Waypoint Kangaroo

by Curtis C. Chen

  “Fine.”

  “You’re dehydrated. Finish drinking that bulb.”

  Of course. I always forget that Jessica has full remote access to my cybernetic implants. It always feels like a breach of privacy, until I remember that I don’t have any privacy on the job.

  “How big was that last portal?” she asks.

  “Fifteen meters diameter,” Oliver replies.

  Jessica looks at me. “Fifteen meters is the widest you’ve ever opened the pocket, and the last time you did it, you fainted.”

  “Well, I’m fine now, as you can see. All that training must have paid off.” Science Division loves to make me open and close the pocket in different simulated situations, for hours on end, while measuring my brain activity.

  “You’re dehydrated,” Jessica repeats. She turns the tablet to show me a bunch of medical readouts. “Cortisol levels are still elevated, acetylcholine saturation is low. Drink two more bulbs of vitamin water, then go take a nap. You have less than two and a half hours to recover.”

  “I don’t need to recover. I told you, I’m fine.” I finish the red drink and stick the bulb to the nearest table.

  Jessica lowers her tablet and nods. “Okay. Open the pocket.”

  “What?”

  “Open the pocket.”

  I shrug. “What do you want me to take out?”

  “Nothing,” she says. “Just open the portal. Show me you’re fully recovered.”

  “With or without the barrier?” I ask. I’m doing my best to stall, because I don’t want to admit she’s right, and I’m hoping another minute or two will make a difference.

  “Open the damn pocket, Kangaroo.”

  I glare at her, then turn and look at the far wall. I concentrate as hard as I can on opening the pocket. Nothing happens.

  “You know, that noise is really distracting,” I say, pointing at Oliver’s bug-killer.

  Jessica nods at Oliver. He taps the disk, and the room becomes eerily quiet.

  “Go on,” Jessica says.

  I put out a hand to focus my concentration and try again. Still nothing. I cycle through the first reference objects I can think of, attempting to pull each one: pink elephant, blue elephant, orange elephant, white elephant …

  After a minute, I slam a fist against the table and curse.

  Jessica opens a cooler, rummages through it, and retrieves a blue drink bulb. “Drink this one next.” She pulls out a green bulb. “Then this one.” She sets them on the table and removes the empty bulb.

  “Is the goal here to get my tongue dyed completely black?”

  “Each color indicates different vitamins and electrolytes,” she says. “You need the variety to rebalance your system. And your body needs sleep to make that happen.”

  Might as well get this part over with. I take a big gulp of blue liquid and make a face. “I don’t suppose you brought any alcohol with you.”

  She frowns. “No drinking on duty.”

  “I’m just saying, some liquid courage would make these more palatable. And a bit of the hard stuff would also help me get to sleep.”

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” Oliver says.

  I’ve finished the blue drink and am halfway through the green one when I realize what he means. “No. Oh, no. What the hell did you—”

  My muscles go slack before I can finish the sentence. Goddamn Surgical.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  X-4 transport—Crew berths

  90 minutes from waypoint zero

  I wake up zipped into a sleeping bag on one of the lower decks. I do feel better after my chemically induced nap, but I’m never going to admit that to Jessica.

  Something pokes into my chest as I wiggle out of the sleeping bag. I unzip my jumpsuit and find an encrypted agency file tucked inside.

  I instinctively hide the plastic document sheet and look around to make sure I’m alone. It’s completely unnecessary—the display surface appears transparent to the naked eye, and will only be readable to someone with the right scanning implant—but it’s a reflex.

  Oliver and Jessica must have left it. Why didn’t they just hand it to me? I blink my left eye into decryption mode, move my fingers to enter my passphrase, and wait for my implants to process the file. After a second, the agency logo appears overlaid on the sheet in my HUD, along with phantom controls for paging through the data.

  I swipe over to the first page and have to read it twice to make sure I understand it.

  When I get to page three, I realize I’m clutching the sheet so hard the plastic is starting to deform.

  I take several deep breaths to calm myself and finish reading. Then I go to the bridge.

  I find Oliver there with Colonel Brutlag and the pilot. I ask if I can have a word alone with Oliver, and wait until we’re in the mess area and he’s turned on his bug-killer before slamming him up against the wall.

  “What the fuck!” I say, waving the file in his face.

  “Lasher thought you should know,” Oliver says.

  “Lasher,” I say, “is a deceitful, two-faced, manipulative bastard.”

  Oliver frowns. “And this is somehow news to you?”

  “He lies to other people.” I had resolved not to lose my shit, but I’m not sure I can hold it together. “He doesn’t lie to us.” He doesn’t lie to me.

  “You read the whole file?” Oliver asks.

  “Who the fuck are you talking to? Yes!”

  “Then you know he couldn’t take the risk!” Oliver says. “Lasher knew there was a security breach within the agency, but he didn’t know if it was a leak, a mole, or some kind of technology exploit. Not until you requested Alan Wachlin’s service record. Lasher was able to pull that thread and discover Wachlin’s connection to D.Int.”

  I feel a surge of pride. They wouldn’t have discovered that without me. Score one for insubordination.

  “And then military police arrived to escort Surgical and me out of the office,” Oliver continues. “We realized we weren’t actually in trouble when they strapped us into a high-gee US-OSS clipper, but we didn’t know the whole story until we rendezvoused with the X-4s.” He scowls at me. “At least you got to enjoy a seafood buffet.”

  It was a pretty good buffet. I shake my head. “Lasher should have trusted us.”

  “He did trust us. He just couldn’t tell us. He didn’t know who might be listening.” Oliver points at the file. “He repositioned thirty-eight other operatives in addition to the three of us. And he moved everyone under nonofficial covers. That’s a massive operational deployment, and he did all the paperwork himself. He must not have slept for a week.”

  “I could have exposed Wachlin and Bartelt sooner,” I say. “I could have gone after the cargo immediately. I could have stopped them before they hijacked the ship.” I could have saved Xiao.

  I could have protected Ellie.

  “You could have gotten yourself killed,” Oliver says. “We couldn’t prep you without raising suspicions. You would have been on your own, facing two trained killers. They would have made short work of you and anyone else who got in their way.”

  “You don’t know that.” I could have tried.

  Oliver shakes his head. “How many contingency actions did Wachlin demonstrate after the hijacking, when you and the crew were attempting to re-take engineering? Sakraida has been planning this for years. Your biggest advantage was Bartelt and Wachlin not knowing who you were or what you could do. You had to wait until the right moment to use the pocket, for maximum effect.”

  “I don’t know if anybody told you,” I say bitterly, “but people have been dying out here.”

  “We didn’t know what they were going to do. They could have tried to steal the ship, or destroy it, or ransom the passengers. We couldn’t defend until we knew how they would attack.”

  I know he’s right. That’s the worst part. Paul’s always right.

  “We could have taken an educated guess,” I say.

  “Save it for
the debrief,” Oliver snaps. I guess he’s had enough of me for once, instead of the other way around. “We still have work to do. If you’re done with that?” He tugs the file out of my grip.

  “Why tell us now?” I say, releasing the plastic sheet. “He must have known this was going to piss off every last one of us. Make us feel betrayed.”

  “I was curious about that decision as well.” Oliver touches invisible controls at the corners of the document, and it shrivels up and vaporizes in a puff of acrid smoke. “Lasher said he wanted to notify everyone that they were, in fact, deployed on mission. To be ready for new orders at any time. And he wanted to remind you of your objectives and priorities.”

  I cough out an angry laugh. “My objective is pretty simple. Stop Dejah Thoris from crashing into Mars.”

  Oliver stares at me. “Your priority is Mars.”

  “What?”

  “If a decision has to be made,” Oliver says slowly, “it’s twenty million people versus six thousand.”

  I didn’t think I could get any angrier. I remind myself that Oliver’s just the messenger. “I’m not very good at math,” I say. “And I have friends on that ship.”

  “We will do our best to save everyone,” Oliver says, “but if a decision has to be made—”

  “Then I’ll make it!” I bang my fist against a bulkhead and immediately regret it. Bulkheads are very solid. “It’s my responsibility, Lieutenant.”

  Oliver exhales. “Perhaps we should stretch our legs.”

  * * *

  We suit up and go outside on the hull. We have only an hour to rehearse what’s going to happen when I open the pocket again.

  I can’t actually practice what I need to do. Opening the pocket with a fifteen-meter aperture takes a lot out of me. We just have to hope, based on my vital signs, that my body’s had enough time to recover. All we can do is measure things, rig tethers, and talk through the steps until I’m sick of hearing them.

  Colonel Brutlag gives us an update at one hour from waypoint zero. If this plan doesn’t work, Mars Orbital Authority is prepared to use their planetary defense platforms to cut Dejah Thoris to pieces. There’s no guarantee they can carve the ship into small enough sections to significantly reduce Martian casualties, but there would at least be a chance.

  Spending six thousand lives to save twenty million.

  Fuck that. I’m going to save everyone.

  Or die trying.

  Oliver calls for Kapur and two other spacemen to secure the cables attaching me to the transport’s hull. It feels like forever while they check, double-check, and triple-check the rigging.

  “Ready,” Kapur calls, finally.

  “I’m detaching myself from the hull,” I say, disengaging my boots.

  The transport has maneuvered into position for the delivery. Dejah Thoris is behind me, five kilometers away, looking like a toy. Our fighter escort has moved behind the transport, out of the line of fire. Past the fighter, I see dozens of other shapes. I blink my eye into radio mode and see the colorful pulses of spacecraft nav beacons—civilian, merchant, and military. All Martians. Ready to push Dejah Thoris as soon as we disable her engines.

  The spacemen have set up a ring of marker buoys next to the X-4 transport, and Oliver has aimed it at Dejah Thoris. The ring is fifteen meters across. That’s my target.

  I reach the end of my tether, one meter short of hitting the ring, and stop with a jerk. I take a deep breath. One meter is not much margin for error, but I don’t know if I can place the pocket any farther off-center from my body. Even this is a long shot. I’ve only been able to do it once in the lab.

  Well, I’m only going to get one chance at this. I’d better get it right.

  I sip some water from the dispenser in my helmet. It probably won’t do any good at this point, but it couldn’t hurt. And it feels vaguely useful.

  “I’m in position,” I report.

  The engines cut out, and the stealth canopy deploys again, putting me in darkness except for the ring of blinking buoys.

  “Vitals are good,” Jessica says over the radio.

  “You are go to activate the wormhole device when ready,” Oliver says.

  “Copy that.”

  This wouldn’t be such a bad place to end. I’ll have laid down my life in the line of duty. I’ll have used my unique abilities to do something nobody else could. I’ll have done it to save innocent lives.

  But I don’t want to die here. I want to live through this.

  I want to capture Alan Wachlin alive.

  “Delivery in three,” I say aloud.

  I want to make Wachlin pay for the murders he committed.

  “Two.”

  I want to punish Wachlin for taking Ellie Gavilán hostage.

  “One.”

  I want to hurt Wachlin. A lot.

  “Now.”

  I stare at the center of the target ring and visualize the unpainted side of a wooden shield. I imagine it not directly in front of me, but above me, fifteen meters wide and lined up with the ring of marker buoys. Right there. Up there. Away from me. Out the back door.

  I open the pocket.

  Several buoys on the closest part of the ring disappear behind the bottom edge of the portal. The event horizon flickers less than half a meter from my face.

  The tug has been accelerating at full burn for three hours. It comes tearing out of the pocket at over a million meters per second. It’s a good thing we’re in vacuum, otherwise the sonic boom would probably kill me.

  I feel a shudder as the tug punches a hole through the stealth canopy. It closes the distance to Dejah Thoris in the blink of an eye.

  The explosion has nearly faded by the time I twist myself around to look. The ruptured canopy has detached from the transport and is spinning away, giving me a clear view of the debris cloud expanding around Dejah Thoris’s stern.

  “Delivery confirmed!” Jemison shouts over the radio. “Ionwell is offline!”

  “Nice shooting, sir,” Kapur says as she reels me back in.

  “Thanks,” I say, not trying to disguise my shaking.

  “Spacemen, help the major back inside,” Jessica says. “He’s having a panic attack.”

  I don’t love that cover story, but it sells. I touch down on the hull and feel like throwing up. Kapur grabs my shoulder and steadies me.

  “Something’s happening,” says one of the other spacemen.

  “We’re getting gravity,” says Jemison.

  That’s not right. With the main engines disabled, there can’t be any significant acceleration.

  I blink my eye to telescopic magnification. I see maneuvering thruster pods firing all over Dejah Thoris, turning the ship. It starts spinning on its long axis. Then the thrusters fire in a different direction, turning it end over end. The jets keep firing, increasing the spin rate and the rotation around all three axes.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I say.

  I hear Jemison cursing. Then the radio goes dead.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  X-4 transport—Situation room

  21 minutes from waypoint zero

  Kapur leads us back inside to the situation room behind the bridge. Colonel Brutlag and the rest of his detachment are there with Oliver and Jessica. Nobody looks happy.

  Brutlag stands in front of a wall-sized tactical display. Dejah Thoris is spinning madly. I wonder how much torque the superstructure can take.

  “She’s pulling up to three gravities with every new rotation vector,” Brutlag says. “Anyone who isn’t puking their guts out is having a hell of a time moving around.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Jessica says. “We’re talking about four thousand civilians without variable-gravity training. They’re getting thrown around like rag dolls. Broken bones, concussions, lacerations—”

  “How often is the rotation changing?” I ask.

  “Hesch?” Brutlag yields the floor to his pilot, a lanky man with pale eyes and stubble covering the lower p
art of his face.

  “New vector every three to five seconds,” Hesch says. “I doubt anyone can keep their bearings long enough to operate any controls.”

  The constantly changing rotation also makes it impossible for any ship to dock with Dejah Thoris. And we can no longer maintain line-of-sight with the comms dish on the hull. We’re completely cut off from Santamaria and his crew.

  “We’re mapping the pattern,” Oliver says. “The changes are very fast. The hijacker must be using a computer program, which means it’s only pseudo-random, and we should be able to predict it. But it will take time to gather enough data to reverse-engineer the program.”

  “Four thousand civilians,” Jessica says, staring daggers at all of us. “The longer we wait, the more serious their injuries become. Some of those people will die.”

  “There is another option,” Brutlag says.

  “Let’s hear it,” I say.

  “We have two plasma beam cannons on board,” Brutlag explains. “Each PBC disassembles into five separate components, and each part can be carried by one spaceman. We move to within half a kilometer of Dejah Thoris. Our fighter escort deploys countermeasures to jam her sensors. The spacemen jump in pairs, each pair carrying two of the same component, and latch on to the hull with grappling claws.

  “Every spaceman who makes it onto the hull claws his way to an airlock and enters the ship. Once inside, they assemble the weapon, blast their way into the engineering section, and take out the hijacker.”

  I should tell him this plan is completely insane, but after what I just did, I’m in no position to criticize.

  “We’re fifteen minutes from waypoint zero,” I say. “Is that enough time?”

  “We don’t need to deflect the ship that much,” Hesch says. “We can still bounce it off the atmosphere. It’ll be rough, but it doubles our time margin. We do the math right and we’ll barely scratch the paint.”

  “And if we don’t do the math right?”

  Hesch looks at me. His mouth is a thin, determined line. “We lose one ship to save half a planet, sir.”

  This is the worst headache I’ve ever had.

  “We need to contact all the spacecraft around Mars,” Oliver says. “They need to coordinate their intercepts.”