Waypoint Kangaroo

by Curtis C. Chen

  “Listen, Chief,” I say once we’re inside the crew elevator, “about the nanobots—”

  “How much time do we have?” she asks.

  I blink a countdown clock into my eye. “Sixteen hours. But sooner would be—”

  “We’ll deal with it later,” she says.

  “Maybe you can have someone start compiling a list of affected personnel?”

  Jemison glares at me. “I just took one of my security officers into custody. Let’s not assign any new projects until we know who we can trust.”

  I can’t wait for Jemison to help me with this. I’m the one responsible for dispensing these nanobots. And I already have an appointment with my first patient.

  We continue in silence. I don’t know what Jemison’s thinking, but I’m working on how to exfil myself from her mission and get back to my own. Maybe our chat with the captain will give me an opportunity.

  When we reach Santamaria’s quarters, she presses her hand against the lockpad to announce herself. The door swings open, and he looks at us through red-rimmed eyes.

  He’s wearing his uniform pants and a gray, short-sleeved undershirt. I can see four tattoos on his arms, but I only recognize three of them. One of those is the same one Paul Tarkington has burned into the skin of his right forearm.

  “Chief,” Santamaria says. “Mr. Rogers. Is there a problem?”

  Jemison pushes me through the doorway, follows me in, and closes the door behind herself. I’m not sure what I expected Santamaria’s quarters to look like. Maybe I thought it would be more naval, or nautical, or—I don’t know, but decorated with pictures of seascapes and ancient sailing vessels. Maybe a tiny ship in a bottle that he built with painstaking precision over a period of months. As usual, I was wrong.

  If it weren’t for the clothing visible in the open closet and the computer tablets clinging to stick-strips above the small desk, I might have thought these quarters were unoccupied. There are no family holos or diplomas or the display case of rank insignia and service medals one might expect a decorated military veteran to have. But more unnerving than the lack of personality is the complete lack of clutter.

  Even Oliver, the most fastidious neat freak I know, leaves stuff lying around his workshop all the time. Sure, it’s all perfectly lined up at right angles, but it’s still lying around. Santamaria’s quarters are completely devoid of anything that could be construed as mess or disorganization—that would imply some kind of organization to begin with, and there’s simply nothing here. I wonder if he’s just OCD about zero-gee stowage protocols, or if there’s some deeper psychological reason for the spartan décor.

  “We may have found the real murderer, Captain,” Jemison says, and gives a quick rundown of how we identified and apprehended Jerry Bartelt. “Guy’s got professional written all over him. Danny and Mike are sitting on him in his stateroom. He was using a laptop, but we don’t want to mess with it yet. Thought you’d want to talk to him first.”

  Santamaria nods. “If Jerry Bartelt is a known operator, his file will be in the high-value section. We won’t be able to access that over an insecure connection.”

  “I’m end-to-end encrypted,” I say. I blink my network feed into view and start powering up the comms dish on the hull. “I can run a face-reco search through the warehouse. Just give me a few seconds to—”

  Santamaria grabs my face and jams his thumb under my left eyelid, pushing it up into my brow.

  “Ow,” I say, predictably.

  “Do not send that signal,” he says. There’s no special emphasis or threat in his voice, but, as with his stateroom, it’s the lack of ornamentation that unsettles me.

  “I’m just running a records search,” I say. “Even if it comes back with a restricted-access marker—”

  “That’s not the point,” Santamaria says.

  “You might tip off Bartelt or his bosses,” Jemison says.

  “What?” I ask. “We’ve got Bartelt in custody. He didn’t have any chance to alert his superiors. They don’t even know we’re looking—”

  “He’ll have regular check-in times,” Jemison says. “Once or twice a day, I’m guessing. Whatever time that is, he’s going to miss it. We’ve got a few hours at most before his handlers know something’s up.”

  “At that point,” Santamaria says, “our advantage will be keeping them in the dark about the fact that Bartelt’s been captured. They won’t know if he’s simply been injured, or taken ill, or missed his check-in for some other, mundane reason. We don’t want to do anything to make them suspect he’s been apprehended.”

  “How would they—can you please let go of my face, Captain?”

  “Do not send that signal.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And power down the dish.”

  “I will.”

  He releases me, and I deactivate the comms dish. “Okay, the dish is offline. But how would these hypothetical bosses know what kind of signal they were seeing anyway? This ship must be transmitting dozens of different radio beacons at any given time.”

  “Your Echo Delta uses US-OSS frequencies,” Santamaria says. “We don’t want to advertise that there is a military presence aboard this ship.”

  My stomach tightens as I remember all the calls I’ve made to Jessica, but I can’t worry about that now.

  “Did you notice anything about Bartelt’s behavior?” Santamaria asks. “Anything that might indicate a country of origin or specific training?”

  “Oh.” I think back to my encounters with Jerry Bartelt: first at dinner, then in the thruway, and finally in his stateroom. “No, nothing stands out. American accent—sounded like a native English speaker. Very smooth body work with the security guards. You don’t get that good without training, but that could be any national program.”

  “I didn’t see anything distinctive in his fighting style,” Jemison says. “But he was tussling with Rogers in a small stateroom. Not a lot of space to maneuver, not many moves you can use to begin with. So that doesn’t tell us much.”

  “He did say something odd,” I say, “that first night, after dinner. About how he’d been to Mars before, on business, but this time it was personal.”

  Santamaria scratches his beard. “Hmm.”

  “He also mentioned something about cloning his dog.” I retell the anecdote as well as I can remember it. “Seemed like a weird thing to offer up as a cover story. All I asked was if he had a wife and kids, and he went into this whole spiel about going through a messy divorce. Maybe he was drunk, but it still seems sloppy for a professional.”

  “Maybe he really is on vacation,” Jemison says, “and murdering innocent people is just a hobby.”

  “I bet you’re tons of fun at parties,” I say.

  “If we’re going to continue speculating,” Santamaria says, “I’m going to need some coffee.”

  Jemison nods. “Sorry, sir. We’ll wait outside while you get dressed.”

  She drags me into the corridor. Santamaria closes the door behind us. After a moment, he emerges wearing his full uniform.

  “We’re going to the radio room,” he says, pulling himself down the corridor. Jemison follows alongside him, and I bounce from one wall to the other behind both of them. “I’ll code a personal message to Director Tarkington with Bartelt’s face. There’s a dead drop on the State Department’s public web site. Mr. Rogers, you’ll upload my package in the same burst as whatever reports you’re submitting as cover.”

  “Right,” I say. “What reports are those?”

  Jemison turns to frown at me. “Didn’t the agency set you up with a cover story?”

  “I’m on vacation!” I don’t like being blamed for things that aren’t my fault. “Lasher handed me a ticket and told me to go away. I’ve got some legend papers, but that’s all. I don’t think he expected me to have to run with this.”

  Santamaria looks at Jemison. “Chief?”

  “We’ve got some docs on file,” Jemison says. She doesn’t look hap
py about it. “I’ll send them up to the radio room. But after that, I think we should interrogate Bartelt.”

  “And by ‘we,’ you mean me,” Santamaria says.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He exhales. It’s not quite a sigh—he’s not that effusive—but it has a similar effect, pausing the conversation and underscoring his reluctance. “We’re not authorized for that kind of action.”

  “We’ll get authorization,” Jemison says. “Include the request in your package to Lasher. You know he’ll approve whatever you ask for.”

  “That’s not guaranteed,” Santamaria says.

  Jemison scoffs. “This is the guy who personally pinned a medal to your chest after the war. The guy who gave you the nickname—”

  “We’re not authorized.” Santamaria’s voice is tighter now. “You said yourself we don’t know anything about Bartelt. Suppose he really is just a garden-variety psychopath? What happens after we rough him up, when we find out he’s a civilian?”

  “Fat chance,” Jemison says. “He’s an expert pickpocket, a computer hacker, and he nearly killed Rogers in hand-to-hand combat.”

  “Hey now,” I protest. They ignore me.

  “Every minute we waste arguing about this, he’s got more time to plan an escape, and his bosses have more time to suspect something’s gone wrong,” Jemison says. “We need to crack this guy.”

  “Torture is an unreliable method of information gathering,” Santamaria says.

  “Didn’t seem that way on Mars,” Jemison says.

  Santamaria glares at her. My entire body is tense. I’m afraid he’s going to take a swing at her, and I want to be ready to get out of the way.

  Finally, he repeats, “We are not authorized for that type of action.”

  “Okay,” Jemison says. “We’re not authorized to do anything, agency-wise. But you are still the captain of Dejah Thoris, and you have the authority to question a passenger who is the prime suspect in a double homicide. Just talk to him. Maybe you’ll notice something we missed.”

  Santamaria unclenches his fist. “Very well.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Dejah Thoris—Deck 7, passenger section

  1 whole hour before I need to go meet Ellie

  Our errand in the radio room takes only a few minutes. I’ve decided to delay slipping away to get ready for my fancy dinner. I’ve still got time. And I can’t pass up the chance to see the captain in action. Watching Jemison dismantle a clueless civilian during questioning was one thing; Santamaria interrogating an actual secret agent is sure to be a real prizefight.

  Danny is standing guard outside Bartelt’s stateroom when Santamaria, Jemison, and I float up to the door. Jemison’s not happy about this.

  “You left Mike alone with him?” she shouts, jabbing at the lockpad.

  “I was watching the hallway,” Danny says, “in case he had other accomplices—”

  “Later!” Jemison smacks the last number into the keypad, and the door swings open. She kicks herself off the floor of the hallway, spinning to land upside-down on the ceiling with her stunner drawn.

  I am not ashamed to admit that I flatten myself against the outside wall as soon as Jemison opens the door. I hear Mike’s voice: “Chief! What’s going on?”

  “What the hell are you doing in the closet?” Jemison says.

  I poke my head into the doorway. Mike is crouched inside the narrow closet between the bed and the bathroom. The closet is empty except for him and a large, clear plastic bag containing a bundle of clothes wedged in the far corner.

  Mike has positioned himself under the top shelf of the closet, where a small metal safe is bolted to the wall. The safe door is open, and the safe itself appears to be empty. A square access panel has been removed from the wall beneath the safe. Mike is holding a portable scanner against the exposed circuitry.

  “I was checking his personal belongings, then the safe,” Mike said. “Nothing in there—it wasn’t even locked—but there were some scratch marks on this access panel. Looks like he put some sort of device in here. Not sure yet what it does.”

  Jemison holsters her stunner and moves over to the closet. Mike hands her something. I follow Santamaria into the room.

  “Which systems are routed through there?” Jemison asks.

  “Nothing critical,” Mike says. “Power taps for this stateroom and the one next door, climate control sensors, and PCI.”

  “PCI?” I ask, looking over Jemison’s shoulder.

  “Public computing infrastructure,” Jemison says. “Same as he could get over wireless. He wouldn’t need to hack that.”

  The device in her hands is a small, flat, gray rectangle, with no visible markings or instrumentation. If Mike had found it in the trash, it might have looked like a flange that broke off another piece of equipment. Easy to hide, easy to explain away, easy for people to forget ever seeing.

  Just like the devices Oliver fabricates for me.

  Jerry Bartelt is tied to the tiny stool that swings away from the wall underneath the desk surface to make a seat. Plastic zip-ties bind his wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles. His forearms are secured to his thighs with duct tape, which also appears to be wrapped around the stool. Mike and Danny seems to be experts at improvising restraints. Our prisoner is bent forward, maximizing discomfort and preventing him from getting any leverage against his bonds.

  I look at his face, expecting an angry glare. But his expression is completely blank, his face slack above the duct tape covering his mouth. His nondescript brown eyes are staring off into space, unfocused, and—

  “He’s blinking!” I call out, and kick off the side of the closet, head-first toward Bartelt.

  I stretch out my hands to grab his head. He tilts out of the way. My knuckles smash into the wall behind him. I curse and extend my legs to the floor, attaching my feet to the stick-strip next to the desk. I manage to put my hands on either side of his head and jam my thumbs into both his eyeballs. I’m not nearly as careful as Santamaria was with me, and Bartelt cries out through his duct-tape gag. I ignore him and swipe my thumbs up, lifting his eyelids and holding them open.

  Both the captain and Jemison have floated over to the desk. Santamaria’s behind my left shoulder, and Jemison’s on my right.

  “Son of a bitch,” Jemison says, leaning forward. “I can’t believe I didn’t see that before.”

  “They make the overlays hard to spot on purpose,” I say, examining both eyeballs until I find the telltale grid of a corneal display implant. “Here. In his right eye.”

  Santamaria taps my shoulder, and I lean to one side, allowing him a more direct view of Bartelt. I’ve moved my right hand away from his head. My left hand is still holding his right eye open and keeping him from completing whatever control sequence he was inputting. I hope he wasn’t blinking the whole time we were gone, doing who knows what through a wireless interface with his laptop or that device in the closet. We might be completely screwed already.

  “Mr. Bartelt,” Santamaria says, “I’m Edward Santamaria, captain of Dejah Thoris. I’d like to know why you killed two of our passengers.”

  Santamaria’s trying to get a reaction. I watch Bartelt’s face with my eye scanners enabled, but I don’t see anything. He’s definitely a professional. A civilian who’s been accused of murder is going to react in some way; even if he doesn’t twitch, his pulse and skin temperature will vary.

  His eyes jump back and forth, looking at each of the people in the room in turn. He gives a single, short, sharp nod.

  Santamaria grabs the duct tape and rips it off in one quick motion. The sound makes me cringe, but Bartelt shows no sign of feeling any pain. In fact, he’s smiling and looking straight at the captain.

  “Nice to meet you, Hades.”

  I don’t even see Santamaria move. The only thing I’m aware of is a dull thock sound, and then Bartelt’s head snapping back. I jerk my arm away instinctively. His head hits the wall, bounces forward, and waggles back and forth
a few times. A dribble of blood bubbles out of his right nostril.

  “What the hell was that?” I ask, in a much higher voice than I intended to use.

  Jemison puts two fingers on the side of Bartelt’s neck. “He’s alive.”

  “Good.” Santamaria massages the heel of his left palm with his right hand. “It’s been a long time since I did anything like that.”

  “Yeah, well, you’ve still got the touch,” Jemison says. “Danny! Mike! Help me move this guy to the brig.”

  “I thought you didn’t want him in the brig!” I say. “What about booby-traps?”

  Jemison looks over to the bed. “How long was he awake, Mike?”

  “He came to about five minutes after you left,” Mike says.

  Jemison turns back to me. “He’s had enough time to activate anything he set up in here. We need to keep him from doing anything else now.”

  “You can’t interrogate him if you keep him sedated,” I say.

  “He’s not going to tell us anything,” Santamaria says.

  “Also not the point,” Jemison says. “Sedating him means getting someone close enough to administer the drugs every few hours. We can’t risk that much contact.”

  “So you’re just going to leave him tied up like this?” I ask. “You’ll have to post a twenty-four guard anyway. Why not put him on IV sedation—”

  “We’re going to put him in a Faraday cage!” Jemison yells into my face. Danny and Mike, who have just finished separating Bartelt from the stool, look up in surprise.

  “What’s a Faraday cage?” asks Mike.

  “We have a Faraday cage?” asks Danny.

  “Shit,” Jemison says.

  Santamaria puts a hand on Jemison’s shoulder and pulls her back before she can say anything else—or, maybe, take a swing at me. She sure looks like she wants to hurt me. I’m getting used to it.

  “Mr. Egnor, Mr. Brown, we need your help,” Santamaria says. “We’re dealing with some very sensitive matters now—matters of planetary security—and we need to know that we can trust you with this information.”

  Danny and Mike exchange a look that appears to be half shock and half barely concealed delight. I wonder how long they’ve both been waiting for a promotion.