Waypoint Kangaroo (8 page)

The agency's Galle Crater station was barely thirty meters underground. It was my first assignment after getting my field agent certification, and the post I vacated on the first day of what turned out to be the Independence War. I didn't want to stay, but I still felt bad abandoning my fellow station officers in the middle of a crisis.

I never saw any of them again.

“Are you staying in Capital City?” Jerry asks.

I shake my head. “Polar ice cap tour. One of those package deals. You?”

“I … haven't decided yet,” Jerry says.

His expression is thoughtful as he studies the thermal view of Mars, and it suddenly occurs to me to be suspicious. What kind of divorced, middle-aged salesman takes a multiweek vacation on impulse, without planning, and without any traveling companions? No girlfriend, no drinking buddy, not even a destination he's been dying to see since childhood?

Just as suddenly, it occurs to me that I could easily be describing myself—at least, my cover story. But I'm playing a tourist. I
have
somewhere to go and something to do. Jerry seems to have neither in mind.

“What are you running from, Jerry?” I ask.

He hangs his head. “Is it that obvious?”

“I should also add that I'm not looking to hook up,” I say.

We stare at each other, then both burst out laughing.

“Sorry,” Jerry says after catching his breath. “I didn't mean to give you the wrong idea.”

“'Sokay,” I say. “Comes with the territory when you look as good as I do.”

I have trouble finishing the sentence. Jerry doubles over with laughter, and I clutch the railing next to the control panel to keep from falling over. It feels good to laugh. Even if it did take two or three liters of alcohol to get here.

An elderly couple walks past and looks at us as if we're crazy. I point at the display and call out to them. “Mars! It's hilarious!”

I feel something at my elbow and turn to see a uniformed crew member giving me the stink-eye. He's young, early twenties maybe, and his slim build belies his strength. He gets a firm grip on my arm and stands me upright.

“Can I help you gentlemen find your way back to your berths?” he says.

At first I think he's saying “births” and I wonder why he's being so philosophical and metaphorical. My alcohol-soaked brain rolls the first coherent words it finds down to and out of my mouth.

“I never knew my mother,” I say. “Not really. I mean, maybe I was an orphan and maybe I wasn't. Who's to say? You don't know. Who are you again?”

The crewman stares at me impassively, and some small, quiet part of my brain wonders how often he has to do this. He taps his glowing blue earpiece with one hand and says, “Guest assistance in Promenade section four, please.”

Two more crewmen appear behind him. One is a taller, bulkier fellow, and the other is a woman, about the same height as Blue-Ear but more muscular. The new arrivals are wearing the same blue earpieces, so I decide I need to make up different nicknames for them.

“I'll call you ‘Chunk,'” I say to the bulky fellow, pointing a finger past him down the corridor. I turn and smile at the woman. “And you're ‘Daisy.'”

Daisy frowns at Blue-Ear. “Didn't I see these two at the Captain's Table tonight?”

Blue-Ear nods. “Yeah. Captain must have been feeling generous with the vino.”

Something clatters behind me. I turn my head to look at the same time that Blue-Ear spins us both around, and the effect is more than a little dizzying.
Have I really drank that much? Drunk that much? Is it “drank” or “drunk”? Shit.

Suddenly I'm staring at the high ceiling of the Promenade and I have a very strong sense of vertigo. There's no up or down in space, right? But I'm feeling gravity. That ceiling is very far away. This is all very confusing.

My free arm, the one not being held by Blue-Ear, swings out, searching for something solid to brace against. My hand clutches at a shoulder. I pull myself upward and see that it's Daisy, not looking very happy about this interaction.

“Sorry,” I say. “Seem to be having trouble with my balance—”

She pushes my hand away, but it swings back toward her—that arm appears to be even more confused than the rest of my unsteady body. Daisy deflects it again, this time grabbing my forearm and using my momentum to spin me back around to face Blue-Ear. He grabs my collar and yanks me forward, away from Daisy.

“That's great,” she says. “I was wondering if I'd get groped tonight.”

“On the bright side,” Blue-Ear says, “just two more and you'll get your self-defense stripes.”

“Funny.”

“Was an accident,” I say over my shoulder. The dizzy feeling intensifies, and my face smacks into Chunk's palm. He pushes me back up and grabs my disobedient arm. “Oh, hey, thanks.”

“Let's move out of the thruway, sir,” Blue-Ear says.

Daisy eyes me as I struggle in his and Chunk's grip. “You want any help there, Mac?”

“We got this one,” Chunk says. “You might want to grab that other guy before he puts his head through the screen. Or worse.”

“Frozen crap on a stick,” Daisy mutters, then goes after Jerry, who's crawling over the railing and into the display alcove.

My uninhibited male brain can't help but admire Daisy's backside as she leans forward and pulls Jerry back from the edge, and I'm momentarily envious of him. Why aren't I the one being manhandled by the athletic Valkyrie?

“Hey,” I say to Chunk and Blue-Ear as they drag me away. My legs don't seem to be working, and my feet drag along the deck, making occasional squeaking noises. “I'm not drunk, you know.”

“Whatever you say, sir,” Blue-Ear says.

“I've got a hollow leg!” I think I'm singing now. Jerry appears to be dancing with Daisy, or possibly wrestling. Hard to tell from here.

“Just another Sunday night, huh, Greg?” Chunk says to Blue-Ear.

Blue-Ear shakes his head. “Glad I joined the navy.”

*   *   *

There are no clocks anywhere on this ship. Well, not literally, but there are no time-telling devices in most places where they would actually be useful to passengers. No clocks in my stateroom, no clocks in the elevators, no clocks in the dining areas. It's somewhat counterintuitive, considering how tightly scheduled all shipboard activities are. For example, breakfast service ends at 11:00 a.m. precisely—and I mean
precisely
; there's actually a metal shutter that closes over the buffet area—and lunch doesn't start until 11:30, so there's a whole half-hour when the only food option available appears to be vegetation from the cocktail bars.

Okay, it's probably not quite that bad, but that's how it feels when I stagger out of bed at 11:05, wondering just how much alcohol I consumed last night. I shamble from one dining area to another, watching other passengers finish off their meals and gazing forlornly at the closed-off serving sections where, mere minutes ago, heaping piles of hot, salty, possibly deep-fried foods were just waiting to be shoved into my face.

I spend probably a full minute staring at a half-eaten strip of bacon on someone's discarded plate, at war with myself over whether to stoop that low, until a boxy cleaning robot comes along and clears the table. My stomach rumbles. My head hurts. A lot.

I have many important questions to consider. Why Paul put me on this ship. What it means that the captain is also in the loop. But most important, where the hell I'm going to find some goddamn food right now.

If this were a planned mission, I'd have emergency rations in the pocket. But it's not, so I don't. And those analgesics I pulled earlier expired and froze solid two years ago. I took them anyway. They didn't help.

The word HEADACHE pops into my head, followed by the word REMEDIES. Not just the words as abstract concepts—those specific letters, rendered in a very specific font. And this is in my memory, not in my HUD. Why am I remembering this? Where did I see this?

Then the full image blossoms in my consciousness, and it might as well be accompanied by a heavenly chorus singing
Hallelujah
: it's Sola's Sundries, the always-open gift shop on the Promenade. I remember the animated picture window advertising all kinds of personal items, including HEADACHE REMEDIES. Hell, they might even have some snacks for sale. Delicious, sodium-laden snacks.

Now I just have to find my way out of the buffet and down to the Promenade.

One might think that a pleasure cruiser designed to ferry mostly elderly passengers between planets would be easily navigable on the inside. One would, in the case of
Dejah Thoris,
be as wrong as the day is long. Because passengers are trapped inside this technological marvel for a week or more at a time, and if they get lost, well, there's always a helpful crew member nearby prepared to guide them back to the nearest bar.

I'm not sure how many times I circle the buffet, dodging cleaning robots, before I finally find a human crew member who's willing to stop and show me to an elevator. Maybe they thought I was running laps or something. The elevator buttons are helpfully marked with symbols as well as letters and numbers, and I stab at the one that looks most like a shopping bag.

A moment later, the elevator dings, and the doors open to reveal a lanky young man holding a computer tablet.

“Good morning!” I'm sure he's not actually shouting, but my eardrums feel like they're about to burst. The bright lights of the Promenade flood around him, causing my eyes to tear up, and I can barely read his name tag: WARD. “How are you doing today, sir? Do you have exciting plans for the afternoon?”

My throat makes a weird grumbling noise before I can convince it to speak. “I'm actually looking for a little less excitement right now.”

“I understand, sir. Have you heard about our wide variety of onboard excursions?” Ward asks, shoving the tablet in my face. It's showing an animated brochure. The motion makes me queasy. “We offer astronomy shows and spacewalks, if you want to see the stars—”

“I think I'd rather stay inside, thanks.” I stagger out of the elevator and past Ward. He follows me down the Promenade.

“Not a problem.” Ward taps at his tablet and holds it up again. It's still moving too much. I look away. “We offer several behind-the-scenes tours of
Dejah Thoris.
Did you know this is the largest civilian spacecraft ever built?”

“By Earth,” I say without thinking.

“Sorry, sir?”

I stop myself before spewing a whole dossier of intel:
Mars Orbital Authority has a four-million-cubic-meter drydock in high orbit. LiuWuJiang has a mining collar roaming the asteroid belt that can expand to a diameter of one thousand kilometers. Porta Collina InterPlanetary is assembling a solar sail the size of the friggin' Moon—and they would have finished it a year ago, if the agency hadn't sent a team to sabotage it.

Instead, I say, “Other planets have built bigger spaceships.”

“Very true, sir. Do you work in the industry?” Ward asks. His plastic smile remains in place, though I can see his eyes losing it a little. It must be tough getting rebuffed all day by grumpy passengers who just want another damn drink.

“I just do research.”

“Desk jockey, eh?” Ward sneaks the tablet under my nose again. “Have you ever seen an actual, working ionwell drive up close?”

The tablet shows an animated image of a uniformed crew member standing on a catwalk above a large circular thing with lights chasing around its circumference. I start to feel nauseated and push the tablet aside. “I'm not really interested—”

“For just a nominal fee,” Ward says, “you'll get a full hour in our engineering section with one of our crew specialists, who will explain how
Dejah Thoris
's ionwell reactor produces the electroplasma energy that powers—”

“Look, friend.” I point to the gift shop, which may conceal within its depths a magical cure for this pounding inside my skull. “I'm just trying to get something to kill this hangover.”

He raises the tablet toward me again. Now it's showing a payment page with a blinking signature box. “For just a nominal fee, sir.”

I squint at him. “You work on commission, don't you?”

Ward shrugs. “You might be seeing a lot of me this week, sir.”

Fuck it.
Paul stuck me here, he can damn well pay to ease my suffering. I press my thumb down on the signature box until it flashes green.

“Thank you, sir!” Ward grins and yanks the tablet away. “One of our crew guides will come by your stateroom at two o'clock to take you to where the tour starts. If you're not in your room, just look for any crew member and tell them you're on the 2:00 p.m. engine room tour. They'll direct you to the right place.”

“Great.” I push myself off the wall and am able to stand upright on my own. “I'm going to leave you now.”

“Have you tried some ‘hair of the dog'?” Ward keeps talking even after I turn my back to him. “I hear that a Bloody Mary is an excellent hangover cure. You can get one at the Red Sky Bar, at the far end of the Promenade!”

“So helpful,” I mutter, and resume my pilgrimage to Sola's Sundries.

 

CHAPTER SIX

Dejah Thoris
—Deck 6, Stateroom 6573

How the hell is it mid-afternoon already

My headache has abated slightly by the time someone pounds on my stateroom door at five minutes to two. Unfortunately, my recuperative nap coincided with lunchtime, and I still haven't eaten anything aside from that packet of salted cashews I found at the gift shop. I open the door to yet another smiling crew member, name-tagged PARVAT.

“Aren't cruise ships supposed to have ridiculous amounts of food available for consumption at all times?” I ask.