One Way

27

[Transcript of private phone call between Bruno Tiller and (unidentified XO employee 1) 8/13/2047 1550MT.]

They got the power back on, and clustered around the comms console.

“How far away is Earth now?” asked Frank.

“I don’t actually know. Eight, ten minutes? It could be at least half an hour before we get a reply.” Declan typed in the commands for the dish to seek out the orbiting satellite and let it run. As ever, he kept an eye on the power meter, watching it crawl down. The sun was setting, and they were on batteries until dawn.

“We could be dead by then,” said Zero.

“No one is going to die. We’re staying together.”

“Actual astronauts have something like five years’ training.” Declan watched the numbers. “We got barely six months. What the hell were we thinking?”

“We got enough to do the job,” said Frank.

“Just.”

“Are we on yet?” Zero pushed forward. “What do we do when we are? What do we say? Is there anyone going to be listening to us?”

“Just give it a few more seconds.” Declan eased Zero back. “It’s got to find the signal, lock on, then we can transmit.”

“Why’s it taking so long?”

“It always takes this long.” Declan pointed to the screen. “It’s doing it now.”

A square on the screen went from red to green.

Frank opened up his tablet, and looked again for the second buggy. Still nothing.

“We have no idea where he is.” He turned it so that the others could see. “He could be miles away. He could be outside.”

Zero turned and looked behind him. “He could be here. He could be here right now.”

“Maybe,” said Frank. “But we don’t want to get into a fight with him. He’s sick: we need to find a way to make him better.”

“Frank, he’s killed at least two people, and maybe four,” said Declan, “and you want to find a way to make him better? Good luck with that, because if he comes at me, I’m not going to be messing around. Anyway, if he thinks he can just disappear, we can all play at that game. Switch your transmitters off.”

“Wait, we can do that?” said Frank. “I thought it was just the mics.”

“Jesus, Frank, get up to speed. It’s always been the case. Just that we chose not to, so that XO wouldn’t know we were having private conversations.” Declan pushed the chair out of the way of the console. “Go and stand watch by the door. I’ll type out a message.”

Frank and Zero tabbed through their suits’ menus and turned their suit comms off. When they’d done, Frank looked through the door that led into the yard, then went a little further and stood in the big, open space. There should have been gym equipment, but there’d been nothing in the supplies they’d got so far.

Perhaps it was down in the new cylinders, ready to install when NASA got here. Frank walked a little further, towards the kitchen. He could see the table through the open doors, and something had caught his eye.

“Where you going, man?” asked Zero.

Frank waved him back. “Just… wait there.”

He stood in the doorway, checked as best he could there was no one there, and came back carrying the blue glove. He held it out, and Zero took it from him.

“Are we losing air?” He gave the glove a squeeze. It did seem plumper than before.

Frank opened his suit controls and checked the external pressure. It should have been five psi. It was four point three.

“We’re depressurizing.”

“Fuck. He’s outside, isn’t he?”

“And we’re inside, in our suits. We’re fine.”

“But the greenhouse.”

“The greenhouse is on a separate system. It’ll be fine, too. Brack, even crazy Brack, won’t touch that.”

“I need to go check.”

“No, you don’t. If you’re going to check, we all go and check.” Frank held Zero by the shoulders. “We don’t split up. Got that?”

“What’s going on?” called Declan.

“We’re losing pressure.”

“Deliberately?”

“What do you think?”

“OK, give me a minute. Typing is hard in these gloves.”

Zero tore himself away and leaned into Comms. “Just speak it. Use the mic.”

“It’s not that easy. We got bandwidth and compression issues. Text is certain, like sending a phone message when you’ve got no data signal. Almost there. And… send.”

Declan pushed Zero ahead of him.

“So what did you say?”

“Help, mostly. Explained we were four crew down, Brack chowing down on opioids like they’re popping candy, and that he’s working his way through the rest of us like virgin teens in a slasher movie. I don’t know what they’re going to suggest. We were, and are, always going to be on our own.” Declan looked up at Frank. “You know what it means.”

Frank had tried. He’d tried everything. And now, for the second time in his life, he was going to have to solve his problems the hard way. “I know what it means. That we’re going to have to find him and stop him before he damages the base.”

“Fuck no,” said Zero. “We’re not doing that. You said we weren’t going to have to fight.”

“That was before he started depressurizing the habs. He could sabotage the water, the power, anything. He could just cut through the greenhouse wall and bang.” Frank pulled out his knife, and slid off the plastic guard. “It’s starve or suffocate. Declan’s right: Brack’s left us no choice.”

“Just… stop, OK?” Zero backed away from them both, holding the sides of his helmet. “Brack said to all of us that we could go home with him. What if, what if, one of you is making that happen. That you know if you’re the last man, you get that ride.”

“Who the hell is depressurizing the hab, Zero?” Declan pointed to the slowly inflating glove that Zero still held.

“It could have been Frank, before he came in. It’s Frank. It’s you, isn’t it? You’re killing us off so that you get to go home.” Zero threw the glove on the floor. It bounced rather than flopped. He looked for his knife, but couldn’t remember what he’d done with it. He backed away further, then ran for the cross-hab. “Shit. Where’s my shank?”

“It’s not me,” said Frank.

“It’s what a killer would say,” said Declan. His voice was thinner now the air was leaking away. “Just kidding. We should go after him, make sure he’s OK.”

“After you.”

“Well, thanks.”

But when they got to the cross-hab, Zero wasn’t there. And the gardening knife, if he’d dropped it, wasn’t there either.

“Zero? Zero?”

“Where did he go? Greenhouse?” Frank inspected the airlock, and tried to cycle it. “That’s… not working.” He tried it again, and peered at the telltales. “Inner door not closed. He’s chocked it open so we can’t get in.”

Declan hammered his fist on the outer door. “Zero?” Then he turned to Frank. “The only way we’re getting in this lock is if I pull the fuses. Jesus, why does everything have to be so complicated?”

“He’s just a kid. He’s scared.”

“And now he’s scared and alone. At least, I hope he’s alone.”

“He doesn’t trust us. Me.” Frank lent his own hand to pummeling the airlock door. “This isn’t working. And we can’t vent this anyway without trashing the plants.”

“No shit. It’s not like we can slide a note through, either. And we still have to find Brack.”

“Inside or outside?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve ever done this before.”

Frank looked along the cross-hab at the medical bay. “Start down there, work our way back to here, I guess.”

Everything that once looked used and familiar, now looked empty and strange: the stacked boxes, the rattling of the floor, the ladders down to the first floor, the bright overhead lights. They walked the length of the top floor, and back along underneath. It was growing gradually more and more silent.

“Where’s the leak?” asked Declan.

“It’ll be one of the airlocks. We should check them all.” Frank cycled the nearest, and checked inside. The manual vents were all shut.

But when they went back down to the other, the controls had obviously been forced. Frank pushed the levers back up and stopped the flow. He nudged the last panel shut with his knee.

“We still need to check the others,” said Declan.

“Sure. How long’s it been since you sent the message?”

“Five, ten minutes.”

“How can we be so far away that it takes ten minutes just for a text to get there?”

Declan stopped mid-stride. “Frank? You say some really stupid shit sometimes.”

“We went to sleep on Earth. We woke up on Mars. If we’d actually traveled the distance, I might understand it better.” Frank checked the external pressure. “Three point nine. We might have stopped it in time.”

“Crew hab?”

They checked downstairs in the cross-hab, just a storage area, but congested with boxes. Upstairs, the airlock was fine, so they went back into the kitchen, and through to the crew quarters. The curtained-off rooms were still and silent.

“I’ll do these, you do the cans,” said Frank.

The toilets were at the far end. Declan brandished his screwdriver and moved swiftly down the corridor, leaving Frank to flick each curtain aside and peer around. Nothing, and no one.

“Clear,” said Declan, and turned round to look at the airlock. “OK, this one’s been tampered with.” He moved the first lever, and pulled open the door to set the second.

“While we’re doing this, he could be at the other side of the base, opening them again.” Frank clenched his jaw. “We’re going to have to go out and find him. Aren’t we?”

“A base, made for people who want to live on Mars, not die on Mars: who would have thought it? We’re going to have to go out, yes. Be easier with Zero, though.”

“Try him again?”

“What’s the point? We’ll just have to do it without him.”

“We’ll go out through the lock at the end of the yard. Circle around.”

“That’s a terrible plan, Frank. We’ve got a buggy. The buggy’s got lights. We climb up and turn it round. Then we light this sucker up from a distance. How does that sound?”

“I like yours better.”

They moved swiftly through the kitchen into the yard, and into the airlock at the far end. It was a squeeze, but they could just about both fit. It was only after Declan had closed the door behind him and the airlock was cycling through, that Frank realized if Declan did want to stick him with the screwdriver, there was very little he could do about it until the pressure equalized. The hard torso and helmet would stand up to some force, but his arms were in range.

It was an exercise in trust, being in such a confined space.

The airlock lights winked green. Frank opened the door and shuffled out onto the platform. There was the buggy—one of them—over by the workshop. He couldn’t see the other one, but he couldn’t see much at all. While they were inside, the sun had set, and it was those few minutes of dusk before pitch-black night.

With their suit lights off, they ran directly away from the base, using their fastest skipping gait, then angled towards the buggy. They both arrived and ducked down behind one of the wheels.

With touching helmets, Declan said, “You drive. You’re better at it. I’ll spot.”

“OK. Go.”

Frank climbed up, hand over hand, and turned on the fuel cell. The console came alive, and he quickly tabbed up the lights. A wash of bright white light spilled out across the landscape. The shadows were long and dark, and moving dust glittered in the beams. He took hold of the controls and started to squeeze them, when he realized that Declan wasn’t on the back of the buggy.

It was impossible to turn round, so he stood up and twisted, holding on to the top of the roll cage.

Something tugged at his arm. He looked at it, and smoke was drifting from a sudden hole in the external covering just up by his biceps. He registered a twinge of cold, and he put his other hand over the rent.

He’d been shot.

He leaped from the seat, and didn’t care much where he was going to land. He was silhouetted against the still-glowing horizon and literally a sitting target. He landed on his feet, but he kept on falling, forwards and down. He rolled his shoulder under him, and skidded to a halt in the hard-packed dirt. His carapace had crunched down on several rocks, but he’d managed to turn his faceplate away.

Alarms were sounding inside his helmet. He was losing pressure. He might be losing blood, too, but there was no way of knowing. He sat up, and clapped his hand hard over where he presumed the hole to be.

He had to stop the leak in his suit. He had a scalpel. He had patches. Without taking his hand away, he managed to empty the contents of the pouch on the sand. He picked up the knife, moved his hand, cut the cloth into a larger rent, then chose the smallest patch he had.

Calm. Cold, calculating calm. There’d be time for panic later. Peel the backing. Slap it into place. Feel the suit reinflate around him.

Frank fleetingly remembered that locked flight case Brack had brought with him when he installed himself in the consultation room in the med bay. He’d brought a gun to Mars.

At least the alarms had stopped, and he could breathe again.

Who the hell brought a gun to Mars?

Someone tasked with overseeing a bunch of convicted criminals doing a complex, dangerous job and maybe not getting on so well with each other when things went wrong, that’s who.

Where was Declan? It was almost full dark, and the suit lights that would have helped Frank find him would also have made them an easy target. The buggy’s headlights were shining out across the Heights, catching the edge of Comms/Control and the yard in the beam, with little spillover.

There he was, exactly in the shadow cast by the big plated wheel. Frank scurried over, keeping a low, ungainly crawl like a beetle. Declan was face down in the dirt, and he wasn’t moving. Frank leaned in and touched helmets. “Declan? You in there?”

All he could hear was the same jangle of alarms that he’d just endured.

He dragged him over, the bulky suit losing against necessity and effort.

Declan’s faceplate had gone. Just ragged shards around the edge, framing the still-smoking ruin inside. All the emergency lights were flashing, and moisture was boiling and freezing and boiling again in spirals and jets.

“Goddammit.”

There’d been at least two shots, and he’d heard neither. Brack could be shooting at him now, and he probably wouldn’t realize.

He pushed up against the disc of the wheel and looked around the side, under the latticework of the buggy. Brack had to be somewhere close by the base.

Zero was inside. Frank was outside. Brack… there? The figure emerged from the gap between Comms/Control and the med bay, arm extended ahead of it, something flat, black and mean in the glove. One step. Two steps. Perhaps he thought he’d got them both, but he clearly wasn’t sure. He couldn’t see either of them.

Frank’s scalpel was somewhere in the sand, with the rest of the patches. He had the nut runner, which was heavy but wasn’t weighted right. It was the only weapon he had, though, and he filled his hand with it.

Then the figure retreated back towards the main airlock, quickly disappearing from sight.

Frank panted for a few breaths. He had to come up with something, and quick. Brack—he assumed it was Brack—had gone full-on psycho. There was no help coming. They were alone on Mars. He had, and he checked, six and a half hours of air left: that was less than he’d anticipated, but he’d been using it up faster, what with all the fear and running and jumping at shadows.

He didn’t even know if Zero was still alive. It could be just him against Brack. So much for the promised trip home, a trip that apparently had been promised to all of them, a promise that could never have been fulfilled.

It was there, crouched behind the pitted wheel of a buggy he’d helped put together, on the surface of Mars, while the body of one of his colleagues froze into the red soil in the Martian night, that he suddenly and finally realized the utter depth of his betrayal.

It wasn’t that none of them were ever meant to go home. It was that none of them were ever meant to survive.

Well. Frank was going to have to see about that.