Kangaroo Too

by Curtis C. Chen

  “What the hell is that?” I swing my head around, looking for any signs of movement. I blink my eye into scanning mode, but all the doors into the hangar bay are still sealed. “I don’t see anything. Is this a sensor malfunction?”

  “Get in the shuttle!” Hong shouts.

  “What? Why?”

  He jumps off the ramp, grabs my arm, and swings me up into the open shuttle airlock. I keep forgetting that we’re in one-sixth gravity. I poke my head out of the airlock and look up at the open hangar bay roof.

  I see dozens of flat gray spiders, made to resemble Moon rocks, scuttling down into the unprotected hangar.

  My left eye has sensed a threat and automatically come out of standby mode. The overlay paints each spider with a yellow outline, indicating an unknown status—green would be friendly, and red would be hostile. But these spiders aren’t transmitting anything that positively identifies them as either one.

  “Get inside!” Hong bounds up the ramp.

  “Wait one,” I say, and tell myself that it’s okay to throw up. “Seungmu, do you read?”

  “Affirmative,” says Seungmu’s pilot over the radio. “If you’re going to give us an exit, sir, you’d better do it fast.”

  I see the other shuttle rising from the floor of the hangar bay, outlined in green in my eye, and the wriggling mass of yellow spiders closing in on us.

  Now or never, Kangaroo.

  I think of a colorfully painted sideways drum and open the pocket on the other side of Seungmu. My head pounds, my vision blurs, and I can barely make out the shuttle turning and thrusting into the portal. At least I think that’s what I’m seeing.

  “Hong,” I say, “are they in?”

  “They’re in!”

  I close the pocket and let him push me into our shuttle. I don’t even try to stop myself from doing a faceplant. At least it’s my spacesuit helmet and not my actual face hitting the deck.

  “Good to go! We are good to go!” Hong says, climbing in after me.

  “Affirmative,” Khan replies. “Deploying countermeasures.”

  Hong smacks the control to cycle Calypso’s airlock. Before the outer door fully closes, I catch a blurry glimpse of storage booths opening around the hangar bay and service robots rolling out of their charging slots and toward the invading spiders. I kind of want to stay and watch the imminent robot battle. But mostly I want to get the hell out of here before one of those spiders latches on to our shuttle.

  The inner door cycles open, and Hong bursts into the cabin, throwing off his helmet and diving into the cockpit. “Everybody strap in!”

  Khan and Jessica drag me out of the airlock. “We don’t have time to get him out of this suit,” Khan says.

  “Then we lock down the suit with him inside,” Jessica says.

  “Very well.”

  They carry me back to the spacesuit storage locker—hooray for one-sixth gravity—and ease me backward into a holding slot. The magnetic latches click into place around the waist of my spacesuit. Both women grab handholds on the wall.

  “Good to go!” Khan calls forward.

  “Lifting off!” Hong calls back through the open cockpit door.

  Jessica pulls off my helmet. “Just breathe, Kangaroo.” She locks my helmet into a holding slot. I do my best to follow her instructions.

  She presses an injector slug against my neck. “What’s that?” I ask as it hisses and pinches my skin for a moment.

  “Something to help with the nausea.”

  It feels like my stomach is being pushed into my feet when the shuttle ascends. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Goddammit don’t throw up Kangaroo.

  Something bumps the shuttle sideways. “Please tell me that’s not a spider,” Jessica says.

  “I can’t see it,” Hong says. “How high can these things jump?”

  “They jump?” I say, my voice sounding squeakier than I intended.

  Another bump rattles the shuttle. “They’re jumping,” Khan says.

  “We can get into orbit,” Hong says. I feel two more bumps. “I just need to maneuver—”

  The entire shuttle judders, and an alarm starts sounding. I look forward into the cockpit and see lots of flashing red lights. “That seems bad.”

  “Main engine is out!” Hong struggles with the control yoke. “We’ve still got thrusters. I’m going to get us as far away from here as I—”

  Something actually explodes. I feel it through the hull.

  “That’s definitely bad,” Khan says.

  “That was a thruster,” Hong says. “I need to set us down. Everybody brace for impact.”

  * * *

  Lieutenant Hong is an excellent pilot. Our landing is a bit tooth-rattling, but nobody suffers any injuries, and the shuttle stays right side up.

  I’m starting to feel better now that we’re on solid ground again. Whatever Jessica injected me with is probably also helping. Then I hear thumping noises all around us.

  “Is anyone else hearing that?” I ask.

  “Sounds like more jumping spiders,” Khan says.

  “Please tell me we can electrify the outside hull or something,” I yell forward while struggling to unlatch my spacesuit from the wall.

  “No effect,” Hong calls back. Jessica helps me get the spacesuit free. I stagger forward into the cabin.

  “Can you see how many of those things are out there?” Khan asks.

  “Well,” Hong says, “there’s a lot of them.”

  “I mean how many are physically attached to the shuttle,” Khan says.

  “Yeah,” Hong says. “There’s a lot of them.”

  “Ballpark?” Jessica asks. “Ten? Twenty?”

  “There’s a lot of them,” Khan says, staring out the window.

  “For crying out loud,” Jessica mutters and walks forward. She looks out a window in the aisle behind Khan’s, and her eyes widen. “Shit.”

  I stumble forward in my spacesuit and look out the next window. It takes me a moment to understand what I’m seeing.

  Hong landed the shuttle just outside the rim of Shackleton Crater, so there’s sunlight touching the ground around us. And the Lunar surface, which is normally perfectly still in the vacuum of outer space, is moving.

  It’s not actually the Lunar surface, of course. It’s hundreds of spider-bots, their carapaces painted and textured to resemble gray Moon rocks, skittering toward and into the crater. I hope those hangar bay doors are closed by now.

  I also hope SDF1’s service robots are tougher than these spiders. They don’t appear to have any weapons, other than their needle-sharp climbing legs.

  Which are strong enough to stab a man to death.

  And pierce the hull of a spacecraft.

  Goddammit.

  “Please tell me SDF1 has a self-destruct and you activated it before we left,” I say to Khan.

  “Every serv-bot in the base has a self-destruct,” she says. “I’m not worried about protecting that location. I’m more worried about us.”

  “They seem to be ignoring us,” I say. The spiders are continuing to stream toward the crater.

  “For now,” Khan says. “But whoever was watching and waiting for our evacuation definitely saw this shuttle lift off, blow an engine, and then put down again. They’re going to come after us as soon as the spiders tell them there’s nobody left in the crater.”

  “How are you feeling, Kangaroo?” Jessica asks.

  I look over at her. “Um, fine, I guess? Better? Why do you ask?”

  “Because I’m thinking we could use some of those anti-mech weapons Equipment loaded out.”

  “Right.” I step back from the window and turn to face an empty spot in the aisle. Hong is standing in the doorway of the cockpit. “Stand back, Lieutenant.”

  He nods, his eyes wide with what I can only assume is awe. That’s right, everyone, Kangaroo to the rescue!

  I concentrate on opening the pocket.

  Nothing happens.

  “Just give me a seco
nd,” I say, holding up a hand. I close my eyes and try again.

  Still nothing.

  “Your acetylcholine’s reading low,” Jessica says. I open my eyes and see her working a computer tablet. “Sit down and drink some more water. I’ll find the first aid kit.”

  “This rarely happens,” I say to Hong and Khan as Jessica moves forward into the galley area. “It’s just, you know, I’m under a lot of pressure to perform right now, and I just pulled all those portals for the shuttles—”

  “We understand,” Khan says.

  I feel my ears growing hot. “It’ll just be a few minutes.”

  “Meanwhile, let’s work on plan B,” Khan says. “We have spacesuits for everyone?”

  “That’s affirmative,” Hong says, going to the storage lockers and checking the gear. “Looks like four hours of air in each suit.”

  “Good,” Khan says. “Let’s start suiting up. Anything we can use for weapons?”

  “Not looking great on that front,” Hong says, rummaging through lockers. “This was a Science Division vehicle. It’s mostly repair tools and spare parts back here.”

  “Well, look for blunt instruments,” Khan says. “At least it’ll be satisfying to whack the legs off one of those spider-bots, if it comes to that.”

  I finish the water bottle in my suit and swap it out for a new one while Hong and Khan put on their spacesuits. Jessica returns from the galley with a handful of pills.

  “And what are those?” I ask as she moves to stuff them into my mouth.

  “Stimulants.” I give her a dubious look. She sighs and says, “Caffeine, glucose, vitamins, and amino acids. Nothing dangerous.”

  “That’s a lot of pills.”

  “I’m a doctor. Do no harm, remember?”

  “Fine.” I hold out my gloved hand, and she transfers the pills. I gulp them down with some more water. “How long should I wait before trying the pocket again?”

  “Save it,” she says. “You might only get one use in the next hour. Wait until we’re out of other options.”

  “Right.”

  I put my helmet back on while Hong helps Jessica into a spacesuit. When we finish, Khan is standing by the airlock door, holding what looks like a large wrench in both hands.

  “Ready to go?” she asks.

  “So what’s the plan?” I ask. “Step outside and tell the spiders to take us to their leader?”

  “Whoever’s controlling those bots must be close,” Khan says. “I’m guessing they’ll come to us. They are looking for about two hundred evacuated base personnel, after all.”

  “You’re not worried they’ll just stab us to death?”

  Khan frowns at me. “This is your theory, Kangaroo.”

  “How is this my—”

  “You supposed that whoever threw that rock at us was trying to expose Project Genesis so they could steal it. They don’t know what it is any more than we do. They’re not going to kill any of us until they know for sure they have Genesis and not some other cargo.” Khan looks around at all three of us. “Are we all on the same page?”

  Hong, Jessica, and I all nod and mutter our agreement.

  “Let’s just hope these bad guys think the same way we do,” Hong says.

  “All right.” Khan motions to the pile of tools by the storage lockers. “Everybody grab a weapon and let’s go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Moon—South Pole—badlands

  3 minutes since I swallowed a whole bunch of pills and I feel fantastic, just great, why do you ask

  There’s a small cluster of spider-bots gathered at the bottom of the ramp when we open the airlock. Khan leads the way out. The spiders back away as she steps onto the Lunar surface. They don’t have any visible sensors. It’s kind of creepy. I turn on my eye and confirm that they’re communicating with one another by radio. One big creepy wireless network.

  “Well,” I say, “the good news is, they don’t seem to be that interested in attacking us.”

  “They’re keeping their distance,” Jessica says. “Like they’ve been programmed to herd us, but not engage.”

  “Let’s see if we can find their master,” Khan says.

  “Copy that,” Hong replies. “Scanning.”

  I turn my attention to the sky above us. Hong’s using a handheld active radar unit, so I use my passive EM sensors. If there is a spacecraft above us, it should see Hong’s radar unit pinging it, and will hopefully use that to zero in on our position. Not like they don’t already know where we are. Hey, bad guys, come and get your prisoners!

  Some of the stars look brighter, or different, when I switch to EM sensing. Some of them are brighter when you look at radio waves or other parts of the spectrum. And then there are pulsars, like those over there, flickering as if I were looking through atmosphere—

  Wait a minute. Those stars aren’t just changing brightness. They’re also changing position.

  And they’re getting bigger.

  “There!” I point at the center of the mass of not-stars. There are five or six points of light, flickering and rotating around an invisible central point and getting larger. “Incoming!”

  I feel it before I can see it: thrusters that looked like stars, pushing out propellant to slow the spacecraft’s descent. It must be coated in some kind of energy-absorbing stealth material, except for those thruster jet ports and possibly the main engines. Just like the fancy rock, but this vehicle isn’t on a collision course—it’s headed for a soft landing right next to us.

  I move closer to where Jessica and Khan and Hong are standing—is it my imagination, or are these spider-bots closing in around us?—and keep watching the spot where the reverse thrust seems to be centered. I’m still amazed at how efficient modern stealth materials have gotten. You can tell where a stealthed vessel is by the absence of stars and even cosmic background radiation, if your sensors are that sensitive. But usually they can sneak right up on you and get off a shot before you even know they’re there.

  Spiders move away until there’s a clear circular area in front of us. The ground shudders when the ship touches down, and then a bright horizontal line of light appears in midair. The light expands downward until it’s a rectangle, with a humanoid silhouette in the center.

  The spacesuited figure takes a few steps down the ramp, and by then it’s obvious he or she is holding some kind of assault rifle on us with one arm. With the other arm, the figure points at our tools, then at the ground.

  “People are so untrusting,” I say as we all drop our blunt objects to the ground. Four spiders immediately scuttle forward, grab the tools, and drag them away.

  The figure on the ramp braces the assault rifle with one arm and waves us forward with the other hand. The spiders clear a path from the small circle where we are to the stealth ship.

  “Here we go,” Hong says.

  “Stay frosty,” Khan says, stepping forward.

  “One use,” Jessica mutters. “Make it count.”

  No pressure, Kangaroo.

  * * *

  I don’t know how many gees the stealth ship pulls while leaving the Moon, but it feels like at least five elephants’ worth on my chest. Our captor doesn’t even have to tie us up or restrain us in any way; the gravity keeps all four of us down on the floor of the spacecraft.

  Our mystery host keeps the assault rifle trained on us while sitting in a jump seat at the front of the compartment. Whoever this is, he or she has definitely had some astronaut training.

  After a few minutes, three multiarmed robots emerge from a storage niche and grab Hong, Khan, Jessica, and me by the arms and legs, holding us down and removing our spacesuit helmets. Only then does gravity abate to what feels like roughly Earth normal.

  Our captor steps forward and taps the side of his or her helmet, which is mirrored so we can’t see the face inside. The chestplate of the armored spacesuit sports a stylized image of a blood-red scorpion.

  “Where are the rest of your base personnel?”
The voice coming out of the helmet’s external speakers is modulated and disguised. I can’t tell whether it’s male or female. As a bonus, it also sounds really creepy.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Hong says.

  The assault rifle flips up, then smashes stock first into Hong’s face. To his credit, Hong only emits a grunt. I see blood leaking from his nose.

  Our captor steps over to stand in front of Khan and uses one boot to tap the robot holding her down. The robot lifts Khan upright.

  “You,” our captor says. “Where are the rest of your personnel?”

  “I’m not in charge,” Khan says, then jerks her head in my direction. “He is.”

  Our captor considers this for a moment, then taps the robot again. The bot pushes Khan to the ground. Our captor moves to the robot holding me down and taps it with a boot.

  Good. Whoever this is doesn’t know that Khan was the base commander. That means there’s a lot of other stuff this person doesn’t know.

  Like who I am and what I can do.

  Once the robot has raised me to a standing position, our captor raises the assault rifle and points it at my chest. “Where—”

  I don’t wait for the rest of the sentence. I open the pocket right behind him or her, two meters tall, without the barrier. The figure barely has time to squeeze off one burst from the assault rifle, which goes wild as he or she gets sucked into the vacuum of the other universe. Then I close the pocket.

  “That trick never gets old,” I say, and collapse to the ground. Don’t throw up.

  Hong has managed to dismantle his robot’s arms despite having what is probably a very painful broken nose, and now he’s working on Khan’s bot. The two of them apparently hid some extra tools inside their spacesuits earlier.

  I watch the forward door for any sign of our captor’s accomplices. It seems likely that whoever’s flying the ship will come back here to check on us sooner or later.

  Nobody does before Hong and Khan get free of their robots and then bang on the ones holding Jessica and me until enough pieces break off to free us. Hong and Khan use their tools to remove all the robots’ power supplies while Jessica kneels down next to me and helps me out of my spacesuit.