Hellburner (52 page)

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 Hellburner, 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.

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 the 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 the 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 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 know-how.

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 this 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.

“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.

“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.”