Waypoint Kangaroo (23 page)

In the fourteenth month of the war, an Earth troop transport went off-course and landed in Arabia Terra, just north of Airy Crater. Martian infantry boiled out of the Chaos regions to the west and overran the invaders. The battle turned into a siege that lasted for weeks.

Airy Crater is larger now. The ground is irradiated to a depth of fifty meters, and nothing will grow there for several hundred years. The popular myth is that the Yarrow vineyard workers welcomed the first wave of Earth soldiers into the dome, then killed them with poison gas. It's a good story, but it's not true. I know how those soldiers died. I saw their helmet vids.

I also know exactly when and how Matthew Yarrow died. I wish I could tell Ward, but he doesn't really want to know. Knowing doesn't make it any better.

It's a mystery how many bottles of Meridiani Planum wine still exist. Most of the Yarrows' records were destroyed during the war. Rumors still circulate about the family having a secret underground cellar somewhere in the polar regions, but nobody's been able to find it, of course. The only thing we know for sure is how to identify a genuine bottle of Meridiani Planum Red Wine—by verifying the integrity of the seal over the cork and confirming the cryptographic hash in the holo code on the label.

It's not just a bottle of wine. It's a piece of history. Nobody would refuse to at least taste it, and that's all I'll need to deliver the nanobots and save their lives.

“So,” I ask Ward, “have you ever tasted this Red Wine, yourself?”

“No,” he says. “I prefer whites.”

I can't tell if he's joking.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Dejah Thoris
—Deck 6, stateroom 6573

5 hours before my nanobot-flavored dinner with Ellie

As soon as I get back to my stateroom with the Red Wine, I lock the door, activate the comms dish, and call Jessica again.

This time she answers. She's wearing an olive-green, ribbed, wool pullover with patches on the elbows and shoulders. The room around her is dark except for a couple of computer displays and a few blinking lights on her medical instruments.

“Where the hell have you been?” she asks. “I've been trying to contact you for—” She shakes her head. “Never mind. Please confirm that you've secured all the equipment. Over.”

“Affirmative.” I pull the vial of plasma out of my jumpsuit and hold it up, transmitting vid from my eye. “I spun down a sample of my blood and separated out the plasma to extract the nanobots. By the way, why are you wearing an SAS commando sweater? Over.”

“We can discuss my fashion choices later. Give me a wideband radio spectrum view of that vial. I need to make sure the nanobots precipitated correctly. And please verify that you've kept the vial within half a meter of your body at all times. Over.”

I wiggle my fingers to adjust my eye's sensors, and a series of glowing outlines appears over my arm and hand. Tiny bright circles blink at the bottom of the vial. I pull it closer so Jessica will get a good picture. “Let me know when you've got enough. Over.” I leave the channel open, streaming data back to Earth.

Jessica nods at her display. “Serum nanobots look good. I'm uploading their new firmware now. Do not disconnect, repeat,
do not
disconnect your receiver until I say so. Over.”

I tuck the vial back into my jumpsuit and wait. After a couple of minutes of staring at the side of Jessica's head, I open the box containing the Red Wine, pull the bottle out of its tissue paper wrapping, and turn the label so we can both see it. “So will this do for the expensive booze? Over.”

She turns her head back to face me and says something in Mandarin. “Please tell me you did not steal that! Over.”

“Of course not,” I say. “I'm on a cruise ship. Everything's for sale. I paid with the platinum card.”

Jessica makes a fist, raises it as if she's going to slam it down on her desk, then slowly opens and lowers her hand. “Just in case you've forgotten. Let me remind you that we are trying to
hide
what we're doing. Is there some reason you think Lasher will
not
notice a ten
thousand
dollar purchase and demand an explanation? Over!”

“Relax,” I say. “He's got bigger fish to fry. If he does ask, I'll say I felt like having some fun on my vacation. That's what he told me to do, right? I'll tell him I was trying to impress a girl.” It's not a lie. I sure hope Ellie appreciates this outrageous wine.

“And how will you explain all these long-distance comms with me? Because he's going to notice that, too. And
I
am the one who gets court-martialed for running illegal medical experiments! Over.”

“You know about fancy wines, right? And … women … things? Yeah? I wanted to ask you for some guidance before my big date. There we go.”

Jessica glares at me. “Nobody is going to believe that.”

“Trust me, I can sell Lasher. Asking you for relationship advice wouldn't be the dumbest thing I've ever done.”

“I suppose that's true.”

She turns and looks offscreen. After a few minutes of her silent treatment, I put the bottle away and decide it might be good to change the subject while we wait.

“So tell me again why you're wearing a commando pullover in the dark?” I ask. “Because it's a very flattering look, and I wonder why you don't go with this particular ensemble more often. Over.”

“It's a funny story. I'll tell you later,” she says. “Upload complete. Your nanobots are now programmed to seek out and destroy cancerous and precancerous cells, and repair chromosome damage. Get them inside each of the affected people before noon tomorrow, and they should be all right. But first you'll need to let them multiply for a while.”

The nanobots replicate themselves using compounds found in my bloodstream—they have to, since multitudes of them need replacing every day as they wear out from normal operation or are destroyed by my body's natural defenses. I try not to think too hard about the fact that billions of tiny robots are cannibalizing each other's parts all the time inside my body.

Jessica walks me through the procedure. My vial only contains five cc's of nanobot serum, which is less than one percent of the volume of the wine bottle. In order to make sure that a single sip will deliver at least one nanobot into the drinker's bloodstream, I need more nanobots. And they need more fuel.

I pull a candy bar out of the mini-bar, break it into pieces inside a plastic bag, and grind the pieces into as fine a paste as I can between a metal spoon and the desktop. Then I scrape the candy paste into five empty plastic vials, use an eyedropper to transfer one cc of nanobot serum into each vial, fill it the rest of the way with water, close the lid, and shake to mix everything up before stowing the vials in another of my jumpsuit's many zippered storage compartments.

“Replication confirmed,” Jessica says after I scan the bottle. “Leave that for an hour and you're good to go.”

“Look, I know this is a stupid question,” I say, “but I have to ask. Are you sure I can't tell anyone about this? I could probably work the ship's doctor with a cover story. This will go a lot easier if I have some help.”
And I'm afraid I'll screw it up.
“Over.”

“No, no,
no,
and once again, NO.” Jessica leans forward. The fact that she's not yelling is even scarier than when she raises her voice. “Let me remind you that the very existence of these nanobots is classified Above Top Secret. Nobody finds out about this.
Nobody.
Best case, it causes a shipwide panic; worst case, Lasher is indicted before Congress and we all go to federal prison. Do you understand? Over.”

“Yes,” I say, “I understand. But if this is such a terrible risk—” I can't think of an elegant way to ask her what I want to know, so I just blurt it out. “You've never even met these people, Surge. Why do you care so much? Over.”

Jessica stares into the camera for what feels like a lifetime. “I'm a doctor,” she says, finally. “I took an oath.” She looks over her shoulder. “Dammit. I have to go. I probably won't be able to contact you again today, so it's very important that you get this right. Don't screw it up, Kangaroo. Those people are depending on you.” She pauses. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” I mutter. I wonder what the hell is going on back home.

The image of Jessica in my HUD reaches forward, then pauses. “One more thing. Stop calling me ‘Surge'! Over and out.”

My doorbell rings.

I float over and look through the peephole to see Jemison. She raps the door with her knuckles. “Rogers! Open up.”

The centrifuge is still strapped to the coffee table. If Jemison sees it, she's going to ask a lot of questions I don't want to answer.

“Just a minute!” I shout through the door. “I'm not decent! Let me get dressed first!”

I push back from the door, stuff the Red Wine back into its box, and shove the box into the bottom drawer of my desk. Then I launch myself to the coffee table, unstrap the centrifuge, and suck it back into the pocket, hoping the rush of air into vacuum isn't audible through the stateroom door.

I strip off my jumpsuit—with my luck, Jemison will have a reason to search me at some point—then yank open my closet and retrieve the first outfit I see: a pair of plaid pants and a short-sleeved, Hawaiian-print shirt. I pull on the clothes and open the door.

Jemison scowls at my wardrobe. “What the hell are you wearing?”

“You don't like it?” I say. “I'm trying to blend in.”

“Forget it,” Jemison says. “I need to show you something.”

That sounds ominous. “Is this murder-related?”

I can't decipher her expression. “It's easier if I just show you.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Dejah Thoris
—Deck D, security office

3 hours after I voiced my suspicions about the crew

Jemison leads me to the ship's main security office. I hope we can wrap up whatever this is in time for me to get a new outfit tailored for tonight. I'm thinking about that so hard, I don't even notice Mike and Danny flanking me as I float through the doorway.

They slam the door shut behind me and grab my arms. My reflex is to throw them off and get the hell out of there, but I suppress that and settle for glaring at Jemison. “Something you forgot to tell me, Chief?”

“Funny.” Jemison taps a control panel. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

The display screen in the center of the vid bank behind her lights up with what appears to be security footage. It takes me a few seconds to recognize one of the thruways on the Promenade, right next to—

“Oh,” I say.

It's a recording from the first night of the cruise, showing my drunken tirade in front of the Mars projection globe.

“You want to tell us about your friend?” Jemison asks.

“My what now?”

She freezes the image and points at the man standing next to me. “I don't know if you're actually drunk here, Rogers, but that is the worst goddamn brush pass I have ever seen.”

“What? No. No!” I shake my head, causing my whole body to move, and Mike and Danny grip me tighter. “I don't know who that is. I met him at dinner that night.”

“Right.” Jemison folds her arms. “And he just happened to follow you out of the dining room to have an extended conversation about a children's educational exhibit.”

“I was drunk! He was drunk! And the entire ship is designed to funnel passengers through the Promenade, because that's where all the retail shops are!”

“That's the best you've got?” Jemison says. “Did you not even bother to work up a cover story? Did you think we were just going to let you do whatever the hell you wanted on this ship?” She looks over my shoulder at Mike. “Check his fingers.”

Mike and Danny each grab one of my hands by the wrist and pry my fists apart. I resist the instinct to fight back. I can probably get some leverage by pushing off the floor, but I don't quite have my zero-gee sea legs yet.

The two security guards rub the tips of all my fingers—not very gently, either. What are they looking for? Chemical residue? What do they think I touched?

“Nothing here, Chief,” Mike says.

“Times two,” Danny says.

They release my wrists and clamp their hands on my shoulders again. I raise both hands as much as I can, palms forward, in a gesture of surrender. “Look, Chief—”

I'm suddenly staring at the business end of her stunner.
Damn, that's a fast draw.
“Don't even think about it.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about!” Now I'm getting angry. “I don't know who that guy on the vid is. And I don't know why you're pointing a gun at me!”

“Mike, Danny, cuff him,” Jemison says.

I will myself to keep quiet and stay still while Mike and Danny grab my wrists, yank them behind my back, and secure them together with something cold and metallic. I lose my cool again when they also bind my ankles.

“Oh, come on!” I say. “What the hell do you think I'm going to do?”

Jemison's lips have pressed themselves into a thin smile, but her eyes are still glowering. “You know, I didn't give you enough credit, Rogers. You really had us fooled. Even the captain. But you got sloppy with your computer hacking, or maybe just lazy. I don't know. I don't care. Whatever deal you were running on the side here, it's over.”

My stomach is churning almost as much as my mind. Why am I so anxious, when I know I didn't do what she's accusing me of? The computer thing is a problem, but all I did was set up an encrypted comms channel to the office—there's no way Jemison could tell who I was talking to, or about what.

I feel my arm and leg muscles tensing up, instinctively testing my restraints. I have to pull myself out of operations mode. If I fight back, Jemison will take that as further proof of guilt. Of course, pretty much anything I do right now is likely to aggravate her. I can't give her what she wants. How do I convince her of that?