Kangaroo Too

by Curtis C. Chen

  “What the fuck?” says a thick-necked young man in the back of the group—the name label floating above his head reads HENDERSON. He doesn’t look like he’s out of his teens, even though the records say he’s old enough to drink.

  “I thought wormholes were only theoretical,” Varonfakis says. “You’ve got a device?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have time to explain.” I walk over to an open area of the shelter. “I need to clear a space about three meters square.”

  Gorski claps his hands. “You heard the commander. Let’s go, people!”

  The spacemen start moving, and it’s clear that they’ve been working together for a while. They know who their partners are, and they clear the space with a minimum of chatter. What they do say is directed toward me, the stranger in their midst.

  “How’s this wormhole device work?” Nguyen asks.

  “Can’t tell you that,” I say. I don’t explain that it’s because we don’t actually know how my ability works. They’re not cleared to know that anyway. “All I can tell you is what it does. I’m going to open a portal here and pull out a rescue bubble, then two other people in spacesuits.”

  “Whoa,” Henderson says. “You’re hiding people inside a wormhole?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyes light up. “So if someone else has another wormhole device in a different location—”

  “Doesn’t work like that,” I say. I look over the open area as the spacemen move aside. “Okay. Here we go.”

  I open the pocket, rotated around the rescue bubble, and the transparent sphere rolls out toward me. I stop it with both hands. Alisa and Rich fall to the bottom—there’s no gravity in the pocket, and the Moon is reasserting its grip now—and do their best to cradle Joey against the impact. He’s still unconscious.

  “Holy shit!” one of the spacemen exclaims.

  “Is that a kid?” Varonfakis says.

  “Cut the chatter,” Gorski says. “Let’s get this bubble out of the way. You got two more coming out, Commander?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “He’s not breathing!” Alisa shouts through the bubble. “We need the inducer! Now!”

  “Shit,” I say. “Spacemen, uh, Varonfakis and Henderson, with me. We need to get some equipment out of that wreckage.”

  I put my helmet back on and run out of the tent, back toward the crash site. I’m very surprised to see the stealth ship rising slowly from the landing site.

  The ship turns and rights itself, sending gray dust sliding off its hull, and I see an armored spacesuit through the smashed cockpit window.

  It’s Jane Doe.

  “What the hell?” I turn my radio on. “Scorpion, Kangaroo, what the hell!”

  Jane waves at me and replies over the radio. “Sorry, Kangaroo. It’s in my nature.”

  “We need that machine!” I say. “There’s a medical rig in the cargo bay—”

  “Oh, I know.” The ship is rising straight up into the air, blending into the black sky. “Multifocal transcranial inducer, right? I’ve got buyers lined up from here to Jupiter for that piece of tech. Maybe it’ll even pay for the repairs to my damn ship.”

  I point up at the ship. “Spacemen, open fire—”

  I don’t even see the panels open up on the bottom of Scorpion’s ship, but I sure as hell see the muzzle flashes and the gouts of dust kicked up by the artillery impacts. One of the spacemen tackles me to the side before the line of fire passes through me.

  I roll over and see the other spaceman firing up into space. But it’s nearly impossible to see the stealth ship now that it’s against the black sky.

  “I mean, seriously, man,” Jane chuckles. “You think a five-year-old kid could fly my ship? You people got some weird notions.”

  “You were flying the ship?” I say, mentally kicking myself. “By remote? Shit!” Those comms implants did more than I thought. Also explains why she was twitching so much while she was unconscious.

  “Y’all thought I was asleep that whole time,” Jane laughs. “Guess my snoring was pretty convincing, huh? Sometimes I even impress myself. Oh, yeah, thank those spacemen for me too. They did a great job of distracting you while I snuck back in here.”

  “This child is going to die if you don’t come back!” I shout.

  “That is tragic,” Jane says, “and it’s not my problem. Good-bye.”

  The radio clicks off. I yell up into space for a few more seconds, but I really can’t see the ship now.

  “Shit,” I say, and turn back to the OSS tent. Several spacemen are standing between me and the tent, waiting for my next order.

  “Commander?” Gorski says.

  I point up into the black. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a ship up there that can intercept her?”

  “Sorry, sir. We’re a ground detachment. There might be a satellite in intercept range, but that stealth armor—”

  “Forget it,” I say. “We need to regroup.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Moon—nearside—Apollo 11 Historical Site

  2 minutes after Scorpion screwed us over

  I go back into the tent and pull Jessica and Hong out of the pocket. I give them a quick rundown of the situation. We all go over to where Alisa and Rich are standing over Joey. They’ve put a respirator mask over his face and an IV cuff around his left upper arm. He looks very small and frail.

  “Goddammit,” Alisa says after I repeat my report. She glares at Jessica. “If he dies—”

  “Let’s debrief later,” Jessica says.

  “We need to get him to Lunar General,” Rich says.

  “That’s too far,” Jessica says. “There’s another hospital—”

  “Stanford has an MTI rig,” Alisa says. “It’s the only other unit on the Moon.”

  I remember our tour of the hospital and feel a surge of hope. I turn to Gorski. “Can you give us a ride?”

  He frowns at us. “You said Lunar General?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We can get you there, Commander,” he says. “But there’s a situation.”

  “What kind of situation?”

  “Hostile mechs on site.”

  I don’t quite comprehend what he’s saying at first. “Robots?”

  “Of course there are,” Alisa grumbles.

  “They just stormed the building and took over the radiology wing,” Gorski says. “No human operators in sight, and comms jamming isn’t shutting them down. They must be running independent programs. All the units appear to be armored against projectile firearms.”

  “Of course they are.” Alisa laughs.

  “Clementine’s secondary objective,” Jessica says. “She’s stealing Stanford’s MTI rig.”

  “With killer robots?” I can’t believe I’m actually saying these words.

  “There’s another way to help Joey,” Jessica says. “Kangaroo, a word.”

  She steps aside and motions for me to follow her. I walk over to one corner of the tent with her. We angle our bodies away from the others, and she says quietly, “I’m going to draw a sample of your blood.”

  I step back. “No. Are you fucking kidding me? No!”

  Jessica glares at me. “We can deal with big robots or tiny robots. Take your pick.”

  She’s talking about the nanobots in my bloodstream. We’ve used my nanobots to treat medical conditions before; Jessica was able to reprogram them to do something other than just convert blood sugars to energy to power my body-wide wireless mesh network. Radiation damage, specifically—but that was something she’d been researching for years before she actually wrote the software. And the nanobots are highly classified technology, even more so than my pocket. We shouldn’t even be talking about it out here in the open.

  “We don’t know what’s causing Joey’s seizures,” I say.

  “Episodes.”

  “Whatever the right word is. The nanobots can’t even deal with my earwax. And you and Science didn’t do so well with the last software update. What
makes you think you can program them correctly to fix Joey’s brain?”

  “I can try.”

  “You’re not thinking clearly.” I jab a finger in her direction. “You’ve been off ever since the funeral.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Your mother didn’t die of old age, did she?” I can tell by Jessica’s expression that I guessed correctly. “Whatever unfinished business you had with her, going crazy trying to make the nanobots cure other people is not going to resolve it.”

  Jessica blinks and turns away. “You are not a licensed therapist.”

  “No. I’m just the guy who has more professional contact with you on a daily basis than any other human being in the world.” I risk moving closer to her. “This isn’t you, Surge.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “I trust you to call me on my bullshit,” I say. “And now I’m returning the favor. You’re going through some stuff right now. Don’t try to deal with it by fixing anyone else. It’s okay if the only person you save is yourself.”

  Jessica wipes a sleeve across her eyes. “You could have just said, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’”

  “My name’s not Luke.”

  She laughs. I can always get her with a Bible joke.

  “Are you two done trading barbs?” Alisa says, making me jump. She’s standing right behind me. How much of our classified conversation did she overhear?

  “Private conversation!” I say.

  She folds her arms. “Were you talking about using your nanobots to treat Joey?”

  My head. Exploding. Again. I grab Jessica by both shoulders.

  “You told her about the nanobots?” I say through clenched teeth.

  Jessica slaps away my arms. “She has the clearance. I wanted her to join the project. I knew Ali was on the Moon; State read me in because I was family. I didn’t know what she had going on here.”

  “And I so appreciate you assuming that my life was a disaster and I needed you to rescue me,” Alisa says. “That’s sarcasm, by the way.”

  This whole thing is finally beginning to make some kind of twisted sense. “You thought because your mother—”

  “I hoped,” Jessica says. “I didn’t know about Joey, obviously.”

  “That’s why you snuck out of the hotel in the middle of the night?” I sputter. “To recruit her?”

  “I didn’t want her to be alone.” Jessica looks at Alisa. “I wanted you to have our mother’s holy cross.”

  Something that might be a human emotion flickers across Alisa’s face. “Whatever. I’m vetoing your insane nanobot proposal. We need to get Joey to the hospital.”

  I shake my head. “You do remember the killer robots, right?”

  “We’ve got all these spacemen here,” Alisa says. “They can take back the building. Kill two birds with one stone.”

  She clearly hasn’t ever tried to fight bad guys in confined spaces. I have, and it’s not pleasant or easy. Going into the hospital, even with a superior force, is asking for trouble.

  “We don’t know anything about those robots,” I say. “We can’t attack without more information.”

  “Maybe we should let the professionals make that decision.” Alisa turns and walks back to where the spacemen are gathered.

  “I’m a professional,” I say, holding out my arms in a gesture of incredulity.

  Jessica nudges me. “Come on.”

  We walk over and join Alisa’s conversation in progress with Gorski.

  “You’ve been talking to people on the scene,” Alisa says, pointing to the communications gear stacked on the table. “What do they say?”

  “They’re working the problem,” Gorski says.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Alisa snaps.

  “Doctor,” Jessica says, stepping forward, “maybe we should let the professionals do their job. OSS doesn’t have jurisdiction over civilian facilities.”

  Alisa turns to stare at Jessica. “Joey’s dying.”

  “His vitals are stable,” Jessica says.

  “He’s unconscious,” Alisa says. “His EEG will become more and more erratic if we don’t treat it. His autonomic nervous system will go haywire. His heart will stop.”

  “I’m afraid I have to concur,” Rich says. “It doesn’t look good.”

  “We’ll wire him with a pacemaker,” Jessica says.

  “He’s five years old,” Alisa says. “If he slips into a coma, we don’t get him back. Do you understand that?”

  “I understand that he’s the product of an illegal medical experiment who shouldn’t exist in the first place,” Jessica says.

  “Whoa,” I say. That’s a little harsh, even for her.

  “Jesus Christ,” Alisa says. “You are a fucking robot. He’s just a little kid. How can you be so heartless?”

  “Heartless?” Jessica points at me. “I’m sorry, which one of us poisoned this person?”

  “I was helping him!” Alisa bangs a fist on the table, rattling the communications gear. Gorski puts one hand on the sidearm at his hip. I catch his eye and shake my head. I hope he trusts me to handle this if it escalates.

  “You’ve always had a funny interpretation of medical ethics,” Jessica says.

  “And you’ve never been able to see your patients as people!” Alisa spits back.

  “Okay, okay, let’s take it down a notch!” I slice a hand through the air between them, to no effect. I step forward to physically place my body between the two women. They don’t budge a centimeter. “And can we try to stay on topic here? What’s our next move?”

  “Get Joey to Lunar General,” Alisa says.

  “Stabilize Joey for medical exfil,” Jessica says at the same time. “We’ll find another MTI rig and get it into Earth orbit—”

  “That will take too long,” Alisa says. “And I am not soliciting suggestions. I have primary authority over this project. My mandate comes directly from the secretary of state. I’m pretty sure that supersedes any sort of paper you”—she jabs a finger at Jessica—“or you”—she points at me—“or you”—she indicates Gorski—“can summon. So let’s suit the fuck up and take back that hospital.”

  “I don’t work for you,” Jessica says. “Neither does Kangaroo. And neither do these spacemen. Isn’t that right, Petty Officer Third Class?”

  Gorski looks uncomfortable. “She’s right about my chain of command.” He points at me. “Commander McDrona is actually the ranking officer here.”

  “Who’s the man?” I raise both arms in triumph. “Who is the man!” Nobody responds appropriately. If only Yodey were here.

  Alisa glares at me. “Are you going to let Joey die?”

  Right. The good news is, I’m in charge. The bad news is: I’m in charge. I lower my arms but put my hands on my hips to still assert some authority.

  “We have other options,” Jessica says, also addressing me. “It’s irresponsible to risk a dozen lives to save one.”

  “It’s not just math,” Alisa says. “The agency would risk any number of lives to protect him.” She points at me. “Standing orders, remember?”

  “This is different,” Jessica says.

  “Because Joey doesn’t have the—”

  “Careful.” Jessica glances at the spacemen.

  Alisa clenches her jaw. “He’s just a child. A five-year-old child.”

  “Almost six,” I say.

  They both turn to look at me. I realize that I’ve already decided.

  “Petty Officer Third Class,” I say, turning to Gorski, “are your spacemen qualified on anti-mech armaments?”

  His eyebrows rise. “No, sir.”

  “Well, you’re going to get a crash course. No pun intended.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is insane,” Jessica says. “You are going to get a lot of people killed.”

  “My judgment is not impaired,” I say quickly, remembering her previous threat to relieve me. “And there’s another qualified medical professional here who will cer
tify me fit for duty.” I point at Alisa.

  Jessica scowls at Alisa. “If I can’t stop you, I’m coming with you.” Then me. “Call Oliver and have him walk the spacemen through their new load-out.”

  “I can show them myself—”

  “I recommend we have a subject matter expert supervise this particular training.”

  “You don’t trust me to know how to use my own equipment?”

  Jessica gives me a strange look. Gorski seems to be having a coughing fit.

  “Let me rephrase that,” I say.

  “Call Oliver,” Jessica says, and walks away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Moon—nearside—Lunar General

  20 minutes before we face off against a horde of killer robots

  I have been waiting to use Oliver’s anti-mech weapons ever since he demonstrated them in his workshop and we loaded them into the pocket three days ago. The spacemen definitely appreciate what I pull during the ride to Lunar General: handheld EMP cannons, armor-piercing harpoons, heavy-duty freeze-foam grenades, and more. I patch my shoulder-phone into our rover’s intercom so Oliver can narrate a quick rundown of how to operate the weapons.

  “Sorry for razzing you earlier, Commander,” Nguyen says while loading up a grenade launcher. “Apparently spies get all the best toys.”

  “Happy to share,” I say. I don’t say: I’m also happy to share the risk. I try not to dwell on the fact that I just took responsibility for an entire detachment of OSS spacemen, and if anything goes wrong during this little incursion, it’s going to be my fault.

  “We’re entering the tube,” the driver says over the intercom. The rover bumps over something and tilts downward. There are no windows back here, so I check our position in my eye. Yup, we’re going into a transit tunnel.

  Nobody else seems alarmed by this. I tap the intercom to talk to the driver. “So the trains aren’t running yet?”

  “We’ve secured clearance from the transit authority,” the driver says. “They’ll divert any trains in service out of our path. No worries, Commander. ETA twenty minutes.”

  “Thanks.” I sit back and look around. Everyone seems to know what they’re doing. Or at least they’re pretending to. Guess I’d better join the club.