Devil to the Belt (v1.1)

by C. J. Cherryh

“Are they going to?”

  Scary question. “Him, they don’t need to, do they? He knows what he’s doing.”

  “Just asking,” Mitch said.

  “Yeah,” she said, “Well, whose would they give to him? Tell me that.” Five on ten they made the same and only guess she could, and the idea scared hell out of her. “They took my mates into Testing. They told Dek report in. They didn’t tell me an effin’ thing. I’m either the only one right in the universe or I must be one of the problems.” Which shaded closer to her private anxiety than she wanted. She got up, picked up her towel, for the showers. “So if you got any news, you owe me.”

  “Nothing,” Pauli said. “Except a serious concern for the program. And Dekker.”

  Belters rarely said ‘friend.’ You didn’t say, I care, I love, I give a damn. They wouldn’t do that. But they came asking. Even that skuz Mitch. Made her think halfway better of Mitch, and that gave her another cause to worry.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks. If I hear anything, either.”

  The door opened. Graff said, stone-faced, “The commander wants to see you.”

  “Yessir,” Dekker said.

  No questions. Graff was negotiating with an unreasoning, unreasonable son of a bitch and didn’t need trouble from another source. He got up and walked in, saluted, and Porey said, all too quietly, “You may have had a problem, mister. This whole damn program may have a problem. So I want an answer, I want a single, completely straight answer If you were second-guessing the Aptitudes, where would you have expected Pollard and Aboujib to fit in the crew profile?”

  “Ens. Pollard’s a computer tech, theory stuff.” He had one sudden chance, maybe, to do something for Ben, which would drop the lot of them down the list, break Meg’s heart and save all their skins. He debated a split second, then: “UDC Technical Institute. I’d have thought he’d be handling the computers. —To be honest, sir, I’d have thought he’d go somewhere up in Fleet Ops—they were, going to send him to Stockholm. He’s got—”

  Porey snarled, “We’ve got enough UDC hands in this operation right now. What about Aboujib? Co-pilot?”

  He didn’t know what all this was about. Not enough to maneuver with. “Ben taught her numbers. I’d expect she’s good. Longscan or armscomp. She’s—” He flashed on Sal’s frustration with the scan assignment. “I don’t know— don’t know. What she wants—is the Fire button.” His mind was on what Porey had said about Ben. He thought he might have done Ben harm, bringing in the Stockholm business. He made a desperate, uninvited counter. “Sir, I haven’t got any doubts about Ben Pollard. He went UDC because they had his program, but he’s Belter. He wouldn’t do anything but a hundred percent for his partners.”

  Porey left a cold, cold silence. He didn’t know what he was arguing for or against, or who was on trial. Porey just stared. “If,” Porey began, and the phone beeped. Porey grabbed up the handset, snarled, “This is a conference, damn you—” and the face went expressionless while Dekker had time to think, Something’s happened...

  Graff was paying the same kind of attention. Porey said, “Procedures. Stat. —Estimate,” and looked grim as he hung up and stood up. “Pod’s hung.”

  “God.” Dekker thought Porey wanted the door—grabbed for the switch.

  “Dekker!”

  “I can help, sir,...”

  “No!” Porey said. And there was no argument.

  Meg hauled clothes on, still wet—damn sweater hung on an earring. She finessed it loose the painful way and got her head through—

  Mitch, the skuz, was standing in the locker room door.

  She jerked the sweater down. “Getting your thrills, Mitch?”

  “Serious talk, Kady. Question. Couple of touchy questions.”

  Private, the man wanted. Hell of a way to get it; and time was, Mitch didn’t get two seconds, but Mitch didn’t look like trouble, Mitch looked like business, and curiosity was killing her. “So? Give.”

  “What is their damn hurry with Dek, do you get any feel?”

  She bit her lip. Shook her head. “Neg. No. What are you asking?”

  “Is Ben on our side?”

  “Absolute. No question, and Sal and I fly with him.”

  Mitch ducked his head, looked up with the straightest eye contact she’d ever had out of him. “Ben made a phone call last night. Dek got pulled this morning. You know about that?”

  “Yeah. Ben could have slipped it to the lieutenant—about two jumps ahead of me, you want the truth.”

  “That schedule of his. Did he set it? Is it his choice? Or is Porey doing it?”

  “Much as I know it’s his schedule.” It was sensitive territory. She wasn’t sure she wanted to discuss any crew business with Mitch, who was Dek’s competition in this place. But Dek had her scared to hell, that was what she had said to Sal and that was what made her confess now. “I can believe Ben might have stopped him. I just hope it didn’t land either of them in trouble.”

  “Second touchy question. You apparently aren’t too damn bad. How much of it do you think is tape?”

  “I was good before I came here, mister.”

  Mitch held up a hand. “No offense. Straight q & a—they’re talking about shoving it on the rest of us, I want to know from the ones that know—does that damn thing really work?”

  Sounded like an honest question. “Different way to learn, same way you guys learn, what I hear, this Neural Input stuff. I don’t know what’s the difference, except we trank deeper—by what I hear. How could I tell? I don’t get the other kind.”

  “Rumor is they’re running you guys up to mission level sims. They’re saying they’re using you guys for guinea pigs because you came in cold, as far as these boards. That if it works with you—we’re next and we got no choice. Now they’re hauling Pollard and Aboujib back into Testing? Makes the rest of us damn nervous, Kady.”

  Made her nervous when he put it that way.

  “You know anything about Pete Fowler, you ever have any—weird feelings off that stuff?”

  “I’m not being him, Mitch, I’m not any damn dead guy. That’s not what’s going on....”

  “He was twenty-nine, he was a good, fast thinker, he was regular for Elly Sanders—she was the longscanner. You want any more? Pete’s faults? His virtues? I can tell you. He was a nit-picking sumbitch about the checklist....”

  “I’m telling you I don’t know anything about Pete Fowler. I damn sure haven’t got a fix on Sal and I always was a stickler for doing—”

  “Mitch!” somebody yelled, out in the sims. “They got a pod hung!”

  “Oh, shit,” Mitch said, and he was running—she started running after him, scared as hell, no idea what they could do, why they were going—but it was somebody she knew in that damned thing, and she moved.

  “What’s the status?” Porey asked, leaning over a tech— Security ops had eight monitors and four of them were black, except for green letters showing CORE-21, that was the sims area, anybody who worked up there knew that section, and Dekker knew it, made a guess what those black monitors showed before Porey got his answer.

  “They cut the power, sir,” the ops tech said, “Chief Jackson got the spin shut down. Cameras are working, they’re on another generator, but all the pods are full crewed and frozen out there til they get power back on.”

  The core was totally dark, even the access areas—requests for personnel movement going out over com, the same sequence that must have attended his own accident, Dekker thought glumly—like standing off and watching it happen to him.

  “Do we have a recovery team out there?” Porey asked, and the tech answered that they were still trying to organize that—only way they had to haul you back if a pod had to totally crash was suit up and go out there; the construction workers that formed the rescue squad were coming in from their off hours and from work around the carrier—

  “Too damned long,” he said, he didn’t care if he was out of turn: “I know the systems, sir, I’m used to a
suit—”

  “You’re not going out there,” Porey said, and adjusted the com in his ear, scowling, eyes showing the least anxiety while he listened to something elsewhere. “—You have one?” he asked someone invisible. “Suiting now?”

  They’d found somebody closer. Dekker drew a controlled breath, then, still wanting to do something; but rescue was evidently getting into motion. Black monitors. No emergency lights—the fool engineers had put the viewport shutters on the main power. Power was cut, completely, complete black in the chamber, no ventilation in the pod, no heat, no filtration for anybody out there. God hope the mags weren’t all crashed.

  “Patch through the suitcom,” Porey said. Graff said to the tech at the boards in simulation Control, “Give us audio, here. Are we getting anything out of the pod?”

  “We don’t get anything. Whole core section’s on that generator.”

  “What the hell kind of engineering is that, dammit to bloody hell, what kind of operation do we have here?”

  “An old one,” Graflf said. “Lot of patch-jobs.”

  “Piece of junk,” Porey muttered. “Nothing moves, does it?”

  “Not the shutters, not the internal lights—there’s a requisition to get them on another circuit, but the engineers have found a problem doing that.”

  “Can they power up with the rest of those pods sitting out there?”

  “Should be able to,” Graff said, while Dekker kept his mouth shut. Should be able to, once they got the one pod clear. If it didn’t, if they were all crashed, everybody was in trouble. Imminent trouble.

  “One man’s not enough out there,” he said tautly. “They’ve got no locators, those are all killed with the power.... Sir, in all respect, I know what I’m doing....”

  “Shut down, Dekker, you’re not going up there.”

  A dun seam of light showed at the edge of one monitor— lock door, he figured, on a leech and hand-battery. Audio cut in, unmistakably a suit com, heavy breaming, little else, and a white star appeared in both monitors: suit-spot shining in all that black.

  Sim chiefs voice, then: “You’re going across the chamber, zenith climb about ninety meters.. . sensor range within—”

  “Copy that.” Female voice, unexpectedly. Familiar voice that sent a sinking feeling to the pit of his stomach as the star shot off at a fair speed. Scary speed.

  “Don’t hurry it, don’t hurry it...” from the chief. “Dammit, slow down.”

  Meg didn’t. Meg was hotdogging it, scaring hell out of him and the sim chief—miner showout, but habitual: a miner knew his distance without his eyes, by reckonings they didn’t teach in construction, and she wouldn’t miss: blind in the dark, she wouldn’t miss: that was the push she was used to—and she was counting and caking.

  “Shouldn’t argue with her,” Dekker muttered, sweating it. “She knows her rate, she’s feeling it.. .tell the chief that.”

  “Is that Kady?” Graff asked. “Dekker, is that Kady out there?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Get her the hell out of there!” Porey said into the mike. “This is Comdr. Porey. Get her out of there. Now!”

  Took a little relaying of instructions. Meg developed a problem with her mike. Didn’t fool Porey, didn’t fool anybody, but there wasn’t a thing Porey could do from here. Meg was closing into sensor range, you could hear the pings on audio and see the rate drop.

  Then number two monitor showed a faint haze of detail. Chamber wall and a pod directly in Meg’s suit spot, he’d bet his life on it.

  “She’s all right,” he said, feeling the shakes himself. “Sir, she knows her business.”

  Porey wasn’t saying a thing about the transmission difficulties, wasn’t giving any orders now, he just muttered, “Kady’s on notice with me, you make that clear, Mr. Graff.”

  “Yes, sir,” Graff said.

  Word came from another channel that the Pod Rescue Unit was being deployed. At least some of the rescue squad had gotten there, and was launching the track-guided equipment that could tow the pod.

  Meanwhile an engineer was giving instructions and Meg started identifying and freeing up the bolts that released it from its track.

  “Shit...” came over the com; and froze his heart.

  “What’s the matter?” the chief asked; but he could see it for himself, the pod’s number decal—number three. The pod they’d been scheduled for.

  “That’s Jamil,” he said, to whoever cared, and looked for a chair free. But there wasn’t one. “Jamil and his guys took our slot—said they could use the time...”

  Didn’t take much calc to find a lighted, open hatch, and Meg beelined for it, braked and took a shaky bent-kneed impact, another showout miner-trick, with a hand-up catch at the rim of the lock to stop the rebound. She cycled the lock on battery power, breath hissing with shivers—it wasn’t cold coming through the suit, not this fast, it was shock starting to work, in the loneliness of the airlock. Let the rescue crew do the maneuvering with the PRU, the chief had said, they wanted her out of there and that lock shut before they powered up the mags and she agreed, she didn’t know shit about the tow system: it was on now, it was moving, bound for a pod access lock where meds were waiting, and they weren’t going to need her unless the mags were definitively crashed.

  Moment of intense claustrophobia then, just the ghostly emergency light, then a door opened into a brightly lit ready-room full of guys willing to help with the suit.

  She got the helmet off, drew a breath of icy clean air and got a first welcome bit of news—power-up was proceeding, pods were answering; they for sure weren’t going to need her again out there, and she could unsuit and take the lift out to gravitied levels and the lockers. Good job, they told her, good job, but they were busy and she got herself out of the way, let them tend the suit, unaccustomed luxury for a miner-jock, and boarded the lift out of there.

  Slow, slow business in the recovery of the pod, and they could only watch, in 1-dock Security ops. Dekker hung at draffs back and Percy’s, listened to the output from the rescue team on the open speaker.

  They were working into dock now, at access 3. “That’s copy,” he heard a voice say, and flashed on cold, on dark, on inertia gone wild—

  Enjoy the ride, Dekker....

  “That’s him,” he said of a sudden—had everyone’s attention, and he looked to Graff, who understood what he meant, Graff surely understood.

  “ID that man,” Graff snapped, “isolate that voice. —Mr. Dekker—” as he headed for the door. “Hold it.”

  “Dekker!” Porey said atop Graff’s order, but he’d already stopped and faced them.

  “I want you to listen,” Graff said. “I want you to pick out that voice, all the voices that might be involved.”

  “Is he meaning the attack on him?” Porey wanted to know, and Graff nodded, leaning over the master com in ops. “Yes, sir, that’s exactly what he means. —Play it back, ensign.”

  “That’s copy,” the recording said, among others, and Dekker said with absolute conviction, “Yes. That one.”

  “Who’s carded to that area right now?” Porey asked. “Nobody’s leaving that area without carding out, hear me?”

  “Yes, sir,” the com tech said; and relayed to Fleet Security.

  “Not everybody’s carded in,” Graff said. “They probably let medics and techs in wholesale—anybody with a security badge...”

  “Sir,” the tech said, “I think I’ve got it pinned. That output’s on e-com, I’ve got the serial number on the unit.”

  “Track it.”

  Time to indulge the shakes and the unsteady breathing, alone in the lift. “They’re getting telemetry,” Meg heard, on the com track that was probably going out to every speaker in the mast. “Four heartbeats.” Best news yet. Thank God, she thought, queasy in the steady increase of g against the deep fast dive the car was taking. She clenched her teeth and collected herself, watched the level indicator light plummet until the car came to rest and the door o
pened on warm air and bright light.

  She expected Mitch and a handful of guys; but the room was packed, everybody who could cram themselves hi, all wanting news. “Four heartbeats,” she told them, which they might have heard, she couldn’t tell if the com was feeding through, there was so much racket. She wasn’t prepared to be laid hold of, wasn’t expecting Mitch of all guys to pat her heavily on the shoulder and say how miner-jocks had their use—other guys did the same, and all she could get out was a breathless, desperate: “Jamil. Janul took our sim slot... anybody seen Dek?”

  Nobody had. She was shaking, embarrassing herself with that fact, but she couldn’t stop the chill now. A big guy whose name she didn’t even know threw his arm around her shoulders, hugged her against his side, and yelled out to get a blanket, she was soaked with sweat.

  I’m all right, she tried to say, but her teeth kept chattering. Seeing that number out there had put a shock reaction into her—she wasn’t used to shaking; wasn’t used to time to think when she was scared, or, worst, to knowing there wasn’t a damned thing she could do personally to help those guys or Dek... .

  The blanket came around her. “Tried to kill us,” she said between shivers. “Wasn’t any fucking accident, Dek was supposed to be in that pod. . . That was our slot Jamil took...”

  “Sims tech Eldon A. Kent,” Graff said, reading the monitor, “out of Munich, trained in Bonn ...”

  “I want a piece of him,” Dekker said. God, he wanted it, wanted to pound the son of a bitch so fine the law wouldn’t have pieces left to work with. “Just let me find him.”

  “Certainly answers the questions about access,” Graff murmured, reading over the data on the monitor. “Free access to the pods, a lot of the techs let each other through, never mind the rules. He’s Lendler Corp, he comes and goes—what were you doing up there suited, Dekker? What were you doing with the mission tape?”

  Piece suddenly clicked into place. Bad memory. Whole chunk of memory. “Wanted to look at the tape, just wanted to look at it—” The disaster sequence. The maneuver Wilhelmsen had failed to make. “Damned set piece. They wanted it to work, they kept training us for specifics. I told them that, I...”