Com said in his ear: “Mission is go-for with Dekker. Rider is sepped. We’re coming up in station systems.”
“I copy,” he told the bone-mike. “I’m on my way to mission control.”
Reporters were still looking at him. Optex lenses were all turned his way, and Villy was watching him from the podium.
“Mission’s away,” he said, removed the uncomfortable security com from his ear, and added, with a certain suicidal satisfaction, “Team leader is Dekker,” and watched all chaos erupt.
“All right?” Ben sounded finally satisfied with the numbers and Dekker gave a little breath of relief—a relief that Ben probably wouldn’t understand. Smug, that was Ben when he relaxed; but Ben wasn’t smug now, he was On and anxious, all the way.
“We just keep running quiet a while, Dek-boy. A real hold-steady here, minimum profile, just keep us out of their acquisition long as we can—carrier’s gone up ahead, going to fire a decoy and brake hard.”
The carrier’s vane-config showed clear, that was the immediate worry on this maneuver—the carrier was going to pull an axis roll: a thing the size of some space stations was going to do a total reverse, pass them again at close range, rotate a second time and tail them at a distance …
“This is a set-up,” Meg complained, “we got too many numbers on this, Ben. It’s got to be a set-up…”
“Dekker a murderer?” Graff said, tracking past the spex windows of mission control to the profile screens and the working teams and his own trainees at the boards. They’d established the reporters in the viewing area, gotten the senators a secure spot in a VIP observation point, and on the displays in mission control a situation was unfolding neither party yet comprehended. “No. He happens to be the survivor of three documented attempts on his life, two of which put him in hospital, one of which killed Cory Salazar.”
Not the loudest voice, but the one he chose to hear: “That contradicts what Councillor Salazar charges—“
Probability fans were changing color on the screens, rapidly narrowing. “It is, nevertheless, the truth. The evidence against Paul Dekker was fabricated by the identical agencies responsible for covering up a strike-breaking police action that took seventeen other lives documented in 2304 sworn affidavits and complaints.”
“From Belters?” Bias dripped from the question, and sharpened focus and temper for a split-second.
“From civilian and military eyewitnesses and victims living and dead in Earth Company records. There are no grounds for the charges against Paul Dekker—they’re old history, investigated and officially dismissed when the agencies that made the charges were dissolved by legal action for corruption, wrongful death, and labor abuses. As for the culpable parties, they were relieved of command and stripped of their licenses, but unfortunately that was the only action taken. I suggest you ask Ms. Salazar why she’s never named them in her pending suit.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“I couldn’t speculate on her motives.”
Ten and twenty questions at once. Riot, as reporters a moment ago drifting along the spex wall suddenly elbowed each other to get Optex pickups to the fore. Let the Company raise hell, let the Reel ship him to the battle zone— please God, ship him to the zone, away from reporters, cameras, Edmund Porey, and self-serving senators demanding dinner in the VIP observation area.
Then someone shouted, from the hall, “They’re releasing the separation footage!” and bedlam surged in the other direction, reporters trying to get into mission control, jamming in the doorway. Two stayed to ask:
“Who authorized this test, lieutenant?”
“Not in my need-to-know, I’m afraid. Insystem traffic near Luna shows lift delayed for thirty minutes on the monitor up there. That has to come from very high levels.”
“Who can authorize it?”
“Sol One Stationmaster, for the lowest level.”
‘‘If—“
The barrage of questions and dicing of information kept up. He stood there with his gut in knots. It was go now, no likely recall of the rider. Mission parameters were ‘showing on the screens, dopplered transmission from the carrier, and from the rider, via the carrier. Course was laid for intercept from the ecliptic, of a zenith system entry shielded from the carrier by Earth’s own security zone…