“They’ve always known that.”
“The ordinary citizen hasn’t. The average businessman can get a voice link to Mars now. Or the Belt—if he wants one.”
Lag-corn was a skill, a schitzy kind of proceeding, talking to a voice that went on down its own train of logic with no regard to your event-lagged self. That was one of the reasons senior Com and psych were virtually synonymous. And Earth hadn’t realized until now you couldn’t talk to a launched rider—or a star carrier? He refused to believe it.
“Lag-corn has finally penetrated the civil user market,” Porey said, “since we increased the pace of insystem traffic. Earthers are used to being told the antenna’s gone LOS, used to being told Marslink is out of reach for the next few months, used to shipments enroute for years and months— supply the market counts but can’t touch. Their ship-borne infowave was so slow as to be paralytic, before we started military operations insystem. The last two years have upset that notion—this, from the captain. So if anyone asks you—of course we’re going to have a strong mother-system component hi FleetCommand. Of course riderships will never make command decisions. We’re going to loop couriers back to Earth constantly.”
“Mazian’s promised this?”
“The same as they promised us. —Jurgen, you have far too literal a mind. This is a game. They play it with their constituents. The legislature’s technical advisers are under influences—corporate, economic, political… but you’ve met that. They certainly won’t deviate from party line. Where does the funding for their studies come from, anyway?”
Lights flared, green numbers bled past in the dark. Do the run in his sleep, Dekker kept telling himself, piece of easy.
But it didn’t stop the heart from pounding, didn’t stop hands and body from reacting to the situation on-screen—you didn’t brake the reactions, you didn’t ever, just presented the targets to your inert armscomp, accepted Ben was going to miss most of the time and tried not to let that expectation ever click into the relays in your brain.
“Screw mat,” he heard Ben mutter, and all of a sudden got input on his aux screens, targets lit, armscomp prioritizing.
Chaff, he determined. Then targets flashed and started disappearing. Longscan was coming from a living hand, not the robot inputs. He heard “Shit!” from Ben and saw the scan image shift, tracking fire. Meg’s gold data-sift to his highside HUD was making sudden marginal sense. Not like Pete…. Not the same…. “Doing all right, doing all right,” he muttered, “just—“ Heart jumped. Hands reacted. Sim did—
He stopped the bobble before his vision cleared. Guys weren’t talking, someone had yelped, short and sharp, but the dots that meant conscious were still lit, data was still coming up on the screens, fire was still happening, longscan shaping up. Had three scared guys in the seats. Next four shots were misses. His fault. He’d pulled a panic, lost it—had no time now to be thinking about it—targets— dammittohell!—
“The UDC,” Porey said, rocking back his chair, “believes in a good many myths. We don’t disabuse them. And, yes, this room is secure.”
“What else haven’t we said? What else hasn’t filtered out here? Or is this a longstanding piece of information?”
“The ECS4,” Porey said, “is fully outfitted. Putty outfitted. We’re operational, and we have a com system they can’t penetrate. To our knowledge—they haven’t even detected its operation. Installation on the ECS8—is waiting a shipment. Communications between you and FSO have been, I understand, infrequent. That situation is going to improve.”
“When?”
“Estimate—two months, three.”
“Until then? Edmund, —I want to know. Who pulled Kady and Aboujib out of the Belt? Who opted Pollard in? Where did this damned new system come in?”
“Exact origin of those orders?” Porey asked with a shrug. “I’m sure at some high level.” Meaning Keu or Mazian, which said no more than he knew. “But the reason for pulling them in—plainly, they were Dekker’s crew, we know things now about Hellburner we didn’t know. We’ve adjusted the training tape to reflect that, we’ve chosen a crew with a top pilot to start with a—tragically—clean slate. It’s the best combination we can come up with.”