Hellburner

several turns, more empty corridors. Guards at the barracks section door asked for his ID. “Dekker,” he said, and pulled his card from his pocket, turned it over numbly, all the rush chilled out of him. “Off duty. Just out of detention.”

The soldier guards said go through. He went, through the corridor into a barracks main-room crowded with people he knew, people he liked, guys who grabbed his arm and wished him well. He thought,

If you only knew what I’ve done to you … …

And almost lost everything when Meg got through the crowd and flung her arms around him. Cheers and catcalls from the company, egging her on for a kiss he didn’t shy away from, but all at once he was leaning on Meg, not certain which way was up. Dark was around him, that hazed back to light and the faces—

You all right? someone asked him, and he tried to say he was. Guy belongs in bed, somebody else said, but he said no, and they shoved him at a chair and told him the galley was sending food to barracks and in the meanwhile things had to be better, they were under Fleet control, they were trying to straighten out the duty roster and figure who was on what tomorrow…

Meg hauled a chair up facing his, grabbed his hands and made him look at her.

“Dek. You tracking, cher?”

“Yeah,” he said. He wanted a phone, he wanted—he didn’t know now whether he could cope with the news station or his mother. He kept hearing echoes, like the sim room. Someone saying, Enjoy the ride, Dekker. But the voice never had any tone. It drowned in the echoes.

He kept seeing the accident sequence on the tape. Not threatening, just a problem. He kept thinking about his mother, the apartment, the dock at R2. He kept seeing mission control, and a silent fireball. And the dizzy prospect down the core, all lines gone to a vanishing point. Fire pattern in the sims. Intersecting colors. Green lines. Track, and firepoints. He shook his head and took account of the room again, guys he ought to love, if he had it left. But maybe he was like Porey. Maybe he didn’t have it, or never had had. More comfortable not to have it. More comfortable to love the patterns more than people. Patterns didn’t the. They just evaporated. People went with so much more violence…

“God, he’s spaced. Get him on his feet.”

“We’re going to fly with this moonbeam?” Arm came around him, hauled him to his feet, and he didn’t resist it. “I tell you, I should’ve been in Stockholm, should’ve got my transfer—I hate this shit.” Friends here. People he trusted. People he’d betrayed in there with Porey, because he’d been a damned fool.

“Man’s got to eat.”

“Somebody ought to call me meds.”

“No meds.” He’d had enough. He walked. He got to his room. He hit the bed.

“Didn’t search the room,” he thought he heard Meg say. “Didn’t mess up the drawers, I mean, these MPs are politer than Company cops.”

“Peut-et’ they’re just neater,” Sal said; and Ben:

“There wasn’t a search.”

“How do you?” Sal started to ask. And said: “Silly question. Trez dim of me.”

Electronics and flash-scan assured privacy, even against fiber and remotes. Security swore so. Graff could feel secure in this cubbyhole next the carrier’s bridge, if he could trust present company.

Ask Demas and Saito who they belonged to? They’d say—Captain Keu. Of course. Saito would say it without a flicker. One preferred to hope and reason that was the case, rather than ask a pointless question.

“Tanzer’s actually dispatched a resignation,” Saito said, apropos of the situation within the station, “but it came back negative out of Geneva. That means the UDC wants him where he is. Which could be show of opposition: they could replace him three days from now. Or they want him where he is because he knows where the records are and what’s in them, which could be useful to them here. They lost a big one. Forces inside the JLC lost a big one.”

“We didn’t know,” Demas put in, doubtless reading minds, “when it would shift. That it might—one hoped.”

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