The siren blasted the thirty-second warning. Surreal sound, one he’d heard a handful of times in his life, when he’d ridden out from the Belt.
“Helluva surprise,” Almarshad muttered. “Nobody sets foot on this carrier but the commander’s own staff, what any of us have heard, not even the lieutenant. Don’t they trust each other or what?”
Almarshad wasn’t thinking about surveillance. Wilson wasn’t, either, who said, “Wish the lieutenant was going,” as if Porey wouldn’t eavesdrop. Dekker felt a cold fear, of a sudden, that not all of them might come back down this particular lift again. Mitch’s crew and Almarshad’s: the mission team and the backup, that was the order of things he could see, and he had a sudden claustrophobic sense he couldn’t go through with this, couldn’t watch this, couldn’t stand another watch in mission control while something went wrong...
The deck vibrated with the engagement of the core. The lift door opened to let them in.
Motion instead of thinking—a moment of dumping thoughts and negotiating the door, null-g. He got himself and his crew and their baggage in with two other teams, grabbed the take-hold in the corner next to the lift controls and stared at the panel, read the instruction and warning stickers on monofocus and didn’t blink, because he could lose himself right now, lose where he was, and when this was, and what he had to do...
G increasing. “Hold on,” he said, as the indicator approached the loft exit. The car hit the interface, jolted into lock with the personnel cylinder. The door opened...
Wood and sleek plastic. Carpeted bum-deck...
Looked like the Shepherd club on R2. Like exec offices.
“My Gawd,” Meg breathed at his back. “Is this us or Porey’s cabin?”
“It’s us,” he said in shock, “it’s evidently us.”
Wasn’t real wood, it was synth, but it was good synth. There was a tended bar, an orderly with trays of food and null-capped liquor—there were more orderlies to take their duffles and carry them away...
“Shee-it,” came from Sal. And Ben:
“Class stuff, here.”
Reality was completely slipping on him. He gave up his baggage to the orderly who caught a look at his nametag and took the duffle away—no wide spaces, the whole huge loft was diced up into safer, smaller spaces, by what he could see from his vantage; it hadn’t been like this the last time he’d been aboard. Bare girders on the ECS5—no paneling, no carpet, no interior walls and no orderly with’] cheese and crackers and margaritas and martinis. The Shep- J herds were right in their element: Mitch said, “All right,” and moved right in on the bar; and Ben didn’t blink, Ben had been living the soft life on Sol One; Meg and Sal had been with the Shepherds—
But he hadn’t. This wasn’t real. Not for him. It wasn’t ever supposed to be for him. . . there were people who had luxuries and people who didn’t have, by some rule of the universe, and he couldn’t see himself in a place like this...
“As you were.” Porey’s voice, deep and live. He looked around at the outer-corridor entry, as the commander walked in. Porey strolled past Mitch to the bar and picked up a cheese and cracker, popped it in his mouth. Nobody moved. Nobody thought to salute. It was too bizarre, watching Porey walk a tour of the very quiet area.
“We had a problem. We still have a problem, gentlemen. —Ladies. —We have sims down—again. We have one of our best teams down—again. This wasn’t your fault. Fixing it, unfortunately, is your responsibility. Seeing you have time and opportunity to focus on the job at hand—is mine. I’ve pulled you out here, and I am pulling this carrier out of station. Our final Hellburner prototype is mated to the frame, we’re proceeding with deliberate speed, we’ve advised the necessary powers that there will be a test, and we are, frankly, using the time to make our final selection. Three units will be using traditional lab sims, which we can manage aboard this ship, and using sims in the actual prototype, daily, shift after shift. Mr. Dekker’s unit will be using something different in addition, which we are watching and evaluating. Selection will be solely on the basis of scores and medical evaluations.
“Alcohol is not a prohibition during this watch. It will be available from time to time as schedules permit; but I suggest you not have a hangover in the morning: schedule will start with orientation to the library, tile loft, the prototype—
“About which, remember you people are the best of the best—a carrier’s survival and the accomplishment of its objectives is in large part your mission. You will live very well here, as you can see: core crews and technicians will occupy these quarters, with adequate staff to assure your undivided attention to your duty, which is solely the operation of your craft, the protection of your carrier and the achieving of strategic and tactical objectives. Additionally, privilege is extended in special facilities to your maintenance personnel, your library research technicians, and your communications and analysis personnel—you will sit at the top of a pyramid of some seven hundred staff and crew, with information gathering and processing facilities interfaced and cross-checked with the nerve center of the carrier itself. Everything you need. Anything you reasonably request. And, yes, tactical and targeting decisions will be part of your responsibility, in consultation with the captain of this ship. You will learn to make those decisions in close cooperation with carrier staff, decisions which were not, until now, your responsibility. Command believes your expertise in gravity-bound interactions and object location is an invaluable resource; and you will no longer receive cut-arid-dried mission profiles. You will construct them yourselves. This is a policy change reflecting a change in the source of policy: how long we can maintain that control of policy rests directly on your successful completion of this mission.
“In the meanwhile, enjoy yourselves, ask the staff for anything within reason, and consult your individual datacards for further briefings.” The second half of the cracker and cheese. Porey walked slowly toward the exit. And stopped. “Enjoy yourselves, gentlemen. Ladies.”
Scared hell out of a guy—Porey, as Meg would put it, doing courtesy.
“Shit,” Ben said, closing ranks with him and Meg; and Sal said, close after, “So that’s Porey up close.”
“That’s Porey,” Dekker said.
“Po-lite chelovek,” Meg said. “Nice place, and all.... You wouldn’t ever mink it, would you? Son of a bitch.”
A massacre, a slaughter of the innocent. Graff braced his finger against his lips, watched the vid in dismay, the crowd, the peacers shouting, the blond woman with the stringing hair looking distractedly left and right over the crowd like something trapped. Reporters asked, “Is your son the model they’re basing this tape on? Are you in communication with him?” Ingrid Dekker shook her head in bewilderment, saying, “I don’t know. I don’t have anything to do with him, nothing he did has anything to do with me... it’s aever had anything to do with me...”
God.
He sat there, watching the alien scene, steps of some ornate building, a cathedral, they said, in London, the placards and banners, the sheer mass of human beings...
A bas la Compagnie, they were yelling. Down with the EC.
And elsewhere on Earth’s life-rich surface, a UDC spokesman was claiming that the attitudes of the rab movement were infiltrating the Beet, that the real aim was to disarm Earth’s local forces, that the Earth Company was attempting to use the Fleet and the whole construction push in the Belt to take political control of the UDC and establish a world dictatorship...