I select those options and read the settings back to her. “Are you sure that’s right?” Even without my eye sensors, I can tell her pupils are dilated. I don’t want to push the wrong button here.
“Yes,” Alisa says, staring off into space. “Run.”
“Surgical, do you concur?” I ask over the radio.
“I don’t know how those rigs are programmed,” Jessica says. “What’s Joey’s condition?”
I check the readouts. “He’s still breathing, but his heartbeat is slowing.”
“We’re almost there. Just hold fast.”
Joey shivers. An entire bank of indicators goes red, and a high-pitched noise fills the room.
“Dammit!” I lean over the chair to make sure it’s not a sensor malfunction. “He’s not breathing! What do I do?”
“Run the program!” Jessica shouts. I hear more gunfire behind her.
Alisa’s still staring into space, glassy-eyed. “Concur. Run.”
Goddammit.
I hit the RUN button. The dome over Joey’s head flexes, extends to fit against the back of his neck, and emits a low whine. The noise rises in frequency for a few seconds, then ends in a loud crack.
A shower of sparks explodes from the panel in front of Dumont. She falls backward. The control panel goes dark.
“What the fuck!” Dumont jumps to her feet. She’s a little singed, but doesn’t seem seriously injured.
“Maybe full power was wrong,” I say, scrambling around the chair to get a better look at Joey with my eye. His heart rate is still slow, but it’s steady now, and his chest is rising and falling. “No. We’re okay. He’s breathing again. We’re good, Surge!”
“Don’t call me Surge,” Jessica says, not over the radio. I turn to see her entering the room followed by four spacemen. She grabs some equipment out of the bag Rich brought in. I step out of the way and let her examine Joey.
After a moment, she puts down her instruments and exhales. “He’s stable. The stim-pulse must have overloaded whatever jury-rigging you did down there.”
“Dumont did it,” I say reflexively.
Dumont folds her arms. Jessica frowns at me. “My point is you didn’t make it worse. We still need to treat the root cause, but this bought us some time.” She turns and kneels down next to Alisa. Jessica examines the broken med-sig collar, then starts checking Alisa. “Dammit.”
“I’ll be fine,” Alisa says.
“Shut up,” Jessica says. “Kangaroo. Medkit.”
I open the pocket and pull out a medkit. Then I check the inventory list in my eye and pull another one. I repeat until I’ve pulled all the medical supplies I have. It’s not much, but Jessica doesn’t complain. She just goes to work.
“Joey,” Alisa says. “Help Joey.”
“We can’t,” I say. “The machine’s fried.”
“That was a standard electroplasma pulse regulator,” Dumont says. “We didn’t reinstall any of the specialized components yet. We can replace the EPR and finish rebuilding the rig.”
“Okay, well, let’s get to—”
Joey screams like he’s actually, literally dying. His eyes pop open when he takes a breath, and Jessica and I both scan him. I can’t see into his brain, so I don’t know what’s going on there—with either his seizure-causing genetic disease or his five-year-old psyche—but he doesn’t seem to be in pain. He’s just afraid.
“Ali?” he calls. “Ali!”
Alisa reaches up with the hand that’s not clutching her bloody thigh and touches Joey’s arm. He reaches back with his own hand, closing it around her fingers.
“What’s happening?” he cries. “Where are we?”
“It’s okay, Joey,” Alisa says. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I want to go home!”
“Soon, Joey.” Alisa blinks and grimaces. My medical scanners are painting a lot of red flags over her in my eye. “Listen, Joey. I need to leave for a while.”
“No!” Joey clutches her hand even tighter. “No! NO! NO!” He repeats the word over and over again, shaking his head.
“Kangaroo’s going to look after you, Joey,” Alisa says. “Right, Kangaroo?”
I put a hand on Joey’s shoulder. He squirms, but he’s still restrained, so he can’t get away. The screaming continues. Jessica has now bandaged up Alisa’s thigh, wrapped an IV cuff around her arm, and slapped some kind of gel-patch over her neck. I can’t tell if any of those things is helping.
“It’s going to be okay, Joey,” Alisa says. “You’re going to be okay.”
I look at Jessica. “Please tell me she’s going to make it.”
She doesn’t say anything. The medical scanner she’s holding has a lot of blinking red lights on its display.
“Kangaroo?” Alisa says.
I let go of Joey and crouch down next to her. “I’m right here.”
She grabs my collar and turns her head toward me. Her eyes are unfocused. My eye scanners are losing her heartbeat. Jessica injects Alisa with something, and her pulse quickens for a moment. But only a moment.
“You’re the man, Kangaroo.” She smiles. “Take care of yourself. And that … that…” She gulps in a breath. “Th-th-that’s all, folks.”
She starts to laugh, then stops.
Joey cries for a long time. So does Jessica.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
People are celebrating on the Moon.
It’s five minutes before six o’clock in the evening, Zulu time, on July 21st. It’s the precise day and time when the first humans to set foot on the Moon lifted off again in their flimsy little Lunar Module to return home, all those many years ago.
Through the window of the agency spaceplane, I see fireworks below, colorful starbursts over each one of the Apollo mission sites. My understanding is that the party on the Moon will continue for three more days: the entire duration of those first Lunar astronauts’ return trip to Earth.
It’s going to take Jessica and me just a few hours to land in Washington, D.C. But it’s going to take me the rest of my life to deal with what’s happened in the last few days.
Shackleton Crater is just another hole in the Moon now. Oliver tells me there’s some pretty spectacular security vid of robots fighting each other, before too many self-destructing bots collapsed the entire crater. I’m not that interested. I’ve seen enough killer robots to last me a lifetime.
We lost Scorpion. Chances are she’s on her way back to the asteroid belt. Doesn’t matter. We’ll catch up with her sooner or later. She can’t fence all those stolen MTI parts without raising some red flags here and there. And she’s too flamboyant to lie low for very long.
Gladys has been renditioned to a blue site somewhere on Venus. I’m sure the wardens will have some very interesting conversations with her. Maybe the old hag will actually tell us something eventually. And we got most of that gold back. Bonus.
Richard Johnson, alias Charlie Angel, is dead. He might have led us to Terman Sakraida. He might at least have gotten us closer. Life’s a bitch. The good news is, Sakraida probably hasn’t managed to decrypt all those highly sensitive agency files he stole. All evidence indicates that Rich Johnson took the initiative to open his big mouth about Joey’s existence, and Sakraida only knew as much about Project Genesis as Rich told him. That means we’ve still got time to hunt down Sakraida before he cracks the digital safe.
Alisa Garro is also dead. Her body is resting in a coffin in the cargo bay below where Jessica and I are sitting. She’s going back to Earth at last. She’ll be buried next to her mother. Jessica’s going to deliver the eulogy.
I won’t be attending the funeral. I’ll pay my respects later. I’ve got work to do.
I pull out my red key to make a call.
* * *
Paul is not very happy when we meet. Probably because I presented an ultimatum—through Admiral Morris—that he had to come to the Eyrie for the meeting. But I didn’t choose the location arbitrarily, or just to be a jerk.
T
his is as close to Earth as Joey can get. For now, anyway.
Nobody says anything for the first few minutes after Paul joins Morris, Joey, and me in the observation lounge. This part of the station is in zero-gravity, so there’s a constant view of the planet through the large window, and I suspect Joey’s fascination with the view is the only reason he’s not bouncing around like a maniac.
There’s a hurricane forming off the coast of Florida, and Joey is mesmerized. He’s never seen large bodies of water before. He’s never seen weather before.
Paul just floats there for a few minutes, one hand on the railing opposite the window, and stares at Joey. I can’t quite tell from his face what he’s thinking, but I have a few dozen educated guesses.
Finally, Morris pulls herself forward on the railing to approach Paul. “Lasher.”
He nods at her. “Gryphon.”
“Welcome to the Eyrie.”
“You’ve redecorated.”
“Funny.”
Paul looks at me. “I just had a very long meeting at the White House.”
“Did you get me a souvenir?” I’ve never been to the White House.
“The secretary of state had some choice words about your conduct on the Moon.”
“My conduct?” I take a breath to calm myself. “State can suck my—”
“Stand down. The president’s on our side,” Paul says.
“I’m surprised we don’t have a new secretary of state already,” Morris says.
“We just got a new D.Int,” Paul says matter-of-factly. “The president doesn’t want to further destabilize agency leadership right now.”
Now I’m getting angry again. “So State just gets away with conducting secret illegal medical experiments?”
“There will be consequences,” Paul says. “Nothing public, and nothing right now. The other shoe drops after the election.”
“Eighteen months is a long time for State to wheel and deal,” Morris says. She’s right. The new president won’t be elected until next fall, and it’ll be the following January before that person’s inauguration takes place and any new cabinet appointments take effect. “People can forget a lot of things in a year and a half.”
“We won’t forget,” Paul says.
“‘We’ meaning the three of us?” I ask. I’m not convinced we could outmaneuver State, if it ever came down to horse trading in the district.
“I mean all of the Intelligence, Operations, and Science Divisions,” Paul says, his tone clearly indicating he thinks I’m an idiot. “Some of our people have been with the agency for decades. They’re loyal to more than just the secretary.”
“At least we’ve got an ace in the hole,” Morris says, tilting her head toward Joey. He’s followed the hurricane rotating beneath us and is now on the other side of the room.
I have to ask. “Do you—either of you—think State and Sakraida might have been—”
“Please,” Paul snorts. “This was way above Sakraida’s head. No, this is all State. Nobody else would have the hubris to even attempt something like—” He waves a hand toward Joey and grimaces. “Christ. He’s tall for a five-year-old.”
“Almost six,” I say. “And he grew up in low gravity.”
Paul turns back to Morris. “You’re prepared to house him here? For the duration?”
“We’re making arrangements,” Morris says. “Dr. Chu’s helping us with the gravity acclimatization plan.”
It was my idea to send Joey to live on the Eyrie—Morris was betrayed by State as much as any of us, and she’s got the resources to protect Joey here—but it was Jessica’s idea to build a variable-gravity compartment for him in the Eyrie’s rotating habitat ring.
His room will start close to the hub, at one-sixth gravity. Over time it’ll get moved farther outward until he’s adjusted to Earth normal gravity. That’s the hope, anyway. Nobody’s ever tried this before. Jessica’s hoping that Joey’s young enough that his body will deal with the changes as it grows normally.
I guess we’ll find out in a few years whether it works. That’s not the big question, of course. The big question is whether he’ll also be able to use the pocket. We’ll probably find that out in four to five years. Or maybe we won’t.
I’m not sure which possibility I’m hoping for more: that he does have the pocket, which would make Science Division very happy, or that he doesn’t, which would mean he might be able to live something approaching a normal life someday. Eventually. Hopefully.
“Have you cleared Garro’s other assistant yet?” Paul asks.
“We’re working on it,” Morris says. “So far she’s clean. The good news is, she had minimal contact with Johnson. They worked completely separate duty cycles.”
“You make absolutely sure that nobody compromised her,” Paul says. “Also, you’ll need at least three more people to care for Joey.”
“We don’t need to rotate them off the Eyrie that often.”
“I want two minders for Joey at all times.” Paul gives Morris a stern look. “He’s going to have parents, or at least the closest thing we can provide. God is my witness, that child will have some stability and normalcy in his life. Ops can help you source the personnel.”
I seem to be getting a lot of lumps in my throat lately. And watering eyes. Maybe I should ask Jessica for another checkup.
“Does this mean you’re going to start taking my calls, Lasher?” Morris asks.
Paul scowls. “I wasn’t avoiding you. I simply needed to prioritize. You understand.”
Morris nods. “Does this mean I’m higher on your priority list now?”
“What happened on the Moon is likely a bellwether of how last year’s breach is going to play out,” Paul says. “Sakraida’s not going to come at us directly. He’ll pull strings from whatever rock he’s hiding in. He’ll use other people to do his dirty work. We can find his weak links and exploit them.”
“So am I in your top ten?” Morris asks.
“You never worked with Sakraida. You won’t be able to recognize his patterns or habits. We’re going to get a lot of data coming in after we co-opt SKR’s robots in the belt. My analysts will help yours manage and review all that data. Ops and Intel will co-sign any operations pertaining to this objective.”
“Top five?”
“Would you rather have a red key, Gryphon,” Paul growls, “or just a vial of my blood?”
Morris smiles. “Lasher, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Paul turns his scowl on me. “You are a bad influence.”
“What did I do?” I don’t know if Morris is aware she’s quoting an old movie. I certainly am, but it’s fun to play dumb with Paul when nothing’s at stake. I don’t get opportunities like this very often.
“Kangaroo! Kangaroo!” I feel a tug on my shirtsleeve and look down to see Joey hanging off my arm. “There’s flashes of light! In the clouds! Come look!”
“Excuse me,” I say. Paul and Morris nod, and I push myself off the wall. Joey and I float back to the window, and I grab the railing there to stop us.
The hurricane off Florida is almost out of view, and we’re seeing the huge bank of thick white clouds mostly from the side now. The sun’s rising behind the weather system, putting the near side of the cloud mass into gray shadow.
“There!” Joey points to a lightning burst inside the dark clouds. “You see it?”
“Yeah, I see it, Joey.” I’m starting to get used to saying his name. It’s just a name, after all.
“What is it? Is it a fire?”
“No. That’s lightning. Do you know about lightning?”
“Is that like making something weigh less?”
“Not quite. It’s—” Boy, I don’t even know where to start here. “That whole thing is a hurricane. Do you know about hurricanes?”
“Is it a wetter thing?” he asks.
“Weather,” I correct.
“Yeah, weather. Like something that happens in atmosphere? Ali tol
d me about weather, but she said we didn’t have any on the Moon.”
“That’s right. Hurricanes are one specific kind of weather. They’re tropical storms.”
“What’s a storm?”
This is going to be a long conversation. But I might as well get used to teaching him things.
After all, I might be doing a lot more of it in a few years.
“Hey,” I say, “here’s a fun fact. Did you know every hurricane gets its own name?” I blink up the latest Earth weather report. “Scientists start at the beginning of the alphabet and use a different letter for each hurricane name throughout the year. Looks like this is the eleventh this year. Do you know the eleventh letter of the alphabet?”
He moves his lips silently for a few seconds before answering, “K!”
“Yeah. That’s good.”
Joey points at me. “K for Kangaroo.”
I hated that code name when Paul first assigned it. I’ve gotten used to it. And now I guess I’m stuck with it. I suppose I’ve gotten stuck with a lot of things.
All I can do is make the best of whatever comes next.
“That’s me,” I say. “Kangaroo.”
We watch the storm until it drifts out of view, beyond the blue horizon.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am humbled by all the amazing people I’ve met who support me and my work. If I fail to mention you below, I apologize, but please know that I appreciate having you in my life.
First, last, and everything: I could not make good art without my beloved wife, who sustains me in countless ways. She always tells me what I need to hear, good or bad. She’s the reason I don’t give up when the going gets tough. And she’s one of the best editors I know. (Pete thinks you’re great!)
Thanks to my relentless professional editor, Pete Wolverton, who knows all about picking up the pace despite being in New York City. (“New York City?!” “Get a rope.”) Thanks also to everyone at St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne Books who contributed to the development, production, or marketing of this volume.
Big ups to my literary agent, Sam Morgan, and all the other JABberwocks who negotiate on my behalf. I wouldn’t be here without you. I can’t wait to see where we go next.
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