Heavy Time (40 page)

“Go for it, go for it!” Sal said, “you got it, Ben!”

Neat touch. Hardly felt it.

Attached. To a tether stanchion. The manipulator grip closed and locked.

“
Nice
job,” she said. She wasn’t sure anybody heard.

The Shepherd yelled, “
Go
!”

Acceleration started, built and built.

Better dump those tanks, Dek, better just uncouple
Way Out
, let her go, and just hope to hell the arm mount holds—no way we can decel off what a Shepherd can put on us, anyway…

Ought to tell the kid. But just hard to get organized—hard to get the mouth to work.

Unstable load. Lot of push on. Pressure built in her arm and deserted her brain.

Going
up
, guys, going
up
, long and hard as we can…

Quiet. Couldn’t even hear the fans. But no more
g
.

Taste of blood.

Explosion—

But they weren’t tumbling. Wasn’t the way it had been. He opened his eyes, got the board in focus in this peaceful drifting—neck was stiff, muscles sprained. He turned his head and saw Ben out cold—the Shepherd beside him, headset drifting loose. If there was sound he couldn’t hear it, except the fans.

Then he remembered shutting down. Remembered Meg—tried to move. There wasn’t a muscle that didn’t hurt. But he unclipped, pushed off and turned, getting to Meg’s position.

Blood made a fine mist. She was white as a ghost and cold when he touched her face. She looked dead.

But tension came back, dead one moment, then unconscious, but
there
, by some subtle change that wasn’t even movement until the eyelids showed stress. Ben was moving—number 2 boards and the best place, his and Ben’s, to ride out the push.

“She make it?” Ben asked fuzzily.

“Yeah,” Meg mumbled, speaking for herself. At least that was what it sounded like.

“Are we still grappled?”

“I don’t know,” Dekker said. “We seem stable.”

Ben freed himself and drifted over to see to Sal—Sal was coming to. The Shepherd was still out. Dekker reached for the headset, heard faint static and a thin voice before he held it to his ear. “… alive in there?” he heard, and: “I’m hearing voices. Their com is open…”

“Yeah,” he said, pulling the mike into line. “This is miner ship
Trinidad
. Is this the
Hamilton
?”

«
^

HE wasn’t doing a damn thing,“ Ben said—there was blood all over him and Sal, blood dried on his own hands, Dekker saw, Bird’s, Meg’s, he had no idea. There was too much of it.

“Nothing?” the officer asked.

“Cops had
me
, dammit, he didn’t need to be there, he wasn’t doing a damn thing, just objected to them grabbing me, and some fool—just—pulled a trigger.”

Dekker stared at the backs of his hands, seeing what he hadn’t been there to see.

Seeing Meg in the lift, holding on to Bird.

Sal said, “
I
saw it. They were arming guys straight off leave, some of them still higher than company corruption: green kids, didn’t know shit what they were doing.”

“It was a soldier.”

“Damn right it was a soldier. Marine. Couldn’t have been twenty.”

The
Hamilton’s
purser clicked off the recorder. “We’ve got that. We’ll send it before we make our burn.”

Dekker said: “How is the fuel situation?”

“Not optimum,” the purser said.

“Shit.” Sal shook her head. The purser left. Ben didn’t say anything, just got a long breath and clasped his hands between his knees.

It was as much information as they’d gotten. The same information as they’d gotten since they’d come aboard. Hadn’t seen Sammy—Sammy had gone offshift, probably in his own bunk asleep or tranked out if he hadn’t gotten the news yet.

Sammy—Ford was his last name—had been fairly well shaken up, hadn’t asked for the position he’d been handed—the situation at the dock had gone to hell, the shuttle crew hadn’t answered, the 8-deck group hadn’t answered, they’d suspected their com was being monitored: Mitch had gone next door to use the restaurant’s phone to get contact with his crew and hadn’t come back, arrested or worse, they still hadn’t found out. Sammy wasn’t flight ops, he was the legal affairs liaison, a Shepherd negotiator, for God’s sake, who’d come aboard R2 to deal with management, if the plan had gone right, if the soldiers hadn’t come in…

Sammy’d done all right, Dekker decided. All right, for a guy who’d probably never gotten his hands dirty. Had to tell Meg when she came to. She’d get a laugh out of it.

Another officer, this one straight past them, where they waited in the tight confines of the medstation. Right into the surgery.

Angry voice beyond the door, an answer of some kind.

“Think they’ve got a hurry-up,” Sal muttered.

More voices. Something about paralysis and another thirty minutes. Voice saying, quite clearly, “… doesn’t do her any good if she’s dead, Hank, we haven’t got your thirty minutes. Get your patient prepped, we’re moving.”

Man came back through the door then, looked at them, said, more quietly,

“We’ve got your ship free, we’ve got a positional problem and we’re doing a correction burn, about as fast as the EV-team can get in and I can get up to the bridge. Best we can do. You’ve got belts there. Use them. Staff’s got take-holds.”

Bad, then. Dekker clamped his jaw and reached for the belt housed in the side of the seat as Sal and Ben did the same. The officer was out the door and gone.

“Shit-all,” Ben muttered. His hands were shaking. Sal’s were clenched in her lap.

They were in trouble. No question. Headed into the Well, nobody had to say it.

“Positional problem” on a Jupiter-bound vector meant only one thing, and a hurry-up like that meant they were on their own, no beam, just the fuel they had left—which wasn’t a big argument against the Well’s gravity slope.

Way Out’s
whole mass had had to go—that had been his decision: save
Hamilton
the fuel hauling it, keep
Trinidad’s
manipulator arm from shearing off at the bolts, or maybe taking the bulkhead with it: but that fuel in
Trinidad’s
tanks had been a big load—
big
load, on those bolts. He’d made a split-second judgment call, last move he’d made before he’d gone out. Maybe opening that valve had saved their lives. If that bulkhead had gone they’d have decompressed; but an uncalc’ed mass attached to
Hamilton
, three-quarters of it dumped without warning a few seconds into the burn… hadn’t helped their situation. Computers had recomped.

But their center of mass had changed twice in that accel; and when the arm gearing had fractured—
they’d
had to lase through the tether ring—they must have swung flat against
Hamilton’s
frame and that would have changed it again. He’d gone out by the time that had happened. Didn’t know how long they’d pushed, but with a warship moving on them, they’d had to give it a clear choice between chasing them or dealing with R2.

Hamilton
crew couldn’t be real damn happy with their passengers right now.

The lock hydraulics cycled and stopped. A siren shrieked. A recorded voice said: Take Hold Immediately.

“
All hands prepare for course correction burn. Mark. Repeat
—”

“The Bitch won’t give em a beam, Sal muttered, teeth chattering as she checked her belt. ”The Bitch is damn well hoping we’ll all take the deep one. Won’t lift a finger.“

“We’re going to be all right,” he said.

“‘Going to be all right,’” Ben said. “‘Going to be all right.’ You know if you weren’t a damn spook Bird’d be alive. Meg wouldn’t be in there. We wouldn’t be where we are. This whole damn mess is your fault.”

“Yeah,” he said, on a deep breath. “I know that.”

“His damn fault, too,” Ben muttered. “They weren’t after him, they didn’t know who the hell he was. He was clear, damn him, he was clear. I don’t know what he did it for.”

Engines fired.
Hamilton
threw everything she had into her try at skimming the Well.

He thought, I could just have pulled us off and out. Didn’t
have
to go to the
Hamilton
. Wasn’t thinking of anything else.

They’d have picked us up. But the shooting would have stopped by then. And we wouldn’t be in this mess. Ben’s right.

“Didn’t make sense,” Ben said. “Damn him, he never
did
make sense…”

Somebody
had started shooting. The police swore they were military rounds, and Crayton’s office wanted that information released immediately.

The statement from Crayton’s office said: . .
greatly regrets the loss of life
…

Morris Bird was a name Payne fervently wished he’d never heard. Thirty-year veteran, oldest miner in the Belt, involved with Pratt and Marks, and popular on the

’deck—a damn martyr was what they had. Somebody had sprayed BIRD in red paint all along a stretch of 3-deck. BIRD was turning up scratched in paint on 8, and they didn’t need any other word. The hospital was bedding down wounded in the halls, a file named DEKKER was proliferating into places they still hadn’t found and the Shepherd net was broadcasting its own news releases, calling for EC intervention and demanding the resignation of the board and the suspension of martial law.

Now it was vid transmission—a Shepherd captain explaining how the miner ship
Trinidad
had made a run for the
Hamilton
—more names he’d heard all too much about. A pilot who’d had his license pulled as impaired. A crew who’d been with Bird when the shooting happened. The story was growing by the minute—acquiring stranger and stranger angles, and N & E couldn’t get ahead of them by any small measures.

…
A spokesman for the company has expressed relief at the safe recovery of the
Trinidad
and all aboard. The same source has strongly condemned the use of
deadly force against unarmed demonstrators and promises a thorough
…

The door opened. He blinked, looking at rifles, at two blue-uniformed marines. At a third, who followed them in, and said,

“William Payne? This office is under UDC authority, under emergency provisions of the Defense Act, Section 18, Article 2.”

He looked at the rifles, looked at the officer. Tried to think of right procedures. “I need to contact the head office.”

“Go right ahead, Mr. Payne.”

He doubted his safety to do that. He hesitated at picking up the phone, hesitated at pushing the button. “This
is
Administration I’m calling. Do you want to be sure of that?”

“Check it out wherever you like, Mr. Payne. Your computer will give you an explanation. Go ahead. Access Administration.”

He took a breath, touched keys, windowed up Executive Access.

It said,
Earth Company Executive Order
…

It said Charter Provision 28, and Defense Act, Section 18, Article 2.

“We have a press release for you, Mr. Payne.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. No questions. No hesitations. He reached for the datacard the officer put on his desk and put it into the comp.

It said:
The UDC has assumed control of ASTEX operations. All workers,
independent operators and contractors, and all
ASTEX
employees below
management levels will be retained. President Towney is under arrest by civil
warrant, charged with misappropriation of funds and tax evasion. Various
members of the board are likewise under investigation by the EC. Residents who
have information on such cases are directed to deliver that information to the
military police, Access 14, on the system
.

All residents who report to the UDC office on their decks will have their cards
revalidated and will be passed without question or exception under a general
amnesty for all non-executive personnel of R2.

The UDC will meet with delegations from the independents, the contractors,
and civilian employees to discuss grievances…

“Hell of a mess,” Meg said, propped on pillows in the peculiar kind of
g
you got in small installations—still lightheaded, but the fingers could move in the cast, she’d tested that.

“Couldn’t tell you from the sheets when they brought you in.” Sal sat down carefully on the edge of the bed, reached out a dark hand and squeezed her good one. Skins brut sure didn’t match right now, Meg thought, seeing that combination, and then thought about Bird, left adrift in that lift-car. Hell of a thing to do. Bird had deserved better than that. But he’d always been a practical sumbitch, where it counted.

Water trickled from the corner of her left eye. Sal wiped it with her thumb.

“Hell,” she said, and tried to put her arm over her eyes, but every joint she owned was sprained. She blinked and drew a couple of breaths. “They get us out of the dive yet?”

Sal didn’t answer right off. Hadn’t, she thought. Welcome back, Kady. We’re still going to die.

Sal said, “We still got a little vector problem. Where’d you hear it?”

“Meds said. Thought I was out. Are we going in?”

Another hesitation. “Say we’re going in a lot slower. They’re having a discussion with the EC right now. Idea is, deploy the sail to half, see if we can get a line-up with the R2-23, just get a little different tack going.”

“That’d be nice.”

“Listen, ice-for-nerves, we got word the military’s taken over—got Towney under arrest—yeah. And the board. They’ll bring the beams up, they damn well have to.

They’re talking deal with helldeck right now—they’re asking for Mitch and Persky and some of the guys to come and talk grievances—“

“It’s a trick.”

“They going to put so’jer-boys to picking rocks? Beaucou’ d’ luck, Kady. First tag they try they’ll be finding bits of some ship clear to Saturn.”

“They’ll deal. Maybe even get us our beam. Wouldn’t be surprised. But it won’t change, Aboujib. Won’t change.”

Sal didn’t say anything for a moment. And she was on a dive of her own. Wasn’t fair to Sal. Sal had real vivid nightmares about gravity wells.