Pod was in neutral now. They wouldn’t abort you cold—a shift like that messed with your head. But nothing further was going to happen in the sim. Virtual space was running, green lines floating in front of his eyes, but without threat. His heart was going like a hammer. Breams came in gasps.
“Muscle spasm.”
He lied to the sim chief. Chief was going to order them in, no question. New crew—he could well glitch their reactions— He’d never, never gotten called down over com. Never gotten a stand-down like this.
“Going to order a return. Your crew ail right?”
“Crew’s fine.” He didn’t get any contradiction over com.
“You want to push the button?”
Abort was quicker. Abort would auto them to dock. His nerves wanted that.
“I’ll go manual. No abort.” Hell if he was going to come hi like a panicked neo. He got his breathing calmed. He lined them up, minute by excruciating minute. He brought it as far as basics. “Meg,” he said then, “take it in. Dock it, straight push now. Can you do that?”
“Got it,” Meg said. “Take a breath, Dek.”
Three more minutes in. Dock was basic—now. Lesson one. Punch the button. Mind the closing v. They’d killed one man and a prototype module getting that to work realtime, before Staatentek admitted they had a problem.
Whole damned program was built on funerals...
“Doing all right, Meg.”
He unclenched stiff fingers. Watched the numbers run, steady, easy decline in distance: lock talked to lock and the pod did its own adjustments.
Bang into the grapples. System rest.
A damned pod, not the ship, but he was having trouble breathing as the hatch opened, to Meg’s shutdown—
“Shit!”
His heart jumped. “Easy, easy,” he told her, as she made a frantic reach at the board. “Lock’s autoed, not your fault, not your fault, it’s automatic on this level.”
“Not used to these damn luxuries.” Breath hissed between her teeth. “Got it, thanks.”
No word out of Ben. Ben wasn’t happy. Sal wasn’t. He could feel it out of that corner. He thought about saying Don’t mind it, but that wasn’t the case, you damned well had to mind a screw-up like this, and they did. He thought about telling them some of those were his fault, but that wasn’t what they needed to set into their reactions either. He just kept his mourn shut, got the tape, grabbed the handholds and followed Meg out the hatch.
Caught Meg’s attention, quick concerned look. He shied away from it, hooked onto the handline and heard Ben and Sal exit behind him. He logged the tape out on the console, teeth clenched against the bitter cold.
“Cher,” Meg said, gently, hovering at his shoulder, trying for a look at him or from him, he wasn’t sure and he wasn’t coping with that right now.
“We’ll get it,” Sal said. “Sorry, Dek.”
They were trying to apologize to him. Hell.
He started to shiver. Maybe they could see it. Maybe they were realizing how incredibly badly he’d screwed that move—or would figure it once their nerves settled. He didn’t know how much to tell them, didn’t want to act like an ass, but he couldn’t put his thoughts together—he just grabbed onto the handline and headed off down the tube, not fast, but first, so he didn’t have to see their faces.
He heard Ben say, “Damn temper of his. Break his neck, I’d like to.”
“Hey,” Meg said, then, “we screwed up, all right? We screwed it, we screwed him up, he’s got a right.”
He wanted to tell Meg no; and he wanted to believe that was the answer; but he couldn’t. He handed off at the lift, waited for them.
Sal said, “Dek, we’ll get it. Trez bitch, that machine. But we’ll get it, no problem.”
“Yeah.” First word he’d been able to get out. He punched the lift for exit level, snatched back a shaking hand toward his pocket.
Meg was looking at him, they all were, and he didn’t want to meet their eyes. He stared at the lift controls instead, watched the buttons light, listened to the quiet around him, just the lift thumping on the pressure seals.
“So?” Tanzer asked, on the phone; “Does this mean a runaround or does it mean you’ve found an answer to my question?”
“There is an answer, colonel. Negative. The orders come from outside this base. We cannot change policy.”
“Policy, is it? Policy? Is that what we call it now, when nobody at this base can answer questions? What do you know, lieutenant? Anything?”
Graff censored what he knew, and what he thought, and said quietly, “I repeat, I’ve relayed your objections. They’ve been rejected. That’s the answer I have to convey, colonel, I’m sorry.”
“Damn you,” Tanzer said, and hung up.
He hung up. He sat for a long few moments with his hands folded in front of his lips and tried to think reasonably. No, he could not call the captain. FleetCom went through Porey now. No, he would not go running to his crew—and maybe that was pride and maybe it was distrust of his own reasoning at the moment. He was not command track. He was not in charge of policy. He was not in authority over this base, not in authority over strategy, and not in the decision loop that included the captain, who somehow, in some degree, had to know what was going on here—at least so far as Demas and Saito had said: they’d warned Keu, they’d pleaded with him, and Keu—had refused to rein Mazian back, had let Mazian make his promises and his assignments.
So what was there to say? The captain had refused to disapprove Porey’s command. The captain had refused Demas, refused Saito... who was he, to move Keu to do anything? Perhaps the captain was more farsighted, or more objective, or better informed.
Or more indifferent.
Porey was aware of Dekker’s problem? And Porey shoved Dekker and a novice crew toward mission prep?
Bloody damned hell\
“You blew it,” Porey said.
“Yessir,” Dekker said on a breath. “No excuses.”
“ ‘No excuses.’ I told you I wouldn’t hear excuses, and I wouldn’t hear ‘sorry.’ You’re the pilot, you had the say, if you weren’t ready you had no mortal business taking them in there.”
“Yessir.”
Porey’s hand came down on the desk. He jumped.
“Nerves, Mr. Dekker. What are you going to do about it?”
“Get my head straight, sir.”
Second blow of Porey’s hand. “You’re a damned expensive failure, you know that?”
You didn’t argue with Porey. The lieutenant had warned him. But too damned many people had told him that.
“I’m not a failure, sir.”
“Was that a success? Was taking trainees into that sim and screwing them up a success?”
“No, sir.”
“Nothing’s the matter with you physically. The meds found nothing wrong with you. It’s in your head, Dekker. What did you claim after Wilhelmsen cracked up? That you knew better? Do you still know better?”
“Yessir.”
“Can you do the run he did?”
“Yessir.”
“You’re no use to me screwed up, you are no damned use, mister. I’ve got other crews. I’ve got other pilots. And let me tell you, if you don’t straighten yourself out damned fast, we’ve got one more way to salvage you. We’ve got one more tape we can use, which I haven’t, because you said you were better, because the techs said untrained personnel were better on tape, but if you’re no other good to anyone, Dekker, then we might just as well put you right down in that lab and input what might improve your performance. You know what I’m talking about?”
He guessed. He managed to say, “Yessir.”
“I’ll make a promise to you, Dekker. You’ve got one week. I’m not restricting you, you can do any damned thing you want, I don’t give a damn for the regulations, for the schedule, for whatever you want to do. You’ve got carte blanche for one week. But if you don’t pull those sim scores right back where you were before your ‘accident,’ then we put you into lab, input Wilhelmsen’s tape into your head, and see if it improves your performance. You understand that?”
“Yessir.”
“Are you clear on that?”