No Way

32

[Transcript of private phone call between Paul Leander (CEO XO) and Marjorie Bellingham (PL’s Personal Assistant) XO headquarters, Tower of Light, Denver CO 3/10/2049 0822MT]

It all needed to go like clockwork, and there were too many ways for things to go wrong for Frank to feel any certainty at all. But it was literally all they had. Justin knew what they were outside for. If he hadn’t wanted a confrontation, he could have sent Yun out to them. He’d had plenty of time, but there’d been no move, no attempt at communication. They were going in.

They couldn’t force their way into the descent ship’s airlock. There was a manual release, but that could be blocked from the inside. Even with the sliding, rather than hinged, door, they’d need to essentially break it.

And then they’d have to do the same thing again with the inner door. And once they were in, the ship would be depressurizing the same way the hab had. Justin would be waiting for them. They’d have to fight their way past him to get to Yun, and get her into a suit, all within thirty seconds. Max.

It was what they’d been going to do if she’d been in the hab—but access to a plastic hab and access to the interior of a metal spaceship were two entirely different scenarios, and now they needed a new plan.

Frank had explained what he had in mind, and, since time was short, the others had agreed all too quickly. Given that these guys were supposed to be the smart ones, and he was just a construction worker from San Francisco, they were all scraping the barrel. No pressure, then.

In the back of the cave, he found the makings of a second hab, the one that Jerry had told him they hadn’t had enough energy to make air for, or heat. Everything was there: the rings, the bolts, the cover. And, critically, the airlock.

The four of them dragged that part out and carried it over to the rocket. Isla disconnected the oxygen cylinder from the cannon, and Frank put both that and the spare spacesuit inside the unpressurized compartment. Then they stabilized it, using ratchet straps wrapped around big blocks of fallen masonry from the cave roof.

It all took time. And the external spaceship cameras were watching them.

Fan positioned himself next to the airlock. He knew what to do. Maybe he’d wanted a go at Justin himself, but since he was the doctor and had trained for decompression injuries, this was his job. It was up to the others to extract Yun.

Frank mounted one buggy, and drove it over to the ship, reversing it up to one of the landing legs. He paid out some cable, and Lucy threaded it around the leg, carabiner locking on to the cable itself. He wound in the slack, and she climbed up behind him, tapping him on the shoulder to let him know she was ready.

What were they going to find inside? Who knew? Maybe Yun was in her spacesuit. And this Justin, this mad leader of a failed mission, was naked to the air. That would make everything so much easier. Maybe Yun was already dead. Maybe Justin was too. That would also be easier, as it would mean Frank hadn’t had a hand in killing either of them.

But this wasn’t about what he’d find easier to live with. This was about getting a certain result and damn the method. A result that in the cold, pale light of the Martian day stood about as much chance as a snowflake in this particular unpressurized hell.

He turned his rear-view cameras on. In the little picture on the console’s screen, he could see the edge of the ship, the leg and, in the distance, Isla turning the second buggy around, ready for her run.

Either this would work, or it wouldn’t. Lucy had assured him it would… in theory.

In practice, it was a total crap shoot.

He sat, fingers curled around the steering column, and waited for the signal. Maybe something else would come to him, so that he didn’t have to do any of this. So that they could come up with another, better scheme.

Lucy put her hand into his eyeline and gave him the OK.

Well, crap. Time was up.

He squeezed the controls and kept one eye on the screen in front of him.

The cable he’d paid out went abruptly taut and his body jerked forward against his harness. The tires scrabbled for purchase through the dust and against the rock, spurting red fog up and out.

“Come on, you bastard.” He gave the wheels maximum grip and gunned the engine.

If this were Earth, he’d be able to hear the tensioned cable sing and the spaceship’s metal leg groan. All he heard was a deep bass growl as they started to drag the whole ship across the surface of Mars.

That was not what they’d intended at all.

He glared at the screen and hauled the controls around to the left. There was a crater. If the leg wasn’t going to give way on its own, he was going to have to let the terrain lend a hand. Of course, moving the ship was pulling it away from the airlock, and away from Isla, but goddammit, they had to get it down somehow.

Lucy banged on his shoulder, and when he didn’t respond, hammered on it again.

He let go of the controls, frustrated, and pushed himself back in his seat.

She leaned her helmet against his. “It’s not working.”

“You don’t say. Unhitch the tow. We’ll try again.”

“Which leg?”

“Unhitch, and I’ll drive round.”

She climbed down and walk-ran back to the descent ship. There was no element of surprise. Justin could see exactly what they were doing, and there wasn’t anything they could do about that. There wasn’t much Justin could do about it either, or at least, that’s what Frank hoped.

Lucy unclipped the hitch and laid it on the ground. Frank wound it back in and waited for the autostop to shut the cable reel down. Then he turned the buggy around and examined the geometries carefully.

So, not the leg he’d been trying to buckle. The one that was now between him and the airlock. He gestured to Lucy—waving his hands from left to right, as if sweeping the path ahead of him. Then he settled his hands back on the controls and squeezed hard.

The wheels dug in, and he sped across the surface, dust and rock flicking up behind him. Belatedly, Lucy realized what he was about to do. She scrambled out of his way, and Frank slammed the buggy’s cargo-drum battering ram into the side of the landing leg.

He hit it hard. The straps bit down against his hard carapace, and the buggy’s back-end came up. He’d forgotten to clamp his jaw shut, and now his teeth hurt. And his neck. And his shoulder. When the dust of the collision had settled, he backed up. The leg had bent, but it hadn’t buckled. He drove backwards fifty feet, and gave it everything the fuel cell had.

This time, he tensed up. He clenched his jaw. He pushed himself into the back of his seat and prepared for the bang.

It was more brutal than before. He could feel parts inside of him move in ways they were never designed to, and when they stopped, he felt disorientated and sick. He struggled to find the controls, even though they were right in front of him, and had to remind himself how to put the buggy in reverse.

One more time. One more. He’d buckled the whole support, and he needed to hit it again to bring it down.

He pulled back seventy feet. Eighty. Enough? He didn’t know anything beyond the fact that this was going to hurt. He took the column, squeezed the triggers and leaned into the direction of travel.

The impact left him hanging limply over the controls, his harness the only thing stopping him falling out of his seat. He shook his head and blinked hard. He’d felt something tear. At first he thought it was just dust on his faceplate, but maybe it was blood in his eye. Isla was standing up, waving at him, pointing above him.

Frank craned his head backwards. Something went click in his neck, but he didn’t have time to faint or throw up, because there was a spaceship about to topple over, and it didn’t much care where it was going to end up.

Reverse. For the love of God, reverse. For all his bemoaning the lack of cold beer, he was punch-drunk. It took time to find his hands, longer for them to connect with the controls, and he started by trying to go forward again, knocking against the collapsing leg as it twisted into the fold made by repeated blows from the buggy.

That button. That one there. He mashed his palm against it and squeezed the triggers again. He shot backwards in an arc that terminated in a four-wheel drift across the Martian surface. He had no idea what he was doing any more. He sprang his fingers from the controls.

The buggy juddered to a halt, tilting over, and dropping back on its wheels with an emphatic and possibly final bounce. Frank reached up and slapped at his chest, once, twice, three times to release the harness.

The ship was falling, its leg bent beyond use. It tipped, and, in what appeared to be slow-motion, went past the point of no return.

Frank tumbled over the edge of the buggy, hanging on to the frame. He pulled himself upright just as the fuselage hit the ground. It crumpled against rocks and boulders, sending out clouds of dust and waves of sand, all in almost perfect silence. Frank could feel it, though, through the soles of his already unsteady feet. The nose cone dug itself in a yard from where he stood, and he didn’t have the wit to flinch.

The nose rose again, towering over him, and he watched it go, open-mouthed.

It settled, rocking backwards and forwards in ever-decreasing cycles, and Lucy, not realizing just how damaged he was, thrust his shield and sword at him. Frank stood there, staring at these items that he knew meant something but couldn’t work out precisely what.

He took them anyway, and let himself be dragged to one side.

Behind, Isla turned her buggy in a tight circle, and drove directly at the side of the fallen ship.

It tore through the flimsy metal skin and composite core like it was foil. Gas erupted in a white cloud around the front of the buggy, and when Isla reversed out it revealed a rent, a hole punched into the flank, big enough to climb through and access the inside.

And Frank came back to himself with a sudden realization that the clock had started. Thirty seconds to save Yun.

He fumbled his shield onto his arm and dragged his sword point off the ground. Lucy was ahead of him, and he scrambled to catch up. The edges of the ship’s wound were turned inwards. Getting in was just a question of pushing through the gale.

He knew the layout. He remembered it. Sleep tanks at the top. Middle storey with a mesh floor. Bottom layer with storage and controls and the airlock. They were in the middle level, and there was Yun, gasping and gulping as the air streamed out into the insatiable void beyond the circular walls.

He barely had time to register her presence when he saw a spacesuited figure launch itself at him, coming from his right. One of the mesh floor panels came loose and struck him hard on the shoulder, and while the momentum wasn’t enough to knock him down, it was enough to momentarily blindside him.

Frank’s helmet sounded like a gong. He raised his arms, and the second blow accidentally struck his shield. It hurt, but it still gave him a moment to recover and reorient.

Justin was in a spacesuit like his own, and he was attacking him with a hammer. A geology hammer. Jim’s. Justin’s face was… not impassive. Determined. Serious. Intent on killing him, and moving on to the next job. He brought the hammer down again, and Frank interposed his shield, and it hurt again, jarring his arm, making his shoulder burn.

Frank couldn’t see what was happening behind him. He could only assume that Lucy had grabbed Yun and pushed her through the opening to the willing hands beyond, that Yun hadn’t panicked and fought her off, that she hadn’t already died from an embolism, or sheer fright.

The hammer kept on rising and falling, smashing into Frank when he couldn’t get his shield in the way, and into his arm when he could, pushing him back and back towards the ceiling of the middle deck until the only way out was to fight or die. Justin seemed oblivious to his hopeless situation, to the reason he was still attacking Frank, to the whole fact that his ship was now lying on the sands of Mars, gutted and open to the outside.

He just wanted to kill Frank.

And maybe that was OK. Frank had done what he’d come here to do. Goddammit, he was tired of all this shit, and maybe signing off was something he could contemplate. He saw his own derangement mirrored in the eyes of another—it was the same look he’d worn in the rear-view mirror moments before he’d got out of his truck, gun in hand.

He slipped to one knee, shield over his head, the blows against it steady and methodical, like a metronome. His left arm was numb. His shoulder on fire. Justin wasn’t going to stop. He absolutely wasn’t going to stop. Was Frank going to do anything about that?

He was going to slowly, surely, get battered to the ground and have his faceplate cracked open, and all the air in his lungs and liquid in his body boil out through the wounds. His testimony, his witness, his crew’s story, lost for ever. Unless he used the sword in his right hand.

For them, then. For them.

Frank lifted the shield higher and swung at Justin’s legs. He hit. Not hard enough. He pulled back, suffered another literal hammer-blow to his upraised arm that almost tore it from its socket, and swung again.

This time he got the right knee. Justin’s leg buckled like the ship’s landing leg had done. He caught himself before he collapsed, hopped backwards and tested his weight.

Frank pushed himself up, slowly and painfully. There was nothing left to fight over. Yun had gone, M2 was in ruins, and still they were going to duke it out. A proxy war between XO and Frank’s crewmates. Nothing at stake but pride.

He couldn’t lift his left arm any longer. If he had time, perhaps he could strap it across his chest to protect his suit controls, but he didn’t, and he let it hang limp. Instead, he raised his makeshift sword out in front of him, to give him a sense of the space between them.

Justin knocked the end of the sword with a swing of Jim’s hammer and Frank made the effort to bring the point back around again. He’d never done this before today, unless kids playing with fallen sticks, pretending to be Jedi knights, counted, which he guessed not. But he could at least turn sideways on, lead with his sword hand, keep his suit and his left arm out of the way of the hammer. Awkward, though: he couldn’t see through the side of his helmet, and he returned to a face-on stance when he realized it wasn’t going to work.

“We going to do this, then?” he said. “We going to finish this now?”

There was no way Justin could hear him. All the same, the man’s eyes seemed to narrow. He knew it was over, too. He knew. He swung the hammer again, connecting with the end of the sword, knocking it aside, and tried to jump forward to hit Frank on the return, but his leg wouldn’t take it. He stumbled, and he hastily pushed back, trying to recover his balance.

Frank lunged, the sword point skittering across Justin’s carapace just above the controls, heading for his armpit, but he was out of range, and it was Frank’s turn to go on the back foot. They were testing each other, seeing what the other could and couldn’t bring to the fight.

Clearly, Frank had the reach, and he started to circle, always keeping the sword between him and Justin. Circling meant walking up the slope of the wall, and back down to the mid-line, and it was obvious from his opponent’s painful hopping that Frank had the advantage of maneuverability, too. He could get in and out of range far more easily, just as long as he didn’t make a mistake.

Frank could feel the feral part of his brain take over again, sliding between him and conscious decision, turning him into something with just animal instinct; predator and prey.

Was that what he wanted? Was that what he really wanted? Justin’s blood on his blade? Revenge, justice, whatever he called it, he was going to kill yet another man, and he didn’t have to. No one was forcing him. He could leave it. He could just leave it. Walk away. Let nature take its course.

He was panting with the effort of making a choice. He wasn’t at war with Justin. He was at war with himself, and it was time to declare a truce. He wasn’t alone any more. He could, conceivably, still go home after this. He’d survived everything, the worst that both Mars and XO could throw at him.

And he could just as easily throw all that away by giving Justin a chance to get inside his guard.

OK. Deep breath. Circle round again. Back to the breach.

He kept his eyes firmly on Justin, parried a couple of abortive attempts to get closer, and finally stood part-way up the wall, one foot on the edge of the curling metal and loose insulation wave that had frozen in place. The buckled fuselage was sharp. He’d need to tread carefully.

But every time Frank tried to back out, he had to straighten up and ward Justin off by brandishing his sword, holding him at arm’s length to prevent him from landing a blow. With one damaged arm, it was impossible to escape. But neither did he want to kill again. Justin, however, seemed hellbent on only one of them getting out alive.

Lucy climbed through, and stood next to Frank. It took a little while for him to realize she was there, and a little longer for him to register the gun in her outstretched hand. He looked at her through her faceplate, her thin-lipped expression, her unblinking gaze.

He got the message, even though they couldn’t talk. Justin got the message too. He stood, weight on one leg, hammer held low by his side. He stood up as straight as he could. Frank climbed carefully out, teasing his way through the gap in the side of the prone spaceship, and then stood on the sand, waiting for the flash, waiting for the low, distant pop, waiting for Lucy to come out and tell him it was done.