Hellburner

You did the best you could in a touchy situation and they promoted Edmund Porey two ranks in the last year?

God, what did the man do? The Captains had to know Porey. Had to. Were they blind?

But Nav Two on Carina had a good head for Strategic Operations—Porey was back and forth to the Belt, Porey was ferry-captain on the carriers as they moved in for finish, which made him currently one of the most experienced with the ships, and Porey was probably working tight-in with Outsystem and Insystem Surveillance: that had to be where he got the merits. Clever man. Clever man, Edmund Porey was, and, clearly now, command-track, which he himself would never be: hyperfocus and macrofocus weren’t the same thing—not by a system diameter they weren’t.

So Porey had the stuff. Clear now how desperately they needed a mind of Porey’s essential qualities.

Clear now whose command he just might end up serving Helm for. The captain hadn’t trusted him. So they brought Porey in over his head?

He didn’t want to think about that. Instead, he arranged his priorities and issued his orders, trusting they were getting through. It gave him the same surreal feeling he’d had writing his will, for the handful of personal possessions he did own—that past the time those instructions were carried out, his personal existence was going to be very much different.

He had ordered the records secured. That first. There were a lot of extremely upset UDC security personnel on the loose. There had very nearly been an armed stand-off. The UDC ordered erasure on certain files, he was quite certain. He was equally certain he had been too late to prevent that, during the time of the stand-off and queries flying back and forth between his office and Tanzer’s—he was sure UDC security had done exactly what they should have done, and that he had not been able to prevent it (although outside of going hand to hand with UDC personnel and cutting through a lock he didn’t know what he could have done) would be written down for a failure on his part.

He had not let them throw the database into confusion. That was a plus. He had not lost the library tapes. That also. He had ordered personnel in detention transferred; he had taken hospital and testing records under Fleet protection. He might order the release of detainees, but the disposition of those cases as a policy issue was not within his administrative discretion. He did not like the new commander. He, however, did not personally approve of creating administrative messes, which, counting his administrative style and Porey’s, might be the worse for the difference. He advised the UDC officers that all facilities were passing under Fleet administrative command, and personally phoned the UDC provost marshal and UDC Legal Affairs to be certain that all legal proceedings were frozen exactly where they were: no sense letting anything pass into record that need not.

Demas called, to say that the carrier was braking, directly after ceasing acceleration. Demas said that there was a contingent of marines aboard needing gravitied accommodations.

“I copy that. What’s the head count?”

“Two thousand.”

That was a carrier’s full troop complement. They wanted miracles. He called Tanzer, he listened to the shouting, he calmly requested invention, and ordered an emergency galley set up in an idle SoICorp module, ordered its power-up, ordered an Intellitron communications center linked in as FleetCom relay for the marine officers, ordered the Fleet gym given over to troop exercise, the Fleet exercise schedule combined with the UDC, on alternate days; located every class-4 storage can in Sol-2, shifted all class-4 storage to low-g and ordered station ops to consolidate the remainder and clear section D-2 for set-up as habitation. Sol-2 civil Ops bitched and moaned about access-critical supplies.

“I assure you,” he said coldly and courteously, “I appreciate the difficulty. But human beings have priority over galley supplies… That is a problem. I suggest than you move your dispenser equipment to 3-deck to handle it. There are bottles and carts available… —Then get them from maintenance, or we’ll order them. I’m sure you can solve that….”