Steal the Stars

by Mac Rogers

  We worked on getting his arms into the sleeves. Adamant Dak appeared every now and then, jerking Lloyd around, barking orders at him, like an unpleasant barber. Once that was done, we stepped back.

  “Okay,” you panted, “does it zip up somehow?”

  “Great question,” I said, examining the suit. The new knobs placed strategically at the suit’s various openings: they must have been sealing devices. “I’m assuming it’s got something to do with these. Are we good to close you up?”

  “Please, be my guest,” Lloyd beamed. “Shall I instruct you?”

  But, no, I wanted to figure it out for myself. If this suit wound up working, I’d have to learn its ways pretty thoroughly.

  There were two small knobs and two red buttons, one of each on both sides of the opening to the suit. I pressed one button and twisted the knob, then did the same for the other. There was a strange, almost pneumatic whoosh and buzz and the suit appeared to seal itself up the center.

  Lloyd talked at you over all of it.

  “So that’s been my little project for the last year. Studying sample after sample until I could synthesize the N5 insulation myself.”

  “N5?”

  “Okay!” I yelled. “Before he starts in on explaining the name! Is that it? Are we sealed?”

  “We are sealed! Splendidly done! She’s very strict with me.” Lloyd winked at you. You smiled neatly. What does that smile mean? “But she’s very good. She’s the best.”

  “Yes, she is, Lloyd,” you said. Casually? Sincerely? What the fuck does that smile mean?

  Fuck.

  I hated this. I hated this so much. But there was still work to be done.

  “Okay.” I cleared my throat. “Salem, you’re doing the next one. Here on the arm, see?”

  Another seal, another button and knob. You reached your hand out to touch where I was touching. I made sure to pull away.

  “All right, I’ll spare you the reasoning behind the name, but answer me this: once I’ve synthesized the N5 insulation, what would the next step be?”

  “I guess…,” you said as you successfully activated the seal on his sleeve, “… you make a space suit out of it.” Whoosh buzz.

  Lloyd looked at the two of us like a pastor overseeing nuptials. “We’re going to have so much fun!”

  * * *

  TWENTY MINUTES or so later, after Lloyd had paraded around in his new design without stumbling or falling in the slightest—it was finally time for me to take a break.

  The day was far from over, though. Quill’s director of operations, Michael R. Harrison, was finally back from a trip to Sierra headquarters in D.C. and needed to be caught up. I had hours more shift to pull. And then I had to go home and be alone with my thoughts. You know: the real work.

  At the very least, this was the end of my orbit and yours overlapping.

  “It’s been real,” I said to you, feeling convincingly steely and disinterested, not at all like a petulant twelve-year-old.

  Before either of us could say anything further, though, Patty was making a beeline for us, her ponytail bouncing like a standard being borne to battle.

  “Done for the day, New Fish?”

  “How long do I stay New Fish?” you asked.

  “Right, lemme check my calendar,” Patty answered, miming a device in her hand. “Looks like it’s just until Go Fuck Yourself.”

  “Got it,” you said. I couldn’t tell if you were genuinely stung. You nodded at both of us, and started ambling slowly toward the elevator. Patty and I continued walking leisurely in the same direction.

  “All good, Chief?” she asked.

  “All good. I got to practice suit-sealing, so I’m gonna train the team on it tomorrow.”

  “Is Lloyd still planning on—?”

  “Yeah, but I’m still gonna try to talk him out of it before EOD today. Who’s on the team for the Sierra show again?” With reps from Sierra coming in a couple weeks to see all that we’d managed to do with their money, I wanted to make sure we had a top-notch team on the floor.

  “It’s gonna be me, Vonn, Shel, Grant, both Davies—” I groaned at the sound of Grant’s name. “I know, but he’ll be perfect because he wants to kiss up. Oh, and also Chatty Andy.”

  Great. Must have been my birthday.

  “Should we grab lunch?” she asked. “We can prep together before we meet with Harrison?”

  My voice rose slightly. “You know what? I actually left mine in the car. Gotta go up and grab it.”

  I thought I saw your head tilt slightly at that.

  “Ugh, if it’s that falafel crap you might as well just leave it up there. You can have some of mine.”

  “Energy bars and beef jerky?”

  “All a person needs.” She puffed her chest out.

  “Listen, Patty…” I lowered my voice and stopped walking.

  “Oh, shit. What’s up?”

  “Harrison wants you to sit out this afternoon.”

  “Okayyyy. Really?”

  Usually, whenever I briefed Harrison, Patty was there with me. This morning, for whatever reason, I’d received communication from him on his way back from D.C. that he needed to speak with me, and me only. “You know how this works,” I muttered to Patty. “I’ll tell you whatever I can tell you. I’m sure he has his reasons.”

  “Yeah,” she muttered back, “and I bet they were on the rocks.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders. “Someday, my young padawan, you’ll have my gig and will be saying the same shit to your deputy.”

  “Only that’s never gonna happen because we’re gonna stay chief and deputy forever.”

  “Right. I forgot.” I saw you waiting for the elevator. I had no reason to delay getting on as well. Crap. Let’s just get it over with then. I separated from Patty and headed over to the elevator, calling back to her, “Enjoy your dehydrated meat product and compressed carbohydrates.”

  “Enjoy your mulch balls and hot sauce!” she called back.

  * * *

  THE ELEVATOR was full of scientists. They were chattering about thermal sensors on the hull, how they break down so fast, how they have to replace all of them almost weekly or they get too close to the breakdown point.

  The breakdown point. Who says science and poetry don’t overlap?

  But I was grateful to not be there alone with you.

  * * *

  ONCE OUTSIDE, you walked ahead of me. You handled the maneuver expertly, the training still in your bones. I shouldn’t have been impressed—that’s par for the course for anyone who ends up working here—but everything you did was somehow managing to confound my expectations.

  It was overcast. Rain was probably imminent. We lose all sense of weather down there in the stomach. I was grateful for the chill.

  I stopped at my jeep; you stopped in front of the car next to it—just before you’d come out the other side, you bent down to tie your boot. You didn’t turn around as I stepped in between the vehicles.

  “Figured you said that loud enough for me to hear. Figured it wouldn’t hurt for us to talk,” you said, your hand moving over your laces.

  “I’m gonna make sure we’re always on different shifts,” I said. “Might take a while. Can’t be obvious about it. But I’ll make it happen.”

  “Okay. That seems right.”

  “It is right.”

  “It is, yeah. Only…” You stopped fiddling with your boots, but you still weren’t looking at me. Fat raindrops started to land heavily on the cars around us.

  “What?” I asked. My heart was beating about as heavily as those raindrops. “Only what?” No answer. No eyes. “Fuck you, only what?!”

  But you knew as well as I did that you’d stopped walking for the absolute longest credible stretch of time. So without any further word, you walked off to your car.

  I grabbed my lunch from my passenger seat and then made my way back to the first checkpoint to start the whole process over again.

  * * *

  DI
RECTOR HARRISON was already there when I finally got back to Bird’s Eye, lunch bag in hand (and Patty was right: falafel with hot sauce, thank you very much). He stood by the desk that held the monitors of the closed circuit feeds to the Hangar.

  If I could help it, I always wanted to catch Harrison in the morning. It was a pretty open secret that he did most of his office-drinking in the afternoon. A post-lunch meeting like this was risky.

  “Dak, hi.” He was wearing chino pants and a polo shirt, neatly tucked in. I’d never seen him in combat fatigues, yet it always seemed out of character to see him in civilian clothes—like looking at a pirate in a basketball jersey or something. He was a fit man in his late fifties, formerly a colonel in the 10th Special Forces, and I always thought his demeanor was a very specific kind of paternal: never patronizing, never dottering. He was like the father who abandoned you and with whom you were reconnecting as an adult who held no grudges. Like I said: a very specific kind of paternal.

  I felt my body trying to snap to attention and salute. I settled for raising my lunch bag.

  “Welcome back, Director.”

  “How were things while I was away?” He seemed pretty steady, actually. Distracted, but sober. He wasn’t swaying. He wasn’t blinking with weights on his eyelids.

  “Smooth sailing, most part. Folded in a new guy.”

  “Any problems?”

  “Just the usual Lloyd hazing.”

  “I, uh … I actually asked Lloyd to join us, hopefully he’s…” He gave a soft snort and his head bobbed.

  I stared at him for a second. He’d asked Lloyd to be here but Patty to sit out. What could that mean? Then I shook my head of it; I’d find out soon enough.

  “How was D.C.?”

  “Good. I think. It’s just different, it just … takes a lot of getting used to. But I think it’s good.” He swallowed dryly. “Let’s say I’m … keeping an open mind.”

  Quill Marine, like much of Washington, D.C., after the great governmental fire sale of 2019, was owned by the Sierra Corporation, a hefty defense contractor, all hail, long may their bottom line be fruitful. That meant old army cats, like Harrison, like myself, who’d trained themselves, indoctrinated themselves, in service to a country, now found themselves adapting to a far different chain of command. We were servants to a logo now, not a flag.

  It was certainly a shift. And, fortunately or unfortunately, the experiment showed no signs of slowing down. What catastrophes you would read in the news about the learning curve sweeping up all sorts of collateral damage didn’t seem to really stem the pace of privatization. Things kept getting negotiated and bought out, monopolized and commoditized. If I were young and idealistic I’d say it was spreading like a cancer. But I’m old and I’m wise so I know there are plenty of cancers you can learn to live with.

  At that moment, Lloyd came barreling into the room.

  “Am I late? I have a problem with being late.” A hand went to his temple. “Maybe because my brain gets maxed out—”

  “You’re fine, Lloyd, have a seat.” Harrison waved to the room.

  “Um, anywhere, or…?”

  We both nodded. Lloyd sat down immediately where he stood.

  “So, Dak,” Harrison resumed, “after we’re done here I’m going to give you authorization to access and erase the security recording of this meeting.”

  Whoa. “Yes, sir—Director.”

  Lloyd looked confused, almost like he was about to ask if he should leave the meeting he was personally just asked to attend. He even started to rise, but Harrison dropped the bomb before either of us could get to a safe distance.

  “The Sierra visit is going to be a week earlier than we previously expected.”

  “Wait—are you serious?” I stood up.

  “Well, let me just finish what I’m—”

  “Respectfully, sir, if that’s the case I gotta scramble, I gotta start—”

  “Sure, I understand, but don’t you think you need to know a bit more in terms of how to scramble?”

  He had a point. I sat back down.

  “For example you might find it helpful to know that rather than the full executive panel we were expecting … it’ll just be Trip Haydon and his immediate team.”

  I was sitting. I wished I could have sunk into the earth, never to be seen again.

  “Haydon’s coming here?”

  Sierra was owned by a Mr. Peter Haydon. He’d always been a bit of a mysterious entity, more of a name on paper and on buildings than an actual human being, but every now and then he would show up places—an event, a gala, a ribbon cutting. Except lately; even what little public appearances Peter Haydon usually made seemed to all be drying up and he was giving his middle son, Trip, way more latitude to ride roughshod. I’d been around for two of Trip’s visits, back when I was just a grunt here. They were not fun.

  “Apparently he’s taken an interest. I’m still trying to get the whole story. But of course one thing we have to consider…” He looked at Lloyd. Lloyd looked back at him. Then at me. Then back at Harrison.

  “Um … obviously, obviously there’s a reason you’re looking at me like—”

  “We have to consider the possibility that Haydon may want to cash out,” Harrison said. Another bomb fell on the room.

  “Cash out?”

  “Lloyd—”

  “Waitwaitwait”—another hand to his forehead, this one trembling slightly—“you mean cash out Moss?”

  “Lloyd, we need to—”

  “He can’t.”

  “Well, strictly speaking, he can.”

  “He can’t!”

  “You took a moss measurement this morning, correct?”

  “Well, obviously, I—”

  “And it’s still receding?”

  “Certainly, certainly the pattern is … holding…”

  Harrison put a tablet on the table.

  “Lloyd, this is the image I have of Moss’s chest area from eleven months ago. Do you have today’s image?”

  Lloyd fumbled with his own tablet. “Of course, of course I, it’s standard—here.”

  Harrison took it, looked at it. “All right, well, I’m not a xenobiologist, but I think it’s fair to say we’re looking at an escalating rate of recession here.”

  “Yes, clearly, obviously, but, but, but—that doesn’t mean anything! That isn’t matched by any observable decomposition within Moss’s actual body! That whole theory is based on nothing!” Lloyd was starting to sputter. Harrison kept his cool.

  “I’m not talking about the science, Lloyd, I’m talking about appearances—what Haydon will see and what he’ll infer from what he sees. The very real danger is that he either believes the theory, or doesn’t think he can take the risk. In either case he’ll cash out.”

  And by “cash out” he meant, if Moss’s perceived value is about to run out, they’ll move him to a big city and start selling tickets.

  “But … but…”

  “I don’t want it either,” Harrison said, straight and even. “I don’t know what Quill’s future is without Moss. A lot of people work here. We work here. Does everyone understand?” Everyone, meaning Lloyd and myself, nodded solemnly. Harrison’s voice changed, then, and I understood why I was to delete the security footage of this meeting. “We can’t change what Haydon will see when he gets here, of course. But is there any way to…”

  He trailed off. I needed—we all needed—to hear him say it so I urged him on.

  “Sir? Director…?”

  “I don’t know, redistribute the weekly images in such a way that … that…”

  “Will make the rate of moss recession look … slower?” Lloyd whispered.

  “Is it possible?”

  “I … I think so…” Not committing, just running the hypothesis through his supercomputer head.

  “Well, you’re as invested as anyone, Lloyd. More so. I suspect you’ll find a way. Dak?”

  I had my own half-formed thoughts, but they all seemed to contradict
each other. So I just shrugged and nodded.

  “Well,” Harrison slapped his upper thighs like some middle-aged, halfhearted cheerleader. “Co-conspirators, then.” He gave a chuckle half good-humored, half poisoned. It was the laugh I imagined he gave before cracking open a bottle in his dark, lonely office.

  “Where are we on the suit?” Harrison asked.

  Lloyd was still lost in a thought cloud.

  “Um, um … the suit … is…”

  “We’ve now had three dogs in the suits emerge from full-cycle exposure with no deleterious effects, Director.”

  That seemed to help clear Lloyd up. His eyes widened and he began looking at faces again. “That’s right, that’s right, three dogs! Flopsy, Mopsy, and, and Queen Buttsniffer. I, uh … I didn’t name the last one.”

  “We’re ready for human testing,” I said, hoping I could gently let Harrison know what Lloyd had been champing at the bit to do. I was already changing my attitude on his plan. Lloyd jumped in before I could finesse it further.

  “We’re testing me. Tomorrow.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Harrison gaped. I tried to intervene and Harrison barreled over me. “Actually you?”

  “Why not?” Lloyd shrugged, back to full Lloydian confidence.

  “In the suit?”

  “Why not?”

  “With the Harp?”

  “Three dogs came out fine!”

  “You know we can provide someone, right? You know how many prisons Sierra owns?”

  “Ten minutes ago I would’ve been on your side, Director,” I jumped in. He glared at me. I hated to say this. “But if Sierra’s coming this Monday, if it’s Haydon in person … Lloyd’s gotta be the one in there running the show.”

  Harrison turned his attention back to Lloyd.

  “We can’t lose you,” he practically pleaded.

  Lloyd held up some fingers. “Three dogs! It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “Lloyd…”

  “Look, I promise you! I don’t have a death wish!” He looked at both of us, laughing with a big, wide-open smile. “I definitely, definitely am not planning on dying anytime soon.”