Devil to the Belt (v1.1)

by C. J. Cherryh

  Guards fell in with him, the same that had brought him there. He hadn’t even any notion where they were taking him, but they escorted him to the main corridor and told him go to barracks, everybody was confined to barracks.

  Deserted corridor. Deserted conference rooms. Guards posted line of sight along the curvature. The vacancy of the corridors was surreal. The echoes of his own steps racketed crazily in his ears. The downside of the adrenaline surge left him dizzy and chilled.

  Several turns, more empty corridors. Guards at the barracks section door asked for his ID. “Dekker,” he said, and pulled his card from his pocket, turned it over numbly, all the rush chilled out of him. “Off duty. Just out of detention.”

  The soldier guards said go through. He went, through the corridor into a barracks main-room crowded with people he knew, people he liked, guys who grabbed his arm and wished him well. He thought, If you only knew what I’ve done to you ... ...

  And almost lost everything when Meg got through the crowd and flung her arms around him. Cheers and catcalls from the company, egging her on for a kiss he didn’t shy away from, but all at once he was leaning on Meg, not certain which way was up. Dark was around him, that hazed back to light and the faces—

  You all right? someone asked him, and he tried to say he was. Guy belongs in bed, somebody else said, but he said no, and they shoved him at a chair and told him the galley was sending food to barracks and in the meanwhile things had to be better, they were under Fleet control, they were trying to straighten out the duty roster and figure who was on what tomorrow...

  Meg hauled a chair up facing his, grabbed his hands and made him look at her.

  “Dek. You tracking, cher?”

  “Yeah,” he said. He wanted a phone, he wanted—he didn’t know now whether he could cope with the news station or his mother. He kept hearing echoes, like the sim room. Someone saying, Enjoy the ride, Dekker. But the voice never had any tone. It drowned in the echoes.

  He kept seeing the accident sequence on the tape. Not threatening, just a problem. He kept thinking about his mother, the apartment, the dock at R2. He kept seeing mission control, and a silent fireball. And the dizzy prospect down the core, all lines gone to a vanishing point. Fire pattern in the sims. Intersecting colors. Green lines. Track, and firepoints. He shook his head and took account of the room again, guys he ought to love, if he had it left. But maybe he was like Porey. Maybe he didn’t have it, or never had had. More comfortable not to have it. More comfortable to love the patterns more than people. Patterns didn’t the. They just evaporated. People went with so much more violence...

  “God, he’s spaced. Get him on his feet.”

  “We’re going to fly with this moonbeam?” Arm came around him, hauled him to his feet, and he didn’t resist it. “I tell you, I should’ve been in Stockholm, should’ve got my transfer—I hate this shit.” Friends here. People he trusted. People he’d betrayed in there with Porey, because he’d been a damned fool.

  “Man’s got to eat.”

  “Somebody ought to call me meds.”

  “No meds.” He’d had enough. He walked. He got to his room. He hit the bed.

  “Didn’t search the room,” he thought he heard Meg say. “Didn’t mess up the drawers, I mean, these MPs are politer than Company cops.”

  “Peut-et’ they’re just neater,” Sal said; and Ben:

  “There wasn’t a search.”

  “How do you?” Sal started to ask. And said: “Silly question. Trez dim of me.”

  Electronics and flash-scan assured privacy, even against fiber and remotes. Security swore so. Graff could feel secure in this cubbyhole next the carrier’s bridge, if he could trust present company.

  Ask Demas and Saito who they belonged to? They’d say—Captain Keu. Of course. Saito would say it without a flicker. One preferred to hope and reason that was the case, rather than ask a pointless question.

  “Tanzer’s actually dispatched a resignation,” Saito said, apropos of the situation within the station, “but it came back negative out of Geneva. That means the UDC wants him where he is. Which could be show of opposition: they could replace him three days from now. Or they want him where he is because he knows where the records are and what’s in them, which could be useful to them here. They lost a big one. Forces inside the JLC lost a big one.”

  “We didn’t know,” Demas put in, doubtless reading minds, “when it would shift. That it might—one hoped.”

  He considered a question, shot a sidelong glance at Demas and asked pointblank: “And Porey? Where does he fit?”

  Demas broke eye contact, just momentarily. Saito’s face was absolutely informationless.

  Saito said, then, “Porey is highly successful.”

  “At what!” Anger betrayed him into that bluntness, anger and the memory of dealing with them differently. “At covering his trail, evidently.” If they were Porey’s or about to be, he was laying a firetrack in his own path, he knew he was, but he had his personal limit of tolerance. And he disturbed them. Even Saito flinched, looked down, saying:

  “Some things are excused, as long as the results are evident. Some patterns of behavior simply do not come through in social context....”

  “Other things,” Demas said with unexpected harshness, “are blindly ignored. The captain is head of Strategic Operations. The captain is too valuable to assign back to Hellburner, so says the EC. Porey is available. He could be promoted into qualification. That is what happened, J-G, plain and simple.”

  He looked at Demas, saw fire-flags left and right of this conversation and knew he could self-destruct here. He took a chance on them—a last chance. “Who wanted him? Who?”

  “—promoted him? Who does promote by executive order these days?”

  Mazian. Who wasn’t the best of the militia captains: Keu was; or Kreshov, maybe. But Mazian was the promoter, Mazian was the one who could smile his way through corporate and legislative doorways, Mazian could say things the way they needed to be said...

  “The Earth Company,” Saito said, “has SolCorp, LunaCorp, ASTEX, all space-based entities. But it also has its hands deep into the whole EuroTrust industrial complex— Bauerkraftwerke, Staatentek... the list is extensive—that have very good reasons to want extension of their facilities outside the reach of pressure groups and watch committees— meaning, into space. Those Earth-based companies give the EC an enormous influence inside the Joint Legislative Committee. The citizen pressure groups are enormously naive, usually single-issue. They think they move events. But in general the JLC is riddled with influence-trading, purchase decisions made on relationships, not quality....”

  “Ancient terrestrial lifeform,” Demas said. “Dinosaur. Vast body. Little brain. It flourished in an age of abundant food supply.”

  “I’ve heard the word,” Graff said.

  “Not to overwhelm you with local history,” Saito said, “but the UDC is a composite creature that never did function well. The Earth Company created us to oppose Cyteen’s secession; but it never imagined a splinter colony could raise a population base of Union’s size and it never imagined the light barrier would fall so quickly.”

  “More,” Demas said, “it didn’t understand the shipbuilding capacity of an enemy with no social debt. Ships cost Union nothing but sunlight, ultimately. Do you want more facilities? Create more workers.”

  “But now the EC understands,” Saito said, “at least enough to frighten them. The special interests understand enough to see their interests are threatened. Now everybody wants to manage the crisis. Everybody wants to safeguard their power base. Everybody believes there’s fault, but it’s most certainly someone else’s. The free-traders are making headway.”

  “Union-run merchanters,” Graff muttered. “Long we’d last. And they’d be nothing to Union but a supply source. Cyteen manage Earth? There’d be short patience.”

  “Possibly they’d founder of bewilderment. —But that is the truth, J-G: the Company brought us here
because Earth doesn’t believe in star-travelers unless it sees us: and its own problems absorb its attention. The EC needed the demonstrable presence, the face and the voice to make the outside real to these people. And whether they’ve believed their own myth, or simply view Mazian as manageable—he’s gotten far more important than we planned.”

  He was listening to sedition. To conspiracy. The captains had sent Mazian downworld, they’d chosen their spokesman— who excelled mostly at salving over wounded egos, at getting the captains to make unified decisions. It was merchanter command structure: Mazian was only the Fleet’s Com One....

  “They’re putting him in single command,” Demas said.

  “God.” He didn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe it. But Demas went on:

  “The EC stamps his personnel choices as a matter of course. Yes, he does the things that have to be done. But he’s not following the rules we laid down.”

  “Hellburner has all but foundered,” Saito said, “on citizen groups that fear the EC, who’ve insisted the UDC do what it doesn’t have the personnel to do—”

  “They’ve run us out of time,” Demas said. “So now, now the EC steps in and gets us the power to do something— but it’s Mazian they give it to. The captain’s still sitting at Sol One with a mess on his hands, the whole UDC administrative system suddenly shoved inside our operations, but—”

  “We begged him,” Saito said, “to break with Mazian, to repudiate his personnel assignments, catch the commercial back here and take command of the carrier, the hell with Mazian’s reputation with the EC.”

  His heart was beating faster and faster. He was sure what he was hearing, and surmised what must have been passing, God, on FleetCom—

  “But the captain won’t do it,” Demas said, “won’t expose dissent among the captains. Not now, he says: with Earth, appearances and public belief are everything. If we don’t get the riders and the rest of the carriers funded in this legislative session, we’re back to the spooks and the rimrunners.”

  He was still reeling from the first shock. Nerves wanted to hype and he tried to hold it. “What in hell did the captain want me to do here? Was I supposed to foul it up so badly he’d have to take it over? —Or is Porey what I won us?”

  “That rump session of the committee wasn’t supposed to come here,” Saito said. “You handled it as well as it could have been handled. You were sincere. You were indignant. You were the epitome of the Fleet’s integrity and professionalism. You didn’t know anything to the contrary.”

  “So now we’ve got Mazian’s hand-picked command here? Mazian’s put Edmund Porey over a program that’s already self-destructing? Have you worked with this man? I have. I was in the Belt with him.”

  “We’re extremely concerned,” Demas said. “We’re concerned about those carriers out in the Belt, and at Mars, that have yet to have officers assigned. Yes, they’ll bring in our people. But fifteen of the captains will be UDC. That was the deal that was cut.”

  His stomach turned over. A second time. “You’re serious.”

  “That is the deal. Fifteen of the carriers—with Earth-born command.”

  “Who do they have?”

  Saito made a ripple of her fingers. “They’ll have a selection process. Earth believes in processes.”

  “That’s fifteen dead ships—first time they take them past Viking.”

  “J-G, this is the crash course on truth in this venue. Mazian projects well. As a strategist he’s even competent. But thank God for the Keus and the Kreshovs. They’ll keep us alive. They may even keep Mazian alive.”

  “I’ve got a—” —kid on the verge of insanity, he was about to protest, when he recalled he didn’t have anything, he didn’t have a command, so far as he knew. “Dekker’s not going to work well with Porey. Dekker’s the best we’ve got. Mitch is not going to work well with Porey. He’s the next. We’re going to lose this program.”

  “No, we’re not,” Demas said. “Porey’s in command of the program. Porey’s put you in charge of personnel.”

  “Me? Where did you hear this?”

  “Say it went through channels.”

  “Did he do the picking? Or was my selection—”

  “Compromise. Though in Mazian’s view I think you’re to keep us in line,” Saito said. “Technically, we equal his rank. But we’re not command personnel. We’re not designated as such, by the captain. Consequently the captain can recall us at will and Porey can’t take us under his command—or get us assigned to that carrier. I’m afraid that isn’t your case.”

  “We’re concerned for that,” Saito said. “But there’s nothing we can do, but advise, where our perspective is of use.”

  He was glad he’d not had time for supper. He thought he might lose it, if that were the case.

  “All personnel?”

  “All flight and technical associated with the program. Tanzer’s still there, of course, but he’s promoted sideways, still in charge of R&D, but Hellburner’s being lifted out of R&D—”

  “Into what?”

  “Fleet Ops. The parts manufacturers and the yards are being given a go-ahead, on a promise of funds tied to test success. They’re pushing this ship for production, we’re funded for one carrier’s full complement, but no further; and the plain fact is, we’re out of time. Latest projection is—we’re going to see the first carrier-rider system in the field in six, seven months. Theirs or ours. Naturally we have our preference.”

  “What in hell are they asking me to do with these people?”

  “Mazian sets the priorities. Porey carries them out. You keep the crews sane.”

  “You mean I promise them anything. Have I got a shred of authority to carry it out?”

  For the second time, Demas evaded eye contact. “I’d say it’s more than we can do. But, no, in effect, you don’t.”

  “Is he asleep?” Ben asked quietly—made a trip to the bathroom while Sal was drowsing and stopped for a look-see. Dekker looked skuzzed, thoroughly, face down in the pillows. Meg was using his reader, scanning through Dekker’s manuals—there was a lot of study going on in the barracks, over cold dead hamburgers and breaded fish. The smell out there could gag you. And the atmosphere was crazed. Guys glad they were going to fly this thing—the pilots and the lunatic lead techs who made up the core crew.

  He should have counted, he told himself. He’d been a numbers man. He should have added it—and panicked when the number of him and Dekker and Meg and Sal tallied four, same as the other core crew units out there.

  “He’s out,” Meg said. “Cold. Thank God. Man’s seriously needing his sleep.”

  He came and sank down on the edge of the other bunk, said, ever so quietly, “You like this guy?”

  Meg shrugged. You never got unequivocal out of her or Sal. But she was here. She’d risked her neck and her license for him. Partner, yeah. But Meg didn’t do things for one reason, or even two. A solid part of it was in that datacard, was in the way Meg looked right now, sharp and serious and On as he’d ever seen her.

  He didn’t say what he’d sat down to say: Flunk that damn test. He slid a glance at Dekker and back and said, “You know, you better carry a pocket wrench.”

  Any Belter knew what a wrench was for, on helldeck. Meg’s mouth quirked.

  “The CO’s crazy,” he said very quietly. “I flew out here with that guy.”

  “So did we.”

  “That where they got him? Belt garrison?”

  She shook her head. Whispered, “That carrier came in from deep. We dunno where. All the time we were on there, we saw crew, never but once saw him.”

  “What’d you think?”

  Meg frowned. “Didn’t like the signals.”

  He said, under his breath, “We got a serious warning. Don’t know what that guy’s problem is, but it is. We saw him far more than once. Just watching us. The body language. He wants his space, he wants yours. Smiles and laughs but he doesn’t smile, you know what I mean? He watched Dek re
al close. Dek didn’t like him.”

  “Grounds?”

  “Just that.” He didn’t think the place was bugged. Events hadn’t proven it and it was too egocentric to mink Polrey’s security had made a straight line to their quarters. But he got uneasy with the topic. He said, “Helldeck radar, maybe. Guys you’d insist do the EVA, if it was the two of you in a miner can, you know what I mean?”

  Meg got real dead grim. “Ask Sal about that kind.” And then bit her lip like she’d said too much of Sal’s business. “Yeah. Same signals. You ever ship with Sammy Wynn?”

  Awful thought. Guy with some serious personality faults, that wouldn’t get better on a long, lonely haul. “I wouldn’t share a bar table with Sammy Wynn. Whatever happened to him?”

  “Spaced by now, I hope.” She stopped and looked aside as Dekker turned over and buried his head in a pillow. Time to go, Ben decided, before they woke Ens. Moonbeam. He stood up, stood still til he knew Dekker wasn’t going to wake up.

  “You going to take the Aptitudes?” Meg asked him.

  Sore spot, that. “Yeah,” he admitted. And went back into the room with Sal. He had signed the assignment roster out there. He hadn’t intended to tell them. But what had happened here, with the UDC CO busted out of command, himself being caught behind a Fleet Security wall... he didn’t give a real thought to a transfer right now. He could test into something administrative. Damned sure the Fleet wouldn’t want him going back under the UDC curtain with what he’d witnessed here, if by any means they could finagle hanging on to him—and it certainly looked as if they had the clout. He didn’t have the instincts or the nerves for combat, he’d proved that before, and that was bound to show. Drugged you down, they did, even for the basic test. Hooked you up to a machine and read your responses and your answers. You couldn’t fake this one. They said.

  He passed the door back into his room, sat down on the bed carefully, so as not to wake Sal. Low light, scatter of braids on the pillows, innocent-as-a-babe profile with parted lips, slight snub nose—dammit, the conniving kid was his partner, he liked being with her, he’d found a piece of himself clicked back into place when she’d come walking into the barracks—and being without her again was a dreary thought. He earnestly, honestly liked Sal; and Meg; which he’d never said about anybody but Morrie Bird; and God help him, he could even get acclimated to Dekker, or just plain nerve-dead.