Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (11 page)

Lou wandered into the
storage room, bleary eyed and unshaven. Brushing past them, he sensed all of
the comet mission members and their significant others crowded inside. Most of
them were crinkling around in bulky spacesuits. “Glad you could join us,” Toby
said with genuine humor. “Did you get a good night’s sleep?”

Taking
a swig of the obnoxious coffee blend, the pilot grunted. “I slept almost four
hours. It was the waking part that was good. Why are you so happy? You didn’t
cut anyone into sausage this morning, did you?”

“No,”
Toby replied with more reserve. “Yvette spoke to me yesterday. I understand I
have you to thank for that.”

Lou
chuckled throatily. “I got treated to ‘the Salmon Ladder on the Raging River’ last night, and you made that possible. So we’re even.”

“What’s
that?” Toby asked.

“A
secret Asian sex maneuver that Yuki told Mercy about. Ho! My woman wanted to
make up for missing my birthday this year . . . and Father’s Day. Did she
ever!”

Park
coughed. “You know we can all hear you. I’m Asian, and I have no idea what
you’re talking about.”

“I
guess you’re used to a diet of cold borscht,” Lou replied.

Red
snorted in laughter, but Nadia, Park’s partner, slapped Lou in the back of the
head.

Zeiss
raised his voice. “Captain Llewellyn, mission 7-11 is a marathon: twenty hours
of hard labor and four hours of decontamination. Are you up for it?”

“Sir,
this is my normal mission prep. Only this time I don’t have a hangover.”

“I
gave him a hall pass for being tardy,” Red explained. “He wanted to walk Mercy
down to meet Yvette for safekeeping. So he was late because he was holding
hands with his wife and didn’t want to say good-bye.” Several people made
‘isn’t that sweet’ noises at this revelation. “Herk and Park, help Snuggle Bear
suit up.”

Zeiss
smiled at Lou’s chagrin. “Back to our regularly scheduled program. There are
seven of us heading up: six members on the shuttle plus Toby standing by in the
landing bay to treat casualties. Risa, is the conversion process finished?”

The
Latina structural engineer gave a brief report. “Herk and I have been busy
hauling things up to the hangar and welding the last few weeks. We put skis on
Ascension
for our uneven ice landing. All the parts of the distillery are installed. I
have no idea how well it’s going to work. I’m sure we’ll have a few adjustments
to make once we feed the fuel components in.”

“How’s
the communication cable you ran?” Zeiss asked.

“Plenty
of bandwidth.” Risa explained to the others, “Since the Magi built this ship
with a barrier that shields against any kinds of radiation—electromagnetic or
mental—we needed a bypass so we could maintain contact with control.”

Over
the radio, Yuki spoke up. “The walls in the hangar broadcast barnyard images,
and we can control the telescope lens from here. There must already be a
connection of some kind.”

“We
haven’t found it in time for project 7-11,” replied the commander. “Risa, how
did the return pods work?”

“We
followed all the new safety steps. I’m sure being this close to the sun helped,
too. The portable heaters and pressure tent we took worked like a charm. The
oxygenated liquid filled the decontamination pods, and we came back clean as a
whistle. There are still sixty pods left in the room.”

“Why
did you call the mission 7-11?” asked Red. She had been busy supervising the
medical team until the day before. “Because there are seven participants?”

“Because
we’re going to the convenience store on the corner for a drink and chips,” Risa
replied. Then they had to explain corner stores to Red because she’d never been
to one. “They’re usually run by someone from India. Can I say that?”

“Is
the mayor or Auckland here?” asked Lou.

“No.”

He
proceeded to do a spot-on mockery of Pratibha. “Oh, you came to get a Big Gulp
of jet fuel? It would be more cost effective to order nachos with that.”

Nadia
slapped him again, but this time she was laughing. “If you ever do me, I’ll put
lithium grease in your ketchup bottle and give you the runs for days.”

Zeiss
scolded, “Children! We’ll have three support personnel here in the saucer.
Since he can pilot, Park will be active duty first and take standby for second
shift. Yuki will be active for second shift to monitor for storms and quakes.
She’ll be tuned in on our approach in case we need to pick a second landing
zone or need specific minerals. Once we’re safely back, Auckland will take the
last four hours alone. He’ll babysit us through decontamination. Lou planned
the choreography for this run, so I’ll let him walk you through it.” He fiddled
with a projector until there was a click.

Lou
spoke up. “We’re already pacing the comet. Once in the shuttle, we’ll have
Snowflake pump the air out of the landing bay. I know that it’s supposed to
stay contained by the force field, but the explosions after we landed damaged
the membrane. We’ll open the lens and the nictitating membrane completely. Wide
open like that, the lens is effectively a movable hole in space that looks like
it only has one side.
Snowflake
will hover the lens 100 meters off the
comet, facing the surface. We wait for a calm and then eject no faster than a
jogger. We should drop to the ground like a tank out the back of a cargo plane.
Simple.”

“What
do you mean ‘wait for a calm’?” Nadia asked.

Zeiss
fielded the question. “The lens may cause swirls in the comet snow like a dust
storm. If there’s an icequake or an eruption on the surface due to sunlight
boiling off volatile material, we’ll pull back and wait for traffic to subside.
It’ll be just like crossing the street to buy that Big Gulp.”

“If
you lived on the other side of an eight-lane freeway,” Nadia said, nervously.

“Relax,
I could do this blindfolded,” Lou said. “My only worry is that there might be
some blowback from our landing, takeoff, or one of these comet belches. In that
case, some of the foreign objects may enter the hangar. This is key: Toby will
need to pick up every speck bigger than a marble and remove it from our runway.
Any rubble can cause incredible damage to our landing gear, or bounce into our
hull. On the bright side, these are free resources. Put them in a fifty gallon
drum, and we’ll sort through them later.”

“I’m
game. What do I use to collect the fragments?” asked Toby.

Zeiss
said, “Oops, we almost forgot the grabbers. They look just like the ones Apollo
used on the moon to take samples.”

Over
the radio, Yuki said, “I used those to stock the high shelves in the dining
hall. I can play fetch after I finish testing all the helmet cameras and voice
logs.”

“Not
enough time,” Lou decided. “Nadia, could you go get those?”

“
Da
,”
she replied, slipping out of the storage room.

After
snapping on Lou’s last glove and testing the suit’s systems, Park whispered,
“What is birthday sex?”

Herk
answered before the pilot could. “The one night a year when a woman in a
committed relationship will do anything you ask. It’s great. You do the same
for her on her birthday, of course, but she usually wants a night out at an
opera, dinner at a restaurant with cloth napkins, and a present first.”

Lou
said, “You know what we’re talking about, Park. You took Nadia to the Bolshoi
Ballet before we left, and you hate that shit. I mean, you turned the big
three-oh last week. You had to have . . . you know . . . Herk, what’s Russian
for bow-chicka-bow-wow?”

“She
gave me a book—
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
—and we shared a
cookie,” the Korean drive specialist said solemnly. “I wasn’t allowed to have
either in bed.”

“Ooo,”
said Herk in the same tone one would after witnessing a fresh arrow wound.

“Ouch,”
echoed Yuki, who’d been eavesdropping.

When
Nadia returned, Park announced, “I’m going to seal the storage unit and test
the communications cable.”

After
her partner left, Nadia said, “What did you guys say to get him so riled up?”

“I
have no idea what you’re talking about,” Herk muttered guiltily.

“He
didn’t give me a good-bye kiss on the cheek. Also, he addressed half the crew
and didn’t say please once. This is unlike him.”

“Ask
him when you get back. It’s game time,” said Lou, screwing his helmet into
place.

The
climb up the tube was uneventful. Zeiss led Lou using a tether. When they
passed the thick layer of radiation and psi shielding, the commander said, “We
have passed the point of no return. We are beyond the barrier into normal
space. Olympus, do you read me on the cable?”

“Loud
and clear, sir,” Yuki replied.

Once
they arrived in the decontamination area, the team placed a few heaters and
arranged emergency air tanks and a plastic tent around the first available pod
that would prepare their bodies for reentry into
Sanctuary
. Even if
Snowflake couldn’t raise the pressure and temperature to welcome levels, they
could still send someone back in a hurry.

When
Lou reached the landing bay, he walked the thirty meters of the shuttle,
dragging his fingers along the old friend. Entering the command module through
the airlock, he tested the air quality using voice commands. “Life support is
green,” he reported. “Red, perform a system check on the
Chemical
Oxygen-Iodine Laser. We left the COIL deployed before we entered Sanctuary. You
can retract the toys back into the nose cone.” Helmet off, he was pushing
buttons for prelaunch checks. Even blind, he could power up this bird.

When he flipped an overhead switch
to disable a false alarm that told him the Icarus engines had been jettisoned
ages ago, Lou glanced up through the lens. “Fuck me sideways,” he muttered.

“What?” Red demanded. “Is ignition
failing?”

“Worse,” he said, head still tilted
upward.
“I can sense the grav signature of
the comet, but not in stereo like I usually do. I have no depth perception.”

“Is
it because Mercy is on the other side of the barrier?”

“Or
the dampening drugs she’s on. Either way, I can’t make touchdown. I’m off from
the mission. Toby, you’re up. Give me that grabber, and I’ll wait in
decontamination.”

“You’re
going to be able to find rocks?” Toby asked.

“Olympus will talk me through using the cameras,” Lou said softly. “If you need advice, I’ll
be monitoring.”

Zeiss
had to reorganize the mission. Toby would sit with the non-command personnel in
the cargo compartment. As co-designer, Toby would ride herd on the distillery
with Risa. Zeiss opened the hatch between shuttle sections so the two could be
chaperoned. Freed from chemical duty, Nadia shifted to the laser controls at
Lou’s station. She had cross-trained on the high-powered weapon and would blast
away obstacles to make Herk’s drilling job easier.

“Smooth,”
said Park, observing the asteroid landing on his cameras. “Barely a puff of
snow dusting the wings.”

“Watch
closely,” Lou warned, “because you’re riding shotgun with Red next mission.”

“I
don’t have enough practice hours,” Park objected.

“Relax,”
Yuki said. “A black belt is just a white belt who never gave up.”

“Already
quoting the great and powerful Z,” Lou observed.

They
deviated from mission specs when Nadia found that bursts from the COIL on low
power made a better ice remover than the drill. Herk just had to keep the
flex-line siphon near the site to capture the steam.

Lou
complained, “For the next nineteen hours, I’m as useless as tits on a bull.”

“Keep
an eye out for stresses building below the surface,” Zeiss suggested. “You can
still spot those before they manifest as fractures.”

“Roger,”
Lou agreed. “Hey, Red, be careful on the way back. You’ll be carrying a lot
more mass. The controls may be a little sluggish.”

Red
politely ignored him while she watched the asteroid surface for real threats.

While Park was
distracted on duty, Yuki entered every room of the saucer, peeling her
listening devices free before the doctor woke up. The bug in the dining area
was obstinate due to repeated exposure to heat and cooking oil. She had to grab
a spatula and a ladder to scrape it. The process would destroy the bug, but she
didn’t dare leave one behind.

So
she wouldn’t get grease spots on her uniform, she slipped out of her pants and
climbed the ladder in just her J-Wear bottoms. She didn’t mind because with all
the conservation measures lately, it was hot in here. She was bent over the
step ladder applying elbow grease, grunting, and thrusting with all her might,
when she heard the door shoosh open. “Just cleaning a bit, Doc,” she ad-libbed.
She wiggled enough with the next few scrapes to make the bronchially-challenged
man wheeze half to death. “There,” she proclaimed.

When
she turned, Park was staring at her, mute and stunned. Finally, someone who
appreciated all the exercise she’d been doing. She found that she enjoyed his
attention. He was a little straight-laced but dependable. With no ring on his
finger, he was also technically single. Yuki crouched on the ladder, trying to
distract him from the pile of listening devices to his left. “Should you be
away from your post?”

He
shook his head to clear it. “Everything is going like clockwork. The doc
ordered me to take fifteen.”

She
hadn’t had sex in a year, and her body was reminding her that his break would
be just enough time for her to enjoy a nice, light snack. If she liked the
sample, she could follow up off duty, when everyone else was stuck in
decontamination. “Then by all means, follow the doctor’s orders and grab a
seat,” she said in her best Mae West.

Sweating,
Park sat and covered his face with his hands.

She
plunked down on the table and palmed the bugs without him noticing. He was
still inhaling her smell and swallowing hard. “L-Lou was trying to explain
something, and he said I should ask you about it.”

“Anything
to help a planner,” she purred.

“He
said you could tell me about b-birthday sex.”

She
chuckled wickedly and shook her finger. “That man has a set of fake IDs so he
can claim a birthday every week. Personally, I think Christmas sex is better.”

“Nadia
is an atheist and refuses to celebrate.”

“Oh,
trust me, if the sex is good enough, you believe in God.” She tucked the
evidence into her pants pocket while he was distracted. Then she made a slow
show of wiggling into them using only one hand to tug alternately on each side.
It was a reverse striptease with all the same moves.

His
mouth was wide open, but he was still resisting the lure.
Time for the
direct approach.
She asked, “Could you be a doll and do me?” Nodding at her
snap, she said, “It’s hard to fasten without two hands.”

Hands
trembling, he pulled the sides together and squeezed. Holding his hands in
place, she whispered, “I know what you want.”

He
froze, staring at her navel.

She
set the hook. “I overheard Lou’s bragging. You’re curious about ‘the Salmon
Ladder on the Raging River.’”

Park
nodded.

“It’s
actually a series of moves. The salmon becomes pink and swollen with jump after
jump. The river pushes him back down, but he rises again. The cycle continues
until all thought has been driven out of his mind except the overpowering need
to spawn.” Yuki arched over him, his lips a centimeter from her skin. She could
command him to do just about anything right now, and he would. Picturing how
rugged he had looked after rescuing Mercy and following his morning shirtless
workouts, she knew exactly what she wanted him to do.

Of
course, the doctor would hear the moans. Everybody listening to the comm would
know what was happening. Zeiss and Sojiro would be disappointed in her. She
could just hear him saying
Dress for the job you want.
Carnies had a
saying when they wanted to feel better about fleecing some townie:
You can’t
cheat an honest man
. In this case, she shouldn’t.

Trembling
with desire of her own, she set the fish free. “I’ll explain the steps to Nadia
when she gets back,” Yuki said, walking briskly back to her station.

With
some satisfaction, she heard the agonized whimper Woo Jin Park made when she
was gone.

****

Yuki
felt the apprentice pilot’s eyes sneaking glimpses of her through both shifts,
but he stayed professional. Everything went remarkably well with the chemical
extraction. A spray of dust blew toward the lens at one point, but through the
various helmet cameras and
Ascension’s
security cameras, they saw the
dust sparkle against some invisible field. Everyone on the mission buzzed about
the phenomenon on the conference-room channel.

“I
watched something over the lens repel the little stuff, which explains why the
shuttle isn’t peppered with fine holes,” Lou noted. “There may be a minimum
mass and speed combination to gain admittance.”

Risa
replied, “What’s more interesting is that whenever the membrane is sealed, the
bay projects a star field from the proper angle. The camouflage is interactive
with the viewer.”

“Heisenberg
feedback,” Zeiss explained. “The cloak knows when it is being observed. We had
people studying the lens for years. Only the Probability Mechanics talent in Brunei was able to make headway on the problem. It’s in the double-naught files. He was
able to make fiber-optic panels up to a meter across fade into the background.”

Herk
grunted. “I heard something about that. The cloak wasn’t big enough for a tank
and too heavy for a drone. Any sudden movement or change in lighting blew the
illusion. The UN scrapped the whole project.”

“Could
still have limited applications,” Risa decided.

“The
Sultan sold the tech to China a while back,” Yuki related. In the new spirit of
total disclosure with the team, she shared all the intelligence data she had.
“The Chinese have a prototype they call dust armor that blends in with sand.
Mori looked into it. Each suit would cost twenty-eight million Euros and weigh
more than the person inside it. Instead of getting sucked into an arms race,
Mori built a fifty-Euro detector for the effect. I have one in my wristwatch.
Mori warned me because several scientists from the canceled project now work at
the Chinese moon base.”

After
a shocked pause, Zeiss said, “Yuki, we need to have a talk when I get back.”

“You
really
were
a spy?” Park asked, covering his microphone to let her know
it was a personal query. His voice a trifle strained, he took a small squirt
from his tea bulb.

“Yes,”
she admitted, “but I stopped working for Mori the moment Mercy saved my
life—I’ve lost count how many times now. By the way, I never thanked you
properly for getting her to the stasis chamber in time.” She put a heavy dose
of bedroom eyes into the look of appreciation she gave him.

Open-mouthed,
Park accidently squeezed the tea bulb at the wrong angle and liquid danced in
the air of the command room. He dashed to the break room to get a towel.

She
chuckled. Geeks were so easy.

****

The
only significant radio chatter during the main mission was Nadia complaining
about the heat in the cockpit. Evidently, the COIL heat sinks were overloaded
from repeated use. The whole command crew was drenched with sweat. Though the
Zeisses were able to seal their suits and perform their duties, Nadia needed
the fine control afforded her by bare hands and a face pressed close to the
targeting screen.

“Your
eyesight needs adjusting,” Red noted. “Didn’t you have Lasik?”

“She’s
getting to be that age where the eyes change, and she needs bifocals,” Lou
teased over the radio.

Nadia
replied with a heavy accent, “You are getting to age where you need rectal exam
every year. I am told the doctor uses whole fist and a tube of Vaseline. Bend
over and cough. Tensing up only makes it hurt more.”

“That
shit’s not funny,” Lou muttered.

“Keep
the channel clear,” Zeiss admonished.

The
return voyage was exciting for about three minutes. Red rotated the shuttle
very slowly for positioning, but her off-center landing made Lou grumble. Once
out of
Ascension
, Zeiss discovered a few centimeters of build-up under
one of the skis that they had to blast with the COIL, lest the landing gear be
damaged. Herk put several cubic meters of pure water in luggage claim, and they
began loading the decontamination pods.

With
everyone safely in pods on their way home, Yuki went to bed—alone. She was
awakened by shrieking in the showers. It sounded like someone had been caught
in the gears of a machine. She ran out in her J-wear to see if she could help.
She anchored herself with the strap she always slept with in case they had to
change directions in an emergency.

Looking
down into the tube surrounded by shower pods where the decontaminees emerged,
she saw a nearly naked Nadia. Her tangled hair was dripping gobbets of
antibacterial gel, including her unshaved armpits and legs. Even less
attractive was the sight of her beating on Park’s hunched-over form, yelling
vile curses in Russian. Yuki only understood the word for the devil. Zeiss and
Herk hadn’t cycled through yet, but Risa struggled to pull the raging woman away
from the cringing Korean, who refused to raise a hand against a woman.
Eventually, the doctor helped separate the grappling couple. Then Nadia stood
at a distance and continued to heap insults on Park.

When
Park glanced up and saw Yuki standing on the rim above the fray, he couldn’t
look away. Nadia followed his gaze. She shouted, “Whore, this is your fault!”
The Russian woman grabbed an IV pole and launched herself upward.

“Oh
shit,” Yuki blurted as she jumped toward the main door. She tapped the gold rectangle
of the airlock door three times and made it onto the patio an instant before
her crazed pursuer. Nadia fell to the tiles in the sudden presence of gravity.

With
no time to ride the slow elevator down, Yuki did the only thing she could.
Ripping off the handful of sticky straps by the door, she climbed on top of the
pergola like a monkey.

With
no straps of her own, Nadia couldn’t follow easily. Red-faced, she demanded,
“Come down here and fight me like man.”

“Nothing
happened,” Yuki swore, dodging a jab from the metal pole. Using the sticky
strap around her wrist, she inched further up the dome of the saucer. Then she
applied loops of the Velcro-like substance to her feet and knees.

“He
tells me about the time he saw you perform in circus, how he has pined after
you ever since.”

“Seriously?”

“I
checked his computer history last week. He watched that video of you giving
tour of ship fifty times,” Nadia complained, dropping her articles in her
anger. Yuki felt flattered and a little unbalanced by such a devoted secret
admirer. “After three years, he breaks it off with me because his pennies are
almost gone and you carry dollar bills in your belt—whatever that means.”

Against
her will, the sex analogy made Yuki laugh.

Nadia
interpreted this as mockery. “He says one afternoon with you has ruined him for
other women. I will ruin somebody, all right.” Nadia jumped up to seize the
slats over her head.

Risa
had been hovering in the doorway, monitoring the situation from a safe
distance. “You don’t have a safety strap,” she yelled, grabbing at Nadia’s
ankles. The berserk woman kneed her in the eye socket, knocking Herk’s wife
backward across the tiles.

Since
Nadia specialized in fencing, she could be lethal with that metal rod. Yuki had
no choice but to kick the woman in the jaw, sending her to the ground.
Undeterred, the angry Russian stormed back into the saucer. From her perch,
Yuki could hear fabric ripping. There went her clothes.
Thank God I didn’t
have my partial arm up here. My arm!

Risa
was groaning on the ground, rubbing the purple-blotched side of her face.

There
was a lull while the rampage moved to Park’s bedroom. Then, they could hear
paper tearing. “Risa, call Sojiro and get him to hide my arm . . . and the rest
of Park’s belongings.”

“My
badge is in luggage claim, in the storage room. I’m not going in there with
that whack job running around.”

“If
I climb down, she’s going to kill me.”

“Should
have thought of that before you screwed her boyfriend.”

“I
didn’t touch him. We just talked for five minutes in the cafeteria.”

“Park
talked?”

If
she weren’t sitting on the roof in her underwear, Yuki would have laughed.
“Where’s Auckland?”

“He’s
in the showers trying to hurry Red through the process.”

“What
about Park? Maybe he could talk—” Yuki was interrupted by a loud crunch and
clatter.

Risa
risked a peek. “She just knocked him into the dining hall. Ouch. He closed the
door on her. Smart man. Hide the knives and plates.”