Devil to the Belt (v1.1)

by C. J. Cherryh

  Then someone shouted, from the hall, “They’re releasing the separation footage!” and bedlam surged in the other direction, reporters trying to get into mission control, jamming in the doorway. Two stayed to ask:

  “Who authorized this test, lieutenant?”

  “Not in my need-to-know, I’m afraid. Insystem traffic near Luna shows lift delayed for thirty minutes on the monitor up there. That has to come from very high levels.”

  “Who can authorize it?”

  “Sol One Stationmaster, for the lowest level.”

  “If—”

  The barrage of questions and dicing of information kept up. He stood there with his gut in knots. It was go now, no likely recall of the rider. Mission parameters were ‘showing on the screens, dopplered transmission from the carrier, and from the rider, via the carrier. Course was laid for intercept from the ecliptic, of a zenith system entry shielded from the carrier by Earth’s own security zone...

  Worst-case scenario in system defense—an attack coming into Earth’s vicinity, and not a damned thing on the trans-missions to say the case wasn’t real... worse, there was an incoming showing on the one screen his eye knew for real-case. Something was inbound or they’d gotten insystem traffic management to lie, and it didn’t. Ever.

  Ship felt good, felt good all the way, zero no-calls and zero glitches on the boards. Clean, wide sep from the carrier and for a while they would keep the carrier’s rate inside its shields, pretending to the enemy that separation was still to come. Attitude assemblies were all answering test-calls. Dekker lost himself in the internal config-confirms, in the numbers that were the immediate future—Meg was there to tell him where he was, Ben was shaping further future, and Sal was working up the fire-path, armaments taking program, talking to Meg’s boards which would talk to his V-HUD when the time came. Right now body-sense was expanded into the ship, time was cut loose and independent of circumstance—the track and the fire-points were shaping up further and further into the diagrams spread in his far vision—but he was only generally aware of that; he was seeing that interval as leisurely information-building minutes diving toward a split-second hype-point, where he had to be ready to execute a sequence of immaculately timed moves to confuse the enemy, position the fire platform, and get their asses safely past a line of answering fire scarily close to Luna, with a v that overrode both Luna’s pull— and the available energy of their own missiles.

  Which was all Sal’s problem.

  They aren’t doing anything, the reporters objected with increasing frustration, even anger, and Graff said, finally, with a heart going faster and faster, eyes fixed on the monitors beyond the spex panes: “Oh, yes, they are. They’re maintaining output silence. The carrier’s doing all the transmission, noisy as it wants to be. They launched something on either side before they braked, one’s a decoy, one’s the rider, and the rider doesn’t want to be seen yet, that’s the name of the game—even we don’t know which it is, because they haven’t told us and motion hasn’t started.”

  Questions broke out, a shouted confusion.

  “Yes, we have no doubt they’re still conscious. See the four dots on the screen, all doing fine...” Trajectories were widening their perspective on the screens and one reporter noticed the obvious. “That’s going straight through Luna space—is that Luna space?”

  “All system traffic’s suspended. The firepaths will have been cleared and safed.”

  “What if—”

  Chatter kept up. Media seemed to abhor a dunking silence.

  He watched the situation on the screens, thinking, Damn, who’s feeding them their orders? But he heard no calculations emanating from FleetCom. He suspected the carrier armscomper had primed them for this—set up the incoming and the response: he personally suspected that anything and everything Porey did was with mirrors; but he kept his mouth shut and hoped to God no reporter got onto that question.

  And the firepaths were damned close to Luna... me reporter was right, they were terrifyingly close, from the viewpoint of civilians not used to starships at entry and exit v—close, and with a maneuver that, if they did it—damn, it was Russell’s Star, replayed—

  Long, long time on a hold-steady. Easy to become hypnotized, if not for the nuisance chatter on internal com. Dekker did the small breathing exercises that kept him aware of time—nothing but freefall at fractional light, minimal signature, nothing noisy, no output at all, no input but the passive receipt of the carrier and its boards that advised them things they couldn’t output to see.

  Couldn’t prove it wasn’t real, what they were receiving. You couldn’t assume: it, daren’t assume it.

  “What we’re going to do imminently, Dek-boy, we’re about to do a little round the corner shot at this sumbitch. Luna’s shadow’s your boost point, God, I hope you get it right...”

  “Copy that,” he muttered. “Do your own job, Ben.”

  “Ordnance up,” Sal said. “Meg. Dek, that’s your plot-points, you copy?”

  Dots and lines were multiplying in his midvision now, floating in space, designating essential fire-points, orientation, mass decrease. Considerable decrease: Hellburner was 90% fuel, engines, ablation surface, and ordnance.

  “He’s got it,” Meg said. “Here we go, guys. —Initiate.”

  Pulse of the main engines. Missiles launched with a shock through the frame, one and two away.. .straight .toward the moon. Adrenaline stretched time arid distances.

  “T-l,” Ben was saying, calling out the major coordination points.

  Second pulse, high-g RO, intermittent accel and launches directly down their backpath toward their carrier, staccato hammer of missiles away, Hellburner’s mass diminishing fast.

  Second RO, braces engaged. Had to hold the track with immaculate numbers—crossing the carrier firepath now, edge on, minimum profile.

  “Son of a bitch,” Ben yelled, as the emissions receipt picked up launch, but their four missiles had kicked off the frame on the mark and Dekker swung into his scheduled Profile RePosition with an instant eighth less mass and a violence that blurred vision. “Track!” Ben yelled at Sal. “Track!”

  “Got it, got it, got it,” Sal cried, onto a steady stream of profanity, as their chaff gun opened up down the hostile firetrack straight for the incoming. “Burn it!” Ben yelled, and Dekker shoved it to 4-10.5 instant gs ahead, on the instant, rotated sideways as they were.

  Countered. Graff watched the fire bursts, listened to the dispassionate voice of FleetCom confirm the intercept.

  It looked so slow on this scale—so incredibly slow. But his heart knew the speed at which things were moving, his gut was in knots, he wanted his own hands on controls, he wanted that with every breath he took—

  They were on. God, God, they were making it. So had Wilhelmsen—this early on. Another Reorient and they were still throwing fire...

  But, damn! the lines intersected, and of a sudden—missiles near Luna were off the scope of a sudden—

  Range safety? or hostile action?

  “Test stop,” came over the speakers. “The test has been terminated.. . this is FleetCom mission control...”

  Disaster? Graff felt cold all over. Couldn’t have. The plot was still tracking.

  “The incoming is confirmed as EC militia merchanter Eagle, proceeding at V to maintain effect shields against inert chaff which will not, repeat not, intersect civilian traffic. Luna-vectored ordnance was destroyed by the range safety officer. At no time was this ordnance capable of reaching the lunar surface: technical explanation will follow. The remaining ordnance is being cleared from the area by destruct commands issued by range safety. Rider ordnance trajectories have been computed as intersecting Eagle presence and moment with three major strikes, sufficient to have eliminated the incoming threat. This concludes a successful test of the Hellburner prototype. In-progress System traffic will resume ordinary operations in fifteen minutes ...”

  Impossible to hear in the spectator gallery, after that. Crews a
nd techs inside mission control were out of their seats, pounding each other on the backs with complete disregard of uniform or gender. “Damn on!” Villy roared from the other side of the spectators, Optexes were going, reporters were shouting questions—a few of them loudly incensed about the apparent proximity to the moon.

  God, he just let it go. Gave fragments of answers, how he felt—damned happy; had he been nervous—wanted to be out there, he said, all the while tracking on the screens, the celebrations, the communications from FleetCom telling Hellburner 1 there was no need to brake, the carrier was on direct intercept, and from UDC System Defense saying that lift traffic would resume in areas declared cleared, starting with alpha zone, near Earth’s atmosphere.

  Was it an unwarrantable risk to Luna? a reporter wanted to know. He said, tracking on the politics as well as the damned brilliant straight-line shot, “In the first place, it was never going to hit the moon. It was moving past the moon faster than it was moving toward it. By the laws of physics it absolutely couldn’t hit the surface.”

  “If something had gone wrong with the missiles—”

  “They didn’t have enough fuel to reach the moon soon enough to hit it. It’s absolutely impossible.”

  “But they could reach the carrier.”

  “The carrier could run into them. The range officer got it well within the safe zone. If it had failed to detonate, there were two back-up systems; and, I reemphasize, the ordnance was not infalling Luna, no more than the ship itself was. The armscomper knew exactly what she was doing.”

  “She,” a reporter pounced on the question, but another shouted:

  “Was it a successful test, when the duration was half an hour less than the Wilhelmsen run, at a slower speed?”

  “The rider eliminated the threat. It had nothing left to shoot at. There’s no point in continuing beyond mission accomplished.”

  “But could they have kept going?”

  “No doubt whatsoever. And let me point out, they were slower, but their target was moving at system entry speeds. Wilhelmsen’s targets were only randoms, from known fire points, nothing this real-time. But he gave us data that helped us. It wasn’t a pointless sacrifice—never a pointless sacrifice.” Tanzer had just shown up in mission control, Tanzer accepting handshakes of his staff, beyond the sound-damping spex, and the whole press corps was suddenly trying to figure out how to get where they weren’t going to be admitted. Villy clapped him on the shoulder in passing and escaped the intercepts, while another Optex pickup arrived in his face with, “Ms. Salazar has denounced the choice of Paul Dekker as the source of tape for the program and called for the disfranchisement of the Beet. How do you feel about that?”

  “My answer? If that incoming had been Union, that ship and that young pilot and crew would have prevented global catastrophe. A single barrage of inert matter falling on Earth at half light would create ecological disaster.” Stock answer, stock material, the science people had calc’ed it years ago: he knew not a damned thing about climates, truth be told.

  A reporter followed up: “Earth was not in actual danger.”

  “Earth was in deadly danger if that had been a Union ship. But Hellburner demonstrated its ability to deflect any such attack. Their course was right on intercept with that incoming militia ship, you can see it on the display up there. This was a live ordnance test, but nothing at any time was aimed at Earth or Luna.”

  “What if it went off-track?”

  “That’s why there are range safety officers.” He didn’t want to say what he suspected, that if the destruct sequences for the rider’s missiles hadn’t been dumped to Eagle’s computers by the Sol system buoy on entry, the range safety officer on the ECS4 had to have had a few extremely anxious moments once the shots went around the limb of the moon. That volley had come very close to sending the missiles out of communication with the carrier. But the crew hadn’t pulled any punches. No crew could afford to think in those terms. Ever. “Lieutenant, lieutenant, do you think—” “Excuse me....” He was getting a burst of new information off FleetCom on the screens and over the PA, and another line of comflow in his ear from Saito, saying ...

  Panic over much of Europe, assumption the test was real, public reactions yet uncertain... But Mazian was in front of the cameras in Bonn, with pronouncements of what a Union strike would have meant for Earth,... calling Paul Dekker and his crew phenomenally skilled, heroes of Earth’s own defense forces, a combined FIeet-and-crew...

  “Good run. Still room for improvement.”

  Porey’s voice; and Dekker wanted to tell him go to hell for the trick they’d pulled. Destruct the ordnance, damned right they’d had to, he’d been scared as hell they might hit a friendly ship; but a Belter didn’t have ordinary nerves, and he’d not been a hundred percent convinced until they’d gotten the congratulatory communication from FleetCom that it had been the scheduled test.

  Didn’t know what to do with the nerves now, things were still dragging along, interminable time stretch: not so hard a job, this run, but that was the problem, wasn’t it? You didn’t get the hellish repositions and redirects when you were working with Ben and Sal, when your co-pilot was thinking ahead of the pilot’s problems so he didn’t get called on for those moves—only one of those shifts he’d had to rip, they’d hyped the v sideways hard after Sal’s best shot and Ben was still muttering about realspace feeling real, and soreness setting in.

  Meg said, “We’re in the pocket, right in the pocket, now, Dek, you don’t have to do a thing til the bow-shock. —Incidentally, compliments from Capt. Kreshov, on Eagle, he says it was a damn pretty job, his words. —Thank you, sir. The team appreciates the compliment. —We got a drink offer from his armscomper.”

  “Sounds good,” Ben said. “Yeah!” from Sal.

  Himself, he wasn’t highly verbal, just tracking on the approaching carrier—Ben decided it was a frigging party, all of a sudden, Sal and Meg evidently had; and he could strangle Ben. They weren’t through until they’d been through the realtime shields, nothing virtual about it this time: carrier coming up like a bat behind them, Baudree’s showing out, no different than the rider jocks, except Baudree was carrying multiples of their mass, and when he contemplated dock after what he’d been through he felt sweat running on his forehead and a tension cramp knotting his leg.

  Meg switched him out of the FleetCom loop to carrier-com, then, the range blip and the docking schematic a total preoccupation in his 360° V-HUD compression, carrier Helm talking to him now, wanting his attention, while he left Meg and Ben to watch elsewhere.

  “Just hold steady and we’ve got you.”

  Moment of panic. Hard to shift time-perception. It wasn’t going fast now. Everything took forever and a tiny bobble was disaster. You didn’t screw it at this stage. Didn’t, please God, didn’t.

  “Bow shock in 43 seconds.”

  “Copy that. Go.” He couldn’t afford to think they’d done it...

  Not yet.

  “That’s capture and dock,” FleetCom’s dispassionate voice said. “Thank you, Mr. Dekker. Excellent job.”

  Graff found himself breathing again.

  “We’re going into our checklist.” Dekker’s voice. The reporters had gotten to recognize it. Had picked up on the tension in mission control and Villy had finally gotten it through, the shift the pilot had to make between nanosecond events and docking at relatively slow docking approach. “We had two funerals getting this down pat,” Villy muttered. “It’s no piece of easy the kid’s working—hell of a buffet when you cross the shields.”

  Another flurry of technical questions. Graff looked for an escape, saw the door to the VIP area open and the two senators walk out—instant recognition from the press, instant convergence in that direction. Shouts and questions.

  “We were invited to observe this test.” The senior senator, Caldwell. “To see how the taxpayers’ appropriations have been spent. I must say we’ve had a compelling demonstration of the effectiveness of t
he technology, outstanding performance...”

  “J-G,” Demas said, in his ear. “Bonn. Our suspect did work for MarsCorp.”

  He ducked for the corridor, deserted Villy and the senators for a small nook near a couple of marine security guards. “Say,” he asked the security unit. “Have we got a case?”

  “I don’t know if we have a case, but he has former close associates in the Federation of Man, and the UDC background check didn’t go that deep, he was passed in under Lendler security, and hear this, J-G, the VDC ‘took Lendler’s word for it,’ unquote. ‘Ail their personnel have to have a clearance.’ Unquote. MarsCorp is 45% of Lendler’s business: the atmospherics softwares, for a start.”

  Bloody hell, he thought. The information had hit his brain. The implications were still finding sensitive spots in his nervous system. Took Lendler’s word for it. ‘All their personnel have to have a clearance.’ Political implications, far beyond the Dekker affair.

  “You’re serious.”

  “Mars is threaded all through this. But so is the Federation of Man. Eldon Kent has two cousins in that association. Lendler’s records on him are so-named classified—which we can’t penetrate without filing charges.”

  “Not yet. Not yet. God.”

  Saito cut in on the channel. “J-G. The carrier is returning to dock.”

  “We’re deep in reporters. Tell the commander that.”

  “I’m sure he knows,” Saito said.

  Damn! he thought, but he kept it off his face, he hoped, at least. He stood very still for a moment, heard Caldwell saying, inside, “... a tribute to the skill and dedication of Earth’s industry and innovation—”

  CHAPTER 19

  MAINS cut in, hard, and Dekker gave himself up to TV 16 ‘force’ Just breathed the way one had to and twisted, figuring at this point if the carrier hit a IV rock and took them to hell, he wasn’t afraid any more, he just stared at the blank, black VR in front of him, sensory deprivation... they were planning to fix that, arguing about what a crew wanted, coming off hype, whether they wanted anything at all but a VR off the carrier’s boards, but Dekker personally voted just for the vid of the carrier surface, that was the only thing he wanted to see, he was convinced of it now, only thing a rider crew was going to want was constant reassurance that they were snugged up against the frame and locked, and that the clanks that rang through the hull were the auto-service connections and the ordnance servos, ready to shove ordnance up into the racks if there were a need to launch the prototype a second time immediately, which, thank God, there wasn’t, and the servos didn’t. Tired, now, just tired. The carrier pulsed down to system speeds, and announced a reposition on a new vector. Slow as humans lived, now, Dekker supposed, but things were moving faster than he could track or understand—