“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 that 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.”
“Are you creating tape?”
“Of course. They’re creating tape over in the UDC. In TI. They’re creating tape in Houston, for physical rehab patients—”
“You know what we’re asking. These people with their fingers on the fire button—are you saying, lieutenant, that the tape training your crews are being given is being adjusted to the personality of some single individual, and among those individuals may be Paul Dekker?”
“Physical reaction tape doesn’t affect personality. That’s a complete misapprehension.”
“It’s a public perception. Truth doesn’t matter. Public perception does! You’re going to use a rab agitator, a man linked to riots in Bonn and Geneva—”
He held his voice steady and his hands from clenching. “A young man who knows nothing about riots in Bonn, who was qualified for a pilot’s license before his enlistment, which one would hope the ECSAA doesn’t do for its own ease.”
”Oh, come on, lieutenant! The ECSAA licensed every miner in the Belt!”
“Dekker was a pusher pilot at Sol One, in your own space, by your certifications. He’s an outstanding young officer who’s distinguished himself by his work and his dedication to this program. And if he meets mission criteria, he will be a source for training material. Skill—”
“He’s too politically sensitive. It’s already too public. God! Why do you people persist in shoving this man in our faces? Are you actively challenging the legislature?”
He shook his head. “Your creativity, sir, with all respect. Any choice made on political and not operational grounds reduces this ship’s chances of survival. If this test fails, the EC has no alternative and no further resources to offer us. I’m authorized to tell you we will have no choice at that point but to pull out entirely and abandon our defense of the motherworld. That’s precisely where it stands.”
“Dammit!”
“Yes, sir. I agree with you. But no one but our predecessors had a choice.”
Things kept on surreal, so far as Dekker was concerned, time-trip to a place he’d never been, and the little things got to you: the moment in the shower you couldn’t remember where you were: the split-second during mission prep the whole scene seemed part of the station, not the carrier. Nothing felt safe, or sure. You ran the prep, you ran the sims, you scribbled away on your plans, you ran the sims, and every once in a while they gave everybody a day down and you could put your feet up, play cards and enjoy a light beer, because the carrier pilots were using the equipment, but the whole thing cycled endlessly.
You could believe at times you were in the war, the other side of the Hinder Stars. Or in Sol Station’s carpeted corporate heart, where orderlies served you food you didn’t even recognize, arranged in pretty patterns on the plates. Your bed turned up made, your clothes turned up clean and the bar when it was open served free drinks. Wasn’t so bad a life, you could get to thinking. But debt for this had to come due, either to Porey or to God, or to somebody.
Hit two hundred-percenters, back to back, and he started dunking, the sims are lying to us. They’re jerking us around, trying to give us confidence—
They want their damn theory to work, they’re targeting the tape they’re giving us at the exercises, that’s why we’re getting scores like that, that’s why it’s not happening to the other teams—
Some damned fool in an office somewhere could believe a lie and put us out there, when it’s all lab stuff that looks good...
“Dek, what are you guys having for breakfast?” Call from the end of the narrow room, down by the display.
Damn, they’d posted the scores.
Lot of guys went and had a look. “Hell,” he groaned, but it wasn’t ragging this time, it was a rueful shake of heads and a:
“Dek, looks like you got the run.”
“Not yet,” he said to Almarshad.
“No, I mean you got the run. You’re posted. Mitch is back-up one, we’re two, half a point between us.”
Blood went to his feet. He sat there, with his crew, who weren’t celebrating, who just looked at him; and got up as Mitch and Almarshad came over and congratulated him, not looking happy, not taking it badly either. It was too serious for that, too damned uncertain for that.
“Not a thorough surprise,” Mitch said. “Sounds like we’re headed for girl-tape for sure.” Ragging it a little close to the edge, that. But he took Mitch’s offered hand, and Meg let him lay a congratulatory hand on her shoulder after. “Kady. Class job, you guys. Sincerely.”
Meg looked as if she’d swallowed something strange. Sal just looked smugly satisfied, and gave Mitch a kiss on the cheek.
Ben said, “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this. What am I doing here?”
CHAPTER 18
HIS mother had said often enough, You don’t care, Paul, you just don’t care about people, there’s got to be something basic missing in you— Maybe there was. Maybe he didn’t feel things other people did. Maybe machines were all he came equipped to understand, all that was ever going to make sense to him, because he couldn’t stay away from them... he honestly couldn’t live without doing this...
He couldn’t turn it loose. When he was away from the ship, he could think reasonably about it, and know that it was a cold way to be, and that if he could be something different and he could be back in the Belt with people he cared about, doing nothing but mining, he could be happy— he’d been happy there; he could have been again, in the right company...
But when he got up here in nuIl-#, in the rider loft, with the four Hellburner locks staring him in the face, and the ship out there, behind number1, then everything was different, every value and priority was revised. The ship was different, every value and priority was revised. The ship was a presence here. Was waiting to be alive; and he was, in a way he wasn’t in the whole rest of his life. He was scared down in the gravitied quarters, scared out of his reason, and be realized he’d gotten everyone who cared about him in one hell of a mess; but up here—
Up here he knew at least why he’d made the choices he bad, right or wrong, he knew why he’d kept going, and why the pods made him afraid—just that nowhere else was this. Nowhere else had the feel this did. It didn’t altogether cure being scared, but it put the fear behind him.
This was where he would have been on that day, dammit, except for Tanzer, except for Wilhelmsen being put in the wrong place, at the wrong time... it felt as if his whole life had gone off-line since then, and he was just now picking up again where it should have been, with the people he should have had: time that had frozen on him, was running again, the mission was in his pocket, and right now the only thing he was honestly afraid of up here was being pulled from the mission again—
But nobody in command would mess with him—not now. It wasn’t Tanzer in command. He was too valuable. He was somebody, finally, that people couldn’t shove aside, when all through his life people had been trying, and they couldn’t do that again. If he did this—if he lived through it—
If he made good on everything he’d promised.
“Dekker.”
Percy’s voice, echoing over the speaker, making his heart jump.
“Sir?”
“Mission dump has gone to your files. We have incoming.”