S Morden - No Way

Frank kicked out, taking out the astronaut’s legs, and rolled awkwardly away, scrambling to his feet. The other guy stood up and closed the distance between them, swinging the wrench, but telegraphing each move so that Frank didn’t have to do much in the way of dodging, but instead just backed away.

He’d backed away too far. The other man was now between him and the buggy. He threw the wrench at Frank—badly aimed, and it glanced off his carapaced shoulder on the way past—then started to climb up the buggy’s chassis on the way to the driver’s seat.

What was he doing? Hijacking the buggy? No. Obviously, stopping him from driving away. Frank jumped, grabbed the man’s leg, and pulled. The man’s other foot came away from the side of the tire he had wedged it against, and he was now hanging by his arms, with Frank hanging from him. He kicked out at Frank, missed because Frank had moved sharply out of the way, and still he hung on. He tried to carry on climbing with just his hands. Despite his weakness, his furious intensity dragged Frank across the sand. He tried to shake Frank off with another kick.

Frank felt the blow against his chest, a solid punch that nevertheless did nothing but leave a boot mark against the white plastic. He took the foot he was holding on to, and he wrenched it around by more than a right angle. He felt something give at the same time as the man in Jim’s suit went rigid. He could pull him off the buggy easily now, and Jim’s helmet hit the sand hard.

The wrench was too far away to retrieve, so Frank pulled his nut runner from his belt and pinned the man face-down in the dirt. He banged on the other man’s helmet with the nut runner once, twice, three times: hard enough to send a message and perhaps disorientate, but not enough to crack the seals.

He had to turn to check he wasn’t being bounced from behind. He’d hear nothing. He’d see nothing outside of the narrow window in front of him. But they were still alone. The hab’s airlock stayed closed.

He knelt down, bent his head low until their helmets touched. He could hear groaning, but that wasn’t his priority right now.

“What have you done with Jim?”

No answer.

Frank took his nut runner and banged on Jim’s helmet again.

“What have you done with him?”

“Go to hell!”

OK. Frank adjusted his position slightly so that he could put his weight on the man’s ankle.

“One last time,” he shouted through the screaming. “Where is Jim Zamudio? Is he alive or dead?”

He lifted his foot to ease the pressure. He could hear the man inside Jim’s suit panting.

“He’s… he’s…”

How difficult would it be to say “alive” if Jim was actually alive? He clawed his fingers around the mission patch on the spacesuit’s arm and ripped it free. He tucked the patch into his belt pouch, reholstered his nut runner, then looked again at the cave entrance. Suit lights. One. Another. Goddammit. Coming towards him. Fast.

Frank scrambled up into the buggy seat, and didn’t bother to strap himself in before he gripped hard on the accelerator triggers. The wheels spun before the tire plates dug in, and he jerked away, bouncing over the ground, heading past the descent ship, on his way towards the end of the trench. The rattling of the frame grew too much, and he slowed momentarily to buckle up.

He also activated his rear-view cameras. The tiny screen told him what he suspected. Dust plumes. Two of them. Right behind him.

From:Mohammed Aziz

To:Jay Fredericks

Date:Sun, Mar 7 2049 23:26:21 -0700

Subject:re: interference

Jay,

I can assure you that those transmissions were not from MBO, the DV, the MAV or the TV [transit vessel]. They ran full diagnostics, and there’s no leakage. Yes, I know what the next question is, and no, I have no idea where it actually came from. I’ll get back to you once we’ve locked that down. We are definitely working on it. I’m sure you realize it’s not our top priority at the moment.

Mo

Even though Frank had been sent to prison for murder, not carjacking, he was still going to give outrunning his pursuers his best shot, because what choice did he have otherwise? Suffer the same fate as Jim? Whatever that was.

He pointed himself in the direction of the summit of Ceraunius and tightened the suspension. This was going to get difficult. The vibrations in the frame—constant, with frequent big hits as he clattered against a rock—made it all but impossible to see out of the rear-facing cameras. He managed fleeting glimpses of something, but unless he slowed down, he wouldn’t know where the M2 buggies were. He couldn’t turn around in his seat. He wasn’t going to swerve the buggy to give him a view beyond his ten-to-two. He was never going to hear them behind him either.

He’d just have to hang on and hope that it was enough.

His front wheels skimmed a ridge, and he was airborne. Torque control slowed the motors, and when he landed, he landed hard. It took him moments he probably didn’t have to get up to speed again, until the next time it happened. And the next. Would he be going faster if he actually slowed down? Less airtime meant more wheels-in-the-dirt time. He didn’t know. He couldn’t judge. Marcy would know. Marcy would be able to get him out of trouble because she was a pro, and not a rank amateur like he was.

The plain. Better. Deeper dust, fewer rocks.

The nose of the buggy dipped down, chewed up a plume of red soil, and then dug itself out of the hole it had made.

Frank acknowledged that for all his time on Mars, getting into what amounted to a car chase was something that he hadn’t prepared for. No streets, no buildings, no other traffic. He was just being driven down.

He looked at the shaky picture from the rear-facing cameras. Nothing. He could see only the distant horizon. Did that mean they’d given up, that he was sweating bullets running from people who weren’t chasing him any more? Did he dare swing left, swing right, to check? Not just yet.

He wondered at which point were they going to give up. When Frank reached the volcano? Halfway up? All the way to the top? If it depended on when their fuel cells or their gas reached fifty per cent, that was nothing he could control. They could chase him all the way home, come to that, except they’d be pretty much out of air. They were all hammering their buggies hard, driving in such a way that wasn’t efficient use of the stored energy. Their ranges were decreasing faster than the miles they covered.

Crap. He was going to have to do something, wasn’t he?

So, laying it out. He was on his way home. The only thing he needed to worry about was whether he had enough watts and tanked air to make it back to MBO. They were on their outward leg, so they needed to keep enough in store to make it back, and the further they went, the more they’d need. Also, Frank only had to stay ahead, while they had to stop him. That meant cutting him off. Boxing him in at least. They didn’t have comms, but maybe they could talk to each other like the NASA suits could, when they got close enough. That meant they could coordinate their attack.

Frank had a pretty good idea of what was at stake for him here if he lost this. His hard-won, if limited, freedom. His future trip back to Earth. Possibly his life. And just possibly the lives of all the NASA astronauts. He still didn’t know whether to count Jim among the living or the dead.

Just how much skin did his pursuers have in the game? What did they want from him? His suit? His buggy? Him? He didn’t know, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to make it easy for them.

He caught movement in the corner of his eye. He turned his head, and just saw more of the inside of his helmet. He straightened back up again, and shifted his hips slightly so he could turn his shoulders.