S Morden - No Way

And the gun by his side.

He’d decided that he was going to keep it. XO would never know, one way or the other. He’d brought the metal case over along with the rest of Brack’s effects, dumped it in plain sight of the ship-board cameras, but the gun itself was currently in the same pouch at his waist as his suit patches.

He hadn’t thought so far ahead as to what to do with it when the NASA astronauts turned up. Bury it outside, maybe, as keeping it anywhere on the base would mean he’d always be worried it’d be discovered. And trying to explain his possession of a modified automatic pistol would unravel any lie he might come up with.

He looked up at the ship. He wasn’t certain how he’d got there. The buggy was behind him. How else?

Come on, Frank. Keep it together. Just a little longer.

He ducked under the hull of the ship and took hold of the first of the shrouds. He pulled it out, watching how the dust that had accumulated in the folds of the cloth dribbled out into the drag lines. Who was he moving? The twisted package was quite slim, no real bulk to it, and nothing to suggest a spacesuit inside. Zero, then.

He laid him out at the bottom of the steps, and went back for Brack, or Declan. Then again for Declan, or Brack. Both were still in their suits, both with shattered faceplates. Brack’s life support had ended up broken. Ended up: Frank had driven an oxygen cylinder into it, repeatedly, like a battering ram, until he’d rendered it inoperable. Declan’s should be fine. But he really didn’t have the heart to unwrap one, then the other when he inevitably unwrapped the wrong one first, and remove the life support pack.

It was going with the ship, and that was that.

He activated the timer on his tablet, and thumbed the airlock open. He bounced Zero up the steps and inside, then cycled them through. When the inner door opened, he was again confronted by the sheer amount of trash that they’d managed to generate. Brack, specifically, had contributed to much of that, as he slowly but surely lost himself in addiction.

He pulled Zero through the debris, and laid him down near the inactive computer console. He wanted to stand and think about what he was doing, about what he had agreed to do. But the clock was ticking. He turned and went back for the next, and then the next.

Seven bodies. Four upstairs in their sleep tanks, but most definitely dead. Three downstairs, wrapped in their black and white shrouds. His crew.

He thought about sleep. He thought about not having to worry about M2. Not having to worry about being suffocated or stabbed. Not having to worry about every little aspect of the base.

He could finally have some time off. A holiday. He used to look forward to vacations, road trips to various far-flung places, piling into the car and marking their progress on the map. When was the last one? Maybe ten years ago? Twelve? Yellowstone? Sure, that was it. Mike had been fourteen, fifteen, sliding from wonder to cynicism, but the geysers had still taken his breath away.

The alarm on his tablet sounded. Time to stop daydreaming and get the hell out. He cycled the airlock through and bundled himself outside, breathing hard. It was a stupid thing to do, to risk getting caught now. He stumbled as far as the buggy, and leaned against one of the huge wheels to steady himself.

Done it. Escaped. The sun was halfway to the horizon, so it wouldn’t be long now. Everything was finished, and he supposed if XO was going to make its move, it’d be now, when he’d done all the hard work and they could just replace him. Today, tonight, and in the morning. Then the next descent ship would come down, and bring relief.

He was so very tired.

But he drove to the drop-off that overlooked Sunset Boulevard and stared out across the crater. Rahe was as empty and still as ever, a huge, deep oval basin with ramparts of broken rock and a central spine of ragged hills. Later craters pocked the floor like afterthoughts.

No telltale dust clouds coming towards him across the shadowed floor of Rahe. No advancing buggies with astronauts hanging off the sides. He supposed that if they were going to try and get to him, and they were somewhere on the south side of Ceraunius, they’d probably try to come over the top. He’d thought of setting up some kind of early warning, but he had no technical expertise to help him. He wondered about all the things he might do, involving automatic cameras, or vibration sensors, or physical tripwires, and he didn’t know where to even start.

It was just another day when he seemed to have got away with it. Relying on XO’s word was… wearing. Since that moment on the flanks of the volcano, he’d not seen anything of M2. He wondered why. Perhaps they lacked the capacity to get to him after all, with broken buggies or the inability to recharge them. Perhaps they’d already succumbed to hunger, to thirst, to asphyxiation, and their base, what they had of it, what Frank hadn’t taken, was derelict. A tomb.

Perhaps it was just that they didn’t know where he was. Or that they did, and they were biding their time, eking out their resources until the hard work was done.

He drove slowly back to the base via the MAV.

The MAV still seemed to be doing its thing. Extracting carbon dioxide, splitting it up, and sequestering the products in separate tanks. It was largely still: every so often the panels turned a few degrees to better face the weak sun, and he knew that at sunrise and sunset the vents would close and the panels rotate all the way back to their starting positions, ready to pick up the first light of dawn.

The NASA astronauts were already up there, above him. Packing and preparing to fall the last few miles from the transit ship down to Mars. Putting one machine to sleep, and waking up another. Those last few miles that had been described as seven minutes of terror on one of the training videos he’d seen, back on Earth and a lifetime ago.

What if they died on the way? After all that time—awake, for all of it—and all that distance, only to burn up in the atmosphere and then plow into the frozen red ground fast enough to leave nothing but a carbon-black smear. There was nothing Frank could do about that. If they fell too fast or too far away, he wouldn’t be able to help them, only be a witness to what was happening. And then radio home.

The only preparation that was now useful would be to make sure he charged up the buggies and synced his tablet, and be ready. He knew what was required of him. Be Brack.

He craned his head back, and looked towards the zenith. They weren’t going to die. He wasn’t going to die either. They were going to live, and take him home with them, and he wouldn’t have to be scared all the time any more. It was going to be OK. They would call him Lance Brack, and he’d have to wear the cloak of a different murderer for a while—but that was OK too, because Franklin Kittridge knew what that felt like, knew what the weight was around his shoulders, knew how to straighten up his back under the load.

One more sleep. One more attempt at sleep. There were drugs he could use, and never had before. He’d managed to hold back until now: partly through fear—both of what it might do to him, and what could happen while he was under—and partly through an iron rod of stubbornness that ran through him.

He was better than that. Everyone was better than that, he thought. No one needed that shit to help them cope or do normal stuff like sleep. In his more lucid moments, he acknowledged his approach was killing him, but he wasn’t going to give in. Not now.

One more night. One more morning.

The closer it got, the more apprehensive he grew. He wasn’t in control of this, and could never be: all he had was the illusion of control, pretending to set his own agenda and write his job list as if he was the site foreman. He wasn’t the boss. XO were. NASA were. He was just working off their timesheets.