Opening Acts

  *** ***

  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-its swollen body, the frozen eyes and 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 each other. 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 One-twenty-two. I'll take One-twenty-seven-point-five. Let's start making calls."

  Geoff switched his comm frequency to the first biker channel and leapt onto his bike.