“Talk to my captain. I can’t change his orders.”
Tanzer was red in the face. Keeping his voice very quiet. “We can’t reach your captain.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know why. We think he’s in committee meetings.”
“Go to Mazian’s office, colonel, I can’t authorize a thing.”
“We’ve been trying to reach him, lieutenant, and we’ve got your whole damned program about to destruct on us, out there—you’d better believe you’re in a hot spot, and I wouldn’t take you into confidence, you or your recruits, but we can’t afford another shouting match for the committee. We’re trying to save this program, we’re not arguing the value of human hands-on at the controls: you know and I know there’s no way Union’s tape-trained clones are any match for real human beings—“
“They’re not that easy a mark. Azi still aren’t an AI with an interdict.”
“They’ll crack. They’ll crack the same as anybody else. Their program’s going to have the same limitations.”
“They won’t crack, colonel, they’re completely dedicated to what they’re doing, that’s what they’re created for, for God’s sake—“
“You listen to me, lieutenant. I was in charge of the program that put your Victoria out there and I don’t need to be told by any wet-behind-the-ears what a human pilot is worth, but, dammit! you automate when you have to. You don’t hold on to an idea til it kills you—which this is going to do if you screw up in there. You can lose the whole damned war in that hearing room, does that get through to you?”
“Colonel, in all respect to your experience—“
“You go on listening. Yes, we had to have a show, yes, I subbed Wilhelmsen. Your boy Dekker’s got problems. Serious problems.” Tanzer pulled a datacard from his breast pocket.
“What’s that?”
“A copy of Dekker’s personnel file. It’s damned interesting reading.”
Damn, he thought. And hoped he kept anxiety off his face. It couldn’t be Reel records—unless mere was a two-legged leak in the records system.
“Reckless proceeding and wrongful death.” Tanzer pocketed the card again. “You want the reason I subbed him? There’s a grieving mother out there that’s been trying to get justice out of that boy of yours. Rape and murder—“
“Neither of which is true.”
“I had, if you want to know, lieutenant, specific orders to pull Dekker off that demo, because Dekker’s legal troubles were going to surface again the minute his name hit the downworld media—and it would have.”
“On a classified test. He lost a partner out in the Belt. The incident isn’t a secret in the Company. Far from it. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that, if you’ve got that record.”
“The name was going to surface, take my word for it. He’s politically hot, too damned hot to represent this program— that’s why I pulled him from that demo, lieutenant, and you had to ignore my warning. Stick to issues you’re prepared to answer and leave Dekker the hell out of this. Cory Salazar. Does the name mean anything to you?”
“ASTEX politics murdered Salazar.”
“Tell that to the mother. Tell that to the mama of the underage kid Dekker seduced out there.”
“That wasn’t the way it happened, colonel.”
“You want to tell Salazar’s mother that, —lieutenant? You want to tell that to a woman who’s on the MarsCorp board? I couldn’t put him in front of the media. I had to pull him off that team. You understand me? I’m trusting you
right now, lieutenant, with a critical confidence, because, dammit, you’ve raised the issue in there and you’d better have the good sense to back off mat point, waffle your way out of it and come into line if you want to keep your boy , inside these walls. If he gets to be a media issue, he’s dead. You understand that?”
“I understand Wilhelmsen died, I understand a whole ciew died for a damned politicking decision—“
“You mink I don’t care, Lieutenant? Your boy Dekker’s got a political problem and a mouth. And we’ve got a ship mat kills crews and somebody’s mother breathing down our necks, wanting your boy’s head on a platter. You hear me? I didn’t screw Dekker. Your captain put him in that position, I didn’t. Damned right I pulled him from what was scheduled to go public, and damned right I shut him up before he got to the VIPs we had onstation.”