Hellburner (48 page)

“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 its own ease.

 
“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 challenging 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 the 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?”

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 number1, then everything was different, every value and priority was revised. The ship was 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 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 the hall, that was Rios and Wojcak in UDC fatigues and Pauli in 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.

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 long-distance, dumped her touch, her patterns, her them-marks on the plot-screen fire-path to the Hellburner systems.