Hellburner (47 page)

On which they had evidence, except a member of a Fleet unit also had accesses he wasn’t supposed to have... that Fleet Command didn’t know about... which, if he confessed it now, was damning to him, to the Fleet, to Dekker’s crew at minimum, to the Fleet’s credibility and their support from the legislative committee, at worst.

While at least at some level the UDC and potentially the legislature knew about Pollard’s security clearance—and might possibly know he’d somehow retained system access— if Pollard himself weren’t under higher orders.

God, he should never have held his information source secret from Porey. Never.

“I suggest you use the channels you have to find out what’s going on, lieutenant. Somebody in your command with real authority had better get his ass into this station, find out where the leak is and get this program off the evening news. You’re public as hell, reporters are demanding to come over here in herds, we’ve got a very fragile coalition that worked hard to give you what you asked for, and let me tell you very bluntly, lieutenant, if anything goes wrong with this rumored upcoming test you’ve lost the farm. You cannot disavow another failure, your captains can’t pass the buck to junior officers. Do you understand that? Am I talking to anyone who remotely understands the political realities of this situation?”

“Yes, sir, I do understand.” No temper. “I am thirty-eight unapparent years of age, sir, and older than that as you count time. I was in command of this base during the last hearings, I was lately the director of personnel in this program, I am currently in charge of this facility and the testing program, and of the investigation, and we do have an answer, at least to what happened to Jamil Hasseini and his crew.” He reached in his pocket and held up a yellow plastic washer. “This caused the so-called accident.”

He had their attention. At least.

“How?”

“Operations records showed a hangup in an attitude control. This plastic washer turned up to block the free operation of the yoke. In a null-# facility, you may know, maintenance has to be extremely careful to log and list and check every part, down to the smallest screws and washers, mat they take into the facility. These are experienced null-g workers. We don’t know by those records how long this little part has been there—whether it was there from the time the pod was assembled and it by total accident floated over a course of years undetected into the absolutely most critical position it could take in the control system—or whether it was placed there recently.”

“Sabotage, in other words.”

“We view it as more than suspicious. Paul Dekker was assigned to that pod.”

“So we’ve heard.”

“How much have you heard?”

“Maybe you’d damn well better tell us what there is to hear. We hear Dekker was assigned there and pulled at the last minute. Again. Why? How?”

“By my order, as chief of personnel. I made a routine final check on the crew stats: they were coming out of a period of orientation and lab sims. I felt we might be rushing it, in terms of fatigue levels. A stand-down under those circumstances is routine. Routine—except mat this was the time his replacement crew was going into sims with him. Except that the same individuals we suspect of sabotage had access to that area. Civilian employees: Dekker’s given a positive ID on one of them as guilty of assault in the last so-called accident. We’re talking about deliberate sabotage and premeditated murder committed on Dekker—“

“With what motive?”

“I doubt it was personal. We’ve two employees of Lendler Corp under surveillance. We don’t know all their contacts, yet. But they had access on both occasions.”

Frowns. “Can you prove anything?”

“We’re developing a case. But you see the problem we’ve been working against.”

“Your security is supposed to be on top of things. People come and go where they like here, is that the way it works?”

“People with security clearances, yes, sir—in this case clearances granted by the UDC, interviewing people on Earth, where we have no screening apparatus. We’re reviewing the systems, and the clearances, but there are 11338 civilians on B Dock, hired by the UDC and overseen by various offices. We’re naturally giving Lendler Corp a higher priority in our review, but that doesn’t mean information can’t go out of here through another route.”

“Meanwhile Dekker is unavailable.”

“He is unavailable.”

“And you have no proof of this sabotage.”

“Their access. Dekker’s testimony. The washer. Circumstantial evidence placing them in the area.”

“You know what that’s worth.”

“A good reason not to let out what we know or make charges we can’t substantiate. We’re gathering evidence.”

“Meanwhile these purported saboteurs arc at work on this station.”

“Yes, sir. Of necessity, they are.”

“And Paul Dekker’s out there on that carrier. —Is he in any way involved in the upcoming test?”

“Certainly he’ll be in observation and advisement. All crews have that assignment during a run. Whether he’ll be assigned the run or not—that’s dependent on evaluations.”

“He can’t be the one to take the controls. That name can’t be prominent in this program. —Have you no comprehension?”

“Senator, political decisions in crew choice caused the last disaster to this program. And I can’t believe I’m hearing this all over again.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing from the junior command officer on this base. I can’t believe your persistence in putting this man into the glare of publicity. Let me make it clear to you, lieutenant, careers are going down in flames if there’s a second disaster. We’ve backed you, we’ve delivered votes in the JLC, we’ve patched together the coalition that gives you what you asked for and damn you, you serve us up Dekker for a witness to sabotage and Dekker for the representative of your program, and leak to the press, while you’re ‘developing a case’ you daren’t bring to court. Are you aware what’s happening on Earth? Are you aware of the fire-bombing at the EC headquarters? Are you aware of the bill pending in committee?”

“The extradition bill? Yes, I’m aware of it. And both acts of sabotage were aimed at him—by people who didn’t even know him. This is no personal grudge on the part of the saboteurs, senator, it’s politically motivated murder, the same as the substitution mat killed his crew was politically motivated, by people who may not have known where their orders came from. Now we have another coalition, as I understand it, part of which is working for this bill, but somebody else clearly doesn’t want him in court—somebody in a position to obtain security clearances wants him dead, and if we break the Lendler case into the open right now, it’s going to be a string that reels more and more information into the spotlight—it’s as explosive as the Dekker case and for identical reasons. That’s why we haven’t expelled these individuals. We know where they are. We suspect who they work for.”

Temper. Saito had warned him. He got it under control. He faced the senators and the busily note-taking aides with a cold stare, and saw anger and consternation on both senatorial faces.

“I also want to know,” he said, “how this exact information about Dekker’s being pulled from the sim got to the Joint Committee. Was it out of Stockholm?”

Silence for a moment. The other senator said, harshly, “Through the media, lieutenant. Not the way we prefer our briefings.”

“Haven’t you the power to find out those sources?”

“No. We haven’t. There are laws.”

“To cover illegal activity? I find mat incredible.”

“We want to know who made this decision to test. Is mere a test? Or is this whole maneuver a cover for this Dekker person?”

“There assuredly will be a test.”

“With Dekker’s crew?”

“Possibly.”

“Let me tell you what this looks like to us. It looks like a do or the proposition, a harebrained go-for-broke damned stupid risk, on your senior captain’s perception that the Fleet’s losing prestige in Europe and your facility here is shut down! We can’t get you another ship to wreck, lieutenant, we can’t continue our support in the face of this stupid risk of lives and equipment!”

Senior captain? Mazian? “The program is not shut down, sir. If you perceive that, you’ve been misled.”

“The simulators are wrecked, you’re vulnerable to sabotage, you’re sending out crews who aren’t ready—“

“No, sir. I’m delighted to report that all necessary equipment is functioning. There’s been no hiatus in the program. All our crews are at work, including the UDC teams, integrated with ours.”

A silence. Doubt, curiosity, and deep offense. He had his own doubts, of these men Saito called essential and friendly and to be trusted with the truth, these fools who wouldn’t so much as talk to Saito, because Saito wasn’t a command officer and Saito wasn’t in charge.

“This doesn’t agree with our information.”

“I hope I have better news, then, sir. Our crews are keeping schedules, we are bringing our other senior crews, including UDC personnel, up to mission-ready; and when they’re ready they will go. Officially, I know nothing about the upcoming test. I won’t know the time until I’m told. But assuredly it will go. And any media attention to this facility will find everything in operation.”

A modicum of respect, perhaps. A reassessment, a reevaluation what situation they were dealing with, certainly.

“Maybe you’d better explain yourself, lieutenant. With what equipment? With this tape you’ve come up with? Are we brainwashing our crews?”

“Crews at mission ready have to practice daily to maintain those skills. With the damage to the sims, Fleet Command opted to use the Hellburner prototype, patched to the shipboard simulators.”

“When was that authorized?”

“The patch?”

“The shipboard facility. The chamber.”

“Not chambers, sir, nothing like. I’m not privy to the details, but this is equipment we brought with us into the system, that we regularly use. Combat crews on stand-by also have to practice, virtually daily, to keep their edge. We certainly can’t stop a carrier’s operations or use its physical self for exercises. Naturally we have the equipment.”

“Then why in hell haven’t we been using it all along? Why spring it now? Why this whole damned, accident-riddled program?”

“Politics, sir.” He hoped he kept all satisfaction off his face. “As the situation was told to me, we were ordered at the outset, over our captains’ explicit protests, to submit our trainees to the UDC Systems Test protocols, to their aptitude criteria, their rules and their existing equipment during testing of the prototypes. As I believe, there was a major policy battle over that point in the JLC, and we lost.”

Total quiet in the room. The clicking of the aides’ keys had stopped.

“You never said explicitly,” the other senator put in, “that you had the equipment.”

“There was some fear,” Graff said, “that the UDC might use its position to demand control of that equipment. In a situation in which we arc not to this hour solely in control of communications system accesses, in which we’ve had sabotage, attempted murder of our personnel, assignment of flight personnel on criteria purely ideological in nature— plus the security breach—we are trusting your discretion on this point and we trust mere will not be another leak. What we train on is a very dearly held piece of information. If our enemy knows what equipment we have—we are, in the vernacular, screwed. We protested, through every channel we trusted, that the station facilities here are a hundred fifty years old, with maintenance problems that eat up funds for improvements we asked for. The decision to put the rider training into the hands of the UDC, to use Lendler’s data conversion system for the pods in the first place—was as I understand, a purely political decision. We asked to review the software. We were not trusted to make that input. We... were... no/... trusted.”

Another silence. An angry silence on both sides. But it wasn’t productive anger. Graff shifted back in his chair. “I’m not a diplomat. My captain left other officers here who are. But they aren’t command track by UDC rules. So I pass their word on to you. As for the operational crews of all the ships—you gave us a requirement to have carriers on standby to defend this system—and I can tell you with absolute certainty I would be grossly irresponsible to take that carrier’s controls after months of total stand-down. We’re in constant training, all ops crews and staffs are in training during any stand-down; and the UDC has never provided carrier control siras. It’s certainly no secret.”

“Where did you obtain this other equipment?” Anger. Still, a genuine offense, and he answered with careful exactness:

“I haven’t been on that carrier and I honestly don’t know the source.”

“Where would you expect that carrier to obtain it?”

“The black market.”

“Whose black market?”

The question seemed naive. “The one out there, sir. Outside this solar system. There’s very good equipment available.”

‘ ‘I find this outrageous. Union equipment? Is mat story true?”

“We have manufacturers. We’re not primitives looking for Earth’s expertise, my God, senator. We provided the designs that are making your corporations money.”

“Are you using Union equipment?”

“Senator, we don’t look for the label. If it works, if it’s better, we use it. If we can get our hands on Unionside equipment, we’re delighted, and they’d be extremely upset, if they knew it. They don’t want us using their programs.”