a doubt."
He took a sip and
made a face at the sting; and in the midst of his indignation, realized flavors
still evolving on his tongue, an unfolding sensory sequence, the way Earthly
flavors tended to do—nothing
simple. Nothing exactly quantifiable. From instant to instant he liked and
loathed the taste. He found it significant that the sensory overload could
reach even through his present mood to say it was rich, it was expensive, it
was—if you could
synthesize it—only one of endless
variations on which a whole trade flourished— from a gravity well in which Conrad
Mazian had been sunk for weeks.
"This place
corrupts," he murmured. "It's the motherwell of corruption. When did
we forget what we came here to prevent?"
"Take another,
J-G. Edmund Porey is in charge of the people in charge of the tape. He brought
the tape, he brought the applications techs. They're officially Carina
crew."
HELLBURNER
257
"What are we
fighting to keep away from? What in hell are we fighting to keep out of Sol
System?"
Demas caught the
bottle that drifted from his hands, took a sip and sent it on to Saito, third
leg of their drift-skewed triangle. Demas said, "I earnestly recommend
sleep, J-G. Perhaps a night of thorough debauch—we might manage that. There's
absolutely nothing else we can do."
"We can help the
boy. We can at least do something about his next-of 's situation."
"Technically
Ingrid Dekker is not, you know, next-of. Pollard is. Dekker explicitly took her
out of mat status..."
"For her safety.
He knows the situation. That's why he didn't call on her."
Saito frowned,
cradled the bottle in her arms. "I've been over and over the Dekker file.
There is a remote possibility someone at Sol One leaked the story about
Dekker's accident. The information was at Sol One via FleetCom and one can
never assume there was no leak. One hopes not. But it's remotely possible she
might have found out, and she may have learned about Salazar's proceedings
against her son. She might have taken action of her own—but there is that last, troubling
letter from the mother to Dekker—in
his file...."
"In which she
tells him not to communicate? But he disregarded it." . "He doesn't
know we monitor these things."
"He should
suspect. —You think she may
have attacked MarsCorp, in revenge for her son?"
"Difficult.
Difficult case. Neither Cory Salazar nor Dekker had a father of record—not an uncommon situation for Mars,
much less so for Sol One. Sol's still very tied to the motherwell. In all
senses. Ingrid Dekker had a son. Had she named a father, tests would have
established paternity. That man would have had financial and legal liability—under local law."
"Possibility she
didn't know?"
"Possibility she
didn't know or didn't want to say. It
258
CJ CHERRYH
would extend legal
rights to the child. She took full financial responsibility. She had the child—again, her choice."
Graff frowned,
revising attitudes. He had no idea who his own father was, but his mother had
had a cheerful account of possibilities, all from one ship—who had not the least liability in the
matter: not for him and not for his cousins of the same stopover. Who might
even be half-sibs, but who cared?
Earth certainly did.
"Mother,"
said Saito, "has nothing to do with ship-loyalty. Not in the least.
Unitary family. He grew up in a two- or three-room apartment alone with one
woman. No sibs, no cousins, no other kin—not
an abnormal situation. Not the local ideal either."
Claustrophobic, what
he could feel about it. He watched Saito take a drink and sail the bottle back
to him.
"Dekker did not
get on well in school," Saito said. "Fell in with a group of young
anti-socials—read, quasi-rab—and got caught vandalizing station
lifesupport—a series of smokebomb
incidents, as happened. One might assume it was their idea of political
statement."
"A very stupid
one." He had read the file, though not with Saito's interpretation.
Sabotaging one's own lifesupport hardly qualified as intelligence—and Dekker was far brighter than that.
Or should have been.
"He got very
little education. It's all classroom theory, mere. Very little hands-on. Dekker
doesn't learn by lecture. His episode with the court nearly had his mother
fired and deported, for a minor out of control—"
On a merchanter ship,
it would have had the youngster scheduled for a station-drop and a go-over by
psychs. Possibly with mother or cousin in tow, but not absolutely. There was no
use for such a case aboard—
But Dekker was not
insane. Quite remarkably sane, considering his upbringing. Graff took a sip and
frowned, passing it on to Demas.
"She spent her
personal bank account on lawyers and
HELLBURNER
259
bond for the boy's
behavior," Saito said. "She enrolled him in vocational training.
Electronics, her own profession. He ducked out of that and got a position
pushing freight. Lied about his age. Made very little money, but he was out of
trouble. He went back to school—probably
found out he needed the math for a license—and
apparently became an upstanding citizen, though by this time he was in remedial
in all his subjects...."
"One brush with
the rab. And no other troubles," he said, "until the Belt."
"Until he
absconded with Alyce Salazar's daughter—with
whom he'd been a correspondent since his return to school."
"Mmmn,"
said Demas, "the miraculous reform."
"And no record
there," Saito said, "until Cory's death. A model citizen. Solvent—"
"On Ms.
Salazar's money."
"But solvent. A
hard worker. He had been on Sol before he left. Had, one suspects, a habit of
pushing himself beyond the legal limits on his license...."
"Certainly a
talent," Graff murmured, thinking. .. "Why did no one at Sol ever
Aptitude him?"
"With that score
in social responsibility, I don't think anyone ever thought of tracking him for
ops."
"A mortal
waste."
"Earth has a
million more who want the slot. They can afford human waste."
"Dekker's a
statistical anomaly."
"Especially in
that population. But they didn't recognize the profile. Sports or trouble, that
was their analysis. And he was off the team very quickly. He wasn't physically
adept, of course. And temper didn't serve him well. You do not frustrate that
lad. But you know that."
Morbidly interesting,
Graff thought, to know what a profile like his own might have meant—in the motherwell. "Pressure on
the genome."
Demas muttered:
"Emory? Or Wallingsford?"
And Saito:
"Don't we fight this war for that distinction?"
260
CJ CHERRYH
"Who knows why
we fight? Because we stayed by the Company? But what's the Company? Not wise,
nor representative of the motherwell. Nothing I've met tells me that
answer." Demas passed the bottle again, to Saito.
Graff asked,
"Can we help his mother? We've civilians working in FSO. Maybe she could
be employed there."
"There's mat
peacer contact. She certainly won't pass our security clearance with that
attachment."
The bottle came back
to him.
"Because she's
naive and desperate, she's a security risk? She wouldn't have access to the FSO
lunch schedule."
Saito said:
"Being Dekker's kin and outside our wall is a security risk. And there's
the vid. The Dekker affair may have died out of the media—but watch them remember it now. Command
will be extremely reluctant to solidify that association. The peacer connection—"
"Our employing
her could be an interesting embarrassment to their side."
"And there's the
claim of harassing Salazar."
A most uncomfortable
thought occurred to him. "You don't think Salazar could have hired Ms.
Dekker's lawyer, to control both sides of the lawsuit?"
"Not legal, of
course—to pay both sides'
legal help. That much is true even in Sol System."
"Possible,
though. Isn't it? Their system of exchange makes a private transaction hard to
trace."
"Oh, it's even
possible the peacer groups see Salazar as a way to their objectives; possible that
the money is flowing to mis conflict from the peace and the defense committees.
Mars is relatively leftist, relatively isolationist. They see their interests
remote from the EC as a whole. Pursue some of these groups deeply enough and
you come out the door of their opposition."
"Moebius
finance," Demas said. "These groups survive on fund-raising.
Particularly their executives and staff. How could these people survive without
each other?"
Completely paranoid.
HELLBURNER
261
"The enemy of my
enemy," Demas said, and took the bottle up, "threatens both our
livelihoods. And of course the Fleet is innocent in this game. Earth's
parliaments and congresses understand Mazian. Mazian gains command of R&D.
Of Sol Two. God, one wonders what traded hands."
Graff thought
privately, and dared not say, even to them: Our integrity. Our command. Mazian
was going to fill the captaincies with his choices—
Porey among the
first.
Fingers felt all
right. Wasn't sure about the ownership of the hand, though. Schitzy experience,
that was. Meg held her eye from blinking with one set of fingers and tried to
apply the pencil without blinding herself—Dek
had been kind enough to make a supplies run from the quarters to the lab-dorm,
only thing she'd asked of him last night: Get our makeup, God, we got to look
like hell—
"Dek was a skosh
bizzed last night," she said to Sal, who was putting earrings in, stealing
a bit of mirror past her shoulder. "Don't you think?"
"Man's doing all
right."
"You?"
You had to catch Sal
like that, blindside. Sal met her eyes in the mirror, wide-open.
"So,
Aboujib?"
Sal said, scowling,
"Scared as I hoped to be, give me a damn field of Where-is-its? and a:
Some of these things are rocks, Aboujib, and some of these things are missiles?
I never memmed a field faster in my damned life—"
"Pass?"
"Hey. I didn't
have a heart attack. —Kady,
I got seriously to talk to you about your sojer lessons. They're severely real,
these sumbitches."
She would have turned
around. But mirrors was the best place to catch Sal. "Truth, Aboujib. You
want to go back to tile Hamilton?"
262
CJ CHERRYH
She saw the
hesitation. The little nip of a lower Up. "Without?"
And had this moment
with her heart up in her throat. She'd passed, dammit, they'd told her. Finally
got a chance at a ship and a guy she got on with, and, dammitall, here was Sal
pulling in the other direction, she saw it plain.
And it was a lot of
hours with Sal, a lot of bad times and a lot of good, but on the other hand
there was Dek—there was Dek, who—God....
Sal's frown had gone.
The lower lip rolled out in a rueful sulk. "I dunno, Kady, I dunno how you
talk me into these things."
"Aboujib, come
serious. You want to be back there."
"I tell you
what. I want, I seriously want, a little damn couple finesses on that
simulation. They got no mem-check, there's not a damn interset macro in there—maybe they been getting this thing from
Shepherd types. Ought to ask a freerunner about rocks, Kady, ought to ask us
how not to go boom in a fire-track—"
"I'm not asking
that.*'
"Well, I'm not
the hell going back to the Hamilton. Leave you here with the guys?"
Frivolous. Deliberate. The mask was back and Aboujib's long eyes were
half-lidded. *7 lay you bets, Kady." Flick of a nail against a large
earring. "Ben didn't flunk that mama. Not our Ben. Scare hell out of him
the way they did me—and
they get a class A per-for-mance. So with mis child. Miner nerves, here. Don't
tell me fire-track. They're saying I got to set up the positional? Somebody
else is going to have his finger on the fire-button? Shit-all. I want the guns,
Kady."
"Effin' right I
passed, Dek-boy. No question I'd pass if I wanted to. Ap-ti-tuded, hell, they
put me in armscomp, are you satisfied?"
Dekker wasn't. He
sincerely didn't want that. He watched Ben shaving in this dormitory the labs
afforded their test subjects and kept his chilled hands in his pockets.
HELLBURNER
263
"Sorry doesn't
cover it. I know. But—"
Ben looked around at
him. "You're worried, Dek-boy. Tell me why you're worried."
He wasn't sure he
ought to say that either—since
Ben didn't know; since self-doubt was the deadliest creature you could take
into the program. The program was full of egos. Ben's was fairly healthy.
"So what's the
matter?" Ben prodded him.
He had to say something—because somebody would, back in
barracks. "Say the Fleet has that new program—say they came up with this tape
stuff..."
"You mean what
they gave us wasn't reg?"
He was supposed to be
a fast thinker. He wasn't doing well this morning. Mute as a rock, he was.
"Look, Moonbeam,
what in hell are they up to? Gives a guy a real uneasy feeling, that look of
yours, and you're the lousiest Har I know of."
"It's supposed
to work, that's all I know."
Ben gave him a long,
suspicious stare.
"All I
know," Dekker said; and Ben said,
"Hell if. What's
going on?"
"Nothing,"
he said. "Nothing but they want results. Fast. And the heat's on my tail.
But it doesn't get to you guys. It doesn't."
"Yeah? They put
you in command, did they, of the whole friggin' Fleet?"
"No. Porey said
it. They don't want to lose another ship. And I swear to you, —I won't lose another crew."
CHAPTER
12
GLOVING lines
converged. Dekker blinked sweat and the simulator manufactured an uncharted
rock on split second Imminent for the carrier. Missed the bastard and redirect
to take it out on the fly-Got it, got the beta target before the bloodflow
caught up with his knees. Targets coming.
Carrier showed up on
the scope. That was the priority—
your carrier showed and you got the come-home, and you were done, far as you
could clear it a path, granted you could get through the effect shield without
glitching.
Soft and smooth—you got the slight buffet as you came
through the shield, momentary LOS of everything on the boards and you had to
know its v, the extent of those shields, how close you were going to be when
you came through the envelope—damned
close, damned close. Touch. Slight mismatch. Within tolerance. Probe caught.
Mate.
-264-
HELLBURNER
265
Power down.
Good run, solid run.
Not flashy, except that UO and making that shot. He could cut the sim, meltdown
and unbelt, he'd earned it and a hot shower. Fine control when you'd been hyped
was hell, and switch-off was the copilot's job, if there'd been a co-pilot this
sim—he wouldn't lose points
on that. But he was a fussy sumbitch. He set his switches. He set every effin'
one.
Damn, it felt good.
Felt solid.
Home again.
He shifted his legs
as the pod opened and he could unbelt and drift out. Breath frosted, while
sweat still ran under the flightsuit.
Take that in your
stats, Tanzer.
Card game went on,
Ben and Sal running up favor points on Almarshad's and Mitch's guys, and the
spectators drifted down there. "Hey, Dek," came back, but Dekker
tried to ignore it and concentrate on his math and his set-targets for
tomorrow's run.
Conversation floating
back from the table said, "It's one thing in sims. Live fire's going to be
something else."
"You just hit
'em," Ben said, and took a card. "Dots is dots."
"No way,"
Wilson said. "Ask Wilhelmsen."
"They don't have
to," Mitch said, and a chill ran through Dekker's bones. He was thinking
what to say to shut that up when Meg said, acidly, "Dunno a thing about
Pete Fowler, mister. Nice guy, I s'pose, and I highly 'predate his help, but he's
not the one does the thinking."
"Still not live
fire, Kady."
"Ease off,"
Dekker said, and shoved his chair back.
"Hey,"
Mitch said. "No offense."
"Doesn't bother
me," Meg said, and dealt out cards. "Testosterone's not the only
asset going. Shepherds seriously got to rethink that."
"Meg," Sal
said.
"Hey. I'm
easy."
266
CJ CHERRYH
"You been easy,
Kady."
Meg pursed her lips.
"You a virgin, Mitch? I swear I don't know."
"Hold it, hold
it," Ben said.
"The program's
making a serious mistake," Mitch said, "putting you girls in here.
Tape can't give you the wiring, Kady, there's a reason they never pulled women
in on this program—''
"Yeah," Meg
said acidly. "Look at the scores, Mitch."
"Meg,"
Dekker said.
"Tape off a real
pi-tut, Kady."
That tore it.
"Mitch," Dekker said.
"No, no,"
Meg said coolly, "not a problem, Dek. Man's just upset."
"Bitch."
"Yo," Sal
said. "You want to match score- and score, Mitchell?" -
"Just hold
it," Dekker said into the rising mutter from Mitch's crew and Almarshad's.
"We don't need this."
"We don't need
any damn tape," Mitch said, "and we damn sure don't need any tape off
any women. Reactions aren't there. You're never going to see a female pilot on
this ship, Kady, you don't see 'em in the carriers, you don't see 'em in the
riders, and you're never going to. You'll crack under fire, you're going to
screw mis whole damned program, on a rep you didn't earn."
Meg said, with a
riffle of cards, "Cher, you got a truly basic misconception, there. Ship's
aren't shes, they're hes—
you got to make love to them the right way, got to keep 'em collected so you
both get there..."
Laugh from some of
the guys, thank God. Wasn't funny at the table. Mitch was pissed. Mitch was
being a son of a bloody bitch, was what he was being, hurt feelings, and a
mouth that made you want to knock him sideways.
But Mitch gathered up
the cards Meg dealt. "You're in over your head, Kady."
"Cher, I had a
shuttle go dead once, lost a motor on lift, landed in the Seychelles, and that
was a bitch. I haven't sweated since."
HELLDURNER
267
"Bullshit."
"Yeah. Tell me
yours."
Mitch glowered a
moment, then laid down a card and said, "Well-divers are fools."
"You got
that," Meg said. "I resigned it."
"Didn't resign
it," Sal said. "They threw you out."
"Huh. I was
getting tired of it. Too much same stuff. You seen Luna once, you've seen it.
Big damn rock."
"Smug
bitch," Mitch said, in better humor. Dekker eased back and found himself
shaking, he was so wound up. But Meg wasn't. Cold as ice, or she hadn't any nerves
between her hands and her head. Couldn't tell she might want to knife Mitch
Mitchell—
But he'd lay odds
Mitch knew.
"Damn, damn. You
got a rhythm in this thing."
See those programs,
see how that infodump selected for the human operator, and how it prioritied—that, that was a serious question.
They'd had a problem like mat in TI, putting a human into the supercomputer
neural-net, without letting it take over infbselection. This one sampled the
human needs as well as the environment and it wasn't doing all it could. The
data behind it was fiatline. He pushed it, and it gave him the same input.
"You're not
supposed to critique it, Pollard. Just stick to the manuals."
"Screw the—begging your pardon. But I worked on
something like this. Staatentek program or independent?"
"Classified."
He bit his lip.
Didn't raise the question of his clearance.
"Just a minute,
Pollard."
Just a minute was all
right. He sat and stared at the screen that offered such interesting prospects:
infodrop for the human decision and infocompression for the computer. Reality
sampling against a chaos screen in a system Morrie Bird's prize numbers man
found achingly familiar, after a stint in TI's securitied halls....
268 • CJ CHEfWH
Screw supply systems
modeling, this thing talked to him with a familiar voice.
This isn't sim
software, he thought. Main program's elegant. This is real, isn't it? Ignore
the cheesy recorded randoms, son of a bitch—the system under this is a piece of
work—
He said, to the air,
"Staatentek didn't do this, did they?"
No answer for a
minute. Then a different voice; "Pollard. Leave the programs alone."
"You can feel
the randoms. I didn't have to look for them."
A pause. "That's
very good, Pollard. What would you suggest we do about it?"
Obvious answer. To
the obvious question. The Belt. The numbers. The charts. The feeling you got
for the system— the way the rocks
moved. Real rocks, with the Well perturbing what the Sun ruled....
... Shakespeare; and
Bird...
Ben, leave the damn
charts—
"Pollard? What
would you do?"
"I'm sure you
have," he said. "Use Sol."
"Or Pell. Or
Viking. You haven't met Tripoint, Pollard. Would you like to see Tripoint? That
one's an excellent example...."
Balls hit and
rebounded on the table. Ben walked around the other end, considering his next
shot, gave a twitch of his shoulders, estimated an angle, and took careful aim
with the cue.
"Mmmn," Sal
said. Ben was sure it was Sal's voice behind him. Muscles were absolutely limp
this evening. He was a little off his game—give
or take a year's hiatus. Dekker, the skuz, had had practice. Keep the run
going. He didn't want the cue in Dekker's hands, not from what he'd seen.
Two in succession. It
was rec hall, bar in the middle—a
lot of UDC guys on Permission down there, drowning their sorrows. Fleet at this
end, some of them too. And a scatter
H ELLDU RN ER
269
of marine guards—more khaki around the corridors than
Ben personally found comfortable, thank you.
Real wringer of a sim
this afternoon, he'd earned a beer, dammit, but they had him up again tomorrow,
same with all of them.
Opened his big mouth
and they'd reset the sim, all right.
Dots and more dots,
in a space where the effin' familiar sun didn't exist...
Spooky situation.
Wanted to feel it out and you were busy tracking damn dots.
Gentle shot. Balls
rebounded. "Come on, come on—"
"Ouch," Sal
said.
Shit.
Dekker drew a breath.
Armscomper wasn't the opponent you'd choose in this game. Pilot versus
armscomper got bets down, never mind he'd had practice Ben swore you didn't
have time to take at TI.
Hell if. Ben had
learned it somewhere, he 1 Meek, maybe. And a Belter, didn't show you any
mercy. You damn sure didn't want to let him get the cue back.
He saw his shot.
Lined it up. Bets were down. Favor points. Military didn't let you play with
money. And nobody had any.
Click and drop. Sighs
from half the spectators. Muted cheers from the rest.
Second shot. Ball
dropped, balls rearranged the pattern. He was sore when he bent to survey the
situation, but it was a good kind of soreness, kind you got from a hard run.
Never had realized there was good pain and bad. He'd felt the other kind. Too
damn much.
Click.
"Right on,
Dek!"
Meg and Sal had bets
on opposite sides.
He grinned, took aim.
Click. Perfect bank.
Sudden disturbance,
then, in the ambient. Dekker felt it, looked up as everybody else was looking,
at a handful of
270
CJ CHEIWH
UDC guys who'd showed
up at the table. Marines were in motion, starting to move between.
Rob Childers. Kesslan
and Deke. Chad's crew. A marine said, "Let's not have any trouble. Get on
back there."
Rob said,
"Dek."
He felt a sudden
queasiness in the approach. A sense of confrontation. The marines weren't
pushing. They weren't letting the UDC crew closer, either, and there was
starting to be noise, other UDC guys moving in.
"Wait a
minute," Almarshad protested, thank God somebody on their side had the
sense to say something, offer a hand to object to force; and he had to move,
himself, had to do something in the split second.
He dropped the cue to
his left hand, took a nonbelligerent stance.
"Dek," Rob
said and held out his hand.
Put him entirely on
the spot. Marines didn't move, didn't know who was who or what was happening
here, he scoped that—scoped
the moment and the move and the necessity to do something before they all ended
up in the brig.
"Rob," he
said, and went quietly past a confused marine and took the offered hand, looked
Rob in the face and wondered if Rob was the one who'd tried to kill him, or if
Rob knew who had. He took Kesslan's hand, and Deke's. The music system was
grinding out a muted, bass-heavy beat, that had the silence all to itself.
"Too much gone
on," Rob said. "Both sides."
He had to say
something. He took that inspiration, said, "Yeah. Has," and couldn't
find anything else to say.
"Let you get
back to your game," Rob said.
"Yeah. All
right." He stood there while the room sorted itself out again, Rob and the
rest of them going back to their side. He never managed to say the right thing.
He didn't know what he could have said. He felt a hand on his arm—Meg, pulling him back to the table,
while Franklin muttered, "Shit all."
"They do
it?" Mason asked him under his breath.
HELLDURNER
271
He gave it a
desperate thought, trying to believe they were innocent. But he remembered
getting hit, remembered the pod access, and couldn't be analytical about the
dark, and the pain of broken bones, and the toneless voice that said, in the
back of his memory, Enjoy the ride, Dekker.
Tape going into the
slot. The voice said, Let me—
Let me, what?
Wasn't anybody but
the pilot handled the mission tape.
Didn't make sense.
He didn't answer
Mason. He got down and lined up his shot again, determined. Made it. There was
a sigh of relief. He was relieved too. Was all he asked, for his pride's sake.
Didn't want to show how rattled he was. He focused down and made a run of
three, before a ball trembled on the verge of a drop. And didn't.
"All
right," Ben said, out of a sigh and a stillness. Ben sounded less man satisfied.
Everything seemed paler, colder, he didn't know why. He stood by Meg and Sal,
arms folded, and watched Ben make a straight run.
UDC MPs looked in on
the situation. You could hear the music over the voices. When things were
normal, you couldn't.
He wanted a drink,
but regs didn't let him have one. He thought of desperate means to get one, but
if they caught you at it, you were screwed. He didn't want a session with
Porey. Didn't.
Bets got finalized.
He'd bet himself, as happened, so had Ben; and Sal could collect. But something
passed between Meg and Sal, and Meg took his arm and said Sal was taking a
wait-ticket—
"You better get
to bed," Meg said, and he'd have paid off, he wouldn't have minded, he was
halfway numb at the moment—her
change in arrangements made him think maybe he was better with Sal, who
wouldn't pry—Sal and he never had
gotten into each other's reasons for anything.
But Meg had set up
what she evidently thought was a rescue, and he gave himself up and went off
with her.
272
CJ CHEWWH
She was upbeat,
cheerful, talking about the game, not a single question who that had been or
why—must have gotten her
information on her own, because Meg didn't favor ignorance, depend on it: she
got him to bed, was willing to go slow if he'd had the inclination: he didn't;
and wrapped herself around him after and snuggled down to keep him warm, about
the time Ben and Sal came trooping through.
"Shhh," Meg
hissed, and they were immediately quiet, quiet coming and going to the bathroom—the front room had its drawbacks; but
he was on the edge of falling asleep, suddenly exhausted.
Glad he'd made some
sort of peace, he decided. Even if their move had put him on the spot and
forced what he wasn't ready for.
Likely they weren't
the ones who'd ambushed him. He hadn't been sure of mat when he'd taken Rob's
hand; and even if he was somewhat sure now, he couldn't come to peace with it,
couldn't forgive them, could he, if there was nothing to forgive in the first
place, if they were innocent and it was somebody else he saw every day in the
corridors, ate with in the mess hall. Maybe whoever had put him in hospital had
been in the crowd getting a further kick out of his confusion.
He'd lost an argument
or two when he was a kid—he'd
lived through the chaff he had to take, he'd faced the guys again—they'd been two years older: he'd lived
in fear and gotten hell beaten out of him a couple of times by the same guys
before he'd made them believe they were going to take so much damage doing it
they didn't want to keep on his case—not
the ideal outcome he'd have wanted, but at least he could believe he'd settled
it, at least he'd made a point on them and at least they didn't give him any
more trouble.
But out there in
front of everybody, they'd put him directly on the spot, damn them—yeah, he could have acted the touchy
son of a bitch Ben said he was, told them go to hell and had the program in a
mess and the lieutenant ready
H ELLBURN ER
273
to kill him. He'd had
an attack of responsibility, he decided finally. Mature judgment or something.
His mother had sworn he'd never live that long.
But it didn't solve
his own problem. Just theirs. He was still walking around not knowing, still a
target for another try, God only when, or on what provocation. In the meanwhile
he knew those he'd trust with his life, and those he just didn't know. In the
meantime somebody was off scot free and probably laughing about it.
"You all right,
cher?" Meg stirred beside him, massaged a shoulder. He realized the
tension he had, then, probably as comfortable as a rock to be next to.
"Yeah." He
tried to relax. "Cold."
Meg put a warm arm
over his back. "Roll over, jeune fils. No questions. Do. We got sims in
the morning. Big day. Relax."
Couldn't understand
why she put up with him. Couldn't understand why Ben did, except Sal was with
Meg. He wished he could do better than he did, wished he could say they weren't
in a mess of his making. But it was. And they were. And Meg somehow didn't care
he was a fool.
The rec hall was
quiet. It was a Question whether to acknowledge what had happened or ignore it;
but the former, Graff decided—word
having drifted his way via Reet Security via Sgt.-major Lynch. Probably word
had drifted to Porey too and no orders had come. But it was Personnel's business
to take a tour, while the alterday galley staff was cleaning up. Music was
still going. Most of the participants were back in barracks, hopefully.
"Quiet
here?" he asked a marine on watch.
"Quiet,
sir."
"Any feeling of
trouble?"
"No, sir. Not
lately. Real quiet, sir."
He made no approach
toward the last few celebrants—a
few UDC, a few Fleet personnel, a little the worse for drink, at opposite ends
of the hall. He wasn't there on a
274
C.J. CHE1WH
disciplinary. But he
meant to be seen. His being there said command levels had heard, command levels
were aware.
Dekker hadn't blown
it, by all he'd heard. He didn't know where the idea had started. He didn't
know that it had done any good, but at least it had done no demonstrable harm.
Someone walked in at
his back, walked up beside him.
"Tables still
standing," Villy said.
"Noted
that."
"Hope it
lasts," Villy said. "Difficult time."
Villy had never said
anything about the change in command. Like having your ship taken out of your
hands, Graff thought, like watching it happen on, Villy had said, the last big
project he'd ever work on.
What did you say?
What, in the gulf between his reality and Villy's, did one find to say?
"Good they did
that," he said. "I hope it takes."
CHAPTER
13
DIG empty section of
the mast—you'd know where you
were blindfolded, null-g with the crashes of locks and loaders and the hum of
the core machinery, noises that made the blood rush with memories of flights
past and anticipation of another, no helping it. Meg took a breath of cold,
oil-touched air, a breath mat had the flightsuit pressing close, snug as a
hardened skin, and hauled with one hand to get a rightside up view of what Dek
had to show them, screen with a live camera image from, she guessed, optics far
out along the mast.
Big, shadow-shape of
the carrier—wouldn't all fit in
the picture—with spots on its
hull picked it out in patchwork detail, all gray, and huge—
And on the hull near
the bow, a flat, sleek shape clung, shining in the floods. "That's
it?" Ben asked.
"That's
it," Dek said. "Her. Whatever you want to call it. They built three
prototypes. That's the third. That's the one that's make or break for us. Crew
of thirty, when we -275-
276
CJ CHERRYH
prove it out. Four
can manage her—in a clean course, with
set targets. Most of her mass is ordnance, ablation edge, and engine load.
You've had the briefings."
Meg stood by Sal's
side and got a shiver down the back that had nothing to do with the cold here.
Beautiful machine, she was thinking; Sal said, Brut job, and meant the same
thing, in a moment, it sounded as-if, of pure gut-deep lust. Wasn't any
miner-can, that wicked, shimmery shape.
And most imminently,
in the sim chamber behind the clear observation port, the pods, one in
operation, a mag-lev rush around the chamber walls, deafening as the wall
beside them carried the vibration.
"Damn," she
breathed. But you wouldn't hear it.
"The pods you
see moving," Dek said, over the fading thunder, "that's the tame
part. That rush is the dock and undock. They can take those pods more positive
or neg g's than your gut's going to like. But that's not the dangerous part.
That pod, there, the still one—"
He pointed at one floating motionless, away from the walls. "That's the
real hellride. Could be at 3A light, what you know from inside. That's the one
they mop the seats on. That's the one can put you in hospital—unstable as hell in that mode—screw it and you'll pull a real sudden
change."
"Thanks,"
Ben said. "I like to hear that, damn, I like to hear that."
Meg said, "Going
to be all right. No problems. Hear?"
But Dek looked up at
that pod in a way she kept seeing after he'd turned away and told them it was
up the lines to the pod access—like
an addict looking at his addiction, and a guy scared as hell.
"Take you on the
ride of your life," was the way he put it.
"Now wait a
minute," Ben said. But Dek took out on the handlines and Sal snagged Ben's
arm with: "Now, cher, if we don't keep with Dek and Meg here, diey'll
assign us some sheer fool pi-lut we don't know the hell who... Do
HELLDURNER
277
you want to go boom
on a rock? No. Not. So soyez gentle and don't distract the jeune fils."
"No," Graff
said, "no, colonel, I don't know—I've
got a meeting with him..."
"He's got no
right," was the burden of Tanzer's phone call. Which didn't over all help
GraflFs headache. Neither did the prospect of dealing with Comdr. Porey face to
face.
"I'll pose him
the question," he told Tanzer. Couldn't honestly blame the colonel this
morning—discovering that his
carefully constructed sims schedule was in revision, that Villanueva's team had
been opted straight off test systems into the priority sims schedule and three
others of the test systems crews had been bumped off the sims schedule
entirely, in favor of Dekker and three raw recruits, who'd been given
access-on-demand, on any shift.
The officer in charge
of Personnel ought to know what was happening. One would logically think so.
The officer in charge
of Personnel hung up the receiver, put on his coat and took his hangover
headache down the corridor to the CO's office.
Marine guards let him
in. Porey was all smiling, smooth congeniality.
"Jurgen,"
it was. And an offered hand as Porey got up from his desk. One had to take it
or declare war. "I've been going through the reports. Excellent job you've
done, getting us settled into station. I don't find a thing I'd change. Sit
down, sit down..."
"Thank
you," Graff said, and sat, wondering whose name those actions had gone out
under in the report to FleetCommand—wonder,
hell, he knew what games Porey was playing, with the reports, with his smiling
good grace: Porey's aides never knew what they'd meet when they walked into his
office, the smiling bastard or the shouting, desk-pounding sumbitch, but either
one would knife you. It was, knowing your career could hinge on Porey's
approval, damned easy for a staffer to start twitching to Porey's cues.
276 • CJ CH0WH
He could see it
working in Carina junior crew out there, in the marine guard—he could see it going on all around
him, suggesting that it might be wise for him to play Porey's game too;
suggesting that this man, clearly on his way to a captaincy, and certainly in
Mazian's good graces, could be a valuable contact...
Except that he'd seen
this game going on since they were both junior lieutenants, and he felt the
urge to puke.
He said, with a fixed
smile, "Edmund, do you think your staff could possibly give Personnel any
sims schedule changes a day in advance? Tanzer is not happy. I could have
minimized the disturbance."
"Didn't that
come to you?" Porey was all amazement.
"No, it didn't
come to me. I had to hear it from Tanzer. I don't like dealing with the UDC
when I don't know what's going on. It makes me feel like a fool. And I don't
like that, Edmund, I truly don't."
Satire on Porey's own
style wasn't what Porey was used to meeting. Porey had a thinking frown as he
sat down, guarded amusement at the edges of his mouth: everything for effect,
most especially the expressions on his face. Peel Porey layer by layer and you
never got to center.
"Matters of
policy," Porey said, rotating a paperweight in his fingers, "are
handled in this office. Tanzer has no power that you don't give him. If you
choose to coddle him, that's your decision. Not mine." The paperweight
stopped moving. "The assignment of personnel and priorities, however, is
mine. Relations with the UDC—use
your talents at diplomacy. I'm sure you're up to it."
Distraction and a
shot across the bow. "By the Procedures, Personnel involves health and welfare,
neither of which works when my office has no say in reassignments or systems
changes." Attack on his own. "In consideration of which, I want a
briefing on the tape-learning procedures from the techs that came in with you.
I don't have time to read science reports."
HELLBURNER
279
"Jurgen, my
staff hasn't time to handle delicate egos, Tanzer's or yours."
"Or three
hundred fifty-six Shepherds who've been rooked out of their seniority, lied to
by the UDC, shafted by the legislature and killed out there on the course
because nobody's ever damn listened to them. Edmund, we have tempers at
critical overload here, and a blow-up isn't going to look any better on your
record than it looks on Tanzer's. If you want a riot, these are the ones that
will do it. They're not kids, they've had too many fools in command over them
here and in the Belt to trust anybody now on credit. They don't reject
authority: they're looking for it, they want h—but don't expect them to follow orders
til they know die ultimate source is sane."
Porey didn't say
anything for a moment. He wasn't stupid and he cared about his own survival.
That was one thing you could believe in.
Porey said softly,
"You're an honest man, Jurgen. How do you plan to get out of Earth system
alive?" "By keeping my CO from making mistakes." Long, cold
stare. A slow smile. "You don't have any resentment, do you, for my being
installed here?" "I'm not command track. 1 never pretended to
be." Still the stare. "You think I'm pretending?" **I don't
think you're pretending anything. I know you." Feed the fantasy—and the anxiety. Porey didn't like to
be known, but he liked to be respected. The man did have an ego. A parsec wide.
Porey smiled slowly, in a way that almost touched the eyes. "Good. A vote
of confidence from you, I appreciate, Jurgen. I truly do."
Odd chill of unease
as the pod cruised up to the access. Thump of die pressure seals. Hydraulics as
it opened and offered its dark, screen-lit interior. Ordinary sounds. Shadows
moved on the white plastic of the control console as Dekker put the tape in and
he felt an irrational urge to look behind him, as if his crew wouldn't be
there.
260
CJ CHEPAYH
HELLBURNER
261
No damned reason to
get nerves. But it had been Pete on the line beside him, all the times before.
It wasn't now. It wasn't Elly, it wasn't Falcone. It was Meg, on Pete's tape,
and Ben and Sal—they belonged here.
He made himself believe that, stop remembering what had been...
For no reason, a
piece of the puzzle snapped in, unbidden. Null-g. Shadows on the console. He
felt the blow at the base of his skull. He knew where he had been—at the entry. Knew where they'd been.
Shadows. Two of them...
Dammit. Not the time
to be woolgathering. He looked back at Ben—Ben
looked scared, but Ben looked On, tracking wide and fast on the pod, taking in
everything, the same as Meg and Sal. All business—the way they were when the jokes
stopped and they were thinking and absorbing. He gave them the lecture tour,
the buttons on the console, the read-out window, the authorizations procedure— "Card and tape in the slot for a
check-out. It reads your ID, takes your personal numbers and sets, and
double-checks the tape for authorizations. Ready?"
"Are you
serious?" Ben said. Then: "Yeah. Yeah. Go."
He caught the handholds
on either side of the entry, angled his feet for inside and eeled into his
station. "Sal," he called back, over the hum of a passing pod, caught
her by the arm as she sailed into the dark, shadow against the lights, a
glitter of braids tied into a cluster, for safety's sake. He aimed her for the
far side of the four-wide cockpit. "Ben." Same as Ben came feet-first
through the hatch, for the seat between him and Sal. Meg came last, for the
seat between him and the hatch, settled in. Green-lit gold on plain stud
earrings. Green dyed her side-shaved profile, green turned her red curls black.
Ringed fingers found the belts and buckled in, eyes glowed wide and busy in the
light of the screens, assessing the instruments.
He drew his own belt
over—he waked reaching for
them at night, with a recurring nightmare of drifting free. Suit braces powered
up as he plugged in, and the helmet cut off
side vision. It was
deep-field V-HUD now. Switches on, power up. "Comfortable?"
"Yeah,"
from Meg. "As possible," from Ben.
Belts were tight.
Second tug, to be sure. Orientation run. Starting over, primer stuff—only he wasn't the neo this run. There
was something surreal in the moment, in the familiar lights, in the ordinary
sounds of the pod, the dark masquerading as routine. They were On. Anxious.
Wanting to be right. But he kept expecting other voices.
"This thing got
any differences?" Meg asked, last-minute.
He shoved the tape
into the console, pushed LOAD. "One. See that yellow ABORT, upper left?
Doesn't exist on the real boards. It'll stop the pod—if you don't get a response from me, or
if you detect anyone in trouble, you hit that. Takes you right back to the
bay."
"Cher,"
came Meg's low voice, "you just do. I got confidence in us."
"More 'n I
got," Ben muttered. "Hold it, hold it. I'm not set yet.".
"Response check,
thing doesn't glitch, but be sure. Boards are all in test mode."
Passengers was all
they were required to be; but mat wasn't Meg's style, wasn't Ben's or Sal's
either. He tried his own boards, set his arms in the supports, heard Meg's
voice saying, "I got it, right on." Ben muttering, "Don't screw
it, Dek-boy. Yeah, I'm on, on, go."
Sal's, saying,
"Hit it, Dek."
Dark, flash of lights—
He kicked the thumb
switch on his keys. Readout glowed green against the dark. Finger moves on
opposite hands, the undock sequence switch.
Bang! of grapples.
Mag-levs and human voices mixed—a
6 g shove butt-first for ten eternal seconds to a sustained
straight-at-the-spine shove at +9 g.
Green lines wove fast
and faster... the pod was alive and the tons of thrust were mag-lev sim, but it
was all in his
2fl2
C.J CHBWH
hands, responsive to
a breath, a stray thought, a moment's doubt—where he was, when he was, who he was
with—
He didn't want to do
this.
Serious panic, a
flash on instruments in chaos—
Then. Not now. Now
was now. Not a time to lose track, God, no—
Focus down. Focus
wide. Attention to the moving lines, that's all—
"Politics,"
Porey said, "pure politics. Let me explain it to you. Fifteen of the fifty
carriers have to be UDC—-that's
the deal we cut, and that's what we have to do. The accident gave us
Hellburner, and that tape's going to give us the program. The parliaments on
Earth want responsible individuals in policy positions—read: no captains will violate policy
laid down by the JLC. And this won't change in the field."
Graff stared at
Porey. He thought he'd heard the depth of foolishness out of Earth.
Porey made a small,
sarcastic shrug. "They have our assurances. And if the news services
should call your office, Jurgen, and since you're over Personnel, they might,
the answer you give is: No, of course these ships are launched at carrier
command discretion, with specific targets. No, they will never be
deep-launched, with less specific orders. That tactic won't work."
"You mean I
lie."
"I mean the
Joint Legislative Committee's expert analysts say not. The changing situation
over time—read: the commanders
of individual ships making decisions without communicating with each other—would make chaos of strategic
operations. So it can't be done. End report. The JLC analysts say it's not
appropriate use of the riders. The legislators don't like what these ships can
do, combined with the—irregular
character—of the crews we've
picked to handle them. These crews are, historically, trouble Earth got rid of.
Earth's strategic planners are obsessed by the diffi-
HELLBURNER
203
culty they've
discovered of conveying their orders to ships in the Beyond—they've apparently just realized the
time lag. They can't phone Pell from here and order policy about—"
"They've always
known that."
"The ordinary
citizen hasn't. The average businessman can get a voice link to Mars now. Or
the Belt—if he wants
one."
Lag-corn was a skill,
a schitzy kind of proceeding, talking to a voice that went on down its own
train of logic with no regard to your event-lagged self. That was one of the
reasons senior Com and psych were virtually synonymous. And Earth hadn't
realized until now you couldn't talk to a launched rider—or a star carrier? He refused to
believe it.
"Lag-corn has
finally penetrated the civil user market," Porey said, "since we
increased the pace of insystem traffic. Earthers are used to being told the
antenna's gone LOS, used to being told Marslink is out of reach for die next
few months, used to shipments enroute for years and months— supply the market counts but can't
touch. Their ship-borne infowave was so slow as to be paralytic, before we
started military operations insystem. The last two years have upset that notion—this, from the captain. So if anyone
asks you—of course we're going
to have a strong mother-system component hi FleetCommand. Of course riderships
will never make command decisions. We're going to loop couriers back to Earth
constantly."
"Mazian's promised
this?"
"The same as
they promised us. —Jurgen, you have far
too literal a mind. This is a game. They play it with their constituents. The
legislature's technical advisers are under influences—corporate, economic, political... but
you've met that. They certainly won't deviate from party line. Where does the
funding for their studies come from, anyway?''
Lights flared, green
numbers bled past in the dark. Do the run in his sleep, Dekker kept telling
himself, piece of easy.
264
CJ CHERPYH
But it didn't stop
the heart from pounding, didn't stop hands and body from reacting to the
situation on-screen—you
didn't brake the reactions, you didn't ever, just presented the targets to your
inert armscomp, accepted Ben was going to miss most of the time and tried not
to let that expectation ever click into the relays in your brain.
"Screw
mat," he heard Ben mutter, and all of a sudden got input on his aux
screens, targets lit, armscomp prioritizing.
Chaff, he determined.
Then targets flashed and started disappearing. Longscan was coming from a
living hand, not the robot inputs. He heard "Shit!" from Ben and saw
the scan image shift, tracking fire. Meg's gold data-sift to his highside HUD
was making sudden marginal sense. Not like Pete.... Not the same.... "Doing
all right, doing all right," he muttered, "just—" Heart jumped. Hands reacted. Sim
did—
He stopped the bobble
before his vision cleared. Guys weren't talking, someone had yelped, short and
sharp, but the dots that meant conscious were still lit, data was still coming
up on the screens, fire was still happening, longscan shaping up. Had three
scared guys in the seats. Next four shots were misses. His fault. He'd pulled a
panic, lost it—had no time now to be
thinking about it—targets— dammittohell!—
"The UDC,"
Porey said, rocking back his chair, "believes in a good many myths. We
don't disabuse them. And, yes, this room is secure."
"What else
haven't we said? What else hasn't filtered out here? Or is mis a longstanding
piece of information?"
"The ECS4,"
Porey said, "is fully outfitted. Putty outfitted. We're operational, and
we have a com system they can't penetrate. To our knowledge—they haven't even detected its
operation. Installation on the ECS8—is
waiting a shipment. Communications between you and FSO have been, I understand,
infrequent. That situation is going to improve."
HELLBURNER
285
"When?"
"Estimate—two months, three."
"Until then?
Edmund, —I want to know. Who
pulled Kady and Aboujib out of the Belt? Who opted Pollard in? Where did this
damned new system come in?"
"Exact origin of
those orders?" Porey asked with a shrug. "I'm sure at some high
level." Meaning Keu or Mazian, which said no more than he knew. "But
the reason for pulling them in—plainly,
they were Dekker's crew, we know things now about Hellburner we didn't know.
We've adjusted the training tape to reflect that, we've chosen a crew with a
top pilot to start with a—tragically—clean slate. It's the best combination
we can come up with."
"Not to rush
into schedule. Dekker's just out of hospital. Look at his psychological record,
for God's sake. You're putting an outrageous load on this crew."
"I leave that to
the medics. They cleared him. He's in."
"Cleared him
with how much pressure from command?"
"What are you
suggesting?"
"That there's
too damned much rush on this. That Dekker's not ready to go into
schedule."
Porey leaned back hi
the chair, frowning. "You expressed a curiosity about the tape system.
Have you ever had deep-tape, Jurgen?"
"No."
Emphatically. It occurred to him at the moment mat Porey could order that even
in his case. And he didn't like the thought.
"Ordinary DNI
tape isn't so different from deep teach. Less detailed, in general. But the
real difference is the class of drugs. Deepteach trank suppresses certain types
of brain activity. Eliminates the tendency to cross-reference with past
experience. General knowledge is still an asset. Specific training isn't.
Hostility to the process certainly isn't. The other trainees have both
handicaps. They've been trained otherwise and they won't trust a tape telling
them differently. But this crew knows nothing else. They have general
206
CJ CHEIWH
knowledge. They're
not afraid of it. So their judgment can override the tape."
"Theoretically."
Another shrug.
"So the technicians assure us: that with no trained response to overcome—they can do it and not panic. We cut a
new tape from what succeeds—and
bootstrap the others."
"You bring this
tape business in," Graff said, "you slip it on a novice crew without
an explanation—then you want to
shove off Belt miner reactions on Shepherd crews that've risked their necks for
a year training for these boards? What do 1 say to these people? What's the
official word? Because the rumor's out, Edmund, they didn't take that long to put
two and two together."
Porey looked at him
long and coldly from the other side of what had been his desk. "Tanzer's
complaining. You're complaining. Everybody's bitching. Nobody in mis facility
wants to take this program to implementation. I have other orders, Jurgen. If
crews die—they'll die in the
suns. We do not lose another ship on display. We haven't, as happens, another
ship we can lose."
"We haven't
another core crew we can lose, either. Where are you going to get recruits if
you kill our best with mis damned tape? Draft them out of Earth's pool?
Persuade the Luna-Sol cargo runners to try what killed the Shepherds?"
"Maybe you don't
have enough confidence in your recruits.''
"I have every
confidence in them. I also know they've never been cut free to do what they
know—not once. They're a
separate culture from Earth, separate from Mars, separate even from the Belt.
The UDC regulated them and played power games with their assignments and their
schedules. The JLC changed the specs and cut back the design. These crews
thought when the Fleet came in here mat somebody was finally on their side. So
what do I tell them when they ask about this tape? That we took it off the last
spectacular fatalities? That's going to give them a bell of a lot of confidence."
HELLOURNER
267
"Dekker should
trust it. The tape did come from his crew. And he certainly knows the crew
we've given him."
"The crew we've
given him never worked ops together. They were financial partners. Everyone
seems to have forgotten that!"
"Dekker's
confident."
"Confident,
hell! Dekker's numb. He's taken the chaff that's come down from the UDC, his
crew's dead, somebody tried to kill him, he's got a personal problem with a
MarsCorp board member, which is why the UDC pulled him from that demo in the
first place, on somebody's orders I still haven't heard accounted for. You put
him into the next mission and what guarantees you won't get the same communique
Tanzer got: Pull Dekker, keep him out of the media, take him out of the crew
that's trained for that run—and
then what will you do? Fold like Tanzer did? Or tell the EC go to hell?"
Cold stare. Finally
Porey said, "I'm aware of Dekker's problem."
"Is that all?
You're aware? —Do you realize his
mother and the peace party lawyers are all over the news right now? The case is
active again. Do you think that's coincidence? Salazar doesn't care what she
brings down."
"I'm aware of
Alyce Salazar."
"So are you
going to pull Dekker? Or are you using him as test fodder? Doesn't matter if he
cracks up in the sims, it solves a problem—is
that it?"
"You have a
personal attachment to this boy—is
mat your problem?"
No re-position.
Straight through. Straight through. He got a breath and tried to tell himself
it was all right, it was only a sim. A last target.
Miss. Sal said,
"Damn," and: "Sorry, Ben."
"Yeah,
yeah," Ben said. -
"Dekker." Sim chiefs voice. You didn't hear them break
286
CJ CHBWH
in like that, they
didn't remind you they existed unless you were totally, utterly screwed.
"Dekker. What's the trouble?"
Pod was in neutral
now. They wouldn't abort you cold—a
shift like that messed with your head. But nothing further was going to happen
in the sim. Virtual space was running, green lines floating in front of his
eyes, but without threat. His heart was going like a hammer. Breams came in
gasps.
"Muscle
spasm."
He lied to the sim
chief. Chief was going to order them in, no question. New crew—he could well glitch their reactions— He'd never, never gotten called down
over com. Never gotten a stand-down like this.
"Going to order
a return. Your crew ail right?"
"Crew's
fine." He didn't get any contradiction over com.
"You want to
push the button?"
Abort was quicker.
Abort would auto them to dock. His nerves wanted that.
"I'll go manual.
No abort." Hell if he was going to come hi like a panicked neo. He got his
breathing calmed. He lined them up, minute by excruciating minute. He brought
it as far as basics. "Meg," he said then, "take it in. Dock it,
straight push now. Can you do that?"
"Got it,"
Meg said. "Take a breath, Dek."
Three more minutes
in. Dock was basic—now. Lesson one.
Punch the button. Mind the closing v. They'd killed one man and a prototype
module getting that to work realtime, before Staatentek admitted they had a
problem.
Whole damned program
was built on funerals...
"Doing all
right, Meg."
He unclenched stiff
fingers. Watched the numbers run, steady, easy decline in distance: lock talked
to lock and the pod did its own adjustments.
Bang into the
grapples. System rest.
A damned pod, not the
ship, but he was having trouble breathing as the hatch opened, to Meg's
shutdown—
"Shit!"
His heart jumped.
"Easy, easy," he told her, as she made
HELLBURNER
289
a frantic reach at
the board. "Lock's autoed, not your fault, not your fault, it's automatic
on this level."
"Not used to
these damn luxuries." Breath hissed between her teeth. "Got it,
thanks."
No word out of Ben.
Ben wasn't happy. Sal wasn't. He could feel it out of that corner. He thought
about saying Don't mind it, but that wasn't the case, you damned well had to
mind a screw-up like this, and they did. He thought about telling them some of
those were his fault, but that wasn't what they needed to set into their
reactions either. He just kept his mourn shut, got the tape, grabbed the
handholds and followed Meg out the hatch.
Caught Meg's
attention, quick concerned look. He shied away from it, hooked onto the
handline and heard Ben and Sal exit behind him. He logged the tape out on the
console, teeth clenched against the bitter cold.
"Cher," Meg
said, gently, hovering at his shoulder, trying for a look at him or from him,
he wasn't sure and he wasn't coping with mat right now.
"We'll get
it," Sal said. "Sorry, Dek."
They were trying to
apologize to him. Hell.
He started to shiver.
Maybe they could see it. Maybe they were realizing how incredibly badly he'd
screwed that move—or would figure it
once their nerves settled. He didn't know how much to tell them, didn't want to
act like an ass, but he couldn't put his thoughts together—he just grabbed onto the handline and
headed off down the tube, not fast, but first, so he didn't have to see their
faces.
He heard Ben say,
"Damn temper of his. Break his neck, I'd like to."
"Hey," Meg
said, then, "we screwed up, all right? We screwed it, we screwed him up,
he's got a right."
He wanted to tell Meg
no; and he wanted to believe that was the answer; but he couldn't. He handed
off at the lift, waited for them.
Sal said, "Dek,
we'll get it. Trez bitch, that machine. But we'll get it, no problem."
290 • CJ CHEIWH
"Yeah."
First word he'd been able to get out. He punched the lift for exit level,
snatched back a shaking hand toward his pocket.
Meg was looking at
him, they all were, and he didn't want to meet their eyes. He stared at the
lift controls instead, watched the buttons light, listened to the quiet around
him, just the lift thumping on the pressure seals.
"So?"
Tanzer asked, on the phone; "Does this mean a runaround or does it mean
you've found an answer to my question?"
"There is an
answer, colonel. Negative. The orders come from outside this base. We cannot
change policy."
' 'Policy, is it?
Policy? Is that what we call it now, when nobody at this base can answer
questions? What do you know, lieutenant? Anything?"
Graff censored what
he knew, and what he thought, and said quietly, "I repeat, I've relayed
your objections. They've been rejected. That's the answer I have to convey,
colonel, I'm sorry."
"Damn you,"
Tanzer said, and hung up.
He hung up. He sat for
a long few moments with his hands folded in front of his lips and tried to
think reasonably. No, he could not call the captain. FleetCom went through
Porey now. No, he would not go running to his crew—and maybe that was pride and maybe it
was distrust of his own reasoning at the moment. He was not command track. He
was not in charge of policy. He was not in authority over this base, not in
authority over strategy, and not in the decision loop that included the
captain, who somehow, in some degree, had to know what was going on here—at least so far as Demas and Saito had
said: they'd warned Keu, they'd pleaded with him, and Keu—had refused to rein Mazian back, had
let Mazian make his promises and his assignments.
So what was there to
say? The captain had refused to disapprove Porey's command. The captain had
refused Demas,
HELLDURNER
291
refused Saito... who
was he, to move Keu to do anything? Perhaps the captain was more farsighted, or
more objective, or better informed.
Or more indifferent.
Porey was aware of
Dekker's problem? And Porey shoved Dekker and a novice crew toward mission
prep?
Bloody damned hell\
"You blew
it," Porey said.
"Yessir,"
Dekker said on a breath. "No excuses."
" 'No excuses.'
I told you I wouldn't hear excuses, and I wouldn't hear 'sorry.' You're the
pilot, you had the say, if you weren't ready you had no mortal business taking
them in there."
"Yessir."
Porey's hand came
down on the desk. He jumped.
"Nerves, Mr.
Dekker. What are you going to do about it?"
"Get my head straight,
sir."
Second blow of
Porey's hand. "You're a damned expensive failure, you know that?"
You didn't argue with
Porey. The lieutenant had warned him. But too damned many people had told him
that.
"I'm not a
failure, sir."
"Was that a
success? Was taking trainees into mat sim and screwing them up a successT'
"No, sir."
"Nothing's the
matter with you physically. The meds found nothing wrong with you. It's in your
head, Dekker. What did you claim after Wilhelmsen cracked up? That you knew
better? Do you still know better?"
"Yessir."
"Can you do the
run he did?"
"Yessir."
"You're no use
to me screwed up, you are no damned use, mister. I've got other crews. I've got
other pilots. And let me tell you, if you don't straighten yourself out damned
292
CJ CHEIWH
CHAPTER
fast, we've got one
more way to salvage you. We've got one more tape we can use, which I haven't,
because you said you were better, because the techs said untrained personnel
were better on tape, but if you're no other good to anyone, Dekker, then we
might just as well put you right down in that lab and input what might improve
your performance. You know what I'm talking about?"
He guessed. He
managed to say, "Yessir."
"I'll make a
promise to you, Defcker. You've got one week. I'm not restricting you, you can
do any damned thing you want, I don't give a damn for the regulations, for the
schedule, for whatever you want to do. You've got carte blanche for one week.
But if you don't pull those sim scores right back where you were before your
'accident,' then we put you into lab, input Wilhelmsen's tape into your head,
and see if it improves your performance. You understand that?"
"Yessir."
"Are you clear
on that?"
"Yessir."
"Then get the
hell out of here and do it, Dekker, while the labs try to straighten out the
damage you've done to your crew. I don't want to see your face right now. I
don't know if I want to see it again."
14
5EQ. 285MII. Dekker,
Paul F. Authorized. He waited, clinging to the line, felt like a fool inputting
the card and checking the tape serial number on the display for the second
time, but the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach refused to go away, and
nothing seemed right, or sure enough.
Couldn't remember if
he'd done it. Things he'd done weren't registering. He was thinking on things
other than here and now and the number didn't damn matter. There wasn't a
training tape he couldn't handle.
Come apart on an
orientation run, for God's sake? Their input couldn't have overridden his
displays if he hadn't let it, and they were apologizing to him for screwing up?
If he was glitchmg on their input, he could have spared a hand to shut them
out. He could have let go the damned yoke and recovered it at leisure. The
number one sim was a walk down the dock if you didn't seize up like a fool—
Muscle spasm. Point
zero five second bobble—not
wide -290-
294 • CJ CHERRYH
enough to invoke the
braces or trigger an abort on a sleeper run like that; and he'd spaced on it—in that five-hundredth second, he'd
been in the Belt, he'd been back at Sol, he'd been with Pete and the guys and
lost with Cory—God only where his
head had been but he hadn't known his next move. He'd blanked on it, without
reason, without warning.
Pod drifted up,
opened for him. He grasped the handholds and slid into the dark inside—respiration rate coming up. Sweat
starting. He could feel it on his face, feel it crawling under the flightsuit
as he prepped die boards. Belts, confirm. Power up, confirm. Single occupant,
tape 23b, Dekker, P, all confirm.
He adjusted the
helmet. The dark and the glowing lights held a surreal familiarity. It was no
time. It was every time.
Some drugs came back
on you, wasn't that the case?
But the guys weren't
with him now. If he screwed it he screwed it by himself. Wasn't going to let
them do to him what they'd done to Meg and Ben and Sal, wasn't going to take
that damned tape—
No.
"Dekker."
Sim chief again.
"Dekker, you
want to stand down for an hour?"
Didn't like their
telemetry. Picking up his heartbeat.
"No. I'm all
right."
"Dekker."
Series of breaths.
"Porey's orders. Free ticket. I'm all right, let it go."
Seemed like forever
that light stayed red.
They had guys over in
hospital that couldn't walk straight, that never would fly again...
Had guys in the
mental ward...
Sim chief was
probably checking with Porey's office.
Calm the breathing
down.
Light went from red
to green.
Punch it in.
GO!
HELLDURNER • 295
"Dek," it
was, "how'd the run go?" and "Dek, you all right?"
He winced, shrugged, said,
Fine, working on it.
And stopped the lift
on three-deck, made it as far as the nearest restroom and threw up non-stop.
From Meg, back in
barracks, a shake at his shoulder: "Dek, cher. Wake up. Mess call. You
coming? You'd better come."
He hauled himself out
of half-sleep and off the bunk, wobbled into the bathroom to pop an antacid—the meds didn't restrict those, thank
God—-and to scrub normal
color into his face. He walked out again to go with Meg, navigated ordinary
space, trying not to see the glowing lines and dark, not to hear the mags or
feel the destabilizing jolts of thrust.
Familiar walls,
posters, game tables, drift of guys out to die hall. Ben and Sal gave them a:
Come on, you're late, and he wondered suddenly where this hall was, or why he
should stay in it, when there were so many other like places he could be—spaced, he told himself, sane people
didn't ask themselves questions like that, sane people didn't see the dark in
the light...
"Hey, Dek, you
all right?"
Mason. "Yeah.
Thanks."
Hand on his shoulder.
Guys passed them in the hall.
"He all
right?" Sal asked.
"Yeah," he
said. Somehow he kept walking as far as the messhall, couldn't face the line.
"I'm just after coffee, all right? I'm not hungry."
They objected, Meg
said she was getting him a hamburger and fries, and the sumbitch meds and
dieticians would log it to her, the way they did every sneeze in mis place,
maybe screw up her medical records. He waved the offer off, went over to the
coffee machine and carded in.
Nothing made sense to
him. Everything was fractured. He was making mistakes. He'd glitched the target
calls right and left mis morning.
296
CJ CHEFWH
HELLBURNER *
297
It had been this
morning. It had to have been this morning... but he'd run it so many times...
He walked back toward
the tables, stood out of the traffic and muttered answers to people who talked
to him, not registering it, not caring. People came and went. He remembered the
coffee in his hand and drank it. Eventually Meg and Sal came out of the line,
so did Ben, and gathered him up.
Meg had the extra
hamburger. "You're eating," she said. "You want the meds coming
after you?"
He didn't. He took
it, unwrapped it, and Ben hit him in the ribs. "Pay attention,
Dek-boy."
"Huh?"
"Huh," Ben
echoed. "Salt. Pass the salt. God. You are a case today."
"Thinking,"
he said.
Ben gave him a look,
a shrug in his direction. "He's thinking. I don't think I've ever seen
that before."
"Ben," Meg
said.
"Dekker. Pass
the damn salt."
"Shit!"
Wasn't approved com, the sojer-lads got upset, but she was upset, so what?
"It's all right,
it's all right," the examiner said. "You're doing fine, Kady."
"Tell me fine, I
screwed my dock..."
You couldn't flap the
voice. "It gets harder, Kady. That's the object. Let's not get
overconfident, shall we?"
"Overconfident,
my—" She was shaking like a leaf.
Different voice. Deep
as bone. "You shoved a screen in over your pilot's priority. Did your
pilot authorize that?"
Hell, she wasn't in a
mood for games. She thought she knew that voice. It wasn't the examiner.
"Kady?"
"Had to
know," she muttered. Hell, she was right, she'd done the right thing.
"Not regulation,
Kady."
Screw the regs, she'd
say. But she did know the voice. There weren't two like it.
"Yessir,"
she said meekly, to no-face and no-voice. Dark, that was all. Just the few
yellow lights on the V-HUD and the boards, system stand-down.
"You think you
can make a call like that, Kady?"
Shit.
"Yessir."
Silence then. A long
silence. She waited to be told she was an ass and an incompetent. She flexed
her hands, expecting God only—they
sometimes started sim on you without warning.
Then the examiner's
quiet voice said—she wasn't even sure
now it was alive—
"Let's go on
that again, Kady."
She couldn't stand
it. "Was I right?"
"Your judgment
was correct, Kady."
"Ms. Dekker, do
you have proof of your allegations?"
"Talk to my
lawyer."
' 'Is it true your
son is in a top secret Fleet project?''
"I don't know
where he is. He doesn't write and I don't give a damn."
"How do you feel
about Ms. Salazar's allegations—"
More and more of it.
A Paris newsservice ran a clip on Paul Dekker that went back into juvenile
court records and fee other services pounced on it with enigmatic references to
'an outstanding warrant for his arrest* and his 'work inside a top-secret Fleet
installation.'
Graff punched the
button to stop the tape, stared at the blank screen while Demas hovered. FSO
had sent their answer Regarding your 198-92, Negative. Meaning they'd turned up
nothing they cared to say on the case—at
least nothing they trusted to FleetCom—or
him.
"Influence-trading,"
Demas said. "Scandals of the rich. Young lovers. Salazar and her money
against the peacers. The public's fascinated."
The Fleet didn't need
this. He didn't. Dekker certainly
296 • CJ CHEIWH
didn't. A bomb threat
involving Salazar's plane, the peacers denying responsibility, the European
Police Agency finding a confidential report in the hands of the news services.
Rode the news reports outside Sol Two almost as hot and heavy as the Amsterdam
Tunnel collapse.
While Demas and Saito
only said, Hold on, Helm. Hold on. Don't make a problem, the captain doesn't
need a problem.
"I
honestly," Demas said, "don't think Dekker needs to see this
particular broadcast, regardless of any promises."
"She's never
called him. Never returned the call."
"Lawyers may
have advised against. I'd advise against. Personally, J-G."
"I knew you
would."
"So you didn't
ask."
"I don't know
Earth. Now I wonder if I even know Dekker. He's never asked me, either—whether there was word."
Light and dark. The
AI substituted its interlink for crew, he was fine till the randoms popped up,
till he saw the wicket he had to make and the pod reacted—bobble and reposition, reposition,
reposition—
Fuckin' hell\
Screwed it, screwed
it—screwed mat one—redlight—
You're hit. Keep
going. Don't think about it.
Chest hurt, knees
hurt, right arm was numb. Damn hour and five sim and he was falling apart—
Made Five. Lost one.
Randoms again, five
minutes down. God, a chaff round....
Blinked sweat. Tasted
it. Hate the damn randoms, hate the bastards, hate the Company, dammit—
Overcorrection.
Muscles were tired, starting to spasm, God, where was the end of this run?
Couldn't hold it. HUD
was out, the place was black and blacker—
HELLOURNER
299
"Dek, Dek, wake
up," from the other side of the door and Ben, with the territory behind
his eyes all full of red and gold and green lines and red and yellow dots,
hoped Meg would just put a pillow over the sumbitch's face. Beside him. Sal
moved faintly.
"Dek!"
"Shit," Sal
moaned, and elbowed him in a muzzy catch after balance.
"Dek? Come out
of it."
"Son of a
bitch," Ben muttered, felt a knee drop into the cold air outside the
covers and set a foot on the floor, hauled himself to his feet and banged into
the chair by the bed.
"Ben?" Sal
murmured, but the blow to the hip did it. He shoved the door open into the dark
next door and snarled, "Dekker!"
Dekker made a sound,
Meg gave a sharp grunt above a crack of flesh and bone meeting. The son of a
bitch had got her.
"Dekker!"
He shoved past a smooth female body to get a shove of his own in, got a grip
and held it. "Dekker, dammit, you want to take a cold walk?"
Same as he'd yelled
at Dekker on the ship, when Dekker got crazy. He had one hand planted against a
heaving, sweating chest, right about the throat, and Meg had cleared back,
gotten to the light switch. He couldn't see anything but a blur, and he didn't
let up the pressure—if
Dekker moved to hit him Dekker was going to be counting stars, he had his mind
made up to that. Dekker was gasping for breath—eyes open now.
"Spooks
again," Meg panted.
"I'll say it's
spooks, this is the damn spook! I dunno why yon sleep with him."
The inside door opened
and Sal came in at the periphery of his vision. He heard Meg saying, "It's
all right, it's just surface," and kept his own hold on the lunatic, who
still looked spaced and shocky. Dekker's heart was going hard,
000 *
CJ CHERPYH
H ELLBURNEP,
301
felt like detonations
under bis hand. Dekker's eyes had lost their glaze, started tracking around
him.
Drifted back again,
looked halfway cognizant.
"Let up,"
Dekker said.
He thought about
that. He thought about Meg saying for the last damn week Dekker was just
confused, and Sal saying back off and give him some space. While Dekker kept a
sim schedule the other crews were talking about. He gave Dekker a shove in the
chest. Hard.
"Let up, hell.
I'll solve your problem, I'll break your neck for you. You hit Meg, you skuz,
you know that?" Dekker didn't say anything, so he asked, for Dekker's
benefit, "You all right, Meg?"
"Yeah."
"Hell of a
bruise coming," Sal muttered.
Dekker set his jaw
again, didn't exactly say go to hell, but that was the look he gave, along with
the impression he might not be in control of his voice right now. When Dekker
shut up, you either kept a grip on him or you got out of his way. So he kept
his hand where it was, asked, civilly, "You still talking to him, Meg?"
,
"Wasn't his
fault, Ben." Mistake. Meg sounded shaky herself, Meg had evidently gotten
clipped worse than he thought, and that wobbly tone upset Dekker, he saw that.
Dekker quit looking like a fight, just stared at the ceiling, gone moist-eyed
and lock-jawed.
Great.
He gave Dekker
another shove, risking explosion. "You want to, maybe, get a grip on it,
Dek-boy? Or you want to schitz some more?'*
Dekker made a move
for his wrist, not fast, just brushing him off. He let Dekker have his way,
stood back and let Dekker sit up with his head down against his knees a moment,
to wipe the embarrassment off his face.
"You know,"
he said, pressing mat advantage, "you do got a serious problem, Dek. You
busted Meg who's trying to help you, the meds are bitching you're pushing it
too
damned hard—you seriously got to get your head
working » Dek-boy, and we got
to have a talk. Meg, Sal, you want to leave him with me a minute?"
Dekker looked away,
at the wall. Sal shoved Meg out of the room and Dekker didn't look happy with
the arrangement, didn't look at him when the door shut, just sat in bed and
stared elsewhere.
Towel on a chair. Ben
got it and wrapped it around himself—wasn't
freezing his ass off, wasn't matching physique with pretty-boy, either—wouldn't effin' be here arguing with
him, except he was supposed to go back into pod-sims with a guy who couldn't
figure out what time it was.
"Just drop
it," Dekker said.
"Drop it, huh?
Drop it? Wake me up in the Middle Of, and I should drop it? We're getting back
in that pod at 0900, I'm not seriously inclined to drop it!"
Dekker leapt up off
the bed and shoved him. "Just fuck off! Fuck off, Ben, all right? —I'm resigning."
Took a second for
that to make sense. Didn't look as if Dekker was going to shove him twice,
didn't look as if Dekker was anything but serious. Resign from the Fleet? You
couldn't. From the program? Moonbeam had cold feet of a sudden?
Serious problem here,
damned serious problem, from a ; guy
who had dragged him into this so deep he couldn't see t out, whose neck he had every moral
right to break already; Dekker was piling the reasons higher, except Dekker
wasn't exactly copacetic enough for a fight at the moment, and there were two
women in the other room, primarily Meg, but Sal, too, who would take severe exception to his
murdering the skuz.
"Resigning,"
he echoed Dekker.
Dekker leaned an
elbow against the wall, wiped his shave-job mop out of his eyes and muttered,
"Before the sim. First thing I can get anybody on mainday."
"When did this
notion take you?"
302
CJ CHEIWH
HELLBURNER
303
Dekker's jaw locked
again, visibly. Knot of muscle. Nowhere stare. But you waited and it would
unlock, sometimes in ways you didn't want, but he waited. Dekker took a second
swipe at his hair, and stood with his hand on the back of his neck.
"I haven't got
it, Ben, mat's all. I'm schitzing out."
"Yeah?" He
wasn't eager to climb into that pod with a lunatic, he didn't know why in hell
he had this urge to pull Dekker out of his funk and assure he was going to have
to do that—it was instinct kept
him here, to hold the seams of the partnership together, maybe, what they had
right now being better than the hellish situation they could have. "Schitz
I'm used to. You want to explain this new idea?"
"Doesn't need
explaining. I can't cut it anymore. Can't do it."
"Nice of
you."
"Yeah."
"Dekker, you are
the absolute nicest son of a bitch I ever met, God, what do we do to deserve
how nice you are? We are stuck in this fool's outfit, they're feeding us this
damn experimental tape on account of they got it off your crew and you skuz out
on us. Do you think they're going to give up on the investment they got in us? —No, they're going to put us out on die
line with some only skosh saner fool and take stats on how long we take to make
a fireball! Thanks, thanks ever-so for the big favor, Dek, and mercy for the
vote of confidence, but you got to excuse us if we don't all break into party,
here."
"I'm sony."
Dekker turned his back on him, leaned a second against die bathroom door, then
went in and shut the door.
"Dekker, —"
Didn't like that
sudden cut-off. Didn't like that, I'm sorry, out of the son of a bitch. There
weren't locks on the doors. Not in mis place. So he hauled the door open.
Dekker was bent over
the sink. Mirror-Dekker looked up,
white as death, with
a haggard expression that scared hell out of him.
"You
contemplating anything stupid, Moonbeam?"
"What time is
it, Ben? You know what time it is?"
"You know what
the hell time it is."
"Not all the
time, Ben, not all the fuckln' time I don't know what time it is, all right?
I'm losing it!"
"You never knew
where it was in the first place."
"It's not funny,
Ben. It's not damn funny. Let me the hell alone, all right?"
Hell if. He grabbed
Dekker by the elbow and steered him out of the closet of a bathroom, Dekker
balked in the doorway and Ben slammed him hard against the doorframe.
"Listen, Moonbeam, you don't need to know where the hell you are, that's
Meg's department. You don't need to wonder what's coming, that's Sal's. You
don't need to know a damn thing but where the targets are and get me a window,
you hear me? Time doesn't mean shit to you, it doesn't ever have to mean shit,
you just fuckin' do your job and leave ours to us, you hear me?"
Door opened. It was the marines or it was Meg to
* Dekker's rescue.
But Dekker wasn't fighting the hold he
had, Dekker was
backed against the bathroom doorframe
with a kind of
consternation on his face, as if he'd just heard
something sane for
once.
"Ben, back off him."
"Yeah, yeah,
he's all yours, I got no designs on him." He let Dekker go and Dekker just
stood there, while Sal grabbed his arm and said, "Benjie, cher, venez,
venez douce."
Hell of a mouse Meg
had on her cheek. Meg was wearing a towel around the waist and not a stitch
else when she put her arms around Dekker's neck and said something in his ear,
Come to bed, probably—but
he wasn't sure that was what Dekker needed right now, Dekker needed somebody to
bounce his head off the wall a couple more times, if it wouldn't wake the
neighbors.
304 • CJ CHEIWH
"Cher. Come
on."
Sal tugged at him. He
went back to their room, Sal trying to finesse him into bed. Ordinarily nothing
could have distracted him from that offer. But he was thinking in too tight a
loop, about Dekker, the sim upcoming, and the chance of a screw-up. He sat down
on the edge of the bed. Sal massaged his back, then put her arms around his
neck, rested against his shoulders.
"Meg'11 handle
him," Sal said.
"Meg should take
a good look at him. Sal, we got a problem. Major. He says he's quitting."
"Quitting!"
"You want to lay
bets they'll let him? No. Nyet. No way in hell. We got ourselves one schitz
pilot. I got nightmares. He's got 'em. He's been pushing himself like a crazy
man—"
"Put Meg
in?"
' 'I think we better
consider it. I think Meg better consider it—at least on the one tomorrow. I don't
know if they'll stand for it. But that's our best current idea, if we're going
to get in there with him."
Sal gave an
unaccustomed shiver. "They give us that damned tape. Hell, I'm used to
thinking, Ben. I'm used to making up my own damn mind. I can't. I don't know
that I am. It's a screw-up, soldiers no different man the corp-rats, you get
the feeling on a screw-up."
"You're doing
all right."
"The scores are
all right. But I still never know, Ben, I don't get anything solid about what
I'm doing, I don't ever get that feeling."
He didn't either. He
hauled Sal around in front of him, held on to her, Sal being warm and the room
not.
Sal held on to him.
He buried his face in Sal's braids and tangled his fingers in the metal clips.
"Dunno, Sal, 1 dunno. I've done everything I know. Meg should screw him
silly, if he wasn't so skuzzed."
"Won't cure
everything, cher."
HELLBURNEft
305
"Makes a start,
doesn't it?"
"He's a
partner," Sal said.
"Yeah. Moonbeam
that he is."
"Soldier-boys
aren't going to listen to him or us."
"Dek-boy's on
total overload. I've seen this guy not at his best and this is it. He's not
stupid. Lot of tracks in that brain—mat's
his problem. All he has to do is follow one and he's in deep space so far you
need a line to bring him back. But none of them pay off. His crew's dead, he's
stifl hurting, not a damn word out of his mama, Porey's on his back, we're in
deep shit, and he's not thinking, he's just pushing at the only track he's got.
The only one that'll move. Don't give this boy time as a dimension. He's just
fine—as long as it's
now."
"Yeah. Yeah. I
copy that. What do they say, hyperfocus and macrofocus?"
"And dammit, you
don't let this boy make executive decisions. Paper rank's got nothing to do
with this. It's who can. Effin* same as the merchanters."
"Meg?"
He hesitated over
that. Didn't have to think, though. "Meg's Meg. Meg's the ops macrofocus.
The Aptitudes pegged her exactly right. Meg always knows where she is. Knows
two jumps ahead. Dek's the here and now, not sure what's coming. No. I'm the
exec."
Silence a moment.
Maybe he'd made Sal mad. But it was,; the truth.
"So how do we
tell them!" Sal asked.
"Sal, —you want to switch seats tomorrow
morning?"
She sat back and
looked him in the face, shocked. "God,; you're serious. They'd throw us in
the brig."
"Is that new?
No, listen, we can do it: same boards, different buttons. You got eight
different pieces of ordnance, mat's the biggest piece of information to track
on. I can diagram it for you. Inputs, you got two, one from Meg if you got time
to sight-see, one from longscan, which you know what that looks like..."
306
CJ CHBWH
"Ben. What are
you up to?"
"Surviving this
damn thing." A long, shaky breath. Going against military regs wasn't at
all like scamming the Company. But it did start coming together, now that he
was thinking about the pieces. "Because I want the damn com p. Because, screw
'em, it's what 1 do. Because I think mat ET sumbitch in there effin' knows
we're in the wrong spots and it doesn't feel right to him and it's killing him.
I don't know this crew that died, but I can bet you, one of them was the number
one in this unit, no matter who they had listed. That guy died and they bring
us in and put Dekker in charge? No way."
"What's that
make me, mister know-all? Why in hell did they Aptitude me longscan and you the
guns?"
He'd spent a lot of
time thinking on that. He reached up and laced his fingers with Sal's.
"Because you want *em too much, because you enjoy blowing things up. —Because mat's not what the tests want
on that board."
She let go.
"Where'd you get that shit?"
"Hey. Hetldeck
psych. Cred a kilo. And I know what the profiles are. I'm from TI. TI writes
these tests. They got this Command Profiles manual, lays out exactly what
qualifications they want in fire-positions and everything else. Enjoying it'd
scare them shitless. We're not inner system. You got to lie to the tests, Sal,
you got to psych what they want us to be and you got to be that on those tests—only way you get along."
"Meg—Meg is doing all right with this stuff.
Tape doesn't bother her."
"Meg's an inner
systemer, isn't she? She knows how to tell them exactly what they want to hear.
Meg's doing what she wants. We're not.'9
"So what do we
do? Is Aptitudes going to listen, when they made the rules?"
"Lieutenant
might." If Graff could do anything. If it wasn't too late. He was scared
even thinking about what occurred to him. But running into a rock was scarier
than
HELLDURNER
307
that. And that was
likely. A lot of scary things were likely. Like a crack-up tomorrow morning.
Stiff neck for a week after Dekker's twitch at the controls.
"Should we go
talk to him?"
"No. Not
direct." He eased Sal off his lap, went and got a bent wire out of a crack
in the desk drawer.
"What—?" Sal started to ask, and shut up
fast. She watched in silence as he bent down and fished his spare card out of a
joint in the paneling.
He put it in the
reader, typed an access, typed a message, and said, " 'Scuse, Sal. Taking
a walk."
Sal didn't say a
thing. He opened the door, went out through Dekker's and Meg's blanketed, dark
privacy—towel and all.
"Ben?"
Dekker asked.
" 'S all
right," he said, "forgot something."
He slipped out to the
corridor, around to the main room of the barracks, and around to the phones.
Linked in. Accessed
the station's EIDAT on system level. With a card with a very illegal bit of
nailpolish on its edge.
"What in
hell?" Dekker asked when he came through again.
"Hey," Meg
said. "Easy."
He got through the
door and Sal didn't ask a single question, not while he folded up, not while he
put the card away in its hiding spot behind the panel joint. You grew up in ASTEX
territory, you learned about bugs and you developed a fairly sure sense when
you might be a target for special monitoring. He didn't honestly think so. But
he took precautions and hoped to hell the bugs, if they existed, weren't
optics.
Most of all he hoped
the lieutenant was one of the good guys, because the lieutenant was no fool:
(he lieutenant knew enough to figure who around here could get into the system
and drop an unsigned message in his file. They didn't have TI techs above a 7A
in this place. He'd checked that, already.
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-rae 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.
-ooa-
HELLGUKNER
309
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.
010
CJ CHERRYH
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."
H ELL BURN ER
311
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,
312
CJ CHERRYH
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
HELLOURNER
313
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—"
314
CJ CHEtWH
"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 mat—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 emergen-
H E L L DU
ER
315
cy 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?"
f "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
016
CJ CHERRYH
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. Nowl"
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.
HELLDURNER
317
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.
316
CJ CHEIWH
Slow, slow business
in the recovery of the pod, and they could only watch, in 1-dcck 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 mat voice. —Mr. Dekker—" as he headed for the door.
"Hold it."
"Dekker!"
Porey said atop GraiTs 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,
HELLBURNEIX
319
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
320
CJ CHBWH
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 die 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, 1 did that, they hit me from
HELLOURN ER
321
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
322
CJ CHERKYH
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
HELLDURNER
320
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 misassigned 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.'1
"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,
324
CJ CHBWH
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 mat, 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."
HELLBURNER • 325
"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 mat?"
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
326
CJ CHBWH
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. Grafif 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 GrafFs 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."
HELLDURNER
027
"What are
they?"
"SUence.
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 mat'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,
326
CJ CHEfWH
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 die 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
HELLDURNER
329
'criminal element'
with a finger on the fire button. Earth is extremely worried about mat
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
mis, 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
330
CJ CHEIWH
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
HELLBURNER
331
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."
CHAPTER
16
YOU knew it was bad,
Mitch put it, and trez correctly so, Meg thought—when they gave the whole bar-•acks a beer pass, and brought cans and
chips into the <acred barracks to boot.
Pod sims were severely crashed, mags could be down a week, if sabotage
wasn't the cause, as was the running speculation in the barracks: in which
case, plan on longer.
Beer helped the mood,
though: the ping-pong game got highly rowdy, a couple of armscompers not quite
in their best form, but at least everybody was laughing. Word from hospital was
guardedly optimistic—the
meds weren't talking about life and death with Jamil and the guys now, but how
long they'd be in hospital, about the percentage they could expect to come back
and how soon. Jamil was conscious, Trace was. In the ruckus around the table,
nobody questioned Ben and Sal slipping late into barracks. Ben just settled
down soberly on Dek's other side with: "Heard the news. Bad stuff,"
while Sal went for beers. "Meg pulled them out," Dek said, "Got
to them fast as -002-
H E LL BURN E R
333
anybody alive could.
And the sim chief was on fuckin' duty this time, didn't have to stop to get
fuckin' Tanzer's fuckin' authorization, he just braked the other mags and cut
the power, was all. The worst part's the stop. I can tell you that. —They go on and switch you guys, or is
somebody going to tell me what they did, or what?"
Dek had had
considerably more than one beer, not a happy drunk, but direct.
"Yeah, they
switched us. Damned right they did."
At which Dek looked
at Ben and Meg recognized it was a good thing Sal came back with the beers.
Dek asked: "Why
in hell didn't you tell me?"
Ben took his beer and
Meg held her bream. Ben said: "Because they could've said no deal. And you
already knew."
"I didn't
know."
"Yes, you did.
Give me armscomp, hell, I don't want the guns ... why'd they give me the guns?
I'm a numbers man. So Sal said, 'Want to trade?' and I said, 'You friggin' got
it, give me the comp and I'll get you the fire-tracks ...'*'
"BulLr/iiY,
Ben." Dek's voice wobbled of a sudden. "What are they going to do
about it, then?"
Like he didn't know.
Like he hadn't told her, in a couple of minutes during which Cpl. Bloomfield
had been calling the hospital, checking on Jamil.
"Come on,
cher." Sal squatted down with her beer and patted Dek on the knee.
"Screw the regs. Ben's the numbers, Ben's always been the numbers—"
Ben said,
"Armscomp and longscan's integrated boards, what's the difference, who's
punching up, who's punching in? They ran us switched, as a pair, didn't have an
iota of trouble with the sim—Sal's
got to get the feel for the ordnance, but she's on it..."
"It's not a free
lunch, Ben."
"Close as. I got
my hands on that system, Dek-boy, I got a system runs like it's friggin'
elegant—"
Ben was in serious
lust. Dek looked at him. Dek was
334
CJ CHERRYH
going to hit him, Meg
thought, poised to grab. But Dek didn't.
Sudden quiet from the
ping-pong match. Rapid fall-off of noise from the door inward, and she looked,
where, God, it was VDC uniforms incoming, senior guys; and the lieutenant was
with them. Guys were coming to their feet. They did.
"Villanueva..."
Dek murmured. The redoubted Captain Villy, then.
"At your
ease," Graff said—official
voice, mat. Something sure as hell was up. Nobody moved. "Personal message
first," Graff said. "Jamil says he's coming back. Says he and Dekker
are in a race."
Fly-by was a
show-out, but, God, that was good news: he was no cheap write-off and neither
was his crew. Cheers at that. A faint laugh out of Dek.
"As you
know," Graff continued, "the mag interfaces took damage in shut-down,
repair crews can handle that... but the larger question is what caused the pod
to hang, and we are not putting crews back into the moving sims until we can
pinpoint a cause and ensure operational safety. This does not, however, mean
the program is at stand-down."
Whole room must be
breathing in unison, Meg thought. Good on everything they'd heard so far. But
there were the UDC uniforms.
—Just hope to God they
aren't putting us back under Tanzer.
"—Lab-sims will continue as scheduled. We
have also made selection of Fleet crews for a carrier operations exercise—"
"Test run,"
Dekker muttered, at her side. Translation from a lot of sources, to the same
effect.
"—starting within the hour." Quiet
settled. Quickly. "In the meanwhile we are taking steps to integrate Fleet
and UDC instructional and operational personnel. You will see UDC personnel in
Fleet areas, eventually in barracks: on which matter I want to say something
specific
HEILBURNER
335
Rising murmur of
dismay. The lieutenant waited, frowning.
' 'There was an
incident reported to me, out of rec-hall, an attempt from a UDC crew to meet
this company halfway, which was reciprocated with good grace. As a pilot
myself, I appreciate the cnticality of operational confidence in fellow
personnel—let's be blunt:
confidence of mat kind was a casualty of the WUhelmsen run.
"But what went
wrong with this program does not serve this program; and when you're heads-up
and hands-on, what doesn't serve this program doesn't serve you or the carrier
you're defending. I don't have to spell out to you the reality for the future:
that you will be working with UDC crews, whose lives will be equally at risk,
including the lives of personnel aboard your carrier. Competition is well and
good where it brings out extreme effort. But the relationship between the four
core crewmembers of this ship will be extended eventually to the complete
thirty-member support team aboard, who will rely on core crew: in the same way,
a carrier's four Hellburner crews will have to rely on each other, and on that
carrier and its internal support crew, for survival. There is no more serious
business. Those of us from merchanter background have never quarreled with your
style or your customs—and
we refuse to quarrel with the personal customs of our sister service out of the
inner system. Whatever makes a crew work, is that unit's business and only
their business: that's the position we've always taken. That's the position we
expect you to take now, because when you're out there in the wide dark,
friends, your personal style, and whether you're from Sol's inner or outer
system, doesn't make a damn bit of difference. The reliance you have on the
crews making up your defensive envelope-—that's
all you've got. Those are your brothers and your sisters. And me uniform will
not matter."
Murmur from the
barracks, worried murmur.
Graff cut it off
with: "The names of the pilots..." and got instant quiet. "..
.of the three crews selected, given alphabetically: Almarshad,... Dekker,...
Mitchell. Those
336
CJ CHEfWH
crews: pack
immediately and board ECS4 within the hour; your quarters in this barracks will
remain in your name, sacrosanct. You have no mass limit for this particular
run: the carrier's engines will not notice your handweights or your case of
soft drinks, for that matter; but remember that all electronics aboard must be
listed with the duty officer, and alcohol and medications of any sort must be
dispensed by carrier staff only.
"Other crews will
keep listed schedules. That's all, guys, have a good evening. We'll have a
further briefing after breakfast call."
"Lieutenant!"
Mitch called out. "Is that as in—test
flight?"
"It's as in
keeping this program going, Mr. Mitchell. You'll get more specific briefings
after you're aboard. That's all I can tell you. I won't be making this trip.
You'll be under the orders of Comdr. Edmund Porey, specifically. Goodbye, good
luck, good outcome."
"Porey!"
Sal breamed.
"What in hell
are they doing?" Ben muttered, which was what she was thinking.
"They're crazed," Dek said, and called out, "Lieutenant!"
started across the room.
And stopped, still,
arms at his sides, just stopped, for no reason she could see. The lieutenant
was still standing there, looking straight at him with a worried expression,
but Dek didn't ask his question and the lieutenant didn't give his answer.
"Shit!" Sal
said, and went for Dek before she had the brains to, as Graff walked out with
Villanueva, and guys were coming up and accosting her and Sal and Ben with
congratulations—noisy and excited
gatherings around Almarshad and Mitch and their guys, speculation flying...
upbeat: the whole program had crashed on them, and now everything was moving
faster than anyone thought.
"Dek." She
got his attention and he looked sane—sane
and a little shaken. Ben overtook and asked: "What are we doing in this
sort-out?"
HELLBURNER
337
"We have to
pack," Dek said for an answer, which meant, to an old Company hand, We
can't discuss it here.
Another time-glitch,
the station's smooth pale surfaces to the carrier's spartan corridors, foam
steel and color codes, lights that worked only when there was presence,
hand-lines rigged every which way, and deja-vu on every surface. The rigging
crew had been kind enough to supply a hand-line with a color cue and Dekker
followed it, herding the duffle along, the head of his little column,
Mitchell's group and Almarshad's. Long, long way from the entry to me rider
loft: the lifts wouldn't take them where they wanted to go so long as the
carrier core was crashed, and the rules wouldn't let you do miner-tricks, not
on Porey's ship, he had that by experience. You slogged it the hard way, and
expected sore arms.
Ship's officer was
ahead, check-in point. "Welcome aboard," they got; and a copy apiece
of the ship's internal regs; and the standard information on alcohol,
volatiles, explosives, electronics, and live animals or plants.
"Inner perimeter
take-hold for power up..." rang out on the speakers—inner perimeter didn't mean them; which
he knew, but not everyone seemed sure of on the instant; and the petty officer
said, "Core's going to engage for you. You can take the lift, captain's
compliments."
Captain's
compliments. He took a breath, exchanged glances with his crew, thinking,
Bloody hell... because extravagant gestures from Porey were highly suspect. The
man liked causing pain: he'd met what he'd taken for examples of the type, but
cheap talent, compared with Porey's position and intelligence and potential. He
didn't want to be on this ship, he didn't want to be under Porey's command,
even feeling as he did now that Porey was a competent commander—he knew in his mind that they were
aboard for security reasons, not because of the test; and they weren't mission
candidates, he'd said as much to his crew in the privacy of their quarters, but
the way this was starting
330
CJ CHERRYH
out, this move on
Percy's part—was Porey in games
mode. You bet your life on your nerves and your skill, and they had Porey
jinking like this to start with, yanking them out, putting UDC into the
barracks when he damned well knew they were worried about UDC security? A dozen
guys with combat nerves, trained to deal with this kind of thing, and what in
hell was Porey up to, making maneuvers on the ones trying to make his program
work?
Snake, he thought as
he punched the lift call. It's politics, it's damned, stinking politics, that's
what it smells like—
he's afraid I'll talk, he wants me where he can control com, where I can have
another accident if it comes to that—
man'11 do anything, nothing in him you can get hold of, nothing gets to his
eyes except when people squirm—he
enjoyed it this morning, when he knew he'd got a hit in, and I hadn't done
anything, he's that kind...
The siren blasted the
thirty-second warning. Surreal sound, one he'd heard a handful of times in his
life, when he'd ridden out from the Belt.
"Helluva
surprise," Almarshad muttered. "Nobody sets foot on this carrier but
the commander's own staff, what any of us have heard, not even the lieutenant.
Don't they trust each other or what?"
Almarshad wasn't
thinking about surveillance. Wilson wasn't, either, who said, "Wish the
lieutenant was going," as if Porey wouldn't eavesdrop. Dekker felt a cold
fear, of a sudden, that not all of them might come back down this particular
lift again. Mitch's crew and Almarshad's: the mission team and the backup, that
was the order of things he could see, and he had a sudden claustrophobic sense
he couldn't go through with this, couldn't watch this, couldn't stand another
watch in mission control while something went wrong...
The deck vibrated
with the engagement of the core. The lift door opened to let them in.
Motion instead of
thinking—a moment of dumping
thoughts and negotiating the door, null-g. He got himself and his
HELLDURNER
339
crew and their
baggage in with two other teams, grabbed the take-hold in the corner next to
the lift controls and stared at the panel, read the instruction and warning
stickers on monofocus and didn't blink, because he could lose himself right
now, lose where he was, and when this was, and what he had to do...
G increasing.
"Hold on," he said, as the indicator approached the loft exit. The
car hit the interface, jolted into lock with the personnel cylinder. The door
opened...
Wood and sleek
plastic. Carpeted bum-deck...
Looked like the
Shepherd club on R2. Like exec offices.
"My Gawd,"
Meg breathed at his back. "Is this us or Porey's cabin?"
"It's us,"
he said in shock, "it's evidently us."
Wasn't real wood, it
was synth, but it was good synth. There was a tended bar, an orderly with trays
of food and null-capped liquor—there
were more orderlies to take their duffles and carry them away...
"Shee-it,"
came from Sal. And Ben:
"Class stuff,
here."
Reality was
completely slipping on him. He gave up his baggage to the orderly who caught a
look at his nametag and took the duffle away—no wide spaces, the whole huge loft was
diced up into safer, smaller spaces, by what he could see from his vantage; it
hadn't been like this the last time he'd been aboard. Bare girders on the ECS5—no paneling, no carpet, no interior
walls and no orderly with*] cheese and crackers and margaritas and martinis.
The Shep- J herds were right in their element: Mitch said, "All
right," and moved right in on the bar; and Ben didn't blink, Ben had been
living the soft life on Sol One; Meg and Sal had been with the Shepherds—
But he hadn't. This
wasn't real. Not for him. It wasn't ever supposed to be for him. . . there were
people who had luxuries and people who didn't have, by some rule of the
universe, and he couldn't see himself in a place like this...
"As you
were." Porey's voice, deep and live. He looked
340
CJ CHEIWH
around at the
outer-corridor entry, as the commander walked in. Porey strolled past Mitch to
the bar and picked up a cheese and cracker, popped it in his mouth. Nobody
moved. Nobody thought to salute. It was too bizarre, watching Porey walk a tour
of the very quiet area.
"We had a
problem. We still have a problem, gentlemen. —Ladies. —We have sims down—again. We have one of our best teams
down—again. This wasn't
your fault. Rxing it, unfortunately, is your responsibility. Seeing you have
time and opportunity to focus on the job at hand—is mine. I've pulled you out here, and
I am pulling this carrier out of station. Our final Hellburner prototype is
mated to the frame, we're proceeding with deliberate speed, we've advised the
necessary powers that there will be a test, and we are, frankly, using the time
to make our final selection. Three units will be using traditional lab sims,
which we can manage aboard this ship, and using sims in the actual prototype,
daily, shift after shift. Mr. Dekker's unit will be using something different
in addition, which we are watching and evaluating. Selection will be solely on
the basis of scores and medical evaluations.
"Alcohol is not
a prohibition during this watch. It will be available from time to time as
schedules permit; but I suggest you not have a hangover in the morning: schedule
will start with orientation to the library, tile loft, the prototype—
"About which,
remember you people are the best of the best—a carrier's survival and the
accomplishment of its objectives is in large part your mission. You will live
very well here, as you can see: core crews and technicians will occupy these
quarters, with adequate staff to assure your undivided attention to your duty,
which is solely the operation of your craft, the protection of your carrier and
the achieving of strategic and tactical objectives. Additionally, privilege is
extended in special facilities to your maintenance personnel, your library
research technicians, and your communications and analysis personnel—you will sit at the top of a pyramid of
some seven hundred staff and crew, with
HELLBURNER • 341
information gathering
and processing facilities interfaced and cross-checked with the nerve center of
the carrier itself. Everything you need. Anything you reasonably request. And,
yes, tactical and targeting decisions will be part of your responsibility, in
consultation with the captain of this ship. You will learn to make those
decisions in close cooperation with carrier staff, decisions which were not,
until now, your responsibility. Command believes your expertise in
gravity-bound interactions and object location is an invaluable resource; and
you will no longer receive cut-arid-dried mission profiles. You will construct
them yourselves. This is a policy change reflecting a change in the source of
policy: how long we can maintain that control of policy rests directly on your
successful completion of this mission.
"In the
meanwhile, enjoy yourselves, ask the staff for anything within reason, and
consult your individual datacards for further briefings." The second half of
the cracker and cheese. Porey walked slowly toward the exit. And stopped.
"Enjoy yourselves, gentlemen. Ladies."
Scared hell out of a
guy—Porey, as Meg would
put it, doing courtesy.
"Shit," Ben
said, closing ranks with him and Meg; and Sal said, close after, "So
that's Porey up close."
"That's
Porey," Dekker said.
"Po-lite
chelovek," Meg said. "Nice place, and all.... You wouldn't ever mink
it, would you? Son of a bitch."
A massacre, a
slaughter of the innocent. Graff braced his finger against his lips, watched
the vid in dismay, the crowd, the peacers shouting, the blond woman with the
stringing hair looking distractedly left and right over the crowd like
something trapped. Reporters asked, "Is your son the model they're basing
this tape on? Are you in communication with him?" Ingrid Dekker shook her
head in bewilderment, saying, "I don't know. I don't have anything to do
with him, nothing he did has anything to do with me... it's aever had anything
to do with me..."
342
CJ CHEIWH
HELLBURNEK
343
God.
He sat there,
watching the alien scene, steps of some ornate building, a cathedral, they
said, in London, the placards and banners, the sheer mass of human beings...
A bas la Compagnie,
they were yelling. Down with the EC.
And elsewhere on
Earth's life-rich surface, a UDC spokesman was claiming that the attitudes of
the rab movement were infiltrating the Beet, that the real aim was to disarm
Earth's local forces, that the Earth Company was attempting to use the Fleet
and the whole construction push in the Belt to take political control of the
UDC and establish a world dictatorship...
Disaster. Utter
political disaster.
"The tape is the
damning thing. Someone's given out details. Someone in a position to know what
we're doing—"
Saito said,
"Don't discount Tanzer. The UDC has those records at their disposal, a lot
of damaging data. We had to accept the UDC structure in place, and after the
takeover, we knew it was a bomb waiting to go off."
"What side are
they on, Com, for God's sake? Do they think it's a bloody game we're
playing?"
"Their power is
in question. Their sight has unquestionably shortened. The question whether or
not they're in control of the EC or whether the EC is in control of Earth's
policy—it's a very large, a
very sensitive, issue in this system. The EC has enormous power, a constituency
spread over the stations and the refineries and worlds outside this system. And
we outsiders only know the EC. But there are governments, many governments on
Earth, that consider the situation out there solely the EC's war."
"But it is the
EC's war. Do any of us doubt it's the EC's war? The EC's cursed emigration
restrictions created the mess, they motivated the dissidents to move out, they
insisted on micromanaging at lights distance. Every stupid decision they ever
compromised their way into created this war, but the fact is something very
foreign is coming here, that's the point. They're worried about tape-training
off a rab model because the rab movement is foreign? The rab
isn't azi. The rab isn't
designed personalities. The rab isn't an expansion into space so remote we
don't know what may come out of it or what in hell they're going to provoke...
Belters are foreign? They should worry about me, Com. I'm foreign. I'm more
alien than anything they've ever met!"
"Maybe they do
worry. Maybe that's what that mob in Geneva is really saying. Give us back our
control over things. Make it stop. Make it the way we always thought it
was."
"It never was.
Not for one moment was the universe the way they imagined."
"Of course it
wasn't. But they thought they knew. They thought they controlled it all. Now
they know they don't. And that poor woman—is
the symbol of their outrage."
"Alyce Salazar
has to be the EC's greatest internal liability. Why in hell do they go on
letting her take the offensive?''
"Principally
because Mars wants its independence. Because Mars has gotten quite different,
quite alien from Earth. That's what I've turned up on the Salazars."
"Cyteenization?"
"Something like.
Something like the Belt—with
nostalgic conservatism as the engine, instead of the radical reform that drove
the rab to the Belt. They cling to an Earth that never existed. They're the
pure article, more Earther than Earth is—maintaining
the true opinion, the true Earthly tradition. Never mind the outbackers are
eccentric as they come. The corporate management runs the government, quite
conservative, quite protective of their personal interests and their family
influence."
"I thought that
was illegal."
"It is. But it's
the driving force in Martian society—
who's in whose camp. Understanding what the daughter's desertion meant to Alyce
Salazar—simplistically,
face-saving has to be a large part of her motive, by what we've turned up. The
girl escaped her mother's authority by literally slipping through customs and
eluding her mother's personal security: that was one blow to the Salazar
corporate image; more extravagantly, she embarrassed her mother by dying,
344
CJ CHERRYH
CHAPTER
quite publicly, quite
firmly associated with Belter rab in a fullscale Company disaster. The daughter
was clearly a dynastic hope on her part—a
bid to extend Salazar's influence into another generation. A lot of Salazar
alliances were built on that assumption."
"Which had to be
revised at the daughter's death."
"Which to a
Martian corporate, was a major disaster. A threat to her immediate control.
It's radicalized the Salazar influence: she's—certain people think, calculatedly—offended certain elements that oppose
the Company. The consensus I'm getting from intelligence is she's not mad, she
calculatedly created a cause and an opposition to force the EC itself down her
path in a move to come out of this more powerful man she was. That's what we're
dealing with. She's maneuvering for power equal to the EC president—and the EC so far is paralyzed, because
of who's backing her. They can't betray the conservatives in Bonn, or it erodes
a structure they've built up over decades. The conservatives mere are in fear
for their lives over the radical resurgence. And that promotes Company
hardliners, like Bertrand Muller. Muller is for the war, incidentally. He wants
us to 'recover Cyteen.'"
"My God."
"He calls it a
colony. What do you want? He's ninety years old, he formed his current opinion
on his fortieth birthday, and he says the Company police who fired on the rab
were defending civilized values."
"We're in the
hands of lunatics."
"Of financiers.
Far worse."
17
HIT it, hit it, hit
it—" Breathless dive down the
handlines for the seats, one, two, three, four... in place, switches up...
Launch. Surreal burst of static while the screens and the V-HUD spieled numbers
and lines...
"Shit!"
from Ben. You couldn't cure him—or
Sal; and there wasn't a miracle, they'd screwed the first run, the second and the
third, but damn, Meg thought with half a neuron to spare, it felt better of a
sudden... wasn't garbage she was screening, it was starting to shape itself— Objective wasn't there, God,
intelligence gaffe— Time to sweat. Ben
was on it, logicking his way for the current location. Dek said, "What the hell?" and Ben
confirmed a fire-zone. Virtual ordnance blasted out into virtual reality and
she figured—yes! "Got it,
got it, got it—" "Watch
that mother!"
Fan of junk in the
carrier path. Dek repositioned and gave Sal the window on a roll to the main
objective, and Meg -045-
346
CJ CHEIWH
input him the latest
calc in long vision, new definition to the hostile fire-paths he was ready to
see, more precise positions she was inputting to Sal and to him.
Feeling too good, too
damn good, you didn't cut a rip like that, couldn't sustain it...
Couldn't get
overconfident, the damn sim kept throwing them targets and you couldn't believe
you were getting them, effm' sim had to be playing with them...
Couldn't go on this
way—she was the only one
in the crew who had time to worry, worry was die job description, taking the
long view, mission objective, degree of criticality, sight and target, sight
and target, priority was seen to, ride home couldn't be this—
"Shit!"
Whole list of hits.
It had felt too good all the way through, and Dekker shook his head, looking at
the outcome, all of them gathered around the table, getting the same news.
Objective achieved, path cleared, flock of surprises locked and taken out...
"Too soft,"
Ben muttered. "Too soft, this thing. I don't like it. It's not supposed to
fall down like this..."
Dekker rocked his
chair on its hinge, propped a knee against the table and surveyed his crew, the
chart-table with its windowed displays—not
the stuff they'd worked with in the station, not the hard plastic chairs and
the scrub-boards and the antique display system: anything they wanted, Porey
said, and for himself he still had crises of disbelief.
And moments of
slipping reality—like this one, that
showed him faces he knew with reactions that just weren't wrong... Pete and
Elly and Falcone riding in the cockpit with them an hour ago, if he wanted to
be spooked about it; but that wasn't really what had happened: the carrier had
that tape lab down the corridor, the way the carrier had a lot else it hadn't
let out, and his crew spent hours there, but they didn't drug deep anymore,
they didn't need to, that was the story from the tape-techs. Done was done and
their
H EL LBURN ER
347
sessions were simply
reaffirming the synched reactions, making sure—Meg said—they didn't pick up any bad habits in
live practice....
Live practice. Hell
of a way to word it, considering.
They ran the sims in
the prototype itself up to four hours a day, its V-HUD and instruments linked
realtime to the carrier boards and the sims library, thanks to what Ben called
the effin' difference between the UDC's EIDAT and the Fleet Staatentek. Ben
seemed personally vindicated in mat—what
it all meant, he wasn't sure, but it ran.
And they did, not the
first time, damned sure, the screw-up had been what Meg called egregious and
Sal called words he'd never heard. Until, this sim-run ...
This run, he looked
at the result and the fact Ben had psyched that relocated target right and laid
the probability fan right over the son of a bitch, dead center—that was a fluke, but Ben swore he'd
had a good hunch—which was what Elly
had used to say. Same words. That was a spook-out, too; but it was another
fluke. The cockpit wasn't haunted and his crew didn't see spooks in the mirror.
He slept with Meg with no illusions it was Pete Fowler, hell if, Meg would say.
You didn't confuse one with the other...
And that still wasn't
what worried him. It was what Ben said, it wasn't supposed to fall down this
easy. They were out here on no other reason than keeping him away from the
media, he told himself that once a day and he managed to relax and worry about
Mitch and Almarshad, who were the ones in jeopardy—stilt catching glitches; and the crew
who was dogging it and trying to come up from scratch and a couple of total
disasters pulled a hundred percenter?
He'd thought he knew
the answers, he'd eased off, kicked back, taken it for granted he was just
going to steer while everything was going to go to hell and they started
handing him stuff that fit together.
Adrenaline had come
up, hold-it-steady had become tracking-on, this last run; he was still hyped
and on his edge
346
CJ CHERRYH
and he hadn't been
this alive down to the nerve-ends since—
Since he'd screwed
the sim. You knew all along something was wrong with our set-up, Ben kept
insisting. And by comparison, now it wasn't wrong, and he couldn't sit still
and couldn't help remembering how it felt to be a hundred percent On, and
right...
With a crew he cared
about, dammit, more than he'd ever cared about human beings in his life, and
too damn many deaths and too many lost partners, with a chance to make runs
they'd plotted, the way the UDC hadn't let mem do it, and that perfect run
lying on the table saying... Can't do it twice. Complete fluke. Can't pull it
off again... System can't be that perfect. Something's wrong.
His gut was in knots
and his suspicion began to be, in two blinks of an eye and the work of an
overhyped brain, that it could be working because his team had come in with
miner-experience, something the lofty Shepherd types with their fancy tech
hadn't had, or—
Or the tape off his
dead partners worked, and Porey hadn't given up when they'd had to downgrade
the crew to basics—it wasn't basics
anymore. They'd either pushed the sim to the limit—or it had lied to them. And he didn't
put that past Porey, he didn't put anything political past Porey, if he wanted
to prove something to some committee in charge of finance ...
They were on the damned
list, that was what, they always had been, that son of a bitch had jerked him
sideways and just kept going with his crew. What was it, a confidence-building
exercise? Another damned psych-out for more damn political reasons? He felt
sick at his stomach.
"You all right,
Dek?"
He looked at Meg,
realized everybody was looking at him.
"Dek," Ben
said, "you aren't spooking on us, are you?"
He shook his head
solemnly. "It's August eighth, Ben."
"Huh?" Sal
said. Meg frowned. But Ben said;
"It better be,
Moonbeam. It had effin1 better be."
H ELLBURNER
349
"Yes, sir,"
Graff said, at the table, hands folded, looking straight at two very anxious
senators and a busy background of senatorial aides. There was a committee,
inevitably if there was a glitch, there was a committee, thank God currently
meeting at Sol One, in the comfort of class 1 accommodations: it wanted answers
and this was the forerunner, the shockwave.
"Why is a junior
lieutenant left in command of this base? What in hell does your base commander
think he's doing taking that carrier out? We give you the authority you ask
for, and immediately the program goes to hell in a handbasket, while the
officer in charge removes a carrier and declares he's going to test, without
notifying the UDC or the Joint Committee, with a highly controversial figure
aboard, conveniently unavailable to an ongoing investigation, while a distorted
version of the whole damned training program leaks to the media? What kind of
circus are you running here?"
His stomach was in
knots. He missed certain of the references. Demas and Saito had advised him
certain things to say, certain points to make, the direction he should go with
these men. But Demas and Saito didn't know one truth he knew. Neither did Porey
and neither did the captain.
"Sir," he
began on that track, "with all respect, I deny that the breach was in our
Security."
"Are you
suggesting the UDC leaked it? What about Dekker's phone call to Sol One? What
about other phone calls from other Fleet personnel?"
He hoped to hell
there wasn't a recorder going. "Let me explain, sir. Fleet personnel are
contained in a security cocoon within the former administrative apparatus. Our
personnel are issued cards which do not work with civilian accesses, which
can't access BaseCom or the internal phone system without going through
FleetCom, which is physically aboard the carriers, if there were anyone outside
this
350
CJ CHBWH
facility for them to
call, nearer the Belt. The one exception was Dekker, who—" They began to interrupt and he
kept going. "—who made his only
call to his mother in my office, on my authorization, and I recorded the call
in its entirety in case any question arose about that contact. The UDC system
is run through BaseCom, which is linked by other means to station central.
Those are the principal routes information can take. There is the shuttle, and
there is contact between human beings who can walk from one place to another If
information flowed from this facility, it took one of those routes."
On which they had
evidence, except a member of a Fleet unit also had accesses he wasn't supposed
to have... that Fleet Command didn't know about... which, if he confessed it
now, was damning to him, to the Fleet, to Dekker's crew at minimum, to the
Fleet's credibility and their support from the legislative committee, at worst.
While at least at
some level the UDC and potentially the legislature knew about Pollard's
security clearance—and might possibly
know he'd somehow retained system access—
if Pollard himself weren't under higher orders.
God, he should never
have held his information source secret from Porey. Never.
"I suggest you
use the channels you have to find out what's going on, lieutenant. Somebody in
your command with real authority had better get his ass into this station, find
out where the leak is and get this program off the evening news. You're public
as hell, reporters are demanding to come over here in herds, we've got a very
fragile coalition that worked hard to give you what you asked for, and let me
tell you very bluntly, lieutenant, if anything goes wrong with this rumored
upcoming test you've lost the farm. You cannot disavow another failure, your
captains can't pass the buck to junior officers. Do you understand that? Am I
talking to anyone who remotely understands the political realities of this
situation?"
"Yes, sir, I do
understand." No temper. "I am thirty-
H ELLDURN ER
051
eight unapparent
years of age, sir, and older than that as you count time. I was in command of
this base during the last hearings, I was lately the director of personnel in
this program, I am currently in charge of this facility and the testing
program, and of the investigation, and we do have an answer, at least to what
happened to Jamil Hasseini and his crew." He reached in his pocket and
held up a yellow plastic washer. "This caused the so-called
accident."
He had their
attention. At least.
"How?"
"Operations
records showed a hangup in an attitude control. This plastic washer turned up
to block the free operation of the yoke. In a null-# facility, you may know,
maintenance has to be extremely careful to log and list and check every part,
down to the smallest screws and washers, mat they take into the facility. These
are experienced null-g workers. We don't know by those records how long this
little part has been there—whether
it was there from the time the pod was assembled and it by total accident
floated over a course of years undetected into the absolutely most critical
position it could take in the control system—or whether it was placed there
recently."
"Sabotage, in
other words."
"We view it as
more than suspicious. Paul Dekker was assigned to that pod."
"So we've
heard."
"How much have
you heard?"
"Maybe you'd
damn well better tell us what there is to hear. We hear Dekker was assigned
there and pulled at the last minute. Again. Why? How?"
"By my order, as
chief of personnel. I made a routine final check on the crew stats: they were
coming out of a period of orientation and lab sims. I felt we might be rushing
it, in terms of fatigue levels. A stand-down under those circumstances is
routine. Routine—except mat mis was
the time his replacement crew was going into sims with him. Except that the
same individuals we suspect of sabo-
352
CJ CHERRYH
tage had access to
that area. Civilian employees: Dekker's given a positive ID on one of them as
guilty of assault in the last so-called accident. We're talking about
deliberate sabotage and premeditated murder committed on Dekker—"
"With what
motive?"
"I doubt it was
personal. We've two employees of Lendler Corp under surveillance. We don't know
all their contacts, yet. But they had access on both occasions."
Frowns. "Can you
prove anything?"
"We're
developing a case. But you see the problem we've been working against."
"Your security
is supposed to be on top of things. People come and go where they like here, is
that the way it works?"
"People with
security clearances, yes, sir—in
this case clearances granted by the UDC, interviewing people on Earth, where we
have no screening apparatus. We're reviewing the systems, and the clearances,
but there are 11338 civilians on B Dock, hired by the UDC and overseen by
various offices. We're naturally giving Lendler Corp a higher priority in our
review, but that doesn't mean information can't go out of here through another
route."
"Meanwhile
Dekker is unavailable."
"He is
unavailable."
"And you have no
proof of this sabotage."
"Their access.
Dekker's testimony. The washer. Circumstantial evidence placing them in the
area."
"You know what
that's worth."
"A good reason
not to let out what we know or make charges we can't substantiate. We're
gathering evidence."
"Meanwhile these
purported saboteurs arc at work on this station."
"Yes, sir. Of
necessity, they are."
"And Paul
Dekker's out there on that carrier. —Is
he in any way involved in the upcoming test?"
"Certainly he'll
be in observation and advisement. All
HELLDURNER
353
crews have that
assignment during a run. Whether he'll be assigned the run or not—that's dependent on evaluations."
"He can't be the
one to take the controls. That name can't be prominent in this program. —Have you no comprehension?''
"Senator,
political decisions in crew choice caused the last disaster to this program.
And I can't believe I'm hearing this all over again."
"I can't believe
what I'm hearing from the junior command officer on this base. I can't believe
your persistence in putting this man into the glare of publicity. Let me make
it clear to you, lieutenant, careers are going down in flames if there's a
second disaster. We've backed you, we've delivered votes in the JLC, we've
patched together the coalition that gives you what you asked for and damn you,
you serve us up Dekker for a witness to sabotage and Dekker for the representative
of your program, and leak to the press, while you're 'developing a case' you
daren't bring to court. Are you aware what's happening on Earth? Are you aware
of the fire-bombing at the EC headquarters? Are you aware of the bill pending
in committee?"
"The extradition
bill? Yes, I'm aware of it. And both acts of sabotage were aimed at him—by people who didn't even know him.
This is no personal grudge on the part of the saboteurs, senator, it's
politically motivated murder, the same as the substitution mat killed his crew
was politically motivated, by people who may not have known where their orders
came from. Now we have another coalition, as I understand it, part of which is
working for this bill, but somebody else clearly doesn't want him in court—somebody in a position to obtain
security clearances wants him dead, and if we break the Lendler case into the
open right now, it's going to be a string that reels more and more information
into the spotlight—it's as explosive as
the Dekker case and for identical reasons. That's why we haven't expelled these
individuals. We know where they are. We suspect who they work for."
054
CJ CHERKYH
Temper. Saito had
warned him. He got it under control. He faced the senators and the busily
note-taking aides with a cold stare, and saw anger and consternation on both
senatorial faces.
"I also want to
know," he said, "how this exact information about Dekker's being
pulled from the sim got to the Joint Committee. Was it out of Stockholm?"
Silence for a moment.
The other senator said, harshly, "Through the media, lieutenant. Not the
way we prefer our briefings."
"Haven't you the
power to find out those sources?"
"No. We haven't.
There are laws."
"To cover
illegal activity? I find mat incredible."
"We want to know
who made this decision to test. Is mere a test? Or is this whole maneuver a
cover for this Dekker person?"
"There assuredly
will be a test."
"With Dekker's
crew?"
"Possibly."
"Let me tell you
what this looks like to us. It looks like a do or die proposition, a
harebrained go-for-broke damned stupid risk, on your senior captain's
perception that the Fleet's losing prestige in Europe and your facility here is
shut down! We can't get you another ship to wreck, lieutenant, we can't
continue our support in the face of mis stupid risk of lives and
equipment!"
Senior captain?
Mazian? "The program is not shut down, sir. If you perceive that, you've
been misled."
"The simulators
are wrecked, you're vulnerable to sabotage, you're sending out crews who aren't
ready—"
"No, sir. I'm
delighted to report that all necessary equipment is functioning. There's been
no hiatus in the program. All our crews are at work, including the UDC teams,
integrated with ours."
A silence. Doubt,
curiosity, and deep ofiense. He had his own doubts, of these men Saito called
essential and friendly and to be trusted with the truth, these fools who
wouldn't so
HELLBURNER
055
much as talk to
Saito, because Saito wasn't a command officer and Saito wasn't in charge.
"This doesn't
agree with our information."
"I hope I have
better news, then, sir. Our crews are keeping schedules, we are bringing our
other senior crews, including UDC personnel, up to mission-ready; and when
they're ready they will go. Officially, I know nothing about the upcoming test.
I won't know the time until I'm told. But assuredly it will go. And any media
attention to this facility will find everything in operation."
A modicum of respect,
perhaps. A reassessment, a reevaluation what situation they were dealing with,
certainly.
"Maybe you'd
better explain yourself, lieutenant. With what equipment? With this tape you've
come up with? Are we brainwashing our crews?"
"Crews at
mission ready have to practice daily to maintain those skills. With the damage
to the sims, Fleet Command opted to use the Hellburner prototype, patched to
the shipboard simulators."
"When was that
authorized?"
"The
patch?"
"The shipboard
facility. The chamber."
"Not chambers,
sir, nothing like. I'm not privy to the details, but this is equipment we
brought with us into the system, that we regularly use. Combat crews on
stand-by also have to practice, virtually daily, to keep their edge. We
certainly can't stop a carrier's operations or use its physical self for
exercises. Naturally we have the equipment."
"Then why in
hell haven't we been using it all along? Why spring it now? Why this whole
damned, accident-riddled program?"
"Politics,
sir." He hoped he kept all satisfaction off his face. "As the
situation was told to me, we were ordered at the outset, over our captains'
explicit protests, to submit our trainees to the UDC Systems Test protocols, to
their aptitude criteria, their rules and their existing equipment during
356
CJ CHERRVH
testing of the
prototypes. As I believe, there was a major policy battle over that point in
the JLC, and we lost."
Total quiet in the
room. The clicking of the aides' keys had stopped.
"You never said
explicitly," the other senator put in, "that you had the
equipment."
"There was some
fear," Graff said, "that the UDC might use its position to demand
control of that equipment. In a situation in which we arc not to this hour
solely in control of communications system accesses, in which we've had
sabotage, attempted murder of our personnel, assignment of flight personnel on
criteria purely ideological in nature—
plus the security breach—we
are trusting your discretion on mis point and we trust mere will not be another
leak. What we train on is a very dearly held piece of information. If our enemy
knows what equipment we have—we
are, in the vernacular, screwed. We protested, through every channel we
trusted, that the station facilities here are a hundred fifty years old, with
maintenance problems that eat up funds for improvements we asked for. The
decision to put the rider training into the hands of the UDC, to use Lendler's
data conversion system for the pods in the first place—was as I understand, a purely political
decision. We asked to review the software. We were not trusted to make that
input. We... were... no/... trusted.''
Another silence. An
angry silence on both sides. But it wasn't productive anger. Graff shifted back
in his chair. "I'm not a diplomat. My captain left other officers here who
are. But they aren't command track by UDC rules. So I pass their word on to
you. As for the operational crews of all the ships—you gave us a requirement to have
carriers on standby to defend this system—and
I can tell you with absolute certainty I would be grossly irresponsible to take
that carrier's controls after months of total stand-down. We're in constant
training, all ops crews and staffs are in training during any stand-down; and
the UDC has never provided carrier control siras. It's certainly no
secret."
HELLDURNER
357
"Where did you
obtain this other equipment?" Anger. Still, a genuine offense, and he
answered with careful exactness:
"I haven't been
on that carrier and I honestly don't know the source."
"Where would you
expect that carrier to obtain it?"
"The black
market."
"Whose black
market?"
The question seemed
naive. "The one out there, sir. Outside this solar system. There's very
good equipment available."
* *I find this
outrageous. Union equipment? Is mat story true?''
"We have
manufacturers. We'rfc not primitives looking for Earth's expertise, my God,
senator. We provided the designs that are making your corporations money."
"Are you using
Union equipment?"
"Senator, we
don't look for the label. If it works, if it's better, we use it. If we can get
our hands on Unionside equipment, we're delighted, and they'd be extremely
upset, if they knew it. They don't want us using their programs."
"Are you
creating tape?"
"Of course.
They're creating tape over in the UDC. In TI. They're creating tape in Houston,
for physical rehab patients—"
"You know what
we're asking. These people with their fingers on the fire button—are you saying, lieutenant, that the
tape training your crews are being given is being adjusted to the personality
of some single individual, and among those individuals may be Paul Dekker?"
"Physical
reaction tape doesn't affect personality. That's a complete
misapprehension."
"It's a public
perception. Truth doesn't matter. Public perception does! You're going to use a
rab agitator, a man linked to riots in Bonn and Geneva—"
He held his voice
steady and his hands from clenching. "A young man who knows nothing about
riots in Bonn, who was qualified for a pilot's license before his enlistment,
which one would hope
the ECSAA doesn't do for cnnanais^f^f^
~*~ ^^,
056
CJ CHEIWH
H ELLBUKN E R,
359
"Oh, come on,
lieutenant! The ECSAA licensed every miner in the Belt!"
"Dekker was a
pusher pilot at Sol One, in your own space, by your certifications. He's an
outstanding young officer who's distinguished himself by his work and his
dedication to this program. And if he meets mission criteria, he will be a
source for training material. Skill—"
"He's too
politically sensitive. It's already too public. God! Why do you people persist
in shoving this man in our faces? Are you actively chalienging the
legislature?"
He shook his head.
"Your creativity, sir, with all respect. Any choice made on political and
not operational grounds reduces this ship's chances of survival. If this test
fails, the EC has no alternative and no further resources to offer us. I'm
authorized to tell you we will have no choice at that point but to pull out
entirely and abandon our defense of the motherworld. That's precisely where it
stands."
"Dammit!"
"Yes, sir. I
agree with you. But no one but our predecessors had a choice."
Things kept on
surreal, so far as Dekker was concerned, time-trip to a place he'd never been,
and the little things got to you: the moment in the shower you couldn't
remember where you were: the split-second during mission prep the whole scene
seemed part of the station, not the carrier. Nothing felt safe, or sure. You
ran the prep, you ran the sims, you scribbled away on your plans, you ran the
sims, and every once in a while they gave everybody a day down and you could
put your feet up, play cards and enjoy a light beer, because the carrier pilots
were using the equipment, but the whole thing cycled endlessly.
You could believe at
times you were in the war, the other side of the Hinder Stars. Or in Sol
Station's carpeted corporate heart, where orderlies served you food you didn't
even recognize, arranged in pretty patterns on the plates. Your bed turned up
made, your clothes turned up clean and
Ibe bar when it was
open served free drinks. Wasn't so bad a life, you could get to thinking. But
debt for this had to come due, either to Porey or to God, or to somebody.
Hit two
hundred-percenters, back to back, and he started dunking, the sims are lying to
us. They're jerking us around, trying to give us confidence—
They want their damn
theory to work, they're targeting the tape they're giving us at the exercises,
that's why we're getting scores like that, that's why it's not happening to the
other teams—
Some damned fool in
an office somewhere could believe a lie and put us out there, when it's all lab
stuff that looks good...
"Dek, what are
you guys having for breakfast?" Call from the end of the narrow room, down
by the display.
Damn, they'd posted
the scores.
Lot of guys went and
had a look. "Hell," he groaned, but it wasn't ragging this time, it
was a rueful shake of heads and a:
"Dek, looks like
you got the run."
"Not yet,"
he said to Almarshad.
"No, I mean you
got the run. You're posted. Mitch is back-up one, we're two, half a point
between us."
Blood went to his
feet. He sat there, with his crew, who weren't celebrating, who just looked at
him; and got up as Mitch and Almarshad came over and congratulated him, not
looking happy, not taking it badly either. It was too serious for that, too
damned uncertain for that.
"Not a thorough
surprise," Mitch said. "Sounds like we're headed for girl-tape for
sure." Ragging it a little close to the edge, mat. But he took Mitch's
offered hand, and Meg let him lay a congratulatory hand on her shoulder after.
"Kady. Class job, you guys. Sincerely."
Meg looked as if
she'd swallowed something strange. Sal just looked smugly satisfied, and gave
Mitch a kiss on the cheek.
Ben said, "I
can't believe this. I can't believe this. What am I doing here?"
CHAPTER
HELLBURNER
361
16
HIS mother had said
often enough, You don't care, Paul, you just don't care about people, there's
got to be something basic missing in you—
Maybe there was. Maybe he didn't feel things other people did. Maybe machines
were all he came equipped to understand, all that was ever going to make sense
to him, because he couldn't stay away from them... he honestly couldn't live
without doing this...
He couldn't turn it
loose. When he was away from the ship, he could think reasonably about it, and
know that it was a cold way to be, and that if he could be something different
and he could be back in the Belt with people he cared about, doing nothing but
mining, he could be happy—
he'd been happy there; he could have been again, in the right company...
But when he got up
here in nuIl-#, in the rider loft, with
the four Hellburner
locks staring him in the face, and the
ship out there,
behind number 1, then everything was
different, every
value and priority was revised. The ship was
-360-
different, every
value and priority was revised. The ship was a presence here. Was waiting to be
alive; and he was, in a way he wasn't in the whole rest of his life. He was
scared down in the gravitied quarters, scared out of his reason, and be
realized he'd gotten everyone who cared about him in one hell of a mess; but up
here—
Up here he knew at
least why he'd made the choices he bad, right or wrong, he knew why he'd kept
going, and why the pods made him afraid—just
that nowhere else was this. Nowhere else had the feel this did. It didn't
altogether cure being scared, but it put the fear behind him.
This was where he
would have been on mat day, dammit, except for Tanzer, except for Wilhelmsen
being put in the wrong place, at the wrong time... it felt as if his whole life
had gone off-line since then, and he was just now picking up again where it
should have been, with the people he should have had: time that had frozen on
him, was running again, the mission was in his pocket, and right now the only
thing he was honestly afraid of up here was being pulled from the mission again—
But nobody in command
would mess with him—not
now. It wasn't Tanzer in command. He was too valuable. He was somebody,
finally, that people couldn't shove aside, when all through his life people had
been trying, and they couldn't do mat again. If he did this—if he lived through it—
If he made good on
everything he'd promised.
"Dekker."
Percy's voice,
echoing over the speaker, making his heart jump.
"Sir?"
' 'Mission dump has
gone to your files. We have incoming,''
Cold hit his gut, raw
panic negated every reasoning. It couldn't happen. It wouldn't happen, it
wasn't true...
"/ said
incoming, Dekker. Get your ass into library! Fast'"
He grabbed a new grip
on the zipline for the lift and hit the inner lift wall, damn the drilled reaction,
he didn't believe it, damn, he didn't believe it. "We're not betraying
362
CJ CHERRYH
position," the
voice from the speakers said. "We're allowing forty minutes, that's all we
can allow, for library access, plot, and confirm. Get with it."
"You're lying!
Sir! This is a test run, this is the damn test, you don't have to pull this on
us!"
Silence from the lift
speaker. Lift crashed into the frame, jolted him and the whole compartment
around to plus 1 g, and he caught a grip on the rail.
"Damn you!"
he yelled at the incommunicative com. "Damn you to hell, commander, —sir! Where's this incoming?"
But nothing answered
him.
"I swear to you
it wasn't our guys," Villy said on the way to the officers' conference
room, to a meeting Graff would as soon have skipped. "That's official from
the colonel. He didn't leak it, nobody on staff did that he can trace. That's
what he wants me to say."
"What do you
say?" Graff asked.
"He's not
lying." Villy didn't sound offended by the question. Villy's eyes, crinkled
around the edges with a lot of realtime years, were honest and clear as they
always had been. You wanted to believe in Alexandra Villanueva the way you
wanted to believe in sanity and reason in the universe. But Villy quoted Tanzer
at him and it was suddenly Villanueva's own self Graff began to worry about,
now, about the man who, over recent weeks, he'd worked with as closely and as
cooperatively as he worked with his own staff—sorting out the tempers, the egos, the
simple differences in protocols: they'd mixed the staff and crews in briefings
and in analysis sessions, they'd given alcohol permissions in rec on one
occasion, holding the marine guards in reserve—and nobody'd been shot, nobody'd been
taken to the brig, and no chairs had left the floor. More than that, they had a
remarkable sight ahead of them in die hall, that was Rios and Wojcak in UDC
fatigues and Pauli in
HELLBUKNER
363
Fleet casuals and
station-boots, engaged in conversation that involved a clipboard waved
violently about.
No combat. Sanity.
Cooperation, if a thin one. There was a secret, highly illegal betting pool
going among the crews, odds on which crew was going to draw the test run, and a
sizable pot, from what Fleet Police said, the UDC crews leaning heavily toward
solid, by-the-book Almarshad and the Fleet tending to split between Mitchell
and Almarshad and no few still betting on Dekker as the long shot. He hadn't
taken the action on that pool that regulations demanded; Villy hadn't; more
remarkable, Tanzer hadn't, if Tanzer knew, which he personally doubted—Tanzer didn't know everything that was
going on these days, Villy directly admitted there were topics he didn't bring
up with Tanzer, and it was too much to hope that Tanzer had learned anything
about dealing with the Shepherds or changed his style of command. It was
Villy's discretion he leaned to—had
been leaning to it maybe more than he should have. Maybe he'd only been naive,
looking too much for what he hoped and too little for the long years Tanzer had
built up a network: in this place.
Fact was, same as
he'd told the committee, there were too many chances for leaks, too many
contractors, too many technicians, too many station maintenance personnel with
relatives in Sol One or, God knew, in Buenos Aires or Paris. It was worth their
jobs to talk, the workers knew that, they'd signed the employment agreements,
but they were human beings and they had personal opinions, not always
discreetly.
Shuttle was coming in—approaching dock. They might be rid of
the senators, but they had reporters incoming, FleetCom had broken the news of
the impending test. The senators had no wish to get caught here, they were
packing to leave, had their last interviews with the Lendler personnel today
(God hope they didn't give anything away) and the shuttle would be at least six
hours in maintenance and loading, latest report.
364
CJ CHERRYH
H E L L DU RN
365
None too soon to be
rid of the lot, in his book.
"We have any new
data on the hearings at One?" Villanueva asked him. "Anything from
the JLC or the technical wing?"
"Nothing. Not a
thing yet."
Steps behind them in
the hall, rapid, as they reached the briefing room. Late arrival, Graff
interpreted it, turned to glance and met an out-of-breath Trev, out of
FleetCom. Evans handed him a printed note.
It said: Reporters
are on the shuttle. All outbound system traffic on hold. Test is imminent.
Hell, he thought.
And: Why didn't the captain warn us? FSO has to have known, FSO has to have
signed the press passes...
"Reply,
sir?"
"None I want in
writing. Tell Com One I said so and what in hell. Those words. Stat."
"Yessir,"
Trev said, and cleared the area at max speed.
Which left Villy's
frown and lifted eyebrow.
"Reporters, on
the inbound shuttle," he told Villy. "The test's been announced, I
don't know by whom... System traffic is stopped. We're stuck with the shuttle,
the senators, and the reporters."
Villy's look couldn't
be a lie. "They've been inbound for three damned days! This isn't a leak,
this is a damned publicity set-up! What kind of game are you guys running over
at FSO?"
"That's what I'm
asking FleetCom. Bloody hell, what are they doing to us?"
"Damn
mess," Meg muttered, in the ready room, looking at the lighted plot-screen—Dek was a bundle of nerves, holding to
the hand-grip beside her and memorizing that chart with the only drug-training
he'd ever had, the bit that helped you focus down and retain like crazy. Ben
was swearing because he hadn't got his specific numbers out of carrier Nav yet,
Sal was talking to the ordnance clerk; and
Meg muttered her own
numbers to voice-comp, while suit-up techs tugged and pulled at her in intimate
places. You didn't even do that basic thing for yourself, you just memmed
charts fast as you could and talked to the systems chiefs and techs who you
hoped to God had done their job.
The helmet came down
over her head, and other hands twisted the seal. 360° real-HUD came active, voice-link did.
She evoked her entry macro, that prepped her boards longdistance, dumped her
touch, her patterns, her mem-marks on the plot-screen fire-path to the
Hellburner systems.
Mitch's crew and
Almarshad's were in flight control, two beats of argument between them whether
it could possibly be real, whether they might actually have a realspace system
entry launched at high v from far out; or whether intelligence reports foretold
something about the drop in—the
consensus was test, set-up, but they couldn't take it as a test run, didn't
dare believe the ordnance that would come at them was anything but real. The sketchy
fire-track was running right past Earth's moon, not the kind of thing Sol
System traffic control was going to like, and that meant a wide-open track with
a shot at Earth that if they didn't get a fast intercept on that incoming ship—the doomsday scenario: they could lose
the whole motherwell in less than ten minutes, that was what shaped up on their
data. Billions of people. All life on earth. The enemy wouldn't do that. They
were human beings. ..
But life in the Belt
and the gossip from Fleet instructors argued there were minds out there more
different than you ever wanted to meet. And you could never, ever bet on them
doing the logical—
Siren went off, the
board and take-hold. "Hell!" Ben cried, because they were going,
there was no more time, the carrier was going to hit the mains and the next
input they got was going to be off carrier ops, the carrier's longscan/ com
team that was their data-supply and their situation monitor, them and the
back-up teams doing her job for the
366
CJ CHEJWH
sixty-minus seconds
it was going to take them to board and belt.
She grabbed the
dismount line behind Dek, in crew-entry order, hindmost, and hung on as the
door slammed wide and the line meshed with the gears, hell of a jerk on the
arm. You held on, was all, as the singing line aimed you for the mounting bars
at the hatch, one, two, three, four, tech lines ringing empty, the Hellbumer's
tech hatch open, but receiving no one. Carrier technical crew shouted good
wishes at them as they shot past and one after the other hit the stop, pile-up
of hand-grips—inertia carried them
in—she hit the cushions last, heard the
hatches shut when she flipped the toggle, both ports, confirm on the seal by
on-panel telltales as she was snapping the only manual belt; second toggle and
they went ops-corn, linked with the carrier, sending and receiving a blitz of
electronic information. "We're go," Dek said, and instantaneously the
carrier mains cut in with a solidity that shoved them harder than the pods ever
had, 10+ in a brutal, backs-downward acceleration.
Carrier was
outputting now, making EM noise in a wavefront an enemy would eventually
intercept in increasing Doppler effect, and to confuse their longscan they were
going to pull a pulse, half-up to FTL and abort the bubble, on a heading for
the intercept zone—that was the scary
part. That was the time, all sims aside, that the theoretical high v became
real, .332 light, true hellride, with herself for the corn-node that integrated
the whole picture.
They tranked you down
for jump. They didn't for this move. They told you what it was going to be,
they pulled disorientations and sensory assaults, and learned the
mem-techniques from the starship crew, and hoped you could get the threads back
when you came out—but meanwhile you
just kept talking to the computer and the carrier and moving your markers with
the joystick, laying the strike and the strategy as if you were seeing it
tamely on the light-table instead of on monitors, with numbers and grids
floating in glowing colors. Reality became hyper-extended vision, into
H EL L BU RN E P.
067
mathematical futures,
chaos of nature, two intersecting presence-cones of human action that had to
narrow at a proximity to Luna that was truly harrowing.
Hard to breathe. The
flight-suit squeezed the ribs in efficient pulses, oxygen flowed—damned sure not the pod this time. This
was real—this was—
Moment that the brain
skipped. . . moment that they weren't—anywhere,
and all the data left the brain void. A voice said, like God, Stand by sep, Hellburner;
she recalled that procedure, scanned her crew's LS, TAG and STAT data glowing
gold at the upper periphery of her midrange vision and said, mechanically as
any machine, "Sep go, that's go, go..."
Bang!
"We have
absolutely identical interests," Villy said to the gathered reporters,
while Graff folded his arms and leaned against die wall by the door. Captain
Villy rested elbows against the podium and said in that voice mat had to be
believed: "Let me explain where the UDC stands. Yes, there've been
problems in the past. As a test crew, in this facility, we've seen ideas that
worked and we've seen ideas that didn't—we've
worked with a lot of bright-eyed young pilots and techs that came in here all
impatient to be trained in equipment we ran when it didn't have all the buttons
they put on it—who never gave a damn
about what we knew so long as the buttons worked. That's the truth. And I'll
tell you, having the future operational crews shoved in here to be part of the
testing procedures—that's been a hell of
an adjustment for us—but
the Fleet did call this one right. The physiological demands of this equipment
are hell; and the crews that can fly this baby are going to be so scarce in the
general population they're probably going to give some of us a chance to be
honest working crew."
Tidbit of real News.
Graff pricked up his ears, saw Optex record lights like so many blinking eyes
among the reporters.
"They say the
other guys have to grow 'em in vats, and
068 • CJ CHEMYH
eighteen years from now
we're going to see their hand-raised clone pilots in the cockpit. That eighteen
years is the lead we have, because they tell us the merchanters that won't take
our side, won't take the Union side either. Union doesn't have the insystem
crews we do—they're a lot more
mechanized, their mining equipment's state of the art, a lot of robots. Their
miners sit on big ore-collectors, they don't have our antique equipment and
consequently they never developed the pool of experienced insystem crews like
we drew in from our asteroid belt—"
"What about this
tape?" a reporter asked, out of turn. "What about this Union
mind-tape?"
"It's not
Union," Graff said from near the door, and drew an immediate concentration
of steady red lights. "It's ours, and it works only on the reflexes, a
glance left or right at the panels, mathematical formulae and routines, nothing
as organized thought or attitudes... It covers the same kind of memorizations
you do in school—" He trusted
they did such things in schools. These reporters were Earth's equivalent of com
and he doubted they had any experience in common. He wanted Saito down here,
but Saito was on the carrier, where FleetCom with a test proceeding mandated
she be; Demas was God knew where—Demas
had taken refuge in Ops, he was willing to lay bets...
Com said in his ear:
"Mission is go-for with Dekker. Rider is sepped. We're coming up in
station systems."
"I copy,"
he told the bone-mike. "I'm on my way to mission control."
Reporters were still
looking at him. Optex lenses were all turned his way, and Villy was watching
him from the podium.
"Mission's
away," he said, removed the uncomfortable security com from his ear, and
added, with a certain suicidal satisfaction, "Team leader is Dekker,"
and watched all chaos erupt.
"All right?"
Ben sounded finally satisfied with the numbers and Dekker gave a little breath
of relief—a relief that
H EL L BU RN ER
369
Ben probably wouldn't
understand. Smug, that was Ben when he relaxed; but Ben wasn't smug now, he was
On and anxious, all the way.
"We just keep
running quiet a while, Dek-boy. A real hold-steady here, minimum profile, just
keep us out of their acquisition long as we can—carrier's gone up ahead, going to fire
a decoy and brake hard."
The carrier's
vane-config showed clear, that was the immediate worry on this maneuver—the carrier was going to pull an axis
roll: a thing the size of some space stations was going to do a total reverse,
pass them again at close range, rotate a second time and tail them at a
distance ...
"This is a
set-up," Meg complained, "we got too many numbers on this, Ben. It's
got to be a set-up..."
"Dekker a
murderer?" Graff said, tracking past the spex windows of mission control
to the profile screens and the working teams and his own trainees at the boards.
They'd established the reporters in the viewing area, gotten the senators a
secure spot in a VIP observation point, and on the displays in mission control
a situation was unfolding neither party yet comprehended. "No. He happens
to be the survivor of three documented attempts on his life, two of which put
him in hospital, one of which killed Cory Salazar."
Not the loudest
voice, but the one he chose to hear: "That contradicts what Councillor
Salazar charges—"
Probability fans were
changing color on the screens, rapidly narrowing. "It is, nevertheless,
the truth. The evidence against Paul Dekker was fabricated by the identical
agencies responsible for covering up a strike-breaking police action that took
seventeen other lives documented in 2304 sworn affidavits and complaints."
"From
Belters?" Bias dripped from the question, and sharpened focus and temper
for a split-second.
"From civilian
and military eyewitnesses and victims living and dead in Earth Company records.
There are no
070
CJ CHHWH
grounds for the
charges against Paul Dekker—they're
old history, investigated and officially dismissed when the agencies that made
the charges were dissolved by legal action for corruption, wrongful death, and
labor abuses. As for the culpable parties, they were relieved of command and
stripped of their licenses, but unfortunately that was the only action taken. I
suggest you ask Ms. Salazar why she's never named them in her pending
suit."
"Why didn't
she?"
"I couldn't
speculate on her motives."
Ten and twenty
questions at once. Riot, as reporters a moment ago drifting along the spex wall
suddenly elbowed each other to get Optex pickups to the fore. Let the Company
raise hell, let the Reel ship him to the battle zone— please God, ship him to the zone, away
from reporters, cameras, Edmund Porey, and self-serving senators demanding
dinner in the VIP observation area.
Then someone shouted,
from the hall, "They're releasing the separation footage!" and bedlam
surged in the other direction, reporters trying to get into mission control,
jamming in the doorway. Two stayed to ask:
"Who authorized
this test, lieutenant?"
"Not in my
need-to-know, I'm afraid. Insystem traffic near Luna shows lift delayed for
thirty minutes on the monitor up there. That has to come from very high
levels."
"Who can
authorize it?"
"Sol One
Stationmaster, for the lowest level."
**If—"
The barrage of
questions and dicing of information kept up. He stood there with his gut in
knots. It was go now, no likely recall of the rider. Mission parameters were
'showing on the screens, dopplered transmission from the carrier, and from the
rider, via the carrier. Course was laid for intercept from the ecliptic, of a
zenith system entry shielded from the carrier by Earth's own security zone...
Worst-case scenario
in system defense—an attack coming into
Earth's vicinity, and not a damned thing on the trans-
HELLDURNEfX
371
missions to say the
case wasn't real... worse, there was an incoming showing on the one screen his
eye knew for real-case. Something was inbound or they'd gotten insystem traffic
management to lie, and it didn't. Ever.
Ship felt good, felt
good all the way, zero no-calls and zero glitches on the boards. Clean, wide
sep from the carrier and for a while they would keep the carrier's rate inside
its shields, pretending to the enemy that separation was still to come.
Attitude assemblies were all answering test-calls. Dekker lost himself in the
internal config-confirms, in the numbers that were the immediate future—Meg was there to tell him where he was,
Ben was shaping further future, and Sal was working up the fire-path, armaments
taking program, talking to Meg's boards which would talk to his V-HUD when the
time came. Right now body-sense was expanded into the ship, time was cut loose
and independent of circumstance—the
track and the fire-points were shaping up further and further into the diagrams
spread in his far vision—but
he was only generally aware of that; he was seeing that interval as leisurely
information-building minutes diving toward a split-second hype-point, where he
had to be ready to execute a sequence of immaculately timed moves to confuse
the enemy, position the fire platform, and get their asses safely past a line
of answering fire scarily close to Luna, with a v that overrode both Luna's
pull— and the available
energy of their own missiles.
Which was all Sal's
problem.
They aren't doing
anything, the reporters objected with increasing frustration, even anger, and
Graff said, finally, with a heart going faster and faster, eyes fixed on the
monitors beyond the spex panes: "Oh, yes, they are. They're maintaining
output silence. The carrier's doing all the transmission, noisy as it wants to
be. They launched something on either side before they braked, one's a decoy,
one's the rider, and the rider doesn't want to be seen yet,
372
CJ. CHBWH
that's the name of
the game—even we don't know
which it is, because they haven't told us and motion hasn't started.*'
Questions broke out,
a shouted confusion.
"Yes, we have no
doubt they're still conscious. See the four dots on the screen, all doing
fine..." Trajectories were widening their perspective on the screens and
one reporter noticed the obvious. "That's going straight through Luna
space—is that Luna
space?"
"All system traffic's
suspended. The firepaths will have been cleared and safed."
"What if—"
Chatter kept up.
Media seemed to abhor a dunking silence.
He watched the
situation on the screens, thinking, Damn, who's feeding mem their orders? But
he heard no calculations emanating from FleetCom. He suspected the carrier
armscomper had primed them for this—set
up the incoming and the response: he personally suspected that anything and
everything Porey did was with mirrors; but he kept his mouth shut and hoped to
God no reporter got onto that question.
And the firepaths
were damned close to Luna... me reporter was right, they were terrifyingly
close, from the viewpoint of civilians not used to starships at entry and exit
v—close, and with a maneuver that, if
they did it—damn, it was
Russell's Star, replayed—
Long, long time on a
hold-steady. Easy to become hypnotized, if not for the nuisance chatter on
internal com. Dekker did the small breathing exercises that kept him aware of
time—nothing but freefall
at fractional light, minimal signature, nothing noisy, no output at all, no
input but the passive recept of the carrier and its boards that advised mem
things they couldn't output to see.
Couldn't prove it
wasn't real, what they were receiving. You couldn't assume: it, daren't assume
it.
"What we're
goinj to do imminently, Dek-boy, we're
HELLDURNER
373
about to do a little
round the corner shot at this sumbitch. Luna's shadow's your boost point, God,
I hope you get it right..."
"Copy mat,"
he muttered. "Do your own job, Ben."
"Ordnance
up," Sal said. "Meg. Dek, that's your plot-points, you copy?"
Dots and lines were
multiplying in his midvision now, floating in space, designating essential
fire-points, orientation, mass decrease. Considerable decrease: Hellburner was
90% fuel, engines, ablation surface, and ordnance.
"He's got
it," Meg said. "Here we go, guys. —Initiate."
Pulse of the main
engines. Missiles launched with a
shock through the
frame, one and two away.. .straight
.toward the moon.
Adrenaline stretched time arid distances.
"T-l," Ben
was saying, calling out the major coordination points.
Second pulse, high-g
RO, intermittent accel and launches directly down their backpath toward their
carrier, staccato hammer of missiles away, Hellburner's mass diminishing fast.
Second RO, braces
engaged. Had to hold the track with immaculate numbers—crossing the carrier firepath now, edge
on, minimum profile.
"Son of a
bitch," Ben yelled, as the emissions recept picked up launch, but their
four missiles had kicked off the frame on the mark and Dekker swung into his
scheduled Profile RePosition with an instant eighth less mass and a violence
that blurred vision. "Track!" Ben yelled at Sal. "Track!"
"Got it, got it,
got it," Sal cried, onto a steady stream of profanity, as their chaff gun
opened up down the hostile firetrack straight for the incoming. "Burn
it!" Ben yelled, and Dekker shoved it to 4-10.5 instant gs ahead, on the
instant, rotated sideways as they were.
Countered. Graff
watched the fire bursts, listened to the dispassionate voice of FleetCom
confirm the intercept.
374
C.J CHEfWH
It looked so slow on
this scale—so incredibly slow.
But his heart knew the speed at which things were moving, his gut was in knots,
he wanted his own hands on controls, he wanted that with every breath he took—
They were on. God,
God, they were making it. So had Wilhelmsen—this early on. Another ReOrient and
they were still throwing fire...
But, damn! the lines
intersected, and of a sudden—missiles
near Luna were off the scope of a sudden—
Range safety? or
hostile action?
"Test
stop," came over the speakers. "The test has been terminated.. . this
is FleetCom mission control..."
Disaster? Graff felt
cold all over. Couldn't have. The plot was stitl tracking.
"The incoming is
confirmed as EC militia merchanter Eagle, proceeding at V to maintain effect
shields against inert chaff which will not, repeat not, intersect civilian
traffic. Luna-vectored ordnance was destroyed by the range safety officer. At
no time was this ordnance capable of reaching the lunar surface: technical
explanation will follow. The remaining ordnance is being cleared from the area
by destruct commands issued by range safety. Rider ordnance trajectories have
been computed as intersecting Eagle presence and moment with three major
strikes, sufficient to have eliminated the incoming threat. This concludes a
successful test of the Hellburner prototype. In-progress System traffic will
resume ordinary operations in fifteen minutes ..."
Impossible to hear in
the spectator gallery, after that. Crews and techs inside mission control were
out of their seats, pounding each other on the backs with complete disregard of
uniform or gender. "Damn on!" Villy roared from the other side of the
spectators, Optexes were going, reporters were shouting questions—a few of them loudly incensed about the
apparent proximity to the moon.
God, he just let it
go. Gave fragments of answers, how he felt—damned
happy; had he been nervous—wanted
to be out there, he said, all the while tracking on the screens, the
H ELLOURN EK
375
celebrations, the
communications from FleetCom telling Hellburner 1 there was no need to brake,
the earner was on direct intercept, and from UDC System Defense saying that
lift traffic would resume in areas declared cleared, starting with alpha zone,
near Earth's atmosphere.
Was it an
unwarrantable risk to Luna? a reporter wanted to know. He said, tracking on the
politics as well as the damned brilliant straight-line shot, "In the first
place, it was never going to hit the moon. It was moving past the moon faster
than it was moving toward it. By the laws of physics it absolutely couldn't hit
the surface."
"If something
had gone wrong with the missiles—"
"They didn't
have enough fuel to reach the moon soon enough to hit it. It's absolutely
impossible."
"But they could
reach the carrier."
"The carrier
could run into them. The range officer got it well within the safe zone. If it
had failed to detonate, there were two back-up systems; and, I reemphasize, the
ordnance was not infalling Luna, no more than the ship itself was. The
armscomper knew exactly what she was doing."
"She," a
reporter pounced on the question, but another shouted:
"Was it a
successful test, when the duration was half an hour less than the Wilhelmsen
run, at a slower speed?"
"The rider
eliminated the threat. It had nothing left to shoot at. There's no point in
continuing beyond mission accomplished."
"But could they
have kept going?"
"No doubt
whatsoever. And let me point out, they were slower, but their target was moving
at system entry speeds. Wilhelmsen's targets were only randoms, from known fire
points, nothing this real-time. But he gave us data that helped us. It wasn't a
pointless sacrifice—never
a pointless sacrifice.'* Tanzer had just shown up in mission control, Tanzer
accepting handshakes of his staff, beyond the sound-damping spex, and the whole
press corps was suddenly trying to figure out how to get where they weren't
going to
376
CJ CHERRYH
H ELLDURN ER
077
be admitted. Villy
clapped him on the shoulder in passing and escaped the intercepts, while
another Optex pickup arrived in his face with,
"Ms. Salazar has
denounced the choice of Paul Dekker as the source of tape for the program and
called for the disfranchisement of the Beet. How do you feel about that?"
"My answer? If that incoming had been Union, that ship and that young
pilot and crew would have prevented global catastrophe. A single barrage of
inert matter falling on Earth at half light would create ecological disaster.''
Stock answer, stock material, the science people had calc'ed it years ago: he
knew not a damned thing about climates, truth be told. A reporter followed up:
"Earth was not in actual danger." "Earth was in deadly danger if
that had been a Union ship. But Hellburner demonstrated its ability to deflect
any such attack. Their course was right on intercept with that incoming militia
ship, you can see it on the display up there. This was a live ordnance test,
but nothing at any time was aimed at Earth or Luna." "What if it went
off-track?"
"That's why
there are range safety officers." He didn't want to say what he suspected,
that if the destruct sequences for the rider's missiles hadn't been dumped to
Eagle's computers by the Sol system buoy on entry, the range safety officer on
the ECS4 had to have had a few extremely anxious moments once the shots went
around the limb of the moon. That volley had come very close to sending the
missiles out of communication with the carrier. But the crew hadn't pulled any
punches. No crew could afford to think in those terms. Ever. "Lieutenant,
lieutenant, do you think—"
"Excuse me...." He was getting a burst of new information off
FleetCom on the screens and over the PA, and another line of comflow in his ear
from Saito, saying ...
Panic over much of
Europe, assumption the test was real, public reactions yet uncertain... But
Mazian was in front of the cameras in Bonn, with pronouncements of what a Union
strike would have meant for Earth,... calling Paul Dekker
and his crew
phenomenally skilled, heroes of Earth's own ^defense forces, a combined
FIeet-and-£/£>C crew...
"Good run. Stilt
room for improvement."
Porey's voice; and
Dekker wanted to tell him go to hell for the trick they'd pulled. Destruct the
ordnance, damned right they'd had to, he'd been scared as hell they might hit a
friendly ship; but a Belter didn't have ordinary nerves, and he'd not been a
hundred percent convinced until they'd gotten the congratulatory communication
from FleetCom that it had been the scheduled test.
Didn't know what to
do with the nerves now, things were still dragging along, interminable time
stretch: not so hard a job, this run, but that was the problem, wasn't it? You
didn't get the hellish repositions and redirects when you were working with Ben
and Sal, when your co-pilot was thinking ahead of the pilot's problems so he
didn't get called on for those moves—only
one of those shifts he'd had to rip, they'd hyped the v sideways hard after
Sal's best shot and Ben was still muttering about realspace feeling real, and
soreness setting in.
Meg said, "We're
in the pocket, right in the pocket, now, Dek, you don't have to do a thing til
the bow-shock. —Incidentally,
compliments from Capt. Kreshov, on Eagle, he says it was a damn pretty job, his
words. —Thank you, sir. The
team appreciates the compliment. —We
got a drink offer from his armscomper.
"Sounds
good," Ben said. "Yeah!" from Sal.
Himself, he wasn't
highly verbal, just tracking on the approaching carrier—Ben decided it was a frigging party,
all of a sudden, Sal and Meg evidently had; and he could strangle Ben. They
weren't through until they'd been through the realtime shields, nothing virtual
about it this time: carrier coming up like a bat behind them, Baudree's showing
out, no different than the rider jocks, except Baudree was carrying multiples
of their mass, and when he contemplated dock after what he'd been through he
felt sweat running on his forehead and a tension cramp knotting his leg.
37ft • CJ CHEIWH
Meg switched him out
of the FleetCom loop to carrier-corn, then, the range blip and the docking
schematic a total preoccupation in his 360°
V-HUD compression, carrier Helm talking to him now, wanting his attention,
while he left Meg and Ben to watch elsewhere.
"Just hold
steady and we've got you."
Moment of panic. Hard
to shift time-perception. It wasn't going fast now. Everything took forever and
a tiny bobble was disaster. You didn't screw it at this stage. Didn't, please
God, didn't.
"Bow shock in 43
seconds."
"Copy that.
Go." He couldn't afford to think they'd done it...
Not yet.
"That's capture
and dock," FleetCom's dispassionate voice said. "Thank you, Mr.
Dekker. Excellent job."
Graff found himself
breathing again.
"We're going
into our checklist." Dekker's voice. The reporters had gotten to recognize
it. Had picked up on the tension in mission control and Villy had finally
gotten it through, the shift the pilot had to make between nanosecond events
and docking at relatively slow docking approach. "We had two funerals
getting this down pat," Villy muttered. "It's no piece of easy the
kid's working—hell of a buffet when
you cross the shields."
Another flurry of
technical questions. Graff looked for an escape, saw the door to the VIP area
open and the two senators walk out—instant
recognition from the press, instant convergence in mat direction. Shouts and
questions.
"We were invited
to observe this test." The senior senator, Caldwell. "To see how the
taxpayers' appropriations have been spent. I must say we've had a compelling
demonstration of the effectiveness of the technology, outstanding
performance..."
"J-G,"
Demas said, in his ear. "Bonn. Our suspect did work for MarsCorp.''
HELLBURNER
379
He ducked for the
corridor, deserted Villy and the senators for a small nook near a couple of
marine security guards. "Say," he asked the security unit. "Have
we got a case?"
"/ don't know if
we have a case, but he has former close associates in the Federation of Man,
and the UDC background check didn't go that deep, he was passed in under
Lendler security, and hear this, J-G, the VDC 'took Lendler's word for it,'
unquote. 'Ail their personnel have to have a clearance.' Unquote. MarsCorp is
45% of Lendler's business: the atmospherics softwares, for a start.''
Bloody hell, he
thought. The information had hit his brain. The implications were still finding
sensitive spots in his nervous system. Took Lendler's word for it.' 'All their
personnel have to have a clearance.' Political implications, far beyond the
Dekker affair.
"You're
serious."
"Mars is
threaded all through this. But so is the Federation of Man. Eldon Kent has two
cousins in that association. Lendler's records on him are so-named classified—which we can't penetrate without filing
charges."
"Not yet. Not yet.
God."
Saito cut in on the
channel. '7-G. The carrier is returning to dock."
"We're deep in
reporters. Tell the commander that."
"I'm sure he
knows," Saito said.
Damn! he thought, but
he kept it off his face, he hoped, at least. He stood very still for a moment,
heard Caldwell saying, inside, "... a tribute to the skill and dedication
of Earth's industry and innovation—"
FT
CHAPTER
19
i A
AINS cut in, hard, and Dekker gave himself up to l\ TV*16 f°rce'
Just breathed the way one had to and
I \i \tnisted,
figuring at this point if the carrier hit a I
V Vock or took them to hell, he
wasn't afraid any more, he just stared at the blank, black VR in front of him,
sensory deprivation... they were planning to fix that, arguing about what a crew
wanted, coming off hype, whether they wanted anything at all but a VR off the
carrier's boards, but Dekker personally voted just for the vid of the carrier
surface, that was the only thing he wanted to see, he was convinced of it now,
only tiling a rider crew was going to want was constant reassurance that they
were snugged up against the frame and locked, and that the clanks that rang
through the hull were the auto-service connections and the ordnance servos,
ready to shove ordnance up into the racks if there were a need to launch the
prototype a second time immediately, which, thank God, there wasn't, and the
servos didn't. Tired, now, just tired. The carrier pulsed down to system
-360-
HELLBURNER *
361
speeds, and announced
a reposition on a new vector. Slow as humans lived, now, Dekker supposed, but
things were moving faster than he could track or understand—
Which was the
universe at ordinary, Meg would say, if Meg was talking, but none of them
seemed to have the energy to talk right now, just trying to ride through the
braking and not think, he supposed, all of them coming down off hype, and
exhausted.
Second accel. He made
the deep sustained breaths and shut his eyes. Black around them and black
inside: reality had caught up to him, and Cory was dead. Long time back.
Another life. Pace the breaths and count, the way you had to with a shove like
that, to keep conscious. Hotdogging from Baudree, far as anybody could do that
with a mass like
this—
"What in hell's
he doing?" Ben asked plaintively. "Where
are we going?"
"Going back to
base," Meg said.
"You got
read-out?"
"Nyet. But you
feel the direction, rab."
"Come off the
mystic stuff. Nobody 'feels* the direction."
"Hey. There's
ways and ways to feel it, cher, we did it. Where else they got to take us? —And there's those of us that feel the
sun. Those that lived close to her—"
"Hell if,
Kady."
"Nothing mystic.
We got magnetics. Science boys say
so."
"That's
shit."
"Dunno. But the
sun's starboard by 15 and high by 5."
"Trez garbage,
Kady."
"Hey. Trez
mystique, Pollard."
"Could get us a
comlink," Sal grumbled. "Bloody damn hurry, they could let us come
aboard. I got a serious bet on with Mitch's guys. And we're alive to
collect..."
"What'd you
bet?"—Ben, alarmed.
Familiar voices in
the dark. He was safe here. Porey was outside, Porey who wanted him to make
decisions, when
362
CJ CHBWH
H ELLBURNER
380
Ben and Meg were the
ones who decided—exactly the way , Graff said about merchanter crews, and he
couldn't under- ; stand why Porey
expected him to follow UDC rules; he didn't want the say, just fly the ship,
that was all, and he'd i done that,
hadn't he? He'd done the part he wanted, and for his part, he didn't care where
they went from here, whether Meg was right or whether they were going to turn
up somewhere out in real combat, he wanted to talk to Mitch and the guys, just
a real quiet chance at the crews they'd worked with, chance to store it down,
debrief—forget the tilings
he'd been through.
But that wasn't the
way it worked. God, that was still to go through, the meds were going to haul
them in and go over them with a microscope. And he'd gotten spoiled, he wanted
the massage, the stand-down and the beer and somebody else to make up his bunk,
the kind of treatment you got on the carrier, that was what, he'd gotten
spoiled... But the barracks was where he lived. He looked forward to messhall
automat cheese sandwiches... french fries and a hamburger and a shake, one
thing Percy's fancy cooks couldn't come up with, not with the right degree of
grease. You had to have things like that or you didn't know you were alive, and
not in some passing dream...
Eyes were watering,
tear tracks running down his face. He didn't know why. He just listened to
carrier ops, com chatter between base ops and here, and traffic control; and
Meg was right, they were routed in.
Did it, he kept
telling himself, the dark was proof of that, the feel of the ship was proof of
that. He'd done what he wanted to do, the most outrageous thing he'd ever
planned to do, and he didn't know what was left but to be free to do it. Didn't
even have to teach how. Tape would do that. He just had to get it together for
the next time they let him fly....
"We find—" Graff said, to the gathering of
Optexes, "when we bring in an integrated crew—the sum of the one
is reliably the sum
of the rest. People in this profession, given the chance to pick their own
partners, sort themselves, I don't know how otherwise to express it. You don't
work with anybody under your ability, where you know your life is on the line.
Yes, they're all four that good..."
"This crew is
tape-taught," a reporter said. "What does that say about human
skill?"
"Let me explain
for any of you who're thinking of tape in the classic sense, the tape we're
referring to is really the neural net record: you go in with what you did
before, matched to a performance you want; and the neural assist system shapes
itself around you—that's why we work
with just four people at this stage. They're physically programming the
systems."
"By their
feedback."
"Exactly. The
tetralogies won't do what these people do. They brought instincts and
experience no tape can teach. The experts and the computers all have to ask
them what the right reaction is—that's
what the tape is, that's all it's doing, recording and learning from the humans
in control ... storing all the responses as a norm some other human being just
may exceed...."
The reporters liked
that idea. You could see it in the mass mark-that orders to the Optex loops,
the shouted questions, the sudden comprehension on their faces. They wanted a
confirmation of themselves, that was what they wanted for their viewers,
another human yearning, a sense of synch with the chaos systems around them.
"You're saying there's something unquantifiable, something about the human
factor.
"The human
component governs the computers, that's the way it is in the stars hips, that's
the only way this ship is going to do what it was created to do. That's what
the whole design fight has been about and that's what this crew's just
proved."
A vid byte they could
use. The carrier was in dock.
364
CJ CHEFWH
Presumably the rider
crew and the backups were on their way down and the reporters were ready; he
was theoretically the sacrifice, stalling and pacifying the reporters with
running commentary, but, damn! he'd scored a point.
On the viewscreens
and the monitors, images of Bonn and Paris and London, demonstrations by the
Federation of Man and the leading peace groups, claiming Earth itself had been
at risk, never mind high-v ordnance was aimed the other way: that same fear of
near-c in system that discouraged the trade they might have had—people were frightened, stunned by the
rapid approach, reporters already asking (personal applications always chased a
new idea) why they languished three days on a shuttle ride mat the carrier
could cover in thirty minutes...
They had more
questions. He saw the lift indicator showing operation, and nodded in that
direction. "They're coming onto station."
Attention deserted
him for the lift area: marines and Fleet Security had an unbreachable line of
athletic bodies setting up a clear area, through which Villy, on similar
advisement, showed up with Tanzer and the senators in tow, trailed by a still
ecstatic crowd of Fleet and UDC crews from mission control—a complete media show-out, Graft
thought with an uneasy stomach; and damned Porey to bloody hell for the
decision to come straight in—but
what else was it all for, after all? Risk Dekker, risk the prototype, risk
Eagle with its thousand-member crew, for that matter, not to mention
oversetting local regulations and stirring up the peacers with what they
thought was a burning issue—
"Lieutenant."
Tanzer arrived on his left hand. "Colonel. We seem to have done it."
Tanzer shot him a look as if he were weighing die courtesy 'we' mat he hadn't
even considered in saying. The senators were in earshot. He'd delivered Tanzer
an unintended, face-saving favor and Tanzer looked as if he were trying to
figure what he wanted in exchange.
"We have done
it," Tanzer said, as the lift doors opened.
HELLBURNER
065
Dekker and his crew
walked out still in their flight gear, all pale and tired-looking, but cheerful
till they confronted the snockwave of reporters, questions, and Optexes—nobody, dammit, had even warned them
what was waiting: Porey had let them walk into it. Graff dived forward; and the
other core crews surged through and grabbed them, slapping backs and creating a
small island of riot inside the cordon of security. He hung back a little, let
the crews have their moment—saw
Dekker both dazed and in good hands, the reporters not getting past the guards,
just jostling silently for position with the Optexes as he finally took his
turn with the crew, shook hands and congratulated them. There was glaze in
their eyes. The four of them were still hyped and lost and not coping with the
timeflow—he knew the look, he
felt it, he ached to insulate them from this, get them quiet and stability....
"Good job,"
he said. "Good job, all of you."
"Thank you,
sir," Dekker breathed, and looked past him where—he turned his head—the vids showed riot in Bonn and Paris,
just wide-tracking, lost.
"Ens.
Dekker," the reporters shouted, "Ens. Dekker, how do you feel right
now?"
Dekker turned his
head to look at the reporter, honestly trying and failing, Graff read it, to
accept one more slow-moving attention track. "I—" he began.
A reporter said,
"Ens. Dekker. Ens. Dekker. There's a news crew standing by with a link to
Bonn. Your mother's with the crew. Are you willing to speak to her, tell her
how you feel at this moment?"
Damn! Graff thought,
and shot another glance at the vids, where placards and banners called for
peace, where a blond woman with a look as lost as Dekker's gazed into the
lenses and then to the side, probably toward a monitor.
"Talk to
her," the reporter said, "you can talk, she'll hear you—do you hear us, Ms. Dekker?"
"Yes,"
Ingrid Dekker said. "Yes, I hear you...."
386
CJ CHEWWH
"I hear
you," Dekker said faintly, and the whole area shushed each other to quiet.
"Paul? Paul? Is
that you?"
"Yes." God,
he was going to fracture—Graff
saw the tears well up, saw the tremor. "Are you all right, mother? Are
they treating you all right?"
Ingrid Dekker bit
back tears. "/ wanted to return your
call."
"I wanted to
call again. They said the lawyers wouldn't—"
Somebody shoved
between Ingrid Dekker and the interviewer, said, "That's enough."
"Let her
alone!" Dekker cried. "Damn you, take your hands off her—"
The picture jolted,
the broad shadow of peacer security for a moment, Ingrid Dekker's voice crying,
"Paul, —Paul, 1 want to go
home!"
Kady got hold of
Dekker. Aboujib did; and Pollard said, on Optex, "Those sons of
bitches."
"We'll see if we
can get Ms. Dekker back on," the interviewer was saying; and addressed his
counterpart in Bonn. "Can you get to Ms. Dekker to ask—?"
Dekker was in shock,
reporters shoving Optex pickups toward him, marines under strict orders not to
shove back. That face was magnified on monitors all around the area, pale and
lost, then Senator Caldwell's face was on the screens, reporters asking him his
reaction.
Caldwell said,
gravely: ' 'It's clear Ms. Dekker had something more to say, and the Federation
leadership didn't 'want her to say it. I see enough to raise serious questions
about how free Ms. Dekker is, at the moment..."
Serious questions,
Graff thought, choking on his own outrage. Serious questions whether Porey's
timing for noon in Bonn, when Mazian was there, with the peace demonstrators,
was anything like coincidence.
—God, run the test
right past Luna in a move the peacers were bound to protest, have the reporters
set up, the questions primed—
HELLQUKNER
387
Then send Dekker and
a crowd of excited crews head-on into the media for a reaction, when Porey
damned well knew he was spaced?
He couldn't pull
Dekker out directly, couldn't order Security to oust the reporters, daren't
look like censorship on this side of the issue. He went in, took Dekker's arm
with Optexes on high gain all around him. "Someone will do
something." Which rang in his own ears as one more damned promise he
didn't know how he was going to keep.
Dekker gave him a
bleak, blank stare. "I don't want to leave, sir. If they can get her back
I want to talk to her."
The mikes got that,
too. Kady said, out of turn, "They don't want her loose. That's
clear."
But all that showed
on the Bonn monitors was a shut wooden door, and a reporter outside it, with no
sound going out, talking, while demonstrators elbowed and shoved.
And all that showed
on theirs was Dekker's stricken face, Dekker saying, dazedly, "They lied
to her. They lied to her all the way..."
"It's
playing," Demas said, leaning against the counter, "it's playing over
and over again, around the planet, as the world wakes up. Dekker's a handsome
kid, doesn't at all hurt his case. Or ours."
Graff wanted to break
something—Demas' and Saito's
necks, if he didn't recognize in Demas' glum expression an equal disgust. He
looked at the vid, seeing Ingrid Dekker's bewildered distress, her son's—"Let her alone!" Over and
over again.
As a weapon, Ingrid
Dekker had turned in the hands of Her wielders, and bit to the bone. Dekker was
no longer the faceless Belter exile, he was the pilot who'd pulled a
spectacular success with the Hellbumer, he was a kid with a human grievance and
a mother held prisoner by causes and politicians, and the demonstration
organizer who had shoved Ingrid Dekker away from the reporters was under heavy
condemnation and refusing questions.
308
C.J. CH0WH
HELLBURNER
389
Demas was right: it
didn't hurt that Dekker had the face of a vid star and sincerity that came
through the body language. The crew hadn't played badly either the rumored
split in the UDG Fleet ranks, Ben Pollard with his UDC insignia on his
flightsuit, Kady and Aboujib in flash and high tech, all of them profoundly
concerned and angry at a human issue.... While on the evening and morning news
around the world, Alyce Salazar was doing damage control, covering her
partisans, claiming that the Fleet had manipulated the media (truth) and mat,
quote, the important issues were being ignored in a rush to sympathy for a
lying scoundrel who'd conned her daughter...
Dekker might be
seeing it—he'd ordered open
media access for appearances' sake while reporters were here, if no other
reason; and had no argument from Porey. The vid was going out over all the
station, their local authority doing no screening whatsoever.
"J-G,"
Demas said, "honestly, 7 didn't know until they ordered me to take charge
of Security, right when the test started. They did query Saito, early on, for
an assessment of Dekker's personnel record, his cultural makeup—"
"They. Did the
captain know?"
*'I don't know what
there is to know. My guess is, Mazian sent Porey in here to figure the odds. If
it was good enough, go, shove the best team in the ship and make die run; and
if it turned out to be Dekker, meet the political chaff head-on, no hiding it,
aim him straight for the cameras and damn all Salazar could do."
"Pardon me, Nav,
but the hell the timing was random! High noon in Europe, in Bonn? Mazian's
there. He knows the schedule. He knew it would draw instant fire!"
"I don't think
he planned the scene with Dekker's mother."
"I don't put it
past him."
"I think you
give him too much credit. Some things just drop into your lap. But Mazian did
want the protests— according to Saito.
He wanted to solidify the issue, Saito says, so that it has substance, and men
shoot that substance
to bell. Make the
peacers take a specific position and prove them wrong."
"Dekker's
mother."
"Dekker's mother
is a side issue. An opportunity I'm sure they'll take advantage of. Not
mentioning Salazar. The EC wants Salazar stopped, in such a way it won't break
Mars out of the union... and we have the Kent business with MarsCorp's
fingerprints all over it."
"And daren't use
it, dammit, we daren't even arrest Kent and Booten, we don't know—"
A stray thought
crossed his mind.
"What?"
Demas asked in his silence. "Don't know what?"
He leaned back in his
chair and looked at the vid, where another instant opinion poll was playing. A
radical shift in the numbers in the last 5 hours, plus or minus 3 points of
accuracy. People believed the things they'd seen. 45% believed Paul Dekker was
innocent and 46% now believed there was a significant threat of the war
reaching Earth.
He said to Demas,
apropos of nothing previous, "I want a statement prepared, a public
relations version of Dekker's rile. In case. I don't like unanticipateds,
Nav."
"You've got it.
But the Company will black-hole it. Salazar is too sensitive an issue. And far
too powerful. She's using the issues, she's not the grieving mother, she's a
politician. Kent...has got to be a professional. And if we've got him, there'll
be others—inside the Earth
Company offices, for all we know."
"All the
same," he said.
He offered Demas a
thin smile, and Demas took himself and his securitied briefcase back to the
carrier, to Saito, to whatever lines of communication they were using to reach
die captain with or without Mazian's knowledge.
They knew now what
had killed Wilhelmsen: Ben Pollard had put them onto it and Porey's question to
Dekker had shown it plain as plain. Wilhelmsen had been UDC command track. Pete
Fowler had been the shadow behind
390
CJ CHEfWH
HELLDURNER
391
Dekker's status, the
real decision-maker—and
the UDC had put them into the same cockpit. But they couldn't put mat story in
the release to the media—they
dared not confuse the issue. Dekker was the point man, the—what had Saito said—the face the public knew? Dekker was
the command officer of record in both crews; and that was the way the story was
going to Earth.
Himself, he put on
his jacket and went to evening rec, where there was a general liberty in force,
with most of the reporters packed in with the senators on the shuttle, about
six hours distant from the crews, thank God.
Thanks to some other
agency, he was trapped with eight of them on station for at least a week. And
damned if he was going to deal with them blind.
Beer and vodka were
permissible; and Mitch and the UDC's Deke Chapman were doing a v-vid arcade
game, noisy and rude, with bets down and the marine guards in on it, when a
command officer walked in on it unannounced.. .
"Graff,"
Meg said, the whole room drew a breath, seemed to decide it was a friendly
tour, and went back to an abated roar; Vasquez offered the lieutenant a beer.
"Sip,"
Graff said, in the way of a Shepherd who was on duty; so Graff got his sip to a
cheer from all about, then said, quietly, "Pollard. Word with you.
Outside."
Quick frown from Sal.
"No
trouble," Graff said. "Just an operational. As you were,
everybody."
Jokes on that score,
no disrespect at all, just guys on an R&R from death and destruction. Meg
slid into her chair again, caught Dek's hand, because he was looking spaced
again—
Letdown, she
understood that. Only thoroughly happy moment he'd had in his life, by all she
knew; and they'd hit him head-on with that business with his mother and the
peacers. He looked her in the eyes now as if she had the
answers—as if, as the rab would say, she was
the word and the knowhow.
And maybe she had
been that, once, for a lot of people—
maybe she'd been more, once, than she ever let on to those who checked on such
things—but the generations
changed, the whole human race spun and raced toward tomorrow after tomorrow,
and if you were twenty-five now you didn't know the rab that had been the young
and the foolish and the seekers after personal truth. The rab is, they'd used
to say—after the Company man
had said, No dealing with rabble. The rab is, and the rab will be, and screw
the corp— Was it lover or her
personal tomorrow—looking into her eyes
and hanging on the words?
"She'll get
out," she told him, because she knew it was his mama he was brooding
about; and maybe Cory. He didn't have many tracks left when he got this far
down. She hit his arm, and said, "Rab is and rab does, jeune fils. And
they shot us down. Don't forget that. Shot you down. I got .nothing to teach
you about being screwed." "She never cared about politics, Meg!"
"We got to do, got to do, jeune His. Life is, death is, and mat's all; but
we're here and they got to deal with that. They got to deal with us."
Dek had been a kid
when the rab had lost its innocence, and the blood had run on the Company
steps. Severely young, Dek still was, in some ways. She couldn't be, again; and
she told it cold and plain as she'd learned it herself: "There's no luck,
jeune rab, things don't brut happen for no damn reason, and you aren't it,
forgive, cher. But nobody at mis table, not me and not you and not Sal, is that
important, mat God is going to screw up somebody else's life to get you. I
dunno who, I dunno why, but we've eliminated God as a suspect...."
Dek managed a laugh,
a grin, and picked up his beer with his hand shaking. He drank a sip without
spilling ft. At least.
092
CJ CHEIWH
"Hey," Sal
said, "They got the whole UN Human Rights Commission asking to talk to
your mama...."
"But if they get
her out she's not safe, Salazar's people tried twice to kill me and got Jamil—"
"Cher rab, are
they going to risk stirring things up now? They got their ass on the line. They
want quiet, soon as they can hush this up, When the corp-rats get caught, they
always want a real quick silence."
He let go a sigh,
shook his head.
Sal elbowed him.
"Take you on, cher. Billiards or poker?"
Poker, it was. Ben
pulled a chair back, set his beer down, said, cheerfully, "Deal me
in," and collected looks from his crewmates. He kept the smugness off his face—the reason was for Sal's ears, for
Dekker and Meg once the stuff went public—as
would happen, he was sure, when Security found out what to do with the file
that had landed in their laps.
Dekker asked,
"What did they want?"
"Oh,
nothing."
"Come on,"
Sal said.
"Oh," Ben
said, picking up cards, "just a little tekkie stuff." Good hand, it
was. There were nights a guy was On, and this was it.
Damn, there was stuff
going to hit the news tomorrow.
"Tekkie stuff,
hell," Sal said. "What was it?"
"Just a little
advice." And access numbers and a nailpolish-sealed card. He laid down
chips.
Didn't have to go to
Stockholm to prove the Staatentek over the damned EIDAT, damn no. Elegant
equipment, they had on that carrier.
"What
advice?"
He smiled, thinking about
the morning news, and MarsCorp, and Salazar's personal memo file, and the
wonderful, damning things it held.
HELLBURNER *
390
"Don't buy stock
in EIDAT, Lendler or MarsCorp. Even at discount."
"What have you
got?" Dekker asked sharply.
Wider smile. "A
winning hand, Dek-boy, odds are—a
winning hand."