Hellburner

“No,” he objected, suddenly panicked. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

But they took him anyway.

Aboujib, assault with a weapon, incitement

Basrami, assault

Bissell, assault

Blumgarten, assault, assault on an officer

Brown, assault with a weapon

Cannon, assault, incitement

Dekker, instigation of riot, assault

Franklin, assault with a weapon

Hardesty, assault

Hasseini, assault, verbal abuse of an officer

Jacoby, assault with a weapon

Kady, assault, assault on an officer

Keever, assault, destruction of government property

Mason, assault

Mitchell, assault, assault on an officer

Pauli, assault, incitement

Pollard, assault with a weapon

Rasmussen, verbal abuse; (hospital)

Schwartz, assault

Simmons, assault

Vasquez, assault; (hospital)

Zeeman, aggravated assault

Graff read the list, handed it to Petrie, the junior out of Legal Affairs. “I want interviews, any way you can get them. Record everything. I want them now, I want any releases you can get, I want them an hour ago. And I want condition, instigator and perpetrator on our hospital cases.”

“Yessir.” Petrie put the list in his case. The temper must be showing. Petrie didn’t stop for questions of his own. The door shut.

Demas, resting against the counter, said, “Doesn’t seem there was anything premeditated: the channel 3 news boss recognized a correspondence of names on the Sol One news feed, suddenly realized it was sensitive, and jerked the report off the air—bad decision. Dekker happened to be in the messhall, the vid happened to be channel 3. Charlie Tyson happened to be behind him with a tray; Dekker jumped up—bang into the tray. Tyson blew up, Dekker blew, the whole messhall blew.”

“I want a tape of that news broadcast, I want to know what’s going on with Dekker’s mother, I want to know what she’s involved in.”

“You want it in capsule now?” Demas asked. “I’ve got the essentials.”

“Go.”

“Dekker’s mother got fired two days ago. She was a maintenance worker—electrician—for SolCorp. The maintenance office claimed incompetence—the record is apparently inaccessible—she claimed she was a victim of MarsCorp pressure inside the EC, claimed Salazar’s agents had been harassing her on the phone. She showed up in front of the MarsCorp office with lawyers and reporters, MarsCorp called Security, and a MarsCorp spokesman went on camera to charge Ms. Dekker with sabotage and threatening phone calls—apparently Ms. Dekker had been doing some work inside the MarsCorp sector and got some phone numbers, by what Ms. Salazar charges. Ms. Dekker claims they’ve been harassing her—calls on her off watch, that kind of thing. Ms. Dekker’s got some civil rights organization on her side, they’re charging Ms. Salazar used pressure to get Ms. Dekker’s job on personal grounds. End report.” “Harassing phone calls. Is Ms. Salazar on One?” “She was eight days ago, at the time Ms. Dekker claims she got two of the calls. She’s in London at the moment. Ms. Dekker claims she asked for a trace on the calls. The station office claims there was no such request and says their records show no calls to Ms. Dekker’s residence.” Demas folded his arms. “Ask how sophisticated Ms. Salazar’s employees might be.”

“I take it there are ways to evade those records.” “Abundant methods—limited only by the sophistication of the operator and the equipment. This is a woman who maintains apartments in two space stations and a couple of world capitals, on two separate planets. I would not match a station electrician against her technical resources.”

“We’ve been sleeping through this one. I need a structural chart of MarsCorp and the EC, With names and kinships.” Damn, the Security chief was—where else?—with the captain. “Can we get that through our own channels?” “We can try. It’s going to be a maze. Kinships, I’m not sure are going to be systematized anywhere. They’re illegal, remember—where it regards government contracts. Personal friendships are illegal.”

“Are animosities?”

A humorless laugh. “Unfortunately there’s no such rule. Among those cards on your desk is the Alyce Salazar file such as we have it—with Saito’s compliments. Some of the information may be in there. It’s going to take Legal Affairs to—“

“—unravel the MarsCorp connections?”

Demas nodded. “If they can.”

“Meanwhile there’s the next shuttle to One. I want somebody on it. I want somebody to go personally to the captain’s office—if there still is an office—and get a report to him we’re sure isn’t intercepted. And I want some message back here that isn’t wearing a UDC uniform or Belter chain and claiming they don’t know a thing. I should have done it when Pollard came in here.”