Kangaroo Too Read online

  “Perhaps I wasn’t clear. When I say ‘State,’” Paul says, “I mean the secretary of state.”

  I blink. “What?”

  “Garro is on special assignment, personally allocated, reporting directly to the secretary of state.” Paul doesn’t look happy about this. “I wasn’t in the loop.”

  “But that—” I can’t wrap my head around this. Paul reports directly to the secretary. There are only eight directors at his level in the agency. “Is that even allowed?” There can’t be more than a handful of people in the entire Solar System who have higher security clearances than Paul. If he’s not authorized to know about this … “State’s not supposed to run operations. That’s why the agency exists, right? So the secretary’s hands don’t get dirty.”

  “State has broad authority to act in Non-Territorial matters,” Paul says with a sneer. “I’m not going to speculate about motives yet. I was able to isolate the code-tag. It’s a project named GENESIS.”

  “That doesn’t tell me anything.”

  “It tells you what to look for,” Paul snaps. “And it’s leverage you can offer when you tell Gryphon that State went behind her back to home a full-black secret project at Science Division’s Facility One.”

  I’m learning all sorts of interesting things today. “Garro’s in the crater?”

  “That’s what my sources tell me.”

  “And you want me to take this over the fence? To D.Int?”

  “You said Gryphon wants to be friends,” Paul says. “What’s more friendly than a common enemy?”

  I’m not sure I like where this conversation is headed. “Just to be clear, do you think—”

  “No. This is politics, not security.” He gives me a sour look. “But I’d very much like to know what State felt it was necessary to hide from literally everyone else in the agency.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”

  “I want you to go to SDF1 and find out exactly what Alisa Garro is doing with Project Genesis,” Paul says. “I understand Oliver’s already arranged military transport for you.”

  It’s a good thing I’m not drinking anything, otherwise I would totally have done a spit take just now. “He told you?”

  “Oliver works for me,” Paul says. “Good idea, by the way, asking JAG Corps to retrieve Surgical. Make sure you take her with you when you visit SDF1.”

  “Is there some reason I wouldn’t?”

  “She may be reluctant to go.”

  “Why would that be?” I’d like to know why Jessica and Alisa seemed to be at each other’s throats last night.

  Paul hesitates. “It’s not my secret to tell.”

  Sometimes I hate this job.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Moon—nearside—Hotel Tranquility

  30 minutes before I check out

  The Moon is a pretty big place. It takes a few days to drive a typical rover across the entire surface of one hemisphere, either nearside or farside. So it was easy for the first colonists and companies establishing bases here to find open spaces far enough apart from each other to allow for plenty of potential future expansion. The tube transit system came later.

  The thing about the surface of nearside is, anyone on Earth can see you out there on most any given day. A kid with a decent telescope can go out at night, point his lens skyward, and count the number of vehicles or people moving around in any outside area.

  The agency prefers to start its digs on farside, where in theory fewer prying eyes are watching at any given time, and that’s why there’s a huge network of poorly maintained construction tunnels under the Lunar surface that are occasionally used to hollow out a new secret underground facility. Of course, no one wants to have to go very far in a dark underground tunnel every time they want to get in or out of one of these bases. So the agency looks for places where it can create out-of-the-way access points. They don’t have to be totally secret and completely hidden, but they do need to be not obvious to the casual observer.

  Hence the Crater of Eternal Darkness.

  Because the Moon is tidally locked, with one hemisphere always facing Earth, there is a “twilight zone” around its circumference where, depending on the exact geography, there can be areas of “eternal light” or “eternal darkness.” The former tend to be high mountain peaks, and the latter tend to be crater floors. All of these are at either the north or south pole. In the north, the rim of Peary Crater is home to an entire range of solar power plants; same for the Malapert Mountain region in the south. And right at the south pole, there’s Shackleton Crater, whose rim is not ideal for power generation, but whose floor is perfect for spacecraft to approach from farside and land in secret.

  Underneath Shackleton Crater is Science Division’s Facility One, the agency’s first off-world base for research and development. The agency has since established newer and fancier bases on the Moon and elsewhere, but even though it has older equipment and somewhat outdated infrastructure, there is still a certain mystique associated with SDF1. Most of the actual research and experiments have moved to sites with better containment or quarantine failsafes. SDF1 is now only used for administrative purposes.

  And, apparently, for hiding secret projects with exiled personnel like Alisa Garro.

  * * *

  The phone in my hotel room rings while I’m packing up Jessica’s and my things and putting them into the pocket.

  “Mr. McDrona,” the hotel front desk clerk says, “there’s a Lieutenant Hong in the lobby to meet you. He says he’s from Copernicus Base?”

  “Great. Thank you. I’ll be right down,” I reply.

  I finish packing, then run upstairs to the topside garage, pay Zoo the rest of what I owe, and tell him to go home. Then I head to the lobby, where a clean-cut OSS officer is standing with his hands folded in front of him.

  “Lieutenant Hong?” I say. “I’m Edwin McDrona.”

  We shake hands, and I blink my left eye into verification mode. The scanners check the ID chips embedded in his dog tags and subdermal transponder in his wrist. Clean match.

  “Are you ready to go, Commander?” Hong asks. Sometimes it’s very useful to have a high-ranking military cover identity. “I have transportation waiting. And your colleague is with us.”

  “Yes, thank you, Lieutenant. Lead the way.”

  The tubes still aren’t running, but Hong walks me out to the transit hub next to the hotel and through a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. We ride an elevator up to a hangar where a small spacecraft is parked.

  “How long will it take us to get to the south pole?” I ask as Hong leads me toward the shuttle.

  “Just a couple of hours,” he says.

  “And how’s Dr.—I mean, Lieutenant Commander Chu—doing?”

  Hong gives me a look. “I think she’s been better.”

  * * *

  “This is a bad idea,” Jessica says when I sit down next to her in the shuttle.

  “Liftoff in thirty seconds,” Hong says, going forward into the cockpit.

  “You know what else is a bad idea?” I say to Jessica while buckling myself in. “Not telling me that you were meeting with Alisa Garro.”

  Jessica’s eyes widen for the briefest of moments, then settle back into her normal scowl. “We can’t talk about this here.”

  “Oh. So you know that she’s working on some ultra-top-secret project called Genesis?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Now I’m really confused. “That’s not why you were meeting with her?”

  Jessica shakes her head. “It was a personal matter.”

  “I don’t believe you.” I fold my arms. “You don’t have a personal life.”

  The scowl intensifies. “You don’t know my life.”

  “Lifting off now,” Hong says over the intercom.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” I call into the cockpit.

  Jessica and I continue our staring contest as the shuttle leaves the hangar and rises into the black s
ky. Gray landscape blurs past as we speed toward the south pole.

  “Tell me why you met Alisa Garro,” I say.

  “No,” Jessica says.

  “Tell me who killed Jeremiah Burgess.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “Why did you try to give a crucifix to Alisa Garro?”

  Her scowl deepens. “It’s a personal matter.”

  “This trip is going to take a couple of hours,” I say. “So we can talk about this, or—”

  “Did we get what we needed from Clementine?” she asks.

  And we’re back. All-Business. “I sent the data to Oliver for analysis.”

  “It will be more useful for us to talk about our mission,” Jessica says, enunciating the last two words, “instead of my personal life.”

  “Fine. I’ll call EQ and we can have a nice little conference here. Is that what you want?”

  “For a start.”

  I blink up my shoulder-phone and call Oliver. He doesn’t answer. I try Paul. No answer. “They’re not picking up. But I’m not seeing any internal alerts.” I’d be able to tell if something were wrong with the agency’s secure communications network. “You don’t think—”

  “Somebody just blew up the Moon,” Jessica says. “I’m sure it’s all hands on deck working that crisis. Show me the data we got from Clementine.”

  While I set up a link from my shoulder-phone to one of the shuttle’s display screens, I tell her what I’ve already found in the database. “This is a huge breakthrough, right? If we can trace some of these other robots directly to Sakraida—”

  “He was director of intelligence,” Jessica says while manipulating the display on the seat back in front of her. “He’s not an idiot. He won’t tap the same resource twice. But he and his pals were planning their breakaway stunt for months. They knew they’d need robots to survive in the belt. We should look for purchases by other Intel shell companies, and private corporations which might have been controlled by Sakraida or his associates.”

  “Um, what do you mean ‘we,’ kemo sabe?” I point at the screen, which she’s turned into a dense jumble of alphanumeric strings. “Can you actually read that mess?”

  Jessica gives me an irritated look. “This ‘mess’ is the database. I thought you looked at this already.”

  I realize she’s displaying the actual database code instead of filtering it through a user interface. I forgot that Jessica actually prefers looking at raw data feeds. She says it’s easier for her to see patterns and spot anomalies that way. “I looked at it in a human-readable format. You know, because I’m a human?”

  “I find this more efficient.”

  “Okay, well, you have fun with that. I’m going to get a snack. You want a snack?”

  “No.”

  I go to the back of the shuttle and dig through supply lockers looking for rations that appear halfway edible. At some point, I hear gentle snoring and look over to see that Jessica has dozed off in her seat. Apparently robot data isn’t actually that interesting.

  I sit down across the aisle from Jessica, chew on a so-called candy bar, and watch the Moon slide past beneath us. Just for laughs, I try scanning through her raw database view myself. I fall asleep before I finish eating the candy bar.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Moon—South Pole—Shackleton Crater

  10 minutes before landing

  Jessica wakes up after I do, just as the shuttle descends below the rim of Shackleton Crater.

  “Copernicus sure looks different in the dark,” she mutters, rubbing her eyes.

  Right. She thinks we’re at the OSS base, because JAG took custody of her from the U.S. marshals. I never told her that we were actually going to SDF1, and she never asked.

  I decide not to tell her yet. It’ll be more fun to surprise her when we get inside.

  “Last chance,” I say. “You want to tell me about Alisa Garro now? While we still have some privacy? Or do you want to wait until I find someone who can order you to talk?”

  “I’m already under arrest,” Jessica says. “I’ll wait for my lawyer. My actual lawyer.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The shuttle touches down on the pitch-black floor of the crater, then dims its own running lights and rolls forward into a hidden hangar bay. An airlock tunnel extends toward us and mates with the side of the shuttle. Air hisses into the tunnel, and Hong cycles open the door and leads us into the base.

  The person who greets us on the other side of the airlock is a tall woman with skin the color of wet sand and eyes like obsidian. She’s not wearing a uniform, but the way she carries herself implies that she’s had military training.

  “Kangaroo, I presume,” she says, staring at me.

  “That’s me.”

  She turns to Jessica. “And Dr. Chu?”

  Jessica nods. “Happy to be here.”

  “Welcome to Science Division, Facility One. I’m Director Khan.”

  “Wait,” Jessica says. “What?” She looks at me. “I thought we were going to Copernicus!”

  “Surprise,” I say, smiling.

  Jessica looks like she wants to murder me. “I’m not going in there.”

  “You don’t want to say hello to your old friend Alisa Garro?” I ask. “You can continue the conversation you were having last night.”

  “I’m sorry,” Khan says. “Is there a problem here?”

  “More than one,” Jessica says. “I’m staying in the shuttle.”

  “You can’t stay in the shuttle, Doctor,” Khan sighs. “This is a full-black secure facility. We can’t have heat signatures lingering on the hangar deck.” It’s pretty unlikely that anybody would be able to sense one single human’s body heat through the crater doors, but agency regulations are very clear about taking no unnecessary risks when it comes to hiding personnel.

  “Fine,” Jessica says. She turns to Hong. “Then we’re leaving.”

  Hong points at me. “Sorry, ma’am. I was ordered not to leave the commander’s side.”

  Jessica glares at him. “You can call me sir. And who gave you that order?”

  Hong gives her a sheepish look. “My orders came directly from Lasher, sir.”

  Jessica actually growls. “I should have stayed with the marshals.”

  “We can discuss this inside, people,” Khan says. “Kangaroo. Lasher said you want to meet with Dr. Jill.”

  I frown at her. “I’m here to see Alisa Garro.”

  “My apologies,” Khan says. “Same person. ‘Dr. Jill’ is her code name. If you’ll follow me, please.” She turns and leads us into the facility.

  “Why is her code name ‘Dr. Jill’?” I ask.

  “No idea.”

  “Why does she even need a code name?”

  “Look,” Khan says, “I just work here.”

  * * *

  At Jessica’s request, Khan points her toward the cafeteria. I don’t know exactly how big this facility is, nor are there helpful floor plans or emergency escape route diagrams posted around SDF1. One of the issues with secret bases: you don’t get many inspectors coming through looking for building safety code violations.

  Khan walks Hong and me down a curved corridor to an intersection and then in toward what I’m pretty sure is the center of the place—given the way things are shaped and placed, it appears that SDF1 is a circular setup, with the main corridors dividing it into four quadrants and then curving across each of those four wedges to make concentric circles. I blink my eye to do an omnipedia lookup and find a basic floor plan for SDF1—either it’s not that classified, or I have high enough security clearance to see the layout of the place. Nothing is labeled, but I can at least tell where we are and where we’re going.

  “You’re in luck. She’s out of the cave right now,” Khan says.

  “The cave?” I ask.

  “Her project labs are restricted access,” Khan says. “But one of our maintenance crew had an accident, and Doc’s the only surgeon within a hundred ki
lometers. We managed to coax her out to perform an emergency procedure.”

  She leads me into the third concentric-circle corridor out from the round command center at the middle of the facility, past a variety of service robots and scientists, then about halfway down the arc until we get to a door labeled EXAM FOUR. The door slides open as Khan approaches, and Hong waits outside while I follow Khan inside.

  We’re in a medium-sized room with a medical examination bed in the center, surrounded by counters and cabinets along the walls. A burly man in a jumpsuit is sitting on the bed, staring at one hand while he flexes the index finger. There’s a bulbous bandage wrapped around the second knuckle.

  A woman stands against the far wall opposite us, working at a computer console. Her shoulder-length blond hair is pinned back against her skull. She’s wearing a white lab coat. She mutters to herself as she works, apparently oblivious to Khan and me entering the room, and the motions of her arms against the console are short, sharp, and precise.

  Just seeing her makes me angry.

  “I can move it, but it still feels numb,” the man says, squeezing together the tips of his thumb and index finger. “Is that the anesthetic?”

  “Don’t put too much strain on it. The nerves will take a couple of months to grow back,” says the woman with her back to us, in a familiar voice that makes my blood boil. “The bio-wrap will augment the healing process. It’s waterproof, but don’t submerge it. And use your other hand as much as you can.”

  “When should I come back for a checkup?” the man asks.

  “You don’t,” the woman says. She points to the nurse-bot in a charging slot in the corner of the room. “Any nurse-bot in the crater can do a follow-up.”

  The man gives the nurse-bot a wary glance. “I didn’t know they were programmed to do surgeries.”

  The woman sighs. “You just need it to change the bandage and make sure your finger’s not getting infected. That’s it. Simple. Any other questions?”

  “I guess not.” The man looks over at Khan and me. “You need the room, Director?”

  The woman stiffens, then turns to glare at us.