Hellburner (16 page)

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 at attention while Tanzer stared at him.

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 that, 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 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, Graff’s 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? —Graff’s 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 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 the card would copy—if you had the Programming OS on the card, which wasn’t supposed to fit in the THEM 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 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. “The 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 Graff’s 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.

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 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 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.”