Nicole nodded assent and started up from her seat, but a raised hand from Hobby sat her back down again.
“Not quite finished, Nicole.”
“I was afraid of that, sir.”
“Tom, if you’ll excuse us, I’m afraid this discussion is confidential.”
“Understood, Captain. See you later, Nikki.”
Hana rolled her eyes; she liked the nickname as little as Nicole herself did and radiated a lot less tolerance for Pasqua’s frequent use of it. The man simply refused to take the hint.
After the Commander’s exit, Hobby activated the security screen to isolate the room.
“I understand your ambivalence, Major.”
“Sort of hard, Captain, to work with someone who’s tried to kill you.”
“Dr. Murai,” and he offered Hana a look to give due emphasis to his words, “without the deal Judith Canfield cut with Ms. Cobri, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all. She gave her word. By extension, so did the pair of you.”
“We’ve been busy, sir.”
“I know, Nicole. I’m responsible for a fair measure of that. But none of us can stall any longer. Ms. Cobri’s played the game as well—with a lot more grace than I’d been led to expect from her—however, she’s not about to be put off any longer, either. I have a formal request to initiate work on the active phase of Lamplighter, and I haven’t a blessed reason to deny it.”
“How ’bout she’s psychotic?”
“Hana!” Nicole snapped. “Give it a rest!”
“She passed a class-one astronaut’s physical,” Hobby told them pointedly, “including a psychological evaluation, both Earthside and here aboard ship. She’s as qualified to be here, on those grounds, as the pair of you. And, I might add, she isn’t the one who spends an hour or more a night jogging around the circumference of this ship. Or the one who watches her go and sits up worried sick until she comes home.”
There was a long and awkward silence, neither woman willing to be the first to break it.
“I appreciate you’re only human,” Hobby continued finally, “we all have problems, some great, some small, welcome to the club. And I appreciate that whatever is concerning you is having a negligible impact on your professional performance. But the pair of you also occupy a fairly sensitive position, both on this ship and in NASA itself, and I’m afraid that makes you somewhat special cases. You’re more under a microscope than most, sad but true; on the other hand, you get cut a fair degree of slack as a result. In this instance, ladies, that slack’s run out.
“Schedule a start-up meeting with Ms. Cobri and Colonel Sheridan. I’d like a progress report within forty-eight hours and a viable schedule before planetfall. Clear?”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Nicole rose.
“Then we’re adjourned.”
As they emerged onto the Bridge, Nicole tried a joke to mask her flash of apprehension. “Ah well,” she sighed, “I was hoping if we simply ignored her, she’d forget all about us.”
“That’ll be the day.”
Nicole looked at her friend. “You were awfully quiet in there.”
“Nothing to say.”
“Oh.”
“Look,” Hana grumbled in exasperation, “sometimes this ‘Big Brother’ side of the job gets to me. Being under perpetual surveillance makes me hinky.”
“On a flight, we’re always part of a telemetry stream; that comes with the territory, has from the start.”
“I’m not a complete dim, Nicole, I know that. In-System, though, you’re talking about a half dozen, maybe a dozen people in the crew; the... intimacy makes it easier to take, because everyone’s in everyone else’s face. And after the first few days, you forget about the data link with DaVinci. They’re sort of too far away to matter. This bucket, though, it’s so damn big! Someone’s always peeking, only I never know who.”
“I think I know the feeling.”
Hana bridled visibly. “I worry about you, okay? But more often than not you’re so damn solitary! Bad enough that makes it pretty near impossible for people to offer help, you don’t offer a whole helluva lot of encouragement when it’s needed in return.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the rocket jock, figure it out.”
Hana turned on her heel and strode away so suddenly that Nicole had to sprint to catch her. Her pager beeped, but she ignored it.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded, refusing to back off as Hana shook her arm loose of Nicole’s grasp.
“A great many things, my friend. And not all of them can be addressed by a belated acknowledgment of concern, no matter how heartfelt.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you mean that. I know you care. When you’re reminded. It doesn’t help.” Suddenly Nicole felt as cut off from Hana as she was from the Hal, and as equally unsure of the reasons for it.
“Look,” Hana said brusquely, seeking refuge for the both of them in a change of subject, “about the C3 glitch.”
“You still think there’s a problem.”
“Just as much as you, I’ll bet.”
Nicole shrugged and shook her head. “All I’ve got to go on are instincts, which I’m not sure I trust anymore.”
“If that’s the case, we may be well and truly doomed.” Nicole looked up sharply. “I’ve seen you operate, Ace. I’ll go with your instincts over the empirical data more often than not. Especially when the data’s bogus.”
“You got proof?”
“Instincts of my own. Plus a small advantage: I wrote a fair chunk of the software. Something about the program doesn’t feel right, but it’s going to take a while to be sure.”
“Be careful,” Nicole said.
“Always.”
“I’m serious. Assume your suspicions are justified, Hana; consider the implications. If there’s a flaw, it has to be in the archival files as well or in the diagnostics software. That makes it real unlikely that it exists by accident—shit!”
The pager had begun warbling a continuous peremptory summons that would not be denied. Whoever wanted her was serious. Nicole cast about for a WallCom station and accessed the message. When she turned back towards Hana, she didn’t bother hiding her anger.
“We’re wanted back at our quarters,” she said flatly. “There’s trouble.”
“Now this is cute,” Hana noted dryly as they surveyed the damage.
Someone had been busy with a few cans of spray paint. Multicolored block lettering, cast at an angle across the doorway, big and garishly bright enough to be as impossible to ignore as easy to read.
The Cathouse.
“Did they get inside,” Nicole asked the woman who was waiting for them.
“Didn’t bother to try,” was her reply as she held out her hand. “I’m Rose Guthrie,” she said, “Chief of Security.” She didn’t much look the part, standing a full head shorter than Nicole and Hana, which made her pretty much average height. She had a trim figure, cast along the lines of a ballroom dancer. Wheat-colored hair and dark hazel eyes on an oval face that still retained much of the prettiness of youth. She was in Navy khaki, but she wore a skirt instead of trousers—a rare exception in the blue water fleet and far more so in space—with the silver leaves of a full Commander on her shirt collar. The ready smile was genuine, but her gaze was the true measure of the woman; it missed nothing.
“Only the doorway was tagged,” she continued. Square-cut nails and a firm grip, a woman who balanced appearance with the practical necessities of the job. Nicole suspected that more than one person was so taken in by the “Mom” facade that they missed the cop underneath. “And only your doorway. They left the Hal entrance alone.”
“So what comes next,” Hana wondered aloud. “You round up the ‘usual suspects’?”
Rose grinned. “No need. We got who did it.”
“Anyone we know,” asked Hana.
“Not one of my division,” from Nicole, as Rose led them along.
“N
o, and not quite,” they were told.
“Don’t take offense,” Hana said, “but you don’t come across much like the other naval types.”
That got them a laugh, unrestrained but still ladylike.
“Perish the thought. I’m a Marshal. What you got here is a small town, what you need to keep the peace is a Sheriff. They got the Marine detachment for busting ass in combat.”
“Is there really that much need?”
“You take the world into space, Major, you take its problems with. But while you can haul some Seaman Striker up before the Captain’s Mast for discipline, or convene a general court-martial, the same doesn’t necessarily apply for that same Seaman’s”—she shouldered open the entrance to a Security substation, in effect the local precinct—“fourteen-year-old kid.”
He was skinny and scared, growing faster than his clothes could keep up—even if they were the right size, he hadn’t time to get comfortable in them, any more than in his own skin. His hair was blacker than Hana’s, the color out of a can, parted to the side in the style of classic Japanese anime, so that it swept straight down to mask half his face to the chin. He was slumped over, hands and elbows on the table, as they entered the interrogation room, but as soon as he had an audience, he flipped his hair up and away and tilted back in his chair, the picture of total insolence.
“You got no right to hold me,” were the first words out of his mouth, with a sneer in place of outright profanity. “I didn’t do nothin’.”
Rose took a chair opposite and motioned for Nicole and Hana to join her. She was smiling, but there was nothing pleasant to her expression.
“Paint residue on your fingers,” she said.
“I was doin’ some decorating. I didn’t like the color the housebox came in. Figured I’d pretty it up, make it more a home. Got a problem with that?”
“You got some mouth, kid.”
“What, you didn’t hear of ‘Freedom of Speech’? First Amendment to the Constitution, go look it up. Figure this stupid ship’s named after the fuckin’ thing, oughta have some respect for it.”
“We have you on tape,” Rose said.
“Bullshit.”
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot, you disabled the ScanCams for that entire subsector. Nice piece of engineering. Unfortunately, not quite as comprehensive a job as you may have assumed.”
“So, what, I haveta scrub it clean?”
“That an admission of guilt?”
He twisted in his chair, body language striking resonant chords in Nicole of how Amy Cobri still occasionally behaved. He plucked a cigarette pack from under his vest.
“You light it,” Rose said quietly, “you eat it. Hot.”
This time, he paid attention. He started to put the pack away, but Rose snapped her fingers. His lips pursed, he looked ready to argue the point, but then thought better of it and threw the cigarettes across the table. Another snap and the lighter followed.
“I know you,” Nicole said, having snuck a glance at the boy’s file on the DataPad in front of Rose. “Your father’s in my division.”
The boy said nothing, his sole acknowledgment a slow blink of the eyes. Nicole felt her arm tingle and flexed the fingers of her right hand to bleed off some tension. Problem for her was, she’d much rather do it by punching the kid in the face.
“He’s got a good record,” she said, pulling the information from her own memory, “but this is his first ops on the Tachyon Highway. You want to mess it up for him.”
“He lives his life, I live mine.”
“Listen to the Major,” Rose said, “cause she’s being nice and cutting you some major slack. Right now, sonny, what’s saving your skinny pale ass is your old man. We’re tryin’—real hard—to keep the sins of the child from being visited on the parent. But if you want to cut yourself loose”—and the smile she gave him this time was purely predatory—“fine with me.”
He was sweating now, little beads on his forehead and upper lip, as he bounced his eyes from one to the other of the three women across from him.
“Hey. It wasn’t any federal crime or nothin’, it was just a ‘tag.’ ”
“We’ll talk about that in a minute. You bounced the ScanCams off-line. It was very nice work. Those systems are there for a purpose. You do them harm, you do the ship harm, you put lives at risk. That’s a Federal offense. You want to think different, we’ll find you a nice little compartment up-top and open a door to outside, see how you like it when you’re screaming for help into an inactive screen.”
“It was a joke!” He was whining. If anything, Rose’s smile got even more dangerous.
“That’s why we’re having this little talk, Louis. To establish ground rules as to what is and is not funny. Or acceptable.
“You got a problem with girls?” she asked, abruptly changing tack.
“Hey,” he said dismissively, clearly not.
“How about with lady officers? Maybe you, maybe your old man, you still figure they got no rightful place in the Navy, or space, or whatever?”
“Hey!” Again, from tone and gesture, clearly not. He could see where this was going, though, and he didn’t like it.
“How about the Hal?”
“Hey!” A clear protestation. “Don’t I get a lawyer or nothin’? Or a lousy phone call?”
“You haven’t been charged, Louis, we’re just having ourselves a friendly little talk.”
“So I’m free to go then, right?”
“You want to make this official, Louis?”
“I got zip against the Fuzzies, okay? I never even met any of ’em. Christ, gimme a break.”
“Just Major Shea, then?”
“Hey. There’s talk, y’know?”
“What kind?” Nicole asked.
The boy shrugged. “Talk,” he said, as if the single word explained everything. “Y’know, ’bout how you’re a Fuzzy in all but fur.”
The interview didn’t last much longer. It was all recorded but because the boy hadn’t been charged, or even read his Miranda rights, none of it was official. Putting him in the brig wouldn’t accomplish much at this stage, Rose told them, better to try to warn him off and hope he’d learn from the experience.
“Nice attitude,” said Hana. “The boy, I mean.”
Rose shrugged. “Surely it’s one you’ve heard before.”
“Not really,” Nicole confessed. “Not that much.”
“The virtues,” Hana said, “of the monastic life at Edwards. Folks there know you, know the Hal, they have what we’d consider the ‘right’ perspective.”
“You saying you have heard it?”
“In bars. Bull sessions. The Moon. The Belt. Where who we are, you and me, and what we did is more story than truth.”
“And you know kids,” Rose said, expanding on Hana’s comment, “always go for the jugular, especially when you’re dissing somebody. Louis may not even believe most of what he said, it’s simply what would get the biggest rise out of you.”
“So what’s the next step,” and then, Nicole answered her own question. “Talk to the father, I suppose.”
“You and me both,” agreed Rose. “This ship isn’t a playground. And the next time, his targets might not be so forgiving. He’d better realize I wasn’t altogether kidding. This is a closed social system. Problems can’t be exiled to prison. Unfortunately, they can be disposed of. I don’t want that kid, or his old man, or anybody, to find themselves breathing vacuum.
“We’ll hold him overnight, to give him a taste of what’s in store for him if we ever have to get ‘official,’ then send him over first thing tomorrow to clean up his mess.”
Nicole nodded.
Hana didn’t want to go straight home, however, striking a path instead towards the starship’s equator and the hangar bay where the Swiftstar was parked.
Before boarding, Hana pulled all the umbilicals that plugged the spaceplane into the Constitution’s power and life-support grid. Then, as Nicole settled herself on the fl
ight deck, she sealed the hatch behind them. Nicole thought the precautions were a little extreme, but kept those feelings to herself.
“This is not good,” Hana said finally, sitting herself across the aisle from Nicole after plugging her PortaComp into the adjacent console and scanning a page of data.
“It’s a kid with an overabundance of attitude and hormones, Hana, not a federal case.”
“Nicole,” and she took a breath to master herself. “Nicole, I’ve been on the Frontier these past five years. Trust me, it’s different from Earth. From the Stations. From Da Vinci,” this last referring to the primary starport, and Manned Space headquarters, on the Moon. “There is fear. There is a lack of trust. There is hatred. Earth First is an extreme, but that kid’s tag is partly where it starts. As far as we’re concerned, our specific situation,” she went on, “I know three people on this globe well enough to trust implicitly—myself, you, and Ramsey Sheridan.”
“Go on,” Nicole prompted, when Hana fell silent.
“The probability is that I’m simply being paranoid—believe me, I know how weird this all looks, the way I’m behaving here—but the fact is we’re a long way from home, aboard a ship where we pretty much don’t know a soul. And I mean know, Nicole, as in you’d bet your life on them without a second thought, the way we both would with each other or Andrei or Ben Ciari.
“Part and parcel of the ambush on the Swift was an attack through the C3 software. Not the on-board programs, mind you, but their mainframe counterparts on Sutherland and Da Vinci. We were totally incommunicado with those on whom we depended most. Now, those nexuses are supposed to be inviolable. Only somebody got to them, with a target-specific routine so well masked that the only reason it was spotted at all was because we survived. Constitution could hear us fine, along with a half-dozen other ships in local space, plus Hightower and Hawking,” Earth’s two L-5 colonies. “We even got picked up by a ham operator on Mars, for Heaven’s sake! But not the Moon and not Sutherland. To me, that betokens a capability as formidable as the fighters.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, Ace.”
Sundowner Page 17
