Up Against It - M. J. Locke [11]
His friends were nodding. “It’ll work,” the young woman said.
“What the hell are you talking about?” someone said, but Shelley got it.
“Like slingshots. They’ll drizzle right down into the center of the ice, shut down the reaction.” Another of the engineers protested, but Shelley insisted, “It’s our best shot. If they can pull it off.”
Sean gave the boy a searching look. “What’s your name?”
“Geoff.” The kid’s voice cracked, whether from stress, grief, or ordinary hormones, Sean could not say. Maybe all three. “Geoff Agre.”
“All right, Geoff, get off the goddamn table.” The boy obliged. More graceful than he looked. Sean laid a heavy hand on the young man’s shoulder as he touched down. Sean could tell the boy needed contact. He might have great ideas, but his gaze was still glassy, and he looked as if he was about to float off into space. “Here’s how it is, Geoff. We’ve got precious few supplies of neutralizer, and less time. You just saw your brother die. Are you going to fall apart on me up there?”
Anger glinted in the boy’s eyes. Sean liked that better than the blank stare it supplanted. “No way!” He struggled for control. “No. We can help you. If you’ll let us.”
“You’ll have to take orders from Shelley. All of you. Without question or hesitation. Even if you don’t like what she tells you to do.”
The kids surveyed Shelley, who eyed them back, a corner of her mouth quirked up. He looked at his companions, eyebrows raised. One by one, they gave him a nod.
“All right,” he told Sean. As if he could make such a promise. The arrogance of youth. But hell; why not? Maybe the rest of the bikers would listen to him. At this point, the cluster had nothing to lose.
“You’re on, Agre. Shelley, you lead the op.”
* * *
They suited up and went out. Geoff was still shaking. He could not believe he had said what he had out loud. Worse, Moriarty had listened. Now he had to act, fast, when all he wanted to do was curl up somewhere.
He kept seeing how Carl’s face had looked—the swollen body, the frozen eyes, the bulging veins. The world had shrunk, like he was seeing it through a long tunnel. Everything was happening in slow motion.
He remembered the old man’s face as he had challenged him. Geoff had told Moriarty he could do this. If he could not keep his shit together, he should have said so then.
The big blond woman, the one they called Shelley, was talking to him. Near them, the cluster’s ice was boiling away. If that wasn’t a good enough reason to suck it up, he may as well take off his helmet right now.
For you, Carl, he thought. I’ll do this, because you would.
“… to get your friends,” she radioed. “We need them now. Whoever you can muster in the next three minutes. Less, if you can.”
“What do we need to know about the bug neutralizer?” Kamal asked.
“The juice comes in five-hundred-kilo bladders. It’s not damaged by cold, but it needs heat to liquefy. Solid, it’s useless. And you’ll have to break the packaging. The ice is hot—the packaging should melt on impact—but to be on the safe side, you’ll need to hurl them hard. That means low, powered orbits. To shut down the reaction you’ll have to blanket the ice, which means you’ll need to come in from different angles, at high speeds. In other words, it’ll be a death derby up there.”
Amaya asked, “You know biking?”
“I know orbital mechanics. Think you guys can handle it?”
The four of them looked at one another. This time it was Ian who replied. That was fine with Geoff. He had done all the thinking he could handle for now. Now he just needed to go and do. He needed to outrun what he had just seen. “We can handle it. We’ll be at the pickup spot in three.
“All right,” Ian said, as they bounded across the landscape toward their bikes, “Geoff, you take one ten nanometers; Amaya take one sixteen point five; and Kamal, you’re