Hellburner

He passed the door back into his room, sat down on the bed carefully, so as not to wake Sal. Low light, scatter of braids on the pillows, innocent-as-a-babe profile with parted lips, slight snub nose—dammit, the conniving kid was his partner, he liked being with her, he’d found a piece of himself clicked back into place when she’d come walking into the barracks—and being without her again was a dreary thought. He earnestly, honestly liked Sal; and Meg; which he’d never said about anybody but Morrie Bird; and God help him, he could even get acclimated to Dekker, or just plain nerve-dead.

Fact was, skuz as this whole place was, somehow the echo and the racket and the coming and going in the barracks fit him like an old sock—fact was, he liked the racket and the activity and the accent he’d grown up with echoing off the bulkheads. Pressure here was from fools higher-up, different than TVs carpeted, high-voltage corridors, where competition was cutthroat and constant.

But this wasn’t any damn mining run this group was prepping for. At TI your highest chance of fatal injury was sticking your finger in a power socket or ODing on caffeine. Here—

God, they weren’t even sure the damn ship would work. Rumor out in the hall was that they were going max v with the program and they still hadn’t proved any crew could run it once—let alone fly it in combat.

That was crazy. And he wasn’t—even if insanity got the rest of them.

Sal—go out there and turn herself into a missile? Sal and Meg end up in a fireball? Hell if, if he could stop it. But he didn’t know how to; couldn’t stop Meg, damn the woman, if Dekker couldn’t. And if Meg went, Sal went, and if Sal went—

Oh, hell, he was not a fool. There were women in Stockholm. There’d be a way to get down there, even through Fleet Command—if he just got Aptituded into strategic technical.

Stockholm women wouldn’t ask stupid questions like What’s the Belt? They’d have university degrees and stand and watch the tide come in and the snow fall and… think it was all damned ordinary.

Hell. Bloody hell with women. Dekker was saner. At least Dekker knew what he wanted.

Chapter 10

Insert card please,” the neutral voice said. The phone clicked. Dekker held the receiver and waited. And waited. Meg and Ben and Sal were in Testing. His day didn’t start until 1015, when he had an appointment with Evaluations. Which meant he could go to the gym to try to settle his breakfast and his nerves; or try a phone call, see if he could get a personal call through to Sol One, on FleetCom, in spite of the security crackdown.

“Ens. Dekker.” Human voice this time. “Is this an official call?”

“I’m trying to call my mother.” He hated to sound like a strayed six-year-old. Mother always felt strange to him. Mama he’d long outgrown, though it came naturally to Belter ears. “It’s a next-of. There was something on the news. —Look, can you put me through to Lt. Graff? He knows the situation.”

“—I’m not being obstructionist, Ens. Dekker. I’m aware of your situation, but I am required to get an authorization for personal calls.”

God, everyone in the solar system knew his business. “Yeah, well, can you do anything, FleetCom? The lieutenant’s not outstanding easy to find this morning.”

“I’ll page him.”

“Everybody’s paged him,” Dekker muttered. “I’ll card in every little bit, I’m going down to gym 3A.”

“I’m sorry. The gym is now off limits to Fleet personnel. Use the one on 3-deck, section 2.”

“How do I get my clothes out of the locker in 1A?”

“Check with the office on 3-deck.”

Everything was on its ear. “Thanks,” he said glumly, and went four sections and took a lift in—it was about as much exercise as he wanted, just walking it. But one thing he’d learned in his tour in the Belt, if you could crawl to the gym, you crawled there and worked out; and if you got the spooks or the nerves—you went there and burned the chill off, you didn’t let your mind go in loops—never let that start, not when you worked in cold, dark places, with things mat went bang all too commonly.

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 *