Waypoint Kangaroo (41 page)

“What?”

“If a decision has to be made,” Oliver says slowly, “it's twenty million people versus six thousand.”

I didn't think I could get any angrier. I remind myself that Oliver's just the messenger. “I'm not very good at math,” I say. “And I have friends on that ship.”

“We will do our best to save everyone,” Oliver says, “but if a decision has to be made—”

“Then I'll make it!” I bang my fist against a bulkhead and immediately regret it. Bulkheads are very solid. “It's
my
responsibility,
Lieutenant.
”

Oliver exhales. “Perhaps we should stretch our legs.”

*   *   *

We suit up and go outside on the hull. We have only an hour to rehearse what's going to happen when I open the pocket again.

I can't actually practice what I need to do. Opening the pocket with a fifteen-meter aperture takes a lot out of me. We just have to hope, based on my vital signs, that my body's had enough time to recover. All we can do is measure things, rig tethers, and talk through the steps until I'm sick of hearing them.

Colonel Brutlag gives us an update at one hour from waypoint zero. If this plan doesn't work, Mars Orbital Authority is prepared to use their planetary defense platforms to cut
Dejah Thoris
to pieces. There's no guarantee they can carve the ship into small enough sections to significantly reduce Martian casualties, but there would at least be a chance.

Spending six thousand lives to save twenty million.

Fuck that. I'm going to save everyone.

Or die trying.

Oliver calls for Kapur and two other spacemen to secure the cables attaching me to the transport's hull. It feels like forever while they check, double-check, and triple-check the rigging.

“Ready,” Kapur calls, finally.

“I'm detaching myself from the hull,” I say, disengaging my boots.

The transport has maneuvered into position for the delivery.
Dejah Thoris
is behind me, five kilometers away, looking like a toy. Our fighter escort has moved behind the transport, out of the line of fire. Past the fighter, I see dozens of other shapes. I blink my eye into radio mode and see the colorful pulses of spacecraft nav beacons—civilian, merchant, and military. All Martians. Ready to push
Dejah Thoris
as soon as we disable her engines.

The spacemen have set up a ring of marker buoys next to the X-4 transport, and Oliver has aimed it at
Dejah Thoris.
The ring is fifteen meters across. That's my target.

I reach the end of my tether, one meter short of hitting the ring, and stop with a jerk. I take a deep breath. One meter is not much margin for error, but I don't know if I can place the pocket any farther off-center from my body. Even this is a long shot. I've only been able to do it once in the lab.

Well, I'm only going to get one chance at this. I'd better get it right.

I sip some water from the dispenser in my helmet. It probably won't do any good at this point, but it couldn't hurt. And it feels vaguely useful.

“I'm in position,” I report.

The engines cut out, and the stealth canopy deploys again, putting me in darkness except for the ring of blinking buoys.

“Vitals are good,” Jessica says over the radio.

“You are go to activate the wormhole device when ready,” Oliver says.

“Copy that.”

This wouldn't be such a bad place to end. I'll have laid down my life in the line of duty. I'll have used my unique abilities to do something nobody else could. I'll have done it to save innocent lives.

But I don't want to die here. I want to live through this.

I want to capture Alan Wachlin alive.

“Delivery in three,” I say aloud.

I want to make Wachlin pay for the murders he committed.

“Two.”

I want to punish Wachlin for taking Ellie Gavilán hostage.

“One.”

I want to hurt Wachlin. A lot.

“Now.”

I stare at the center of the target ring and visualize the unpainted side of a wooden shield. I imagine it not directly in front of me, but above me, fifteen meters wide and lined up with the ring of marker buoys.
Right there. Up there.
Away
from me. Out the back door.

I open the pocket.

Several buoys on the closest part of the ring disappear behind the bottom edge of the portal. The event horizon flickers less than half a meter from my face.

The tug has been accelerating at full burn for three hours. It comes tearing out of the pocket at over a million meters per second. It's a good thing we're in vacuum, otherwise the sonic boom would probably kill me.

I feel a shudder as the tug punches a hole through the stealth canopy. It closes the distance to
Dejah Thoris
in the blink of an eye.

The explosion has nearly faded by the time I twist myself around to look. The ruptured canopy has detached from the transport and is spinning away, giving me a clear view of the debris cloud expanding around
Dejah Thoris
's stern.

“Delivery confirmed!” Jemison shouts over the radio. “Ionwell is offline!”

“Nice shooting, sir,” Kapur says as she reels me back in.

“Thanks,” I say, not trying to disguise my shaking.

“Spacemen, help the major back inside,” Jessica says. “He's having a panic attack.”

I don't love that cover story, but it sells. I touch down on the hull and feel like throwing up. Kapur grabs my shoulder and steadies me.

“Something's happening,” says one of the other spacemen.

“We're getting gravity,” says Jemison.

That's not right. With the main engines disabled, there can't be any significant acceleration.

I blink my eye to telescopic magnification. I see maneuvering thruster pods firing all over
Dejah Thoris,
turning the ship. It starts spinning on its long axis. Then the thrusters fire in a different direction, turning it end over end. The jets keep firing, increasing the spin rate and the rotation around all three axes.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I say.

I hear Jemison cursing. Then the radio goes dead.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

X-4 transport—Situation room

21 minutes from waypoint zero

Kapur leads us back inside to the situation room behind the bridge. Colonel Brutlag and the rest of his detachment are there with Oliver and Jessica. Nobody looks happy.

Brutlag stands in front of a wall-sized tactical display.
Dejah Thoris
is spinning madly. I wonder how much torque the superstructure can take.

“She's pulling up to three gravities with every new rotation vector,” Brutlag says. “Anyone who isn't puking their guts out is having a hell of a time moving around.”

“It's worse than that,” Jessica says. “We're talking about four thousand civilians without variable-gravity training. They're getting thrown around like rag dolls. Broken bones, concussions, lacerations—”

“How often is the rotation changing?” I ask.

“Hesch?” Brutlag yields the floor to his pilot, a lanky man with pale eyes and stubble covering the lower part of his face.

“New vector every three to five seconds,” Hesch says. “I doubt anyone can keep their bearings long enough to operate any controls.”

The constantly changing rotation also makes it impossible for any ship to dock with
Dejah Thoris.
And we can no longer maintain line-of-sight with the comms dish on the hull. We're completely cut off from Santamaria and his crew.

“We're mapping the pattern,” Oliver says. “The changes are very fast. The hijacker must be using a computer program, which means it's only pseudo-random, and we should be able to predict it. But it will take time to gather enough data to reverse-engineer the program.”

“Four thousand civilians,” Jessica says, staring daggers at all of us. “The longer we wait, the more serious their injuries become. Some of those people will die.”

“There is another option,” Brutlag says.

“Let's hear it,” I say.

“We have two plasma beam cannons on board,” Brutlag explains. “Each PBC disassembles into five separate components, and each part can be carried by one spaceman. We move to within half a kilometer of
Dejah Thoris.
Our fighter escort deploys countermeasures to jam her sensors. The spacemen jump in pairs, each pair carrying two of the same component, and latch on to the hull with grappling claws.

“Every spaceman who makes it onto the hull claws his way to an airlock and enters the ship. Once inside, they assemble the weapon, blast their way into the engineering section, and take out the hijacker.”

I should tell him this plan is completely insane, but after what I just did, I'm in no position to criticize.

“We're fifteen minutes from waypoint zero,” I say. “Is that enough time?”

“We don't need to deflect the ship that much,” Hesch says. “We can still bounce it off the atmosphere. It'll be rough, but it doubles our time margin. We do the math right and we'll barely scratch the paint.”

“And if we don't do the math right?”

Hesch looks at me. His mouth is a thin, determined line. “We lose one ship to save half a planet, sir.”

This is the worst headache I've ever had.

“We need to contact all the spacecraft around Mars,” Oliver says. “They need to coordinate their intercepts.”

“And we need medical triage facilities for four thousand people,” Jessica says. “Colonel, permission to open text communication links with Mars Orbital.”

“I'll get you both set up,” Brutlag says. “Do the math right, Hesch.”

“Yes, sir.”

*   *   *

When I got my spaceflight certification, I spent way too much time inside a “multi-axis trainer.” It simulates the wild spinning of an out-of-control spacecraft. The goal of the exercise is to keep yourself from vomiting for fifteen minutes.

It took me a full week and eight different attempts to pass that test. I'm sure vomiting is the best thing that's happening to anyone aboard
Dejah Thoris
right now.

After issuing orders to our fighter escort and setting up Oliver and Jessica with text comms to MOA, Colonel Brutlag escorts me down below. He wants another pair of eyes on this unorthodox deployment. I hover inside the observation pod above the main cargo bay while Brutlag puts on a spacesuit and joins the ten already suited spacemen lashing artillery components to their backpacks.

I recognize Kapur by her size and graceful movements. All the spacemen act as a unit, with synchronized fluidity. After securing the PBC parts, they lock small arms into suit holsters. Then they move on to checking their other gear, including the comically large metal claws attached to their forearms.

The cargo bay doors open, and I look out to see the spinning mass of
Dejah Thoris
filling the view. From half a kilometer away, it dwarfs the transport. The cruise ship's thrusters continue firing, jerking the gigantic vessel this way and that. The cargo section rotates past us, and I can see that a few containers are missing. I hope the ship holds together long enough for the spacemen to finish their job.

Colonel Brutlag shouts an order that I can't hear—I'm not tuned in to the X-4 comm channel. The spacemen line up in pairs against the open doors.

Brutlag raises his arm, and two spacemen pull their way into the middle of the open bay along a scaffolding. They turn themselves upside-down relative to me, bending their legs, getting ready to literally jump out of the boat.

Brutlag's arm drops. The first two spacemen launch themselves out of the cargo bay. At the same time, bursts of light start flashing outside—our fighter escort's countermeasures.

I blink my left eye to radio sensing. I'm dialed into the spacemen's burst locator beacons, so I can see when each one reaches
Dejah Thoris.

In less than half a minute, only Colonel Brutlag is left in the cargo bay. He turns and waves at me. “Can you see them, Major?”

“Yes,” I reply, watching the red dots blinking in my left eye. “Eight landed so far. The last two are touching down—shit!” One red dot just bounced off the hull. “One's been thrown off. One spaceman has been thrown off the ship.”

“Hesch, you got him?” Brutlag asks.

“Yes, sir. We're moving,” Hesch says over the radio.

The view out of the open cargo bay changes as the boat rotates and moves. I watch the blinking red dot as we chase it. My eye makes its speed fifty-two meters per second. The spaceman must have been launched just as
Dejah Thoris
changed rotation. Not enough to damage him, but more than enough to shake him up.

Hesch maneuvers the open cargo bay around him. The spaceman grabs onto the scaffolding. His grappling claw is a mangled mess of metal.

“We got him,” Brutlag says. “Let's get back into position.”

“Yes, sir,” says Hesch.

Brutlag closes the cargo bay doors and helps the spaceman down to the floor. After the room fills with atmosphere, I turn myself out of the observation pod and join them.

The spaceman's name is Lynch. He's sweating, and he grimaces as we pull off his helmet. The medical readouts inside show a lot of red lines.

“Looks like a cracked rib,” Brutlag says.

I detach the claw from Lynch's suit and turn it over, surveying the damage. “Well, at least we know what went wrong.”

“Yessir,” says Lynch.

I switched my eye to medical monitors to make sure Lynch didn't have any internal injuries, and now I see his heart rate shoot up.

Brutlag starts helping Lynch out of his suit. I'm just about to put the claw back in an equipment locker when I notice something unusual. I take an extra moment to blink my eye into a different scanning mode and confirm my suspicions.