Hellburner

“What else do we need?” Meg was asking. “What about these tests tomorrow? Is there anything we can do to prep ourselves?”

“Nothing but a lot of sleep. Relax. They put you through anything on the carrier? They did, me.”

“Didn’t see a damned soul on the carrier, except at mealtimes. We played gin most of the way.”

“Nice guys,” Sal sighed, “and the reg-u-lations said we couldn’t touch ‘em.”

That got a frown out of Ben. And Sal’s elbow hi Ben’s ribs.

Meg said, “So what do we do? What’s it like?”

“They hook you up to a machine, like medical tests, eye tests, response tests, hand-eye, that sort of thing.”

“Hurt?” Sal asked.

“Yeah, some.”

“You going to study up?” Sal asked Ben.

“I’m telling you, I’m not taking them. I’m not showing. Let them court-martial me, it’s exactly what I want,”

“Ben, —“

Guys stopped by the table. C-Barracks. Techs. Mason, among them, nudged his shoulder with his tray. “Dek,” Mason said. “How you doing?”

“All right,” he said, “pretty tired.”

“Good to see you. Real good to see you….”

“Pop-u-lar,” Ben said when Mason and his guys had moved on. “Just can’t figure how. All these people get to know you and they haven’t broken your neck,”

“Ben,” Sal said, defending him. But it didn’t sting, couldn’t even say why, just—it didn’t. Ben didn’t ask for help, Ben didn’t ask for anything—Cory had been a lot like mat. Ben was going to fight his way out of this mess on his own, and that was at least one piece of karma he wouldn’t have to worry about.

“Best—“ he started to say. And caught a name on the vid, sounded like Dekker. He picked up Sol Station, and… lodging a complaint—

“Ms. Dekker, what specifically are you alleging?”

God. It was. She looked—

“Dek?” Meg asked, and turned around to look where he was looking, at the vid, at a woman in a crowd of reporters. Blond hair was faded. Face was lined. She didn’t look good, she didn’t look at all good…

Something about MarsCorp, something about threats, an investigation into phone calls … Some organization backing a suit—

Sal said: “What’s going on?” and Meg: “Shhh.”

He couldn’t track on it. Didn’t make sense. Something about losing her job, some civil rights organization launching a lawsuit in her name—

“It’s his mother,” Ben said; he said, “Shut up, dammit, I can’t hear—“ But he could see the background, see the MarsCorp logo, he knew that one—MarsCorp offices on Sol Station, police, reporters, some guy who said he was a lawyer—something about her son—

Picture jumped, tore up. The local station cut in with the channel 2 program information crawl—but he wasn’t finished yet, wasn’t damned finished yet…

“They cut it off!” He shoved the chair around to get up, get to a phone, saw the shadow of the tray and the sense of balance wasn’t there. He staggered, hit it, food went everywhere, cup bounced—“Shit!” He was flat off his balance, elbowed the guy trying to hold his feet, guy grabbed at him and he didn’t want a fight, he just wanted the phone. “Get out of my way!”

“You son of a bitch!” The guy had his arm. Ben and Meg and Sal grabbed for him, Ben saying something about Let him go, the man’s upset; but the guy wasn’t letting him go, the guy swung him and he grabbed for a handhold on the UDC uniform, about the time there were a whole lot of other chairs clearing, and Fleet was all around them. A high voice yelled, “You damn fools, stop it—“

Wasn’t any stopping it. The UDC guy hit him, and he hit the guy with everything he had, figuring it was the only blow he was going to get in—couldn’t hear anything, with guys coming over the tables, guys pushing and shoving and punches flying past his head—he didn’t want to be here, he wanted the damned phone, wanted the truth out of the station, that was all—

Lights were flashing on and off, shouting filled his ears, fist rattled his skull and gray and red shot across his vision as arms came around him and hauled him out of it.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *