Hellburner (43 page)

I’m all right, she tried to say, but her teeth kept chattering. Seeing that number out there had put a shock reaction into her—she wasn’t used to shaking; wasn’t used to time to think when she was scared, or, worst, to knowing there wasn’t a damned thing she could do personally to help those guys or Dek... .

The blanket came around her. “Tried to kill us,” she said between shivers. “Wasn’t any fucking accident, Dek was supposed to be in that pod. . . That was our slot Jamil took...”

“Sims tech Eldon A. Kent,” Graff said, reading the monitor, “out of Munich, trained in Bonn ...”

“I want a piece of him,” Dekker said. God, he wanted it, wanted to pound the son of a bitch so fine the law wouldn’t have pieces left to work with. “Just let me find him.”

“Certainly answers the questions about access,” Graff murmured, reading over the data on the monitor. “Free access to the pods, a lot of the techs let each other through, never mind the rules. He’s Lendler Corp, he comes and goes—what were you doing up there suited, Dekker? What were you doing with the mission tape?”

Piece suddenly clicked into place. Bad memory. Whole chunk of memory. “Wanted to look at the tape, just wanted to look at it—“ The disaster sequence. The maneuver Wilhelmsen had failed to make. “Damned set piece. They wanted it to work, they kept training us for specifics. I told them that, I...”

“They.”

“The UDC. Villy.”

“So you went to the ready room, or up to the access?”

“The ready room. To run it on the machine there. They wouldn’t let me in the labs, I was off-duty. I just wanted to look at the sequence—“

“Where did this Kent come in?” Porey asked.

“While I was running the tape.”

“Alone?”

He shook his head. “Guy was with him. I know the face, I can’t remember the name—“

“And they came in while you were reading the tape. What did they say?”

“They said they were checking out the pods, they were looking for some possible problem in the sims. They wanted me to go up to the chamber and answer some questions...”

Graff asked: “Did you suit to fly? Was that your intention?”

“I—I hadn’t—no. I just had the coveralls. I hadn’t brought a coat.”

“You suited because of the cold, you mean.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You went up there,” Porey said. “What happened?”

“They said put the tape in, 1 did that, they hit me from the back. Said—said—‘Enjoy the ride.’ Sir, I want these guys...”

“Absolutely not,” Porey said. “You don’t go after them. That’s an order, mister.”

“Commander, they’re up there right now with Jamil and his guys, they’ve got their asses to cover—“

“Mr. Dekker.”

“They’re with Jamil!”

“Mr. Dekker, shut up and believe there are reasons more important than your personal opinion. We have a program with problems, a ship with problems, and what happened to you and what happened up there isn’t the only thing at issue. They’re Lendler Corp technicians; and they didn’t take a spontaneous dislike to you, do you read that, Mr. Dekker? Lendler Corp has a multitude of Reel contracts, which has UDC contracts, which leaves us with serious questions, Mr. Dekker, does it penetrate your consciousness that there may be issues that have a much wider scope than your need for vengeance or my personal preferences? If things were otherwise, I’d turn you loose. As is, you keep your mouth shut, you keep it shut on this and let Security handle it. We’ll get them. It may take time, but we’ll get them. We want to know whether there’s a network, we want to know if there’s any damage we don’t know about, we want to know if there is a connection to you personally or if you just have incredible luck, do you understand that, Mr. Dekker?”

“Yessir,” he said, past a choking anger. “Yessir, I understand that.”

“Then you see you keep your mouth totally shut about what you know. You don’t even tell your crew; and believe me I mean that. —Mr. Graff?”

“Sir.”

“Escort Mr. Dekker to my office. I’m not through with him.”

“Walk slowly,” Graff said, on the way out of ops. Porey was back mere on com calling in senior Security, he was well sure: Fleet Police already had the pod 3 access as secured as it could be with medics at work; they had the answer they’d been looking for and the mess only got wider, with tentacles into God knew what, Lendler, any other corporation. You didn’t take a highly educated technical worker and suddenly turn him into a saboteur and hand-to-hand murderer, not overnight, you didn’t; which meant Kent was other than a peaceful citizen, Kent was skilled and malicious, and somebody in Lendler Corp had gotten him credentials and arranged for him either to get here or to stay here, at the time a lot of Lendler Corp had transferred out—Porey was right on this one. They had, as Villy was fond of saying, pulled a string and got a snake. Potential faults in the equipment, faults in the programming, faults in the assignments, and Porey still hadn’t closed on the monumental coincidence of his pulling Dekker from the test today in the first place, why he’d had sudden misgivings on this day of all days...

The message that had turned up in his personal file, with no identifying header or record, damned sure hadn’t been a spontaneous generation of the EIDAT system, and his stomach was increasingly upset, with guilt over the concealment of that security breach, and the conviction exactly who had inserted that message—along with a cluster of Testing Labs files nobody outside highest security clearances should have been able to access at all.

Bias in the tests, Earth-cultural bias in the Aptitudes, consequently in the choices and reactions trained into the UDC and the Shepherd enlistees—a bias that didn’t want aggression on the fire-button or command decisions out of the pilots: he’d only to run an eye down the questions being asked and the weight given certain answers to see what was happening; and before the accident phone calls had already been flying back and forth between Sol One and B Dock: Porey had already invoked military emergency on Intellitron in as fine a shade of a contract clause as a merchanter could manage—demanding access to programs Intellitron had held secret thus far: Pending mission. Medical question. Emergency. Credit Edmund for the nerve of a dockside lawyer... and meanwhile, aside from the possibility of active sabotage, they had to wonder how many other examples of mis-assigned crews they were going to find, they had a clear notion why the UDC crews had had problems, and knew, thanks to Pollard, why the whole program might have a serious problem—which he couldn’t, for Pollard’s sake, confess.

Friendliest Edmund Porey had ever been to him, after he’d broken the news and Porey had absorbed it. And, dammit, he didn’t want Percy’s kind of friendship—he didn’t want Porey deciding he could help Porey look good, and putting in a request for him on staff, God help him, even if it meant a promotion. Not at that price. And it looked that way now, it looked increasingly that way, with no word from his own captain, no evidence Keu was still in charge over at FSO.

Be careful, Demas had told him last night. Don’t succeed too conspicuously.

“Mr. Dekker.”

A breath. “Yessir.”

“Coincidence in this instance is remotely possible.

“Yes, sir.”

“You don’t believe it.”

“No, sir. I absolutely don’t.”

“You’re probably asking yourself why you were so lucky— why I pulled you from tests.”

Another breath. Maybe Dekker hadn’t gotten that far. Maybe Dekker was still tracking on the past, pulling up damaged memory—maybe Dekker was thinking of revenge, or Porey, or the multitudinous accesses corporate connivance could infiltrate that a Fleet pilot wasn’t educated to suspect...

“The reason I did pull you—we found a bias in the Aptitudes. I’m telling you something that’s classified to the hilt, understand. If it gets to the barracks the wrong way, with no fix, it could affect performance. Fatally. You understand me? We’re on a knife’s edge here, right now. We don’t need loose talk. On any topic.”

A worried glance. “Yessir.”

“I’m telling you this because I suspect one of your crew made the discovery and communicated it to me, secretly, which is also not for general consumption, and when the commander briefs you, don’t let him know you know either—how I heard could bring one of your crew before a court martial, do I make myself absolutely clear on that?”

“Yessir.” Dekker’s voice was all but inaudible.

“The public story has to be mat, having experience with this ship, we’re going to be re-evaluating certain crews for reassignment—“

“Break crews? Is that what we’re talking about?”

Damnable question. Touchy question, considering the Wilhelmsen disaster. He paused in the corridor short of the marine guards outside Percy’s office, outside their audio pick-up, he hoped, or their orders to eavesdrop on an officer. “Not by fiat. I’m asking for any crews who might want assignments re-evaluated—in the light of new data. No break-up of existing crews unless there’s a request from inside the crew. We recognize, believe me, we recognize the psychological investments you have.”

“Why in hell—“ Dekker caught a breath, asked, in bewildered, betrayed tones: “Why didn’t you catch it before this?”

“Mr. Dekker, when we began this program, in an earlier, naive assumption of welcome here, we trusted the UDC to know Sol mindsets better than we did. We were absolutely wrong. We didn’t understand the prejudice involved, against the people we most needed. And your crew is the most foreign to their criteria. More so than Shepherds. Maybe that explains how it turned up with your group. But what I’ve told you can’t go any further. Hear me?”

Dekker drew a shaky breath. “Yessir.”

“I have to take your word, Mr. Dekker. Or, understand me—court-martial Ben Pollard.”

“I’m giving you a two-day stand-down, Mr. Dekker,” Porey said, the friendliest Dekker had ever seen the man, me quietest he’d ever imagined him. It still didn’t include warmth. “I don’t want you near the labs for forty-eight hours.”

Graff said, from the side of the room, “I’d recommend longer.”

Frown from Porey, who rocked back in the desk chair. ‘’We haven’t got longer. You have a mother a great deal in the news... which you know. You may not know there’s a special bill proceeding through a JLC committee, that requires the military to surrender personnel indicted for major crimes, are you aware of that, Mr. Dekker? —Does that concern you?”

A complete shift of attack. Another assault on memory. Sometimes he thought he lost things. “My mother, sir,...”

“He’s not gotten the headlines,” Graff said. “His schedule’s been non-stop for days...”

“Your mother, Mr. Dekker, has a battery of very expensive peacer lawyers, your mother is a cause that’s burned a police station in Denmark and gotten a MarsCorp chartered jet grounded in Dallas on a bomb threat—do you know mat?”

No, he didn’t. He shook his head and Porey went on,

“The whole damned planet’s on its ear, there’s a lot of pressure on the legislative committee, and you’re essential personnel, mister. Your crew is an essential, high-tech experiment that through no particular fault of yours, has taken a direct hit from a damnably persistent woman and a nest of lying political fools in the UDC, who are in bed and fornicating with the politicians who appointed them to their posts, the same politicians who are fornicating with the shadow parliament and the peacers in Geneva. That bill is a piece of currency in this game. We have to avoid you becoming another piece of currency in this affair, a damned media circus if they extradite you, and that means getting anything done with this project has assumed a sudden certain urgency, do you follow me?”

He saw the lieutenant out of the tail of his eye. Graff wasn’t looking at him. Hadn’t told him... God, how much else had Graff kept from him?

Porey said: “We’re talking about a fault in the Aptitudes, and I want your well-considered opinion here, Mr. Dekker, whether you want a go-with as-is, or whether you personally want to make a personnel switch. Both your crewmembers are demonstrably capable in the seats they’ve trained for— but “capable” is a fragile substance in a Hellburner crew, you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” he managed to say. “Extremely well. Pollard and Aboujib?”

“Exactly.”

“Can I talk to them?”

THUMP of Percy’s hand on the desk. “You’re the pilot! Gut decision! Which?”

An answer fell out. “I’d ask them, sir.”

“Correct answer,” Graff muttered, looking at the floor.

Hard to argue with Porey. Hard to think in Percy’s vicinity. But there was Graff. Graff agreed with him... Graff handed him secrets that could mean Graff’s own career; and Graff had failed his promise to tell him if there was news from Sol One...

Porey said, “Then we’ll put the decision up to them, since that’s where you want it. No preferences. You’ve lost one crew. Let’s see if this one’s worth the investment. Meanwhile, Mr. Dekker, do some thinking about your own responsibilities—like executive decisions. Do you make executive decisions, Mr. Dekker?”

“Yessir.”

“Do you remember your instructions, regarding what you’ve seen and heard?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are they?”

“Silence. Sir.”

A hesitation. A cold, cold glance, as if he were a morsel on Percy’s plate. Then a casual wave of the hand. “Dismissed. Two-day stand-down.”