No Way

by S. J. Morden

  “But you don’t work for XO. Not now.”

  “Let’s say I’ve gone freelance. Just let me do this. I’ll be fine.”

  “Like hell you will.” Despite that, Fan shut up and turned away.

  Yun stood next to him, the tablet still useless in her hands.

  “So what do I do?” he asked.

  “There are several ways of doing this. The wireless starts in Comms/Control, and has repeaters in every hab. You could turn them all off manually, but that relies on you finding them all. Did you install them?”

  “That was Declan. I think Dee helped.”

  “If you miss one, the kill signal still gets broadcast. The surest way of disabling it is to turn it off on the main computer.”

  “But you can’t access that.”

  “I know.”

  “Can’t I just cut the power to the computer?”

  “Yes, but it’s working on a UPS.” When Frank looked blank, she explained. “It’s got its own battery. We’d have to wait a day for it to run down.”

  “Can’t I just pull the battery leads out?”

  “Again, yes. Do you know where it is?”

  “Do you?”

  “It’s behind a whole lot of panels that aren’t meant to be opened. And if you do turn the computer off, there are all the automatic systems that rely on it. We run the risk of everything freezing, the plants dying, and the base atmosphere going wrong, between you turning it off and me turning it back on again safely. So that’s Plan B, but there’s something else I’d rather try first. It is rather technical.”

  “If you’re asking me to reprogram it, then you’ve picked the wrong guy. Turning stuff off, I can do that. Silicon Valley shit? Nope.”

  “Why not give me a chance to explain, and then decide?”

  His arm was aching, and it was making him irritable. He took a breath, and then another one. Because he could. “Just keep it simple.”

  “The new code must have been either installed and activated recently, or installed at a past time and activated only recently. The computer regularly backs itself up. An earlier version of its memory will have the kill switch set to off. All you need to do is load up that version instead of the version that is currently running.”

  “If you can’t get into the computer, what makes you think I’ll be able to?”

  “Because the keyboard in Comms doesn’t go through the wifi system. At that point, you’ll have bypassed what’s locking me out. Now, you’ll need to restart the computer—”

  “If I’m doing that anyway—”

  “Let me explain, first,” she repeated.

  “Sorry.”

  “You interrupt the boot sequence, and you access the system set-up screen. From there, you can then tell the computer where to look for its operating system. You direct it to a different path, and then let it continue from there. The problem is solved, at least temporarily, with very little interruption of the core life support systems.”

  “But the kill switch might still be in there.”

  “Yes, which is why I’ll have to find the process afterwards and delete it permanently.” Yun tilted her head on one side. “What do you think, Frank? Can you do that?”

  “I… guess so. You’re going to have to go through it, line by line. And what happens if I forget a step? It won’t be like I can just ask you to remind me.”

  “I’ll write it all down for you.”

  “On what?” The tablet was useless. They didn’t have paper or pen.

  “You, Frank. Hold still.”

  She turned Frank towards her, and dragged her glove across his partially frosted faceplate, cleaning it as best she could. Then she reached into her—into Leland’s—utility belt and held up a stubby pencil. A grease pencil.

  And she began to write the instructions Frank would need across the clear plastic, in English, backwards, and right to left.

  34

  [Transcript of 9News broadcast Sheila Tan 3/11/2049 0732MT]

  ST: Extraordinary scenes here as hundreds of law officers, acting on a warrant obtained by the Federal Aviation Authority and backed by the FBI, perform an early morning raid on the Denver offices of Xenosystems Operations. XO’s chief Paul Leander was taken into custody, and files and computers have been leaving the high-rise Tower of Light ever since.

  XO has been under the media spotlight in the last several days due to the failure of its communications links with Mars Base One and the Ares IV mission currently in residence on the red planet, but this raid came right out of the blue. The search warrant cites multiple breaches of the Commercial Space Launch Act, but we don’t know exactly what those breaches are, what they mean for XO, or what impact this will have on the astronauts on Mars. This story is developing, and a press conference with FAA officials is scheduled for ten [10] o’clock Mountain Time.

  [transcript ends]

  Frank was helped up onto the buggy—no point in walking the mile or so to the base—and he settled himself in the seat. The controls relied on squeezing the accelerator paddles, but it’d work just as well with one as with both, and there wasn’t anything else he needed to do, even strap himself in. It was straightforward enough, literally as well as figuratively, to drive over to the base, squinting out at the world around the blue pencil-marks across his field of vision.

  Whether he’d get there with his suit still working was something else entirely. Yes, he knew he could press buttons on his suit controls that would tell him he’d turned his transmitter off, but whether that was enough, or whether XO had installed some sort of backdoor that allowed them access to his life support without him knowing…

  He was about to find out. And there was nothing he could do about that. Either he’d realize in time, and manage to steer the buggy back over to the river, where the others would try and restart his suit again, or he’d black out and just carry on until he hit something. Or fell off the edge of the Heights and into the crater below.

  He was back in a world of silence. Whatever he’d done, he’d cut himself off from the voice comms. It was just him and the buggy for now. And he didn’t care what Fan said, the morphine was definitely wearing off. He couldn’t turn around anyway, to see them all for what might be the last time, but maybe that was for the best, because there were also the two M2 crew lying dead on the ground right next to them. Whatever they were, whatever they’d done, they deserved their names at least. Jerry could supply those.

  Frank raised his good hand, then took hold of the controls and eased the buggy away. It rumbled and rocked, carrying him onwards.

  The base slowly grew larger, and he caught himself holding his breath. That was stupid. Instead, he took his hand off the wheel, and propped open his suit control pad so that he could see whether it was powered up or blank. Then he carried on, one eye on the diminishing distance, one on the little read-out. If it went dark, he’d know instantly.

  It stayed stubbornly on.

  Was he close enough? Was he past that point already?

  The buggy was slowing to a crawl. That was him. He was easing back on the trigger. He checked his suit again, and it was still fine.

  “Fuck it,” he said to himself, and purposely closed his fist. The buggy picked up speed and, surely, he was near enough now that if something was going to happen, it would have already happened. There was the base… the base that looked wrong. Deflated. Not all the way, but the outer skin wasn’t as taut as it usually was.

  XO were trying to kill them slowly, having failed to kill them quickly.

  He steered in the direction of the yard and pulled to a halt beside it. Getting down from the buggy was an art he hadn’t mastered one-handed. In the end he sat on the edge of the frame and pushed himself off while still holding on. It worked, more or less.

  His heels hit the soil, he flexed his knees, he straightened up. He focused on the list in front of his face.

  It was only a few skipping strides to the airlock at the end of the crew hab. He hauled himself up the me
tal steps, and pushed the airlock cycle button.

  Nothing happened. He looked at it, and saw the telltale wasn’t lit.

  Fine. Play hardball then. There was more than one way to open the airlock. Except not this one, because they—no, he—had left the inner door open, precisely so that no one could open the airlock, with or without power.

  He needed to stay frosty, when he was feeling anything but.

  The cross-hab, then. He climbed down the steps, walked around Comms/Control, and to the cross-hab airlock. The telltale on this airlock was off too, but he should be able to open this one manually. He got his fingers into the recess on the external hatch, gave it a tug, and pulled the lever down to vent any airlock air to Mars.

  A whisper of gas crystallized near his feet, turning to ice and falling as glitter onto the top step.

  He returned the lever to upright, opened the airlock door, and stepped inside, closing the outer door behind him. There was another lever behind another hatch, next to the inner door. He tugged on it, and the cubicle repressurized with a sudden whoosh. Sound returned, and with it the noise of alarms.

  Frank took a moment to check the pressure. It should have been five psi. It was south of four. Breathable, but like being up the top of a mountain. He needed to check on Jerry before he tried anything with the computer.

  He entered the cross-hab. The oxygen sensor on the ceiling was chirping away, the bleeping mercifully dulled by his suit’s helmet. It was still loud, but just about bearable. He picked up the scuba mask from the top of the life support rack, tucked it under his arm, and hauled the one cylinder of oxygen that remained out of its place on the shelf. Either it had grown heavy, or he’d grown weak.

  He let it hit the floor, and he dragged it after him on his way to the med bay.

  The door to the examination room was still locked, the bolt on the outside shot home in the hasp on the frame. Frank used the back of his hand to knock it aside and then his shoulder to push through the door.

  Jerry was lying on the floor, mostly face-down, his hands still bound behind his back and his feet wound into the blanket he’d been given. He didn’t move when Frank barged in, and stayed that way when he was accidentally knelt on.

  Frank heaved him over. Jerry’s face was flushed red, and reminded him instantly of Dee, and how he’d died, gassed by the CO2 extinguishers. Could XO have set those off too? Jerry was still breathing: fast, deep, his whole frame swelling and shrinking. He was still alive, but there wasn’t much Frank could do but plug in the scuba mask, turn the oxygen on and force Jerry’s face into it. He couldn’t work the straps one-handed, and he had to give up on that.

  He left him there. He’d done his best—Fan would be able to do so much more if he could just get into the base. Frank’s job, his one job, was to do battle with the main computer.

  He pulled the door to, just in case that managed to increase the oxygen pressure in the cubicle, and walked quickly through to Comms. He kicked the chair out of the way, then went to the wall where the computer itself was sited. He looked up at his instructions, found the reset button, found that his gauntleted finger was too fat to fit in the depression, and looked around for something small enough to reach.

  A coffee spoon handle.

  OK, go to the kitchen, open the drawer, rake out a spoon, take it back to the computer, insert it into the hole and press.

  The alarms fell silent. Thank God for that.

  Next instruction. Get back to the terminal and press down the shift key before the boot sequence is complete.

  He was too late. It had been seconds at most to walk around the desk and point his finger. He looked at the distance again, and dragged the console closer, and facing him. He used the spoon again, and watched the monitor go blank for a moment, before it popped up with “no video signal”.

  He let go of the button, and now he could just lean over and press the shift key.

  It worked. He was given a list of options. He selected “advanced options”, then the first choice with the recovery mode label. Paranoid about making a mistake, he used the spoon handle on the keyboard, tapping the down arrow key once, and then enter.

  The screen flashed and came up with another menu. This time he was going to choose…“root”.

  This was where shit got real. He had to type in a series of commands exactly as they were presented to him on his faceplate. If he got one of them wrong, he’d have to do it again. If Yun had got one of them wrong, then—what? He’d have to drive back across the Heights and get her to correct her instructions. All the while their base, their food supply, was dying.

  He started along the first line, “mount -o remount,rw” and pressed enter. So far, so good. Then into the system files, delete them all—he was sweating, because Yun had told him that he could really screw things up—then copy all the files over from a backup directory. Streams of data washed up the screen, far faster than Frank could read, almost faster than he could see.

  The inevitable message, something to tell him he’d failed, never came. Yun’s instructions were boilerplated.

  He exited the root, then tapped up to “resume”. Here went nothing.

  It worked. At least, it appeared to work. Scripts ran, the screen went blank, and then icons began to pop up on the screen. The alarms started again, having detected the lack of oxygen in the air, but there were alerts piling up in the action center which, when he opened it, told him that the air plant had just kicked in, that the scrubbers were on max, trying to take out the CO2, that the airlocks were being set to active. Lights. Music. The works.

  Had he managed to remove the suit kill switch, though? The only way he was going to be able to tell was by turning his comms back on. It’d kill him if he hadn’t, so he didn’t.

  He’d done everything he’d come to do. The base should be starting to reinflate around him now, and return to its normal state. He could silence the alarms, but it was a good, audible reminder for everyone not to take their suits off. The noise would stop when the air was safe to breathe again.

  All that remained to be done was to check on Jerry, and then head back to the Santa Clara. They’d see soon enough if he’d managed to incant Yun’s spell properly.

  Jerry wasn’t what Frank would have called awake. He was stirring, moaning and coughing, pushing into the mask. He could really do with being untied, and that was something that Frank could manage one-handed.

  Back to the kitchen for a knife, and saw slowly through the cable ties, trying not to nick the skin on Jerry’s wrists, because he was in enough trouble without getting cut too. The moment the plastic snapped, Jerry coughed and his hands planted on the deck to try and brace himself.

  Frank used his good hand to help Jerry find the mask, and hold it to his own face. He wasn’t a doctor. He barely knew the basics. It was the best he could do.

  He brought his head down and shouted, over the electronic beep of the overhead alarms, over the coughing and panting: “I’m coming back for you, OK? I’m bringing Fan with me. He’ll patch you up. Just keep breathing.”

  Jerry had done bad things, but so had Frank. And if he could work out his salvation, there was hope for everyone. He didn’t have to like him. Just to recognize that he’d been there, too, and the way out took both time and effort.

  Back to the cross-hab airlock, where the lights on the telltale were back on. Frank should have been able to just open the door and enter, but even in the short time the air plant had been back on, the pressure had increased enough to seal the door shut. He cycled the lock to equalize, and then again to exit into a Martian afternoon, the sun tipping low towards the western wall of Rahe crater.

  He had a couple of hours’ air left. By the time that was up, the habs should have reinflated. Or at least enough that it wouldn’t kill them. He walked back round to the buggy, parked next to the dead transmitter dish, and tried to climb up.

  They’d gone through the plan several times. What to do if Frank couldn’t access the computer, what to do i
f Frank couldn’t turn off the wifi repeaters, what to do if Jerry had freed himself and holed up inside, everything that might prevent Frank from neutralizing the kill switch threat.

  What they hadn’t done was plan for his success.

  He should, reasonably, be able to climb up one-handed, but goddammit he was tired. And weak. And everything else in between. The top of the chassis was just over head height. In normal circumstances, he could jump that high from a standing start. Right now, if he could make any air at all, he’d consider it a win. The lower part of the frame was four feet up. If he could get his leg onto that, he could probably lever himself the rest of the way. Barring that, it was a long walk back.

  He looked up at the buggy again. A ladder. That was all he needed.

  OK. He pulled his nut runner from his belt, spent a couple of minutes unbolting the steps leading up to the airlock at the end of the yard, and pulled them, jerking them inch by inch, around and against the side of the buggy.

  He could have thought of that a while back, but he was actually pretty pleased to have thought of it at all. He climbed up, stepped carefully across the open tubes and lowered himself into the seat. It took a little careful steering to maneuver the back wheels away from the obstruction, but he still remembered how to do it, and he drove back across the Heights to where the rest of the crew sat waiting for him.

  All that knowledge, all that training, and it came down to him. He didn’t feel like bragging, though. He was just glad he was in a position, thanks to XO and their prototype suits, to help.

  The others were sitting in the sand, or on the buggy, conserving what was in their tanks. But they stood, one by one, as Frank approached, and walked out to meet him.

  Lucy climbed up and touched helmets with him.

  “Tell me you did it.”

  “I did it. Worked first time.”

  “Thank you.” She relayed the message, and suddenly everyone looked much happier. Apart from the two dead astronauts lying face-down in the dirt.

  “XO had also vented the CO2 extinguishers, cut the power to the airlocks, and had started depressurizing the habs. If they could have burned the base down, pretty certain they’d have done that.”