by S. J. Morden
Eventually, Isla reached across and dragged the serving dish over towards her. She gave herself a tiny portion, barely anything, but from her expression it was going to be all she could gag down. Lucy reluctantly followed, and when she’d finished, she pushed it at Fan.
Who stared at it for the longest time.
“That’s an order,” she said, softly.
He didn’t have the willpower to defy her. The fight had gone out of him, and he theatrically clattered the spoon on the edge of his bowl to knock the last few grains of boiled wheat off.
Frank looked around the table, and found that everyone else was doing exactly the same. It wasn’t just ridiculous, but painfully, obviously so. He picked up his spork, toyed with it for a few seconds, then said: “You know what? Fuck it. If I’m going to die, I’m going down with a full belly. A couple of cold ones would go down nicely, but some damn fool decided this base was dry.”
He took a mouthful and chewed and swallowed, and went back for another.
“My parents,” said Isla. “They never drank. Very strict. When I used to come home from college, I had to hide my beer out in the barn, and the nearest place to buy it was some fifty miles away. Those summers were long.” And she ate. “It’s good, Frank,” she said.
After that, the floodgates opened. Reminiscences of childhoods in cities and on islands, on prairies and on air force bases. Things they’d done. Scars they’d earned. Loves they’d lost and hearts they’d broken.
One last normal evening, because they didn’t know who’d be coming back tomorrow.
31
[Transcript of Officer Denny Kraft Salt Lake City PD and Dispatcher (Jem Macintyre) 3/10/2049]
Dispatcher: They’ve all gone?
DK: Every single one of them. I mean, I know this place was a ghost town before they got here. But everything’s just been left. Except the people.
Dispatcher: Doors open?
DK: Nah. Everything’s locked up. I’m not going to go breaking windows without a warrant.
Dispatcher: No sign of our caller?
DK: There’s no sign of anyone, Jem. The whole place is deserted. Pete’s gone around the lot, same as I have, and it’s like they’ve just been raptured. You know?
Dispatcher: You want backup?
DK: I don’t know. I mean, it’s not a crime to just up and leave, but this is thousands of people. And we got that call.
Dispatcher: Maybe you and Pete should come back to the station.
DK: We’re out here now. We’ll go on to the fence. See what we can see. Maybe someone there we can ask.
Dispatcher: OK, Denny. You take care now.
[transcript ends]
Loading up in the dead of night, at the coldest moment, when everything was glittering with ice, was hard. Plastic was brittle, rubber was like iron, and their suits were stiff.
Frank hitched up a trailer, put drums on it and when they were full—ropes, straps, life supports, oxygen canisters, weapons in one, shields in another, even Leland’s suit in case one of theirs, or Yun’s, got damaged—they got ratcheted down. Everything they thought they’d need. Plenty of pre-made ammunition for the cannon. Spare parachute cloth. Rubber patches, a full medical kit even though getting into a pressurized environment to use it was going to be problematic at best. But if they didn’t take it, they couldn’t pop back for it later.
At three on the nose, Lucy, with Isla strapped into a bucket seat from the kitchen behind her, drove off in the direction of the Santa Clara. Frank followed with the trailer, Fan riding behind him. The tire plates growled and crackled against the loose rocks grown heavy with white frost.
They left the base behind, internal lights barely showing through the dense covering of the habs, the dish pointing blindly up into the sky. Overhead, the stars burned through like holes in a curtain.
It took them two hours to get to the outpost, where they discovered that anything that hadn’t been nailed down was gone. Panels, stores, electronic equipment that was vital for Yun’s work, scrubbers, gas cylinders, either vanished or gutted. There was little reason in taking some of the stuff: perhaps M2 were just punishing them for their abundance.
Frank made the others stay outside while he checked out the interior of the hab. It was still pressurized—a little saggy but otherwise sound—and someone could have been inside. It was freezing, and he walked through the debris of ransacking with the hope that maybe there was someone from M2 there, so that he could get an explanation as to why all this pointless, expensive waste.
It was silent, except for his own footsteps.
“We’re good,” he said. “Come on in, but don’t touch anything with bare hands or feet, or you’ll be leaving your skin behind.”
They swapped out their life supports, one at a time, and then remounted and drove on, with Frank in front this time. He knew the way.
The occasional voices in his ear started to chop and eventually cut out altogether. The NASA suits were still linked together, as long as they stayed close to each other. The XO suit which Frank wore wasn’t. He was out of range of the main antenna back at MBO, and the one they’d set up at the outpost had been stolen.
It was going to make it difficult when they got to M2, and something he should really have thought about first, not that they could have changed it. He might have swapped into Leland’s suit, but Leland had been a different size and shape to Frank. He had to drive on in silence.
He led the way down the volcano’s hard, ridged slopes. With the lights on, they would be easy to spot—but only if someone was looking. It was very much easier said than done, standing out in the freezing night, acting as a lookout. MBO had been attacked in broad daylight, and Yun hadn’t even managed to warn anyone inside before M2 had started coming through the airlocks.
Bouncing the cave base wasn’t going to be the difficult part. Dealing with the occupants while not killing Yun, assuming she was still alive, was.
That was the problem with these long drives. Being in his own head, nothing to do but steer and stare out at a landscape that hadn’t changed for tens of thousands of years, and wouldn’t for another ten thousand. Nothing they did would make any difference, in the long run. Sure, lives saved, lives lost, but there’d be other Martian missions, other Martian bases. When someone came to write a history of Mars, MBO’s fight with M2 might make a paragraph or two. They probably wouldn’t even mention anyone’s name.
When it came down to it, there was so little at stake. A few people, duking it out on the surface of an uninhabitable planet, when there were countless billions at home. It felt meaningful to him, but in a hundred years’ time, who was going to care?
He managed to keep his wheels pointing south. What was he in this for? Revenge? Hell, yes. Anything that was going to piss XO off was worth doing. And mercy: Yun shouldn’t be abandoned, not to this bunch of psychopaths. Even if it was too late, there was always justice. Which, for Frank, felt strange, having spent so long on the other side of it.
The eastern sky started to lighten, and he looked up to see one moon chase towards the sunrise, while the other seemed painted onto the western horizon. The land slowly changed from a blank canvas to one with black pits and gray rock. Then, as the temperature rose, the ice started to burn off.
Had the others never seen this before? Frank had, not just on his previous trip to M2, but on countless early mornings, where he had to hoard the daylight like a miser and spend it thriftily.
Lucy brought her buggy to a stop as the ground steamed and swirled with fog. Twists of smoke spiraled upwards and vanished, and all too soon the spectacle was much diminished, with only sheltered spots sending drifts of white vapor rolling out and up.
It looked like Hell. It could well be.
The first slanting rays of weak sunlight made more substantial shadows from the buggies, and the figures balanced on them, and Lucy set off again, allowing Frank to pull ahead as they descended towards the foot of the volcano.
They reached level
ground, and Frank could, in the distance, see the dark scar of the trench. He pointed towards its eastern end and turned his wheel slightly. He was down on watts from where he’d been at this stage previously, due to the increased weight of towing. He might have to abandon the trailer for the trip back, assuming there’d be one—he might even have to abandon the buggy at the outpost. Someone could collect both later.
He kept watch for any movement ahead of him, but could see nothing. Just miles of dust and rock and craters, like most of Mars. Why would anyone want to come here? Sure, scientists, but a land grab? Get in before the competition? Who would want this? Why throw money and people at a place that was dead, dead, dead?
That was XO’s plan: it didn’t have to make any sense. Maybe he’d ask Lucy about it.
Now they were out on the plain, he could make out tire tracks: his own, and those of the M2 buggies that had chased him. Easy to follow them round to the entrance of the trench, not so easy to make himself drive that route, knowing what he faced at the end of it.
Then they were there, at the start of the five-mile-long trench that sloped gradually downwards and disappeared into the dark vault at the far end. The descent ship was clearly visible as a white thumb pointing skywards, but not the hab hidden in the cave.
Frank rolled to a halt, and Lucy pulled in alongside him. They dismounted and met in the middle, touching helmets.
“You good?” asked Frank.
“As far as the circumstances dictate.”
“I’ll hand out the weapons, and detach the trailer. Then I’ll just follow your lead. Fan has the spare suit, and I’ll run as much interference as I can. And don’t wait for me: Yun’s the priority here.”
“You know I’m never going to agree to that.”
“Is this where I tell you to go fuck yourself, Lucy? Because I will if I have to.”
“Sure you will, Frank. I make the rules now: no one gets left behind.”
They separated, and Frank held out his fist. She dapped it, deliberately and self-consciously. There wasn’t anything left to say.
He took out the shields he’d made, handed them up to Fan and Isla, then went back for the swords. It looked ridiculous, but no one had come up with a better idea. And, to be fair, it looked terrifying as well. The shock of facing armed and armored warriors when all that separated you from instant death was a pressure suit might just be enough to force a surrender.
Frank unhitched the trailer, strapped his shield to his left arm and, for the want of anything better to do with it, passed his sword to Fan. He climbed up to the driver’s seat and wondered what it was going to be like.
He started forward, and Lucy matched his speed. Isla loaded up the cannon, and fixed the oxygen cylinder to the cistern.
Everything ahead of them was quiet. No spacesuited figures, no one coming out early to clean and turn the solar panels. Maybe, maybe they’d done everyone a favor and turned on each other, and Yun was inside, just waiting to be picked up. Maybe it wouldn’t come to a fight after all.
They swept past the descent ship, and started to slow. Sometime soon, surely, they’d have to be spotted. Not yet, though. Not yet.
Frank put the brakes on some hundred yards from the shadowed hab. He sat in his seat, watching the airlock, and still nothing. Then he stood up in his seat and looked back at the ship.
The descent ship he came in had had cameras on the outside.
Goddammit, they were going to have to go in and quickly.
He climbed down, held Fan’s sword while he dismounted, and together they jogged up to the hab’s airlock.
It had exactly the same design as their own. XO standard hardware. He ran up the steps, and pressed the airlock cycle button.
Red light.
OK, so the airlock had power, but it wasn’t cycling. Someone had propped the inner door open. The only way in was to equalize the pressure either side of the outer door, and Frank knew two ways of doing that. One slow and easy to thwart, and one quick, and very, very dirty. And if Yun was in there, out of her suit, most likely fatal.
He butted heads with Fan.
“We’re not getting in that way. We have to go through the wall.”
“Do they know we’re outside?”
“Yes. Get Isla to fire.”
Lucy had rolled her buggy so that it was square on, some fifty feet away. She grabbed Leland’s suit, and dashed across the open ground, dragging its heels after her. Then she handed it to Fan, who tucked his sword under the metal steps, to keep it from being used against him.
She gave Frank the OK sign. She turned and gave Isla the OK sign.
They all crouched down, and Isla turned on the oxygen.
It felt like he’d been waiting for ever when there was an audible pop, and the thick membrane of the hab puckered inwards. A fist-sized hole appeared about six feet off the ground, and the rubber rippled as the shockwave whipped through it.
Almost immediately, the warm, moist air inside started to geyser out, turning to ice in the frigid near-vacuum outside. Frank drove his sword through the breach and dragged it down. The gust knocked him backwards, but Lucy was already pushing through, braced against the headwind. Frank leaned in behind.
The countdown had started. They didn’t have long. Twenty, thirty seconds to find Yun, get her into a suit, pressurize it.
Entering the hab, Frank didn’t know what to expect. What he could get out of Jerry was that they’d partially put the second-storey floor in, but there were no internal walls. Stores, such as they were, were downstairs. Sleeping was upstairs. There’d be at least one ladder up, and he could jump and scale eight feet in open space in any event.
It was far more filthy, more chaotic, than he’d anticipated, but the basic structure was right. Lucy had gone left, to the ladder, so he went right, climbing over a loose pile of drums towards the clear area beyond. The air pressure was dropping fast, and he couldn’t hear much, nothing beyond the faint sound of Lucy’s boots on the rungs. Fan was through too, looking frantically for Yun on the lower deck.
She didn’t seem to be there, so Frank left Fan to search, and reached the open portion of the hab.
No sign of Yun.
He spotted movement above him: outlined by the faint light, two figures were struggling to enter their spacesuits. OK, Frank. Remember what you came here to do. Save Yun. These people made their choices, just as you made yours. They get to live with that, same as you do.
Frank bent his legs beneath him, and pushed off with as much force as he could muster. It was Mars, and he soared.
The edge of the floor passed his eyeline, and he planted his feet solidly on the platform, right arm outstretched so he didn’t cut himself on his own sword. But the two people—one man, one woman—frantically trying to seal their suits, were simply intent on finding air to breathe, and not interested in him.
Where the hell was Yun? The emergency lighting didn’t show her at all.
Lucy emerged at the top of the ladder and instinctively smashed her shield boss into the faceplate of someone who’d already got their suit on. There was someone else at her feet, moving feebly, trying to crawl away—definitely not Yun, but the guy Frank had faced off earlier, the one who’d taken Jim’s suit. The two behind him weren’t Yun either.
Where was she?
He knew that letting them get into their suits and then having to fight them didn’t make any sense. He put his foot against the female astronaut’s side and kicked her over the edge, then swung his sword hard at the second. They put their hand up to ward off Frank’s blow—instinctive, but very wrong.
The blade wasn’t sharp-sharp, but it was moving fast and it broke the man’s hand as it hit the palm of the gauntlet. The scream was silent, and Frank kicked him away, too, sending him spinning down into the drums and the debris below.
He checked quickly on Lucy—her man was down, cowering, covering his head, his back to her, and the crawler, suitless, had stopped moving completely. Below him, the woman had manage
d to seal herself, and she was making her way towards the rent, and towards Fan.
Frank dropped on her from above, boots hitting her helmet, sending them both falling apart. They were up at the same time, but Frank knew where his enemy was, while she would only be able to see Fan’s suit lights as he pushed and pulled the drums aside.
Frank punched out with his shield, right into her life support, and sent her sprawling. Seeing her in that suit, lying there, arms out, legs spread, reminded him too much of Brack and he could feel himself go into that same cold place where killing was necessary and the only thing that would save him and those he cared about.
Then Fan was there, arms around him, holding him back. Their helmets were touching, and he was saying, “It’s OK, Frank. It’s OK. You can stop now. You can stop,” over and over, and after a while, the urge to keep stabbing and hitting faded, and he was able to listen to reason once more.
He took a step back. Yun wasn’t here. That meant one of two things.
Frank went to check on the guy whose hand he’d hacked at. It turned out the man hadn’t managed to close his suit anyway. His faceplate was thick with frost from his last breath, and smoke was starting to spiral out through the open hatch as his fluids boiled away. He was beyond saving.
By the time Frank turned back round, Lucy had marched her prisoner down to the lower deck at sword point, and forced him to his knees. Fan stood over the woman brought down by Frank, and he stepped away to allow her to be turned over.
Frank found himself looking down at someone who was just a kid. Early twenties. Wide-eyed, unblinking. Breathing hard, fogging the faceplate momentarily before the fans cleared it. Frank looked at her, looking up at him. The absolute terror. The imminence of death.
He knelt down and he pressed his helmet against hers. He could hear her now, her panicked, whistling breath.
“Feng Yun. Tell me where she is.”
“In the ship in the ship she’s in the ship with Justin don’t don’t she’s alive I swear she’s still alive—”
