The office there had his gym clothes, everything in sacks with old locker numbers. They had his name on the gym records. They had lockers already assigned to him and his crew….
He hadn’t had a run of things that worked in weeks. It gave him a moment of ridiculous cheerfulness. He had the whole gym to himself for the hour, everybody else being in sims or in special briefings—he wasn’t fondly looking forward to his own session with the meds upcoming. Warm up the sore spots and go in there with the adrenaline burned out of him, was the plan—lunch on carbohydrates and go into Evaluation at 1300 warmed-up and hyped, and blow hell out of their damn tests… he could do it. The doctors had kept him flat on his back too long, he’d dropped five kilos on the hospital food, and Custard Charlie Tyson had gotten a couple of good hits in, but he could do it if he could get the chill out of his bones.
Light workout with the hand weights raised a sweat.
Coordination was shot. That wasn’t good. He leaned on his knees a moment, trying to get his wind back and the rubbery feeling out of his arms, getting madder and madder at the meds, at the UDC, at the Fleet that had busted Graff over to a desk job and put in a bastard with an Attitude—
Temper wasn’t helpful. Demas would say that. Calm down, Dekker. Use your head. Adrenaline’s for speed, not stomach acid.
Yeah. But it didn’t help when the knees wanted to cave in, when you had serious worries about three fools who’d gotten themselves into a Situation for his sake, and had a CO who’d flat warned him he didn’t give a damn for their survival—
Stomach acid, hell, he wanted to beat the shit out of Porey, that was why he was shivering. And if he did that, with all the esoteric consequences of people he knew and didn’t know, it wouldn’t stop bastards from being bastards, and wouldn’t get Porey out of here, he’d only make it worse.
He didn’t want to be in this situation. He didn’t want to be anybody anyone else relied on for anything: he was schitz as hell. He was crazy. Ben knew it. He didn’t see why Beet Command couldn’t see it. He didn’t know why he’d ever been made an issue, or put where they’d put him, except the Shepherds had needed somebody crazier than they were to press their differences with the insystemers— and people who wouldn’t have given a damn about him back in the Belt, found a use for him here. He wasn’t Paul Dekker to them: he was this to one group and that to another and nobody really knew shit about him….
Hi, Dek, good to see you, Dek, how you doing? He couldn’t stand it any more—because Ben was right, they didn’t know him, didn’t know he was a screw-up, a damn dumb pusher-jock who didn’t think before he opened his mouth. Only value he had to anyone, the fact that his nerves jumped faster than average. Only thing he was good at, that ship—that was all that had mattered to him; Pete and Elly and Falcone had had themselves, and they’d gone together— the Fleet had thrown them together, they’d tested high, that was all. And they were good and they’d worked together, but he was burned out this morning, he didn’t even know whether he’d ever felt anything with them but comfort, and mat was cheap—
He didn’t know why Ben had decided to take the damn test this morning. Ben had skuzzed out on him. If Ben had held out, Ben might have persuaded Sal and Sal might have reasoned with Meg—
Like hell. He hadn’t seduced Meg out here. At least Meg and Sal weren’t his fault. The ship had done that. Some lying bastard in the Fleet had done that, who’d told Meg they’d give her a chance—
Yeah. A chance. Thanks.
Drug made you seriously spaced. You had sensor spots patched all over you, in places that made a body most emphatically wonder if it was procedure or the femme tech having a few loose circuits of her own—