Devil to the Belt (v1.1)

by C. J. Cherryh

  Caught Meg’s attention, quick concerned look. He shied away from it, hooked onto the handline and heard Ben and Sal exit behind him. He logged the tape out on the console, teeth clenched against the bitter cold.

  “Cher,” Meg said, gently, hovering at his shoulder, trying for a look at him or from him, he wasn’t sure and he wasn’t coping with that right now.

  “We’ll get it,” Sal said. “Sorry, Dek.”

  They were trying to apologize to him. Hell.

  He started to shiver. Maybe they could see it. Maybe they were realizing how incredibly badly he’d screwed that move—or would figure it once their nerves settled. He didn’t know how much to tell them, didn’t want to act like an ass, but he couldn’t put his thoughts together—he just grabbed onto the handline and headed off down the tube, not fast, but first, so he didn’t have to see their faces.

  He heard Ben say, “Damn temper of his. Break his neck, I’d like to.”

  “Hey,” Meg said, then, “we screwed up, all right? We screwed it, we screwed him up, he’s got a right.”

  He wanted to tell Meg no; and he wanted to believe that was the answer; but he couldn’t. He handed off at the lift, waited for them.

  Sal said, “Dek, we’ll get it. Trez bitch, that machine. But we’ll get it, no problem.”

  “Yeah.” First word he’d been able to get out. He punched the lift for exit level, snatched back a shaking hand toward his pocket.

  Meg was looking at him, they all were, and he didn’t want to meet their eyes. He stared at the lift controls instead, watched the buttons light, listened to the quiet around him, just the lift thumping on the pressure seals.

  “So?” Tanzer asked, on the phone; “Does this mean a runaround or does it mean you’ve found an answer to my question?”

  “There is an answer, colonel. Negative. The orders come from outside this base. We cannot change policy.”

  “Policy, is it? Policy? Is that what we call it now, when nobody at this base can answer questions? What do you know, lieutenant? Anything?”

  Graff censored what he knew, and what he thought, and said quietly, “I repeat, I’ve relayed your objections. They’ve been rejected. That’s the answer I have to convey, colonel, I’m sorry.”

  “Damn you,” Tanzer said, and hung up.

  He hung up. He sat for a long few moments with his hands folded in front of his lips and tried to think reasonably. No, he could not call the captain. FleetCom went through Porey now. No, he would not go running to his crew—and maybe that was pride and maybe it was distrust of his own reasoning at the moment. He was not command track. He was not in charge of policy. He was not in authority over this base, not in authority over strategy, and not in the decision loop that included the captain, who somehow, in some degree, had to know what was going on here—at least so far as Demas and Saito had said: they’d warned Keu, they’d pleaded with him, and Keu—had refused to rein Mazian back, had let Mazian make his promises and his assignments.

  So what was there to say? The captain had refused to disapprove Porey’s command. The captain had refused Demas, refused Saito... who was he, to move Keu to do anything? Perhaps the captain was more farsighted, or more objective, or better informed.

  Or more indifferent.

  Porey was aware of Dekker’s problem? And Porey shoved Dekker and a novice crew toward mission prep?

  Bloody damned hell

  “You blew it,” Porey said.

  “Yessir,” Dekker said on a breath. “No excuses.”

  “ ‘No excuses.’ I told you I wouldn’t hear excuses, and I wouldn’t hear ‘sorry.’ You’re the pilot, you had the say, if you weren’t ready you had no mortal business taking them in there.”

  “Yessir.”

  Porey’s hand came down on the desk. He jumped.

  “Nerves, Mr. Dekker. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Get my head straight, sir.”

  Second blow of Porey’s hand. “You’re a damned expensive failure, you know that?”

  You didn’t argue with Porey. The lieutenant had warned him. But too damned many people had told him that.

  “I’m not a failure, sir.”

  “Was that a success? Was taking trainees into that sim and screwing them up a success?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Nothing’s the matter with you physically. The meds found nothing wrong with you. It’s in your head, Dekker. What did you claim after Wilhelmsen cracked up? That you knew better? Do you still know better?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Can you do the run he did?”

  “Yessir.”

  “You’re no use to me screwed up, you are no damned use, mister. I’ve got other crews. I’ve got other pilots. And let me tell you, if you don’t straighten yourself out damned fast, we’ve got one more way to salvage you. We’ve got one more tape we can use, which I haven’t, because you said you were better, because the techs said untrained personnel were better on tape, but if you’re no other good to anyone, Dekker, then we might just as well put you right down in that lab and input what might improve your performance. You know what I’m talking about?”

  He guessed. He managed to say, “Yessir.”

  “I’ll make a promise to you, Dekker. You’ve got one week. I’m not restricting you, you can do any damned thing you want, I don’t give a damn for the regulations, for the schedule, for whatever you want to do. You’ve got carte blanche for one week. But if you don’t pull those sim scores right back where you were before your ‘accident,’ then we put you into lab, input Wilhelmsen’s tape into your head, and see if it improves your performance. You understand that?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Are you clear on that?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Then get the hell out of here and do it, Dekker, while the labs try to straighten out the damage you’ve done to your crew. I don’t want to see your face right now. I don’t know if I want to see it again.”

  CHAPTER 14

  SEQ. 285MII. Dekker, Paul F. Authorized. He waited, clinging to the line, felt like a fool inputting the card and checking the tape serial number on the display for the second time, but the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach refused to go away, and nothing seemed right, or sure enough.

  Couldn’t remember if he’d done it. Things he’d done weren’t registering. He was thinking on things other than here and now and the number didn’t damn matter. There wasn’t a training tape he couldn’t handle.

  Come apart on an orientation run, for God’s sake? Their input couldn’t have overridden his displays if he hadn’t let it, and they were apologizing to him for screwing up? If he was glitching on their input, he could have spared a hand to shut them out. He could have let go the damned yoke and recovered it at leisure. The number one sim was a walk down the dock if you didn’t seize up like a fool—

  Muscle spasm. Point zero five second bobble—not wide enough to invoke the braces or trigger an abort on a sleeper run like that; and he’d spaced on it—in that five-hundredth second, he’d been in the Belt, he’d been back at Sol, he’d been with Pete and the guys and lost with Cory—God only where his head had been but he hadn’t known his next move. He’d blanked on it, without reason, without warning.

  Pod drifted up, opened for him. He grasped the handholds and slid into the dark inside—respiration rate coming up. Sweat starting. He could feel it on his face, feel it crawling under the flightsuit as he prepped the boards. Belts, confirm. Power up, confirm. Single occupant, tape 23b, Dekker, P, all confirm.

  He adjusted the helmet. The dark and the glowing lights held a surreal familiarity. It was no time. It was every time.

  Some drugs came back on you, wasn’t that the case?

  But the guys weren’t with him now. If he screwed it he screwed it by himself. Wasn’t going to let them do to him what they’d done to Meg and Ben and Sal, wasn’t going to take that damned tape—

  No.

  “Dekker.”

 
Sim chief again.

  “Dekker, you want to stand down for an hour?”

  Didn’t like their telemetry. Picking up his heartbeat.

  “No. I’m all right.”

  “Dekker.”

  Series of breaths. “Porey’s orders. Free ticket. I’m all right, let it go.”

  Seemed like forever that light stayed red.

  They had guys over in hospital that couldn’t walk straight, that never would fly again...

  Had guys in the mental ward...

  Sim chief was probably checking with Porey’s office.

  Calm the breathing down.

  Light went from red to green.

  Punch it in.

  GO!

  “Dek,” it was, “how’d the run go?” and “Dek, you all right?”

  He winced, shrugged, said, Fine, working on it.

  And stopped the lift on three-deck, made it as far as the nearest restroom and threw up non-stop.

  From Meg, back in barracks, a shake at his shoulder: “Dek, cher. Wake up. Mess call. You coming? You’d better come.”

  He hauled himself out of half-sleep and off the bunk, wobbled into the bathroom to pop an antacid—the meds didn’t restrict those, thank God—-and to scrub normal color into his face. He walked out again to go with Meg, navigated ordinary space, trying not to see the glowing lines and dark, not to hear the mags or feel the destabilizing jolts of thrust.

  Familiar walls, posters, game tables, drift of guys out to the hall. Ben and Sal gave them a: Come on, you’re late, and he wondered suddenly where this hall was, or why he should stay in it, when there were so many other like places he could be—spaced, he told himself, sane people didn’t ask themselves questions like that, sane people didn’t see the dark in the light...

  “Hey, Dek, you all right?”

  Mason. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Hand on his shoulder. Guys passed them in the hall.

  “He all right?” Sal asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. Somehow he kept walking as far as the messhall, couldn’t face the line. “I’m just after coffee, all right? I’m not hungry.”

  They objected, Meg said she was getting him a hamburger and fries, and the sumbitch meds and dieticians would log it to her, the way they did every sneeze in this place, maybe screw up her medical records. He waved the offer off, went over to the coffee machine and carded in.

  Nothing made sense to him. Everything was fractured. He was making mistakes. He’d glitched the target calls right and left this morning.

  It had been this morning. It had to have been this morning... but he’d run it so many times...

  He walked back toward the tables, stood out of the traffic and muttered answers to people who talked to him, not registering it, not caring. People came and went. He remembered the coffee in his hand and drank it. Eventually Meg and Sal came out of the line, so did Ben, and gathered him up.

  Meg had the extra hamburger. “You’re eating,” she said. “You want the meds coming after you?”

  He didn’t. He took it, unwrapped it, and Ben hit him in the ribs. “Pay attention, Dek-boy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Huh,” Ben echoed. “Salt. Pass the salt. God. You are a case today.”

  “Thinking,” he said.

  Ben gave him a look, a shrug in his direction. “He’s thinking. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”

  “Ben,” Meg said.

  “Dekker. Pass the damn salt.”

  “Shit!” Wasn’t approved com, the sojer-lads got upset, but she was upset, so what?

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” the examiner said. “You’re doing fine, Kady.”

  “Tell me fine, I screwed my dock...”

  You couldn’t flap the voice. “It gets harder, Kady. That’s the object. Let’s not get overconfident, shall we?”

  “Overconfident, my—” She was shaking like a leaf.

  Different voice. Deep as bone. “You shoved a screen in over your pilot’s priority. Did your pilot authorize that?”

  Hell, she wasn’t in a mood for games. She thought she knew that voice. It wasn’t the examiner.

  “Kady?”

  “Had to know,” she muttered. Hell, she was right, she’d done the right thing.

  “Not regulation, Kady.”

  Screw the regs, she’d say. But she did know the voice. There weren’t two like it.

  “Yessir,” she said meekly, to no-face and no-voice. Dark, that was all. Just the few yellow lights on the V-HUD and the boards, system stand-down.

  “You think you can make a call like that, Kady?”

  Shit. “Yessir.”

  Silence then. A long silence. She waited to be told she was an ass and an incompetent. She flexed her hands, expecting God only—they sometimes started sim on you without warning.

  Then the examiner’s quiet voice said—she wasn’t even sure now it was alive—

  “Let’s go on that again, Kady.”

  She couldn’t stand it. “Was I right?”

  “Your judgment was correct, Kady.”

  “Ms. Dekker, do you have proof of your allegations?”

  “Talk to my lawyer.”

  “Is it true your son is in a top secret Fleet project?”

  “I don’t know where he is. He doesn’t write and I don’t give a damn.”

  “How do you feel about Ms. Salazar’s allegations—”

  More and more of it. A Paris news service ran a clip on Paul Dekker that went back into juvenile court records and fee other services pounced on it with enigmatic references to ‘an outstanding warrant for his arrest’ and his ‘work inside a top-secret Fleet installation.’

  Graff punched the button to stop the tape, stared at the blank screen while Demas hovered. FSO had sent their answer Regarding your 198-92, Negative. Meaning they’d turned up nothing they cared to say on the case—at least nothing they trusted to FleetCom—or him.

  “Influence-trading,” Demas said. “Scandals of the rich. Young lovers. Salazar and her money against the peacers. The public’s fascinated.”

  The Fleet didn’t need this. He didn’t. Dekker certainly didn’t. A bomb threat involving Salazar’s plane, the peacers denying responsibility, the European Police Agency finding a confidential report in the hands of the news services. Rode the news reports outside Sol Two almost as hot and heavy as the Amsterdam Tunnel collapse.

  While Demas and Saito only said, Hold on, Helm. Hold on. Don’t make a problem, the captain doesn’t need a problem.

  “I honestly,” Demas said, “don’t think Dekker needs to see this particular broadcast, regardless of any promises.”

  “She’s never called him. Never returned the call.”

  “Lawyers may have advised against. I’d advise against. Personally, J-G.”

  “I knew you would.”

  “So you didn’t ask.”

  “I don’t know Earth. Now I wonder if I even know Dekker. He’s never asked me, either—whether there was word.”

  Light and dark. The AI substituted its interlink for crew, he was fine till the randoms popped up, till he saw the wicket he had to make and the pod reacted—bobble and reposition, reposition, reposition—

  Fuckin’ hell

  Screwed it, screwed it—screwed that one—redlight—

  You’re hit. Keep going. Don’t think about it.

  Chest hurt, knees hurt, right arm was numb. Damn hour and five sim and he was falling apart—

  Made Five. Lost one.

  Randoms again, five minutes down. God, a chaff round....

  Blinked sweat. Tasted it. Hate the damn randoms, hate the bastards, hate the Company, dammit—

  Overcorrection. Muscles were tired, starting to spasm, God, where was the end of this run?

  Couldn’t hold it. HUD was out, the place was black and blacker—

  “Dek, Dek, wake up,” from the other side of the door and Ben, with the territory behind his eyes all full of red and gold and green lines and red and yellow d
ots, hoped Meg would just put a pillow over the sumbitch’s face. Beside him. Sal moved faintly.

  “Dek!”

  “Shit,” Sal moaned, and elbowed him in a muzzy catch after balance.

  “Dek? Come out of it.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Ben muttered, felt a knee drop into the cold air outside the covers and set a foot on the floor, hauled himself to his feet and banged into the chair by the bed.

  “Ben?” Sal murmured, but the blow to the hip did it. He shoved the door open into the dark next door and snarled, “Dekker!”

  Dekker made a sound, Meg gave a sharp grunt above a crack of flesh and bone meeting. The son of a bitch had got her.

  “Dekker!” He shoved past a smooth female body to get a shove of his own in, got a grip and held it. “Dekker, dammit, you want to take a cold walk?”

  Same as he’d yelled at Dekker on the ship, when Dekker got crazy. He had one hand planted against a heaving, sweating chest, right about the throat, and Meg had cleared back, gotten to the light switch. He couldn’t see anything but a blur, and he didn’t let up the pressure—if Dekker moved to hit him Dekker was going to be counting stars, he had his mind made up to that. Dekker was gasping for breath—eyes open now.

  “Spooks again,” Meg panted.

  “I’ll say it’s spooks, this is the damn spook! I dunno why yon sleep with him.”

  The inside door opened and Sal came in at the periphery of his vision. He heard Meg saying, “It’s all right, it’s just surface,” and kept his own hold on the lunatic, who still looked spaced and shocky. Dekker’s heart was going hard, felt like detonations under his hand. Dekker’s eyes had lost their glaze, started tracking around him.

  Drifted back again, looked halfway cognizant.

  “Let up,” Dekker said.

  He thought about that. He thought about Meg saying for the last damn week Dekker was just confused, and Sal saying back off and give him some space. While Dekker kept a sim schedule the other crews were talking about. He gave Dekker a shove in the chest. Hard.