Sirius Academy (Jezebel's Ladder) (35 page)

“The allotted time for this
exercise is thirty minutes. For every minute early you finish, you gain a
point. For every minute past thirty, you lose ten points. At T plus forty
minutes, the reactor explodes, killing everyone still in the base.” The Seal
paused. “Do you understand?”

Red repeated, “Twenty minutes to
get the data core. Everybody comes back alive. Perfect score 300.”

“Correct on all counts. Questions?”

“What if there’s a point tie?”
asked Red.

“Unlikely. But in that case, the
lowest average team radiation count wins,” Rogers decided.

Zeiss cleared his throat. “I need a
special equipment ruling, sir.”

“We’ve already cleared your
harpoons, Taz,” said Professor Rogers.

“I meant the dye bombs, sir.
Standard issue for underwater demolition teams.”

“I know what they are, Taz. What
were you planning to use those for?”

“Evasion of pursuit and confusing
other teams in a free-for-all, sir.”

The Seal chuckled. “An honest man.
How do you justify them in this scenario?”

“Marking radiation hot zones, sir.”
Zeiss replied. “Pursuant to Fukishima protocol—”

“You can have two dye bombs. One
for each of your balls; it took big ones to ask. Is that all?”

“Conferring with the boss,” Zeiss
said. He and Herk divested themselves of a lot of excess equipment. On the team
link, he said, “Anything else we want to fight for?”

She sighed and over open channel
asked, “Five minutes to plan strategy?”

“The first obstacle in this course
is overriding the computer door lock,” announced the instructor. “You can plan
while your scout cracks the safe. Any last words, Red?”

“Let’s dance, sir.”

Apelu laughed. “Good song.”

Red organized the team into three subgroups. “Moon base is a
ring of domes, just like Sirius Academy. The data core is supposed to be in the
center. Team one, go with Z counterclockwise till you hit radiation and mark it.
Team two: go with Herk clockwise. I’ll march up the center with Sojiro until it
gets too hot. I’m sure my way will be blocked soonest because it’s the easy route.
I’ll wait in the center transit ring for reports.”

Unlocking the front gate took
longer than expected. “Three minutes forty seconds,” Red announced. “All teams:
go!”

The artist wavered from side to
side and said to the dolphins in the distance, “Hi, Cheerful. Play later!”

Red snapped, “Sojiro, did you see
the data core while you were in there?”

“No, that’s what took so long. I
had to defeat three different checks instead of one centralized authorization.
Before base personnel left, they powered the data core down. Maybe they
attempted to evacuate it.” Sojiro’s eyes didn’t want to focus on close-up
items.

“Hear that, folks?” Red announced
as she herded her dazed hacker forward. “The core could be anywhere. Be on the
lookout for hostiles carrying it away.”

As predicted, at the five minute
mark, Red’s sub-team hit a dead-end. She broadcast: “We’ve reached control
central. Nothing here. Sojiro is scouting for clues to salvage but confidence
is low. Be alert: the computer mock-up is made of glass. It’s hard to see in
this water, and it’s very brittle.”

At the seven minute mark, Zeiss
reported in. “Watch the bubble streams. They’re simulated radioactive steam. My
group had their badge counters reach 250 before we noticed. We’re moving to
rendezvous.”

Red countered, “Negative, aim for
Herk’s location. I’ve pulled up the schematics and he’s closest to the emergency
launch pad. If I were evacuating a valuable commodity and Chernobyl fires were
burning around me, that’s where I’d head.”

Sojiro had to crack another
difficult lock, allowing Zeiss to catch up with Red’s group. When Zeiss saw the
hacker place a hand against the bulkhead for support, he ordered, “Auckland, check him out. He’s showing signs of mental fatigue.”

The doctor read the Japanese man’s bio-monitors
remotely from a handheld device. “He might finish this hurdle but we’ll have to
carry him out if he does.”

Zeiss shook his head. “No good.
Red, this shortcut is burning too much time and resources. I say we walk the
long way. Herk already blazed the trail.”

She called Sojiro back to his body and
snapped, “Double-time it.” The doctor and Zeiss helped the dazed Japanese man
keep up with the rest of the team.

At T-plus eight minutes, Herkemer
reported, “First floor was too hot to continue. We had to ascend the elevator
shaft to second floor. The catwalk is open to observation from above. Wires and
bubbles are everywhere, so be careful.”

Red’s group was scaling the shaft
to the second floor by T-plus nine minutes. She was first up. “I see you, Herk.
You’re ninety meters out. Hold location and send me your position history file.
We’ll use it to thread the maze in fast-forward.”

“Roger. Transmitting. We’re stuck
at a chasm anyway.”

She whispered, “Just let me clean
up the false branches. Here.” Red broadcast an overhead photo overlay. “Everyone
follow me single-file as soon as you hit this floor.”

At T-plus eleven, as Red met up
with Herk, he pointed to a glass cube. “I think we’ve spotted the data core.
It’s down there to your right.”

“In the middle of nuclear hell,”
Zeiss noted all the bubbles seething below.

“We can almost touch it!” Red
cheered.

An armada of glass-bottomed boats observed
their every move.

“Half the team is still strung out
along the catwalk,” Zeiss noted. “We’ll see if any of them has a brainstorm
before we commit.”

The entire team could hear Apelu
singing the song “Let’s Dance”, but instead of ‘serious moonlight’, he said,
“Sirius Moonfight.” The Samoan chuckled at his own wit.

“Keep the channel clear,” Red
ordered.

“Check his oxygen mix and pupil
response,” suggested Auckland.

Yvette, with Herk’s team replied,
“Roger.”

When the nurse approached, the
Samoan roared and tossed her off the edge into the mass of bubbles. “Speargun!”
shouted Zeiss.

To those nearby, Herk shouted,
“Back off, don’t try to take him! Something’s wrong.” Over the growls and
chuckles of the Samoan, he said, “He has symptoms of page break, a form of
psychosis . . . shit!” He blocked a blow from the other man with his teak
speargun stock.

After she landed, Yvette shot her
gun into the wooden side of the nearest observation craft. Climbing the line,
she read her badge. “780 . . . 840 . . . 860. (pant) Thank you, confidence
course training. Holding at 870.”

“I can cut his air line from here,”
Red said, taking aim.

The Rex slammed Herk against the
dome wall with a roar.

“Nobody dies today!” Zeiss insisted
pushing her arm outward and down.

The stretching action caused her to
fire her weapon. She watched in shock as her spear shattered the glass cube of
the data core. “You did that on purpose!” Red accused.

“Core destroyed, safe from the
enemy. Evacuate all personnel now!” Zeiss ordered. “Use the guns; follow
Yvette.”

Herk dropped his dark-blue dye bomb
to sow confusion and avoid getting crushed by the rampaging Rex. The dye
expanded outward like squid ink or alien blood.

Auckland radioed on the public band
as he fled, “Emergency medical team needed for Apelu. Psychotic page-break in
progress.”

When the boats realized that
students were targeting them, they fled in all directions, dragging the
attached test-takers along.

Zeiss shot his spear into the stern
of a fleeing vessel and handed the line to Red. “Go! The water will slow you
too much. He’ll kill you.” When she hesitated, he added, “Do I have to get Herk
to tie you to this? You’re too important!”

“Come with me,” she said, grabbing
the gun with both hands.

“Trust me,” her husband begged.

Herk put an arm around her as they
were dragged over the catwalk, dodging pipes, plumes, and wires.

The Rex stepped out of the cloud,
laughing. “You gonna take me by yourself, Taz?”

“No,” Zeiss said, keeping his
distance. “I’m here to keep you company until help arrives.”

Apelu ripped a two meter length of
pipe off the set and advanced. “I swim better than you.”

A large, muscular, gray form plowed
the Samoan over from behind. “But not better than them,” Zeiss said, referring
to the dolphins. To the newcomer, he said, “Grateful greeting, Cheerful. Not
shark.”

The Rex rose to his knees. “WTF?”

“He thinks you’re a people-shark.
Stay down while I talk to him and the others out of their misconception,”
explained Zeiss. “If you put down the weapon and stop broadcasting aggression,
the pod of dolphins can carry us both to safety. Either way, I’m not leaving
you until you get help. What do you say?”

“You know what I’m going to do to
you, Taz?” The Rex narrowed his eyes.

“Why don’t you tell me in detail?” Zeiss
suggested, sidling out of range again.

The light for point-to-point
personal message came on inside Zeiss’s helmet as the Rex said congenially, “I’m
going to take you to the surface, sit you in Rogers’ boat, and force scotch on
you till you wanna puke.”

“Pardon?”

“You passed the test—the first team
to get away with every team member alive and not put one of us in the hospital.
For which I owe you personally. I almost pissed myself when your wife took aim
at my head with that speargun.”

Rogers came over the channel.
“That’s confirmed. I’m awarding 140 points for the people, 10 for the time, and
25 for destroying the data core as a secondary goal. That’s 175 points with the
condition that you become team lead, Taz.”

“But Red . . .” Zeiss objected.

“Failed,” Rogers replied. “Every
good decision your team made, starting from the planning, came from you.
Decide. Team one went down in flames; it was like a teen horror movie. They
stayed separated and between the Rex, the radiation, and the traps, we nailed
them all. Team three only scored 95 last year. They still haven’t figured out
there’s no way the data core leaves this base. The enemy strike team hits them
at the launch pad if they get close. You’re going to win, but only if you want
to.”

Zeiss sat on the edge of the
catwalk and rubbed the dolphin’s flank as it swam by. “I’ll do it, sir, but can
I ride away with the medics to give me a little time?”

“Affirmative, but no contact with
your team. I’ll tell them you’re safe, and that they shouldn’t share information
with the final testing group.”

Zeiss had the mock medical crew
take him straight to Trina’s boat to ask for help.

****

Red was sitting with Risa in the
changing room when Trina arrived. The rest of the team went to mourn and await
the details of Zeiss’s probable maiming. Trina opened with, “The faculty sent
me to give you the news. Frankly, the rest of them are as afraid of you as that
poor Rex was.”

“What?” Red asked, indignant.

“Sonrisa, could you tell the others
that Taz escaped without a scratch?” the professor asked. “Oh, and mention that
you won the competition.”

“Yes, sir!” Risa agreed, leaving
the other two to speak in private.

“That’s great!” Red said. “Where’s
Z?”

“Getting debriefed.”

“Why?”

“The faculty went over every second
of the exercise with him twice—made him justify everything he did. In the end,
they confirmed him unanimously. He’s a team lead.”

“
He
?”

“You need to be happy for him,
Mira.”

Tears of frustration welled in Red’s
eyes.

“What is the first concern of our
Academy?” demanded Trina.

“Safety of the astronauts,” she
replied.

“That’s what Taz did out there
today. You were going to shoot your own team member!” Trina accused.

“He was a Rex,” the younger woman
insisted. “He needed to be put down!”

“It was all staged as a
psychological test!” her aunt hissed. “You failed miserably. Taz saved you from
your own knee-jerk responses. The only doubt was whether Taz figured the scam
early. All the monitors agree that his responses were genuine. When you wanted
to stay, his heart red-lined.” After a long pause for the information to sink
in, Trina said, “Conrad made a bargain so you could get to space: he leads. You
can’t be trusted with life-or-death calls when you want something too badly.”

Red was blinking out tears and
struggling to breathe as Trina continued. “Those notes in his file that you
wanted to see? Z told you ages ago—anger management. He said he’d never met
someone who held onto more anger and resentment. If you don’t let it go, it’s
going to poison everything in your life. I was hoping that marriage would take
the edge off. It has—some. But you’re too self-centered to lead.”

“Hypocrite!” shouted Red. “People
are just as afraid of you—killer!”

Professor Horvath flinched at the
word but held her ground. “I draw lines. I protect family rather than hurt
them. In our home, I can be Trina, not Nena Horvath.”

“I can be Mira,” the girl wailed.

“Really? What’s Conrad’s birthday?”
Trina asked. When Red couldn’t answer, the teacher followed up with, “Too hard?
What’s his middle name?”

“He doesn’t have one,” Red claimed.

“Wrong—it’s Heinrich after his
father. He doesn’t use it because he doesn’t want any part of the man. His
favorite food?”

“Pancakes,” Red said.

“No, he said that for your sake. He
likes angel food, scallops, and fresh pumpernickel. You hate scallops so he does
without that, too.”

“He never complains to me about
that,” Red whispered. “But the fact that he doesn’t get the seafood he wants
doesn’t justify his stealing
my team
.”

Trina stood, shook her hands at the
ceiling, and raged, “You don’t get it, girl. Your fight with Kaguya isn’t over
space, it’s over the most important thing you have—Conrad.”

“Omigod, you do have feelings for
him!”

“Yes, as a mother-in-law. I’ve
known you two were going to bond since you met. He’s your other half, Kitten.
Treat him as such.”

“I do.”

“He shouldn’t be afraid to tell you
anything
.”

The words hung in the air,
unchallenged.

“What are you talking about?” asked
Mira.

“Yvette and I watched his tapes
with Kaguya. It was brutal, worse than some Rex beatings I’ve seen. But he
never bonded with her. Conrad fixated on her tattoo and your face. Now Kaguya
is trying to turn that into a wedge. It’s ripping him apart.”

“How?”

“Open your eyes. Kaguya sends him
emails, postcards, and presents. Her synth-voice is the new interface for all
Mori computers, big and small. Her new album is getting advertized on TV and
radio even before it’s finished. The symbol on the cover of that sexually
charged album is her rabbit, and his programming song is the title track.”

“He never said anything.”

“You need to decide what’s
important: a thirty minute ride in space, or the rest of your life.”

Trina walked out. Red left the
island on the
Half-Pint
alone to think.

****

Daniel sat up with Zeiss to wait in
the restaurant. When Red returned around midnight, she texted her husband: “You
have something that belongs to me. Private dojo, alone.”

“Take some Advil now,” Daniel
advised. “It’s not too late to go to the locker room and pretend you didn’t
read the message.”

Zeiss shook his head. “I tell her
everything. I’ve got to go take my medicine like a man.”