Devil to the Belt

  “Mmmn,” Sal said. Ben was sure it was Sal’s voice behind him. Muscles were absolutely limp this evening. He was a little off his game—give or take a year’s hiatus. Dekker, the skuz, had had practice. Keep the run going. He didn’t want the cue in Dekker’s hands, not from what he’d seen.

  Two in succession. It was rec hall, bar in the middle—a lot of UDC guys on Permission down there, drowning their sorrows. Fleet at this end, some of them too. And a scatter of marine guards—more khaki around the corridors than Ben personally found comfortable, thank you.

  Real wringer of a sim this afternoon, he’d earned a beer, dammit, but they had him up again tomorrow, same with all of them.

  Opened his big mouth and they’d reset the sim, all right.

  Dots and more dots, in a space where the effin’ familiar sun didn’t exist...

  Spooky situation. Wanted to feel it out and you were busy tracking damn dots.

  Gentle shot. Balls rebounded. “Come on, come on—”

  “Ouch,” Sal said.

  Shit.

  Dekker drew a breath. Armscomper wasn’t the opponent you’d choose in this game. Pilot versus armscomper got bets down, never mind he’d had practice Ben swore you didn’t have time to take at TI.

  Hell if. Ben had learned it somewhere, helldeck, maybe. And a Belter, didn’t show you any mercy. You damn sure didn’t want to let him get the cue back.

  He saw his shot. Lined it up. Bets were down. Favor points. Military didn’t let you play with money. And nobody had any.

  Click and drop. Sighs from half the spectators. Muted cheers from the rest.

  Second shot. Ball dropped, balls rearranged the pattern. He was sore when he bent to survey the situation, but it was a good kind of soreness, kind you got from a hard run. Never had realized there was good pain and bad. He’d felt the other kind. Too damn much.

  Click.

  “Right on, Dek!”

  Meg and Sal had bets on opposite sides.

  He grinned, took aim.

  Click. Perfect bank.

  Sudden disturbance, then, in the ambient. Dekker felt it, looked up as everybody else was looking, at a handful of UDC guys who’d showed up at the table. Marines were in motion, starting to move between.

  Rob Childers. Kesslan and Deke. Chad’s crew. A marine said, “Let’s not have any trouble. Get on back there.”

  Rob said, “Dek.”

  He felt a sudden queasiness in the approach. A sense of confrontation. The marines weren’t pushing. They weren’t letting the UDC crew closer, either, and there was starting to be noise, other UDC guys moving in.

  “Wait a minute,” Almarshad protested, thank God somebody on their side had the sense to say something, offer a hand to object to force; and he had to move, himself, had to do something in the split second.

  He dropped the cue to his left hand, took a nonbelligerent stance.

  “Dek,” Rob said and held out his hand.

  Put him entirely on the spot. Marines didn’t move, didn’t know who was who or what was happening here, he scoped that—scoped the moment and the move and the necessity to do something before they all ended up in the brig.

  “Rob,” he said, and went quietly past a confused marine and took the offered hand, looked Rob in the face and wondered if Rob was the one who’d tried to kill him, or if Rob knew who had. He took Kesslan’s hand, and Deke’s. The music system was grinding out a muted, bass-heavy beat, that had the silence all to itself.

  “Too much gone on,” Rob said. “Both sides.”

  He had to say something. He took that inspiration, said, “Yeah. Has,” and couldn’t find anything else to say.

  “Let you get back to your game,” Rob said.

  “Yeah. All right.” He stood there while the room sorted itself out again, Rob and the rest of them going back to their side. He never managed to say the right thing. He didn’t know what he could have said. He felt a hand on his arm—Meg, pulling him back to the table, while Franklin muttered, “Shit all.”

  “They do it?” Mason asked him under his breath.

  He gave it a desperate thought, trying to believe they were innocent. But he remembered getting hit, remembered the pod access, and couldn’t be analytical about the dark, and the pain of broken bones, and the toneless voice that said, in the back of his memory, Enjoy the ride, Dekker.

  Tape going into the slot. The voice said, Let me—

  Let me, what?

  Wasn’t anybody but the pilot handled the mission tape.

  Didn’t make sense.

  He didn’t answer Mason. He got down and lined up his shot again, determined. Made it. There was a sigh of relief. He was relieved too. Was all he asked, for his pride’s sake. Didn’t want to show how rattled he was. He focused down and made a run of three, before a ball trembled on the verge of a drop. And didn’t.

  “All right,” Ben said, out of a sigh and a stillness. Ben sounded less man satisfied. Everything seemed paler, colder, he didn’t know why. He stood by Meg and Sal, arms folded, and watched Ben make a straight run.

  UDC MPs looked in on the situation. You could hear the music over the voices. When things were normal, you couldn’t.

  He wanted a drink, but regs didn’t let him have one. He thought of desperate means to get one, but if they caught you at it, you were screwed. He didn’t want a session with Porey. Didn’t.

  Bets got finalized. He’d bet himself, as happened, so had Ben; and Sal could collect. But something passed between Meg and Sal, and Meg took his arm and said Sal was taking a wait-ticket—

  “You better get to bed,” Meg said, and he’d have paid off, he wouldn’t have minded, he was halfway numb at the moment—her change in arrangements made him think maybe he was better with Sal, who wouldn’t pry—Sal and he never had gotten into each other’s reasons for anything.

  But Meg had set up what she evidently thought was a rescue, and he gave himself up and went off with her.

  She was upbeat, cheerful, talking about the game, not a single question who that had been or why—must have gotten her information on her own, because Meg didn’t favor ignorance, depend on it: she got him to bed, was willing to go slow if he’d had the inclination: he didn’t; and wrapped herself around him after and snuggled down to keep him warm, about the time Ben and Sal came trooping through.

  “Shhh,” Meg hissed, and they were immediately quiet, quiet coming and going to the bathroom—the front room had its drawbacks; but he was on the edge of falling asleep, suddenly exhausted.

  Glad he’d made some sort of peace, he decided. Even if their move had put him on the spot and forced what he wasn’t ready for.

  Likely they weren’t the ones who’d ambushed him. He hadn’t been sure of that when he’d taken Rob’s hand; and even if he was somewhat sure now, he couldn’t come to peace with it, couldn’t forgive them, could he, if there was nothing to forgive in the first place, if they were innocent and it was somebody else he saw every day in the corridors, ate with in the mess hall. Maybe whoever had put him in hospital had been in the crowd getting a further kick out of his confusion.

  He’d lost an argument or two when he was a kid—he’d lived through the chaff he had to take, he’d faced the guys again—they’d been two years older: he’d lived in fear and gotten hell beaten out of him a couple of times by the same guys before he’d made them believe they were going to take so much damage doing it they didn’t want to keep on his case—not the ideal outcome he’d have wanted, but at least he could believe he’d settled it, at least he’d made a point on them and at least they didn’t give him any more trouble.

  But out there in front of everybody, they’d put him directly on the spot, damn them—yeah, he could have acted the touchy son of a bitch Ben said he was, told them go to hell and had the program in a mess and the lieutenant ready to kill him. He’d had an attack of responsibility, he decided finally. Mature judgment or something. His mother had sworn he’d never live that long.

  But it didn??
?t solve his own problem. Just theirs. He was still walking around not knowing, still a target for another try, God only when, or on what provocation. In the meanwhile he knew those he’d trust with his life, and those he just didn’t know. In the meantime somebody was off scot free and probably laughing about it.

  “You all right, cher?” Meg stirred beside him, massaged a shoulder. He realized the tension he had, then, probably as comfortable as a rock to be next to.

  “Yeah.” He tried to relax. “Cold.”

  Meg put a warm arm over his back. “Roll over, jeune fils. No questions. Do. We got sims in the morning. Big day. Relax.”

  Couldn’t understand why she put up with him. Couldn’t understand why Ben did, except Sal was with Meg. He wished he could do better than he did, wished he could say they weren’t in a mess of his making. But it was. And they were. And Meg somehow didn’t care he was a fool.

  The rec hall was quiet. It was a Question whether to acknowledge what had happened or ignore it; but the former, Graff decided—word having drifted his way via Reet Security via Sgt.-major Lynch. Probably word had drifted to Porey too and no orders had come. But it was Personnel’s business to take a tour, while the alterday galley staff was cleaning up. Music was still going. Most of the participants were back in barracks, hopefully.

  “Quiet here?” he asked a marine on watch.

  “Quiet, sir.”

  “Any feeling of trouble?”

  “No, sir. Not lately. Real quiet, sir.”

  He made no approach toward the last few celebrants—a few UDC, a few Fleet personnel, a little the worse for drink, at opposite ends of the hall. He wasn’t there on a disciplinary. But he meant to be seen. His being there said command levels had heard, command levels were aware.

  Dekker hadn’t blown it, by all he’d heard. He didn’t know where the idea had started. He didn’t know that it had done any good, but at least it had done no demonstrable harm.

  Someone walked in at his back, walked up beside him.

  “Tables still standing,” Villy said.

  “Noted that.”

  “Hope it lasts,” Villy said. “Difficult time.”

  Villy had never said anything about the change in command. Like having your ship taken out of your hands, Graff thought, like watching it happen on, Villy had said, the last big project he’d ever work on.

  What did you say? What, in the gulf between his reality and Villy’s, did one find to say?

  “Good they did that,” he said. “I hope it takes.”

  CHAPTER 13

  BIG empty section of the mast—you’d know where you were blindfolded, null-g with the crashes of locks and loaders and the hum of the core machinery, noises that made the blood rush with memories of flights past and anticipation of another, no helping it. Meg took a breath of cold, oil-touched air, a breath that had the flightsuit pressing close, snug as a hardened skin, and hauled with one hand to get a rightside up view of what Dek had to show them, screen with a live camera image from, she guessed, optics far out along the mast.

  Big, shadow-shape of the carrier—wouldn’t all fit in the picture—with spots on its hull picked it out in patchwork detail, all gray, and huge—

  And on the hull near the bow, a flat, sleek shape clung, shining in the floods. “That’s it?” Ben asked.

  “That’s it,” Dek said. “Her. Whatever you want to call it. They built three prototypes. That’s the third. That’s the one that’s make or break for us. Crew of thirty, when we - prove it out. Four can manage her—in a clean course, with set targets. Most of her mass is ordnance, ablation edge, and engine load. You’ve had the briefings.”

  Meg stood by Sal’s side and got a shiver down the back that had nothing to do with the cold here. Beautiful machine, she was thinking; Sal said, Brut job, and meant the same thing, in a moment, it sounded as-if, of pure gut-deep lust. Wasn’t any miner-can, that wicked, shimmery shape.

  And most imminently, in the sim chamber behind the clear observation port, the pods, one in operation, a mag-lev rush around the chamber walls, deafening as the wall beside them carried the vibration.

  “Damn,” she breathed. But you wouldn’t hear it.

  “The pods you see moving,” Dek said, over the fading thunder, “that’s the tame part. That rush is the dock and undock. They can take those pods more positive or neg g’s than your gut’s going to like. But that’s not the dangerous part. That pod, there, the still one—” He pointed at one floating motionless, away from the walls. “That’s the real hellride. Could be at 3A light, what you know from inside. That’s the one they mop the seats on. That’s the one can put you in hospital—unstable as hell in that mode—screw it and you’ll pull a real sudden change.”

  “Thanks,” Ben said. “I like to hear that, damn, I like to hear that.”

  Meg said, “Going to be all right. No problems. Hear?”

  But Dek looked up at that pod in a way she kept seeing after he’d turned away and told them it was up the lines to the pod access—like an addict looking at his addiction, and a guy scared as hell.

  “Take you on the ride of your life,” was the way he put it.

  “Now wait a minute,” Ben said. But Dek took out on the handlines and Sal snagged Ben’s arm with: “Now, cher, if we don’t keep with Dek and Meg here, they’ll assign us some sheer fool pi-lut we don’t know the hell who... Do you want to go boom on a rock? No. Not. So soyez gentle and don’t distract the jeune fils.”

  “No,” Graff said, “no, colonel, I don’t know—I’ve got a meeting with him...”

  “He’s got no right,” was the burden of Tanzer’s phone call. Which didn’t over all help Graff’s headache. Neither did the prospect of dealing with Comdr. Porey face to face.

  “I’ll pose him the question,” he told Tanzer. Couldn’t honestly blame the colonel this morning—discovering that his carefully constructed sims schedule was in revision, that Villanueva’s team had been opted straight off test systems into the priority sims schedule and three others of the test systems crews had been bumped off the sims schedule entirely, in favor of Dekker and three raw recruits, who’d been given access-on-demand, on any shift.

  The officer in charge of Personnel ought to know what was happening. One would logically think so.

  The officer in charge of Personnel hung up the receiver, put on his coat and took his hangover headache down the corridor to the CO’s office.

  Marine guards let him in. Porey was all smiling, smooth congeniality.

  “Jurgen,” it was. And an offered hand as Porey got up from his desk. One had to take it or declare war. “I’ve been going through the reports. Excellent job you’ve done, getting us settled into station. I don’t find a thing I’d change. Sit down, sit down...”

  “Thank you,” Graff said, and sat, wondering whose name those actions had gone out under in the report to FleetCommand—wonder, hell, he knew what games Porey was playing, with the reports, with his smiling good grace: Porey’s aides never knew what they’d meet when they walked into his office, the smiling bastard or the shouting, desk-pounding sumbitch, but either one would knife you. It was, knowing your career could hinge on Porey’s approval, damned easy for a staffer to start twitching to Porey’s cues.

  He could see it working in Carina junior crew out there, in the marine guard—he could see it going on all around him, suggesting that it might be wise for him to play Porey’s game too; suggesting that this man, clearly on his way to a captaincy, and certainly in Mazian’s good graces, could be a valuable contact...

  Except that he’d seen this game going on since they were both junior lieutenants, and he felt the urge to puke.

  He said, with a fixed smile, “Edmund, do you think your staff could possibly give Personnel any sims schedule changes a day in advance? Tanzer is not happy. I could have minimized the disturbance.”

  “Didn’t that come to you?” Porey was all amazement.

  “No, it didn’t come to me. I had to hear it from Tanzer. I do
n’t like dealing with the UDC when I don’t know what’s going on. It makes me feel like a fool. And I don’t like that, Edmund, I truly don’t.”

  Satire on Porey’s own style wasn’t what Porey was used to meeting. Porey had a thinking frown as he sat down, guarded amusement at the edges of his mouth: everything for effect, most especially the expressions on his face. Peel Porey layer by layer and you never got to center.

  “Matters of policy,” Porey said, rotating a paperweight in his fingers, “are handled in this office. Tanzer has no power that you don’t give him. If you choose to coddle him, that’s your decision. Not mine.” The paperweight stopped moving. “The assignment of personnel and priorities, however, is mine. Relations with the UDC—use your talents at diplomacy. I’m sure you’re up to it.”

  Distraction and a shot across the bow. “By the Procedures, Personnel involves health and welfare, neither of which works when my office has no say in reassignments or systems changes.” Attack on his own. “In consideration of which, I want a briefing on the tape-learning procedures from the techs that came in with you. I don’t have time to read science reports.”

  “Jurgen, my staff hasn’t time to handle delicate egos, Tanzer’s or yours.”

  “Or three hundred fifty-six Shepherds who’ve been rooked out of their seniority, lied to by the UDC, shafted by the legislature and killed out there on the course because nobody’s ever damn listened to them. Edmund, we have tempers at critical overload here, and a blow-up isn’t going to look any better on your record than it looks on Tanzer’s. If you want a riot, these are the ones that will do it. They’re not kids, they’ve had too many fools in command over them here and in the Belt to trust anybody now on credit. They don’t reject authority: they’re looking for it, they want h—but don’t expect them to follow orders til they know the ultimate source is sane.”

  Porey didn’t say anything for a moment. He wasn’t stupid and he cared about his own survival. That was one thing you could believe in.