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Sol One. His mother’s apartment. But that was no good. His mother was in trouble, thanks to him...
Way Out. But that ship was dead. Like Cory.
Think of stupid stuff. Name the moons of Saturn. Jupiter had used to work, but he’d learned that real estate too intimately.
Docking fire sequence for a miner ship. Range and rate of closing.
Finally one said, “Name’s Parton. Fleet Medical. How are you doing, Lt. Dekker?”
Fleet. He said, “The lieutenant agree with this?”
“The lieutenant doesn’t agree with fighting.”
So he was in trouble. With everybody. He slid a glance over to the wall, where he didn’t have to look at Parton or get in an argument, and wondered distractedly if he could get a word out of the news cha
But the medic, Parton, was talking with the other medics— said, of the blood pressure, “Yeah, he does that. Doesn’t like hospitals. Doesn’t like UDC medics, if you want the plain truth....”
Not real fond of any meds right now, —sir. Can I get up?
But he didn’t ask that, he didn’t think it was smart to ask, at this point. He got an elbow under him—they had him lying on a table freezing his ass off, and he only wanted to relieve the ache in his back. But a hand landed on his shoulder: it had a UDC uniform cuff. MP. He lay back and stared at the lights and froze in silence until the Fleet medic came back and stood over him.
“Lieutenant’s orders: you go where you’re told to go, you don’t argue, you don’t say anything about the incident to anybody but our legal staff, you understand?”
He said, burning with embarrassment, “Something about my mother on the news, can anybody for God’s sake find out what happened to my mother?”
“Lieutenant’s aware of that. He’s making inquiries.”
“What about the other guys? Pollard and Kady and Aboujib—”
“They’re fine.”
“They arrest them too?”
“Riot and assault.” Parton looked across him, over his head. “Lieutenant wants him with his unit. The three he named.”
“Kady and Aboujib are women.”
“They’re his unit, sergeant.”
Long silence. Then: “I’ll have to ask the major.”
Age-old answer. Dekker shut his eyes. Figured they’d be a while asking and getting no. “It’s protecting me from Kady you better worry about,” he told them. Bad joke. Nobody was laughing. He wasn’t amused either. Meg had a record of some kind. Meg had just gotten it cleared, got a chance to fly again. Ben had his assignment in Stockholm....
His mother used to say, You damned kid, everything you touch you break—
You messed up my whole life, you self-centered little brat—why can’t you do right, why can’t you once in your life do something right, you damned screw-up?
Long time he lay there freezing, with a knot in his gut, replaying that newscast for the information he could get out of it, telling himself they couldn’t prove anything on his mother, she’d at least got some kind of lawyer, so she wasn’t without help—
He’d got a little money ahead, he’d saved it out of his pay, he wasn’t spending anything. He’d tried to give it to her before, for what he’d cost her, but she hadn’t wanted it. Maybe he could get Ben to send it to her. Maybe she’d take it from Ben—she was going to need funds fast, if she wasn’t drawing pay, she never got that far ahead of the bills, and even if she had free legal help, it wouldn’t pay for food...
“Word is, he can’t go in a cell with the women,” the MP said. “Regulations. We can put him with Pollard....”
He didn’t argue. Parton only said he’d report that refusal to the lieutenant.
Parton left. The UDC medics got him up. The MPs locked a bracelet on his wrist that they said he wasn’t to mess with, and took him out and down the hall to the cells.
Guys from his barracks yelled out, along the way, “Hey, Dek!” and he looked numbly to the side. Mason and Chiv were mere. Pauli. Hardesty. And across the aisle—a guy he didn’t know, familiar face, who looked murder at him. So he didn’t look. He walked where they wanted him, they took the cuffs off when he’d gotten to Ben’s cell and they opened the door and put him in.
Ben gave him a sullen look. He didn’t figure Ben wanted to start a fight in front of the MPs. So he got over in the corner, mere being just a double bunk and a toilet, and Ben sitting on the bunk: he sank down on the floor with his back to the corner, feeling the bruises and feeling the silence from the bunk.
MPs stood there a moment more looking at him. He had the fanciful notion that after they left Ben was going to get up and come over and kill him. But he didn’t truly think so. Hit him—yeah. He expected that. He even wanted it. Anything to stop him thinking about the mess he’d made.
The MPs went away.
Ben said, “The place is probably bugged.”
Which meant Ben wouldn’t kill him—not in front of any cameras. He sat mere with his knees drawn up to his chest so tight he couldn’t move and felt numb.
“You going to sit there?”
He didn’t know what else to do. Didn’t care about climbing up to the top bunk. He was comfortable enough where he was—comfortable as he was going to get.
“You sure got a way of finding it, you know that?”
“Yeah,” he said. It cost to say, “Sorry, Ben,” but he did it, past the knot in his throat. He hadn’t said it often enough, maybe, over the years, and a lot of the people he should have said it to—it was too late to tell.
Ben didn’t say anything for a while. Finally: “You break anything?”
“No.” He wasn’t sure about the ribs, and the lately-broken arm and the shoulder ached like hell, but the meds hadn’t taped anything, or sent him back to hospital, so probably not. He just generally hurt.
“Son of a bitch,” Ben muttered. Ben might hit him after all. Ben’s chances of getting out of here and back to his security clearance had sunk, maybe, as low as they could go. Ben had nothing to lose.
Ben muttered, “Get out of the damn corner. You look like hell.”
He made a tentative move of his legs. But he was wedged in. Couldn’t do it without more effort man he wanted to spend. So he shook his head, just wanted to be left in peace a while. Didn’t want an argument... or he just wanted this one to play itself out and come to some distracting conclusion.
“Damn.” Ben got up, came over and grabbed him up by one wrist and the other, turned him back to the bunk and shoved him onto it.
Bang went his head against the wall. He just rested where he’d hit and stared at Ben, Ben with this thoughtful expression he couldn’t figure out. Mad, he expected. But he didn’t want to deal with complexities or have Ben trying to con him. And Ben’s frown didn’t look as angry as Ben should. “You sick? You want the meds?”
“I’ve had ‘em.” He curled into the corner where the bunk met the wall, tucked up and tried to project a thorough Leave me alone.
Ben sat down, put a hand on his ankle and shook him. “You all right?”
“Yeah.” He jerked his leg, Ben moved his hand, and he sat there with his arms across his gut, because he felt the pieces coming apart, the one reliable guy he knew was after him in a way that didn’t mean Ben had just gone friendly—oh, no, Ben had just changed the rules; Ben was after something, maybe his neck, maybe just after using him to get what he wanted: Belters were like that, that were born there. You could partner with them. You could deal with them. But you didn’t ever take for granted they thought the way you did.
“Your mama’s in some kind of trouble, is she?”
“Her trouble.”
Ben said, “Sounds to me like Salazar.”
They’d gotten altogether too friendly one watch, on the ship, on the trip out from the Belt. Their lives had been changing. Late one night he’d told Ben a lot of things he wished now he hadn’t. Early as the next wakeup, he’d known it was a mistake. “Leave it the hell alone, Ben. It’s not your business.”