Kangaroo Too Read online

  “I’m sending you with her,” Paul says. “She’s the contact. You’re the courier.”

  Of course. I have the pocket. “And what am I smuggling onto the Moon?”

  “Gold.”

  I blink. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re going to buy some data from our old friend Clementine.”

  I check the dates in Gladys’s file again. “What data? Any intel she has about the belt is going to be years out of date.”

  “She knows mining robots inside and out,” Paul says. “Two of her patents are owned by ShanKongRobo, which is headquartered on the Moon. And she still has friends at SKR.”

  Paul taps his desktop, and my tablet display changes to a close-up of the stowaway spider’s mangled leg. The shell has been cut apart, showing the interior surface, and I recognize the stylized cloud-and-mountain ShanKongRobo logo next to a factory bar code etched into the metal.

  “That’s a serial number,” I say. “Clementine’s going to find out who bought this robot? And then we can track down the bastards?”

  “Even better,” Paul says. “We couldn’t risk telling her what specific information we’re after or why we want it. But she’s willing to get us a data dump from SKR’s computer core. Every customer record from the last decade, including sales contracts and technical specifications for all software deployments.”

  “That’s—a lot of data?”

  “And it’s going to be worth every ounce of gold we pay her. SKR supplies robotic systems to all asteroid mining concerns in the belt. Once we have those software specs, we can design our own code to remotely access the bots’ onboard sensors and monitor any outpost within a hundred kilometers of an SKR-built radio unit.”

  I look up from the tablet. “You’re going to hack the entire belt?”

  Paul almost smiles. “Only as much as we need to find Terman Sakraida.”

  “You think he’s laying low as an asteroid miner?”

  “He’s not surviving out there without help. He needs air, water, food. Someone’s supplying him. And everyone uses robots in the belt.”

  This is a pretty audacious undertaking, even for Paul. “Do I want to know how much political capital you had to spend to get this massive invasion of privacy approved?”

  “Sakraida is the architect of the worst security breach in the history of the agency.” Any fleeting playfulness has abandoned Paul’s face. “He betrayed all of us. He stole a mountain of above-top-secret files that he could potentially decrypt and use against us. We will go anywhere and do anything to stop him from doing that, if we can, and we will bring him to justice regardless. Understood?”

  “I’m on board,” I say. “Damn the torpedoes and all that. I just want to make sure everyone else is, too.”

  “Let me worry about building consensus,” Paul says. “You just get the information.”

  * * *

  “Give me the gold,” I say, then add: “Arrr!”

  Oliver looks up at me. I’m standing in the doorway to his workshop, just down the hall from Paul’s office. A tall tangle of wires sits atop some kind of partially disassembled ceramic cylinder, obscuring the lower half of Oliver’s face so only his beady eyes and mop of black hair are showing. This is not as unusual a sight as it might seem; as my department’s “Equipment Research, Development, and Obtention Specialist,” he’s always tinkering with something.

  “It’s not ready yet,” Oliver says, ignoring my flawless pirate impression. His voice appears to be muffled by the machine parts in front of him. “Come back later.”

  “Want to do my check-in now?”

  “No.”

  “I’m on a quick turnaround for the next operation.”

  “We’re continuing your inventory,” Oliver says. “I’ll call you when I’ve got your new load-out ready.”

  That’s unusual. Oliver tends to be somewhat anal retentive when it comes to keeping track of the items in my pocket. He’s also overly cautious about making sure electronics and other sensitive devices don’t freeze inside the pocket—it’s hard vacuum, which means objects lose heat slowly but surely. Oliver doesn’t like leaving anything inside the pocket for too long.

  “Am I getting a Lunar rover?” I ask.

  Oliver frowns at me. “Have you not gotten your briefing yet?”

  “Lasher says Surgical’s supposed to brief me, but I can’t find her.” I even tried calling her, on the off chance she might answer, but she ignored me as usual. Jessica doesn’t like to mix her agency job with her personal life. I know pretty much nothing about what she does outside the office.

  “She’ll be back soon,” Oliver says.

  “You know where she is?”

  “I know where she went.”

  I wait for him to tell me, but he’s not forthcoming. “Where did she go?”

  “You should probably ask her yourself. When she gets back.”

  If it were actually a secret—a work-related secret—he would tell me I don’t have clearance to know. Which means this is something personal, and he just doesn’t want to tell me. Because it has to do with Jessica. Which means she’ll be even more reluctant to spill the beans.

  Oliver is my best shot at getting this information, whatever it is. And really, it’s his own fault for not giving me anything else to do.

  “Just tell me where she isn’t, then,” I say. “Is she still on the planet?”

  “I’m not playing this game with you, Kay,” Oliver says. “Go away and come back later.”

  “I’m going on this mission with Surgical,” I say. “I’ll be spending nearly every waking minute with her, probably. And you know she’s not going to tell me anything herself. If there’s something I need to know—something that might adversely affect our operational performance—you need to tell me.”

  Oliver sighs and steps out from behind his work bench. He’s wearing a face mask, an apron—the material looks like rubber, possibly neoprene—and thick gloves that extend up to his elbows. He takes off the gloves and walks across the room to the sink.

  “Um, should I be wearing some kind of protective gear in here?” I ask while he washes his hands.

  “Relax,” he says, pulling off his face mask and dropping it into a biohazard disposal bin. “I sealed the canister already.”

  “Oh, well, as long as the canister’s sealed.” I take a step backward.

  Oliver removes his apron and hangs it on the wall next to the sink. Then he walks toward me. “Come on.”

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  “Yes.” I move back into the hallway, and he walks past me and turns toward the other end of the corridor, opposite the single entry door. I follow him into the conference room at the end of the hall. The lights come on as we walk in. Oliver closes the door behind us.

  “Why are we in here?”

  “For privacy,” Oliver says. “Surgical hates meetings. This is the last place she’ll investigate if she’s looking for either of us.”

  “You don’t know when she’s coming back.”

  “I don’t know how long funerals usually last.”

  I blink a few times while searching for the most sensitive way to ask my question. “Whose funeral?”

  “It was death in the family.”

  “Now, when you say ‘family,’ do you mean—”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Oliver says. “It was her mother. All right? Surgical’s mother passed away. The funeral was in Baltimore, today. That’s all I know.”

  This is literally the most information I’ve ever had about Jessica’s personal life. “Wait. Lasher knows about this.”

  “Of course.”

  “And he’s sending her out? Into the field? Tonight?” Why didn’t he tell me my partner was going to be emotionally distraught?

  Oliver frowns at me. “The answer to all those questions is yes.”

  “That seems extremely ill advised.”

  “Lasher keeps his own counsel. As you know.”

  “Yeah, that’s another
thing,” I say. “You know how I ended up on the Eyrie earlier?”

  “I sense there’s a funny story coming,” Oliver says.

  I ignore his gibe and tell him about D.Int giving me the red key and Paul not seeming all that concerned about his counterpart trying to subvert his authority. Oliver also seems rather indifferent to the situation. “You’re not worried about getting caught in the middle of this … whatever it is?” I ask.

  Oliver shrugs. “Not much I can do about it from down here.”

  “You can talk to Lasher,” I say.

  “You can talk to Lasher,” Oliver says. “I have actual work to do.”

  “This is work!” I know Oliver would prefer to deal exclusively with computers and machines and equipment and not have to suffer all these messy human interactions, but if he’s not dealing with Paul and Jessica’s not dealing with Paul, that means I’m the only person around here dealing with Paul. “You’re going to be the one stuck down here with Lasher while Surgical and I are on mission.”

  “We have separate offices.”

  “So you’re just going to avoid him the whole time?” I ask. “You’re just going to let him continue trying to run the entire Ops division without any support from Intel.”

  “We’re still supported,” Oliver says. “Rumblings on Mount Olympus don’t affect the price of feta cheese in the agora.”

  I’m just about to unreel a detailed takedown of his faulty ancient Greece analogy when the door to the conference room flies open. Jessica steps inside, holding a laptop computer and wearing all black. It’s a departure from her usual attire of neutral colors. She looks like a ninja. A very angry ninja.

  “You’re back,” I say. “How was the—”

  “Fine,” she says. Then, to Oliver: “We’re continuing his inventory?”

  He nods. “Yes. New load-out will be ready by end of business.”

  “Good. You don’t have to stay.”

  Oliver fast-walks out of the room as Jessica sets her laptop down on the conference table.

  “So,” I say, “that implies that I do have to—”

  “Shut up,” Jessica says. “Sit down. This is your briefing.”

  Well, at least the funeral doesn’t seem to have worsened her usual mood.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Earth—United States—Washington, D.C.

  The start of what will probably feel like the longest briefing of my life

  “Sorry to hear about your mother,” I say. “My condolences.”

  “Thanks.” Jessica doesn’t look up from setting up her laptop to talk to the conference room systems. “What did they tell you?”

  “Lasher didn’t tell me anything. EQ told me he didn’t know how long the funeral would last. That may or may not have been slightly racist.”

  She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Sit.”

  I take a seat near the head of the table, across from where she’s set up the laptop. Jessica pulls a control wand out of the side of the laptop and taps it on the top of the screen.

  “I’ve read your after-action report and Ramírez’s debrief,” she says. “We’ll run down the nanobot issue later.”

  “Is there a problem?” I lean forward. “If the tiny robots in my blood are malfunctioning, maybe we should turn them off for now?”

  “They’re not malfunctioning.” Jessica adjusts something on the control wand. “Not technically.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, “my ears might be glitching again. What do you mean, they’re not technically malfunctioning?”

  Jessica sighs and lowers the wand. “I have been working with Science Division on long-term upgrade protocols for the nanobots. We’ve been releasing incremental code patches to add functionality, but there have been unexpected interactions between some of the new software modules. Don’t worry. We’ve rolled back the latest changes.”

  I stare at her. “I used to like talking to you because you didn’t sound like Equipment.” It’s usually Oliver who throws all the computer jargon at me. “And what functionality did you add that accidentally destroyed my hearing?”

  “I think you’re exaggerating. Only the long-range microphone pickups were affected.”

  “And why were they affected?”

  Jessica folds her arms. “Do you remember Project Weyland-Yutani?”

  “Of course I do.” I suggested the name myself, based on an old horror movie about an alien life-form with acid for blood. It seemed appropriate, since the idea behind this project was to harden the nanobots’ shells so they could survive outside my body for a short time, and then program them to attack technological targets—basically, I’d be able to bleed on anything electronic and break it. “Wait. You’re actually implementing that now?” I stand up. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “We were adding individual functions,” Jessica says. “You’ve been complaining about your cerumen situation for a while.” That’s true: my random earwax clogs can be pretty inconvenient, QED. “We didn’t expect the nanobots to—”

  “Turn them off,” I say. “Turn the nanobots off, right now, all of them!”

  “Calm down,” Jessica says. “We debugged the issue during your return trip and flashed a software update as soon you came within range of an agency wireless hotspot on the Moon. The nanobots have been reset to the last stable version from a month ago.”

  That’s a relief. I sit down again. “I thought making the nanobots purely technological was supposed to avoid these unexpected mutation problems.” Most people are still skittish about nanotech because of the Fruitless Year, when swarms of tiny cyborgs destroyed every apple tree on Earth. But my nanobots are software only—no biological components. We’re supposed to be able to control every aspect of their functioning.

  “It’s not mutation,” Jessica says. “This is a software issue. It’s different.”

  “For the record,” I say, “I would like to be informed of any further software updates before they take effect!”

  “You don’t have to shout.”

  “I enjoy shouting! It’s a hobby of mine!”

  “We’re improving the system,” Jessica says. “As I said. Science Division is planning for long-term field deployment of nanobots in other agency personnel. Identifying and fixing these minor issues will help us avoid larger problems later on.”

  “I sure hope so!”

  “Are you ready to start the briefing for our new operation?” Jessica asks. “We are actually on a schedule here.”

  I fume silently for a moment. As therapeutic as it would be to continue yelling at her, we probably don’t have time for that. And I don’t want to have to deal with Paul if we miss our launch window. “Fine. Brief me.”

  Jessica waves her wand, and the large screen dominating the conference room lights up with an image of the full Moon as seen from Earth. “Lasher told you we’re going to the Moon?”

  “Yeah. To talk to your old friend Clementine.”

  “I’m going to talk to her,” Jessica says, tapping the wand against her palm to change the display. The screen cycles through various maps and diagrams of the Lunar nearside. “You’re going to keep your mouth shut.”

  She does something else with the wand, and the screen changes to a grid of thumbnails. She points the wand at one image. The screen fills with an “X-ray” view of my ill-fated shuttle, reconstructed from a few different scans produced by my left eye. The spider-bot looks like a sinister wireframe glowing in pale blue and white against the darkened outline of the shuttle engines.

  “Did Equipment give you the rundown on this thing already?” Jessica asks.

  “The ass-spider?” She doesn’t react. That’s fair; it’s not my best material. “Lasher gave me a quick overview.”

  Jessica turns to frown at me. “Why didn’t Equipment brief you?”

  “Lasher said EQ was busy.”

  “Not too busy for gossiping, apparently.”

  “We were comparing the merits of various management techniques—”

/>   “Equipment needs to brief you,” Jessica says. “If someone can program one of these things to stow away on a shuttle and kill the engines, they can program it to do something more sinister. Make sure you have anti-mech countermeasures in the pocket.”

  “So these bots are autonomous?” I don’t like the idea of a whole bunch of robo-spiders running around unsupervised.

  “They have soft comms.”

  “They have squishy radios?”

  “Soft as in software,” Jessica says. “User-configured computer modules. Whoever buys these spiders from SKR can deploy them however they want—as remote-operated units, or semiautomated drones, or use some kind of clustering algorithm.”

  “Is there any way we can trace the code? Figure out who programmed it?”

  “Most of the spider was destroyed when it blew the shuttle’s engines.” She waves the wand to advance through images until we’re looking at evidence photos of the lower sections of two of the spider’s metal legs. “That’s everything we recovered. Two stalks that were embedded in the hull. No computer memory components, and we don’t know what other hardware modifications might have been made to the main body of the robot.”

  “But we have the serial number.”

  “Yes. And once we buy that database from Clementine, we’ll be able to investigate further.”

  Jessica advances to the next slide, which is Clementine’s dossier. “So you want to tell me about your friend there?” I ask.

  “She’s not my friend.”

  “Acquaintance, whatever. Lasher said—”

  “We met once,” Jessica snaps. “That’s all.”

  “Okay, I’m confused,” I say. “We’re going to visit Clementine in her retirement home. That means you need to know her well enough that you—your cover identity—would take a trip to the Moon to see her. Right?”

  Jessica squeezes her eyes shut and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Fine. Let’s start at the beginning.”

  * * *

  The Moon is not a place where humans can live, long-term, and still expect to return to Earth every once in a while. That’s true for most places in the Solar System, which are either smaller planets or much smaller asteroids or subplanetary bodies, where gravity is significantly less than Earth’s one gee. Mars has one-third of Earth’s gravity. The Moon has one-sixth.