Up Against It - M. J. Locke [189]
“No, I have to leave. Places to go. Et cetera. Here is my contact information, back on the moon.” They twitched their fingers in mirror format, and traded digits. He was painfully conscious of her nearness, and on impulse, leaned forward to kiss her. She stopped him with a palm on his chest.
“I’m not what I seem.”
“Oh, yes you are. You’re a Viridian. You have some weird mutations that will totally freak me out, you’re not exactly pregnant, and you’re not really even, precisely, a woman.”
“Not all the time, anyway,” she said.
“Fair enough. But let’s just go with the mood, OK?”
She burst out laughing—the first time he had ever heard her laugh—wrapped her arms around him, and they kissed. And it tasted so sweet he never wanted to stop.
Then the lift came, and the crowd pushed her along till she boarded. Geoff stood at the edge and watched her leave. He waved good-bye, knowing he’d find her again.
Then he headed up in one of the passenger lifts. Everybody ushered him to the front of the line, and cheered him as he passed. His good-sammy cache had long since filled up so full it couldn’t hold any more, and green pulsed across the edges of his sight. He hadn’t known there was an upper limit. Everyone in the lift wanted to ask him questions and get his autograph. He sighed in relief when the doors opened at the surface. He lofted himself out of the lift station and onto the launch pad.
Amaya, Kam, and to his surprise, even Ian were waiting for him there, outside the rocketbike hangar, along with the rest of the rocketbiker teams. An enormous crowd was gathering on the shores of the crater—pouring out of the lifts; shuffling for space on the pad near the warehouses; lining the crater lip. People were handing out tethers—this ice delivery was going to be a doozy and they didn’t want anyone getting thrown off-stroid.
Ouroboros was going to obliterate their Great Lake. It was going to change the very shape of Phocaea.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” he asked Ian, eyeing his friend. Ian’s right sleeve was duct-taped to his suit.
“Hell, yes, doof. I wasn’t about to miss out on this one. Besides. I can outride you with one arm tied behind my back.”
Kam made a rude noise. “Funny.”
“Your chinpo is showing,” Amaya told Ian. He pretended to look for an unsealed seam at the crotch of his pressure suit as she swung her leg over her bike. Her visor gleamed.
Geoff looked up. Ouroboros loomed. It was more massive than any ice they had ever seen. Tiny blue Earth disappeared beneath its belly as it sank.
“I sure hope they got the calculations right,” Ian said. “Otherwise Phocaea is toast.”
“Relax. The old man checked them a zillion times. So did everyone else on the entire stroid.” Geoff switched over to the rest of the bikers. “Listen up, everyone. We’ve got permission to launch the instant the stroid touches down. I’m beaming the team leads the vectors. You all ready?”
The other biker team leads each gave him an affirmative.
“Stand by,” Sean said in his ear. “We don’t want you all going up till after it touches down.”
He gave the old man an OK sign. Next to him stood Commissioner Jane. Geoff was glad she’d made it up for this.
Ouroboros blotted out the sun. The tugs strained; the positioning rockets blasted; the giant rock crept down. Radio chatter died. Geoff watched, frightened and exhilarated. He couldn’t help but think of Carl. Far off in the distance, at the horizon, Ouroboros and 25 Phocaea touched, and a clamor of voices swelled in his headset. The ground underfoot shook. The tug pilots had done it again, with their uncanny precision.
Geoff revved his engine and with Amaya, Kam, and Ian, led the bikers toward the base of the ramps.
This wasn’t the best ice harvest ever. That would never be true again, without Carl here to watch