“You thieves,” he said to Zhen. “You beautiful thieves!”
Zhen shook her head, frowning. After starts and stops in English, she released a diatribe in Mandarin.
“She’s saying the ends would justify the means,” Love translated. “Because scientific understanding benefits all.”
Zhen nodded quickly and said that both the Americans and Japanese had been in the early stages of missions to sample liquid water found on Enceladus and Europa in the hopes of discovering proteins, the building blocks of extraterrestrial life. Zhen knew her leadership wanted to beat them to it. They wanted to show the soaring, fire-breathing might of China and win the space race, where Zhen just wanted a chance to compete.
Ben was listening, but he was also making a mental inventory of all possible subassemblies in a Hayabusa 3 that could be repurposed in Jin-soo’s HYCIV spacecraft. Oh, fuckety fuck! he thought. The Hayabusa 2 had an ion engine! If the Effort’s HYCIV was powered by an ion engine instead of solar energy, it would be much faster. And if the spacecraft could get to the comet faster, the Effort could push out its launch window and gain more time.
Ben held up his watch and switched the display over to their launch countdown.
He would have to recalculate a reduced launch window and reprogram the Effort’s two redundant rubidium master clocks, counting down with perfection. As he imagined the weeks—months!—that could be saved, Ben released a fluttery, nervous laugh. All of their watches would need to be reprogrammed, but Ben was far from complaining. Since the first sighting of UD3 in July, Ben could finally gain ground in the fight against time.
“My God,” he sighed. “I’d be crying tears of joy if it weren’t for the meds.”
Amy opened her mouth, but before she could ask what the hell was going on, Zhen said, “There’s a problem.”
Of course, Ben figured. There was always a problem, but with the parts of a Hayabusa 3 available, at least the Effort had a fighting chance. Amy helped him sit up as Zhen explained that the Tianlong and its borrowed Hayabusa 2 technology were a national secret. Her orders were to wait until leadership gave disclosure. Zhen took the chance to ask if Ben knew of any communications with China, but he was just as in the dark.
“What I am doing…” Zhen continued.
She looked to Love and spoke again in Mandarin.
“Treasonous,” Love translated.
Zhen thought the word sounded suitably ugly and nodded. Ben bit into his upper lip and counted to five before he asked if she was joking.
“Seriously though,” he insisted, blood in the crevices of his front teeth. “What part of ‘big fucking comet go boom’ do y’all not understand? What part of annihilation leaves any room for this nationalist bullshit?”
Zhen didn’t disagree, nor did she feel understood.
“You are not Chinese,” she said simply. “You can imagine, but you can’t know us.”
Ben opened his mouth, but there was no argument against the truth of the statement. Not that it would stop him from taking the Hayabusa 3—if it really was at the airport—by any means necessary. Zhen could see the quick decision in his eyes.
“The Effort will get our Tianlong,” Zhen promised. “But you will do it my way. With as few deaths as possible. These are my soldiers. My people.”
She stepped forward and awkwardly extended her palm.
“This is how you do deals?” she asked. “Like in the movies?”
Ben looked to her open hand but said, “I need that ion engine.”
It was something between a warning and a threat, but Zhen was determined; her hand never pulled away.
“I know UD3 will hit China,” she said.
NASA had tried to keep the comet’s trajectory secret, but there was nothing to stop others from doing their own calculations.
“I want this as much as you,” she assured Ben.
He finally shook her hand, letting slip the words, “Deus ex machina.”
Zhen shook her head and stated that she didn’t speak Latin, only Sichuanese Mandarin, Cantonese, English, French, and minimal Russian.
“It’s…a term,” Ben explained.
“Meaning?”
His mouth hung open. Ben snapped it shut and shook his head, still acting as if he had been hit over the head with an iron skillet. He leaned his chin on Amy’s shoulder and dared to say that success was possible.
“And it is our only option,” Zhen said.
Her smile seemed to say that she knew these stakes like a fish knew water.
* * *
IT DIDN’T TAKE long to gather all the Chinese engineers into a conference room by the offices of the payload prep facilities. Zhen insisted on talking to her countrymen first. Many of them were friends who had worked beside her on the Chang’e 4 rover that landed on the far side of the moon the previous January. The door to the hallway was propped open so that two peacekeepers could straddle the entryway and keep an eye on things. Love Mwangi sat just outside, leaning her back against the wall. Amy sat beside her, and Ben paced the hallway, hissing expletives.
“There’s no telling what they might do to one another,” he shot out.
Ben already regretted his promise not to intervene until necessary. Twenty-five peacekeepers stood on each end of the hallway ready to quell a revolt by force. Zhen began to speak but was quickly cut off. The peacekeepers in the doorway lunged inside and exited seconds later, dragging one of the Chinese engineers out into the hallway. Zhen appeared in the doorway, holding her neck with both hands. When her hands dropped back to her sides, Ben saw red scratches and welts on her throat.
“Comrade Quon should be barred from this room,” Zhen said with difficulty.
She didn’t linger to watch the man disappear down the hallway, screaming, his legs dragging behind. Nothing would deter her from telling the truth. Ben waved several peacekeepers into the room to stand beside Zhen as she announced the existence of the Tianlong spacecraft. Questions from the other engineers were tentative at first. Then they grew heated and even toxic. Mandarin came fast, loud, and layered as they interrupted one another. Love closed her eyes so she could concentrate and interpret.
“Some are angry—”
“No shit,” Ben muttered nervously.
“—that Zhen didn’t tell them sooner. Others are angry…that she made this decision on her own. The spacecraft wasn’t hers to give away. They are saying…”
Love waved Ben over so she could whisper in his ear and repeat all the angry questions and conspiracy theories hurled at Zhen:
What if this defense effort was meant to fail?
What if the rest of the world was willing to take its chances on a future with no China? America had tried to wipe out communism with war, but here was UD3 to finish the job. Meanwhile, their government might be trying to recall them all for a defense effort back home. What if Zhen was blocking communication?
Zhen finally spoke up, and the room fell silent. Love paused before interpreting her words into English: The Effort is real. It is the only defense effort that can destroy UD3. Either help us save the planet, or get out of our way.
Ben smiled at the word us. It didn’t refer to the Chinese, or the communists, or the cultures of the East. Us was the Effort; Zhen had joined them and raised the flag high.
She came and stood in the doorway and waited for the other engineers to file out into the hallway. She didn’t look any of them in the eyes, not even when one briefly laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Some of these men should come with me to Cayenne,” Zhen said to Ben. “It may encourage the soldiers to lay down their arms.”
Ben had to object. The airport on the edge of Cayenne was less than an hour’s drive beyond the Effort perimeter. Only minimal security guarded the forty miles of highway leading southeast along the coast to the city. Ben admired Zhen’s bravery, but it was too dangerous, and she and her team had proven themselves too valuable.
“Zhen, I’ve heard it’s bad out there. Really bad.”
“I have to go,” she said.
Zhen got to call the shots; that was their deal. Ben sighed.
“You’ll need air cover. And an armed convoy—”
“And me,” Amy said, stepping forward. “I’m going, too.”
Ben opened his mouth, but Amy was a faster draw and louder.
“I knew how this story was supposed to end. I’m the one who found our deus ex machina. Let’s not forget that.”
Amy glared at everyone around her; no one would be allowed to forget that, least of all Ben.
“I can’t lose you,” he pleaded.
“You won’t. Success is our only option.”
She smiled. Amy was the love of Ben’s life, but it was her choice and she had already made it. He looked between the two women and ceded command of the Cayenne mission.
TWENTY-FOUR
Cayenne
Kourou, French Guiana
January 15
T-minus 17 days to launch
BEN WAS ANXIOUS to move quickly, but Zhen insisted on waiting for daylight. Approaching the Cayenne airfield in darkness might look like an attack, and Zhen wanted to avoid bloodshed, if it could be helped. The SWAT team was suspiciously large already, but Ben had flat-out refused to reduce headcount any further.
At the first light of dawn, fifteen Humvees parked in a long line at the administration complex. The commander of the SWAT team led Zhen and Amy to their assigned vehicle and the pile of body armor left for them on the back seat. His own body was covered with segmented pieces that looked like a carapace. Zhen picked up a green-gray helmet and ran her fingers over the pockmarks on its surface.
“I want to go!” Love called out, jogging along the line of Humvees until she reached the two women.
The convoy already had a Mandarin interpreter to negotiate with the Chinese soldiers if Zhen got injured or killed. Amy told Love she had to stay and help Ben.
“Where is he anyway?” Love muttered, scanning their surroundings.
Ben was nowhere to be found. After the Cayenne mission logistics were arranged throughout the night, he had quietly disappeared.
“He said he couldn’t watch me leave,” Amy replied. “It’s better this way.”
She strapped on a bulletproof vest and eyed the gun strapped to the SWAT commander’s thigh.
“Gimme one of those,” Amy said, pointing.
“What?”
“I have a license to carry. I’ve been at target practice since I was eight—”
“I’m not arming a civilian,” he said. “I have ten snipers in the lead Humvees. They’ll get in tactical position and cover you.”
“They better,” Amy snapped.
One by one, drivers flipped their ignitions. The SWAT commander got into the passenger seat and adjusted his headset. Amy pulled Love into a crushing embrace that ended with a gentle push away. On the sidewalks of Chongqing, before UD3, such tall and exotically beautiful women as these would gather a crowd of gawkers—Zhen included. But this was no time for distractions. Zhen strapped on her helmet and crawled into the back seat.
She closed her eyes and tried to envision the Cayenne airport. Ben had shown Zhen video stills in time progression to prepare her. At the beginning of the footage, there were over a hundred Chinese soldiers left to guard the plane, but their numbers reduced rapidly as time wore on and resources ran out. Zhen saw still images of soldiers dragging their own dead off the airfield.
“Do they have the Discovery Channel in China?” Amy asked, settling into the back seat.
Zhen opened her eyes and saw that Love was still standing by the curb, watching them. Amy didn’t look anywhere but forward as she described a documentary series on nature.
“My favorite was the one on penguins,” Amy continued.
The birds were safest on the ice, she said. Predators like leopard seals, orcas, and sharks swam the waters, but so did the fish and krill that penguins needed to eat to survive.
“They would all line up on the edge of the ice and look down into the water, waiting.”
Amy bowed her head to demonstrate. The side part in her hair was just starting to darken at the root, so Amy was human after all, not a colorful and exaggerated character in a manhua comic book.
“But the penguins were scared…”
Amy said that it was always one of the bravest penguins that dove in first. The rest followed almost instantly in a big splash.
“It just takes one to lead,” Amy finished.
Zhen nodded.
“The loadmaster,” she said, to show she understood.
Zhen had bonded with the loadmaster as they worked together to carefully load all of Tianlong’s subassemblies into the fuselage of the plane and secure them for the long flight from China to South America.
“He could be our bravest penguin.”
“I was talking about you,” Amy said, looking at the dark bruising and lines of ruby scabs across Zhen’s throat.
The SWAT commander gave the order to move. As their Humvee slowly accelerated, Love jogged alongside. She slapped her palm flat against the glass of the passenger window. Amy immediately placed her palm against it. Their fan of fingers and lifeline creases matched up for a moment, until Love’s hand slipped off as she fell behind.
The Humvees drove smoothly in sync with ten-meter gaps between them. Soldiers at the security gate of the space center grounds waved them through to the military barracks beyond. Everywhere one looked, there was a grid layout filled with tents, Humvees, tanks, kennels, storage containers, and so on.
“So massive,” Amy gasped.
After five miles, the convoy reached the Effort’s outer perimeter of tangled barbed wire and soldiers wearing the light blue helmets of UN peacekeepers, the olive green of various armies from around the globe, or the black of the French gendarmerie from the Guiana Space Centre. Zhen saw a checkpoint straight ahead. The line of vehicles came to a stop.
“It’s the Disasters,” Amy barely whispered.
“The what?”
Amy had to clear her throat to explain: “Disaster Relief with the Red Cross.” She pointed to several unarmed people walking from the checkpoint down along the line of jeeps. Bright red vests peeked out from under their body armor. The SWAT commander lowered his passenger window and signaled to a tall white woman in the lead. She approached their jeep and opened Amy’s passenger door. Long, stringy gray hair hung from her helmet and swayed as she clambered into the back seat and stepped over Amy’s knees with long limbs.
“Is—is it Ben?” Amy asked.
Zhen’s seemingly fearless ally suddenly looked stricken.
“No, no,” the gray-haired woman said quickly.
Zhen stared at her faded-blue eyes and pointy nose in profile as she buckled the middle seat belt.
“We thought it best to accompany you and the other engineers. It’s been five months since you arrived?” she asked.
Amy was still shaken and could only nod.
“So five months of seclusion within the Effort,” the gray-haired woman continued, making the point out loud.
She paused to turn to Zhen and introduce herself as Dr. Clayton with the Red Cross—a medical doctor, a psychiatrist—she clarified, assuming Zhen may be used to PhDs.
“And you, Dr. Liu, left China in the middle of November?”
Zhen nodded.
“I was in quarantine before I left China, but I heard what happened on the outside,” she said, thinking of Cheung’s stories and shaking hands.
“You may have heard,” the psychiatrist conceded, “but you haven’t seen with your own eyes. Not until now.”
The Effort had to fight for the survival of the species, Dr. Clayton said carefully. This fight had to be won at any cost. That meant any individual, any family, any populated city, country, or continent.
“We’ve had to make very cold, calculated decisions that we could never have imagined ourselves making. And we will keep doing whatever is necessary. And so will you, Ms. Ko
walski and Dr. Liu, because there is no other way.”
One would think this foreboding statement would keep Zhen on the edge of her seat, but the body needs what it needs. Shortly after the convoy exited the Effort’s perimeter, Zhen nodded off.
Bullhorns woke her. Zhen bolted and winced at the pain in her bent neck. Amy was rubbing her tired eyes and looking disoriented. Bullhorns blared again, making them both jump. Voices echoed in French and English. Zhen was slow to translate the regional French into something like: Stay back!
The flat land allowed a clear line of sight for miles. Armed soldiers lined both sides of the highway at ten-meter intervals, facing out to hundreds, no…thousands of gathered people. Here were the French Guiana locals that Zhen had wondered and worried about. And they were starving; stick legs and arms poking out of filthy clothes.
“Stay behind the line!” a voice blared in English.
Another Humvee overtook theirs in the left lane. It had its roof open at an angle that provided cover for the standing gunner. Speakers protruded from the vehicle’s rear, broadcasting warnings.
“Just the patrols,” the SWAT commander said to the women in the back seat.
He had to project above the clamor of loudspeakers and low-flying helicopters. Ben had said that the Cayenne airport and connecting highway were still loosely protected by the Effort’s multinational armies, though no planes had landed in more than a month. Zhen saw that most of the Humvees in the convoy had also opened their roofs to allow standing gunners.
“Why…” Amy asked as her blond head swiveled back and forth, “Why aren’t we helping these people?”
Dr. Clayton took a full breath.
“French Guiana has a very small population density. Luckily for us. Easier to defend against,” she added under her breath. “Not all of its people are starving like this. Some were employed by the space center and kept on for the Effort. But the region’s economy was heavily dependent on the French mainland for subsidies and goods. No longer…”
The doctor said that most local supply chains had broken, let alone a global one that has to cross the Atlantic Ocean. French Guiana had strong gold mining and timber industries that steadily cut away at the Amazon forest, but currency had no value now, and no one needed a new mahogany dining set these days.
The Effort Page 20