But it didn’t solve his own problem. Just theirs. He was still walking around not knowing, still a target for another try, God only when, or on what provocation. In the meanwhile he knew those he’d trust with his life, and those he just didn’t know. In the meantime somebody was off scot free and probably laughing about it.
“You all right, cher?” Meg stirred beside him, massaged a shoulder. He realized the tension he had, then, probably as comfortable as a rock to be next to.
“Yeah.” He tried to relax. “Cold.”
Meg put a warm arm over his back. “Roll over, jeune fils. No questions. Do. We got sims in the morning. Big day. Relax.”
Couldn’t understand why she put up with him. Couldn’t understand why Ben did, except Sal was with Meg. He wished he could do better than he did, wished he could say they weren’t in a mess of his making. But it was. And they were. And Meg somehow didn’t care he was a fool.
The rec hall was quiet. It was a Question whether to acknowledge what had happened or ignore it; but the former, Graff decided—word having drifted his way via Reet Security via Sgt.-major Lynch. Probably word had drifted to Porey too and no orders had come. But it was Personnel’s business to take a tour, while the alterday galley staff was cleaning up. Music was still going. Most of the participants were back in barracks, hopefully.
“Quiet here?” he asked a marine on watch.
“Quiet, sir.”
“Any feeling of trouble?”
“No, sir. Not lately. Real quiet, sir.”
He made no approach toward the last few celebrants—a few UDC, a few Fleet personnel, a little the worse for drink, at opposite ends of the hall. He wasn’t there on a disciplinary. But he meant to be seen. His being there said command levels had heard, command levels were aware.
Dekker hadn’t blown it, by all he’d heard. He didn’t know where the idea had started. He didn’t know that it had done any good, but at least it had done no demonstrable harm.
Someone walked in at his back, walked up beside him.
“Tables still standing,” Villy said.
“Noted that.”
“Hope it lasts,” Villy said. “Difficult time.”
Villy had never said anything about the change in command. Like having your ship taken out of your hands, Graff thought, like watching it happen on, Villy had said, the last big project he’d ever work on.
What did you say? What, in the gulf between his reality and Villy’s, did one find to say?
“Good they did that,” he said. “I hope it takes.”
Chapter 13
DIG empty section of the mast—you’d know where you were blindfolded, null-g with the crashes of locks and loaders and the hum of the core machinery, noises that made the blood rush with memories of flights past and anticipation of another, no helping it. Meg took a breath of cold, oil-touched air, a breath mat had the flightsuit pressing close, snug as a hardened skin, and hauled with one hand to get a rightside up view of what Dek had to show them, screen with a live camera image from, she guessed, optics far out along the mast.
Big, shadow-shape of the carrier—wouldn’t all fit in the picture—with spots on its hull picked it out in patchwork detail, all gray, and huge—
And on the hull near the bow, a flat, sleek shape clung, shining in the floods. “That’s it?” Ben asked.
“That’s it,” Dek said. “Her. Whatever you want to call it. They built three prototypes. That’s the third. That’s the one that’s make or break for us. Crew of thirty, when we – prove it out. Four can manage her—in a clean course, with set targets. Most of her mass is ordnance, ablation edge, and engine load. You’ve had the briefings.”
Meg stood by Sal’s side and got a shiver down the back that had nothing to do with the cold here. Beautiful machine, she was thinking; Sal said, Brut job, and meant the same thing, in a moment, it sounded as-if, of pure gut-deep lust. Wasn’t any miner-can, that wicked, shimmery shape.
And most imminently, in the sim chamber behind the clear observation port, the pods, one in operation, a mag-lev rush around the chamber walls, deafening as the wall beside them carried the vibration.