Another officer, this one straight past them, where they waited in the tight confines of the medstation. Right into the surgery.
Angry voice beyond the door, an answer of some kind.
“Think they’ve got a hurry-up,” Sal muttered.
More voices. Something about paralysis and another thirty minutes. Voice saying, quite clearly, “… doesn’t do her any good if she’s dead, Hank, we haven’t got your thirty minutes. Get your patient prepped, we’re moving.”
Man came back through the door then, looked at them, said, more quietly, “We’ve got your ship free, we’ve got a positional problem and we’re doing a correction burn, about as fast as the EV-team can get in and I can get up to the bridge. Best we can do. You’ve got belts there. Use them. Staff’s got take-holds.”
Bad, then. Dekker clamped his jaw and reached for the belt housed in the side of the seat as Sal and Ben did the same. The officer was out the door and gone.
“Shit-all,” Ben muttered. His hands were shaking. Sal’s were clenched in her lap.
They were in trouble. No question. Headed into the Well, nobody had to say it. “Positional problem” on a Jupiter-bound vector meant only one thing, and a hurry-up like that meant they were on their own, no beam, just the fuel they had left—which wasn’t a big argument against the Well’s gravity slope.
Way Out’swhole mass had had to go—that had been his decision: save Hamiltonthe fuel hauling it, keep Trinidad’smanipulator arm from shearing off at the bolts, or maybe taking the bulkhead with it: but that fuel in Trinidad’stanks had been a big load— bigload, on those bolts. He’d made a split-second judgment call, last move he’d made before he’d gone out. Maybe opening that valve had saved their lives. If that bulkhead had gone they’d have decompressed; but an uncalc’ed mass attached to Hamilton, three-quarters of it dumped without warning a few seconds into the burn… hadn’t helped their situation. Computers had recomped. But their center of mass had changed twice in that accel; and when the arm gearing had fractured—they’d had to lase through the tether ring—they must have swung flat against Hamilton’sframe and that would have changed it again. He’d gone out by the time that had happened. Didn’t know how long they’d pushed, but with a warship moving on them, they’d had to give it a clear choice between chasing them or dealing with R2.
Hamiltoncrew couldn’t be real damn happy with their passengers right now.
The lock hydraulics cycled and stopped. A siren shrieked. A recorded voice said: Take Hold Immediately.
“ All hands prepare for course correction burn. Mark. Repeat—”
“The Bitch won’t give em a beam,” Sal muttered, teeth chattering as she checked her belt. “The Bitch is damn well hoping we’ll all take the deep one. Won’t lift a finger.”
“We’re going to be all right,” he said.
“’Going to be all right,’” Ben said. “’Going to be all right.’ You know if you weren’t a damn spook Bird’d be alive. Meg wouldn’t be in there. We wouldn’t be where we are. This whole damn mess is your fault.”
“Yeah,” he said, on a deep breath. “I know that.”
“His damn fault, too,” Ben muttered. “They weren’t after him, they didn’t know who the hell he was. He was clear, damn him, he was clear. I don’t know what he did it for.”
Engines fired. Hamiltonthrew everything she had into her try at skimming the Well.
He thought, I could just have pulled us off and out. Didn’t haveto go to the Hamilton. Wasn’t thinking of anything else.
They’d have picked us up. But the shooting would have stopped by then. And we wouldn’t be in this mess. Ben’s right.
“Didn’t make sense,” Ben said. “Damn him, he never didmake sense…”
Somebodyhad started shooting. The police swore they were military rounds, and Crayton’s office wanted that information released immediately.
The statement from Crayton’s office said: . . greatly regrets the loss of life…
Morris Bird was a name Payne fervently wished he’d never heard. Thirty-year veteran, oldest miner in the Belt, involved with Pratt and Marks, and popular on the ‘deck—a damn martyr was what they had. Somebody had sprayed BIRD in red paint all along a stretch of 3-deck. BIRD was turning up scratched in paint on 8, and they didn’t need any other word. The hospital was bedding down wounded in the halls, a file named DEKKER was proliferating into places they still hadn’t found and the Shepherd net was broadcasting its own news releases, calling for EC intervention and demanding the resignation of the board and the suspension of martial law.
Now it was vid transmission—a Shepherd captain explaining how the miner ship Trinidadhad made a run for the Hamilton—more names he’d heard all too much about. A pilot who’d had his license pulled as impaired. A crew who’d been with Bird when the shooting happened. The story was growing by the minute—acquiring stranger and stranger angles, and N & E couldn’t get ahead of them by any small measures.
… A spokesman for the company has expressed relief at the safe recovery of theTrinidad and all aboard. The same source has strongly condemned the use of deadly force against unarmed demonstrators and promises a thorough…
The door opened. He blinked, looking at rifles, at two blue-uniformed marines. At a third, who followed them in, and said, “William Payne? This office is under UDC authority, under emergency provisions of the Defense Act, Section 18, Article 2.”
He looked at the rifles, looked at the officer. Tried to think of right procedures. “I need to contact the head office.”
“Go right ahead, Mr. Payne.”
He doubted his safety to do that. He hesitated at picking up the phone, hesitated at pushing the button. “This isAdministration I’m calling. Do you want to be sure of that?”
“Check it out wherever you like, Mr. Payne. Your computer will give you an explanation. Go ahead. Access Administration.”
He took a breath, touched keys, windowed up Executive Access.
It said, Earth Company Executive Order…
It said Charter Provision 28, and Defense Act, Section 18, Article 2.
“We have a press release for you, Mr. Payne.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. No questions. No hesitations. He reached for the datacard the officer put on his desk and put it into the comp.
It said: The UDC has assumed control of ASTEX operations. All workers, independent operators and contractors, and allASTEX employees below management levels will be retained. President Towney is under arrest by civil warrant, charged with misappropriation of funds and tax evasion. Various members of the board are likewise under investigation by the EC. Residents who have information on such cases are directed to deliver that information to the military police, Access 14, on the system.
All residents who report to the UDC office on their decks will have their cards revalidated and will be passed without question or exception under a general amnesty for all non-executive personnel of R2.
The UDC will meet with delegations from the independents, the contractors, and civilian employees to discuss grievances…
“Hell of a mess,” Meg said, propped on pillows in the peculiar kind of gyou got in small installations—still lightheaded, but the fingers could move in the cast, she’d tested that.
“Couldn’t tell you from the sheets when they brought you in.” Sal sat down carefully on the edge of the bed, reached out a dark hand and squeezed her good one. Skins brut sure didn’t match right now, Meg thought, seeing that combination, and then thought about Bird, left adrift in that lift-car. Hell of a thing to do. Bird had deserved better than that. But he’d always been a practical sumbitch, where it counted.