Текст книги "Devil to the Belt (novels "Heavy Time" and "Hellburner")"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

“God.”

“ I’dhave fired him. Damn sure. But there the ‘driver was, he’d hit you. Your ship had blown a tank, you’d shot off into R2, his tenders couldn’t catch you without getting a beam, you’d hit the rock as well as taken the scrape that blew the tank—they were in shit up to their necks—and Ms. Salazar was dead in the explosion. We’re sure of that. —Do you want this part? You don’t have to hear it. Your choice.”

“I want to hear anything you know. I’m very used to the idea she’s dead.” But it wasn’t that easy. His hands were shaking. He folded them under his arms and went on listening, thinking: The ship hit her. Idid.

Sunderland said: “Captain Manning—that’s the senior captain on the ‘driver, was the one who made the decisions at this point. He had one dead. He figured your chances were zero. He had no doubt whatsoever the company was going to black-hole the whole business. And they wouldn’t clear him to chase a ship that wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. BM wouldn’t want that in the log. He knew he had to get rid of the body himself. So they reported they’d acquired the rock, BM didn’t ask what had happened– Registrywasn’t in the information flow. Your emergency beeper was working. BCOM upper management knewwhat was going on with the ‘driver, so it wasn’t asking questions. Nobody in management was going to ask, and maybe—here, I’m attributing thoughts to Manning that may not have been—but maybe he was worried you couldbe alive. At any rate he never filed a report that he’d actually hit the ship. There’d been a flash the military could well have picked up—but flashes near ‘drivers are ordinary. Your radio was out, just gone—you were traveling near a ‘driver fire-path, so you weren’t going to be found for a long time. If any tech reported that signal of yours, I’m betting it just got a real fast silence from upper echelons for the next couple of months. You never called in for a beam, and somebody erased Way Outoff the missed-report list. Just—erased it. You were in R2 zone, you weren’t on R2’s list, and nobody was going to put you there, and nobody in R2 was calc’ing your course, except that eventually the ‘driver and maybe management knew you’d go into the Well, and that would be that.”

“But why did he send Cory there? What the hell was he doing? What was he trying to prove?”

“My guess? His tenders had gone after Ms. Salazar’s body… he couldn’t call them back from a rescue mission. They knewit had been a bumping; they knew it had all gone very wrong, and Manning wanted them too scared to talk. So he made accomplices of the ‘driver crew, the techs, everybody aboard—to scare them into silence; to prove, maybe, if they had any doubt—that the company was going to hush it up.”

He was numb. “So they could’ve fired atthe Well. They didn’t have to leave a trace.”

“I’m not saying Manning isn’t crazy. But there’s no love lost between us and the company crews. He was pissed, if you want my opinion, about the job he was sent on, he was pissed at BM, pissed at management, he was upset as hell about the accident and he had no doubt whatsoever the company’d back him against us when we did find the body—just like the bumpings, just like that, bad blood, a way of shedding some of the fallout on us—because we couldn’t prove a damned thing. Even with a body—because there’d be no record. There’d be some story about a ‘driver accident. Nothing would get done. It’s been that way since they put company crews on those ships. And the company keeps them out there years at a run. They’re bitter. They’re mad. They’re jealous as hell of our deal with the company. They blame us for the company losses that mean they’d been told they were staying out additional weeks. But they’re not totally crazy. They had absolutely no idea you could possibly survive. It was clerks that handled the distress signal, they’d already said too much to Bird and Pollard before they’d had any higher-ups involved, and my guess is they just decided they might as well bring the ship in, get it off the books– they just didn’t want Bird and Pollard telling how there was some ghost signal out there that BM didn’t know about. War jitters. Nervous Fleet establishment. They decided to go on it, they panicked when they found out you were alive—but do them credit, they didn’t even think of having you killed. In their own eyes they weren’t killers, it really was an accident, and they weren’t going to have you die in hospital or on the ‘deck. Too bad for them. Good for us. A lot of people are very grateful to you, Mr. Dekker. —Let me tell you, no matter Cory’s mother’s influence, no matter anything we could do—without you staying alive, without you holding out against the company, there d have been nothing but a body at the Well. Nothing we could prove. Ever. So you did do something. You did win. You’re a hero. You and Morris Bird. People likedhim. People truly liked him…”

Hard even to organize his thoughts. Or to talk about Bird. He couldn’t.

“You’re the ultimate survivor, Mr. Dekker. That’s something near magical to Belters—and the rest of us who know what you were up against. But there’s a time—maybe now– to quit while you’re still winning.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have an enemy, one very bad enemy.”

“Manning?”

Sunderland shook his head, hands joined in front of his lips. “Alyce Salazar. She’s not being reasonable. Her daughter’s death—the manner in which she was found—hasn’t helped her state of mind. You’re not behind a corporate barrier any longer. The EC’s already tried to reason with her. She pulled strings to get the UDC to investigate ASTEX, she wanted ASTEX resorbed—simply so she could get at its records, and so she could get at you. In effect, that order was under consideration, stalled in the EC’s top levels, but it was lying on FleetCommand’s desk principally because Alyce Salazar called in every senatorial favor she owned—favors enough to tip the balance, corporately and governmentally. And she wants you on trial, Mr. Dekker. The military’s sitting on the records. It doesn’t want this ASTEX situation blown up again, it doesn’t want a trial, the EC doesn’t want it, but the civil system can’t be stopped that easily. Financial misconduct is the likeliest charge she’ll try for; but she’s trying for criminal negligence.”

It hurt. For some reason it truly hurt, that Cory’s mother was that bitter toward him.

“She doesn’t have to be right, of course. She doesn’t even have to win. The damage will be done. She has the money for the lawyers and she has the influence to get past the EC. They honestly don’t want you in court—for various reasons. They don’t want you arrested, or tried, or talking to senatorial committees—and they don’t want the fallout with the miners and the factory workers and us, at a verystrategic facility. But most certainly they don’t want you on a ship headed into the Well—when R2 knows about it. They might come after us. But they damnsure won’t let you take the ride.”

It was going somewhere that didn’t sound good. Same song, his mother had used to say—different verse. He asked, in Sunderland’s momentary silence, “So what are they going to do?”

“Our rescue? That ship that’s coming after us? —They’ll pull us out. Save our collective hides. But you aren’t going back to R2. They want you: the Fleet wants you. That was the sticking point the last ten hours. We tried. We’ve stalled, but they’re moving now. We’ve no other options but them. God knows we can’t run. And if we don’t turn you over, they’ll board—I have that very clear impression. In which case anything we do is a gesture, we’ve risked the ship, and various people can get hurt.”

He had trouble getting his breath. He couldn’t feel his own fingers. “Am I under arrest?”

“They tell me no. The fact is, you’ve been drafted.”

The bottom dropped out of his stomach. “Shit!” he said before he thought who he said it to—and told himself he was a fool, they were pulling him out of the Well, they were rescuing a hundred plus people, he had damn-all reason to object to the service—

–to getting thrown into the belly of a warship and getting blown to hell that way.

“May not be altogether bad. They tell me they’re interested in you for reasons that have nothing to do with the EC. They want you in pilot training.”

“They want me where I won’t talk. They think that’ll get me aboard. I’ll be lucky if they don’t arrange a training accident. A lot of people get killed that way.”

“You’re a suspicious young man, Mr. Dekker.”

“Well, God, I’ve learned to be.”

“And I’m one more smiling bastard. Yes. I am. —And I’m sorry. I don’tlike the role I’ve been cast in. I hate like hell what they’re doing. But we don’t have any choice. I risked my crew and my ship getting you away in the first place, because you were that important, I hung on in negotiations as long as I could, and, bluntly put, we’ve gotten as much as we can get, we can’t help you, and it’s time to make a final deal. In some measure I suspect certain offices would rather see all of us dead than you in court: in some negotiations the compromises get toohalf and half, and sanity can go out the chute. People can get shot trying to protect you. Two ships can go to hell. Literally. You understand what I’m saying?”

He did understand. He thought about the kid who’d helped Meg with the vodka bottles. The fool who’d habitually lost his temper over things he couldn’t even remember the importance of, this side of things. Damned fool, he thought. Damned, dumb fool. I can’t even get mad now. The mess is too complicated, too wide, it just rolls on and over people. Like Bird. Like Meg.

Sunderland said, more gently, “If they’re not on the level, I think you can putthem that way, you understand? What they tell me, your reflexes are in the top two percentile– you don’t train that. That’s hardwired. They tell me… the speeds these FTLs operate at… even with computers doing the hands-on ops, the human reaction time has to be there. Mentally andphysically. Whole new game, Mr. Dekker. And I’ll tell you another reason they don’t want to antagonize us. The Fleet’s looking at the Shepherd pilots, the Shepherd techs—as a very valuable resource. I’m not eager for it. I’ll do what I’m doing the rest of my life, and it’s what I want to do. But the young ones, a good many of the young ones– may do something different before they’re done.”

He was in flow-through. Sunderland spoke and he believed it because he wanted to believe it. Sunderland stopped speaking, the spell broke, and he told himself Sunderland was a fool or a liar: there were a lot of reasons for the military to want Sunderland to believe that—a very clear reason for Sunderland to want himto believe it.

He said, in the remote chance this man was naive: “I’ll be wherever it is before you. I hope it’s all right.” Hear me, man. Watch me. Watch what happens. “It’ll be important to you—”

I don’t trust anyone’s assurances. Maybe Meg’s. But you have to know her angles.

Meg knew a whole lot more than she told Bird. And Sal knew more than she ever told any of us. And Ben’s figured that. That’s why it’s gone cold between them… that’s why, in the shakeout, it’s only partners that count.

Mine’s paid out, now. Done everything I could, Cory…

The interview was over. He got up, Sunderland got up. Sunderland offered his hand. He found the good grace to take it.

Hard adjustment—they hadn’t hadproblems except the fact they were out of fuel and falling closer and closer to Jupiter, and in consequence of that, the morbid question whether they’d fry in his envelope before they got there or live long enough to hear the ship start compressing around them. Intellectual question, and one Meg had mulled over in the dark corners of her mind—speculation right now hell and away more entertaining that wondering what the soldier-boys were going to do with the company, and what it was going to be like in this future they now had, living on Shepherd charity.

Sal and Ben might be all right—Ben was still subdued, just real quiet—missing Bird and probably asking himself the same question—how to live now that they had a good chance they weren’t going to die.

Point one: something could still go wrong. When you knew you were diving for the big one, hell, you focused on tryingthings, and you lined up your chances and you took them in order of likeliest to work and fastest to set up. But when you knew you were going to be rescued by somebody else’s decisions and that it was somebody else’s competency or lack of it that was going to pull you out or screw everything up, thenyou sweated, then you imagined all the ways some fool could lose that chance you had.

Point two: Sal was just real spooky right now—scared, jumpy: Sal had held out against her fancy friends once before when the Shepherds were trying to drive a wedge between them, and Sal had all the feel of it right now, wanting them so hard it was embarrassing to watch it—and Sal was hearing those sons of bitches, she was damn sure of it, saying, Yeah, that’s all real fine, Aboujib, but Kady’s an albatross—Kady’s got problems with the EC, that we’re trying to deal with in future—

–Only thing Kady can do is fly, they’d be saying; and meaning shit-all chance there was of that, with their own pilots having a god complex andseniority out the ass. Might be better to split from Sal, get out of her life, quit screwing up her chances with her distant relatives, and go do mining again—maybe with Ben, who knew?

But, God, it’s going to be interesting times. So’jer rules, more and more. They’ll make sweettalk with the miners til they got a brut solid hold on the situation, then they’ll just chip away at everything they agreed to.

Dek—Dek could come out of this all right; but, God, Dek maybe hadn’t figured what she was hearing from the meds, how he’d gotten notorious, how hewas so damn hot an item it was keeping the pressure on the EC to get them out of this—couldn’t drop Dekkerinto the Well, not like some dumb shit Shepherd crew that got themselves in trouble. Dekker was system-wide famous, in Bird’s way of saying. And that was both a good thing and a bad one, as she could figure—majorly bad, for a kid who’d just got his pieces picked up and didn’t get on well with asses.

Lot of asses wanted to use you if you were famous. Piss one off and he’d knife you in the back. She’d got thatlesson down pat.

Good, in that consideration, if the Shepherds kept him on the Hamilton. But she didn’t think they would—kid with no seniority, a lot of rep, and a knife-edge mental balance… coming in on senior pilots with a god-habit. Critical load in a week. And if they put him back on R2, God help him, same thing with the new management.

That left Sol and the EC. And that meant public. And all the shit that went with it.

She was severely worried about Dek. She kept asking herself—while from time to time they were telling each other how wonderful it was they weren’t going to die and all, and Ben and Sal looked more scared right now than they’d been in all this mess—

–asking herself, too, what they were telling Dekker, somewhere on the ship.

Giving him an official briefing on his partner, maybe. Everybody’d been somewhat busy til now; and the heat being off (literally) the senior staff was probably going down its list of next-to-do’s.

Or maybe they were telling him something else altogether.

The door opened. Dek came back quiet and looking upset.

“What was it?” Ben asked, on his feet. (God, she’d strangle him the day she got the cast off.)

But Dekker looked up at Ben the way he’d looked at her when she’d found him on the ship: no anger. Just a lost, confused look.

Maybe for once in his life Ben understood he should urgently shut up now.

But Dekker paid more attention to walking from the door to the end of the bed—getting his legs fairly well, she thought, better than she was, the little they let her up.

He said, “Got an explanation, at least. Pretty much what we guessed, about Cory. And it’s solid, about the ship on its way. We’re all right.”

“You all right?” she asked.

He didn’t answer right away. He looked down at the blanket. There was too much quiet in the room, too long. Sal finally edged over and put her hand on his shoulder.

He said, “I’m real tired.”

Meg moved her legs over. “There’s room. Why don’t you just go horizontal awhile? Don’t think. It’s all right, Dek.”

He let out a long slow sigh, leaned over and put his hand on her knee. Just kept it there a while and she didn’t know what to say to him. Sal came and massaged his shoulders. Ben lowered himself into the chair by the bed and said, “So is this ship going to grapple and tow us or just pick us off?”

“Tow,” Dekker said. “As I gather. Thing’s probably not doing all it can, even the way it’s moving.”

“Starship,” Meg said, thinking of a certain flight. “I’ve seen ‘em glow when they come in.”

“Freighters,” Sal said. “This thing’s something else.”

An old rab had a chill, thinking about that “something else” next that one pretty memory. Thought—Earth’s blind. Earth’s severely blind.

Feathers on the wind. Colonies won’t come back.

Kids don’t come home again. Not the same, they don’t.

Lot of noise. Dekker had no idea how big the carrier was, but it had a solid grip on them, and they could move around now, get what they needed before they sounded the take-hold and shut the rotation down for the push back to R2.

But before that, they had a personnel line rigged, lock to lock, and he had an escort coming over to pick him up. The Fleet wasn’t taking any chances of a standoff—while they were falling closer and closer to the mag-sphere.

Hadn’t told Meg and Sal. Hadn’t told Ben either. He intended to, on his way to the lock. Meanwhile he wanted just to get his belongings together. The Hamiltonhad had their personals out of Trinidadbefore they freed her, Bird’s too: they’d been packed and ready to go, all the food and last-to-go-aboards stowed in Trinidad, that being where they’d enter and where they’d ride out the initial burn. It was all jumbled together now– Hamiltonhad had no idea who’d owned what—and he found an old paper photo—a group of people, two boys in front, arms around each other, mountains in the background.

Blue-sky. He didn’t know what these people had been to Bird. He thought one of the boys looked a little likeBird. He didn’t know what mountains they were—he knew the Moon better than he knew Earth and its geography—another class he’d cut more than he’d attended.

But he looked at it a long time. He didn’t think it was right to take what was Bird’s—he hadn’t had any claim on him. Ben did. But you could put away a picture in your mind and remember it, years after.

If there were years after.

He took what was his. Put on the bracelet Sal had bought him—he thought that would make her happy. He didn’t know, point of fact, whether they’d let him keep anything. Worth asking, he thought.

“Dek?” Sal asked.

About finished, anyway. He stuffed a shirt into the bag, wiped his hair out of his eyes and caught his balance against the lockers as he stood up.

All of them—including Meg. Sal was holding her on her feet. Ben, behind them.

“Meg, God, I wasn’t going to skip out—the meds’ll have a seizure.”

Meg said, “Thought we’d walk down to the lift with you.” In that tone of voice Meg had that didn’t admit there were other choices. “Hell of a thing, Dek.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to worry you. —Walk you back to your cabin.”

“Doing just fine, thanks. Going to check these so’jer-boys out. See if we approve the company they’re putting you into.”

He picked up his duffel, put a hand on the wall and came closer. Familiar faces. Faces he’d gotten used to seeing– even Ben. And Meg. Especially Meg.

He leaned over, very carefully kissed her on the cheek. Meg said, “Oh, hell, Dek,” and it wasn’t his cheek she kissed, for as long as gave him time to know Meg wasn’t joking, and that close as he’d been with Cory, it wasn’t what he felt right now.

Sal kissed him too, same way. But not the same. He couldn’t talk.

Ben said, holding up a hand, “If you think I’m going to, you’re wrong.”

You never knew about Ben. Ben saved him losing it. He got a breath, halfway laughed, and picked up the bag again, hearing the lock operating.

“Sounds like my appointment,” he said. “Better move, so they can get us all under way. Risky neighborhood.”

“Yeah, well,” Meg said, following him, on Sal’s arm. Hard breath. “They better take care of you. Lettersare a good thing.”

“May be a while,” he said, glancing back as he walked. Not good for the balance. “But I will. Soon as I can. Soon as I have a paycheck. Don’t know whether I’ll be at the shipyard or where. Sol, maybe. I just can’t say.”

Trying to pack every thought he had into a handful of minutes. Thinking about the Fleet’s tight security, and the tighter security around him.

“Maybe if you ask the Shepherds they can find out where I’m stationed. Maybe the captain can get a letter to me, even if I can’t get one out. My mother’s Ingrid Dekker, she’s on maintenance at Sol—write to her, if that doesn’t work. She may know where I am.”

Or maybe not, he thought, as they came into the ops area, where the lift was, to take him up to the lock. Fleet uniform on the blond and two marine MP’s, with pistols. Standing with Sunderland. He hoped they didn’t take him off in handcuffs. Not in front of Meg, please God…

“Mr. Dekker?” the crew-type said—young, insignia he couldn’t read. Outheld hand. He took the offer. Didn’t read any threat. “Name’s Graff. Going to take you across and see you signed in.”

Didn’t sound like a threat. It wasn’t handcuffs at least.

Graff said, “This your crew?”

“Meg Kady, Sal Aboujib, Ben Pollard.” He spotted Sam Ford over to the right, Ford with his arm in a sling. “Sam Ford. Ran the com for us.” He wasn’t sure Ford liked the notoriety. Maybe he shouldn’t have opened his mouth. But damn-all the Fleet was going to do about the rest. They were getting the one they’d bargained for, and Graff didn’t look like a note-taker. He shook hands with the captain, waved a small goodbye at his shipmates, took Graff’s signal they were going.

Lift took him and Graff and one guard. That was all that would fit. Graff said, on the way up, “Ops training’s real glad to get its hands on you. Move of yours gave the lieutenant an attack. You didn’t hear that.”

He looked Graff in the face. Saw amusement. Saw the MP biting his lip.

Lift let out at the dock. Cold up here. He stood and shivered, thought then to ask, “They going to let me keep my personals? Or should I leave them?”

“Put them in stowage. Few months, you can get them back.”

The lift was coming up again. It opened.

Ben came out with the other MP.

“Thought we saidgoodbye,” Dekker said.

“Yeah, well,” Ben said, and said to Graff, “Got room for another one?”

Differentkind of ship. ECS5 was her designation—didn’t have a name yet, and wouldn’t, til she was commissioned. Gray and claustrophobic, huge flexing sections on the bridge. Instruments he didn’t understand. Most of it was dark. The crew was minimal, evidently, or the boards weren’t live yet. The personnel ring wasn’t operational—it was acceleration that let them walk the deck, g-plus at that, with the Hamilton’smass. Graff had said he’d do a walk-around with them.

Real quiet walk-around. It was a working ship. They didn’t belong here. They weren’t under arrest. Graff, Dekker got the idea, was doing a sell-job. “Good program,” Graff said, about flight training. “They don’t wantyou to come in with a lot of experience—new tech. Whole new kind of ship. Can’t talk about it. Can’t talk about it covers a lot we deal with.”

He didn’t know what he thought. The machine around him wasn’t anything he’d even seen photos of.

Wasn’t the only thing that puzzled him. He said to Ben, while Graff was talking to one of the techs, “Are you sure what you’re doing?”

Ben gave one of his shrugs. Ben looked pale in the dark, in the light off the monitors. Sweating a little and it wasn’t warm in here. “No way to get ahead. You lost the ship, Dek-boy. Debt up to our necks… but a man with my background—there’s a real chancein this stuff. Military’s where the edge is, the way R2’s going now. Fleet’s the way up, you remember I said it. There’s an After to this war.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Officer before I’m done. Brass pin and all. Damn right, Dek-boy. You remember you know me. You fly ‘em and I’ll be sitting in some safe office in Sol HQ telling ‘em how to do it. Odds on it?”

“Out of your mind,” Dekker repeated under his breath; and looked around him at things he wanted to understand, thinking, he couldn’t help it: God, Cory should have seen this…