Heavy Time

CHAPTER 19

HE wasn’t doing a damn thing,“ Ben said—there was blood all over him and Sal, blood dried on his own hands, Dekker saw, Bird’s, Meg’s, he had no idea. There was too much of it.

“Nothing?” the officer asked.

“Cops had me, dammit, he didn’t need to be there, he wasn’t doing a damn thing, just objected to them grabbing me, and some fool—just—pulled a trigger.”

Dekker stared at the backs of his hands, seeing what he hadn’t been there to see. Seeing Meg in the lift, holding on to Bird.

Sal said, “I saw it. They were arming guys straight off leave, some of them still higher than company corruption: green kids, didn’t know shit what they were doing.”

“It was a soldier.”

“Damn right it was a soldier. Marine. Couldn’t have been twenty.”

The Hamilton’s purser clicked off the recorder. “We’ve got that. We’ll send it before we make our burn.”

Dekker said: “How is the fuel situation?”

“Not optimum,” the purser said.

“Shit.” Sal shook her head. The purser left. Ben didn’t say anything, just got a long breath and clasped his hands between his knees.

It was as much information as they’d gotten. The same information as they’d gotten since they’d come aboard. Hadn’t seen Sammy—Sammy had gone offshift, probably in his own bunk asleep or tranked out if he hadn’t gotten the news yet. Sammy—Ford was his last name—had been fairly well shaken up, hadn’t asked for the position he’d been handed—the situation at the dock had gone to hell, the shuttle crew hadn’t answered, the 8-deck group hadn’t answered, they’d suspected their com was being monitored: Mitch had gone next door to use the restaurant’s phone to get contact with his crew and hadn’t come back, arrested or worse, they still hadn’t found out. Sammy wasn’t flight ops, he was the legal affairs liaison, a Shepherd negotiator, for God’s sake, who’d come aboard R2 to deal with management, if the plan had gone right, if the soldiers hadn’t come in…

Sammy’d done all right, Dekker decided. All right, for a guy who’d probably never gotten his hands dirty. Had to tell Meg when she came to. She’d get a laugh out of it.

Another officer, this one straight past them, where they waited in the tight confines of the medstation. Right into the surgery.

Angry voice beyond the door, an answer of some kind.

“Think they’ve got a hurry-up,” Sal muttered.

More voices. Something about paralysis and another thirty minutes. Voice saying, quite clearly, “… doesn’t do her any good if she’s dead, Hank, we haven’t got your thirty minutes. Get your patient prepped, we’re moving.”

Man came back through the door then, looked at them, said, more quietly, “We’ve got your ship free, we’ve got a positional problem and we’re doing a correction burn, about as fast as the EV-team can get in and I can get up to the bridge. Best we can do. You’ve got belts there. Use them. Staff’s got take-holds.”

Bad, then. Dekker clamped his jaw and reached for the belt housed in the side of the seat as Sal and Ben did the same. The officer was out the door and gone.

“Shit-all,” Ben muttered. His hands were shaking. Sal’s were clenched in her lap.

They were in trouble. No question. Headed into the Well, nobody had to say it. “Positional problem” on a Jupiter-bound vector meant only one thing, and a hurry-up like that meant they were on their own, no beam, just the fuel they had left—which wasn’t a big argument against the Well’s gravity slope.

Way Out’s whole mass had had to go—that had been his decision: save Hamilton the fuel hauling it, keep Trinidad’s manipulator arm from shearing off at the bolts, or maybe taking the bulkhead with it: but that fuel in Trinidad’s tanks had been a big load—big load, on those bolts. He’d made a split-second judgment call, last move he’d made before he’d gone out. Maybe opening that valve had saved their lives. If that bulkhead had gone they’d have decompressed; but an uncalc’ed mass attached to Hamilton, three-quarters of it dumped without warning a few seconds into the burn… hadn’t helped their situation. Computers had recomped. But their center of mass had changed twice in that accel; and when the arm gearing had fractured—they’d had to lase through the tether ring—they must have swung flat against Hamilton’s frame and that would have changed it again. He’d gone out by the time that had happened. Didn’t know how long they’d pushed, but with a warship moving on them, they’d had to give it a clear choice between chasing them or dealing with R2.

Hamilton crew couldn’t be real damn happy with their passengers right now.

The lock hydraulics cycled and stopped. A siren shrieked. A recorded voice said: Take Hold Immediately.

“All hands prepare for course correction burn. Mark. Repeat—”

“The Bitch won’t give em a beam, Sal muttered, teeth chattering as she checked her belt. ”The Bitch is damn well hoping we’ll all take the deep one. Won’t lift a finger.“

“We’re going to be all right,” he said.

“‘Going to be all right,’” Ben said. “‘Going to be all right.’ You know if you weren’t a damn spook Bird’d be alive. Meg wouldn’t be in there. We wouldn’t be where we are. This whole damn mess is your fault.”

“Yeah,” he said, on a deep breath. “I know that.”

“His damn fault, too,” Ben muttered. “They weren’t after him, they didn’t know who the hell he was. He was clear, damn him, he was clear. I don’t know what he did it for.”

Engines fired. Hamilton threw everything she had into her try at skimming the Well.

He thought, I could just have pulled us off and out. Didn’t have to go to the Hamilton. Wasn’t thinking of anything else.

They’d have picked us up. But the shooting would have stopped by then. And we wouldn’t be in this mess. Ben’s right.

“Didn’t make sense,” Ben said. “Damn him, he never did make sense…”

Somebody had started shooting. The police swore they were military rounds, and Crayton’s office wanted that information released immediately.

The statement from Crayton’s office said: . . greatly regrets the loss of life…

Morris Bird was a name Payne fervently wished he’d never heard. Thirty-year veteran, oldest miner in the Belt, involved with Pratt and Marks, and popular on the ’deck—a damn martyr was what they had. Somebody had sprayed BIRD in red paint all along a stretch of 3-deck. BIRD was turning up scratched in paint on 8, and they didn’t need any other word. The hospital was bedding down wounded in the halls, a file named DEKKER was proliferating into places they still hadn’t found and the Shepherd net was broadcasting its own news releases, calling for EC intervention and demanding the resignation of the board and the suspension of martial law.

Now it was vid transmission—a Shepherd captain explaining how the miner ship Trinidad had made a run for the Hamilton—more names he’d heard all too much about. A pilot who’d had his license pulled as impaired. A crew who’d been with Bird when the shooting happened. The story was growing by the minute—acquiring stranger and stranger angles, and N & E couldn’t get ahead of them by any small measures.

…A spokesman for the company has expressed relief at the safe recovery of the Trinidad and all aboard. The same source has strongly condemned the use of deadly force against unarmed demonstrators and promises a thorough…

The door opened. He blinked, looking at rifles, at two blue-uniformed marines. At a third, who followed them in, and said, “William Payne? This office is under UDC authority, under emergency provisions of the Defense Act, Section 18, Article 2.”

He looked at the rifles, looked at the officer. Tried to think of right procedures. “I need to contact the head office.”

“Go right ahead, Mr. Payne.”

He doubted his safety to do that. He hesitated at picking up the phone, hesitated at pushing the button. “This is Administration I’m calling. Do you want to be sure of that?”

“Check it out wherever you like, Mr. Payne. Your computer will give you an explanation. Go ahead. Access Administration.”

He took a breath, touched keys, windowed up Executive Access.

It said, Earth Company Executive Order…

It said Charter Provision 28, and Defense Act, Section 18, Article 2.

“We have a press release for you, Mr. Payne.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. No questions. No hesitations. He reached for the datacard the officer put on his desk and put it into the comp.

It said: The UDC has assumed control of ASTEX operations. All workers, independent operators and contractors, and all ASTEX employees below management levels will be retained. President Towney is under arrest by civil warrant, charged with misappropriation of funds and tax evasion. Various members of the board are likewise under investigation by the EC. Residents who have information on such cases are directed to deliver that information to the military police, Access 14, on the system.

All residents who report to the UDC office on their decks will have their cards revalidated and will be passed without question or exception under a general amnesty for all non-executive personnel of R2.

The UDC will meet with delegations from the independents, the contractors, and civilian employees to discuss grievances…

“Hell of a mess,” Meg said, propped on pillows in the peculiar kind of g you got in small installations—still lightheaded, but the fingers could move in the cast, she’d tested that.

“Couldn’t tell you from the sheets when they brought you in.” Sal sat down carefully on the edge of the bed, reached out a dark hand and squeezed her good one. Skins brut sure didn’t match right now, Meg thought, seeing that combination, and then thought about Bird, left adrift in that lift-car. Hell of a thing to do. Bird had deserved better than that. But he’d always been a practical sumbitch, where it counted.

Water trickled from the corner of her left eye. Sal wiped it with her thumb.

“Hell,” she said, and tried to put her arm over her eyes, but every joint she owned was sprained. She blinked and drew a couple of breaths. “They get us out of the dive yet?”

Sal didn’t answer right off. Hadn’t, she thought. Welcome back, Kady. We’re still going to die.

Sal said, “We still got a little vector problem. Where’d you hear it?”

“Meds said. Thought I was out. Are we going in?”

Another hesitation. “Say we’re going in a lot slower. They’re having a discussion with the EC right now. Idea is, deploy the sail to half, see if we can get a line-up with the R2-23, just get a little different tack going.”

“That’d be nice.”

“Listen, ice-for-nerves, we got word the military’s taken over—got Towney under arrest—yeah. And the board. They’ll bring the beams up, they damn well have to. They’re talking deal with helldeck right now—they’re asking for Mitch and Persky and some of the guys to come and talk grievances—“

“It’s a trick.”

“They going to put so’jer-boys to picking rocks? Beaucou’ d’ luck, Kady. First tag they try they’ll be finding bits of some ship clear to Saturn.”

“They’ll deal. Maybe even get us our beam. Wouldn’t be surprised. But it won’t change, Aboujib. Won’t change.”

Sal didn’t say anything for a moment. And she was on a dive of her own. Wasn’t fair to Sal. Sal had real vivid nightmares about gravity wells.

She said to Sal, only bit of optimism she could come up with, “Won’t be Towney in charge, anyhow.”

“They’re sending out this EC manager. Meanwhile it’s the so’jers.”

Not good news for the guys on R2. Long time til the new manager got here. Meanwhile they were trying their best not to fall into the Well. She wondered how good their options were. Beams going up again, yeah, if the soldiers hadn’t some damn administrative mess-up that was going to wait on authorizations, or if it wasn’t just convenient to the EC to have them gone. Beside which, if they were talking about a bad line, and they were having to use R2-23, they evidently were in one of those vectors where getting a beam was a sincere bitch. R2-23 was a geosync. Geosyncs at the Well were a neverending problem, always screwed, Shepherds futzed them into line and refueled them with robot tugs, and hauled them out of the radiation intense area and fixed them when they’d gotten screwed beyond the usual—useful position, that particular beam, what odd times its computer wasn’t fried—

“Got two nice-looking guys want to see you,” Sal said, looking seriously fragile right now. Doing her best to be cheerful.

“Shit. I got any makeup on?”

“Forgot to pack,” Sal said, squeezed her shoulder and staggered off to the door—hadn’t got her ship-legs yet.

Neither had the boys. They looked like hell. Scrubbed up, at least. But limping and not walking real well, especially Ben. Good time to be horizontal, she decided, sore as she was—Hamilton was fair-sized, but her g differential still wanted to drop you on your ass, besides which your feet swelled til your body adapted. Went through it all again when you went stationside.

If they ever saw stationside again.

She patted the bedside. “Sit,” she said. They sat down very carefully, one on a side of the footboard.

“Hurt much?” Ben asked. Stupid question.

“I’ve had nicer times in bed. You all right?”

“Fine,” Dekker said. “We’re fine.”

“Yeah,” she said, surveying the bruises. “We’re a set, all right.”

Course correction put them in reach of R2-23, the message from Ops said. That’s their last serious option. Calculations extremely marginal even at this point. Situation with beam goes zero chance at 0828h. We checked out that cap and their fill, and the miner-crafts’ registered mass. Unless they got something from the remaining miner’s tanks, they have nothing left. Cap on Athens indicates zero chance intercept. Dumping the tugs didn’t do it. Athens would put itself in danger. We estimate their continuing on course is only for the negotiators. Our data appended.

Porey tapped the stylus on the desk, called up the figures, considered it, considered a communication from the meeting in the corporate HQ, typed a brief message. Tell their negotiators we’ve calc’ed Athens and the chances on the beam go neg at 0828. Tell them we’d be glad to provide them the figures and we’re standing by our offer.

No time for another cause with the miners. Or the Shepherds.

Good PR. Magnanimity. General amnesty, revalidate the cards, put Towney’s arrest on vid, get the beams up again and get the Hamilton out of its situation.

The minute the Shepherds came to terms.

Breakfast.

Marmalade. Dekker hadn’t tasted it since he was a kid—Ben and Sal never had. Meg said it brought back memories of her smuggling days.

“I used to run this stuff,” Meg said. “Course we’d lose a jar or two now and again.”

Sal made the sign for eavesdroppers, and Dekker felt it in his gut. But Meg said, “Hell, if they got time to worry about us—”

“Kind of sour,” Ben said. “Bitter. Not bad, though.”

“Ben, cher,” Sal said. “Learn to appreciate. Life’s ever-so prettier that way.”

“I appreciate it. It’s bitter. And sour. Isn’t it? What’s the matter with that?”

Meg rolled her eyes.

The door opened. Dekker turned his head.

Officer.

Breakfast stopped.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” the Shepherd said, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded. Afro, one-sided shave job, Shepherd tech insignia and a gold collar-clip on that expensive jacket that meant he was senior-tech-something. “Though you’d appreciate a briefing. We’ve got a rescue coming.”

Dekker replayed that a second. Maybe they all did.

Good news?

“Who?” Meg asked.

“That carrier. Moving like a bat.”

“Shee—” Meg held it.

Dekker thought, God, why? But he didn’t ask. He left that to Meg and Sal, who had the credit here—who weren’t the ones who’d put them in the mess they were in.

“Looks as if we’re getting out of this,” Meg said.

“God,” Ben said after a moment. No yelling and celebrating. You held it that long, doing business as usual as much as possible, and when you got good news you just didn’t know how to take it.

“Where’s the catch?” Sal asked. “They can just overtake and haul us out?”

“Thing was .75 our current v two minutes away from R2. They’re not wasting any time.”

Dekker did rough math in his head, thought—God. And us well onto the slope, as we have to be now—

“They’re talking deal,” the Shepherd said. “Seems the Fleet’s figured out they need us. Seems the Association’s said there’s no deal without the freerunners, they’re hanging on to that point—they’ve axed Towney, that’s certain now. Thought you’d want to know. —Mr. Dekker?”

“Sir.”

“The captain wants to see you.”

Another why? But maybe if they were out of their emergency stand-by… the captain wanted to make a serious point with the resident fool. He shrugged, looked back at Meg and Sal and Ben, with: “I’ll see you—” Meaning that they could think about later, and being alive day after tomorrow.

God, the shakes had gotten him, too—he didn’t figure what he was scared of now—a dressing-down by a Shepherd captain, good enough, he had it coming: or maybe it was suddenly having a future, in which he didn’t know what he was going to be doing hereafter. The Shepherd might take Meg and might take Sal—even Ben turned out to have a claim.

But him?

Credit with the Hamilton might be real scant about now. Trinidad was gone, likewise Way Out—nothing like Trinidad’s velocity when they’d dumped her, but not in R2’s near neighborhood by now, either, and on the same track. If she was catchable at all, the law made her somebody else’s salvage. He had the bank account—but God knew what shape that was in, or what kind of lawsuits might shape up against him—corp-rats were corp-rats, Meg would say, and he had no faith the EC was going to forget him and let him be. Not with people dead and the property damage.

It wasn’t a far walk to Sunderland’s office. The tech-chief showed him in—announced him to a gray-haired, frail-looking man, who offered his hand—not crew-type courtesies, Dekker thought. That in a strange way seemed ominous; Sunderland didn’t look angry, rather worn and worried and, by some strange impression, regretful.

That disturbed him too.

“Mr. Dekker. Coffee?”

“No, sir, thank you. I just had breakfast.”

“Good. you have an appetite—have a seat, there. —I confess mine hasn’t been much the last while.”

He made the chair, sank into it. “I know ‘sorry’ doesn’t cover it. I shouldn’t have dumped the tanks.”

“We wouldn’t have you if you hadn’t; bulkhead wouldn’t have stood it. Tried to tell you to do it. Don’t know if you heard.”

He shook his head. “No, sir.” And thought, Just not enough hands. Not enough time.

“Things were going pretty fast, weren’t they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Things have been going pretty hot and hard here, too. You know about the ship coming.”

“Yessir.” He felt light-headed—g difference. Sitting down and standing up could do that.

“Took some talking. But I didn’t seriously figure they were going to let us go down. The EC wouldn’t. R2-23 was an option—best we had without the EC’s help, I’m sure you were following that, and a couple of exotic, chancy possibilities that we really didn’t want to get down to, but when they called us this morning and told us the R2-23 computer was down… I had a good idea that ship was going to move. I had a good idea they had it calc’ed down to the fine figures and they were going to carry it live on vid. Clear to Sol. The EC doesn’t want us in the Well. Bad media, Mr. Dekker. Bad media with the miners. They’ve resorbed ASTEX, you’ve heard that, Towney’s dismissed… a lot of changes, a lot of them for the better. We can work with the contractors. We can work with the EC. We can work with the UDC. They know that. They just wanted the best deal they could get.”

The captain called him in to talk politics?

Hell. What’s he getting to.

“We’ve got the numbers on the accident,” Sunderland said. “I don’t know how much you’ve been told…”

“I’m told you’d found her weeks before you reported it.” He’d found that out this morning, from Ben, and it was on its way to making him mad. “You didn’t tell us, you let us go clear into prep, didn’t warn us—”

“Didn’t have any idea how you’d react—whether you could keep it together and do business as usual. Didn’t know, frankly, whether Aboujib was going to jump our way or not. We thought so. But she’s a hair trigger in a situation like this. And we were pushing for all the time we could, to get at records we needed. We knew about the bumping. We knew there was a miner missing. We were already comparing charts and finding discrepancies when Athens found your partner. We knew you were going out—quite frankly, we waited because we were still doing the legal prep. Sam Ford—you met Ford—was down there making sure the t’s were crossed and the i’s were dotted: when you go up against the company in a lawsuit, you’d better not have a loophole. We advised Aboujib, we set everything up for a quiet transfer hours before the thing went out over the com, we were going to get you quietly up to the dock, shuttle you aboard where they couldn’t get at you and get some essential changes out of the company—I’m being altogether honest with you now—while we were helping you pursue your case against the company. Unfortunately—”

“I took a walk.”

“Not that it mattered, I’m afraid, at least in the majority of what happened. We factored in the company’s stupidity—we expected the military to involve themselves, but not— not that an EC order to resorb the company was already lying on FleetCommander’s desk, waiting for any legal excuse it could, frankly, arrange. They were preparing a general audit of the company, to do it under one provision, but there was an emergency clause in the charter, that had to do with the threat to operations; and there is the Defense Act, that would let the military outright seize control if things were falling apart. And they were ready—ready because of the labor situation, ready because they thought the managers might try to destroy records—”

“They did.”

“They tried. We had one piece. There were others. FleetCommander had that carrier fueled. We’d gotten that rumor. We didn’t like what we were hearing. We knew when we did move we’d be dealing with the Fleet on a legal level—we even expected a confrontation at the dock. But not that they’d be as fast as they were and not that they had the legal documents to take control of the company without a time-lagged information exchange with Earth. That was eight to ten hours we turned out not to have. They had their people on R2, they had weapons on their transport, they turned out and they took the dock and our shuttle crew, and when that happened we were in deep trouble. But it has shaken out: we didn’t anticipate dealing with the UDC this fast—but we’ve gotten what we were trying to force: we’re dealing directly with the parent corporation, now, and very anxious defense contractors and the Fleet, all of whom have a budget and absolutely no personnel who can do what we do—efficiently. We can meet their quotas. We. The miners and the Shepherds. And the ’drivers, who have to come into line. Ultimately they have to. That’s where it stands.”

“Morrie Bird’s dead. A lot of people are dead.”

“We regret that. We regret that very sincerely. But we’re not defense experts. We fought with what we had, the best way we knew. People were being killed. The way your partner was killed. You understand? ASTEX was killing miners, killing us—ultimately something would have happened. Something possibly with worse loss of life. With one of the refineries going.”

He believed that, at least. He thought about it. Thought about the system the way it was and didn’t believe the military was going to be better. “Bastards could have pulled us back ten hours ago,” he said. “Are they better than Towney?”

“No. But they’re saner.”

“They let us fall for ten hours—”

“Part of the game, Mr. Dekker. We fall toward the Well at a given acceleration… their negotiation team meanwhile meets with ours, they won’t get the beam tracking system working, the EC is hours time-lagged and not talking to us, and everybody pretends they’re not going to reach a compromise. I’ve been through too many years of this to believe it would go any differently than, ultimately, it did. Hair’s gone gray a long time ago—between the Well and the shit from ASTEX. Last few went this morning til we knew that ship was moving. But we were fairly sure. All along, all of us were fairly sure.”

“Yessir,” he said, in Sunderland’s wait for a reaction. Adrenaline was running high, there was no place to send it. He’d gotten the rules by now. They included not expressing opinions to Shepherd captains. He looked somewhere past Sunderland’s shoulder, seeing Meg and that dockside, and the blood floating there. Seeing Bird, in the lift-car. Ben covered with blood.

“I’d like, for the record, Mr. Dekker, to have your version of what happened out there, with Industry.”

“God, I’ve told it. Doesn’t anybody have the record?”

“Just in brief. For a record ASTEX hasn’t touched.”

That was understandable, at least. He drew a wider breath, leaned back in the chair, recited it all again. “We found a rock, we went for it, the ’driver went too, and we figured he was going to try to beat us to it. And maybe muscle us off if he didn’t. So we wanted a sample on our ship before BM told us to get out. But they didn’t do that. They ran us down.”

“Bumped you.”

“No damn bump. Sir.”

“I know that. I know other details, if you want them.”

“All right. Then what the hell were they doing?”

“Trying to stop an independent from the biggest find in years. Trying to keep the company from a major pay-out— that could have made the difference between profit and loss that quarter—”

“God.”

“What you may not know, or may not have thought about—’drivers keep track of miners—they have all the charts. They are a Base. And you moved, I’m guessing—on your own engines. Maybe you made quite a bit of v, on quite a long run.”

Another piece of memory clicked.

“True?”

He nodded, seeing in his mind all the instruments of a tracking station, a long, long move for a miner, with no request for a beam. Anomaly. Cory’d suspected BM. They hadn’t thought about a ’driver monitoring what they were doing. BM did. But you could move in a sector without saying… if you could do it on your own engines.

Stupid, he thought, the other side of experience. Fatally stupid. But…

“They could have ordered us off. They could have claimed it on optics.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because—because Cory said they might not log it. They might just claim the ’driver had it first.”

“Politics. Politics. They did log it. They gave it a number.”

“Then why didn’t they call us and tell us? We saw them moving. But BM didn’t tell us a damned thing—not ‘They’ve got it,’ not ‘Pull back,’ not—”

“They wanted that ’driver to beat you there. Crayton’s office had stepped in and said they shouldn’t have logged it that way, they should undo it because they hadn’t made a policy decision yet. They’d called Legal Affairs and asked for advice. We can’t reconstruct all of it: the military’s sitting on those records—but what I guess is there was a ’driver damned determined to get there; BM was waffling—trying to figure out how to solve it, finally figuring they were in a situation—nobody believes BM. Nobody’d believe you weren’t screwed. It’d be all over the ’deck at Rl, one opinion in management was afraid it would touch off trouble, another said otherwise—they went ass-backwards into ‘letting the local base handle it’… that’s BM code for the shit’s on the captain. ‘Use your discretion,’ is the way they word it. That means do something illegal.”

He heard the tone of voice, he looked into neutral pale eyes in a lean, aged face and thought: This is a man who’s been put in that position…

“They just hushed it all,” Sunderland said. “They left it to the ’driver. They didn’t make a policy decision. And he was under communication blackout, because that’s the way things go when you’re ‘handling it’ for the company. The consensus was you’d spook and run.”

“They didn’t know my partner.”

“Extraordinary young woman, by what I know. Extraordinarily determined. Did you call it on optics? Did you try that?”

(—we just use the fuel, Cory had said. Trusting BM to get them home.)

“We were close enough we could get an assay sample before they got there. They weren’t talking to us. We figured they’d pull something with the records, so it just didn’t damn well matter. We thought they’d brake, that’d give us the time. And if we had the sample aboard—and our log against theirs of when we moved—we could make a case. We knew—we were sure BM knew what was going on. We didn’t expect they’d run right over us.”

“You understand bumpings? You know the game?”

The man thought he was a fool. There was “poor, stupid kids” in his voice. He set his jaw and said, “I’ve heard. I’d heard then.”

“Usual is a low-v nudge, usually near the Refineries. Like a bad dock. Usually it’s their tenders, just give you a scrape, make you spend time checking damage. But this time you’d beat him. You’d outdone his best speed even with a beam-assist. And his ass was on the line with the company. No time for nudges from his tenders. They didn’t want a sample in your hands. If you had it, they wanted it dumped. Radio silence—from his side. Nothing to get on record. So he kept on course—had it all figured, closest pass he dared, bearing in mind you don’t brake those sumbitches by the seat of your pants. Scare hell out of you. Get you so scared you’d do anything he said. But you moved toward his path, didn’t you? And his Helm hadn’t calc’ed that eventuality.”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“Most would get out of the way.”

“My partner was out there!”

“Some might. Some might run all the way to elsewhere. Maybe just tell BM there’d been an accident. Maybe have a ’driver tender claim a rescue.”

“Hell!” But he’d known—known it wasn’t quite a collision course. He’d known they were trying to shake him, he’d called their bluff—

They’d called his.

“Damn single correction,” he muttered. “All they had to do. Fire the directionals and brake. Hell, he’d already braked off the beam, he was coming in well inside his maneuvering limits. He was as able to stop as I was.”

“Their Helm was Belter. And that’s a class A ship. Automated to the hilt. You understand me? Didn’t even remotely occur to an Institute cut-rate a move like that was a choice—he wouldn’t, so he didn’t have it laid into his computer in advance. Not the directionals. Without it, running on auto—the jets won’t fire if you don’t take the autopilot off. He hit the jets, all right. With the autopilot on. Nothing. Some projection on the ship hit you.”“

“God.”

“I’d have fired him. Damn sure. But there the ’driver was, he’d hit you. Your ship had blown a tank, you’d shot off into R2, his tenders couldn’t catch you without getting a beam, you’d hit the rock as well as taken the scrape that blew the tank—they were in shit up to their necks—and Ms. Salazar was dead in the explosion. We’re sure of that. —Do you want this part? You don’t have to hear it. Your choice.”

“I want to hear anything you know. I’m very used to the idea she’s dead.” But it wasn’t that easy. His hands were shaking. He folded them under his arms and went on listening, thinking: The ship hit her. I did.

Sunderland said: “Captain Manning—that’s the senior captain on the ’driver, was the one who made the decisions at this point. He had one dead. He figured your chances were zero. He had no doubt whatsoever the company was going to black-hole the whole business. And they wouldn’t clear him to chase a ship that wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. BM wouldn’t want that in the log. He knew he had to get rid of the body himself. So they reported they’d acquired the rock, BM didn’t ask what had happened— Registry wasn’t in the information flow. Your emergency beeper was working. BCOM upper management knew what was going on with the ’driver, so it wasn’t asking questions. Nobody in management was going to ask, and maybe—here, I’m attributing thoughts to Manning that may not have been—but maybe he was worried you could be alive. At any rate he never filed a report that he’d actually hit the ship. There’d been a flash the military could well have picked up—but flashes near ’drivers are ordinary. Your radio was out, just gone—you were traveling near a ’driver fire-path, so you weren’t going to be found for a long time. If any tech reported that signal of yours, I’m betting it just got a real fast silence from upper echelons for the next couple of months. You never called in for a beam, and somebody erased Way Out off the missed-report list. Just—erased it. You were in R2 zone, you weren’t on R2’s list, and nobody was going to put you there, and nobody in R2 was calc’ing your course, except that eventually the ’driver and maybe management knew you’d go into the Well, and that would be that.“

“But why did he send Cory there? What the hell was he doing? What was he trying to prove?”

“My guess? His tenders had gone after Ms. Salazar’s body… he couldn’t call them back from a rescue mission. They knew it had been a bumping; they knew it had all gone very wrong, and Manning wanted them too scared to talk. So he made accomplices of the ’driver crew, the techs, everybody aboard—to scare them into silence; to prove, maybe, if they had any doubt—that the company was going to hush it up.”

He was numb. “So they could’ve fired at the Well. They didn’t have to leave a trace.”

“I’m not saying Manning isn’t crazy. But there’s no love lost between us and the company crews. He was pissed, if you want my opinion, about the job he was sent on, he was pissed at BM, pissed at management, he was upset as hell about the accident and he had no doubt whatsoever the company’d back him against us when we did find the body—just like the bumpings, just like that, bad blood, a way of shedding some of the fallout on us—because we couldn’t prove a damned thing. Even with a body—because there’d be no record. There’d be some story about a ’driver accident. Nothing would get done. It’s been that way since they put company crews on those ships. And the company keeps them out there years at a run. They’re bitter. They’re mad. They’re jealous as hell of our deal with the company. They blame us for the company losses that mean they’d been told they were staying out additional weeks. But they’re not totally crazy. They had absolutely no idea you could possibly survive. It was clerks that handled the distress signal, they’d already said too much to Bird and Pollard before they’d had any higher-ups involved, and my guess is they just decided they might as well bring the ship in, get it off the books— they just didn’t want Bird and Pollard telling how there was some ghost signal out there that BM didn’t know about. War jitters. Nervous Fleet establishment. They decided to go on it, they panicked when they found out you were alive—but do them credit, they didn’t even think of having you killed. In their own eyes they weren’t killers, it really was an accident, and they weren’t going to have you die in hospital or on the ’deck. Too bad for them. Good for us. A lot of people are very grateful to you, Mr. Dekker. —Let me tell you, no matter Cory’s mother’s influence, no matter anything we could do—without you staying alive, without you holding out against the company, there d have been nothing but a body at the Well. Nothing we could prove. Ever. So you did do something. You did win. You’re a hero. You and Morris Bird. People liked him. People truly liked him…”

Hard even to organize his thoughts. Or to talk about Bird. He couldn’t.

“You’re the ultimate survivor, Mr. Dekker. That’s something near magical to Belters—and the rest of us who know what you were up against. But there’s a time—maybe now— to quit while you’re still winning.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have an enemy, one very bad enemy.”

“Manning?”

Sunderland shook his head, hands joined in front of his lips. “Alyce Salazar. She’s not being reasonable. Her daughter’s death—the manner in which she was found—hasn’t helped her state of mind. You’re not behind a corporate barrier any longer. The EC’s already tried to reason with her. She pulled strings to get the UDC to investigate ASTEX, she wanted ASTEX resorbed—simply so she could get at its records, and so she could get at you. In effect, that order was under consideration, stalled in the EC’s top levels, but it was lying on FleetCommand’s desk principally because Alyce Salazar called in every senatorial favor she owned—favors enough to tip the balance, corporately and governmentally. And she wants you on trial, Mr. Dekker. The military’s sitting on the records. It doesn’t want this ASTEX situation blown up again, it doesn’t want a trial, the EC doesn’t want it, but the civil system can’t be stopped that easily. Financial misconduct is the likeliest charge she’ll try for; but she’s trying for criminal negligence.”

It hurt. For some reason it truly hurt, that Cory’s mother was that bitter toward him.

“She doesn’t have to be right, of course. She doesn’t even have to win. The damage will be done. She has the money for the lawyers and she has the influence to get past the EC. They honestly don’t want you in court—for various reasons. They don’t want you arrested, or tried, or talking to senatorial committees—and they don’t want the fallout with the miners and the factory workers and us, at a very strategic facility. But most certainly they don’t want you on a ship headed into the Well—when R2 knows about it. They might come after us. But they damn sure won’t let you take the ride.”

It was going somewhere that didn’t sound good. Same song, his mother had used to say—different verse. He asked, in Sunderland’s momentary silence, “So what are they going to do?”

“Our rescue? That ship that’s coming after us? —They’ll pull us out. Save our collective hides. But you aren’t going back to R2. They want you: the Fleet wants you. That was the sticking point the last ten hours. We tried. We’ve stalled, but they’re moving now. We’ve no other options but them. God knows we can’t run. And if we don’t turn you over, they’ll board—I have that very clear impression. In which case anything we do is a gesture, we’ve risked the ship, and various people can get hurt.”

He had trouble getting his breath. He couldn’t feel his own fingers. “Am I under arrest?”

“They tell me no. The fact is, you’ve been drafted.”

The bottom dropped out of his stomach. “Shit!” he said before he thought who he said it to—and told himself he was a fool, they were pulling him out of the Well, they were rescuing a hundred plus people, he had damn-all reason to object to the service—

—to getting thrown into the belly of a warship and getting blown to hell that way.

“May not be altogether bad. They tell me they’re interested in you for reasons that have nothing to do with the EC. They want you in pilot training.”

“They want me where I won’t talk. They think that’ll get me aboard. I’ll be lucky if they don’t arrange a training accident. A lot of people get killed that way.”

“You’re a suspicious young man, Mr. Dekker.”

“Well, God, I’ve learned to be.”

“And I’m one more smiling bastard. Yes. I am. —And I’m sorry. I don’t like the role I’ve been cast in. I hate like hell what they’re doing. But we don’t have any choice. I risked my crew and my ship getting you away in the first place, because you were that important, I hung on in negotiations as long as I could, and, bluntly put, we’ve gotten as much as we can get, we can’t help you, and it’s time to make a final deal. In some measure I suspect certain offices would rather see all of us dead than you in court: in some negotiations the compromises get too half and half, and sanity can go out the chute. People can get shot trying to protect you. Two ships can go to hell. Literally. You understand what I’m saying?”

He did understand. He thought about the kid who’d helped Meg with the vodka bottles. The fool who’d habitually lost his temper over things he couldn’t even remember the importance of, this side of things. Damned fool, he thought. Damned, dumb fool. I can’t even get mad now. The mess is too complicated, too wide, it just rolls on and over people. Like Bird. Like Meg.

Sunderland said, more gently, “If they’re not on the level, I think you can put them that way, you understand? What they tell me, your reflexes are in the top two percentile— you don’t train that. That’s hardwired. They tell me… the speeds these FTLs operate at… even with computers doing the hands-on ops, the human reaction time has to be there. Mentally and physically. Whole new game, Mr. Dekker. And I’ll tell you another reason they don’t want to antagonize us. The Fleet’s looking at the Shepherd pilots, the Shepherd techs—as a very valuable resource. I’m not eager for it. I’ll do what I’m doing the rest of my life, and it’s what I want to do. But the young ones, a good many of the young ones— may do something different before they’re done.”

He was in flow-through. Sunderland spoke and he believed it because he wanted to believe it. Sunderland stopped speaking, the spell broke, and he told himself Sunderland was a fool or a liar: there were a lot of reasons for the military to want Sunderland to believe that—a very clear reason for Sunderland to want him to believe it.

He said, in the remote chance this man was naive: “I’ll be wherever it is before you. I hope it’s all right.” Hear me, man. Watch me. Watch what happens. It’ll be important to you—”

I don’t trust anyone’s assurances. Maybe Meg’s. But you have to know her angles.

Meg knew a whole lot more than she told Bird. And Sal knew more than she ever told any of us. And Ben’s figured that. That’s why it’s gone cold between them… that’s why, in the shakeout, it’s only partners that count.

Mine’s paid out, now. Done everything I could, Cory…

The interview was over. He got up, Sunderland got up. Sunderland offered his hand. He found the good grace to take it.

Hard adjustment—they hadn’t had problems except the fact they were out of fuel and falling closer and closer to Jupiter, and in consequence of that, the morbid question whether they’d fry in his envelope before they got there or live long enough to hear the ship start compressing around them. Intellectual question, and one Meg had mulled over in the dark corners of her mind—speculation right now hell and away more entertaining that wondering what the soldier-boys were going to do with the company, and what it was going to be like in this future they now had, living on Shepherd charity.

Sal and Ben might be all right—Ben was still subdued, just real quiet—missing Bird and probably asking himself the same question—how to live now that they had a good chance they weren’t going to die.

Point one: something could still go wrong. When you knew you were diving for the big one, hell, you focused on trying things, and you lined up your chances and you took them in order of likeliest to work and fastest to set up. But when you knew you were going to be rescued by somebody else’s decisions and that it was somebody else’s competency or lack of it that was going to pull you out or screw everything up, then you sweated, then you imagined all the ways some fool could lose that chance you had.

Point two: Sal was just real spooky right now—scared, jumpy: Sal had held out against her fancy friends once before when the Shepherds were trying to drive a wedge between them, and Sal had all the feel of it right now, wanting them so hard it was embarrassing to watch it—and Sal was hearing those sons of bitches, she was damn sure of it, saying, Yeah, that’s all real fine, Aboujib, but Kady’s an albatross—Kady’s got problems with the EC, that we’re trying to deal with in future—

—Only thing Kady can do is fly, they’d be saying; and meaning shit-all chance there was of that, with their own pilots having a god complex and seniority out the ass. Might be better to split from Sal, get out of her life, quit screwing up her chances with her distant relatives, and go do mining again—maybe with Ben, who knew?

But, God, it’s going to be interesting times. So’jer rules, more and more. They’ll make sweettalk with the miners til they got a brut solid hold on the situation, then they’ll just chip away at everything they agreed to.

Dek—Dek could come out of this all right; but, God, Dek maybe hadn’t figured what she was hearing from the meds, how he’d gotten notorious, how he was so damn hot an item it was keeping the pressure on the EC to get them out of this—couldn’t drop Dekker into the Well, not like some dumb shit Shepherd crew that got themselves in trouble. Dekker was system-wide famous, in Bird’s way of saying. And that was both a good thing and a bad one, as she could figure—majorly bad, for a kid who’d just got his pieces picked up and didn’t get on well with asses.

Lot of asses wanted to use you if you were famous. Piss one off and he’d knife you in the back. She’d got that lesson down pat.

Good, in that consideration, if the Shepherds kept him on the Hamilton. But she didn’t think they would—kid with no seniority, a lot of rep, and a knife-edge mental balance… coming in on senior pilots with a god-habit. Critical load in a week. And if they put him back on R2, God help him, same thing with the new management.

That left Sol and the EC. And that meant public. And all the shit that went with it.

She was severely worried about Dek. She kept asking herself—while from time to time they were telling each other how wonderful it was they weren’t going to die and all, and Ben and Sal looked more scared right now than they’d been in all this mess—

—asking herself, too, what they were telling Dekker, somewhere on the ship.

Giving him an official briefing on his partner, maybe. Everybody’d been somewhat busy til now; and the heat being off (literally) the senior staff was probably going down its list of next-to-do’s.

Or maybe they were telling him something else altogether.

The door opened. Dek came back quiet and looking upset.

“What was it?” Ben asked, on his feet. (God, she’d strangle him the day she got the cast off.)

But Dekker looked up at Ben the way he’d looked at her when she’d found him on the ship: no anger. Just a lost, confused look.

Maybe for once in his life Ben understood he should urgently shut up now.

But Dekker paid more attention to walking from the door to the end of the bed—getting his legs fairly well, she thought, better than she was, the little they let her up.

He said, “Got an explanation, at least. Pretty much what we guessed, about Cory. And it’s solid, about the ship on its way. We’re all right.”

“You all right?” she asked.

He didn’t answer right away. He looked down at the blanket. There was too much quiet in the room, too long. Sal finally edged over and put her hand on his shoulder.

He said, “I’m real tired.”

Meg moved her legs over. “There’s room. Why don’t you just go horizontal awhile? Don’t think. It’s all right, Dek.”

He let out a long slow sigh, leaned over and put his hand on her knee. Just kept it there a while and she didn’t know what to say to him. Sal came and massaged his shoulders. Ben lowered himself into the chair by the bed and said, “So is this ship going to grapple and tow us or just pick us off?”

“Tow,” Dekker said. “As I gather. Thing’s probably not doing all it can, even the way it’s moving.”

“Starship,” Meg said, thinking of a certain flight. “I’ve seen ’em glow when they come in.”

“Freighters,” Sal said. “This thing’s something else.”

An old rab had a chill, thinking about that “something else” next that one pretty memory. Thought—Earth’s blind. Earth’s severely blind.

Feathers on the wind. Colonies won’t come back.

Kids don’t come home again. Not the same, they don’t.

Lot of noise. Dekker had no idea how big the carrier was, but it had a solid grip on them, and they could move around now, get what they needed before they sounded the take-hold and shut the rotation down for the push back to R2.

But before that, they had a personnel line rigged, lock to lock, and he had an escort coming over to pick him up. The Fleet wasn’t taking any chances of a standoff—while they were falling closer and closer to the mag-sphere.

Hadn’t told Meg and Sal. Hadn’t told Ben either. He intended to, on his way to the lock. Meanwhile he wanted just to get his belongings together. The Hamilton had had their personals out of Trinidad before they freed her, Bird’s too: they’d been packed and ready to go, all the food and last-to-go-aboards stowed in Trinidad, that being where they’d enter and where they’d ride out the initial burn. It was all jumbled together now—Hamilton had had no idea who’d owned what—and he found an old paper photo—a group of people, two boys in front, arms around each other, mountains in the background.

Blue-sky. He didn’t know what these people had been to Bird. He thought one of the boys looked a little like Bird. He didn’t know what mountains they were—he knew the Moon better than he knew Earth and its geography—another class he’d cut more than he’d attended.

But he looked at it a long time. He didn’t think it was right to take what was Bird’s—he hadn’t had any claim on him. Ben did. But you could put away a picture in your mind and remember it, years after.

If there were years after.

He took what was his. Put on the bracelet Sal had bought him—he thought that would make her happy. He didn’t know, point of fact, whether they’d let him keep anything. Worth asking, he thought.

“Dek?” Sal asked.

About finished, anyway. He stuffed a shirt into the bag, wiped his hair out of his eyes and caught his balance against the lockers as he stood up.

All of them—including Meg. Sal was holding her on her feet. Ben, behind them.

“Meg, God, I wasn’t going to skip out—the meds’ll have a seizure.”

Meg said, “Thought we’d walk down to the lift with you.” In that tone of voice Meg had that didn’t admit there were other choices. “Hell of a thing, Dek.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to worry you. —Walk you back to your cabin.”

“Doing just fine, thanks. Going to check these so’jer-boys out. See if we approve the company they’re putting you into.”

He picked up his duffel, put a hand on the wall and came closer. Familiar faces. Faces he’d gotten used to seeing— even Ben. And Meg. Especially Meg.

He leaned over, very carefully kissed her on the cheek. Meg said, “Oh, hell, Dek,” and it wasn’t his cheek she kissed, for as long as gave him time to know Meg wasn’t joking, and that close as he’d been with Cory, it wasn’t what he felt right now.

Sal kissed him too, same way. But not the same. He couldn’t talk.

Ben said, holding up a hand, “If you think I’m going to, you’re wrong.”

You never knew about Ben. Ben saved him losing it. He got a breath, halfway laughed, and picked up the bag again, hearing the lock operating.

“Sounds like my appointment,” he said. “Better move, so they can get us all under way. Risky neighborhood.”

“Yeah, well,” Meg said, following him, on Sal’s arm. Hard breath. “They better take care of you. Letters are a good thing.”

“May be a while,” he said, glancing back as he walked. Not good for the balance. “But I will. Soon as I can. Soon as I have a paycheck. Don’t know whether I’ll be at the shipyard or where. Sol, maybe. I just can’t say.”

Trying to pack every thought he had into a handful of minutes. Thinking about the Fleet’s tight security, and the tighter security around him.

“Maybe if you ask the Shepherds they can find out where I’m stationed. Maybe the captain can get a letter to me, even if I can’t get one out. My mother’s Ingrid Dekker, she’s on maintenance at Sol—write to her, if that doesn’t work. She may know where I am.”

Or maybe not, he thought, as they came into the ops area, where the lift was, to take him up to the lock. Fleet uniform on the blond and two marine MP’s, with pistols. Standing with Sunderland. He hoped they didn’t take him off in handcuffs. Not in front of Meg, please God…

“Mr. Dekker?” the crew-type said—young, insignia he couldn’t read. Outheld hand. He took the offer. Didn’t read any threat. “Name’s Graff. Going to take you across and see you signed in.”

Didn’t sound like a threat. It wasn’t handcuffs at least.

Graff said, “This your crew?”

“Meg Kady, Sal Aboujib, Ben Pollard.” He spotted Sam Ford over to the right, Ford with his arm in a sling. “Sam Ford. Ran the com for us.” He wasn’t sure Ford liked the notoriety. Maybe he shouldn’t have opened his mouth. But damn-all the Fleet was going to do about the rest. They were getting the one they’d bargained for, and Graff didn’t look like a note-taker. He shook hands with the captain, waved a small goodbye at his shipmates, took Graff’s signal they were going.

Lift took him and Graff and one guard. That was all that would fit. Graff said, on the way up, “Ops training’s real glad to get its hands on you. Move of yours gave the lieutenant an attack. You didn’t hear that.”

He looked Graff in the face. Saw amusement. Saw the MP biting his lip.

Lift let out at the dock. Cold up here. He stood and shivered, thought then to ask, “They going to let me keep my personals? Or should I leave them?”

“Put them in stowage. Few months, you can get them back.”

The lift was coming up again. It opened.

Ben came out with the other MP.

“Thought we said goodbye,” Dekker said.

“Yeah, well,” Ben said, and said to Graff, “Got room for another one?”

Different kind of ship. ECS5 was her designation—didn’t have a name yet, and wouldn’t, til she was commissioned. Gray and claustrophobic, huge flexing sections on the bridge. Instruments he didn’t understand. Most of it was dark. The crew was minimal, evidently, or the boards weren’t live yet. The personnel ring wasn’t operational—it was acceleration that let them walk the deck, g-plus at that, with the Hamilton’s mass. Graff had said he’d do a walk-around with them.

Real quiet walk-around. It was a working ship. They didn’t belong here. They weren’t under arrest. Graff, Dekker got the idea, was doing a sell-job. “Good program,” Graff said, about flight training. “They don’t want you to come in with a lot of experience—new tech. Whole new kind of ship. Can’t talk about it. Can’t talk about it covers a lot we deal with.”

He didn’t know what he thought. The machine around him wasn’t anything he’d even seen photos of.

Wasn’t the only thing that puzzled him. He said to Ben, while Graff was talking to one of the techs, “Are you sure what you’re doing?”

Ben gave one of his shrugs. Ben looked pale in the dark, in the light off the monitors. Sweating a little and it wasn’t warm in here. “No way to get ahead. You lost the ship, Dek-boy. Debt up to our necks… but a man with my background—there’s a real chance in this stuff. Military’s where the edge is, the way R2’s going now. Fleet’s the way up, you remember I said it. There’s an After to this war.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Officer before I’m done. Brass pin and all. Damn right, Dek-boy. You remember you know me. You fly ’em and I’ll be sitting in some safe office in Sol HQ telling ’em how to do it. Odds on it?”

“Out of your mind,” Dekker repeated under his breath; and looked around him at things he wanted to understand, thinking, he couldn’t help it: God, Cory should have seen this…

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