Hellburner (33 page)

“They’re Earth-based Internationals: of several related groups, only the Civil Liberty Association and the Human Research Foundation maintain offices off Earth. They apparently do each other’s business. So I understand. I’m no expert in terrestrial affairs. But I thought you should know, this organization does have political overtones that aren’t friendly to the program or to the Fleet.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I only thought you should be aware of the situation.”

Deeper and deeper. He thought of saying, I’m in no position to restrain her from anything. I can’t do your politics for you. But it was all on their side and nothing on hers. And probably the lieutenant didn’t want a blunt question, but it wouldn’t be his first offense this week. “So hasn’t the Fleet got strings it might pull?”

“Possibly.”

“So what do you want me to say to her?”

“Nothing. Nothing on that score. I just want you to be aware of these things.”

Why? In case of what, for God’s sake?

“Do you still want to call her?” Graff shifted a glance toward the phone on his desk.

He had never believed of himself that he was smart, no matter what Evaluations told him—if he was smart, he wouldn’t be here now, put on the spot to make an excruciatingly personal phone call in front of a man he’d thought he trusted, whose motives he didn’t now entirely understand.

And, God, he didn’t want to talk to her... he was fast losing his nerve.

“Do you want to do that?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, before all of it evaporated. “If you can get me through.”

Graff took up the handset and punched in. “FleetCom. Route this through our system, FSO, Sol One. —Number there?”

“97...2849. Dekker, Ingrid. Routing can find her.” 2210 mainday and she ought to be home. She didn’t have a nightlife—at least she hadn’t had, when he’d been living at home.

“Takes a bit,” Graff said, and gave him the handset. “It’s going through, now.”

He held it to his ear. Listened to the clicks and the tones. His heart was beating fast. What in hell was he going to say? Hello, mother?

Click. Click-click. Beep.

“There’s a noise on the line.”

“A beep?”

He nodded.

“Somebody’s got it monitored. FleetCom’s picking that up.”

Hell. It was going through. He listened for the pick-up. But the answering service came on instead. Ms. Dekker is out at the moment. Kindly leave your name and number....

You’d know. “Mother. Mother, this is Paul. I’m sorry to hear about the trouble you’re having....” It was hard to talk coherently to a machine, hard to think with that steady beep that meant the police or somebody else was listening. ‘’I don’t know if I can help, but if you just want to talk, I’m here. I’d like to talk to you. I’d like to help—“ He wondered if he should mention money. But while he was thinking, it clicked off and connections broke, all the way back along the route, leaving him the sound of static.

“She wasn’t home,” he said, and gave the handset back. “I left a message on the machine.”

“Anything that comes through—you will get. I promise you.”

“Thank you.” They’d taught him to say thank you. Please. Yes, sir. No, sir. Stand straight. Answer what you’re asked. They’d told him he wouldn’t fly if he didn’t. His mother hadn’t had that advantage in dealing with him. He didn’t remember he’d ever said Yes, ma’am or Please or whatever boys were supposed to answer to their mothers. Fuck you, he’d said once, in a fit of temper, the week she’d bailed him out of juvenile court, and she’d slapped his face.

He’d not hit her. Thank God, he’d held it back, he hadn’t hit her. Only respect he’d ever shown her, mat last year... and if they shipped him out from here—the only respect he might ever have a chance to show, except that phone call.

“Forgive me,” the lieutenant said. “I have to ask this—in your judgment, is it possible—is it remotely possible she did make threats against MarsCorp?”

Ingrid Dekker wasn’t a walkover. She wasn’t going to stand and take it—not without handing it back. “If they threatened her. But she wouldn’t—wouldn’t just take it into her head to do that, no, I don’t believe that.” I have to ask this...

At whose orders... sir....

“Are you close to your mother—still?”

God. He didn’t want to discuss it. But the lieutenant had been on his side, Graff if anybody was still his lifeline. He didn’t want to put his mother in a bad light. She was the one in trouble and she needed all the credit she could get. He said, looking at a spot on the front of Graff’s desk: “I was a pain in the ass, sir. She said if I went to the Belt I didn’t need to come back. I—was sincerely a pain in the ass, sir. I was eighteen. I was in with a rough crowd. —I was stupid.”

Graff didn’t say anything to that, except: “Have you corresponded with her?”

“No, sir.” He stared fixedly at that spot on the desk, wondering if they might search his room and bleed his datacard for it, next use he made. Maybe they already had. “Not recently. —I’ve got about four, five k I’d like to send over to her account. If I could do that. She’s not working, she’s going to need the money.”

“I’ll talk to Legal. See what the procedures are. —As I said, we’re going to be looking into the case. If mere are strings to be pulled, maybe we can pull them.”

“I appreciate mat, sir.”

“Are you ready to get back to work?”

“Yes, sir.”

Graff keyed something on the deskcomp. Glanced at it. “I don’t know if they can get your friends back to quarters this watch. But you’re their unit commander, you have access there on any shift, if you want to check up on them.”

Not back to quarters? Not in this watch? His heart did a tic and a speed-up. He looked at Graff, met a level, I-can’t-tell-you kind of stare.

“What are they doing?” he asked Graff. “They’re hi there for Aptitudes—it’s a four-hour test, for God’s sake...”

“You have access there.”

“I’ve been over there. They wouldn’t tell me a damn thing!”

Graff had never been one to hold back information, not under Keu, and not under his own administration. Now...

“I suggest you go over there,” Graff said. “That’s all I can say.”

Didn’t like the damned drugs. Didn’t effin’ like the floating feeling. Told you stuff you didn’t want to hear. Told you you’d effin the if you screwed it... and Ben didn’t want to the, he sincerely didn’t want to the...

“Fire!”

His heart took a jump, he felt neg g, he went spinning away—you should feel blood pooling in your head and your feet and he didn’t, didn’t feel anything right except cold breeze on his face and his lungs getting air again—

He could see light. Felt somebody holding his sleeve. He was fiat on his back in g and Dekker was holding on to him, saying, “It’s all right, it’s all right, Ben—“

Wasn’t who he wanted to wake up in the arms of. He stared at Dekker, with his heartbeat still thumping away like explosions, and recalled they were surrounded by dots all but six of which were trying to kill him—

except he was in bed and Dekker wasn’t flying the ship.

He took slow assessment of this fact. He took a look around the ceiling of a disgustingly barren room, recalled signing his name, and them telling him Sal was in, and him talking to the tech and screwing with the sim, because he’d been mad as hell and wanting to get court-martialed and wanting to go to bed with Sal Aboujib if he had to get shot at to do it—only viewed backwards, as he had to see it now, that sequence didn’t highly make sense.

Neither did Dekker sitting on his bedside. He’d come here to sit with Dekker. He wasn’t in the hospital. He was in the sims lab and Dekker, with this scared look on his face, was holding him by the wrist.

“Ben.”

“Yeah?” He began to think he’d better wake up.

“Ben. You all right?”

Dekker asking really worried him.

“Don’t agitate him,” somebody else said. “You know the rules.”

“Trying to give him a heart attack, what’s the damn hurry?”

There wasn’t any answer. Dekker took hold of his hand. Said, “Shit...”

Dekker holding his hand? He’d really rather not. Unless he was dying. He didn’t feel like he was dying. He stared at Dekker, made his fingers bend and his hand draw back and decided in this moment of clarity that he wanted his foot on the floor.

“Ben. Ben, —don’t do that.”

Froze right there. Face down in the bend of Dekker’s arm. And couldn’t think how to get out of that situation.

“Skuzzed,” Dekker said. Light came back. Dekker swore at nothing in particular. That was all right. Saved him the bother.

“Aboujib did pass,” he wanted to know.

“Yeah.”

“Meg?”

“Yeah. I got three of you. Same condition.” With which Dekker got up and stalked out.

That was Dekker, all right. Boy had a lousy temper.

“Shit!” he heard from the hall.

2345h and all Dekker wanted was his own bed, didn’t want to talk to anybody, just skuzzed through the door into a darkened barracks, went straight to his quarters around the corner and down the corridor, and got undressed on autopilot—wasn’t even thinking clearly when he heard the stir outside. A knock came at his door and he stared at it and blinked.

Second knock. He thought, What in hell? and opened it, on Mitch and Pauli and Trace and God-only who else the shadows behind them were.

“Want to talk to you,” Mitch said, and Dekker leaned his forearm on the doorframe and reasoned that even if he could talk them into leaving him alone now, it was too late, the adrenaline he thought he’d run out of was up again, sleep was gone, leaving just caffeine-ragged nerves and a body shaking with chill and exhaustion. Didn’t have a shred of embarrassment left, Trace there and all—he just said hoarsely, “What?”

“The rest of your guys didn’t come in?”

“No.”

“Dek. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know any more than the rest of you guys.” Struck him then, though, that a lot of the aforesaid guys had risen to his defense in the messhalI, a couple of them had gone to hospital and a lot of them had suffered serious inconvenience on his account—so they had some right to knock on his door in the middle of his sleep and want a piece of his hide.

Mitch asked: “Is it true they’re going to bust your guys right into active? They’re going to put Pollard and Kady and Aboujib straight in?”

Wasn’t hiding any damn thing around here. He’d been trying to get the same admission out of Testing and he couldn’t do it, or find out who the order came from that had shoved his crew straight out of Aptitudes into the board-sims—he stared at Mitch a beat or two, muttered, “Something like.”

“ ‘Something like.’ They’re going to take Kady’s hours for legit?”

“Mitch, I don’t know what they’re taking for anything, nobody’s told me a damn thing, I don’t know what your source is, but it’s more than I know...”

“So where are they right now?”

“In the labs sleeping it off. They started in at 0600 and they got through somewhere around 2200, that’s all I know, except they’re Aptituded in, that’s the only official word I have on anything.” He got short. His temper was on the edge. But he hadn’t reassured anybody. And maybe they’d heard something: he hadn’t been in the rumor mill all day, he’d been chasing around in places rumors didn’t get to— back and forth between offices and Evaluations. And rumor was evidently saying for fact what he suspected and couldn’t get the labs or the techs to admit to....

Shove them up into Mission Ready, with him?

God, Porey wouldn’t do that. Porey’d said himself that he wouldn’t lose another ship: the Fleet couldn’t afford it. They weren’t going to do that.... They couldn’t do that....

“Rumor is,” Jamil said, “the Fleet thinks your guys have the stuff, so they’re just going to go with them, put them right in on the pods—“

“They can’t do that,” Dekker said. It came out a thin, helpless kind of voice. “No way. They haven’t got ships to throw away on a notion like that—“

“Rumor is,” Mitch said, “they were running some kind of new tape off Pete and the guys during the mission, rumor is the Fleet thinks they can take that tape and sub it for the whole damn training sequence—“

Legs nearly went out from under him.

“Seems,” Jamil said, “they wanted crew that hadn’t been biased by all this prior training—“

“Shit, no....” He couldn’t feel anything below the gut. He got a couple of breaths and managed to stay on his feet. “This is shit, guys, I don’t know where you got this, but this is shit. No way are they going to do that...”

Trace said, “First we got Tanzer, now we got a guy thinks he can program us like computers?”

“Where’d you hear this stuff?”

“In the slightly off chance,” Mitch said, “that we’re dealing with bugs, we decline to answer that in specific. But we thought you’d like to know.”

“Shit—“ He wasn’t doing too well with words. His teeth started chattering. “I got to talk to the lieutenant....”