Opening Acts
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Geoff remembered the biker chatter in his headset. He recalled dodging other riders, dragging nets filled with neutralization bladders-dropping them-watching them crash onto the shrinking mound of ice, while Moriarty's engineer Shelley gave targeting and pickup instructions-then landing, waiting while technicians loaded up their nets, and taking off again. But everything blurred together in a jumble of events.
He did remember one pass in detail. He and Amaya went in low enough that the net dragged the top of the ice. They dodged ice crags and sudden spurts of superheated gas to drop the packet into a crevice deep in the ice's center. He caught a glimpse: the boiling ice looked like lava in a cauldron. Then they veered upward amid towering gas columns.
Another team veered into their nets as they rose, and Geoff got yanked off his bike. He spun wry-the stars, the flares of the other bikers' rockets, Phocaea's surface, all tumbled past. He had no idea where his bike was, or where Amaya was. He feared he'd plough into Phocaea's surface, but after a moment he realized he'd been thrown upward, out of 25 Phocaea orbit. His breath slowed. Numb calm fell over him. He breathed in and out. Dots of fog appeared and vanished on his faceplate.
Amaya was back there, somewhere, circling back around for him. He was sure of it. But for a moment he thought it might be good if nobody had noticed, and he could just float away, off into the Big Empty.
Then she radioed him that she was approaching. She shot a net that snared him. Geoff grabbed at it, stabilized himself, and then climbed along it to her bike and mounted behind her. She fired her rockets and took him back around to his own bike. Neither spoke a word. As he mounted his bike, she finally asked, "You OK?"
"Yeah."
It was hard to believe that only a half hour ago he had been so excited about his bug-turd art project. He had thought he was such hot shit. Now it all felt like clutter. Bullshit. A waste of time. He shook it off. Don't think. Just do.