Hellburner

“Track it.”

Time to indulge the shakes and the unsteady breathing, alone in the lift. “They’re getting telemetry,” Meg heard, on the com track that was probably going out to every speaker in the mast. “Four heartbeats.” Best news yet. Thank God, she thought, queasy in the steady increase of g against the deep fast dive the car was taking. She clenched her teeth and collected herself, watched the level indicator light plummet until the car came to rest and the door opened on warm air and bright light.

She expected Mitch and a handful of guys; but the room was packed, everybody who could cram themselves hi, all wanting news. “Four heartbeats,” she told them, which they might have heard, she couldn’t tell if the com was feeding through, there was so much racket. She wasn’t prepared to be laid hold of, wasn’t expecting Mitch of all guys to pat her heavily on the shoulder and say how miner-jocks had their use—other guys did the same, and all she could get out was a breathless, desperate: “Jamil. Janul took our sim slot… anybody seen Dek?”

Nobody had. She was shaking, embarrassing herself with that fact, but she couldn’t stop the chill now. A big guy whose name she didn’t even know threw his arm around her shoulders, hugged her against his side, and yelled out to get a blanket, she was soaked with sweat.

I’m all right, she tried to say, but her teeth kept chattering. Seeing that number out there had put a shock reaction into her—she wasn’t used to shaking; wasn’t used to time to think when she was scared, or, worst, to knowing there wasn’t a damned thing she could do personally to help those guys or Dek… .

The blanket came around her. “Tried to kill us,” she said between shivers. “Wasn’t any fucking accident, Dek was supposed to be in that pod. . . That was our slot Jamil took…”

“Sims tech Eldon A. Kent,” Graff said, reading the monitor, “out of Munich, trained in Bonn …”

“I want a piece of him,” Dekker said. God, he wanted it, wanted to pound the son of a bitch so fine the law wouldn’t have pieces left to work with. “Just let me find him.”

“Certainly answers the questions about access,” Graff murmured, reading over the data on the monitor. “Free access to the pods, a lot of the techs let each other through, never mind the rules. He’s Lendler Corp, he comes and goes—what were you doing up there suited, Dekker? What were you doing with the mission tape?”

Piece suddenly clicked into place. Bad memory. Whole chunk of memory. “Wanted to look at the tape, just wanted to look at it—“ The disaster sequence. The maneuver Wilhelmsen had failed to make. “Damned set piece. They wanted it to work, they kept training us for specifics. I told them that, I…”

“They.”

“The UDC. Villy.”

“So you went to the ready room, or up to the access?”

“The ready room. To run it on the machine there. They wouldn’t let me in the labs, I was off-duty. I just wanted to look at the sequence—“

“Where did this Kent come in?” Porey asked.

“While I was running the tape.”

“Alone?”

He shook his head. “Guy was with him. I know the face, I can’t remember the name—“

“And they came in while you were reading the tape. What did they say?”

“They said they were checking out the pods, they were looking for some possible problem in the sims. They wanted me to go up to the chamber and answer some questions…”

Graff asked: “Did you suit to fly? Was that your intention?”

“I—I hadn’t—no. I just had the coveralls. I hadn’t brought a coat.”

“You suited because of the cold, you mean.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You went up there,” Porey said. “What happened?”

“They said put the tape in, 1 did that, they hit me from the back. Said—said—‘Enjoy the ride.’ Sir, I want these guys…”

“Absolutely not,” Porey said. “You don’t go after them. That’s an order, mister.”

“Commander, they’re up there right now with Jamil and his guys, they’ve got their asses to cover—“

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