Hellburner (4 page)

Ben ran a hand over his head. “God.”

“It’s just gone, Ben. Sometimes I think it’s the ship again. Sometimes it’s not. You’re here. But I thought you were before. What are they saying about the sim?”

“Dekker, —“ He gave a glance to the door, but the doctor-types were conferring outside. He said, in a low voice: “You’re not hooked on those damn pills again, are you?”

Dekker shook his head. Scared. Lost. Eyes shifted about. Came back to him.

“Ben, —I’m sorry. Please tell me the time again.”

He didn’t hit Dekker. He leaned forward and took Dekker’s hand hard in his despite the restraints and said, very quietly, “It’s June 19
^th
. Now you tell me the year, Dek. I want the year. Right now. And you better not be wrong.”

Dekker looked seriously worried. A hesitation. A tremor of the lips. “2324.”

“Good. You got it memorized. Now there’s going to be a test every few minutes, hear me? I want you to remember that number. This is Sol Two. You had a little accident a few days back. The doctors want to know, mat’s not so hard to hold on to, is it?”

“I can’t remember. I can’t remember, Ben, it’s just gone...”

“Shit.” He had a headache. He looked at Dekker’s pale, bruised, trusting face and wanted ever so much to beat him senseless. Instead he squeezed Dekker’s hand. “Dek, boy, listen. I got a serious chance at Stockholm, you understand me? Nice lab job. I’m going to lose it if you don’t come through. I really need you to think about that simulator.”

Dekker looked upset. “I’m trying. I’m trying, Ben. I really am—“

Something was beeping. Machine up there on the shelf. Doctors were in the door. Higgins said, “Lt. Pollard. He’s getting tired. Better leave it. —Ens. Dekker, I’m Dr. Higgins, do you remember me?”

Dekker looked at him, and said faintly, “Ben?”

“You do remember him,” Ben said. “Hear me? Or I’ll break your neck!”

“Don’t go.”

“He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“The hell,” Ben said. “Dekker, goodbye. Good luck. I got to catch a shuttle. Stay the hell out of my life.”

“Lieutenant.” That was Evans. “In the hall.”

He went. He got his voice down and his breathing even. “Look, I’ve done my job. I’m no doctor, you’re the psych, what am I supposed to do?”

“You’re doing fine. This is the first time he’s been mat sure where he is.”

“Fine. I’ve got orders waiting for me on Sol One. I haven’t got time for this!”

“That’s not the way I understand your orders. You have a room assignment—“

“I haven’t got any room assignment.”

“—in the hospice a level up. It’s a small facility. Very comfortable. We’d prefer you be available for him 24 hours. His sleeping’s not on any regular pattern.”

“No way. I’ve got a return order in my pocket, my baggage is still right back there in customs. Nobody said anything about this going into another shift. That wasn’t the deal.”

“Nobody said anything about your leaving. You’d better check those orders with the issuing officer.”

“I’ll check it at the dock. I’ll get this cleared up. Just give him my goodbyes. Tell him good luck, I hope he comes out all right. I won’t be here in the morning.”

“Hospice desk is on level 2, lieutenant. You’ll find the lift right down the corridor.”

Ben had been there a while. Ben had told him—

But he couldn’t depend on that. Ben came and Ben went and sometimes Ben talked to him and told him—

Told him about an accident in the sims. But if it was a sim then maybe people he thought were dead, weren’t, even if they told him so. The doctors lied to him. They regularly lied, and Tommy didn’t come back. They kept changing doctors, changing interns, every time he got close to remembering....

Only Ben. Ben came and he started to hope and he knew that hope was dangerous. You didn’t hope. You just lived.

Ben asked him was he on drugs. He had been once. He had been crazy once, now and again, but Ben and Bird had pulled him out. The ship was spinning. Cory was out there alone, and somebody had to pull him out—

Ship was spinning. Pete was yelling. And Cory—

Ben said he would kill him if he was crazy and he hoped Ben would do that, if he truly was, because he didn’t want to live like that.

Ben said remember. But he couldn’t remember any specific time in the sims. He could remember an examiner giving him his C-3. He could remember the first time he’d Men me boards. Remembered pushing beams at Sol. Supervisor had said all right, he could do that: he was under age, but they needed somebody who wouldn’t ram a mass into the station hull. His head was bandaged, his ribs were. His knees ached like hell, he thought because he had hit the counter, trying to hit the button, but he wasn’t sure of anything. You blinked and you got green numbers and lines, and if you followed them too far you never came back. Midrange focus. Back it up, all the way inside.

There’d been an accident and the ship had blown up. And his partners were dead. Or maybe never existed. It was a sim. Bright ball of nuclear fire. And he was here and they were in it, and it was all green glowing lines out there, whipping and snaking to infinity.

He remembered faces now. People he thought he liked— Bird. Meg and Sal. Cory, and Graff. Pete and Elly and Falcone. Faces. Voices. Falcone yelling, Hey, Dek, see you tomorrow.

But Falcone wouldn’t. Elly wouldn’t. They never would.

“You damn bastards!” he yelled. “Bastards!”

Interns came running, grabbed hold of him. “No,” he said, reminded what happened when he yelled. “No. Tommy!”

“Get the hypo,” one said, and he got a breath, he got a little sanity, said, “I’m not violent. I don’t need it. It’s all right. Let go, dammit! Get the doctor!”

They eased up. They stopped bruising his arms and just held him still.

“Just be quiet, sir. Just be quiet.”

“No shots. No damn shots.”

“Doctor’s orders, sir.”

“I don’t need one. I swear to you, I don’t need one.”

“Doctor says you’re not getting any rest, sir. You better have it. Just to be sure.”

He looked the intern in the face. Big guy, red face and freckles, lying across him. Out of breath. So was he. And two other large guys who were leaning on him and holding his legs.

“Sorry,” he said, between breaths. “Don’t want to give you guys trouble. I really don’t want to. I just don’t want any shot right now.”

“Sorry, too, sir. Doctor left orders. You don’t want to be any trouble. Right?”

“No,” he said. He shook his head. He made up his mind he had better change tactics. Agreeing with them got him out of this place. It would. It had. He couldn’t remember. It was only the drugs he had to worry about.

“Just hold still, sir. All right?”

“Yeah,” he said, and the hypo kicked against his arm. Stung like hell. His eyes watered.

He said, “You fuckin’ get off me. I can’t breathe. Let me up, dammit.”

“Soon’s you shut your eyes, sir. Just be quiet. You loosened a couple of John’s teeth yesterday. You remember?”

He didn’t remember. But he said, out of breath, “I’m sorry. Sorry about that. I’m better. A lot better.”

“That’s good, sir.”

“Friend of mine was here,” he said. But the drug was gathering thick about his brain. He said it again, afraid he might not remember when he waked. Or that it hadn’t happened at all.

He went to sleep when they drugged him and he waked up and he never knew where or when. He was going out now. He felt it happening. And he was scared as hell where he would wake up or what would be true or where the lines would lead him.

“Ben,” he cried, “Bird. Ben, come back— Ben, don’t go— they killed my partners, Ben, they fuckin’ killed us—“

“This isn’t validated,” the check-in clerk said, and slid the travel voucher across the desk in the .6 g of 8-deck. “You need an exit stamp.”

Ben took the voucher with a sinking heart. “What exit stamp? Nobody said anything about an exit stamp. There’s no exit stamp in the customs information.”

“It’s administrative, sir. Regulation. I have to have a stamp/’

“God. Look, call Sol One.”

“You do that from BaseCom,” the clerk said. And added without expression: “But you need an authorization from your CO to do that, sir.”

“And where do I get that?” You didn’t yell at clerks. It didn’t get you anything to yell at clerks. Ben said quietly, restrainedly: “My CO’s on Sol One—I need the UDC officer in charge.”

“This is a Fleet transport voucher.”

“I know it is,” Ben said. “But this uniform is UDC. Is it at all familiar to you? Where’s the UDC officer in charge?”

The clerk got a confused look, and focused behind him, where someone had come into the office, to stand in line was Ben’s initial reckoning; but whoever it was said, then, “Lt. Pollard?”

Voice he’d heard before. A long time ago. He turned around, a little careful in the .6g, saw a blue uniform and a black pullover, a thin, angular face and nondescript pale hair. Brass on the collar.

The trip out from the Belt. The Hamilton. And Jupiter’s well.

Graff. Fleet Lt. Jurgen Graff. Carrier pilot, junior grade.

“There’s an office free,” Graff said, meaning very evidently they should go there. Now. Urgently. A Fleet lieutenant wanted to talk to him, and he was stuck on Fleet orders in something that increasingly felt like a deliberate black hole?

“I’ve got a flight out of here at 1800. They’re talking about an exit stamp. I need some kind of clearance.”

“You don’t have a flight out of here. Not this one.”

He slowed down, so that Graff had to pull a stop and look at him. “Sir. I need this straightened out, with apologies, sir, but I’ve got a transfer order waiting for me back on Sol One, I was told not to communicate with my CO, I’m not Fleet personnel. I understand the interservice agreements, but—“

“Five minutes.”

“I’m UDC personnel. I want to see a UDC ranking officer. Sir. Now.”

“Five minutes,” Graff repeated. “You don’t want your friend screwed. Do you?”

“My friend— Sir, I don’t care what happens to my friend. I’ve got an appointment waiting for me back on Sol One, and if I lose it, I’m screwed. I’m just a little uneasy about this whole damn arrangement, —sir. This isn’t what I was told.”

“There’s another shuttle out the 22
^nd
. 2100 hours.”

Ben caught a breath. Three days. But Graff’s moves meant business and you didn’t argue a security matter on the open dock—no. Even if it was blackmail. Extortion. Kidnapping.

Graff waited. He came ahead. He went with Graff into a freight office and Graff waved the lights on.

“Yes, sir?” he said.

“We need him,” Graff said. “We need him to remember.”

“Sir, I just graduated from TI. If I’m not back there for the interviews they’re going away. They’re going to assign those slots and I’m stuck teaching j-1 programming to a class full of wide-eyed button-pushers, —sir. Excuse me, but I’ve not been in contact with any officer in my chain of command, I’ve gone along with this on the FSO’s word it had notified my CO. I’m not sure at this point I’m not AWOL.”

“You’re not. You’re cleared.”

“I’ve got your word on that. I haven’t seen any order but the one that had me report to the FSO on One. What have you done to me?”

“You have my word. I’ll get a message to your CO.”

“You mean they haven’t?”

“I’ll double check. We’ve played poker, haven’t we, Mr. Pollard?”

“Yes, sir.” Days of poker. Him. Dekker. Graff. No damn thing else to do on a half-built carrier.

“This is poker,” Graff said. “For the major stakes. How is he?”

“What does it matter? What’s he into?”

“Say I need him sane.”

“He’s never been sane.”

“Don’t joke like that. In some quarters they might take you seriously.”

“I am serious. The guy’s good, but his tether on reality’s just a little frayed.”

“Maybe that’s what it takes to do what he does.”

He stood there close to Graff, looking into Graff’s sober face in this very unofficial office and suddenly wondering who and what Graff was talking about and what Dekker did regularly do that had put him where he was. He said, carefully, “Dekker got lost out in the Belt. Banged around a lot. Real disoriented.”

“We know that.”

And how much else? Ben wondered. God, how much else? News didn’t escape the Belt. Security didn’t let anything get out. Even yet. Everything about the mining operation out there was under wrap. You didn’t know how much the Fleet might know. Or what tiny, inadvertent slip would let them guess what they’d done track there and what they might have been involved in that might screw his security clearance for good.

“I knew this man a handful of months. I’ve seen him like this before—when he Fust got out of hospital on R2. I can’t make him make sense til he wants to make sense. I couldn’t then. Nobody can.”

“You made a good advance on it. Three days, lieutenant. I want him to talk.”