Hellburner

And how much else? Ben wondered. God, how much else? News didn’t escape the Belt. Security didn’t let anything get out. Even yet. Everything about the mining operation out there was under wrap. You didn’t know how much the Fleet might know. Or what tiny, inadvertent slip would let them guess what they’d done track there and what they might have been involved in that might screw his security clearance for good.

“I knew this man a handful of months. I’ve seen him like this before—when he Fust got out of hospital on R2. I can’t make him make sense til he wants to make sense. I couldn’t then. Nobody can.”

“You made a good advance on it. Three days, lieutenant. I want him to talk.”

Bream came short. “Do I get to beat it out of him?”

“Let’s be serious, lieutenant.”

“What am I supposed to be asking? Have I got a clearance to hear it? Or what happens when he does talk? What am I looking for?”

“As much as you can know—and it’s not been released yet—there was an accident. Dekker wasn’t in it. Friends of his were. Dekker’s crew was lost.”

“Oh shit.”

“Top command subbed in another pilot with Dekker’s crew on a test run. The test didn’t go right. Total loss. Dekker was hospitalized, treated for shock. The day he got out—he either climbed into a simulator under the influence of drugs or something else happened. It’s a matter of some interest—which.1’

Ben chewed his Up. Missile test, they’d said on Sol One.

Tech committee meetings. Place crawling with brass and VIPs. Hell. “So isn’t there an access record?”

“Computers can be wrong. Can’t they?”

Ben’s heart rate picked up: he hoped to hell there wasn’t a monitor hearing it. He tried to think of some scrap to hand Graff, for good will’s sake. He finally said, “Yes. They can be.”

“I want him functioning,” Graff said. “Say you’re on jnterservice loan—at high levels. It could be good. It could be bad. To take maximum advantage of that… you need to deliver.” Graff pulled a thick envelope from his jacket and held it out to him. “He listed you next-of-kin. So you have a right to see this.”

“I’m not his next-of-kin. He’s got a mother—“

“She’s specifically excluded. Don’t worry. There’s nothing in this packet outside your security clearance.”

He took it. He didn’t want to.

“I wouldn’t leave that material lying about unattended,” Graff said, “all the same. —You’ve got your quarters in hospital. I can’t order you not to use the phone. But if you do, if you contact anyone else, do you understand me, you’re not behind our screen any longer. Take my personal advice: get back to the hospital and stay there—and don’t use that phone.”

He looked at Graff a long, long moment. Lieutenant j-g. Carrier command officer. A tech/1 to a tech/2’s rank. But he had the impression Graff was leaning on some executive and clandestine authority to do what he was doing. It was in Graff’s tone, in the clear implication he should avoid his own chain of command.

“Whose office does this originate in, sir? You mind to tell me how official this is? Who’s in charge?”

“Ultimately, the captain.”

Two and two suddenly made four. Keu. Sol FSO. He looked Graff in the eyes and thought—I don’t like this. Damn, I don’t. He said,

“Is your captain the only authority that’s covering me?”

Graff said, “No.”

Conrad Mazian? The EC militia commander who was romancing his way through the UN hearings? “In which service, sir? I want to know. I need to know that. I want orders in writing,”

“Ben. Take my word. I’d go back to quarters, immediately, if I were you. I’d stay quiet. I’d do everything I could to finish my job. If I were in your place.” Graff opened the door, and shut off the lights. “If you need me, for any reason—tell Dr. Evans.”

The keycard worked, at least. The room in the hospice was an institutional cubbyhole with a bunk, a phone, an ordinary flat-vid.

And no baggage.

Delivered, customs had said. Customs had showed him the slip. Delivered at 1500h. God only where.

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