A modicum of respect, perhaps. A reassessment, a reevaluation what situation they were dealing with, certainly.
“Maybe you’d better explain yourself, lieutenant. With what equipment? With this tape you’ve come up with? Are we brainwashing our crews?”
“Crews at mission ready have to practice daily to maintain those skills. With the damage to the sims, Fleet Command opted to use the Hellburner prototype, patched to the shipboard simulators.”
“When was that authorized?”
“The patch?”
“The shipboard facility. The chamber.”
“Not chambers, sir, nothing like. I’m not privy to the details, but this is equipment we brought with us into the system, that we regularly use. Combat crews on stand-by also have to practice, virtually daily, to keep their edge. We certainly can’t stop a carrier’s operations or use its physical self for exercises. Naturally we have the equipment.”
“Then why in hell haven’t we been using it all along? Why spring it now? Why this whole damned, accident-riddled program?”
“Politics, sir.” He hoped he kept all satisfaction off his face. “As the situation was told to me, we were ordered at the outset, over our captains’ explicit protests, to submit our trainees to the UDC Systems Test protocols, to their aptitude criteria, their rules and their existing equipment during testing of the prototypes. As I believe, there was a major policy battle over that point in the JLC, and we lost.”
Total quiet in the room. The clicking of the aides’ keys had stopped.
“You never said explicitly,” the other senator put in, “that you had the equipment.”
“There was some fear,” Graff said, “that the UDC might use its position to demand control of that equipment. In a situation in which we arc not to this hour solely in control of communications system accesses, in which we’ve had sabotage, attempted murder of our personnel, assignment of flight personnel on criteria purely ideological in nature— plus the security breach—we are trusting your discretion on this point and we trust mere will not be another leak. What we train on is a very dearly held piece of information. If our enemy knows what equipment we have—we are, in the vernacular, screwed. We protested, through every channel we trusted, that the station facilities here are a hundred fifty years old, with maintenance problems that eat up funds for improvements we asked for. The decision to put the rider training into the hands of the UDC, to use Lendler’s data conversion system for the pods in the first place—was as I understand, a purely political decision. We asked to review the software. We were not trusted to make that input. We... were... no/... trusted.”
Another silence. An angry silence on both sides. But it wasn’t productive anger. Graff shifted back in his chair. “I’m not a diplomat. My captain left other officers here who are. But they aren’t command track by UDC rules. So I pass their word on to you. As for the operational crews of all the ships—you gave us a requirement to have carriers on standby to defend this system—and I can tell you with absolute certainty I would be grossly irresponsible to take that carrier’s controls after months of total stand-down. We’re in constant training, all ops crews and staffs are in training during any stand-down; and the UDC has never provided carrier control siras. It’s certainly no secret.”
“Where did you obtain this other equipment?” Anger. Still, a genuine offense, and he answered with careful exactness:
“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 mat 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—