“Come on, cher.” Sal squatted down with her beer and patted Dek on the knee. “Screw the regs. Ben’s the numbers, Ben’s always been the numbers—“
Ben said, “Armscomp and longscan’s integrated boards, what’s the difference, who’s punching up, who’s punching in? They ran us switched, as a pair, didn’t have an iota of trouble with the sim—Sal’s got to get the feel for the ordnance, but she’s on it…”
“It’s not a free lunch, Ben.”
“Close as. I got my hands on that system, Dek-boy, I got a system runs like it’s friggin’ elegant—“
Ben was in serious lust. Dek looked at him. Dek was going to hit him, Meg thought, poised to grab. But Dek didn’t.
Sudden quiet from the ping-pong match. Rapid fall-off of noise from the door inward, and she looked, where, God, it was VDC uniforms incoming, senior guys; and the lieutenant was with them. Guys were coming to their feet. They did.
“Villanueva…” Dek murmured. The redoubted Captain Villy, then.
“At your ease,” Graff said—official voice, mat. Something sure as hell was up. Nobody moved. “Personal message first,” Graff said. “Jamil says he’s coming back. Says he and Dekker are in a race.”
Fly-by was a show-out, but, God, that was good news: he was no cheap write-off and neither was his crew. Cheers at that. A faint laugh out of Dek.
“As you know,” Graff continued, “the mag interfaces took damage in shut-down, repair crews can handle that… but the larger question is what caused the pod to hang, and we are not putting crews back into the moving sims until we can pinpoint a cause and ensure operational safety. This does not, however, mean the program is at stand-down.”
Whole room must be breathing in unison, Meg thought. Good on everything they’d heard so far. But there were the UDC uniforms.
Just hope to God they aren’t putting us back under Tanzer.
“—Lab-sims will continue as scheduled. We have also made selection of Fleet crews for a carrier operations exercise—“
“Test run,” Dekker muttered, at her side. Translation from a lot of sources, to the same effect.
“—starting within the hour.” Quiet settled. Quickly. “In the meanwhile we are taking steps to integrate Fleet and UDC instructional and operational personnel. You will see UDC personnel in Fleet areas, eventually in barracks: on which matter I want to say something specific Rising murmur of dismay. The lieutenant waited, frowning.
‘ ‘There was an incident reported to me, out of rec-hall, an attempt from a UDC crew to meet this company halfway, which was reciprocated with good grace. As a pilot myself, I appreciate the cnticality of operational confidence in fellow personnel—let’s be blunt: confidence of mat kind was a casualty of the Wilhelmsen run.
“But what went wrong with this program does not serve this program; and when you’re heads-up and hands-on, what doesn’t serve this program doesn’t serve you or the carrier you’re defending. I don’t have to spell out to you the reality for the future: that you will be working with UDC crews, whose lives will be equally at risk, including the lives of personnel aboard your carrier. Competition is well and good where it brings out extreme effort. But the relationship between the four core crewmembers of this ship will be extended eventually to the complete thirty-member support team aboard, who will rely on core crew: in the same way, a carrier’s four Hellburner crews will have to rely on each other, and on that carrier and its internal support crew, for survival. There is no more serious business. Those of us from merchanter background have never quarreled with your style or your customs—and we refuse to quarrel with the personal customs of our sister service out of the inner system. Whatever makes a crew work, is that unit’s business and only their business: that’s the position we’ve always taken. That’s the position we expect you to take now, because when you’re out there in the wide dark, friends, your personal style, and whether you’re from Sol’s inner or outer system, doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. The reliance you have on the crews making up your defensive envelope-—that’s all you’ve got. Those are your brothers and your sisters. And me uniform will not matter.”