Soft and smooth—you got the slight buffet as you came through the shield, momentary LOS of everything on the boards and you had to know its v, the extent of those shields, how close you were going to be when you came through the envelope—damned close, damned close. Touch. Slight mismatch. Within tolerance. Probe caught. Mate.
Power down.
Good run, solid run. Not flashy, except that UO and making that shot. He could cut the sim, meltdown and unbelt, he’d earned it and a hot shower. Fine control when you’d been hyped was hell, and switch-off was the copilot’s job, if there’d been a co-pilot this sim—he wouldn’t lose points on that. But he was a fussy sumbitch. He set his switches. He set every effin’ one.
Damn, it felt good. Felt solid.
Home again.
He shifted his legs as the pod opened and he could unbelt and drift out. Breath frosted, while sweat still ran under the flightsuit.
Take that in your stats, Tanzer.
Card game went on, Ben and Sal running up favor points on Almarshad’s and Mitch’s guys, and the spectators drifted down there. “Hey, Dek,” came back, but Dekker tried to ignore it and concentrate on his math and his set-targets for tomorrow’s run.
Conversation floating back from the table said, “It’s one thing in sims. Live fire’s going to be something else.”
“You just hit ‘em,” Ben said, and took a card. “Dots is dots.”
“No way,” Wilson said. “Ask Wilhelmsen.”
“They don’t have to,” Mitch said, and a chill ran through Dekker’s bones. He was thinking what to say to shut that up when Meg said, acidly, “Dunno a thing about Pete Fowler, mister. Nice guy, I s’pose, and I highly ‘predate his help, but he’s not the one does the thinking.”
“Still not live fire, Kady.”
“Ease off,” Dekker said, and shoved his chair back.
“Hey,” Mitch said. “No offense.”
“Doesn’t bother me,” Meg said, and dealt out cards. “Testosterone’s not the only asset going. Shepherds seriously got to rethink that.”
“Meg,” Sal said.
“Hey. I’m easy.”
“You been easy, Kady.”
Meg pursed her lips. “You a virgin, Mitch? I swear I don’t know.”
“Hold it, hold it,” Ben said.
“The program’s making a serious mistake,” Mitch said, “putting you girls in here. Tape can’t give you the wiring, Kady, there’s a reason they never pulled women in on this program—”
“Yeah,” Meg said acidly. “Look at the scores, Mitch.”
“Meg,” Dekker said.
“Tape off a real pi-tut, Kady.”
That tore it. “Mitch,” Dekker said.
“No, no,” Meg said coolly, “not a problem, Dek. Man’s just upset.”
“Bitch.”
“Yo,” Sal said. “You want to match score- and score, Mitchell?” -
“Just hold it,” Dekker said into the rising mutter from Mitch’s crew and Almarshad’s. “We don’t need this.”
“We don’t need any damn tape,” Mitch said, “and we damn sure don’t need any tape off any women. Reactions aren’t there. You’re never going to see a female pilot on this ship, Kady, you don’t see ‘em in the carriers, you don’t see ‘em in the riders, and you’re never going to. You’ll crack under fire, you’re going to screw this whole damned program, on a rep you didn’t earn.”
Meg said, with a riffle of cards, “Cher, you got a truly basic misconception, there. Ship’s aren’t shes, they’re hes— you got to make love to them the right way, got to keep ‘em collected so you both get there...”
Laugh from some of the guys, thank God. Wasn’t funny at the table. Mitch was pissed. Mitch was being a son of a bloody bitch, was what he was being, hurt feelings, and a mouth that made you want to knock him sideways.
But Mitch gathered up the cards Meg dealt. “You’re in over your head, Kady.”
“Cher, I had a shuttle go dead once, lost a motor on lift, landed in the Seychelles, and that was a bitch. I haven’t sweated since.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah. Tell me yours.”
Mitch glowered a moment, then laid down a card and said, “Well-divers are fools.”
“You got that,” Meg said. “I resigned it.”
“Didn’t resign it,” Sal said. “They threw you out.”
“Huh. I was getting tired of it. Too much same stuff. You seen Luna once, you’ve seen it. Big damn rock.”
“Smug bitch,” Mitch said, in better humor. Dekker eased back and found himself shaking, he was so wound up. But Meg wasn’t. Cold as ice, or she hadn’t any nerves between her hands and her head. Couldn’t tell she might want to knife Mitch Mitchell—
But he’d lay odds Mitch knew.
“Damn, damn. You got a rhythm in this thing.”
See those programs, see how that infodump selected for the human operator, and how it prioritized—that, that was a serious question. They’d had a problem like that in TI, putting a human into the supercomputer neural-net, without letting it take over infoselection. This one sampled the human needs as well as the environment and it wasn’t doing all it could. The data behind it was fiatline. He pushed it, and it gave him the same input.
“You’re not supposed to critique it, Pollard. Just stick to the manuals.”
“Screw the—begging your pardon. But I worked on something like this. Staatentek program or independent?”
“Classified.”
He bit his lip. Didn’t raise the question of his clearance.
“Just a minute, Pollard.”
Just a minute was all right. He sat and stared at the screen that offered such interesting prospects: infodrop for the human decision and infocompression for the computer. Reality sampling against a chaos screen in a system Morrie Bird’s prize numbers man found achingly familiar, after a stint in TI’s securitized halls....
Screw supply systems modeling, this thing talked to him with a familiar voice.
This isn’t sim software, he thought. Main program’s elegant. This is real, isn’t it? Ignore the cheesy recorded randoms, son of a bitch—the system under this is a piece of work—
He said, to the air, “Staatentek didn’t do this, did they?”
No answer for a minute. Then a different voice; “Pollard. Leave the programs alone.”
“You can feel the randoms. I didn’t have to look for them.”
A pause. “That’s very good, Pollard. What would you suggest we do about it?”
Obvious answer. To the obvious question. The Belt. The numbers. The charts. The feeling you got for the system— the way the rocks moved. Real rocks, with the Well perturbing what the Sun ruled....
... Shakespeare; and Bird...
Ben, leave the damn charts—
“Pollard? What would you do?”
“I’m sure you have,” he said. “Use Sol.”
“Or Pell. Or Viking. You haven’t met Tripoint, Pollard. Would you like to see Tripoint? That one’s an excellent example....”
Balls hit and rebounded on the table. Ben walked around the other end, considering his next shot, gave a twitch of his shoulders, estimated an angle, and took careful aim with the cue.
“Mmmn,” Sal said. Ben was sure it was Sal’s voice behind him. Muscles were absolutely limp this evening. He was a little off his game—give or take a year’s hiatus. Dekker, the skuz, had had practice. Keep the run going. He didn’t want the cue in Dekker’s hands, not from what he’d seen.
Two in succession. It was rec hall, bar in the middle—a lot of UDC guys on Permission down there, drowning their sorrows. Fleet at this end, some of them too. And a scatter of marine guards—more khaki around the corridors than Ben personally found comfortable, thank you.
Real wringer of a sim this afternoon, he’d earned a beer, dammit, but they had him up again tomorrow, same with all of them.
Opened his big mouth and they’d reset the sim, all right.
Dots and more dots, in a space where the effin’ familiar sun didn’t exist...
Spooky situation. Wanted to feel it out and you were busy tracking damn dots.
Gentle shot. Balls rebounded. “Come on, come on—”
“Ouch,” Sal said.
Shit.
Dekker drew a breath. Armscomper wasn’t the opponent you’d choose in this game. Pilot versus armscomper got bets down, never mind he’d had practice Ben swore you didn’t have time to take at TI.