Kangaroo Too Page 20

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  He looks directly at me. “But you’ve never actually tried it.”

  I really want to stop talking about this now. “You know, there’s a procedure for suggesting new experiments to Science Division. Why don’t I give you my case number—”

  “I know the procedure,” Rich says, his nostrils flaring for a split second before returning to their normal, nonthreatening appearance. “I’ve submitted several proposals over the last few years. They’ve all been rejected.”

  And you thought you could short-circuit the process by going straight to the Kangaroo. “Well, like I said, it’s up to them to decide what wacky experiments they want to run. I’m not in charge of that. They’ve got a whole process, they don’t like to deviate from it.”

  Rich leans forward again. “Maybe we could do something unofficial here. Just you and me.”

  I glance over at Hong, who’s been pretending not to listen to any of this. “I’m not sure we have time for that.”

  “You said you weren’t busy. This will just take a few minutes.” Rich grabs his tablet and starts tapping at it. “We have some animals earmarked for experimentation. I can’t bring you into the Genesis labs, but I can bring the specimens out—”

  “No,” I say quickly. I’m not going to kill a rat, you sick fuck. “Actually—sorry, Rich, I just noticed the time. We’re supposed to check in with Director Khan, aren’t we, Lieutenant Hong?”

  Hong stands up with flawless military posture. “Yes, sir. I didn’t want to interrupt, but we really should go now.”

  I stand and shrug at Rich. “Sorry. Maybe we can talk more later. Nice to meet you.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Rich waves at me. “We’ll talk later!”

  I’ve never been so glad to leave a cafeteria in my whole life. And that includes the year I attended an inner-city public high school.

  * * *

  “Thanks for the save,” I tell Hong as I follow him down the corridor away from the cafeteria. “It’s not just me, right? That was a little unsettling back there.”

  “I suppose you get a lot of questions about the pocket,” Hong says.

  “All the time.”

  “Speaking of which,” he says. “I wanted to ask you something about that.”

  I frown at him. “Really?”

  He stares at me, then laughs. “No, not really. I’m just messing with you.”

  “Hilarious.”

  “Seriously, though,” Hong says, “what do you think they’re doing in there for Project Genesis? Something with animals, I guess?”

  “Nothing good, I’m sure.” The word “genesis” implies the creation of life, which means they’re breeding things and probably attempting some kind of unorthodox genetic manipulation. Awesome, he said sarcastically.

  We walk into an elevator that takes us to the hangar bay at the top of SDF1. There’s a lot of activity here. I count eleven shuttles being prepared for flight and dozens of people and service robots moving equipment around and loading up the vehicles. Everyone seems to know what they’re doing.

  It’s easy to find Khan in the crowd—she towers over everyone else by a good fifteen centimeters. She sees Hong and me walking over and comes to meet us.

  “X-4s were not able to intercept the incoming rock,” Khan says by way of greeting. “The attacker appears to have a full complement of countermeasures—anti-missile flash-lasers, radio jammers, who knows what else. The fighters are still tracking it, but they won’t be able to keep up for long.”

  “Wait,” I say. “The rock has been responding to the attempts to shoot it out of the sky?”

  “Yes.”

  “That means there’s a pilot on board,” I say. “A human pilot. Don’t you want to know who’s crazy enough to sacrifice a trained astronaut in order to kill this base?”

  “We’ll find out later,” Khan says. “Suicide bombers are nothing new. Besides, it could be a remote-operated drone, being driven by someone in another spacecraft within a few light-seconds. They wouldn’t need immediate reaction time.”

  “What if—”

  “We’re done talking about this, Kangaroo,” Khan says. “Let’s focus on the evacuation. Go check in with your Surgical officer.”

  She points to one shuttle that is not surrounded by busy clusters of people and robots. The name painted on the side is Calypso. I walk up the ramp into the open doorway and poke my head inside. It looks very similar to the military shuttle Hong brought us here in, but with more seats and a door leading to a cargo section. Jessica is sitting in an aisle seat in one of the middle rows, working on a tablet.

  “Permission to come aboard?” I call out.

  “Granted,” she says without looking up.

  I walk into the shuttle. Hong follows me in and looks around. “Am I flying this thing?” he asks.

  “That’s the plan, Lieutenant,” Jessica says.

  “I’ll start the preflight checklist,” Hong says, and goes into the cockpit.

  “Kangaroo, sit.” Jessica waves at the seat across the aisle from her. “I’m just finalizing the evacuation manifest.”

  “Cool.” I sit down. “Tell me about the necklace.”

  She doesn’t look up. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to.”

  “Not good enough,” I say. “We are on mission. We are required to do all sorts of things we don’t want to do. I need to know what is going on between you and Alisa Garro and whether it’s going to adversely affect your operational performance.”

  Jessica stops tapping her fingers on the tablet. I’m sure she recognizes that last phrase, and this whole lecture—it’s the same one she’s given me countless times to get me back on track, when I’m starting to go off-script too much. I hope she recognizes that I’m only trying to help her.

  “I’m fine,” she says, looking straight at me. “It’s you we need to worry about.”

  I narrow my eyes at her. “What’s wrong with me?” Jessica can see my medical status at all times, but she doesn’t always tell me when strange things are happening inside my own body.

  “Nothing yet,” she says. “But you’re going to be opening ten different five-meter portals, one right after the other, all in the space of about half an hour. That’s an enormous physical strain.”

  “And you’re going to give me something to help me with that, right? Some kind of stimulant, or run a special nanobot program to counteract the pocket stress?” Using the pocket dehydrates me and suppresses certain neurotransmitters, similar to what a night of heavy drinking would do—basically, it gives me a hangover.

  “We’re still working on that,” Jessica deadpans. “I’ll let you know as soon as I patent a hangover cure and become a billionaire.” It’s true: if she developed that, she’d never have to work another day in her life. Of course, I don’t know why she chose to work for the agency in the first place. Maybe she just likes doing espionage.

  “I’m not hearing an actual solution here,” I say.

  “Sixty seconds to get each shuttle into the pocket,” Jessica says. “One hundred and twenty seconds between each portal opening. We’ve got plenty of vitamin water on hand for hydration, but I don’t want to risk dosing you with too many painkillers. So there will be some discomfort.”

  I can tell when she’s underselling bad news. “Now, when you say ‘discomfort’—”

  “I don’t know exactly how bad it will get,” she says. “I’ll start you on some acetaminophen before the first portal, then move on to naproxen and start the anti-nausea meds only when you start feeling it. I want to save the opiates as a last resort. If you’re too sedated, you won’t be able to use the pocket.”

  “I also won’t be able to use the pocket if I’m in too much pain,” I say. We’ve run into both situations before, on different missions, and it wasn’t pretty either time. “What are we talking about here? Scale of one to ten?”

  “I don’t know,” Jessic
a repeats, overenunciating the words. “You’ve never done anything like this before.”

  “I’ve opened bigger portals,” I say. “What was the biggest? Fifteen meters?”

  “This is different. You know this is different.” She’s getting impatient with me. I can tell. “Maybe you can bench-press a hundred kilograms once because you’re on an adrenaline rush. That doesn’t mean you can do ten reps with half the mass. It’s a different type of exertion.”

  “Once again,” I say, “I’m not hearing any solutions here.”

  Jessica glares at me. “You keep telling us you can’t describe what it feels like to use the pocket. We can’t work without information. So it’s really up to you, Kangaroo. Describe the symptoms and maybe I can diagnose and treat them.”

  I glare back at her. “I can’t work without information, either. Tell me about the necklace.”

  “Relevant information.”

  “Hey, raise your hand if you actually received agency training to be an intelligence analyst?” I put up my hand while Jessica scowls at me. “Oh, it is just me? Then how about you let me be the judge of what’s relevant and what’s not.”

  “It’s a personal matter,” she says.

  “You don’t have a personal life.”

  “I don’t tell you about my personal life because it’s not relevant to our work.”

  I can’t believe she’s saying this with a straight face. “You got arrested and nearly blew our entire mission. That’s pretty relevant from where I’m sitting.”

  “You worked around it,” she says. “It’s no longer an issue.”

  I feel like punching something. “So you would have told me if I had asked earlier?”

  She shrugs. “Let’s not dwell on the past.”

  “Excuse me,” I say. “I’m just going to punch this seat for a minute.”

  I turn and hammer my fists into the upholstery until I’m out of breath.

  “Feel better?” Jessica asks when I turn back to face her.

  I raise my right hand and extend my middle finger. “How’s that manifest coming along?”

  She hands me the tablet. “All done.”

  I look over the data. The evacuation manifest lists the name of each shuttle, who’s piloting the vessel, all the passengers’ names, and what reference object I should use to place each one in the pocket.

  The first shuttle, the Mapalé, is carrying just three passengers: Alisa Garro, Rich Johnson, and “Project Genesis.” The pilot is listed as AUTO. That seems unusual, and I scroll through the rest of the manifest to verify: only the Mapalé is going into the pocket on autopilot. And all the experimental animals—chickens, rats, mice, et cetera—are going into other shuttles. Whatever Genesis is, it’s the only thing on that first shuttle.

  I look up at Jessica. “The ultra-important secret science cargo doesn’t get a human pilot?”

  She shrugs. “Their choice. For security reasons, I’m told.”

  “What if something goes wrong?”

  “It will take at most thirty seconds to remote-pilot the shuttle into the pocket,” Jessica says, “and another thirty seconds to pull it out again later. You’re going to rotate the portal for the extraction anyway, and inertia will carry them back out. They only actually need to have control for that first half-minute. I imagine they’ll be fine.”

  I hear footsteps coming up the ramp, and then Khan enters the shuttle. “How are we doing in here?”

  “Fine,” Jessica says.

  “Any issues with the manifest?” Khan asks.

  “Nope,” I say. “Are you sure you don’t want to ride with someone else?” This final shuttle, Calypso, only has four passengers: Khan, Lieutenant Hong, Jessica, and myself.

  “You’re a VIP, Kangaroo,” Khan says. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else with your care.”

  “Thanks.” I transfer the manifest data to my eye and check the time: fifty-two minutes until impact. “Let’s get started.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Moon—South Pole—SDF1

  43 minutes until this crater gets re-cratered

  I’m standing in a spacesuit in the hangar bay, whose atmosphere has been pumped out, like a giant airlock. I can now open the pocket in here without the barrier and not have to worry about the pressure differential.

  Time to get this show on the road.

  I walk over to the Mapalé and position myself next to its nose. Hong, also in a spacesuit, follows and stands next to me. He wasn’t kidding about not leaving my side. Everyone else is loaded into their respective shuttles.

  “Opening the pocket now,” I say over the radio. “Shuttle Mapalé into location one.”

  I think of a blank prescription pad and open the pocket. A pitch black circle ringed by a white glow pops into being in front of me, five meters tall, the event horizon just touching the floor of the hangar bay.

  “Wow,” Hong says. I forgot: this is the first time he’s actually seen me use the pocket.

  “Save your questions until the end, please,” I say.

  “That’s…” He shakes his head. “Wow.”

  “Whenever you’re ready,” I say. “I can’t hold this open forever.”

  “Right. Sorry.” He taps the control pad on his spacesuit’s forearm. “Shuttle Mapalé into location one, moving now.”

  I feel the deck vibrate as the shuttle rises upward on its thrusters, then glides forward into the pocket. Once I’m sure the tail of shuttle has passed the edge of the portal, I close the pocket again, and there’s one less shuttle in the hangar bay.

  “Wow,” Hong says again.

  “Kangaroo, Surgical. How are you feeling?” Jessica asks over the radio.

  “You tell me,” I say. I know she’s monitoring all my vital signs remotely.

  “Drink some water,” she says. “I’m dosing you with naproxen now.”

  “Thanks.” My medical implants include a number of sealed drug capsules I can release into my bloodstream as needed, and that can also be operated remotely. I sip vitamin water through the drinking tube inside my spacesuit helmet and try not to think too much about what might happen to those drug capsules if they got punched too hard.

  We continue down the line of shuttles, putting two more into the pocket before Hong needs to replace the empty water bottle in my life support backpack. I’m only a little lightheaded after the fifth shuttle.

  “Fifty percent done,” Jessica announces. “We’re doing good on time.”

  “Great,” I say, walking across the hangar to the other line of five shuttles. I don’t mention that those extra steps make the lightheadedness worse. Just need to get this over with.

  Two more water bottles and three more painkiller doses later, there are just two shuttles—Calypso and Seungmu—left in the hangar bay. I follow Hong up to the boarding ramp but have to stop and brace one arm against the hull until the dizziness passes.

  Just one more portal, Kangaroo. Then you can rest.

  “Are you okay, sir?” he asks.

  “Just a second,” I say, gulping some more water and hoping these spots I’m seeing will go away soon. “How much time?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Khan reports. “Opening hangar bay doors now. As soon as you get Seungmu into the pocket, we’re dusting off.”

  The hangar bay doors slide open in complete silence, revealing empty black space above us. Looking through that circular opening is almost like looking into the pocket.

  I turn back to Seungmu and try to open the last portal. No dice. The good news is, I manage to keep my breakfast down. Barely.

  “Sit down, Kangaroo,” Jessica says.

  “I’m okay,” I say.

  “No, you’re not,” she says. “And I can’t dose you with any more stimulants right now. Sit down and keep drinking water until your blood pressure evens out.”

  I sit down next to Calypso and wait for my stomach to settle. Hong hovers over me.

  “You can go inside, Lieutenant.”

  “Thank you,
sir, but my orders are—”

  “Never leave my side. Right.” I breathe deeply and slowly. “Just one more second here.”

  I hear a loud, repetitive beeping noise. I hope it’s not my audio implants malfunctioning again. Or my brain failing.

  “Does anybody else hear that?” I ask.

  “External transmission,” Khan says. When we loaded everyone on the base into separate shuttles, we also tied all our radios into a common channel to make communications easier. “I’ll answer.” The beeping ends with a rising trill. “This is Shackleton Crater, go ahead.”

  “Shackleton, this is Dieker, X-4 pilot tracking your incoming bogey.” The fighter pilot’s voice crackles with static. “We have eliminated the threat, repeat, threat eliminated.”

  “Dieker, Shackleton, thank you!” I can hear the excitement in Khan’s voice. “Lieutenant Hong, can you confirm on radar? Sorry, Dieker, it’s not that I don’t trust you.”

  “No offense, ma’am,” Dieker says. “And Lieutenant, you’re going to see a lot of fast-moving debris, but now that we’ve killed the engines, deflector drones should be able to clean up the junk before it reaches you.”

  “Confirmed!” Hong says, working his wrist controls. I see glowing radar displays dancing across the visor of his spacesuit helmet. “Fancy bogey incoming is destroyed, repeat, destroyed!”

  “Thank you, Dieker,” Khan says. “We’re all much relieved down here.”

  “Happy to help, ma’am. We’ll keep an eye on these drones and let you know if anything unusual happens during cleanup.”

  The pilot signs off, and Hong lets out a whoop of joy.

  “Okay, secure that, Lieutenant,” Khan says. “Let’s start bringing our people back.”

  Oh, boy. “Can we wait just a few minutes? I’m not quite fully recovered here yet,” I say. I am not looking forward to pulling all nine of those five-meter portals again.

  “I concur,” Jessica says. “Kangaroo needs more time to recover.”

  “No worries,” Khan says. “We’ve got nothing but—”

  A new, louder beeping noises fills my helmet, and I see red lights flashing all around the hangar bay. A synthesized computer voice says: “Intruder alert. Intruder alert…”