“Must be the programmer that did the EC security system.”
“Listen.” Mason’s finger stabbed the water-ringed table-top. “Right now they’re six months behind schedule and talking about one damn more redesign on the controls. The UDC bitched and bitched about sim time, said Tanzer’s ‘boys’ were the ones to do the test runs because they had the hours and the experience—you want to talk to me about hours? Shit, I’m twenty-seven, that’s twenty fuckin’ years I’ve lived on the Hamilton, and they give me 200 hours at nav? 200 fuckin’ hours, you believe that? They won’t log anything you ran up before you were licensable at your post. I was nav monkey when I was seven, I was running calc when I was ten, I was sitting relief on the edge of the Well when I was twelve, and then they say they’re counting only a quarter of the time our ships logged us—as a compromise because it was civilian hours? Ninety days a tun, thirty heavy, and on call 24 fuckin’ hours a day in Jupiter’s lap for longer than these sim-jockeys would hold up, and they give me 200 hours? I was 2000 plus on my last run out from R2!”
“That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, but that’s UDC rules. You only get hours for the time you’re logged on. Who logs on? Who ever logs on? You do your fuckin’ job, you’re too busy to log on, with a load coming and the watch rousting you out of your bunk at 2100 to check you’re where you think you are, because somebody thinks we got a positional problem, shit if I’m going to log on as officer of record and get my fuckin’ hours for the UDC. Same shit they’re pulling on the merchanters. You know why they don’t count real hours on us? Because the UDC’s got four pilots can claim real hours on a par with us, and last week they had five.”
“The guy with Dekker’s crew?”
“Wilhelmsen.” Mason leaned closer, said, “Listen, —”
And stopped as a nurse came in and carded a soft drink. The nurse left. Mason said, “We’ve got a lot of pressure. You got maybe four, five hours at a run. Virtual space display. Neural net Assist. Real sensory overload. Hyperfbcus, non-Stop. And you don’t sub in some stranger in the last twelve hours before a run, you don’t have bad feeling between the pilot and the techs, you don’t plug in a guy with a whole different visualization system. You want to figure how much pressure Wilhelmsen was under to perform? Shit, he missed a target. He could’ve let it go. But he was too hot for that. He flipped back to get it, schitzed on where he was, and took three good guys with him. You know why Dekker’s in here? Dekker—Dekker told Wilhelmsen’s crew to their faces that he could have done it.”
“Shit.”
“No kidding. Wilhelmsen’s navigator took severe exception, there were words—”
“Before or after they sent Dekker to hospital?”
“Let me tell you about that, too. Yeah, Dekker was in shock. He was watching it in mission control. But he didn’t need any hospital. They wanted him quiet. They wanted him not to say a thing in front of the senators and the VIPs they had swarming around the observation area.”
“They.”
“The UDC. Tanzer. They doped him down and let him out after they got the last of the VIPs on the shuttle out of here. And twelve hours later they haul Dekker out of the sim that’s been running for six—”
Evans walked in. Stood there a moment, then said, “Lt. Pollard. Getting the local news?”
Ben remembered to breathe. And shoved back from the table. “We knew each other, back when. Old news. —Nice seeing you, Mason.”
“Nice seeing you,” Mason muttered, and got up himself, Ben didn’t wait to see for what. He chucked his plastics in the bin and walked out, with a touch of the pulse rate and the cold sweats he’d used to feel in the Belt, when the Company cops were breathing damned close to them.
Infighting with the UDC? A major Reel project going down the chute and the blue-sky UDC fighting to get its boys in the pilot seat and the Earth Company militia under its command?
He wished he were in Stockholm.
“Lt. Graff?” Bonner said, and Graff got up from beside Demas, walked quietly to the table and swore to tell the truth.
“State your name, rank, citizenship, service and age,” the clerk said.
“Jurgen Albrecht Graff, Fleet Lieutenant, EC Territories, ship merchanter Polly d’Or, assigned militia ship Victoria, under Captain Keu, currently Helm Two on the ECS8, uncommissioned, age thirty-eight.” Heads perusing documents, drowsing on hands, came up and looked at him with dawning close attention.
Gen. Bonner said, “Will you state your approximate actual age, for the record, lieutenant?”
Son of a bitch, Graff thought. “Actually, sir, I haven’t calculated it since I was fifteen. But I was born in 2286, Common Reckoning, and the first EC president in my memory was Padriac Melton.”
“Would you agree you’re approximately early twenties, lieutenant, in terms of actual years?”
“I’ve no access to those records, sir. And it’s not relevant to my experience.”
“What is your logged experience?”
“Since I was posted to Helm—ten years, six hours a Shift....”
“Logged hours, lieutenant.”
“—conservatively, 18000 hours, since posting. Not counting apprenticeship. Not counting working during dock, which is never logged.”
Bonner’s face was a study in red. “Logged records, lieutenant. Answer the question as asked or be held in contempt.”
“As far as I know, there are documents behind those hours, sir. The Polly d’Or is likely somewhere between Viking and Pell at the moment, and she maintains meticulous log records. Victoria’s whereabouts the Fleet commander could provide, if you’d care to query—”
“I doubt this committee has the patience, lieutenant. And let’s state for the committee that your logged hours on Sol Two records are substantially less. Can we at least agree that you’re not a senior officer, and you were in physical control of the carrier during the test run?”
“General.” Salto’s quiet voice from behind him, mild registered on the faces of the panel. “Una Saito, Com One, protocol officer on Victoria. —Lieutenant, as a matter of perspective, where were you born?”
Bonner said, “Ms. Saito, whatever your rank may be, you’re in contempt of this committee. Be seated before I have you ejected.”
Graff said, looking at all those frowning blue-sky faces, “Actually, sir, if it’s relevant, I was born on the sublighter Gloriana, on its last deep-space run.”
There was a murmur and a sudden quiet in the room. Graff sat there with his hands folded, not provoking a thing, no, and Bonner, give him credit, gave not a flicker.
“So you would maintain on that basis your experience is adequate to have managed the carrier on a critical test run.”
“I would maintain, sir, that I am qualified to take a starship through jump, an infinitely riskier operation.”
“You’re qualified. Have you done it?”
“Yes, sir. I have. Once on initiation, eighteen times on hand-off on system entry.”
“Yourself. Alone.”
“Helm on Victoria is backed by 49 working stations, counting only those reporting in chain of command to Helm.”
“I’ll reserve further questions. Senator Eriksson?”
“Thank you.” This from the Joint Legislative Committee rep. “Lt. Graff, Eriksson from the JLC technical division. Medical experts maintain that hyperfocus is not sustainable over the required hours of operation.”
“It’s routine for us. If—”
“Let me finish my statement, please. Medical experts have stated that the ERP Index indicates mental confusion— stress was taking its toll. As a starship pilot you have systems which defend against impacts. You have an AI-assisted system of hand-offs. You have a computer interlock on systems to prevent accidents. Based on those facts, do you not think that similar systems are necessary on these ships?”
“Senator, all of those interlocks you describe do exist on the rider, but let me say first that a starship’s autopilot override is at a 2-second pilot crisis query in combat conditions, the rider’s was set at 1 for the test, and that while the carrier does have effect shields, the size of the rider makes it possible to pass through fire zones in which the carrier’s huge size makes such passage far riskier. The armscomp override isn’t necessary, of course, because a rider’s available acceleration isn’t sufficient to overtake its own ordnance, but it does have a template of prohibited fire to prevent its ordnance hitting the carrier or passing through a habitation zone. The Al-driven autopilot did cut on when it detected a crisis condition in the pilot, which, as I said, was set at 1 second for this test. The AI queried the pilot—that’s a painful, attention-getting jolt. It waited a human response—long, in the AI’s terms, again, 1 second before it seized control. It was already tracking the situation on all its systems. It knew the moves that had caused the tumble. It knew the existence of the next target. It knew it was off course, but it had lost its navigation lock and was trying to reestablish that. The buoy’s existence was masked for the test, but the AI realized it couldn’t save the test: it entered another order to penetrate the virtual reality of the test to sample the real environment, accessed information concealed from the pilot and reckoned the position of the target buoy as potentially a concern, and correctly assigned it as a hazard of equal value but secondary imminence to the threat of the ship’s high-v tumble. It reasoned that elimination of the target required the arms function, while evasion of the target required the engines, and that the motion exceeded critical demands of the targeting system. A subfunction was, from the instant the AI had engaged, already firing engines to reduce the tumble, and tracking other firepaths. It was doing all (hat, and attempting to locate itself and its own potential ordnance tracks relative to interdicted fire vectors—realspace friendly targets. Fire against me target was not set for its first sufficient window: the condensed telemetry of its calculations is a massive printout. The AI was still waiting for the window when its position and the target’s became identical.”