One Way

by S. J. Morden

  “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.

  28

  [transcript of audio file #145816 10/16/2047 0930MT XO Mission Control, White Sands Missile Range NM]

  PL: What you’ve done is nothing short of incredible, Bruno. I’m thrilled, and amazed, and deeply, deeply grateful. XO couldn’t have done this without you.

  BT: I wanted to hear you say that. I wanted to hear your approval. It means so much to me.

  PL: He’s on his way, our glorious, noble astronaut. Ready to tend and nurture our investment, and ensure our successful completion of our contract. Lance Brack, I salute you, and your lonely months on Mars.

  BT: He’s undergone years of rigorous training and psychological evaluations. He is literally the best man for the job. He’ll get it done, don’t you worry.

  PL: What would you like to do now, Bruno? In the next few months, while we’re waiting for him to arrive.

  BT: I’m not going to stop, Paul. Why would I stop? We have everything in place: the people, the plant, the production. We just keep launching.

  PL: [pause] I know we were under budget, but …

  BT: We have the money. Mars is within our reach, if only we’re bold enough t
o reach out and take it.

  PL: I don’t understand, Bruno. We need to clear this with the board.

  BT: I have cleared it with the board. They’re all onside. Are you?

  [transcript ends]

  Frank couldn’t hear anything except his own heartbeat in his ears and the hoarseness of his own breath. The gloves, the suit, the boots, the helmet, isolated him from anything in the environment that might give him clues as to what was going on around him. He was relying completely on one sense: sight. And even his peripheral vision was non-existent.

  He kept watch on the base, and opened up his tablet. No signal. It couldn’t sync, and it was because his own suit transmitter was off. That might be why Brack had retreated inside—Frank’s suit wouldn’t give away his location, and he wasn’t close enough for the telltale hidden in his chest to broadcast either.

  As soon as he approached the base, the system would automatically pick him up, and even if it didn’t light him up on the map, it’d push his vital signs into the medical monitor. It would tell Brack he was both alive and close, rather than as he currently was, in limbo.

  Of course, Brack could afford to wait him out. He had the base. He could do pretty much anything he wanted now. He knew that Frank would have to come to him, and he’d know when that happened.

  So, in order: Marcy. That could have been an accident. They were at full stretch that day, and they both knew they were low on air. But the scrubber in Marcy’s life support had failed first, and it could absorb waste gases for much longer than there was air. That was suspicious.

  Then Alice. Alice was the smartest one on board. She was professional and knowledgeable and didn’t take shit from anyone. Yet once they were all defrosted, her work was over. In fact, she became a liability because she knew so much. She’d have spotted Brack’s painkiller addiction simply by counting the pills.

  It left them short-handed to build the base, but there were no more deaths until it was done. Being two people down eased the food situation hugely. It would have been tight, starvation-tight, with eight mouths to feed, and it was no coincidence that they’d just squeaked it with six. Marcy and Alice had been culled, taking out enough of the crew to make the food go around. That the first two they lost were the two women? That, surely, wasn’t going to be a coincidence either.

  Goddammit, Brack.

  Zeus was next. Zeus was both physically strong and knew how to fight. He was also someone who would have felt it his duty to protect the others. He’d already done his job, and more, with the installation of the central heating. His dream of a steam engine had died with him, but maybe there were more panels in the stuff XO was sending later. They didn’t need his generator, and they didn’t need him.

  Dee. Dee was just a perpetual victim. He’d set up all the control systems, and maybe he’d seen things he shouldn’t have in the tech manuals. XO probably knew what he’d been reading. Maybe he was a threat after all. So they’d got Brack to kill him next.

  And how? It had been all too easy because no one had thought that the person going through the crew and picking them off, one by one, was the same person who was supposed to be overseeing their work, and making sure there was a functioning base to invite the NASA astronauts into when they finally arrived.

  It would have been Frank and Declan and Zero next, whichever order Brack or XO wanted it done in, until all the convicts had gone. Except they’d ruined the planned order of execution by working out what was going on and talking to each other about it. The simplest thing—an honest conversation—had led to this. It had led to Frank hiding out in the frozen Martian night, not daring to approach the one place that he could live in.

  Not that that was true. There was still the ship.

  Brack had a gun, though, and the walls of the ship were going to be as much use as the walls of the habs at protecting him. Was there anything there he could use? Were there more guns, or at least better weapons than what he had currently? Probably not, and driving there would give away his position as much as it would going closer to the base.

  All it would do would be to give him a different place in which to die.

  It simply had to be here and now. At night, and on territory which he was at least familiar with. He had no advantages, and lots of problems. It still had to be done.

  If Brack was still watching the buggy, then he might see Frank break cover. But there was a way around that. He left the shelter of the wheel, not hesitating, moving quickly, because a shot could come at any moment and he’d never know until it hit him. He grabbed one of the headlight array and turned it so that it shone directly at the space between the habs.

  He couldn’t see anyone lurking there. And now, with a bright light aimed straight into their eyes, they couldn’t see him either.

  If Brack wasn’t psychotic, and just a cold-hearted killer, it actually counted in Frank’s favor. There’d be only so much that he’d be prepared to bust up—only so much that he’d be prepared to let Frank bust up—before pulling his punches. And bullet holes in the hab skin were going to be difficult to explain away.

  That settled it. He had to get inside, and fast. Close with Brack.

  He couldn’t let go of the buggy chassis. He wasn’t the kind of guy who ran towards danger. He was deep-down scared. No, he was a coward. Last time, he’d chosen the easy way, the simple way, the pull-the-trigger way, just to make it stop, so that all the complex decisions he wouldn’t make collapsed into one course he couldn’t alter.

  Being in jail had been so straightforward. He hadn’t had to do or be anything other than a prisoner. What had he been thinking to come here, dreaming he might have a future rather than only a past? He’d allowed himself to hope. Idiot. All his choices were going to end in abject, painful failure. He was going to die tonight, and the only difference he’d make was which part of Mars he’d water with his blood.

  He was still going to have to try, though. If not now, in a minute, in an hour. At some point, he’d convince himself that not doing it was worse than doing it, and he’d run the short distance to the med hab, wondering if the next bounding step would be his last.

  His arm ached where the bullet had cut his suit. If he was just bruised, then OK. If he was bleeding, then things would only get worse.

  So why not now? Why not go now?

  He forced his hand open, and he was suddenly running, passing behind the buggy, covering the distance as fast as he could, kicking up dust with his heels.

  He caught hold of the corner support leg and let himself swing around with his back to the hab. All of a hundred feet, and he hadn’t died yet. The base’s Wi-Fi would have picked up his heartbeat by now, so he needed to keep going. He ran down the line of supports, and around the back to the airlock there. He cycled it, stepped into the chamber, and cycled it again.

  The suit relaxed around him.

  Another choice to make: take it off, or keep it on? The suit controls told him that the pressure had stabilized at three point nine. Twenty per cent less than normal. Like standing on the top of a mountain. Yes, he’d be free to move and run and fight, but he’d be gasping like a stranded fish the whole time. And the suit was, to some degree, armored. Keep it on for now.

  He gripped the door handle, and in one swift movement pushed it down and swung it open, hard, like a punch. There was no resistance. Brack wasn’t behind the door.

  It didn’t mean he wasn’t there somewhere, though.

  The consulting room was just to his left, the usually locked door uncharacteristically ajar. Frank nudged it with his foot, and it slowly opened. Another bedroll sitting amid a sea of squalid filth, and an open metal flight case. The foam was cut out in the shape of a gun, and there were empty slots for magazines.

  A metal-edged case would be useful as a club. He slid in, and bent down to close the lid and click the latches.

  As he did so, he heard a faint noise, even though it was muffled through his helmet. A creak in the metal that wasn’t due to night-time cooling. He
knew what that sounded like, a steady tick-tick of contraction. This noise was a flex, the muted groan of someone trying to be stealthy.

  Frank stayed perfectly still. He could just see through the door from where he was crouching. The light outside in the med bay dimmed slightly. The floor creaked again. He was there, right outside, looking up and down the length of the hab, trying to see if anything had moved.

  Frank slowly slid his hand inside the flight case handle, and waited. He barely dared to blink, in case his lids rasped against his eyeballs.

  Another creak, and he could see the very edge of an XO-issue overall. No spacesuit. He tightened his grip on the handle, and tensed his arm.

  Then they turned, and their eyes opened wide as they spotted him.

  Frank was already launching the open flight case at their head when he realized it wasn’t Brack.

  It was a direct hit. The case seemed to wrap around Zero’s face, and the momentum and suddenness of the impact carried him backwards off his feet. He fell through a loose curtain and against one of the examination tables, sending it spinning and clattering through the med bay.

  Frank scrambled to his feet. “Crap. I thought you were him.”

  Zero ripped the case from his face. He was bleeding—a cut on his brow, a cut across the bridge of his nose—and he came up still holding his knife.

  He lunged at Frank’s chest. The outside curve of the blade skittered across the hard shell of the torso and Frank managed to turn so that the cutting edge didn’t slide into his arm. He forced Zero back with a two-handed shove that sent the lighter man flying down almost the entire length of the med bay.

  The knife seemed welded into Zero’s hand. He bounced up again, wiping blood out of his eye with his fingers.

  “It’s me,” said Frank. “It’s Frank. Look.”

  “I know who it is! I know what you’ve done. You killed everyone. Brack explained it all.”

  “No. He’s lying to you. He just shot Declan in the face. He shot me.” Frank pointed to his ragged sleeve. “He’s not what you think he is.”