War Surf (20 page)

“Do we have weapons?” Sheeba asked. My peace-loving Sheeba wanted weapons?

“We got the welding rig.” Liam rubbed his chin. “Go see if you can find Juani.”

Unbelievably, Sheeba snapped to attention and dashed away like a gung-ho trooper.

A short while later, the five of us descended into the thin frigid air of Two’s ladder well—Juani, Sheeba, Vlad, Liam and me. Do you wonder why I allowed Liam to draft me into combat? We were going EVA, the chance I’d been waiting for.

“Stay quiet,” Liam whispered.

The commies were just on the other side of Two’s Down door. (The commies—listen to me. I’m starting to talk like Geraldine.)

Liam had sealed the blown-out door and reinforced it with heavy sheet metal, but Two’s ladder well was still re-pressurizing. My ears crackled and ached as denser air escaped through my eustachian tubes. The ladder felt ice-cold through my gloves. Liam warned us not to touch anything with our bare hands. Our breath made clouds.

Geraldine had given me her leaky space suit, but I delayed putting on the collapsible helmet. The nasty thing looked like a wad of duct tape dangling from my belt. Worse, the scary old suit had no self-sealing capability. One rip would mean total death.

Liam and Vlad wore the new white suits, and Sheeba wore a gray one only marginally more functional than mine. Juani shivered bravely in nothing but his inside-out uniform, work boots and gardening gloves. Apparently, these four suits represented A13’s entire inventory of EVA gear. Ye gilt, were we really planning to brave hard vacuum in these getups? Yes, for a little while, we would have to.

Liam’s plan was simple and hopeless. After we rescued the kiddies, we would exit through Deck Two’s airlock, then circle around to where Provendia’s well-armed troops were entering through the ruptured hull. The plan was to ambush the troops with chains, boots and one welding torch. Yeah, that’s right.

My plan, of course, was different. Once outside, I would grab Shee and surrender to the Provendia troops. What could be easier?

Juani tried to open the door leading into the pressurized section of Two. He looked chilled and vulnerable without a space suit, but since he suffered from spacesickness, he couldn’t go EVA. When the door’s wheel refused to budge, Liam and Vlad added their strength. Still, the wheel wouldn’t turn. Apparently, the blowout had damaged its gasket

Sheeba joined in. They made quite a sight, four people trying to turn a one-half-meter wheel. Finally, I scrambled up on Juani’s shoulders and kicked the top of the wheel with my boot. When the door let go, the pressurized air inside nearly broke its hinges. The gust threw us across the ladder well like a heap of crash dummies.

Imagine the bright light exploding from the solar plant. Feel how we squinted and covered our faces. After our long semidarkness, I felt as if my eyes were bleeding. My false optics usually adjusted for glare, but not this time—maybe because I’d missed that eye recalibration. Juani peeked through his fingers, and Vlad slowly uncovered his face. Liam unfolded two long scraps of gauze from his pocket. He tied one over his eyes and gave the other to Sheeba. Curse the graven gods, I wish I’d thought of mat.

The bevy of little trapped toads came pouring out through the bulkhead, cheering like foosball fans, and soon, everyone was hugging and laughing—molto syrupy moment. Slowly, the ambient temperature rose in the ladder well. Sheeba started handing the children up the ladder to Vlad, who cycled them in quiet groups through the safety lock. As she tickled their bellies and rubbed noses, I watched with relief. She was acting like her cheerful self again. Meanwhile, Juani hurried inside to restart the circulator pumps, and Liam cycled down to One to rescue the kids trapped there. I leaned against the wall and felt for the reassuring vibrations of whooshing and sluicing.

Eventually, we got used to the light, and Sheeba tugged her improvised mask down around her throat so she could work more easily. As she lifted the children, her slender muscles popped, and the white gauze danced around her throat like an air pilot’s rakish silk scarf. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Never had I felt such excruciating love.

After the kids were safely stowed on the deck above, Liam led us into the ops bay, where the light was less severe. The overturned desks and office supplies sprawled in massive chaos, and we picked our way through with care.

“First, Vlad and I go outside, see what the ‘xecs up to,” Liam said. He nodded at Sheeba and me. “You wait here.”

“But we can help,” I said, eager to get out.

“Right, Liam. We’re not babies.” Sheeba zipped up her suit and pulled on her gloves.

He shook his head. ‘Too dangerous.”

“But—”

“No.” He gave Sheeba a look that made her draw an exasperated breath. Then she sat on the floor to wait, and her luscious lips showed only a trace of a pout.

By now, I’d learned mere was no point in arguing with Liam, so I sat on the floor beside her. Inept as Liam might be with language, the punk knew how to get his way. So while Sheeba and I sweated in the overheated ops bay, Liam and Vlad slipped outside to run reconnaissance. Vlad would circle the tank prograde. Liam, retro. They would spy on the invading troops from opposite sides of the hull.

Juani joined us with a grin and a thumbs-up. His pimply, optimistic face reassured me. He said the circulator pumps were working just fine, and the air and water were flowing freely again. Even though spacewalking gave him vertigo, he still wanted to help with our mission, so while we waited, he layered more duct tape around our crumbling air hoses and entertained us with a stupid song about yellow bricks. By chance, I found a row of punctures in Sheeba’s sleeve, and he helped me plug them with sealer glue. After that, I examined every square centimeter of her suit while Juani did the same for mine.

Damn these old suits. The manufacturer should have been sued for not installing a self-repair function. I slathered glue over every suspicious scuff mark. Sheeba remained quiet and still, which was not at all her usual style. The three adorable creases between her eyebrows deepened to grooves. Surf the moment, I kept telling myself, but these leaky suits unzipped my peace.

Vlad was the first to return. He said Provendia had a small troop carrier hovering outside, and he’d counted eight commies entering through the blown-out hull. He didn’t get close, but from the rumbling noises in the walls, he thought they were trying to drill through Liam’s patch into the ladder well. I asked why they didn’t simply enter through the airlock, and Juani said the commies were too gutless to try that. Airlocks could be rigged with gas, he said, like euthanasia chambers.

“Would you do that?” Sheeba asked.

“We already did,” Vlad said bitterly, and Sheeba whistled through her teeth.

Recalling my own passage through the airlock, I studied Vlad’s lopsided face with new respect. Sheeba asked if the troops might come through the docking port on Deck One, but Juani said he and Geraldine had jammed the doors. I knew they’d sabotaged the dock, but I wanted details, and as usual, it wasn’t hard to coax Juani into talking. He said they’d dumped five tons of fully loaded shipping pallets on top of the cargo doors so they wouldn’t slide open.

“Sleek.” Sheeba did the palm-to-palm prote handshake with Juani.

“Fully loaded with what?” I asked.

“Product, man. That pro-glu crap they eat on Earth.”

Product? Heaven still had five tons of pro-glu? That much product translated into nontrivial cash value. I made a mental note to inform the staff as soon as I escaped. If we could relabel that product with new expiration dates, we might be able to recoup some of our war expense.

Liam kept us waiting a long time. Juani said he probably went inside Two for a closer look, and Vlad said maybe the troops spotted him. I could feel Shee’s jumpiness. I rubbed her arm to comfort her, all the while knowing how little I succeeded. She didn’t want me. She wanted that agitator. She was infatuated with his—what? Good looks? No, I was more handsome. Not to boast, but any jury would choose my superbly crafted features over his gauntness.

Was it his courage then? But hadn’t I proved my mettle time after time in the zones? He had no assets, no accomplishments, no eighty-story condo. All that punk could offer was the brevity of his life. He was a short-timer, a neophyte, a young man. Was that supposed to be some kind of achievement?

Youth is for sophomores. It’s stupid and embarrassing, a time to be endured and forgotten as soon as possible. When I think back—oh yes, I can still recall those queasy, hormone-drunken days. That was long before the Crash. Yes, I remember fumbling in the dark for girls’ clothing and overturned bottles and questions I couldn’t begin to articulate. The futile rage and confusion, the teapot tempests, wrecked cars, theatrics in restaurant doorways, desperate emails, lost hearts. Now as I wait through these last moments of my life, I want to fling out my arms and rage tempestuously, “Sheeba, you can’t be in love with that juvenile!”

“Relax, beau.” She squeezed my fingers. “He’ll be back soon with good news. I feel it.”

“Um-hm.” In the sweltering ops bay, I leaned my head on her shoulder.

No sooner had my nose settled under her chin than the mighty chief’s shadow fell across us. He took off his helmet and spoke rapidly in his subdued bad grammar. He’d been all through the blown-out section of Two. The Provendia troops were trying to drill into the ladder well, just as Vlad guessed.

Vlad said, “Juani’s seedlings already ruined. We could set a plasma fire.”

“I’m thinking explosion,” Liam muttered. “Blow the hydroponic tables around. Knock a few heads.”

The groves reappeared between Shee’s eyebrows. “Will people die?”

Vlad nodded fiercely. “We hope.”

But Liam chewed the ends of his mustache, ruminating. ‘Trick is to set off a little pop without rippin’ the X wall.”

“This is so lame.” I couldn’t refrain any longer from speaking. “Why do you even bother? Look at the trouble you’re causing your employers. They built this satellite, and they subsidize all your costs of living. You owe them your loyalty. How long have you been holding back those pallets of product?”

“Nass.” Sheeba edged away from me.

“Well, Shee, dammit, be fair. Who started this war?”

Liam caught hold of my collar and pulled me closer. He kneaded the smartskin fabric between his fingers as if testing its quality. His blue eyes glittered like cut glass.

“Gee say you a commie spy. Is she right?”

“That’s nonsense. I’m a tourist, the same as Sheeba. You trust Sheeba, don’t you?” Why had I opened my mouth? Now, he might not let me go EVA.

Sheeba wriggled her shoulders and tried to signal me, but I couldn’t read her meaning. She looked angry.

“Are you with us or against us?” Liam said.

I swallowed. “I’m with you.”

He released my collar but continued to hold me with his eyes. Quite a commanding power the kid had. “Prove it, Nasir. I want to believe you.”

Liam moved toward the door, and Sheeba followed, glancing doubtfully over her shoulder to see what I would do. Of course, I hustled along with the others. My entire escape plan depended on going EVA.

Inside the ladder well, the drilling noise echoed almost as fiercely as the sonic lathe. I pressed my hands over my ears and thought of the fresh pair of disposable eardrums waiting for me in Kat’s shuttle. When we cycled down to Deck One, I found myself back in full Earth-normal gravity, back at the bottom of the spinning bucket where I’d first awakened with a broken leg—how long ago? Four days?

Liam led us through the Up door this time, into the cargo bay. When we stepped over the sill, the first thing I saw were the bales of dried pro-glu stacked all the way to the low ceiling. The shipping pallets rested squarely on top of the huge sliding doors where Provendia’s freighters were supposed to dock. Five tons, Juani had said. It was hard to imagine anyone pushing through that much weight. Still, Provendia’s troops were notoriously resourceful. I was trying to estimate the number of bales when Liam’s low voice caught my attention.

“Sheeba, you want too much from me. I said no.”

Strange words. The sound drew me closer. In a closet-sized work area just off the main cargo bay, Liam and Shee were standing face-to-face, and he was running his finger gently across a gob of sealant crusted on her space suit, just at her collarbone. The sight stopped me cold.

Sheeba caught his hand and pressed it to her lips. “You need me, beau.”

Beau. That was my name. Sheeba child, what were you thinking? I found it very hard right then, very hard to forgive her for that. No doubt, brutal emotions played across my face, but no one was looking at me. Juani and Vlad were busy with some nitrogen cylinders.

Liam murmured so softly, I almost missed what he said. “Your suit’s not safe. Wait here, and if the commies break through, you get your chance to help.”

“I want to come with you,” she said.

Then he kissed her. “No.”

He glanced around and saw me watching. When he moved away to help Vlad lift the cylinders, I got a clear view of Sheeba’s dark golden face. She was glowing.

A death sentence is never definitive. The judge may schedule your execution, set the date and name the hour with a ponderous knock of the gavel, but it’s guesswork. First there are appeals, stays, reprieves. Then abject pleadings for pardon. Of course, you’re not innocent, but you probably know someone in office. You write letters, call friends. As you run out of options, you pray the killing apparatus will break down. You look for hiding places in your cell, under the cot, for instance, or up behind the ceiling fan. You make lists of promises. You dream of your past. Perhaps a time comes when you grow tired of waiting and yearn for death—but I doubt it.

Life is a lie we make up to hide in. I didn’t see Liam kissing Shee. I imagined it. Where’s my memory delete key? I want to punch the damn thing and forget. As I sit here waiting in the anteroom, my body feels vigorous and lucid, yet in a finite number of minutes, Heaven will pass beyond Earth’s shadow, and I will die. Can that be possible? Look at these hands, the fingers still work beautifully. Look at my strong, pearly nails. These hands are too good to throw away. Perhaps I can dig a hole through this steel deck with my fingernails. Perhaps I can cry out again for Sheeba.

Sheeba who glows in the dark.

In the cargo bay, she leaned against the wall, listening to the steel with her eyes shut, while Liam and Vlad went spacewalking to set their explosion. In the dimness, her olive skin merged with the shadows, and her fingertips drew circles in the oily black fungus, unconsciously revealing the graffiti underneath. Her lips parted. Perspiration darkened her uniform. She was mesmerized by the zone.

I wanted to grip her shoulders and shake her awake. This thrill won’t last, dearest. As soon as you get back to civilization, you’ll come down off your surfer high and see that juve for what he is—a prote agitator. The zone is a fantastical outland. It’s not our reality. It’s the Reel.

But Shee was in no mood to hear my warnings. The zone’s electric bliss held her fast in its grip. Eyes clenched tight, she pressed closer to the steel wall, intent on every faint vibration. Under the gray suit, her long, lovely muscles tensed and quivered. I knew how she felt—waiting for action, elevated on stress and adrenaline. Hadn’t I experienced that sweet high? Zone addiction. I had no choice but to save her—if necessary, against her will.

To do that, I needed to get outside the hull and signal Provendia. But Liam wouldn’t let me go EVA. He said Geraldine almost died the last time she used this old space suit. The punk was concerned about my well-being, can you believe it? He made Sheeba and me wear the suits just in case something unfortunate happened during the explosion. Just in case. Ye glittering gods, how that phrase ticked me.

“We gotta reinforce the hatches,” said Juani. “When that explosion come, this old tank gonna shiver. Will you help me carry the welder?”

“In a minute.” I needed to think.

For some time, my IBiS had been tingling an alert, so I slipped off my glove to check it. Oh, great news. My dental NEMs had developed a work-around for their program error. They’d given up waiting for doctors’ orders through the Net, and the little bootstrappers were going ahead with my dental hygiene all on their own. I rolled my tongue around my newly sanitized mouth. Hurrah. Minty fresh.

One more tune, I tugged at the glue crusting my derelict space suit and assured myself it would hold. Juani was trying to walk the heavy welder onto a dolly so he could move it to the ladder well. He wanted me to help, but when his back was turned, I tugged Geraldine’s mildewed helmet over my head. Shee was too immersed to see what I was doing. She splayed her body against the wall as if she were begging for sounds. Dear deluded child, she didn’t open her eyes when I slipped out of sight around the curving corridor.

Finding the airlock was easy—Liam had showed me the way earlier. I cycled through, opened the hatch and felt the cold at once. That was not a good sign. Geraldine’s old suit must have lost some of its insulating capacity. The satellite’s angular momentum didn’t catch me by surprise this time. I hung on tight and took shallow breaths through the musty old-style mouthpiece in the helmet. Then I reached back to check the air-hose connections again.

A row of handholds glinted softly around Heaven’s waist. I gripped the first one and pulled myself toward the Up side. When I emerged from the shade, solar radiation blazed around me like a nuclear burn. Sunset. A13 was just passing behind the Earth. As the sun’s fireball sank behind Earth’s gilded horizon, I quickly turned away to save my eyesight. Geraldine’s visor lacked basic photochromic darkening.

I hadn’t expected to reach Heaven’s sunward face so quickly. In the sun’s dying rays, my suit was heating up, and the hull was too silvery bright to look at. Head down, I swung back into the shadow side, where the temperature inside my suit instantly dropped to the shivering range. From this position, I had a satellite’s eye view of twilight Earth blanketed in steamy clouds. Whorls of gray and rich rusty brown marbled the ochre smog in fanciful patterns. Those whorls must have been the size of Sweden for me to see them this far away.

Beyond Heaven’s bullet point, the asteroid counterweight glowed like a yin-yang symbol, half in sunlight, half in black shade. Briefly, I paused to listen for hisses inside my suit, but so far, the glue was holding. I double-checked my safety line, then started crawling again.

Heaven’s hull seemed more pitted than ever, pocked with rust and dents. The tank had hauled fuel all through the solar system before we bought it secondhand. Had anyone checked its rated lifetime?

I noticed something peculiar. The tank appeared longer than it should have. I’d visited four levels so far, and each was three meters high at most. The fifth deck held the main factory, so it would naturally be larger. I mentally added the numbers, but the tank was triple the length I expected. Optical illusion? Distances can fool you when you’re under severe stress. Either that or the fifth deck was enormous.

Heaven raced around its track like a roulette ball. I clutched the handholds and moved deeper into the shade. Surf it. Ride it. Savor the thrill. How many seconds do any of us glide on the keen thin edge of life? War surfers do it more than ordinary people, but the experience remains rare. I drank in the scenery. One rim of Earth’s black orb still glowed where the sun had set, and beyond that, the ether of space glimmered with spectral agitation. Brain chemicals sharpened my senses to an extraordinary pitch. I thought: This will make a molto vivid blog for the Web site.

A seam ran down the full length of A13’.s underbelly, and the rivets stuck out five centimeters. It was almost as good as a ladder. I could follow this seam down to the tank’s base and signal the gunship. The only problem was, halfway down the ladder of rivets, I reached the end of my safety line.

What the heck. I had made it this far without slipping. Besides, Liam did it. So I unclipped. Imagine me slithering along, clinging to those rivets for dear life, braving the deeps of space. Ye graven gold, how I wished Verinne had her cameras trained on me.

The closer I moved toward the tank’s butt end, the stronger grew the angular momentum. By the time I gripped the lowest rim of the tank, my legs were flying out from the hull, and it was all I could do to hold on. I peeked over the rim at the blunt, flat bottom of the tank.

Picture the brouhaha that awaited. A few meters away, Vlad and Liam hung by their feet from Heaven’s bottom, wearing their (my) shining white suits, and surrounded by blue-clad mercenaries. No, not Provendia troops. These were hired commandos. I recognized their logo, IVet.Com. Why was Provendia hiring mercenaries? We maintained a small army of our own security guards.

In any case, it was obvious that Liam’s plan had crashed on takeoff. He and Vlad had been spotted and attacked before they could detonate their ill-conceived explosion. To have their hands free, they’d jammed their boots into the overlapping seam of the cargo doors, and now they were stuck there, unable to maneuver. So they hung from Heaven’s butt, swinging their chains and trying to fight their way backward, sliding their boots along the seam in precisely my direction.

Visualize their chains impacting those blue IVet helmets in eerie quiet. See the sparks fly, and watch the chains bounce in loose spiraling curls. Take my word, it was fascinating. When one of the mercs spotted me and fired a flechetter, I almost lost my grip trying to duck.

Vlad struggled awkwardly. He meant well, but he wasn’t a fighter. When a mere grabbed his legs, he tried to wrench free, and his boots lifted out of the seam. After that, it was child’s play for the mercs to seize him.

Next, Liam ignited his (my) thruster and astounded everyone by zooming straight out into space. He tried to circle around, flailing his chain. No doubt his intention was to rescue his friend, but he wasn’t very experienced at steering. Four of the mercs zoomed up to surround him, and they were just about to close in when he abruptly spurted away like a meteor. Probably his accelerator hung up. He might have hit the lock button by accident. In seconds, he dwindled to a distant white speck in the sky, and the four mercs called off their chase.

They massed around Vlad like viruses, and the whole squirming clump of them drifted in my direction. The young medic writhed in feral panic, but the men in blue held him tight, and I felt an insane compulsion to try and free him. Without thinking, I rose up over the rim in plain sight.

Vlad recognized me. We were almost near enough to touch, and I could see his mouth moving. In a desperate lunge, he tossed his chain toward me. The chain swung erratically, and in reflex, I freed one hand to grasp it. Then the nearest mere spotted me.

“I surrender!” I shouted uselessly inside my helmet. Quickly, I lowered the chain and bowed to show total submission. But the damned chain kept undulating with waves of inertia. The more I fought it, the more it whipped around. So I wedged my boot in the seam and grabbed the wicked thing with both hands.

Then Vlad gave me a look I’ll never forget, and he mouthed two words through his visor: “Help me.”

I hesitated. This was my chance to escape. Here were my rescuers. All I had to do was let them take me, and this nightmare surf would come to an end. But I stared at Vlad’s desperate expression and—ye gods—I wavered. When the mere zoomed toward me aiming his handgun, I had no choice but to bash him with the chain.

Out of nowhere, reinforcements converged. But these new troops weren’t wearing IVet’s mercenary blue. One of them wore a purple suit with silver and red paisleys, exactly like my old friend Grunze. Hell, it was Grunze. I knew that helmet. And that tall skinny person beside him in black, that was Verinne. No mistaking her willowy shape. Several meters off, Kat was hovering. The Agonists had come to save me!

Imagine my bliss. My dear beloved friends. I waved to them in wild delight. Winston was probably back in the shuttle mixing margaritas. Lime juice and salt, good old Win, he knew my favorite poison. I waved frantically with the chain to get their attention and nearly tugged my boot loose from the seam, but they didn’t see me. All their attention was focused on Vlad, who strained less and less in the iron grip of the mercenaries.

A swarm of space-hardened cameras buzzed around—Verinne was documenting the scuffle, probably uploading it to the Net. When the mere I’d assaulted started peppering me with flechettes, my friends not only failed to intervene, they didn’t send one solitary camera to take my picture. The brawl with Vlad absorbed them. Ye images of gold, that white EVA suit. They thought Vlad was me!

I abandoned the chain and flattened myself to the hull to escape the flechettes. This old gray suit made me look like an agitator. I clawed at the globby glue and hated my life. I would have ripped the suit off there and then to reveal my true face—except that wasn’t feasible. Steady, I told myself. Improvise.

So I kicked off from the hull and let the momentum carry me toward Verinne. Close up, she would surely recognize my face through the visor. My aim was good. I sailed straight for her. No way could I miss. Any second, she would see my helmeted face and open her arms to catch me. Cara mia. I waved and smiled. She would probably win some bet at my expense, but I didn’t mind.

When she noticed me coming, she moved aside. Not far. Just enough to avoid me. Ten centimeters beyond my outstretched hand, she let me streak past without so much as a sideways glance. In this prote getup, I held no interest for her. She could at least have shoved me back toward the satellite. But she was too busy recording her Reel.

So there I was, racing into the night in my leaky gray, glue-crusted agitator suit, running out of air and losing way too much heat, while Heaven and the gunship and everyone I cared for in the world wheeled inexorably away behind me in total mind-fucking indifference. Times like these give a man food for thought.

I torqued my body around to avoid the sunset in my eyes—and managed to throw myself into a slow, rifling spin. Every few seconds, Earth rose and set around me like a fast-forward moon. Shivering with cold, I threw my head back to get a better look at A13, but the helmet limited my view. For several long minutes, I drifted, intermittently holding my bream to preserve my air supply, then hyperventilating in nervous agitation. Does mat work? And one thought orbited through my skull: What would Sheeba do?

Sooner or later, she would discover me missing. I fantasized how she would search through the factory, calling my name. How forlorn she would sound. Perhaps her voice would break and a tear would drip down her bronze cheek. Too late, she would sense the void I left in her life, and a moan would burst softly from her lips. Then she would beat her breasts, violently, wishing we’d made love. Ah Shee, we should have shared that intimacy.

Picture me gliding through the void, stately and sad. All the while, one image enwraps my shivering body like a warm pink nimbus of soap bubbles. Myself and Sheeba making love. Feel the erotic dream, replete with sounds and pinpricks of sweat running up and down my groin. Sense the rapid rhythm of my hands. See my body humping the darkness. Taste the heat.