Waypoint Kangaroo

by Curtis C. Chen

  “One hundred percent, Captain,” Mike says.

  “Hell, yes. Sir,” Danny says.

  “Good.” Santamaria nods toward me. “You’ve probably guessed that Mr. Rogers is not exactly what he appears to be.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty obvious,” Mike says.

  “Is ‘Rogers’ even your real name?” Danny asks.

  “Mr. Rogers is on board to oversee the transportation of certain cargo from Earth to Mars,” Santamaria says. “One of the containers is electromagnetically shielded to prevent its contents from being scanned.”

  “You’re smuggling for the State Department?” Mike asks.

  I wait for Santamaria to run interference. He doesn’t.

  “It’s not smuggling,” I say. “Think of it as an unusually large diplomatic pouch.”

  “So that’s what you were doing outside,” Danny says. “Checking the cargo.”

  I put on my best fake smile of contrition. “Can’t be too careful.”

  “He’s going to pack up the Faraday cage and bring it down to the brig,” Jemison says. “We’ll install it in one of the holding compartments and secure Bartelt inside. The cage will prevent him from transmitting or receiving anything.”

  She releases me, and Santamaria grabs my arm and spins me to face the door.

  “Come on, Mr. Rogers,” he says, “I’ll help you get suited up.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Dejah Thoris—Exterior, cargo section

  I’m probably going to be late for dinner

  The agency regularly smuggles things all around the Solar System—I’ve done more than a few delivery runs myself—but I was never interested enough to inquire about the logistical details of how they concealed and transported all that cargo.

  Data is easy to move around. Encrypt something well enough and you don’t even have to hide it, because the math guarantees that nobody will be able to crack the code before the heat-death of the universe. Physical objects are a little trickier.

  Many things can be broken down into their component parts, which are either innocuous or can be made to appear so; chemicals and certain electronics fall into that category. But some items, like weapons-grade nuclear material or the firing coil of a particle beam cannon, can’t be disassembled or disguised. I am currently the agency’s preferred method of transporting those items, but I’m a scarce resource.

  Santamaria helps me into my spacesuit and gives me a quick rundown of the cargo attached to the niche in Dejah Thoris’s hull. I download a map of the numbered containers, and then he sends me on my way.

  I’m running radio silent because Santamaria is still concerned about some hostile party monitoring our communications, and there’s no easy way to encrypt the spacesuit comms. I think he’s being paranoid, but I’m not about to disagree with his orders.

  The container I’m looking for is in the innermost layer of the cargo mass, with one end pressed up against the hull. All the containers are oriented “gravity-wise,” like a multicolored brick wall stacked against the cut-out side of Dejah Thoris’s egg-shaped hull.

  I pull myself into the interstitial scaffolding between containers carefully, not wanting to tangle my lifeline. Once I’ve attached my magnetic boots to one of the scaffold rails, I unclip my long tether and secure a shorter line from the waist of my spacesuit to the top of my target container, right above the seam where the double doors meet.

  These containers aren’t designed to be opened in vacuum, but they’re not completely airtight, either. All of them were evacuated of atmosphere before being loaded, and if any of them contain perishable items, those are in their own airtight packaging inside the large metal boxes. I enter the captain’s access code into the security panel, then work my gloves around the door handles, brace myself, and turn them downward until the long metal bars holding the container closed creak out of their fittings.

  The doors only swing out so far before clanging against the scaffolding. I have to turn my body sideways and slowly wiggle myself through the opening into the container, all the while hoping there aren’t any sharp metal parts poking out to tear a hole in my spacesuit.

  Once inside the container, I tap my suit’s wrist controls and switch on my helmet lamps. The interior is just as Santamaria described it: one stack of cellulose crates forms a wall just inside the doors, obscuring everything but a narrow passage on the far left side of the container. Whatever cargo the agency is smuggling will be hidden behind these innocent-looking crates marked as various dry goods.

  I lumber forward, still not used to the way these magnetic boots stick, and make my way around the decoy crates. This opening isn’t quite as tight as the outer doors, and I walk through facing forward and see a giant hole in the far end of the container.

  It takes me a moment to make sense of this unexpected sight. There’s a large metal-mesh cube to my right—the Faraday cage—and farther down the long container are more unlabeled containers; some look like chemicals, and others might be weapons or ammunition. I sweep my helmet lights over everything, and finally come back to the thing that shouldn’t be here: the giant hole.

  The exterior of the cargo container is a thick, lead-lined steel alloy, designed to protect the contents of the vessel from cosmic radiation and dust impacts. There’s not a lot of solid matter in interplanetary space, but when you hit anything traveling at several million meters per second, it’s going to leave a mark. It takes serious hardware to cut through that material. I study the edges of the roughly circular hole. They definitely look like they were melted with a high-temperature cutter.

  And on the other side of the hole, according to these hull markings, is a service airlock leading into the ship.

  Man, I could have taken a shortcut.

  * * *

  “What do you mean, a hole in the container?”

  Santamaria, Jemison, and I are alone in the briefing room. After I brought the Faraday cage inside, Security set it up in a holding cell in the brig and confined the still-unconscious Jerry Bartelt inside. Now I’m describing the other things I saw in the cargo container.

  “Hold on.” I finish transferring the vid from my left eye to the conference table and play it back, freezing the image on a clean view of the breach. “Now that’s right up against the ship’s hull, and it’s way too circular and large to be accidental.”

  Jemison pulls her face closer to the tabletop and squints at the image. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Is there anything on board that can cut through steel alloy like that?” I ask. “If there’s missing equipment, maybe we can track Bartelt through the crew sections and see what else he’s been up to.”

  “I’ll ask Eng,” Jemison says, tapping at her wristband. “But we have limited camera coverage in the crew sections. If this guy knew exactly where to cut through to extract the cargo, he also knows where our blind spots are.”

  “What else did you see in there?” Santamaria is looking down, but his eyes seem like they’re staring right through the tabletop.

  I spin the vid forward. “Everything else was still secured, except for this set of straps.” I point to the ends of four yellow tie-downs, hanging in zero-gee like seaweed, the metal buckles unlocked and open. “The Faraday cage hadn’t been touched.”

  “We need to determine exactly what’s missing from that container,” Santamaria says.

  “You don’t know?” I say.

  “Compartmentalization,” Jemison says. “If we don’t know what we’re transporting, we can’t blow the operation.”

  Something else occurs to me. “Did you have any control over the loading procedure? Whoever cut into that container knew exactly where it was, and which section inside the ship would lead there.”

  “The agency takes care of the paperwork,” Santamaria says. “Our transport containers are always loaded near the center of the cargo mass. That position gives them better protection from radiation and accidental discovery.”

  “Well, are they always up again
st the ship’s hull? And right next to an airlock?”

  “Yes. To allow for emergency extraction, if necessary.”

  “Even if there are hazardous materials inside?”

  Santamaria’s dark eyes are hollow, and I see the flicker of something sharp and angry back there. “We don’t transport hazardous materials.”

  “It’s got to be someone inside the agency,” Jemison says. “Someone who knows about this run.”

  “A mole,” Santamaria says.

  “We need to contact Lasher,” Jemison says.

  Santamaria nods. “Yes.”

  “What happened to avoiding detection?” I ask.

  “Have you not been paying attention?” Jemison snaps. “We’re way beyond that. Bartelt and whoever his bosses are, they know more than any civilians should about our operations on this ship. The device that Bartelt hid in his closet was tapped into our internal comms. Bartelt was monitoring crew chatter, probably to make sure he could sneak around the ship without running into anyone.”

  “But we still don’t know why he was sneaking around the ship,” I say. “Have you interviewed Janice Long yet?”

  “Yeah, she’s clean. Innocent victim of a professional thief. And I’m guessing Bartelt was sneaking around to kill Emily and Alan Wachlin and pin their murders on David, the brother.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense,” I say. “Even if Bartelt wanted just Alan Wachlin dead, why not kill all three of them? No witnesses—”

  “To give us a plausible suspect, and deter further investigation!” Jemison says. “But our speculation will get a lot better after we obtain some more goddamn facts from the office!”

  “Okay, okay!” I start blinking my eye into communication mode. “Give me a minute to warm up the Echo Delta.”

  Santamaria presses his fingers to the tabletop and taps out a series of letters and numbers. “You’re going to use this relay port to get a direct line to Director Tarkington’s office.” He scrolls down and taps out a different sequence of gibberish. “Then use this encryption key and route the call to my quarters.”

  I frown at him. “Wait a minute. You want to use my shoulder-phone, but you don’t want me on the call?”

  “I’m sorry, Rogers, Chief,” Santamaria says. “Neither of you has the security clearance for this discussion.”

  * * *

  Before Jemison and I leave, we work out how to securely tie my shoulder-phone into Dejah Thoris’s internal wireless network. Now I can go about my business anywhere on the ship, and it won’t interfere with the captain’s communications link to Paul.

  Jemison says good-bye to me in the corridor outside the briefing room. “Don’t stay up too late. We’re going to have some more fun with the prisoner tomorrow.”

  “Can we talk about the nanobots?” I ask. “I just need a list of names. That’s all. I can take care of the rest myself.”

  Jemison grabs a handrail and stops her motion down the corridor. “Fine. I’ll get you the damn names. Tomorrow morning. And you’re going to walk me through your crazy medical procedure before you do anything to anyone.”

  Sure, I’m going to let you believe that. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

  “What?”

  Jemison doesn’t like talking about the war. She’s made that abundantly clear. She also doesn’t like chatting with me. I’m hoping the combination of the two will repel her long enough for me to get my nano-business squared away without interference.

  “Why did Bartelt call the captain ‘Hades’?” I ask.

  We’re floating at least three meters apart, but I swear the temperature drops by a good five degrees in the moment before she responds. “We’re not going to talk about that right now.”

  “Are we ever going to talk about it? Sounds like a great war story.”

  I flinch as Jemison snaps up her left arm, hand clenched in a fist. She bends her elbow and uses her other hand to work her wrist controls for a few seconds.

  “You now have thumbscan access to the crew sections,” she says. “Captain might need to see you again later. I don’t want to. Stay out of trouble.”

  I watch until the elevator doors close, then rush back to my stateroom, pull the centrifuge out of the pocket, spin down the newly multiplied nanobots into the Red Wine, and fill two drink bulbs with the dosed alcohol. I hope I haven’t made Ellie wait too long. My tuxedo takes forever to put on. Why didn’t I ask for the clip-on bow tie?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Dejah Thoris—Deck 10, Promenade

  20 minutes late for dinner, dammit

  Not every place name on this ship is a terrible pun, but most of them are pretty bad. I suppose that’s to be expected aboard the Princess of Mars Cruises flagship Dejah Thoris.

  The fake-jade dragon’s-head gateway into the Fête Silk Road restaurant glows green on the upper level of the Promenade, between the Joy of Specs and Hats in the Belfry shops, both of which sell exactly the accessories you’d imagine. I arrive at 1950 hours, breathless after my bumpy flight down the crew stairwell, and give my name to the maître d’, an excessively glamorous woman wearing a red qipao and iridescent chopsticks in her hair.

  “Ah, yes, welcome, Mr. Rogers,” she says. “Your dining companion arrived a few minutes ago. She’s waiting for you at the bar. If you would care to join her, we’ll come fetch you both as soon as your table is ready.”

  I thank her and float past the green dragon’s teeth and into the bar area. There’s quite a crowd here, and it takes me a minute to locate Ellie. Mostly because she looks so stunningly different in a glittering black-and-white ball gown. She’s still wearing her duty wristband, and a pair of flat black zero-gee slipper-socks, but she makes the whole ensemble work.

  I haven’t had any time to think about how I’m going to excuse my lateness. I can’t tell Ellie the truth, obviously; I can never tell her about the nanobots or my security errands. I’ve made my peace with that. But who do I need to be to accomplish my current objective? How is “Evan Rogers” going to get her to drink this fancy Red Wine without appearing to be a creeper?

  How about don’t be an idiot, Kangaroo. Let’s start there.

  It doesn’t matter what this woman thinks of me. In less than four days I’m off this ship, and then I’ll probably never see her again. Hell, depending on how tonight goes, I may not see her again for the rest of this cruise. And that doesn’t matter, as long as I get her to drink this nanobot potion.

  It’s all about the mission. It’s always about the mission.

  Not tonight.

  Ellie doesn’t notice me until I’m floating right next to her at the bar, holding out the two bulbs of wine.

  “Buy you a drink, lady?” I say, sticking my feet to the floor.

  She looks at me with those brilliant eyes and smiles. “Hey, stranger. About time you showed up.”

  “Sorry. I had a longer than expected talk with the sommelier. I wanted to select the perfect wine for tonight.”

  “And I’m sure he or she encouraged you to spare no expense.”

  I hand her one of the bulbs. “Judge for yourself, mademoiselle.”

  It occurs to me that I haven’t tasted this wine. Ellie puts a hand on my arm to stop me before I can bring my drink bulb to my lips.

  “Hold on there,” she says. “You can’t drink fancy wine without making a toast first.”

  “Okay. What are we toasting?”

  She raises her bulb. “To meeting new people.”

  I tap my bulb against hers. “To new friends.”

  Ellie takes a sip of her wine. I blink my eye into scanning mode and watch as a fuzzy column of false-color green descends into her torso and diffuses outward, like branches of lightning crawling through her dark blue figure. I suddenly realize it probably looks like I’m staring at her chest, and quickly turn my head away.

  Mission accomplished. Now what?

  I don’t know.

  She sticks her drink bulb to the bar and grimaces. “Well, that’s differ
ent.”

  I quickly take a swig of the Red Wine and wonder if it might have gone bad. The airtight seal was definitely intact—I watched the sommelier verify the holo code, and I also checked it with my eye—but maybe it was a bad batch to start with? Maybe the radiation in Airy Crater did something to it?

  The liquid washes across my tongue and seems to evaporate, just a little, before I register the mixture of fruity and bitter flavors and familiar tang of ethanol. It tastes like wine, and I have to admit, I’ve never actually tried anything this expensive. How do I know what it’s supposed to taste like? The agency doesn’t train us to be food critics.

  “It’s not that bad, is it?” I ask.

  This doesn’t matter. The nanobots are in her system now. They’ll start repairing her radiation-damaged cells within the next few minutes. They’ll replicate themselves until they finish the job, and then they’ll self-destruct. I’ve finished the job. I could leave right now and get back to work, tracking down murderers and hunting spies.

  But I don’t want to.

  “Tell you what,” Ellie says, “the next drink’s on me.”

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll let you order it, but I’m paying.”

  “Evan—”

  “I have an expense account.” It’s not a lie.

  She narrows her eyes. “Okay. You can pay for dinner tonight. But next time, I’m buying.”

  I can’t keep the smile off my face. “So what’s good here?”

  Ellie launches into an in-depth critique of the new menu at Fête Silk Road, which debuted on this sailing and has apparently been the subject of some discussion among the crew. I’m only half-listening as she describes the exotic ingredients, some of which are actually grown on board the ship in hydroponic gardens.

  She said “next time.”

  * * *

  Dinner with Ellie is the longest single meal I’ve ever had, and it’s still over too soon. We close down Fête Silk Road at eleven o’clock, after taking our time ordering and then consuming each spectacular course. I can tell it’s closing time because our server, who has been a paragon of courtesy all night, brings our check without even asking if we’re ready, and with the barest hint of a smile.