Yeah, he thought. Yeah. Tell ‘em that, lieutenant.
Himself, he didn’t want to think what was going on back at Sol Station, didn’t want to think what he’d just done back there in the messhall; he kept his mouth shut all the way to the MP post, and inside; him, and Ben and a whole crowd of their guys and the UDC arrestees; but when they tried to take Meg and Sal into the back rooms:
“I want Fleet Security—laissez, laissez, you sumbitch —ow!”
And Sal screamed how she was going to file complaints for rape and brutality....
The MPs got real anxious then. “Where’s Cathy?” one asked, and a guy got on the phone and started trying to scare up a female officer, while Meg argued with them about holding on to him, “Dammit, let him go, he’s just out of hospital, for God’s sake—man got up and bumped a tray, his mother was on the news—“
God. “Meg, shut up. It doesn’t matter!”
“That sumbitch shoved you!”
At which the sumbitch with the custard all over him started yelling at Meg, somebody shoved, Sal started yelling, and he couldn’t do anything, he was cuffed, same as Ben was, same as the UDC guy was, except they’d made the mistake of not doing that with Meg and Sal.
“Meg,” he yelled, “Afeg!”
They got rough with Meg, they got rough with Sal, he kicked a guy where he saw a prime exposed target and they shoved him up against the wall, grabbed him by the hair and by the collar and shoved him into a chair.
“She didn’t do anything,” he said, but nobody was listening to him. He said, “None of them did anything....”
They got Meg and Sal out of the room. Ben and the other guy, too, and left one guy to stand and watch him. He was dizzy, the adrenaline still had his head going around, and his nose dripped a widening circle on his shirt. He tried to sniff it back, breathing alternate with that disgusting sensation; and in his head kept replaying as much as he’d heard on the vid about what was going on with his mother....
A lawsuit, for God’s sake—but she wasn’t anybody to show up on vid, with lawyers from—what the hell organization was it?
The Civil Liberty Association? He didn’t know who they were, but she’d looked like hell, hair stringing around her ears, makeup a mess. He kept seeing her blinking at the strong lights and looking lost and angry. He knew that look. She’d worn it the last time she’d bailed him out of juvenile court.
.../ don’t need any more trouble, she’d written him. Stop sending me money, I don’t want any more ties to you. I don’t want any more letters....
He had never taken leave back to Sol One: there was a serious question, Legal Affairs had warned him from the beginning of his enlistment, whether once he came onto Sol Station where lawyers could get to him with papers, he could escape a civil process being served... or whether the Fleet could prevent him being arrested. The Fleet had put him behind a security wall only because having him on trial wouldn’t sit well with the Belt, where they mined the steel; and the EC cooperated because letting Cory Salazar’s case get to the media would raise questions about a whole long , laundry list of things about ASTEX and MarsCorp the Earth ‘ Company itself didn’t want washed in public. Anything to keep him out of court—
Because damned right there was a connection between his mother and MarsCorp, it was Aim, it was Cory Salazar’s mother, who’d wanted to have a daughter, had one solo and tried to run that daughter’s life and now her afterlife as a personal vendetta against the pusher-jock who’d romanced her collegiate offspring out of her hands.
Hell if that was the way it had been. Cory had dreamed of starships, Cory’d hated her mother’s laid-out course—college to a MarsCorp guaranteed success track—so much that Cory Wouldn’t run fast enough or far enough to escape it. Maybe starships had only been a kid’s romantic answer—but Cory had come to the Belt because she’d thought she could double and triple her money free mining—she’d lured him along for a pilot, and they’d nearly done it, until Cory ran head-on into the corrupt System her mama had wanted her to sit at the top of—and it killed her.
That was the bloody truth. That was the thing Alyce Salazar wouldn’t see. He’d wanted to tell her so: he’d imagined how he’d say it if he got the chance, maybe talk to her sanely, maybe just grab her and shake some sense into mama, so she’d do something about the system that had killed Cory.
But Legal Affairs had nixed any such move, said plainly, Don’t communicate with her. Don’t attempt to communicate with her. And made it an order.
So now Alyce Salazar had communicated with his mother he knew that was the case, because his mother wasn’t dedicated to finding trouble, his mother was the absolute champion of Never get involved...
The side door opened. A team of medics came in, with: “Let’s have a look at you,” so he sat where they wanted and let them look at his eyes with lights, and into his ears, and his mouth. They got the nosebleed stopped, at least, then said they’d better have him down in the clinic for a thorough go-over.
“No,” he objected, suddenly panicked. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
But they took him anyway.
Aboujib, assault with a weapon, incitement
Basrami, assault
Bissell, assault
Blumgarten, assault, assault on an officer
Brown, assault with a weapon
Cannon, assault, incitement
Dekker, instigation of riot, assault
Franklin, assault with a weapon
Hardesty, assault
Hasseini, assault, verbal abuse of an officer
Jacoby, assault with a weapon
Kady, assault, assault on an officer
Keever, assault, destruction of government property
Mason, assault
Mitchell, assault, assault on an officer
Pauli, assault, incitement
Pollard, assault with a weapon
Rasmussen, verbal abuse; (hospital)
Schwartz, assault
Simmons, assault
Vasquez, assault; (hospital)
Zeeman, aggravated assault
Graff read the list, handed it to Petrie, the junior out of Legal Affairs. “I want interviews, any way you can get them. Record everything. I want them now, I want any releases you can get, I want them an hour ago. And I want condition, instigator and perpetrator on our hospital cases.”
“Yessir.” Petrie put the list in his case. The temper must be showing. Petrie didn’t stop for questions of his own. The door shut.
Demas, resting against the counter, said, “Doesn’t seem there was anything premeditated: the channel 3 news boss recognized a correspondence of names on the Sol One news feed, suddenly realized it was sensitive, and jerked the report off the air—bad decision. Dekker happened to be in the messhall, the vid happened to be channel 3. Charlie Tyson happened to be behind him with a tray; Dekker jumped up—bang into the tray. Tyson blew up, Dekker blew, the whole messhall blew.”
“I want a tape of that news broadcast, I want to know what’s going on with Dekker’s mother, I want to know what she’s involved in.”
“You want it in capsule now?” Demas asked. “I’ve got the essentials.”
“Go.”
“Dekker’s mother got fired two days ago. She was a maintenance worker—electrician—for SolCorp. The maintenance office claimed incompetence—the record is apparently inaccessible—she claimed she was a victim of MarsCorp pressure inside the EC, claimed Salazar’s agents had been harassing her on the phone. She showed up in front of the MarsCorp office with lawyers and reporters, MarsCorp called Security, and a MarsCorp spokesman went on camera to charge Ms. Dekker with sabotage and threatening phone calls—apparently Ms. Dekker had been doing some work inside the MarsCorp sector and got some phone numbers, by what Ms. Salazar charges. Ms. Dekker claims they’ve been harassing her—calls on her off watch, that kind of thing. Ms. Dekker’s got some civil rights organization on her side, they’re charging Ms. Salazar used pressure to get Ms. Dekker’s job on personal grounds. End report.” “Harassing phone calls. Is Ms. Salazar on One?” “She was eight days ago, at the time Ms. Dekker claims she got two of the calls. She’s in London at the moment. Ms. Dekker claims she asked for a trace on the calls. The station office claims there was no such request and says their records show no calls to Ms. Dekker’s residence.” Demas folded his arms. “Ask how sophisticated Ms. Salazar’s employees might be.”