Sirius Academy (Jezebel's Ladder) (2 page)

Although a sniper’s bullet to the
head silenced the rest of his report, Desmond’s last action was to fall
protectively over the girl. Daniel changed his course and used a blue
porta-potty for cover. He couldn’t see the attacker, making the laser useless.

As another Fortune bodyguard ran to
help, the sniper switched to automatic. The second guard dropped to the ground
with leg wounds. Daniel hopped to a mature tree and then to a cement trashcan
as bullets scattered concrete dust. Only ten feet from the girl, he was pinned.

Trina grabbed the cashier’s pistol
and rolled behind a kiosk. She called in the situation to their support teams.
“Gunman on the north side of the quad at my twelve.”

“Twenty degrees elevation,” the
billionaire added seamlessly when she paused. “Range ninety to a hundred feet.
He’s not an active.”

“Too far for me to get with a
handgun, but the area’s too populated to carpet bomb,” she complained. Moments
later, she reported with more optimism. “Two paramedics have responded. Inbound
at ten o’clock.”

One paramedic drew a syringe and
the other pulled out a ceramic blade as they walked toward the girl. “It’s a
kidnapping,” Daniel warned, using his opponents as cover against the sniper
while he closed the gap. As the first paramedic rolled Desmond’s body aside, the
billionaire swung a crutch toward his throat like a baton. The man staggered
backward to avoid the blow. When the man with the syringe was three feet away
from her husband, Trina put a tight grouping of bullets into his heart.

The second imposter lunged at
Daniel with the knife. They grappled and fell to the pavement. Daniel may have
been crippled, but people always forgot how incredibly strong his arms were.
However, the assailant killed people for a living. In the time it took Daniel
to choke him into unconsciousness, the killer stabbed the billionaire three
times, grazing the kidneys. Mira’s uncle managed to reach her, leaving a trail
of dark blood on the sidewalk.

Trina provided cover fire. “The
open window!” She emptied the clip on her borrowed weapon as Daniel herded the
girl toward a park bench. When she had only the bullet in the chamber left, the
rifle spoke again. She dropped to the grass, expecting pain. But there was
none.

Daniel’s laser pointer dropped from
limp fingers. He’d almost made it.

“
No!
” Trina shouted verbally
and through the psychic link.

He mouthed the word “Run” as his
body and left lung collapsed. The little girl held her hands over his back,
trying to stem the flow. His eyes glazed over, but he refused to abandon his
loved ones in their time of need. Only two people in the crowd could see what
happened next. A transparent image stood over his crumpled form. It looked like
a younger version of the man, distorted by static. He flickered in and out,
struggling against a great windstorm.

Daniel could see a security guard
approach the frustrated, grieving Trina from behind. With a projected thought,
he showed his wife the scene from his point of view. She whirled and shot the
man’s gun hand as he drew. But this attacker was special, he could ignore the
pain. “Rex,” she noted as they went hand-to-hand.

His wife would beat the Rex
eventually, but the large fighter had drawn her out into the open. The moment
she won, the sniper would finish her and then the girl. Daniel had to do
something, but his body was useless. Even this warning during daylight had caused
him minor nerve damage. Every moment he spent exposed felt like sandblasting.

There was only one way the other
two would live. To the girl, he said, “
Grab the laser pointer
.”

Because the command was so urgent,
she obeyed.

Wavering, he sent a picture of the
window across the quad. Mira aimed the laser at the exact coordinates. The last
thing Daniel broadcast before dissolving into sand particles was a memory of
the Monty Python show. Mira repeated the announcer’s words. “The penguin on top
of your television set will now explode.”

Soon after, the sniper’s entire
room detonated.

When the Rex turned to look, Trina
crushed his windpipe.

One man with a cell phone caught
the entire event on video. The girl was still reeling from the aftershocks of
death when Aunt Trina ran over and applied field dressing to Daniel’s wounds.
She was the only one who carried superglue patches in her purse—for just such
an occasion. “Don’t die!” she ordered her husband.

When the helicopter landed on the
grass seconds later, the copilot hopped out and waved a hand in front of her
face, trying to snap her out of the trance. “What your name, sweetheart?”

Mira was still staring at her
bloody hands. She wanted to answer “Miracle Redemption Hollis,” but all that
came out was the first syllable of her middle name, “Red.” Everything after
that moment, that choice, had been red.

Red wanted to do a fly-by on the floating college, but they
had missile launchers aimed at her from each side of the landing zone. From
this height, she could see the floating colony was divided into eight pie
wedges. Half were agricultural green and the others bubbled with space
construction modules. Every square meter of cement on the perimeter sparkled
with solar collectors. The center sported a huge dome over the main campus of Sirius Academy. To her, it was the octagonal glass cathedral of the Holy Grail—UN astronaut
school.

“Sirius Tower, confirm my
friend-or-foe transponder is working.” Her flight goggles reported that her onboard
systems had already blocked seven remote software probes, searching for
vulnerabilities. A commercial plane would’ve been subverted and switched to
their control by now. But Red didn’t like giving up control.

“Roger, friend is sounding 4 by 4.”

“Um . . . did anyone tell you it’s
not polite to point?” she said, referring to the anti-aircraft missiles.

“Sorry XRD-2, we give everyone the
same welcome. Don’t deviate from the beacon and no one has to spend their
Saturday cleaning debris out of the South Pacific.”

“Roger, Sirius Tower. Coloring inside the lines.”

After she performed a vertical
landing on the wide swath of tarmac, a flight crew, several students, and a
small security team rushed out to greet her. A lot of them had been practicing on
the shooting range or performing mock repairs on the model of the Fortune
Aerospace mission shuttle. Everyone, except the lead guard with commander’s
bars, was wearing shorts. Red climbed out of the cockpit and handed the man in
charge the clipboard with her assignment and cargo manifest.

“I’m Commander Taggart, the duty
officer.” The trim, fifty-year-old veteran raised an eyebrow at her five-foot-nothing
height, a couple inches under the NASA minimum. When she took off her helmet, he
stared. The tomboy had short, brown hair with a swirl of metallic red that
matched her flight suit. She could have passed for thirteen; however, everyone
knew the minimum age for the Academy was sixteen. “You’re two days early.”

Red keyed open the cargo doors with
her crypto-ring. “According to the school calendar, I’m starting three weeks
late. Besides, we had a priority mail shipment of medicine, and I thought I’d
deliver it early, in case someone needed it before Monday.”

As the door opened, they all saw
the name on the ship. A man in a mechanic’s one-piece joked, “
Half-Pint
.
Is that name yours or the prototype’s?”

“Behind the cockpit, the interior
is a half-scale model of the Sirius mission craft: the same fittings and
controls, with half the cargo rating. It’s a gift from Fortune Aerospace until
the bureaucrats let you have a real one.”

The mechanic grinned from
ear-to-ear. “God bless our rich uncle.”

“It takes the same fluids as the
real thing. The maintenance manual is on the copilot chair. I’ll show you a few
things that aren’t in the manual once I stow my gear.”

“You’re
staying
?” asked an
older student with a crew-cut and the label ‘Merrick’ on his ammunition vest.

“She’s the new student,” explained
the head guard. “Replacing the math washout.”

The other students winced at the
mention of the incident, but the man with the crew-cut grew angry. “You jumped
the queue to get in here. There are at least three of my guys on the
short-list. Did you buy your way in?” Merrick leaned over her with menace.

“Cool out, jarhead,” said a
Japanese teenager with a backpack slung over his left shoulder.

“Pilots get a point bonus,” she
asserted, and neither backed down.

“Merrick, clear off my deck,”
Taggart ordered, and the man reluctantly obeyed.

Red scanned the commander’s badge
with her flight goggles and confirmed that his face matched company records.
“Releasing care to Commander Taggart at 10:47 academy time. Add your pilots to
the access list before you touch her; there’s a self-destruct feature.”

As the mechanic unloaded a
meter-wide freezer unit, he read, “Portable forensic freezer unit?”

Taggart nodded. “I’ve heard of
those. It has a backup battery and secure, signed access for preserving
chain-of-evidence.”

“Yeah, the power’s still on,” said
the mechanic. “What the hell’s in it?”

“My lunch,” she said. Everyone
laughed at the perceived sarcasm. “I’ll carry my duffle but could you
personally escort that skid load of supplies to my quarters?”

He started to complain until he saw
the high-security tag on the load. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll be logging over a thousand
flight hours during my five years. My friends call me Red,” she insisted.

The Japanese student who’d been
following close behind asked, “What do your enemies call you?”

“Asshole,” she said, without
skipping a beat.

“Hah! Great movie quote. You’re all
right,” said the guy with the backpack. “I’m Sojiro.”

She scanned his badge and text
scrolled by on the left lens. He was a specialist in virtual reality
interfaces. She smiled, “My grandfather used that line all the time; I just
stole it from him. Are you the welcoming committee?”

“I pulled Foreign Object Disposal patrol
on the runway—kind of like detention for safety freaks. But Professor Horvath
said I could show you around until she gets done with her class at noon.
Where’d you get the goggles, bootleg on the Ginza strip?”

“No, they came with the plane. Why
do you ask?”

“That design is supposed to be
exclusive to our island, but a lot of tech has been leaking to the outside
lately.”

He signed her in at the entry gate
and clipped the guest badge to the front zipper of her flight suit. “I’ll take
you by the admin office, your dorm room, and some places you can meet people.”

Then Sojiro led her down the tunnel,
through the concrete-walled outer-ring of the artificial island, ambling at a
slow pace so she could take it all in. He pointed to a white starburst set into
a piece of polished marble. “This is the memorial. Each symbol represents
someone on the project who was killed or permanently disabled in service. The
first and brightest star is for Quan, the one who launched the first Cassavettis-Reuter
star drive. The butterfly represents . . .”

“The great Jezebel Hollis,” she
finished, running her hand over the golden shape. “There sure are a lot of stars.
Don’t the others get names?”

He shook his head and kept walking.
“Sirius Academy is named for the loyal dog that followed Icarus, the code name
for the star drive field.”

“Not quite,” Red corrected. “Sirius
was the preamble song for ‘Eye in the Sky’, the original code name for the
alien artifact.”

Because her brusque comment had
silenced her tour-guide, she asked, “Why do you have class on a Saturday?”

“Antiterrorism exercises when other
people aren’t using the school. Horvath’s pretty hardcore. I wasn’t paying
attention and got shot first . . . again.”

“What were you doing that you weren’t
supposed to?”

He looked both ways and then
slipped a sketch book out of his backpack. The active sheet showed several
views of a stern woman with platinum-blonde hair twisting arms and performing
humiliating take-downs. Instead of a martial-arts uniform, the subject wore
tight leather gear with a low-plunging neckline. In spite of herself, Red
laughed. “You’ve got a gift.”

“I’m the hero of my own manga.
Everyone has to do so many hours of journaling for psych profiles. It’s part of
the first-year weed-out.”

“I hate writing. Spelling has too
many arbitrary rules. I plan to do mine as a video blog.”

“Most people do because that’s the
format they train us to use on exercises and in the field. That way when
someone messes up, the UN space program has a record. They keep a few people
like me around in case the alien artifact blocks cameras. My manga records my
school experience as a fictionalized graphic novel.”

“Sweet.”

They stepped out of the tunnel into
sunlight. College-aged kids were playing Frisbee, rugby, and sunbathing in a
grassy quad. He pointed to a couple buildings. “This is the back quarter; not
many people come here during the week.”

She noted the glass sidewalks. “Are
those solar?”

“Yeah. Around here, if it’s not
growing, it generates power.”

“Wow. Self-sufficient?”

He shrugged. “Sort of. All the
computers, lights, and air conditioning run off solar and wind. The engines
only have to use fuel at night or during storms. When we have cloudy days or everyone’s
doing a computer assignment at once . . .” He paused because she was obviously
gawking instead of paying attention.

“I’m finally here,” she whispered
to herself.

“You’re not carrying much.”

“All I need: eight flight suits, in
different colors.”

“That’s the Base Exchange, the BX.
It’s a general store, in case you want to pick up some casual wear. If they
don’t have something you want, they can order it, but delivery can take a while.”

She smiled. Her outfits were
custom-made, bulletproof, and fire-resistant. “I’ll wait till I have a closet.”

“Okay. Over there’s the simulation
building. Advanced students get to use the virtual reality for space walks and
jet packs; we just get to use it for remote classrooms. We only have about
thirty teachers and a dozen or so assistants. Whatever they can’t teach you, they’ll
find a specialty class somewhere else in the world with an audio-video link.”

“This area’s so roomy for such a
small island.”

“The level below us is full of
computers and supplies.”

Red feigned interest as they
meandered counterclockwise on the grooved glass path that ringed the island. She
handed his sketch back. “Do you have a thing for Professor Horvath? I mean,
she’s almost forty.”

“Really? I couldn’t tell. You could
crack a walnut on her ass.” When she didn’t speak, he whispered, “A lot of guys
ogle her, but I . . . don’t swing that way. That’s another reason I get shot
first. The mils, military types, don’t like gays, and nobody wants me on their
team.”

“What’s your specialty?”

“Alien machine interfaces, with an
emphasis on ship design and construction.”

“That rocks. I’ll take you on my
team any day.”

“Thanks. But the new character
still has something missing—a fantasy element.”

“She needs a weapon, a wicked one
to represent her attitude.”

Sojiro’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! The
pain stick or the rod of discipline.” He immediately sat on a bench and whipped
out a pencil.

While he was distracted, she asked,
“So about the guy I’m replacing: did he burn out from reading the psi page?”

“Huh? No, he washed out,
literally.” Pointing to the huge pool on the port side, Sojiro explained, “They
strap you into a cockpit and smash you into cold water. To pass, you have to
get out the exit. It’s harder than it sounds. I couldn’t get my seatbelt off
the first time, and one of the rescue divers had to give me oxygen. Lucky for
me we get three tries on the big tests. Last year, the freshman class dropped
from sixty-five down to forty-five people.”

“Better to fail now than in orbit.”

“That’s what they tell us. Personally,
I think it’s to save money. Over a quarter-million dollars a year per student
is a lot for the sponsor countries to shell out. The Academy’s got to be making
money hand over fist.”

She shrugged. “You’d be surprised
what fuel, food, teachers, and all these high-tech toys are costing.”

“You make it sound like a cruise
ship. I’m busting my ass. Only about half of us are likely to graduate.”

“About the same number it takes to
make a complete mission to Sirius.”

“One of these years, they’ll
actually send some of us.” Sojiro checked the watch on his right wrist. “The
admin just texted me. We’re going to skip getting your badge for now and go
straight to the clinic—meta seven, center. It’s in the middle of the same
meta-pod that holds the girls’ dorm, the first one to our right.”

He got up and led the way.

“Meta-pod?” she asked.

“Sorry, buzz phrase. They cluster
eight standard rooms around a big room that’s about six meters in diameter and
call it a pod. The units are pre-fabricated, just like moon base except we have
air-conditioning . . . most weeks. They put eight two-level pods around a core
service area and call that a meta-pod. There’s a faculty meta-pod, two men’s,
and a girl’s. Technically you share yours with the teaching assistants because
there aren’t that many female students.”

She shrugged. “It’s right next to
the port, handy for me. Why the clinic?”

“So it’s closer to evacuate people
in emergencies.”

“I meant why am I going there?”

“You replaced a guy, and it’s not
like you can share bunk beds with his roommate. There aren’t any vacancies on
the girls’ side. I’m guessing they fixed you a cot in the nurses’ quarters till
someone else washes out.”

“I don’t like hospitals,” Red said.
“You said you’d take me somewhere people hang out.”

“Meta one, center is the student
cafeteria. It’s where anyone who’s anyone gets face time.”

****

The cafeteria resembled a typical,
crowded, urban high school. Conversations were buzzing through the white
geodesic dome, as was the occasional paper airplane, orange, and container of
lip gloss. “There are so many people,” Red said.

“Two hundred twenty of us, plus about
a dozen TAs and other staff,” Sojiro explained. “TAs are allowed eat at the faculty
restaurant, but it’s expensive.”

She pointed to a poster of a
popular cola that bore the caption: “Soda breaks bones.”