Добавить в цитаты Настройки чтения

Страница 119 из 162

“Trez sloppy,” Sal said.

“The Corps don’t like you to calc all the numbers. Neither do the helldeck preachers. Listen all you like, you sojer-boys with the bugs. You sleep down with the Corp, you get up with fleas. How good’s your addition?”

“There is no excuse,” Tanzer said, “there is no mitigating circumstance except your personal decision to release Dekker from hospital without psychiatric evaluation, without appropriate procedures. The man’s a fuse, lieutenant. You knew that. Or don’t you read your perso

Graff didn’t ask how Tanzer had. He said, patiently, standing in front of Tanzer’s desk: “Dekker didn’t do anything. He got up in a hurry and bumped a man he didn’t even know....”

“This is a finger you want on the trigger of the most sophisticated weapons system ever devised? Can’t navigate from a chair in the messhall? Is that his problem?”

“Your news service released a story without a next-of notice. Was that deliberate?”

“Is it a death situation? I think not. Your boy can’t tolerate a little stress? What in hell is he doing in this program? He blows and your whole side of the messhall comes out of the seats—”

“Your man did the grabbing and the shoving. Don’t try that one. It was simultaneous. There are too many witnesses.”

“Your witnesses were all in the middle of it. Your latest recruits were instigators. Is that what you call leadership? Is that what you call a cooperative relationship? Damned right, I don’t put all the blame on Dekker, / don’t blame the boy you dragged out of hospital and put into a high voltage situation, / blame the officer who made that boy a cause, which is damned well what you’ve done with your attitude and, for all I know, your direct statements to your command. You piled the pressure on that boy, you put those women in the middle of it, you set him up to draw fire—he was guaranteed to blow the first time he got any load more man he had. So his mama lost her job, damned right his mama lost her job—she was calling MarsCorp board members at two in the morning, threatening phone calls, you read me? She’s a spacecase—like mother, like son, if you want my opinion. It’s congenital!”

“You have no basis for any such conclusion.”

“Haven’t I? I’m telling you right now, right here, he’s never getting back in a cockpit and you aren’t giving any more orders in a UDC premise, not in the messhall, not the offices, not the classrooms, not the corridors or the hospital. Try that one, lieutenant. Take that one to your captain and see what he has to say.”

He had no instructions how to play that one. He wasn’t a lawyer. He didn’t know whether Tanzer could legally do that. He wasn’t in charge of policy. He didn’t know whether he should use Fleet Security to guarantee access. It was down to that. The phone rang—thank God for two extra seconds to think while Tanzer jabbed a button and growled an irritable, “I’m not to be disturbed.”

“Sir,” the secretary said, on intercom, “your line.”

Unusual. Tanzer picked up the phone to listen in private and his expression smoothed out and went completely grim.

“When?” Tanzer asked; and: “Any other information?” And, “Find out, dammit, however you have to.”

After which Tanzer hung up, glowered at him and said, “Get yourself and your crew up onto the carrier. Right now.”

“Incoming?” A strike at Sol? Union missiles?

Tanzer’s fist slammed the desk. “Get your ass out of this office, lieutenant, and get it the hell up to the carrier where you’re supposed to be competent!”

Incoming was no time to stand arguing, and arguing with Tanzer was no way to get information through the carrier’s systems; but if it was Union action there was no way he was going to make the carrier’s deck before criticality. “Phone,” he said, and reached for the one on the desk. The colonel made to stop him, and he held on to it with: “Dammit, they need a go-order. —Carrier-com,” he told Tanzer’s secretary. “Fast,” —after which the secretary muttered something and he heard the lighter, fainter sound of Fleet relays. “This is Graff,” he said the instant he had a click-in. “Status.”

“J-G,” Saito’s voice came back faintly. “You’re on a UDC line.”





“Yes.” Short and fast. “Colonel’s office.” It wasn’t an incoming—he knew that in the first heartbeat of Saito’s remark about his whereabouts and he knew in that same second that UDC was a codeword on its own. Saito said, calmly: “Stand by,” and the phone popped and went to com-noise.

“This is FleetCom Command. ECS4 ETA at Sol Two 2 hours 3 minutes. Command of Sol Two facilities has passed to Fleet Command. UDC perso

The message went offline. Went on again. Somebody in the outer office had a nervous finger.

“—with Fleet perso

He looked at Tanzer, who didn’t know. Who was worried, clearly. And mad. Tanzer’s secretary said, in his ear. “Lt. Graff, this is Lt. Andrews. The colonel has an urgent message. Would you turn over the phone?”

“For you,” he said, and passed the handset to Tanzer. Stood there watching Tanzer’s face go from red to white.

Number 4 carrier was incoming from Sol One, not at cap, but as much as they meant anyone’s optics to see at this stage. The captain?

“Get a confirm on that,” Tanzer said to whoever was on the line.

Tanzer wasn’t looking at him. He could ease things or complicate matters—here in this office. He could end up with what had happened in the messhall played out on dockside—at gunpoint, if he and Tanzer both wanted to be fools. He put on his blankest, most proper expression—was very quiet when Tanzer finally hung up and looked at him.

“I trust our messages were similar,” he said, with—he hoped—not a flicker of offense. “May I suggest, sir, we present this to perso

Tanzer didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, with a palpable effort: “I’d suggest we keep this quiet until we can sort it out.”

“Colonel, I appreciate the difficulties involved. FleetCom is handling approach and docking. In the meanwhile my command has its own set of procedures, primarily involving dock access at this point. I’d suggest we move your security into a secondary position and move ours into supervision of debarkation facilities.”

“I’ve no authorization to do that. You’ll wait, you’ll bloody wait!”

“I’ll wait,” he said, trying to add up in his head what all the Alpha and Beta Points on this station were, and what he could do to secure records without creating an incident he was virtually certain FleetCommand didn’t want. “On the other hand, that carrier will dock in a little less than two hours, by which time I have to have a secure perimeter, colonel, that’s mandatory under our procedures.”

They’d done it at Mariner, they’d done it at Pell, and he had no doubt, now, that it was his mandate to secure that area here, as quietly and peacefully as possible. It was only now sinking in that a transfer of command had happened, but how it had happened, he had no idea. The thought even occurred to him that it might be a lie—a final, extravagant lie—that maybe things had gone critical—on Earth or at the front, and they were pulling what they had, while they had it. That was what the whisper had been, always, that mere might not be the time they needed to build the riderships or the full number of carriers; and then they could take their choice—let the Fleet the, let Earth fall, and lose themselves hi space or in the motherwell, anonymous and helpless; or run with what they had, and gather the marines and the trainees they knew would be targets...

And run and spend their lives ru

Danger-sense had cut in, for whatever reason: his brain was suddenly doing what it did when hyperfocus was coming up, no reason, except Saito’s evasion yesterday, and the colonel’s being caught completely by surprise. If negotiations had been underway—it was a shock to Tanzer, or Tanzer acted in a way that didn’t make sense.