Waypoint Kangaroo (11 page)

The airlock cycles open. I hope nobody's passing by the corridor outside, but the locker room, lounge, and office should provide decent sound insulation. I step inside the airlock and close the inner door. It seems to take an eternity for the atmosphere to vent and the status light to turn green. The outer door opens onto a black infinity. I step out onto the excursion platform, walk to the railing on the Sunward side, and start looking for handholds on the hull. A big ship like this needs plenty of maintenance grips and niches to allow in-flight repairs.

Dejah Thoris
's constant acceleration simulates gravity. Ascending fifteen decks until I'm past the cargo section is going to be like climbing up the side of a skyscraper. Except if I fall, there won't even be ground to hit—either my tether will hold, and I'll get yanked back into the side of the ship, or the tether will break, and I'll float through interplanetary space until I get close enough to a relay buoy to send a distress signal with my puny shoulder-phone. That's if I don't get fried by the main engines as I tumble past the bottom of the ship.

Did I mention this is going to be fun?
Yeah. Fun.

I've connected several tether cables together to make a run long enough to get me past the cargo section. I attach the carabiner at one end of my mega-cable to the bank of rings above the airlock, wrapping the cable around twice just to be safe. Then I engage the magnets in my boots and start climbing.

It's slow going only because I have to avoid windows. Walking up the side of a building turns out to be surprisingly easy. This
is
fun. I try a few experimental hops, just to see how far off the hull I can get. The gravity makes things tricky; once I'm not attached to the ship, it accelerates past me and I fall backward. But maybe if I rig the cable …

My helmet's faceplate dims automatically as I come over the horizon into sunlight. I'm at the edge of the cargo section, where the rectilinear containers have been lashed together on the outside of the ship and covered with solar panels. Just like Ellie described. I take a moment to admire the structure, multicolored bricks beneath a gleaming blue mirror.

Then I switch my left eye into telescope mode and find the Earth: azimuth negative forty degrees, elevation plus five. This side of the ship always faces Sunward. That allows
Dejah Thoris
to maintain communications with Earth, and it'll do the same for my equipment.

I think of a fish-covered pizza and open the pocket—without the barrier, since I'm already in a vacuum. That makes it much easier to pull out the Echo Delta.

The full name is “emergency communications dish,” but I guess “Echo Delta” sounds snappier. The bulky military case falls out of the pocket and nearly yanks my arm out of its socket. I clamp the twenty-kilo weight to a maintenance shelf before I open it and start assembling the unit. Fold out the parabolic dish, screw it onto the tripod, bolt that to the hull after scanning for wires. Attach power pack, scrambler module, microcell transceiver.

I test the dish by tuning to a public broadcast news feed and smile at the tiny vid image in my left eye HUD. Now I can use my shoulder-phone to talk to the dish, and the dish can connect me to Earth.

After I drop the empty case back in the pocket, I take a moment to admire my handiwork. It's not the most circumspect assembly job ever, but it works. And I did it all by myself, using only my emergency field equipment and my own wits. Paul would be proud, if I ever told him. Not that I plan to.

I celebrate by doing a few stunts on the way back. I rig my tether cable to a handhold, kick myself off the hull, and freefall until the cable goes taut. Like jumping off a cliff! But safer. In some ways. I wonder how far away from the ship I can get before swinging back.

I stop after my third tumble, when my glove slips and I fly ten meters farther than I intended. The ship suddenly looks very small in a vast sea of nothing. I slowly crawl along the hull back to the airlock.

*   *   *

I'm pretty pleased with myself, whistling as I peel off the spacesuit and run down my checklist: suit power off, check. Stop location beacon jamming, check. Replace suit in locker, check. Continue basking in your own triumph, check.

It's just after 0200 when I walk out of the locker room. Plenty of time before the next shift change. Maybe I'll stop by the arcade. After what I just did, that Lunar Lander vid game doesn't look so tough.

I step into the lounge and go blind.

I think I make a noise as I close my eyes, and then I notice the overload indicator in the corner of my HUD. I move my eyes around until the night vision enhancement switches off. All this I do instinctively, so I don't even feel nervous until I open my eyes and see three security guards standing in front of me, stunners raised.

The one in the middle and closest to me is a woman—tall, dark, short brown hair, pale eyes that look like ice. I wonder if her stare is always that cold, or if it's only when she catches a trespasser. The two burly men flanking her look just as unhappy to see me.

“Hands where I can see them,” the woman says, her finger just touching the trigger. She really wants an excuse to shoot me.

I raise my arms slowly, never taking my eyes off her. She's clearly the leader. I suddenly realize that they're much too concerned about a mere trespasser. They were looking for someone. Someone dangerous. The woman is holding her stunner too firmly, and her arms are braced against a nonexistent recoil. She's wishing she had an actual firearm, so she can drop me if I make a move.

“Mike, pat him down,” she says.

The man to her right holsters his weapon and walks over to me, staring me down all the way. He gives me a very thorough frisking.

“He's clean,” Mike says. He takes a step back, standing behind me, and pulls out his stunner again. I decide it's time to say something.

“Look, I'm sorry,” I say, using my best pathetic-civilian voice. “I—I didn't think anybody would—”

“Shut up,” the woman says.

I shut up.

She's actually thinking about whether she should shoot first and ask questions later. I can see her sizing me up. I relax my body and hunch my shoulders. I want to appear to be as slight a physical threat as possible.

“Danny,” she says to the other guard, “check his ID.”

Danny grabs my right hand and presses the thumb against a handheld scanpad. After a second, his wristband—a gauntlet of touchscreen controls for his duty equipment—lights up with my passenger record. “Evan Rogers. Stateroom 6573.”

The woman seems disappointed, but she doesn't lower her stunner.

“What were you doing outside the ship, Mr. Rogers?” she asks.

“I just wanted to do another excursion. By myself,” I say. “I did a spacewalk right after dinner, and it was so amazing, I just wanted to enjoy that—that freedom without a bunch of noisy people all around me. I'm sorry if I caused any trouble.”

She mulls this over for a moment, probably trying to decide if I'm lying or not. I'm pretty sure she can't tell. I'm good at my job.

Then she takes a step toward me and jams the tip of the stunner up under my chin.

Apparently I'm not that good.

“What the hell were you doing outside the ship, Mr. Rogers?” the woman repeats. This time, she says it like she doesn't believe that's my real name.

I make a choking noise for effect. She's not actually hurting me, but I want her to get some satisfaction here. I'm still assessing whether I can take down all three of them at once, and if I do go for it, I need them to be as overconfident as possible.

My heart is pounding. I didn't expect to get caught here, and I didn't expect security on a damn cruise ship to be so hardcore. If this were a real op, I would have three layers of cover stories and remote support through my implanted comms. Or I could just plead the Fifth and wait for Paul to bail me out.

But this isn't an actual operation. I don't have backup, and there's no guarantee the agency will come to my rescue.

I don't have a lot of options here. However, I do want to stop the choking.

I grab the woman's wrist with my left hand and push it away, aiming the stunner at the ceiling. At the same time, I kick backward, catching Mike in the stomach and putting him on the floor. I launch myself forward, pushing the woman into Danny and slamming him against the wall, and simultaneously open the pocket behind me, thinking of a small woolly mammoth.

I reach back through the barrier for my pistol and pull it out. I close the pocket before anyone can see it—I hope—and put my back to the wall with my arm wrapped around the woman. I place the barrel of my pistol under her chin. Now her body is shielding me from Mike and Danny's stunners, and they all know I mean business.

“I thought you searched this guy!” the woman hisses at Mike. He has no response.

I speak in a loud, clear voice. “I am not the person you're looking for. I am not working with the person you're looking for. Do you understand?”

“Oh, yeah,” the woman says. “I'm totally convinced now. You can go about your business.”

I sigh and say to Danny and Mike, “I need you to get Captain Santamaria down here.”

“Fat chance!” the woman snaps. At least she's not struggling or biting. I hate it when people bite me.

“I need you to call Captain Santamaria,” I say, “and tell him that I'm a friend to lumber but not columns.”

The woman twitches and does her best to turn her head toward me. “You know Paul Tarkington?”

Now I don't have a response.

“What do you want us to do, Chief?” Danny asks.

“Do what he says,” the woman orders. “Call the captain.”

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dejah Thoris
—Deck 15, excursion lounge

20 minutes after security decided not to shoot me

Danny and Mike leave the room when Captain Santamaria arrives in the excursion lounge. It's just me, the female security officer, and the captain. I'm sitting on one of the couches. The woman stands with her back against a wall, stunner still in her hand but dangling at her side instead of pointed at me. I've handed my pistol over to her, as a gesture of trust. Her unspoken promise to take a half-second longer to drop me if I move is, I guess, her way of reciprocating.

The captain stands in the doorway for a moment. He seems more curious than annoyed. The look he exchanges with the woman is priceless. He actually appears to be amused at her exasperation. It's too familiar to be the relationship between mere coworkers, but too casual for lovers. Relatives? Father and daughter? But they look nothing alike.

“He was carrying this sidearm,” the woman says, handing over my pistol. “We don't know where he was hiding it. Mike gave him a full pat-down. And the piece was cold as ice.”

The captain turns the pistol over in his hands. He ejects the magazine and examines the ammunition. He replaces the clip, checks the safety, and hands the weapon back to the woman.

“That's practically an antique,” he says. I'm not sure if he's talking to me or her.

“We didn't find anything in the pressure suit he used,” the woman says. “He must have been jamming the locator beacon.”

The captain nods. He sits down in a chair across from me and asks, “Mr. Rogers, which department do you work for?”

I flick my eyes over to the woman, then address the captain. “Your chief of security has me at a disadvantage.”

“You don't get your weapon back until you're off this ship,” the woman snaps.

“Chief,” the captain says, “he means he doesn't know your name.”

The woman frowns. “Who the hell talks like that?”

I can see the barest hint of a smile underneath the captain's beard. There's definitely something between these two. It feels like family, but I can't quite make the connection.

“This is Chief Petty Officer Andrea Jemison,” the captain says. “Head of security aboard
Dejah Thoris,
as you've correctly surmised. She served six years at Olympus Base, through the end of the war. You can look up her full record yourself, can't you?”

I've been moving my jaw muscles as soon as he said her name, constructing a query to send over my secure connection to the agency. Anyone might notice that, but it would look like nervous teeth-grinding to a civilian who didn't know about my control implants.

“And I'm sure you can look up my record as well,” the captain continues. I tap my molars together, transmitting my search parameters, and my left eye HUD blinks while waiting for the response. Back on Earth, the data would have come back instantly, but out here there's a lightspeed delay.

The woman—Jemison—has tensed up. A lot. “Captain, what the hell is going on?”

Without looking at her, Santamaria says, “Mr. Rogers snuck outside the ship to set up a secure communication link with Earth. Right now he's using his shoulder-phone to search for our military service records. Once he knows how much security clearance we have, he'll decide which cover story to feed us.”

“He's a field operative?” Jemison says, as if it's hard for her to believe.

“Well, they can't all be as handsome as I was,” Santamaria says.

Jemison makes a dismissive noise. “I don't see an interface and he hasn't been talking to himself. How is he working the phone?”

“I would guess there's a heads-up display in one of his eyes,” Santamaria says. “And biometric sensors implanted throughout his body. A few eye movements or twitches of specific muscles will control the phone and whatever other devices are hidden under his skin.”

The search results light up in my vision. I don't bother trying to hide my eye or finger movements as I read the information. There isn't much. A lot of the relevant records are still sealed. But I see that Jemison and Santamaria served together for eight months at Olympus during the war. Before that, Jemison was quartermaster of the Earth Coalition corvette
Cincinnati
. And Santamaria's prior command was … First Mars Battalion?
Jesus, he fought in the vanguard?