Waypoint Kangaroo (38 page)

“Twenty million people on Mars are going to die if we don't,” Jemison says.

“Stress fractures from an explosion could cause the ship to shear into pieces,” Fritz says. “Then you're looking at
multiple
planet-killing objects.”

“You're exaggerating the danger—”

“Hey, who's the fucking engineer here?”

“That's enough, both of you,” Santamaria says loudly. “We have over six thousand souls on board. No missiles.”

Jemison grumbles. “Yes, sir.”

“Erica. Can we use that one remaining tug?” Santamaria asks, turning to Galbraith. “As a kinetic projectile. No detonation, just impact.”

“Not enough energy,” Galbraith says, changing the tabletop to a navigation display showing
Dejah Thoris
and the tug on parallel courses. “We'd have to send it away, then accelerate it back toward the ship. It won't have enough momentum when it hits to make it through the outer hull and the ionwell shielding. Plus, Wachlin's going to see it coming. He can still move the ship out of the way.”

Move out of the way.

I remember Oliver yelling that phrase at me, right before a weighted projectile came sailing out of the pocket and hit me square in the chest. I was wearing a spacesuit at the time, but it still hurt like hell.

Move out of the way.

We were at Science Division, working on the rotation problem. Because the portal is locked to my physical location in space, I can't actually get away from it. The portal always stays where I open it, relative to my body, and I can only open it facing toward me.

But I can choose where to position the portal. I can make it pretty big. And it doesn't always have to be right in front of me.

Move out of the way.

Boy, is this a bad idea. But we seem to have run out of the good ones.

“Captain,” I say, “could I have a word in private?”

“If this is about the wormhole device, Mr. Rogers,” Santamaria says, “you can speak freely. I've briefed everyone here on that tech.”

I blink at him for a moment. I guess his conversation with Paul covered many topics.

“What if you don't have to turn the tug?” I ask.

“I don't understand,” Galbraith says.

“What if you had enough empty space to burn it all the way until impact?” I draw a circle on the display next to the tug, then an arrow pointing from the tug into the circle. “I open the wormhole and you pilot the tug through the portal. We let it accelerate for a few hours on the far side. Then I open the wormhole again, rotated around the tug, one hundred and eighty degrees.” I draw a second circle with an arrow coming out of it, pointed toward
Dejah Thoris.
“The portal will be locked to the tug's position, but not its velocity. It'll come flying out again at high speed. Wachlin will never see it coming.”

Her face lights up. “Maybe.” She taps her keyboard, making numbers and trajectory lines dance across the tabletop. “Yes! That should work.”

Understanding ripples through the faces around the table. It feels good to be able to provide some hope.

“Where does the wormhole lead to?” Galbraith asks.

“Interstellar space,” I reply. “Light-years out. Plenty of runway.”

“But where, exactly? I'm just curious—”

“That's classified.”

“Wait,” Jemison says. “I thought you couldn't open the wormhole facing away from you.”

“I can't,” I say.

“So when you open it that second time, the tug's going to be coming straight toward you at an extremely high velocity.”

“That's the idea.”

“How are you going to get out of the way?”

I stare at the radar map. “I'm working on that part. Might need a little help.”

*   *   *

Captain Santamaria contacts the X-4 transport and explains the plan. They agree that it's the craziest thing they've ever heard, but they have no problems taking orders from Santamaria after he shows them the “1MB” tattoo on his right forearm.

Galbraith can't get me into a spacesuit quickly enough. I tell her I'll meet her in a minute and pull Jemison aside.

“No,” Jemison says.

“You don't even know what I'm going to ask you,” I say.

“Whatever it is, I'm sure it's ridiculous and unreasonable.”

I open the pocket and pull out the therm-pack containing the duffel bag. Her eyes go wide when I unzip the bag and hand her the bottle of Red Wine.

“Please tell me you did not steal that,” she says.

I'm flattered that she thinks I could. “Of course not. I paid for it.”

“And how did you—never mind, I don't want to know.”

“The nanobots are in here,” I say, pointing to the bottle. “You need to get everyone who was exposed to the PECC radiation from the Wachlins' stateroom to drink this.”

Jemison gapes at me. “You realize we'll all probably be dead soon, right? That it's not going to matter whether or not any of us will have increased risk for bone cancer?”

“Fuck that,” I say. “We're going to save this ship. And you're going to have grandchildren.”

She grimaces at the bottle. “I hate kids.”

“The universe loves irony.”

Jemison holds out a hand. I give her the duffel bag. She starts putting the bottle away, then stops, pulls out the cork, and puts it up to her lips and tilts back her head for a swig.

I blink my eye into sensor mode and watch as nanobots enter her bloodstream, outlining her limbs in a green glow.

“Thanks, Chief,” I say.

“Did you get Ellie to drink this stuff?” she asks, not looking at me.

“Yeah. At dinner last night.” The memory seems like it's from a different lifetime.

“Did
she
like it?”

I start laughing, then stop myself before it turns into something else. “She hated it.”

“I'll get it done,” Jemison says. “You get the hell out of here.”

“I'll miss you, too.”

“Save this ship.” She puts the cork back in the Red Wine and shoves the bottle into the bag. “Then I'll buy you a real drink.”

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Dejah Thoris
—Deck A, maintenance airlock

Approximately 10 minutes before I disembark

Galbraith and I wait in the airlock at the top of
Dejah Thoris
while Jemison sends a team to disable the avionics package. They're going to create a small blind spot in radar coverage that I can slip through. Nobody wants me to get fried by the engines. I can't die for at least another four hours.

It's a simple scheme, in theory: I jump off
Dejah Thoris
into open space. The X-4 transport picks me up. I open the pocket, and the tug flies inside at full burn. I close the pocket and wait. Three hours later, I open the pocket again, rotated, aimed at
Dejah Thoris,
and the tug comes screaming out to smash the ionwell before Wachlin can react. The X-4s board the ship and take down Wachlin, and other spacecraft push
Dejah Thoris
off its collision course.

Simple in theory, but a thousand different things can go wrong in practice.

Galbraith's voice crackles over my spacesuit radio. “Rogers, you are go for EVA.”

Extra-vehicular activity. That's one hell of an euphemism for what I'm about to do.

“Copy that,” I reply. “Let's do it.”

“Good luck,” Galbraith says.

“Oorah,” I reply. She gives me a funny look, steps out of the airlock, and closes the inner door.

Atmosphere hisses out of the compartment, and then all I can hear are the sounds inside my spacesuit: my own breathing, the rustle of fabric as I push open the outer door, the muffled clanging of my boots against the hull.

I'm wearing a jetpack this time, which makes it harder to move. I make my way to the top of the ship. I want to stay in the radar blind spot for as long as possible when I kick off.

“I'm in position,” I say when I reach the nose of the spacecraft. I already feel like I'm in open space. I can only see the ship if I look down.

“You're all clear,” says Galbraith. “Go when ready.”

I bend my knees, turn off the magnets in my boots, and straighten my legs as hard and fast as I can. My muscles are still sore from my electrifying experience in the crawlway, and I'm sure I make a pathetic grunt.

I sail away from the ship. I look down and watch it fall away. It's only relative motion; I'm still hurtling toward Mars, that reddish speck in the distance, but it feels like I'm moving awfully fast in the other direction.

My shadow slides across the hull. That doesn't seem right.

“He's turning the ship!” Galbraith yells.

“That wasn't much of a blind spot!” I reply, fumbling with the jetpack controls.

“Go. Go! GO!” Galbraith says, unnecessarily.

I find the firing control and push my thumb down. “Thrusting now!”

A few short bursts of gas rotate me into position, and then the thrusters open up, pushing me up and away from
Dejah Thoris.
A timer pops up in my helmet HUD. Galbraith told me I would have fifty seconds of fuel at full burn, and that should be enough to get me out of range of the ship's engines. But we thought I'd have more time in the blind spot than—what was that? Four seconds? Five?

The countdown timer reads forty seconds. I look back and see the ship rotating, its egg shape turning, the shadows on its surface changing.

Fuck!
Is there anything I can do to juice up this jetpack? If we were in atmosphere, I might try opening the pocket in front of myself and hoping that the vacuum sucks me forward—I don't even know if that would work.
Note to self: ask Oliver about it later. If you survive this.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Thirty seconds. I'm looking down into a honeycomb of massive engine bells, glowing but not yet firing. On another day, I might marvel at the beauty of this engineering feat. Right now, I'm about to crap my pants.

“I'm looking straight into the damn engines,” I say to the radio. “Am I clear yet?” I hear my voice cracking.

“Ten seconds,” Galbraith says.

The white light glowing inside the engines starts expanding.

“Well, fuck,” I say to no one in particular.

I'm dead. Nothing else to do. I close my eyes think about all the things I haven't had a chance to do with my life.

Well, at least I got to visit the Legendary Lands of Lore.

At least I got to meet Ellie Gavilán.

Everything around me seems to go quiet as I exhale. The blackness and silence and peace feel welcoming, as if they're telling me that I can stop worrying. Whatever happens now, it's out of my control.

Something cracks behind my head.

My eyes pop open instinctively. The noise was too dampened to have been inside my helmet. The jetpack? Maybe it's overheating or otherwise failing, from being pushed beyond its design limits.

Red text appears in the helmet HUD, covering my view of distant stars. It wasn't the jetpack—it was my life support backpack. I'm losing oxygen. Something must have struck the tank hard enough to fracture it. I could have run into a small rock or even a piece of dust. Speed kills out here.

“Debris impact,” I say aloud. I'm not sure why it matters, but I'd feel remiss if I didn't report in. “I'm losing oxygen.”

“You're almost clear,” Galbraith says. I know she's lying, but I appreciate the effort.

My entire body lurches forward, and my nose smacks into the faceplate of my helmet. I wonder if the jetpack is malfunctioning or just running out of fuel. Then a jolt of acceleration pushes my stomach down into my crotch, and keeps pushing.

“What—the—hell—!” I can barely speak. This isn't the jetpack. Even with Fritz's modifications, it was barely putting out half a gee of thrust. What I'm feeling now is at least two gravities, maybe three.

Galbraith is yelling over the radio. I can't make out what she's saying, but she sure sounds—happy?

Below me, a dozen miniature stars flare into being as
Dejah Thoris
's main engines ignite. A giant pillar of blue-white plasma fire surges toward me, disrupting my radio link with a burst of static. My faceplate darkens automatically to protect me from going blind, but I'm out of range. I can see that on the radar. Twenty-two hundred meters and increasing.

I'm in the dark except for the HUD readouts. Oxygen's down to eighty percent. Suit seals are intact. The thrusters cut out. More red indicators light up. Out of fuel.

But I'm alive. And according to my aching testicles, I'm still accelerating.

What the hell just happened?

“Rogers!” Galbraith shouts over the radio. Wachlin must have shut down the engines. Makes sense; he wouldn't want to push the ship too far off course. Just half a second in that fire would have vaporized me. “Rogers, are you there?”

“Still—here.” I wonder if my words sound more like groans. “What—is—?” The acceleration crushes the end of my question before I can get it out.

“Hang on, Rogers,” Galbraith says. “The cavalry just arrived.”

*   *   *

It takes me a few seconds to stop hyperventilating and figure out how to override the helmet's auto-polarization filter. My faceplate clears just before the acceleration stops. I look around and spot two familiar, sharp-edged, gunmetal-gray shapes, the same ones I've seen countless times swooping over battlefields and patrolling around Earth colony outposts.

The X-4 transport and its fighter escort.

“Oorah,” I say to no one in particular. I start laughing out loud. “OO-RAH!”

I wave at the two ships. The fighter dips its wings to acknowledge me, and the transport rolls until its airlock faces me. I don't think I've ever seen anything so beautiful in my whole life.