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Because damned right there was a co
Hell if that was the way it had been. Cory had dreamed of starships, Cory’d hated her mother’s laid-out course—college to a MarsCorp guaranteed success track—so much that Cory Wouldn’t run fast enough or far enough to escape it. Maybe starships had only been a kid’s romantic answer—but Cory had come to the Belt because she’d thought she could double and triple her money free mining—she’d lured him along for a pilot, and they’d nearly done it, until Cory ran head-on into the corrupt System her mama had wanted her to sit at the top of—and it killed her.
That was the bloody truth. That was the thing Alyce Salazar wouldn’t see. He’d wanted to tell her so: he’d imagined how he’d say it if he got the chance, maybe talk to her sanely, maybe just grab her and shake some sense into mama, so she’d do something about the system that had killed Cory.
But Legal Affairs had nixed any such move, said plainly, Don’t communicate with her. Don’t attempt to communicate with her. And made it an order.
So now Alyce Salazar had communicated with his mother he knew that was the case, because his mother wasn’t dedicated to finding trouble, his mother was the absolute champion of Never get involved...
The side door opened. A team of medics came in, with: “Let’s have a look at you,” so he sat where they wanted and let them look at his eyes with lights, and into his ears, and his mouth. They got the nosebleed stopped, at least, then said they’d better have him down in the clinic for a thorough go-over.
“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
Ca
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 cha
“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 cha
“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 co
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.”
Demas looked thoughtful. “I’ll look up the schedule.”
“Due in at 0900h on the 27 th, out at 2030h the 29 th, we’ve got a service hold for scheduled maintenance. They’re claiming it’s booked full outbound. There’s always some contractor holding seats. If we’ve got any pull—get one.”
He’d gotten used to being handled like a piece of meat. He’d gotten used to cameras and doctors and cops. They made a vid record of the new skin on his shoulder and the finger-marks on his arm. They asked him who’d hit him, he just shook his head, didn’t even have to come out of his haze to talk to them. They took samples of his hair, his skin, his blood, and whatever fluid they could wring out of his body; “Pulse rate just won’t go down,” one of them said. “That’s on his hospital records.”
“What do you expect!” he asked, only time he’d opened his mouth except for a tongue depressor, and one of them said he should calm down.
“Yeah,” he said. His stomach was upset from the poking around they were doing. He tried to go on timing out, just go away and blind himself with the lights and not to let his heart flutter, the way it felt it was doing. Couldn’t think about anything if you wanted to fake out the meds. Think of—