Devil to the Belt (v1.1) (78 page)

“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.

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 that,” 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 this 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.”

“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 that 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 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 I 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 this facility wants to take this program to implementation. I have other orders, Jurgen. If crews the—they’ll the 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 this 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 that 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.”

“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 communiqué 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 that 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 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 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 that 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.”

“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, 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.