He had his pocket com. The captain might send him word at any hour, please God, and give him specific instructions, either for a bare-ass space walk or a steady-on as he was bearing and he’d rather either right now than chasing might-have-beens in circles. After a jump you got a solid Yes, you’d survived it. But right now he could wonder whether the FSO was still operating on Sol One, or whether something might have gone wrong at levels so high the shockwave had yet to hit Sol Two. For all he knew the committee had been the shockwave of a UDC power grab and he’d just self-destructed in it.
Or why else hadn’t they heard anything? Or why, according to the news that he had heard before he’d left the office, was Mazian still smiling his way from council to council in the European Union, and making no comment about the accident, except that a ‘routine missile test’ had had a problem.
The pod flashed by, unexpectedly, filling the view port.
His heart jumped. He watched the pod whip across the far side and felt queasy after the visual shock. Dekker’s pod had been running on the mission tape. Dekker had seen the accident. They’d treated him for shock, he’d gotten out of hospital and turned up here, at shift-change, in a pod repeating the exact accident set-up. On loop. Was there anything in that, but vindictiveness?
Higgins said only that Dekker had lucid moments. No recollection, most times no awareness even where he was. Cory Salazar had died out in the Belt. Dekker was back in that crack-up. Over and over and over.
Check-in records had listed no UDC personnel as in the area. The mission sims tape was checked out to Dekker—as mission commander, he’d had one in his possession. Dekker had been in hospital. One would have expected that that tape had been with his effects. Security should have collected it, with the tapes in all crews’ possession, living and dead. But Library hadn’t checked Dekker’s in: Dekker was alive, and unable to respond to requests for the tape, Security said, they’d decided not to seek an order to get it from his effects—which would have had the Provost Marshal’s staff going into Dekker’s locker while Dekker was alive, a violation of policy in the absence of charges.
A hatch door crashed and echoed at the distant end of the access tube. The lift had just let someone in. The Lendler Corp techs, maybe, moving up to this bay. But the light was still on over there. And the pod was still running, the mag-levs whiting out anything but the loudest sounds.
Damn, he thought, Tanzer might be a fool after all. He might have his answer, all right: and if he and his didn’t make the right moves now, he might become the answer. He’d gotten colder, standing here, and he had a sudden weak-kneed wish to be wrong about Tanzer—he hadn’t thought through what he’d done in the hearing yet, he wasn’t ready or willing to make gut-level choices in a physical confrontation. He closed his fist around the bolt in his pocket—he’d collected that from the desk; he drifted free and took out the pocket com he’d collected too. “D-g, this is 7-A11, sim bay 2. QE, C-2-6, copy?”
“7-All, this is Snowball, C-2-6, on it, that’s 03 to you, dammit, seat that door!”
Saito was on com. Saito must be lurking over Dan Washington’s shoulder and the pocket com was wide open now and logging to files on the carrier. Saito wasn’t as accepting of harebrained excursions as Dan was, Saito must have gotten uneasy, and, onto Helm Two’s side excursion, was probably calling Demas in, besides having Security closer than he’d set them. But they would or wouldn’t come in, depending on what Saito heard. Meanwhile he watched the hand-line quiver along the side of the lighted tube. Someone was on it, now, below the curve of the tube. Several someones, by the feel as he touched it.
First figure showed in the serpentine of lights, monkeying along the line. Not UDC. Their own. Flash of jewelry, light behind blond hair.
Friendly fire incoming, then. Not UDC: Mitch. He drew a breath, focused down off the adrenaline rush toward a different kind of self-protection, said to the com, “Snowball, easy on,” before Security came in hard. More of them behind Mitch: Jamil, Almarshad.. .Pauli. A delegation. The Shepherds didn’t have access to query over com. Saito was sure to give him hell; the Shepherds had tracked him, never mind Tanzer’s ‘boys’ might have—it wasn’t a good time he was having right now; and he hoped it wasn’t a breaking problem that had brought them here. He couldn’t take another.
He held his position as the Shepherds gathered in front of the open door, drifting hands-off on the short tether of their safety-clips, in the frosty-breathed chill and the low rhythmic hum of the mags. “Hear it was bloody,” Mitch said.
“How did you hear? What’s security worth in this place?”
Jamil shrugged, tugged at the line to maintain his orientation. “2-level bar. Aerospattale guys with a few under their belts. Saying Bonner’s pissed. Tanzer’s pissed. Bonner told some female committee member it wasn’t really important she understand the technicals of the accident, or the tetralogic, she should just recommend the system go AI.”
“Damn,” he said, but Jamil was grinning.
“Happens Bonner mixed up his women and his Asians. Turned out she’s Aerospatiale’s number two engineer.”
He had to be amused. He grinned. And he knew that via his open com, Bonner’s little faux pas was flying through the carrier out there, for all it was worth. So the J-G wasn’t the only one who could talk his way into trouble.
But mat was one engineer and one company, with no part of its contract at issue: Aerospatiale was the engines, and they weren’t in question.
The Belter trash, as they called themselves, wanted to know how it had gone. Correction, they knew how it had gone. He didn’t know how they’d found him, didn’t know what they expected him to say. He hadn’t delivered. Not really. They couldn’t think he had.
“What are you guys doing here?”
They didn’t know how to answer, evidently: they didn’t quite look him in the eye. But maybe he halfway understood what was in their minds—a feeling they’d been collectively screwed, the way the Belters would say. And that together was better than separate right now.
“How did you find me?”
Mitch said, “Phoned Fleet Security. They knew.”
Chapter 5
2-DECK 229 was a tacky little hallway in a tacky little facility that met you with a security-locked, plastic-protected bulletin board that said things like
NO ALCOHOL IN QUARTERS and REMEMBER THE 24-HR
RESTRICTIONS, along with SIM SCHEDUUE and LOST CARD,
DESPERATE, BILL H. SMITH.
Humanitarian transfer, hell. You couldn’t shoot a Fleet officer. Wasn’t legal. Couldn’t even kill Dekker, who didn’t know what was going on, who just looked at you and said, Yeah, Ben. All right, Ben. Like you could do anything you wanted to him, the worse had already happened.
Bloody hell.
He found Barracks C. He walked in, where a handful of guys with a vid-game looked up and got up and stared at him, a solid wall of hostility.