Waypoint Kangaroo (37 page)

Fritz makes a face. “Military intelligence. Right.”

“We keep secrets for a reason.”

“Doesn't mean they're good reasons.”

“Both of you, shut up,” Jemison says. “Look at this.”

She turns her tablet toward us. The auto-composited image is dark and grainy, but it clearly shows a bulky figure standing next to a control station.

“He's wearing a pressure suit,” Fritz says. “A goddamn pressure suit!”

“But—” I shake my head. “It takes at least ten minutes to put one of those things on by yourself.”

“He was prepared for the worst,” Jemison says. “He didn't know if we could tamper with his life support, but he didn't want to be caught off guard.”

“Then you removed the oxygen,” Fritz glares at both of us. “Chief Gavilán was still alive. The alarms went off, and the hijacker looked for her, but she wasn't there.”

Jemison glares back at Fritz. “We couldn't have known that.”

“We screwed up her escape,” Fritz says. “You realize that, right? She might have made it out if we hadn't—”

“I'm not going to play this game,” Jemison snaps. “We can only work with what we know.”

“Fine. Let's review what we know.” Fritz holds up a fist and extends his index finger. “We know the fucker's in a pressure suit.” He extends another finger. “We know Ellie's not in the crawlway anymore.” Three fingers. “We know that suit he's wearing is insulated against electricity.”

He's wearing a silver ring on one of his fingers. Why does it look familiar?

“If Wachlin dragged Ellie back into Main Eng, she's already suffocated,” Jemison says. “It's been two hours. No air, remember?”

“He could have put a breather mask on her,” Fritz says, “or shoved her into a rescue bubble—”

“I'm getting tired of repeating myself. We only work with what we know.”

“Everything he's done so far indicates he wants to keep her alive!”

“We do. Not. Negotiate!”

All this shouting is unproductive. And it's making my headache worse.

“Can't we can get another look inside engineering?” I ask. “If you put me in a spacesuit—”

“Not feasible,” Jemison says.

“But you said the suits are insulated.”

Jemison looks at Fritz. “You want to tell him?”

Fritz folds his arms across his chest. “The hijacker electrified every crawlway connecting to Main Eng. The shortest path is twenty meters long. Our suits aren't rated against that much contact with bare conductors.” He finally turns to look at me. “You'd get zapped long before you got close enough to do your wormhole stunt.”

“There's no way to cut the power?” I ask.

“That entire section is powered directly by the ionwell,” Fritz says. “And we can't shut down the reactor from out here.”

“So what do we try next?” I look from one scowling face to the other. “You guys did spend the last two hours coming up with a new plan, right?”

“We wait,” Jemison says.

I'm confused for a moment. Then I blink my left eye HUD over to a clock.

“The tugs,” I say.

Jemison nods. “NAVDEF is offline now. We've still got time to move the ship.”

There's not much I can do to help with this part. One of the pilots on the crew will take control of the remote-controlled tugs and dock them with
Dejah Thoris.
Then, when they've been secured, the pilot will engage the tugs' rocket engines at maximum burn, pushing the massive cruise ship off course just enough to miss crashing into the planet. And once we're in Mars-controlled space, we'll be able to get more assistance from other vessels.

“No,” Fritz says suddenly. “Oh, no.”

I look around. Jemison also seems confused. “Now what?”

“We're rotating,” Fritz says, looking at his wristband. “The ship is rotating.”

“Why would Wachlin want to rotate the ship?” I ask.

“He's going to fire the engines.”

“But you said—”

“The tugs,” Fritz says. “He's going to fire them at the tugs.”

Jemison curses like a sailor, yanks the privacy screen back, and tears out of Sickbay. Dr. Sawhney stops examining another patient and gives Fritz and me a curious look.

“What's going on?” Sawhney says.

“I need to get to the briefing room,” I say, unzipping myself from the bed.

“I cannot allow that,” Sawhney says, moving over to my bed. “You are still recovering from your injuries.”

I give him what I hope is a threatening look. “Doctor, if we don't figure out how to take back this ship, nobody is going to recover from their injuries.”

*   *   *

Fritz reluctantly helps me out of Sickbay and into the nearest elevator. He presses the button for the briefing room.

I suddenly realize where I've seen his ring before. Silver, segmented, inscribed with starbursts. It's the same one Xiao was wearing. It's their wedding band.

Fritz Fisher's husband is dead.

We ride in uncomfortable silence for a few seconds. Fritz's breathing is ragged. He's distracted, not thinking clearly. I know the feeling. But I need him to get past it. Everyone on this ship and in Mars Capital City needs his help.

“You can feel the ship moving?” I ask.

“Inertia,” Fritz says, staring at the wall. “The hijacker's pulsing the RCS thrusters, changing the orientation of the ship. We're floating inside it, so we can feel it.”

“
You
can feel it,” I correct. “That's got to be a pretty subtle motion. And what's RCS?”

“Reaction Control System. Maneuvering jets.”

He's definitely distracted. I need him to pay attention. I need him to focus. He can't think right now because he's using all that mental energy to hold back his rage. I need him to blow off some steam.

And so help me, I think I need to talk about this, too.

“I'm sorry about Xiao,” I say.

Fritz continues staring at the display above the elevator door.

“Your husband was a hero,” I continue. “He gave his life while performing his duty. I don't know if you've seen the security vid, but I think you should be proud of how Xiao protected everyone—”

Fritz launches himself off the other side of the elevator and pins me to the wall, one hand on the railing, his other arm against my neck.

“Ow,” I say.

“His name is
Xiao,
” he says. I still can't hear the difference.

“Fritz—”

“Shut up,” he says, spitting saliva in my face. “I don't care what you think.”

I hate it when people spit in my face.

I work my arm inside his reach, push his elbow away from my neck, and slap his face as hard as I can. Fritz screams and hammers his fist against the wall. I take advantage of his backward momentum, turning him to face the wall and pinning him there. His screams turn to sobs after a few seconds.

“Feel better?” I ask after he quiets down.

“I'll live.”

He struggles out of my grip. I let him go. At least he's not crying anymore. That might even have been a joke just now.

“How did you know?” he asks, wiping wetness from his eyelashes.

“Your wedding rings.” I point at his hand.

A smile flutters across Fritz's reddened face. “He insisted we get matching rings. Everything fair and equal, that was his thing.”

“He was a hero,” I repeat.

“I didn't want him to be a hero,” Fritz says. “I wanted him to stay alive.”

“I'm sorry,” I say. “But he's gone. We have to help the thousands of other people on this ship who are still alive—”

“I'm not blinded by grief,” Fritz snaps. “But I
am
sick of everyone assuming Chief Gavilán is dead. She's not helpless.”

“She's an engineer, not a soldier.” And as much as I want to believe that Ellie's a match for Alan Wachlin—

“Eleanor Gavilán is still alive,” Fritz says. “Because if she's not, then my husband died for nothing. And I won't believe that.”

His red eyes look more angry than mournful now. I know how he feels. I've known too many heroes.

“Okay. She's still alive.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “But best case, she's in a rescue bubble, which means she's trapped and can't do anything. She's counting on us now. She's counting on
you.
So tell me. What does she want you to do?”

Fritz glowers at me for another second, then blinks and looks at the wall. “She wants us to save the ship.”

“Okay.”

“And punish Xiao's murderer.”

“Sure.”

“I mean it.” Fritz turns back to me. “Like the wrath of God.”

I should discourage him from feeling vengeful. But if I've learned one thing from dealing with people, it's that vengeance can be a powerful motivator. Maybe not the best way to live your life, long-term, but I don't care if Fritz needs therapy next year. I want him to have the chance to worry about that later.

And
I
want to hurt Wachlin too.

“Good,” I say. “Let's go smite this motherfucker.”

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Dejah Thoris
—Deck B, officers' briefing room

18 hours until we might die and take half of Mars with us

The briefing room is as bright as ever, with the flat lighting common to always-on command centers everywhere. But the faces around the table—Santamaria, Jemison, Galbraith, Logan, and Fisher—are dark. We've now tried three different ways to foil Wachlin's plan, and been defeated all three times.

Galbraith plays back exterior camera vid alongside recorded radar displays. On the vid, a few faint points of light—maybe stars, more likely asteroids—streak by as the ship rotates, putting the approaching tugs directly behind the main engines.

The image ripples as the engines flare, lighting up the entire screen with a two-kilometer-long tail of white plasma. At the same time, the three nearest blips on the radar display disappear. The other blips veer off, but the ship rotates again, turning its pillar of flame to follow. Only one blip escapes.

Red lights, trilling noises, and we lose gravity again. I grab the conference table and brace myself for acceleration to resume, then stop when I notice nobody else doing the same.

“Why isn't he turning the engines back on?” I ask.

Galbraith gestures at the tactical display on the tabletop. “We're already at speed and trajectory. It's pure ballistic flight now.”

“And if we have to chaperone passengers in zero-gee, we have fewer resources to do anything else,” Logan says.

“I've moved the last tug out of range,” Galbraith says. “It's on a parallel course, but we can't get it close enough for docking.”

“Unless we can knock out both RCS and radar systems,” Jemison says, “the X-4s don't have a chance either.”

“We can disable the main avionics package at the top of the ship,” Galbraith says, bringing up a schematic of
Dejah Thoris,
“but there's a backup rig in engineering that we can't get to. And the RCS mounts are hardwired to nav controls. We can send people out there in pressure suits, but there's no way we can disable all of them in six hours.”

“What? It only took two hours to disable the navigational deflectors,” I say.

“The NAVDEF lasers run on internal power,” Galbraith says. “We just had to cut the lines inside the ship. The RCS pods are external, and each one has its own onboard computer and fuel supply. And they're all over the ship.” She lights up the schematic with a constellation of red dots. “It takes a lot of thrust to turn this much mass.”

All I can think to say is, “Shit.”

“In six hours we'll be out of position for course correction,” Galbraith says.

“So how many of these pods do we need to disable?” I ask.

“That's not feasible,” Fritz says. “The RCS system can function with up to eighty percent of the pods offline.”

“What about all those passengers you recruited?” I ask. “Didn't you have a whole bunch of civilian engineers taking out the deflectors?”

“Not enough pressure suits,” Logan says. “We can't get the coverage we need in time.”

“Even with service robots helping?” I ask.

“Serv-bots are offline,” Galbraith says.

“What? Why?”

“We found a computer virus,” Fritz says. “When we ran the core diagnostic. He was trying to reprogram our robots.”

“Just like he did with NAVDEF,” Jemison grumbles.

“And the lifeboat launch systems,” Logan adds.

“We don't know how many bots were affected,” Galbraith says. “We shut down all of them to be safe.”

“What was he reprogramming the robots to do?”

Galbraith frowns. “We didn't really want to wait and find out.”

“We need to disable the drive rockets,” Fritz says. “He's using them as a giant plasma cannon. No ships can approach us without getting fried. If we can't get nav control back, we need to take those rockets offline.”

“Agreed. Options?” Santamaria asks.

“The X-4s will have a fighter escort,” Jemison says. “They can fire a missile into the main engines.”

“Wait a minute,” Fritz says. “I said ‘disable,' not
destroy
—”

“Just one Fox,” Jemison says to Santamaria, ignoring Fritz. “The blast will shove the ionwell up into the ship. That should crack the shielding.”

“And it might also break open fuel lines or plasma conduits,” Fritz says. “The explosion could compromise the superstructure and tear the ship in half.”

“These guys know how to aim,” Jemison says to Fritz.

“That's not the point, Chief.” Maybe my pep talk in the elevator worked a little too well. Fritz looks like he's ready to ask Jemison to take this outside. “A detonation that close to the reactor will have unpredictable results. We can't risk it.”