Kangaroo Too Read online

  It’s definitely Alisa Garro. She looks older now, but not much. Has she been on the Moon this whole time, since Paul got her kicked off Team Kangaroo? The low gravity might have contributed to her current youthful appearance.

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Amendolara,” Khan says. “Best wishes for a quick recovery.”

  “Thanks, Director. Thanks, Doc.”

  The man hops off the bed and leaves the room, still fascinated with flexing his finger. Khan closes the door behind him.

  Alisa Garro has picked up a tablet and is making some notes on it. She’s half turned toward us, mostly looking at the computer. “Who’s this, now?”

  Of course. She doesn’t recognize me. She hasn’t seen me in nearly a decade, and I’ve had three—no, four cosmetic surgeries since the last time we were in the same room.

  I could just tell her who I am. But it’ll be more fun to show her.

  I gauge the distance to the other side of the room and open the pocket right next to her tablet, without the barrier. She’s not expecting it, of course, and the tablet slips out of her hands and into the black disk floating in midair. I close the portal, and she looks up at me with an astonished and horrified expression on her face. Mission accomplished.

  Her mouth remains pressed into a thin horizontal line. Her eyes return to their normal appearance, narrowed slits that make it look like she’s always a little bit suspicious of you, and she folds her arms across her chest.

  “Kangaroo,” she says. “It’s been a while.”

  I don’t feel like making small talk. “What’s Project Genesis?”

  Alisa blinks before answering, and I see the barest hint of uncertainty flicker across her face. “I can’t tell you that. I’m sorry—”

  “That’s unlikely,” I can’t resist saying.

  “My hands are tied,” she snaps, her eyes flashing. That’s new.

  Nine years ago, even when I was screaming my head off at her, even when Paul got her exiled from Earth, she was always calm and controlled. I hated how she always made it feel like she knew exactly what she was doing, and it was the rest of us who were floundering in uncertainty. This is the first time I’ve seen even a hint of uncontrolled emotion from her.

  “This is above your pay grade,” Alisa continues.

  “Yeah, I know,” I say. “You report directly to the secretary of state.”

  “We cannot talk about this,” Alisa says through clenched teeth. “I have nothing more to say.”

  “Okay, Kangaroo,” Khan says, stepping between us. “I need you to brief me on your situation. You can continue your conversation with Dr. Jill later.”

  “This conversation is over,” Alisa says. She looks at her computer, then glares at me. “I need my tablet back.”

  I shrug. “What’s the magic word?”

  Her glare turns into a scowl. “Antidote.”

  That’s a low blow. I’m almost tempted to not return the tablet.

  “Kangaroo,” Khan says. “If you’re going to keep that tablet, I’m going to need you to submit some paperwork.” She certainly knows how to wield the power of bureaucracy.

  “Fine.” I open the pocket again, but closer to myself this time, rotated and with the barrier. The tablet falls out through the glowing white disk, and I catch it and close the portal.

  I make a show of looking over the medical charts before tossing the tablet forward onto the exam bed with a careless flip of my wrist. I have no idea what the display says. I just wanted to annoy Alisa Garro.

  Khan turns to face Alisa. “Kangaroo is our guest, Doc. Let’s do our best to make him feel welcome.”

  “He’s not welcome.” I can’t see Khan’s face, but Alisa’s is priceless. “And I’m going to be busy for a while.”

  “I’ll be here for a while,” I say. “Borders are closed. Nobody’s going anywhere.”

  “Okay,” Khan says, waving me toward the door. “Let’s allow the doctor to finish up in here, Kangaroo.”

  I take a deep breath and give Alisa one final glare. I point a finger at her before I turn around. “We’re not finished.”

  * * *

  I only have a vague recollection of being guided to Khan’s office, in another quadrant and a different concentric circle of the facility. I wonder if there are nine concentric circles here. Like the nine circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. I didn’t count the lines on the diagram I found earlier in the agency omnipedia. But it sure feels like I’m being punished for something.

  As soon as Khan closes the door to her office behind us—leaving Hong outside again—I ask: “What do you know about Project Genesis?”

  Khan sits down behind her desk before answering. “Not much more than you do.”

  “Aren’t you the commanding officer around here?”

  “I am the administrative director of an outdated research facility,” Khan says. “All I know is, State turned an entire wing over to Garro for her project. She’s got two assistants on the access control list, but no one else is allowed into that area. They receive supply shipments from Earth in shielded containers. I don’t even see the cargo manifests. Whatever Genesis is, they’ve got it locked up tight. Would you care to sit down?”

  I stop pacing and drop into the chair in front of her desk. The chair is surprisingly comfortable. It looked like just a molded plastic shape, but what looked like a hard surface is actually some kind of padded upholstery. The feel of it under my fingers distracts me for a moment, and I run my hand over the material for a moment before remembering how angry I am. Maybe these chairs are here for a reason.

  “How long has she been here?” I ask.

  “Nine years.”

  “But not continuously, right? She has to rotate to higher gravity locations every other year. Where does she go then?”

  “I’ve only been in the command rotation here for five years,” Khan says. “And Garro hasn’t left the Moon in that time. Records indicate she started on a nine-month rotation, just like her assistants, but the year before I started here, she stopped rotating off. She’s been living here for almost six years straight.”

  “That can’t be right.” I sit up in my chair. “That means she can never go back to Earth.”

  “From what I understand, she’s persona non grata there anyway.”

  Every question I ask seems to raise a dozen more. Or maybe I’m just asking the wrong person.

  “I need to use your radio room,” I say.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Moon—South Pole—SDF1

  Hopefully mere minutes before I get some goddamn answers

  Every off-world agency facility is required to have a dedicated, heavy-encryption communications link back to Washington, D.C. Khan takes me to a private booth connected to the main radio room and shows me how to operate the communications terminal. Then she leaves me alone.

  I think of a bright red bird with bushy black eyebrows and open the pocket to retrieve the red key Admiral Morris gave me. I plug the data card into the terminal and wait for the call to connect.

  After a few seconds of a spinning globe, the vid blinks and shows Morris’s office on the Eyrie. She’s standing behind her desk, leaning down over it, and the bags under her eyes imply that she hasn’t been sleeping well—or at all. She frowns into the camera.

  “I need to know everything you can tell me about Project Genesis,” I say.

  “Kangaroo?” she says. “You’re in the crater?”

  “Project Genesis,” I repeat.

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  “I thought you preferred to skip the small talk.”

  Morris sits down. “I assume you’ve already spoken with Director Khan?”

  “Yes.” I give a quick recap of what I know. “So what’s important enough to convince Alisa Garro to live here on the Moon, with no hope of ever returning to Earth?”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you can just go and ask her.”

  “She’s not being very cooperative.”

  “Welcome to
my life,” Morris says, spreading her hands over her desk. “Look, I ran into that brick wall when I first took this job. I couldn’t get anywhere either. And I was able to get meetings with the secretary of state.”

  “You don’t—” I can’t believe this. “How does the director of intelligence not know about this?”

  “I know about it,” Morris says. “I just don’t know what it is.”

  “How does this organization even function?” I say. “Lasher isn’t talking to you, we lost pretty much all of Intel last year, and State’s keeping secrets from everyone—”

  “This is a spy agency,” Morris says. “We’re basically state-sponsored professional liars.”

  I frown. “It sounds pretty unsavory when you put it like that.”

  “It’s the truth. We do secret things every day of the week and twice on Sundays, and we can’t talk about most of those things. You either learn to live with it, or you find a new job.”

  “Right.” Not really an option for me, lady.

  “I’m sure there are plenty of things that State doesn’t tell us,” Morris says. “National security, planetary security, I don’t need to know. I have enough on my plate. And so do you.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious? I mean, the name implies—”

  “Do you know how many different code-tags show up on my screens every day that I don’t recognize?” Morris snaps. “I have a lot of keys. I don’t have all the keys. And right now, I’m just trying to keep my head above water, Kangaroo. We have a full-blown international crisis on the Moon. And I mean all the nations. Every sector is affected by this power outage. Ten million civilians from fifty different countries are losing their minds. The governor wants to declare martial law.”

  She pauses to take a breath. “That seems like a bad idea,” I offer.

  “It’s a terrible idea!” Morris looks as outraged as she sounds. “And now I have to go through the U.N. Security Council to talk him down. Do you know how much I enjoy working with the United Nations?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question?” I detected a bit of a snarl when she said working.

  “This is not what I signed up for when I took this job. But I’m here now, and I’m dealing with it.” Morris points a finger at me. “Do your job, Kangaroo. Don’t go looking for trouble.”

  She disconnects before I can protest that I am doing my job, and also, trouble seems to find me regardless.

  Paul wanted me to get to the bottom of Project Genesis. Nobody around here has been very forthcoming so far, but who knows how long Jessica and I are going to be stuck here until the Lunar lockdown is lifted. I might as well start looking for the weakest link among SDF1’s personnel.

  * * *

  I step out of the communications booth to find Alisa Garro waiting in the corridor, standing next to Hong and tapping away at her tablet. I suppose it’s technically not an ambush, since she’s not hiding, but I am very surprised.

  “Are you ready to talk about Genesis now?” I ask her.

  “Kangaroo,” she says, lowering her tablet and putting on a fake smile. “You know I can’t talk about that.”

  “I don’t know anything,” I say. She wants to treat me like an idiot? Fine. “Why don’t you explain it to me like I’m five years old?”

  A strange expression flickers across her face. Then she recovers, clears her throat, and says, “It’s been a long time. How about we start slow and catch up over some coffee?”

  I can’t stand this good-witch act. “With all due respect, I’d rather drink hemlock with a rabid weasel.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” She smacks the tablet with her palm. “I was helping you, don’t you understand?”

  “You were poisoning me!”

  “They were nowhere near lethal doses!” she shouts.

  “Nonlethal doesn’t mean nonharmful! I was in the hospital for—”

  “We needed to know how toxins in your system might affect your ability! It wasn’t just for operational efficiency; it was to protect you, to keep you safe!”

  “Then why didn’t you tell anyone?” I ask. “Why did you do it in secret? You were my doctor. I trusted you!”

  “Would you have agreed to it?”

  “Of course not!”

  “And that’s why!” she jabs a finger at me. “You never understood, Kangaroo. We need to do things for the greater good. We all need to make sacrifices.”

  “And what the hell have you sacrificed? You’re sitting pretty in your own secret lab—”

  “I’m living on the Moon!” She clutches her tablet so hard I’m afraid she might break it in half. “I haven’t left this crater in six years!”

  “You’re lying,” I say. “You left the crater last night.”

  She blinks. “You don’t know that.”

  “I have an eyewitness and multiple vids showing your face in the Apennine Terraces.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Jessica already told me she met with you,” I say. It’s not a lie—Jessica didn’t deny it when I confronted her earlier—and I find it deeply satisfying to watch Alisa Garro squirm. “And State might have been able to wipe the street-cam footage, but I’ve got resourceful friends too.”

  “I misspoke,” Alisa says in a tight voice. “I haven’t left the Moon for six years. Khan told you that, right? I’ve been here longer than she has. And I can never go back to Earth now. That’s my fucking sacrifice, Kangaroo.”

  Before I can summon an appropriate retort, a loud buzzing noise fills the corridor. It takes me a moment to recognize it as an alert sound. Red light floods the corridor, and I hear voices shouting and running footsteps all around us.

  “That seems bad,” Hong says.

  Alisa turns away and taps at her tablet. “Control, this is Garro. What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got incoming,” says Khan’s voice from the tablet.

  “On my way,” Alisa says, walking down the corridor.

  “Hey!” I shout, jogging after her. Hong follows me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  She stops and whirls around. “Are you kidding me? We’ve got a red alert and you want to keep arguing about ancient history?”

  When she puts it like that, it does sound a little ridiculous. “Fine. We deal with the red alert first. But you and I are not even close to being finished.”

  “Whatever.” She shakes her head and walks away. I follow. Hong doesn’t say anything. I can’t decide whether he’s being politely discreet or annoyingly neutral.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Moon—South Pole—SDF1

  4 minutes of not slapping Alisa Garro and counting

  The control center at the middle of the circular facility is divided into two hemispheres—or rather, two halves of a squat, hollow cylinder. Alisa and Hong and I enter through a door at the back, nearly running into Jessica as we all head for the center of the room.

  “You’re here?” Alisa says, stopping in her tracks when she sees Jessica. “What the hell!”

  “It’s a long story,” Jessica says. “You should have just taken the necklace.”

  “I didn’t want the stupid necklace,” Alisa says.

  “Excuse me, sir, and Doctor,” Hong says, “but can we go deal with the emergency first?”

  Alisa grumbles and walks away. I point at the back of her lab coat.

  “So how long have you known about all this?” I ask Jessica.

  “I hate you,” she says, and follows Alisa. Hong’s right behind them, and I follow him.

  We pass by banks of computers and walk up onto an elevated circular pedestal in the middle of the room, where Khan is standing, surrounded by personnel seated at wedge-shaped control stations. Both her hands grip the railing around that central area. More control stations line the front of the room, between the pedestal and the wall of vid screens that make a huge grid before us.

  The main display is currently showing some kind of orbital diagram, with the Earth and the Moon and a who
le lot of other lines in multiple colors spiraling around those two bodies. One particular red line is pulsing, and I see that one end of it goes off the edge of the screen, and the other end touches the disk of the Moon.

  Khan turns to look as the four of us join her on the pedestal. She points to Alisa and Jessica. “So this has happened already?”

  “Just now,” Alisa says.

  “Sorry I missed it,” Khan says.

  “Am I the only one who cares about the red alert?” Hong says. “What’s going on, Director?”

  “There’s a rock headed for us,” Khan says, pointing at the orbital diagram. “US-OSS projections give us about two hours before impact.”

  “Do we know where it came from?” I ask.

  “We know it’s fancy,” Khan says. That’s what the military calls any flying object that can maneuver under its own power and isn’t just being pulled around by gravity. “OSS sent a deflector drone to intercept, but lost contact before it could get close enough to blast the bogey.”

  “Someone’s shooting at us?” Hong says.

  “Not just anyone,” Khan says, pointing at the screens. “Someone who knows exactly where all our defenses are. This object’s trajectory bypasses all our standard asteroid interception measures, and if it maintains course and acceleration, it will collide with Shackleton Crater dead center. That’s not an accident.”

  “They’re targeting SDF1,” Hong says.

  “Yes,” Khan says. “But they knew we’d see it coming. Maybe we can’t stop it, but they know we have to evacuate. That’s probably their objective.”

  “But the tubes are offline,” I say. “So we have to use surface vehicles or spacecraft, both of which are in limited supply.”

  “SDF1 has enough shuttles to evacuate all our personnel,” Khan says. “But I think we should also use the pocket.”

  Alisa blinks. “What?”

  “We don’t have time to stagger our shuttle launches,” Khan says. “There are close to ten million civilians on the Moon who will notice a whole bunch of ships leaving the south pole all at once, and that is a huge security breach. I’d rather make it one ship, with Kangaroo aboard, and the rest of us in the pocket.”