Hellburner by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online

main door and down the hall to the conference rooms. Door to 6a was open. Mitch’s tech crew was there, Pauli and Jacoby, Jamil and his long scanner, Trace. Graff recognized a delegation when he saw it. Tanzer had said, Don’t discuss the hearings. Patently that was not the intention here.
    Mitch shut the door. “Sir. We’re asking you to get one of us in front of the committee.”
    “Won’t happen,” Graff said. “No chance. You want to get a haircut, Mitch?”
    “Hell if.”
    “That’s an Earth committee. Blue-sky as they come. They won’t communicate.”
    “Yeah,” Jacoby said. “Is that why Tanzer killed Pete and Elly? Couldn’t let a Belter pull it off?”
    “Ease off, Jacoby.”
    “They won’t let us in hospital. You seen Dekker? You seen him, lieutenant?”
    Pauli muttered: “Wouldn’t be surprised if Tanzer ordered him put in that machine. Didn’t want him at the hearings.”
    “Shut that down,” Graff said. “Right now.”
    Mitch folded his arms, set a foot on a chair, and said, “Somebody better hear it. They didn’t want any Belter son of a bitch in front of the cameras. Dekker couldn’t fly it? Then why didn’t they sub the crew, ask them that!”
    “Mitch, I hope somebody does have the brains to ask it. But there’s nothing I can do. They’re not going to ask me that.”
    “Hell if, sir! Tanzer’s pets are killing us. You want me to shave up like a—“ Mitch looked at him—him and his regulation trim, and shut the epithet off unsaid. “You get me in front of that hearing and I’ll look like a UDC accountant.”
    “Mitch, I’m in a position.”
    “You’re in a position. You’re running safe behind shields— sir. We’re the ones with our ass on the line.”
    Pauli said: “And they can’t automate these sumbitches any further. Why don’t they ask somebody who knows?”
    ‘•The designers will. Staatentek’s here. They’ll ask. That much I’ll get a chance to tell them.”
    “Ask ‘em about the sim!”
    Female voice: Trace. “They’re not interested. This is going to be a whitewash start to finish.”
    “The designers have to talk to us, Trace. We’ll get our word in.”
    Mitch said: “The engineers have to talk to us. The execs and the politicrats won’t and they have the say.”
    “Mitch, I can’t listen to this.”
    “Tanzer is a hidebound blue-skyer son of a bitch who thinks because he grew up with a rulebook up his ass is a reason to try to tell any spacer his business or to think that the salute-the-logo dumbasses they’ve pulled in off the Guard and the system test programs could do the job with these ships—“
    “They can fly, Mitch.”
    “Yeah, they can fly. Like Wilhelmsen.”
    “Nothing wrong with Wilhelmsen. Listen to me— Shut it down, and listen: if we have a technical at work, we want to find it, we don’t want to whitewash that either. We have something more at issue here than Wilhelmsen.”
    “Yeah,” Pauli muttered. “Tanzer.”
    Mitch said, “Nothing wrong with that ship. Everything wrong with the pilot. And they aren’t going to find the solution to what happened to Wilhelmsen in Tanzer’s fuckin’ rulebook. Sir.”
    “Let’s just find out, shall we?”
    “Just make the point with them, lieutenant: Wilhelmsen wasn’t set with the crew. Wilhelmsen should have said not ready, he was the pilot, he had the final say-so, demo be damned. It was his responsibility to do mat.”
     
    “Yes,   it was his responsibility, but it wasn’t in his judgment to do it, or he would have done it—the guy’s dead. He got it the same as the rest, Mitch. Let’s give the experts a chance to figure out what.”
    “What chance have they got, if they’re not getting the information? Their experts are blue-sky as Tanzer is!”
    Jacoby said: “It’s the At-ti-tude in the UDC brass. They murdered Wilhelmsen and Wilhelmsen murdered that crew, that’s what they need to hear!”
    “All right! All right! But there’s nothing I can do to