Waypoint Kangaroo

by Curtis C. Chen

  “Just checking,” Jemison says. “Over and out.” She swipes her thumb across the door’s lockpad. The pad blinks red.

  “Captain!” she shouts at the door. We both wait for a few seconds, but there’s no response. “Shit. Get that panel open.”

  I get my fingernails under the edge of the lockpad and pry it up. I’m surprised at how easy it is, but I guess nobody on a cruise ship expects the crew to be too insubordinate. Jemison pulls an electronic tool off her belt and shoves one end of it into the open access port. It emits a soft beep, and the lockpad glows green. The door pops open.

  Jemison shoulders the door aside and leaps into the stateroom. By the time she hits the floor in a crouch, she’s swapped the multi-tool for her stunner, which she sweeps around the room. I am happy to let her lead the way, and only poke my head in the doorway so I can see what’s happening.

  Santamaria is sitting at his desk, which is empty except for a single display tablet, wearing only his short-sleeved undershirt. His uniform jacket lies crumpled on the bed behind him. He’s hunched over and his eyes are closed. I see a pair of white wires leading up the side of his face, and tiny white earbuds fitted into his ears.

  His eyes pop open when Jemison enters the room. He swings his head around to look at the noise, then looks back at the door and sees me. I read panic in his eyes. That’s new.

  He yanks his earbuds out with one hand and reaches for the tablet with his other hand.

  I rush into the room and kick the door shut behind me. Santamaria’s fingers miss the tablet by a centimeter, and I grab it and look down at the display.

  The tablet shows a headshot of Jerry Bartelt and a list of vital statistics. Good. The records lookup came back from Paul. Now we know exactly who this guy is.

  My mild elation sours as soon as I read the text next to the photograph. I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing, and I page down to read more. But there is no more, and my gesture flips the display over to a different document—an agency covert cargo transport authorization form, dated and signed with a familiar name: E. SANTAMARIA.

  I look at the captain. “What the fuck!”

  “What is it?” Jemison asks. She’s put her stunner back into its holster and is standing up.

  Santamaria has both his hands raised. I can hear tinny brass music coming out of the earbuds on the desk. “I can explain.”

  I don’t care anymore. I’m tired of not knowing what’s going on, tired of always being a step behind everyone else. I’m tired of feeling like a tool instead of a person. And I’m tired of not being able to trust anyone or anything. I’m exhausted, but I have enough indignation left for one more outburst.

  My subconscious takes over as soon as I’ve made the decision. I’m younger than Santamaria by a good twenty years. I have faster reflexes. And he didn’t grow up in an orphanage, which I know from personal experience is only slightly better than a men’s prison in terms of getting beat down on a regular basis. I know how to fight, and I am willing to fight dirty.

  I drop the tablet and launch myself forward at the same time. I raise my elbow as I crash into Santamaria, knocking him out of his chair and toward the back wall. We tumble across the small stateroom, and I use the momentum to pull both of us up as we hit the wall, standing behind him and jamming my forearm under his chin.

  I’m not choking him. He can still make noise. That means I’m not choking him.

  Something cold and hard touches the back of my neck. I’m pretty sure it’s the business end of Jemison’s stunner.

  “Let him go, Rogers,” she says.

  “You pull that trigger, you’ll knock out both of us,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says, “but I’m only going to break your jaw while you’re unconscious.”

  I feel anger boiling inside of me, and then I have a sudden moment of clarity. I surprise myself by relaxing my chokehold on Santamaria. As soon as Jemison moves the stunner away, I reach my right arm behind me and yank the weapon out of her grasp. I put a foot in her stomach and kick her away, at the same time pressing the stunner up against Santamaria’s right temple.

  Jemison stops herself against the door and glares at me. “You’re a dead man, Rogers.”

  I find the tablet on the floor and kick it over to her.

  “Read that first,” I say. “Then decide which one of us you want to kill.”

  She shakes her head. I see her muscles tensing. She can cross the room in a less than a second. I’m sure I’d be unconscious milliseconds after that, and I’ll be lucky if a broken jaw is my only injury.

  “You think you can get over here faster than I can pull this trigger?” I shout. “Fifty thousand volts, right into his skull! READ IT!”

  We stare at each other for a moment. Then Jemison bends her knees and lowers herself slowly, eyeing me the whole time, and I’m not sure if she’s going to pick up the tablet or if she’s preparing to jump me.

  She snatches the tablet off the floor and gives me another full second of her dagger-stare before looking down at the display.

  Her eyes don’t actually widen, but I can see the muscles in her face working to contain her expression of surprise. She blinks twice before she raises her head. She looks like she’s about to cry.

  “Captain,” she says, in a shaky voice I never expected to hear from her, “you can explain this?”

  She bites off the words, as if they’re distasteful in her mouth. I relax my grip on Santamaria and lower the stunner. If he makes any trouble now, Jemison will take care of him.

  “He lied to me,” Santamaria says.

  I let Jemison ask the question. “Who lied to you?”

  Santamaria exhales, and it feels like he’s deflating in my grip. “Terman Sakraida.”

  I can’t believe I heard that right. “Director of Intelligence Terman Sakraida?”

  “You know D.Int?” Jemison says. At least I’m in good company.

  “He lied to me,” Santamaria repeats.

  And then he tells us a story.

  * * *

  Terman Sakraida and Edward Santamaria met while waiting in line at the Marine Corps Officer Candidate School, because their last names were called one right after the other alphabetically. They came from different backgrounds—Santamaria enlisted to get out of the ghetto, and Sakraida joined after college as an act of rebellion against his upper-middle-class family—but they shared a romance with the myth of military camaraderie.

  When the first Martian attack asteroid vaporized one of the last Antarctic glaciers, Sakraida was on spaceport construction duty at Air Station Endurance. He talked his entire work crew into transferring to the front lines. He didn’t know that his old friend Eddie, then a lieutenant colonel, had also volunteered to put on a spacesuit and go stomp some Reds.

  The Outer Space Service’s Expeditionary Forces didn’t exist then, but those first troops deployed to Mars were the direct ancestors of today’s X-4s. And Santamaria and Sakraida were among their best.

  A lot of the military records from that time are still classified. The First Mars Battalion did a lot of things in secret. But I’ve spent a lot of time staring at the data, and I’ve learned to read between the redacted lines.

  The Battle of Elysium Planitia is historic for many reasons. It was the first time any nuclear devices were detonated by Martian forces. It was the first use of an orbital satellite to bombard a planet with an energy weapon. And though Earth Coalition won the battle, both sides suffered terrible losses that crippled their capacity to wage war for weeks afterward.

  Elysium Planitia is a wide, flat expanse of Martian plain dotted by ancient volcanoes. The tallest of those is Elysium Mons in the north, and when Earth Coalition drove the Martian Irregulars out of Hellas Planitia, they fled northeast. They established a base in Elysium Mons, including a broadcast tower for Mars Free Radio. Earth Coalition launched several assaults against the mountain, but were beaten back every time.

  The First Mars Battalion—calling themselves “1MB”�
��landed in Hellas Planitia at the end of that week. Earth Coalition set up their camp on a ridge overlooking Elysium Planitia, in the no-man’s-land between the Hellas Planitia habitat and the peak of Elysium Mons. The colonists in Hellas didn’t want troops crowding their community, and the military didn’t want civilians—including possible Martian collaborators—too close to their base of operations. It was the only feasible compromise, and it was the worst of both worlds.

  The Battle of Elysium Planitia started on a Tuesday morning. It ended on a Thursday evening, just as the sun was setting, with a focused high-energy particle beam blasting down from orbit at the same time that a barrage of surface-to-air missiles launched from Elysium Mons and spiraled up to the attacking satellite. The top of the ancient volcano erupted again, and at roughly the same moment, a miniature star blossomed in Mars orbit.

  In terms of hardware, the Martian Irregulars suffered far worse in that final exchange of fire than Earth Coalition did. EC lost their prototype death ray, but they got a successful test firing out of it. The MIs lost an entire mountain full of weapons and supplies, plus a lot of morale. They eventually recovered, of course, but the next few months were pretty harrowing.

  Both sides suffered terrible casualties at Elysium Planitia. EC cleared everyone they could find out of the mountain before the satellite strike, but they had to fight their way across the plain and up to Elysium Mons first. Martian defenses made air support and heavy armor impractical, and Earth Coalition’s commander-in-chief demanded a swift resolution.

  This was back when they still thought the war would be over in a few weeks. Idiots.

  Edward Santamaria commanded 1MB’s ground deployment at Elysium Planitia, and he made countless impossible choices. He ordered thousands of men and women, including his old friend Terry, into one of the ugliest and deadliest battlefields in human history. He did that for two days straight, knowing most of them would never return.

  I understood then why Bartelt called Santamaria “Hades.” He sent his troops into hell. He sent them down to Elysium, where they would rest as heroes—but they would still be dead.

  Sakraida was one of the few who did make it back up the ridge, bursting out of the ground just ahead of the MIs who used an old survival tunnel to bypass EC defenses and infiltrate the command post. A land mine had plunged Sakraida’s squad into one of those tunnels. He and the other 1MBs who survived the blast fought their way through a surprised Martian scout team and burrowed out of the ground just meters away from Santamaria’s position, warning them about the Martian attack minutes before it happened.

  Sakraida may not have made the best tactical decision. He could have taken the remains of his squad and used their suit sensors to avoid MI patrols. They could have followed the tunnels straight into the underbelly of Elysium Mons. That is how EC finally did penetrate the mountain, hours later.

  Some agency analysts argue that Sakraida and his three remaining squadmates didn’t have enough firepower to take the stronghold. Others argue that Sakraida’s squad could have provided valuable reconnaissance that would have saved lives in the later assault.

  None of that matters. Terman Sakraida saved Edward Santamaria’s life that day. What happened at Elysium bonded them. Their careers diverged after the war, but they’ve been brothers ever since that day on Mars, and they’ll always help one another, no questions asked. Even if it means leaving others out in the cold.

  * * *

  “He lied to me,” Santamaria says. “That son of a bitch came to my home and sat at my table and lied to my face. And I believed him.”

  He’s sitting again and staring at the tablet, which Jemison has put down on the desk. I’m standing by the back wall, and Jemison is next to Santamaria’s chair.

  This isn’t just a proverbial bombshell. This revelation is a ground-level nuclear detonation that changes the geography of the battlefield. We thought we were dealing with some national or planetary rival, someone trying to infiltrate and break down our defenses. We were wrong. This danger is in our own house, rooted in the highest levels of what we thought was our most secure stronghold.

  These people already know all our secrets. So what are they trying to accomplish here?

  I look at Jemison and am shocked by her expression. Her previous anger has evaporated, and she’s watching Santamaria now with intense scrutiny—almost desperation. Her arms are folded across her chest, and her deep frown doesn’t disguise the fact that tears have welled up in her eyes.

  “So let me make sure I understand this correctly,” I say slowly, evenly, not wanting to perturb either Santamaria or Jemison too much. Some days my life depends on me reading a room and playing along with other people’s moods, and I am acutely aware of being in that situation right now. “Director Sakraida asked you to sign that transport order, authorizing a sealed piece of cargo onto your ship. No inspection, no questions asked.”

  “Not onto my ship,” Santamaria says. “Into the cargo container.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “But you knew that container was going to be loaded onto Dejah Thoris.”

  Santamaria nods. “That was the deal. I would make sure his cargo reached Mars. It would be unloaded and stored in lost and found, and he would send someone else to retrieve it.”

  “So you have no idea what was in there.”

  He looks at me with weary eyes. “I do not.”

  Jemison coughs. “I want to believe you, sir, but this whole thing is—” She shakes her head. “Why would you do something like this?”

  He looks up at her. “I’d do the same for you, Andie.”

  “I would never ask.”

  “I know.”

  They stare at each other for a long moment. Then Jemison unfolds her arms and extends her right hand. Santamaria clasps his hand around her wrist, and she does the same to him. They grip each other for a long moment, exchanging some invisible communication through their touch.

  “So who the hell is Jerry Bartelt?” I say. We don’t have time for gratuitous camaraderie.

  Santamaria releases Jemison’s hand. She glares at me. He says, “Non-Territorial Intelligence. Bartelt reported directly to Director Sakraida.”

  “And why did your old war buddy put him on this ship?” I ask. “He already had a suicide bomber—Alan Wachlin. Why send a second agent when you’ve already got one on the job?”

  “Because Wachlin wasn’t a professional,” Jemison says. “Sakraida didn’t trust him with the details of our cargo arrangement.”

  “So Bartelt’s the one who cut into the container?”

  “And extracted something to hand off to Wachlin.”

  “Great. How do we find out what it was?” I ask.

  “Security’s already checking camera footage for suspicious activity.” Jemison taps at her wristband. “Nothing yet.”

  “Wachlin was able to carry on a very large knife and a nuclear power supply,” Santamaria says. “Bartelt already had his personal electronics. What would they need to smuggle aboard that neither man could hide in his luggage?”

  I point at the tablet on his desk. “That manifest doesn’t say anything at all about the nature of the cargo?”

  Santamaria hands me the tablet. “Maybe you can read between the lines.”

  I scroll through the entire authorization document again, twice. There’s very little information here, which is just how the agency likes it: the less data we record, the less there is for anybody to compromise. But the people on the ground do need to know certain things, and coded entries are an easy way to hide information in plain sight.

  “Here.” I highlight part of the cargo manifest. “‘Approximate mass: 70.23 kilograms.’ You don’t use two decimal places for an approximation. That’s got to be a coded reference number.”

  “Doesn’t do us any good without knowing the code,” Jemison says.

  “And there are dimensions here,” I say, highlighting another set of numbers. “2.1 meters long, 70 centimeters wide, 60 centimeters high. If that’
s accurate, the box was pretty big.” I try to visualize it. “Big enough to hold a lot of things—”

  “No.” Jemison’s staring at the wall. “Big enough for one thing.”

  Santamaria stands up, watching Jemison intently. “Chief?”

  “Three hundred and forty linear centimeters,” Jemison says. Her eyes are glistening. “That’s a military casket.”

  I open and close my mouth. Jemison’s file showed that she oversaw cargo operations for most of her time at Olympus Base. Her last three years there were during and immediately after the Independence War. And corpses count as cargo.

  I can’t imagine how many of those caskets she had to process for shipment back to Earth.

  “I’m just going to sit down here for a minute,” I say.

  “They needed somewhere to put that fake power core implant,” Jemison says as I sit, feeling lightheaded. “I’m going to bet that a DNA test will tell us we found Alan Wachlin’s corpse in 5028. They cloned him—enough of him to look like a human body—so we would find the right number of corpses at the crime scene.”

  “Doesn’t it take a lot of time to grow a human clone?” I ask. I seem to recall Jessica ranting at Science Division about this a few years ago.

  “They didn’t need a working brain,” Santamaria says. “Just a body.”

  He flexes his left arm, and another tattoo shimmers into being on the inside of his elbow: a caduceus encircled by pixel patterns. Muscle-activated medical inventory tag. That’s not the arm he was born with. I wonder if any of his internal organs are also cloned replacements.

  “We had to stop searching for him,” Santamaria continues, pacing in a tight circle. “They knew we’d be watching every single passenger closely during midway, to minimize zero-gee mishaps. Wachlin could only hide if we thought all souls on board were accounted for.”

  “But they didn’t need to kill his whole family,” I say, rubbing my temples. “Why didn’t Alan Wachlin just fake his own death? Why would he need to burn the whole goddamn stateroom?”

  “‘Need’ is a strong word,” Santamaria says.