Devil to the Belt (v1.1) (77 page)

Big, shadow-shape of the carrier—wouldn’t all fit in the picture—with spots on its hull picked it out in patchwork detail, all gray, and huge—

And on the hull near the bow, a flat, sleek shape clung, shining in the floods. “That’s it?” Ben asked.

“That’s it,” Dek said. “Her. Whatever you want to call it. They built three prototypes. That’s the third. That’s the one that’s make or break for us. Crew of thirty, when we - prove it out. Four can manage her—in a clean course, with set targets. Most of her mass is ordnance, ablation edge, and engine load. You’ve had the briefings.”

Meg stood by Sal’s side and got a shiver down the back that had nothing to do with the cold here. Beautiful machine, she was thinking; Sal said, Brut job, and meant the same thing, in a moment, it sounded as-if, of pure gut-deep lust. Wasn’t any miner-can, that wicked, shimmery shape.

And most imminently, in the sim chamber behind the clear observation port, the pods, one in operation, a mag-lev rush around the chamber walls, deafening as the wall beside them carried the vibration.

“Damn,” she breathed. But you wouldn’t hear it.

“The pods you see moving,” Dek said, over the fading thunder, “that’s the tame part. That rush is the dock and undock. They can take those pods more positive or neg g’s than your gut’s going to like. But that’s not the dangerous part. That pod, there, the still one—” He pointed at one floating motionless, away from the walls. “That’s the real hellride. Could be at 3A light, what you know from inside. That’s the one they mop the seats on. That’s the one can put you in hospital—unstable as hell in that mode—screw it and you’ll pull a real sudden change.”

“Thanks,” Ben said. “I like to hear that, damn, I like to hear that.”

Meg said, “Going to be all right. No problems. Hear?”

But Dek looked up at that pod in a way she kept seeing after he’d turned away and told them it was up the lines to the pod access—like an addict looking at his addiction, and a guy scared as hell.

“Take you on the ride of your life,” was the way he put it.

“Now wait a minute,” Ben said. But Dek took out on the handlines and Sal snagged Ben’s arm with: “Now, cher, if we don’t keep with Dek and Meg here, they’ll assign us some sheer fool pi-lut we don’t know the hell who... Do you want to go boom on a rock? No. Not. So soyez gentle and don’t distract the jeune fils.”

“No,” Graff said, “no, colonel, I don’t know—I’ve got a meeting with him...”

“He’s got no right,” was the burden of Tanzer’s phone call. Which didn’t over all help Graff’s headache. Neither did the prospect of dealing with Comdr. Porey face to face.

“I’ll pose him the question,” he told Tanzer. Couldn’t honestly blame the colonel this morning—discovering that his carefully constructed sims schedule was in revision, that Villanueva’s team had been opted straight off test systems into the priority sims schedule and three others of the test systems crews had been bumped off the sims schedule entirely, in favor of Dekker and three raw recruits, who’d been given access-on-demand, on any shift.

The officer in charge of Personnel ought to know what was happening. One would logically think so.

The officer in charge of Personnel hung up the receiver, put on his coat and took his hangover headache down the corridor to the CO’s office.

Marine guards let him in. Porey was all smiling, smooth congeniality.

“Jurgen,” it was. And an offered hand as Porey got up from his desk. One had to take it or declare war. “I’ve been going through the reports. Excellent job you’ve done, getting us settled into station. I don’t find a thing I’d change. Sit down, sit down...”

“Thank you,” Graff said, and sat, wondering whose name those actions had gone out under in the report to FleetCommand—wonder, hell, he knew what games Porey was playing, with the reports, with his smiling good grace: Porey’s aides never knew what they’d meet when they walked into his office, the smiling bastard or the shouting, desk-pounding sumbitch, but either one would knife you. It was, knowing your career could hinge on Porey’s approval, damned easy for a staffer to start twitching to Porey’s cues.

He could see it working in Carina junior crew out there, in the marine guard—he could see it going on all around him, suggesting that it might be wise for him to play Porey’s game too; suggesting that this man, clearly on his way to a captaincy, and certainly in Mazian’s good graces, could be a valuable contact...

Except that he’d seen this game going on since they were both junior lieutenants, and he felt the urge to puke.

He said, with a fixed smile, “Edmund, do you think your staff could possibly give Personnel any sims schedule changes a day in advance? Tanzer is not happy. I could have minimized the disturbance.”

“Didn’t that come to you?” Porey was all amazement.

“No, it didn’t come to me. I had to hear it from Tanzer. I don’t like dealing with the UDC when I don’t know what’s going on. It makes me feel like a fool. And I don’t like that, Edmund, I truly don’t.”

Satire on Porey’s own style wasn’t what Porey was used to meeting. Porey had a thinking frown as he sat down, guarded amusement at the edges of his mouth: everything for effect, most especially the expressions on his face. Peel Porey layer by layer and you never got to center.

“Matters of policy,” Porey said, rotating a paperweight in his fingers, “are handled in this office. Tanzer has no power that you don’t give him. If you choose to coddle him, that’s your decision. Not mine.” The paperweight stopped moving. “The assignment of personnel and priorities, however, is mine. Relations with the UDC—use your talents at diplomacy. I’m sure you’re up to it.”

Distraction and a shot across the bow. “By the Procedures, Personnel involves health and welfare, neither of which works when my office has no say in reassignments or systems changes.” Attack on his own. “In consideration of which, I want a briefing on the tape-learning procedures from the techs that came in with you. I don’t have time to read science reports.”

“Jurgen, my staff hasn’t time to handle delicate egos, Tanzer’s or yours.”

“Or three hundred fifty-six Shepherds who’ve been rooked out of their seniority, lied to by the UDC, shafted by the legislature and killed out there on the course because nobody’s ever damn listened to them. Edmund, we have tempers at critical overload here, and a blow-up isn’t going to look any better on your record than it looks on Tanzer’s. If you want a riot, these are the ones that will do it. They’re not kids, they’ve had too many fools in command over them here and in the Belt to trust anybody now on credit. They don’t reject authority: they’re looking for it, they want h—but don’t expect them to follow orders til they know the ultimate source is sane.”

Porey didn’t say anything for a moment. He wasn’t stupid and he cared about his own survival. That was one thing you could believe in.

Porey said softly, “You’re an honest man, Jurgen. How do you plan to get out of Earth system alive?”

“By keeping my CO from making mistakes.”

Long, cold stare. A slow smile. “You don’t have any resentment, do you, for my being installed here?”

“I’m not command track. I never pretended to be.” Still the stare. “You think I’m pretending?”

“I don’t think you’re pretending anything. I know you.” Feed the fantasy—and the anxiety. Porey didn’t like to be known, but he liked to be respected. The man did have an ego. A parsec wide. Porey smiled slowly, in a way that almost touched the eyes. “Good. A vote of confidence from you, I appreciate, Jurgen. I truly do.”

Odd chill of unease as the pod cruised up to the access. Thump of the pressure seals. Hydraulics as it opened and offered its dark, screen-lit interior. Ordinary sounds. Shadows moved on the white plastic of the control console as Dekker put the tape in and he felt an irrational urge to look behind him, as if his crew wouldn’t be there.

No damned reason to get nerves. But it had been Pete on the line beside him, all the times before. It wasn’t now. It wasn’t Elly, it wasn’t Falcone. It was Meg, on Pete’s tape, and Ben and Sal—they belonged here. He made himself believe that, stop remembering what had been...

For no reason, a piece of the puzzle snapped in, unbidden. Null-g. Shadows on the console. He felt the blow at the base of his skull. He knew where he had been—at the entry. Knew where they’d been. Shadows. Two of them...

Dammit. Not the time to be woolgathering. He looked back at Ben—Ben looked scared, but Ben looked On, tracking wide and fast on the pod, taking in everything, the same as Meg and Sal. All business—the way they were when the jokes stopped and they were thinking and absorbing. He gave them the lecture tour, the buttons on the console, the read-out window, the authorizations procedure— “Card and tape in the slot for a check-out. It reads your ID, takes your personal numbers and sets, and double-checks the tape for authorizations. Ready?”

“Are you serious?” Ben said. Then: “Yeah. Yeah. Go.”

He caught the handholds on either side of the entry, angled his feet for inside and eeled into his station. “Sal,” he called back, over the hum of a passing pod, caught her by the arm as she sailed into the dark, shadow against the lights, a glitter of braids tied into a cluster, for safety’s sake. He aimed her for the far side of the four-wide cockpit. “Ben.” Same as Ben came feet-first through the hatch, for the seat between him and Sal. Meg came last, for the seat between him and the hatch, settled in. Green-lit gold on plain stud earrings. Green dyed her side-shaved profile, green turned her red curls black. Ringed fingers found the belts and buckled in, eyes glowed wide and busy in the light of the screens, assessing the instruments.

He drew his own belt over—he waked reaching for them at night, with a recurring nightmare of drifting free. Suit braces powered up as he plugged in, and the helmet cut off side vision. It was deep-field V-HUD now. Switches on, power up. “Comfortable?”

“Yeah,” from Meg. “As possible,” from Ben.

Belts were tight. Second tug, to be sure. Orientation run. Starting over, primer stuff—only he wasn’t the neo this run. There was something surreal in the moment, in the familiar lights, in the ordinary sounds of the pod, the dark masquerading as routine. They were On. Anxious. Wanting to be right. But he kept expecting other voices.

“This thing got any differences?” Meg asked, last-minute.

He shoved the tape into the console, pushed LOAD. “One. See that yellow ABORT, upper left? Doesn’t exist on the real boards. It’ll stop the pod—if you don’t get a response from me, or if you detect anyone in trouble, you hit that. Takes you right back to the bay.”

“Cher,” came Meg’s low voice, “you just do. I got confidence in us.”

“More ‘n I got,” Ben muttered. “Hold it, hold it. I’m not set yet.”.

“Response check, thing doesn’t glitch, but be sure. Boards are all in test mode.”

Passengers was all they were required to be; but that wasn’t Meg’s style, wasn’t Ben’s or Sal’s either. He tried his own boards, set his arms in the supports, heard Meg’s voice saying, “I got it, right on.” Ben muttering, “Don’t screw it, Dek-boy. Yeah, I’m on, on, go.”

Sal’s, saying, “Hit it, Dek.”

Dark, flash of lights—

He kicked the thumb switch on his keys. Readout glowed green against the dark. Finger moves on opposite hands, the undock sequence switch.

Bang! of grapples. Mag-levs and human voices mixed—a 6 g shove butt-first for ten eternal seconds to a sustained straight-at-the-spine shove at +9 g.

Green lines wove fast and faster... the pod was alive and the tons of thrust were mag-lev sim, but it was all in his hands, responsive to a breath, a stray thought, a moment’s doubt—where he was, when he was, who he was with—

He didn’t want to do this.

Serious panic, a flash on instruments in chaos—

Then. Not now. Now was now. Not a time to lose track, God, no—

Focus down. Focus wide. Attention to the moving lines, that’s all—

“Politics,” Porey said, “pure politics. Let me explain it to you. Fifteen of the fifty carriers have to be UDC—-that’s the deal we cut, and that’s what we have to do. The accident gave us Hellburner, and that tape’s going to give us the program. The parliaments on Earth want responsible individuals in policy positions—read: no captains will violate policy laid down by the JLC. And this won’t change in the field.”

Graff stared at Porey. He thought he’d heard the depth of foolishness out of Earth.

Porey made a small, sarcastic shrug. “They have our assurances. And if the news services should call your office, Jurgen, and since you’re over Personnel, they might, the answer you give is: No, of course these ships are launched at carrier command discretion, with specific targets. No, they will never be deep-launched, with less specific orders. That tactic won’t work.”

“You mean I lie.”

“I mean the Joint Legislative Committee’s expert analysts say not. The changing situation over time—read: the commanders of individual ships making decisions without communicating with each other—would make chaos of strategic operations. So it can’t be done. End report. The JLC analysts say it’s not appropriate use of the riders. The legislators don’t like what these ships can do, combined with the—irregular character—of the crews we’ve picked to handle them. These crews are, historically, trouble Earth got rid of. Earth’s strategic planners are obsessed by the difficulty they’ve discovered of conveying their orders to ships in the Beyond—they’ve apparently just realized the time lag. They can’t phone Pell from here and order policy about—”

“They’ve always known that.”

“The ordinary citizen hasn’t. The average businessman can get a voice link to Mars now. Or the Belt—if he wants one.”

Lag-com was a skill, a schitzy kind of proceeding, talking to a voice that went on down its own train of logic with no regard to your event-lagged self. That was one of the reasons senior Com and psych were virtually synonymous. And Earth hadn’t realized until now you couldn’t talk to a launched rider—or a star carrier? He refused to believe it.

“Lag-com has finally penetrated the civil user market,” Porey said, “since we increased the pace of insystem traffic. Earthers are used to being told the antenna’s gone LOS, used to being told Marslink is out of reach for the next few months, used to shipments enroute for years and months— supply the market counts but can’t touch. Their ship-borne infowave was so slow as to be paralytic, before we started military operations insystem. The last two years have upset that notion—this, from the captain. So if anyone asks you—of course we’re going to have a strong mother-system component hi FleetCommand. Of course riderships will never make command decisions. We’re going to loop couriers back to Earth constantly.”