Most of all he hoped the lieutenant was one of the good guys, because the lieutenant was no fooclass="underline" (he lieutenant knew enough to figure who around here could get into the system and drop an unsigned message in his file. They didn’t have TI techs above a 7A in this place. He’d checked that, already.
Chapter 15
SHOUTING in Percy’s office again. Dekker sat on the bench outside, between a couple of marine guards, and stared at the opposite wall, acutely aware of the traffic in the main corridor, people stealing glances hi this direction—you got a feeling for notoriety, and disaster, and you knew when you’d achieved it. Wake up to a stand-down and a see-rae from Graff, who had nothing to tell him, except that somehow the Aptitudes in his unit were skewed, that they wanted to see Ben and Sal back in Testing, and Graff was due in a meeting with Porey, immediately. Which left him here, in the hall, listening to war going on in the office, and he hoped it didn’t aim at Graff. Mutiny in the Shepherd ranks, if that was the case—Graff was the only point of reason in their lives since the disaster of the last test; and personally, he wanted to kill Porey. They told him he was supposed to go fight rebels from a planet clear to hell and gone away from Earth and right now the targets he most wanted were Comdr. Edmund Porey and whoever had screwed up Ben and Sal, if that was what had happened.
Something crashed, inside the office. He tried not to twitch, found his hands locked, white-knuckled. The guards exchanged looks, dead expressionless.
Marines weren’t anxious to go in there either.
Weights rang back down into the pad, and Meg collapsed on her back on the bench, nerve-dead. Patterns still danced behind her eyelids, but the adrenaline was gone, it was only phosphenes.
Message came from the lieutenant, and Dek had been outright shaking when he’d read it. Bad shakes. Thank God Ben had done—whatever Ben had done. Sal was close-mouthed on it—but she had me idea it involved last night, phones, and messages Dek would have highly disapproved.
Weights banged, close to her head. Her eyelids flew open. Mitch was standing over her. Hell of a start, even if he was decorative: the son of a bitch. She had as little to do with Mitch as possible. Ben and Sal had gotten called in to Testing. Dek...
“What’s this about Dekker getting scrubbed?”
Mitch wasn’t alone. The other traffic in the gym wasn’t casual. A delegation gathered around—Pauli, Franklin, Wilson, Basrami, Shepherds, all of them on her case; Shit, she thought, and sat up, looking for a way to shut this action down. “Maybe you better ask the lieutenant. I dunno.”
“Word is there was a fight last night.”
Double shit. Damned thin walls. “Wasn’t any fight. A discussion. That’s our business.”
Pauli said, “Discussion that scrubs a crew?”
Basrami said, “Word is, the lieutenant gave him a mandatory stand-down. The lieutenant’s been climbing all over Testing. Saito’s still there, with Porey’s com chief. Now the lieutenant’s talking with Porey and Dek’s hanging outside with the guards. Doesn’t look arrested, but he doesn’t look happy.”
More information than she’d had. The grapevine in this place was efficient except in her vicinity.
Mitch asked, “So what’s going on, Kady?”
“All I know,” she said, “we got the stand-down before we got to breakfast. They wanted Ben, they wanted Sal in Testing, they wanted Dekker in Porey’s office. They didn’t want me, so I came here to blow it off.”
“Come off it, Kady.”
“It’s the truth! I don’t know a damned thing except Dek’s been severely pushing it. Could be a medical stand-down—I hope to hell it’s a medical. Porey’s been on his back. He hasn’t said, but we screwed a sim, he talked to Porey, and he’s run hard since. You want to tell me?”
Silence from the guys. Then Mitch said, “They giving any of this special tape to him?”
Nasty question. “Not that I hear. I don’t think so. —No. There’s been no time like that in his schedule.”
“Are they going to?”
Scary question. “Him, they don’t need to, do they? He knows what he’s doing.”
“Just asking,” Mitch said.
“Yeah,” she said, “Well, whose would they give to him? Tell me that.” Five on ten they made the same and only guess she could, and the idea scared hell out of her. “They took my mates into Testing. They told Dek report in. They didn’t tell me an effin’ thing. I’m either the only one right in the universe or I must be one of the problems.” Which shaded closer to her private anxiety than she wanted. She got up, picked up her towel, for the showers. “So if you got any news, you owe me.”
“Nothing,” Pauli said. “Except a serious concern for the program. And Dekker.”
Belters rarely said ‘friend.’ You didn’t say, I care, I love, I give a damn. They wouldn’t do that. But they came asking. Even that skuz Mitch. Made her think halfway better of Mitch, and that gave her another cause to worry.
“Yeah,” she said. “Thanks. If I hear anything, either.”
The door opened. Graff said, stone-faced, “The commander wants to see you.”
“Yessir,” Dekker said.
No questions. Graff was negotiating with an unreasoning, unreasonable son of a bitch and didn’t need trouble from another source. He got up and walked in, saluted, and Porey said, all too quietly, “You may have had a problem, mister. This whole damn program may have a problem. So I want an answer, I want a single, completely straight answer If you were second-guessing the Aptitudes, where would you have expected Pollard and Aboujib to fit in the crew profile?”
“Ens. Pollard’s a computer tech, theory stuff.” He had one sudden chance, maybe, to do something for Ben, which would drop the lot of them down the list, break Meg’s heart and save all their skins. He debated a split second, then: “UDC Technical Institute. I’d have thought he’d be handling the computers. —To be honest, sir, I’d have thought he’d go somewhere up in Fleet Ops—they were, going to send him to Stockholm. He’s got—“
Porey snarled, “We’ve got enough UDC hands in this operation right now. What about Aboujib? Co-pilot?”
He didn’t know what all this was about. Not enough to maneuver with. “Ben taught her numbers. I’d expect she’s good. Longscan or armscomp. She’s—“ He flashed on Sal’s frustration with the scan assignment. “I don’t know— don’t know. What she wants—is the Fire button.” His mind was on what Porey had said about Ben. He thought he might have done Ben harm, bringing in the Stockholm business. He made a desperate, uninvited counter. “Sir, I haven’t got any doubts about Ben Pollard. He went UDC because they had his program, but he’s Belter. He wouldn’t do anything but a hundred percent for his partners.”
Porey left a cold, cold silence. He didn’t know what he was arguing for or against, or who was on trial. Porey just stared. “If,” Porey began, and the phone beeped. Porey grabbed up the handset, snarled, “This is a conference, damn you—“ and the face went expressionless while Dekker had time to think, Something’s happened...
Graff was paying the same kind of attention. Porey said, “Procedures. Stat. —Estimate,” and looked grim as he hung up and stood up. “Pod’s hung.”
“God.” Dekker thought Porey wanted the door—grabbed for the switch.
“Dekker!”
“I can help, sir,...”
“No!” Porey said. And there was no argument.
Meg hauled clothes on, still wet—damn sweater hung on an earring. She finessed it loose the painful way and got her head through—