Hellburner (8 page)

Except with a wrong word to the UDC R&D chief.

“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.”

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?”

“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?

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 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 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 20
^th
, 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....”

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 braided tight against his scalp, and both of them were as regulation as the 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.