S Morden - No Way

Goddammit. One of them had drawn level with him, fifty feet off his left-hand side. He checked the right, and as far as he could see, there was nothing there. He glanced down at the camera screen.

Right behind. Right. Behind. He swung left, and right, and it was there, just off his rear wheel.

“OK, I have no idea how this works, but screw you anyway.”

He flexed his fingers momentarily, letting go of the paddles, and the other buggy zipped by. He clenched them again, and now it was him who was behind.

Dust was streaming off the tires like spray, and he was in it. He couldn’t see. He nudged the wheel over, and then he was in the clear air between the tracks. Their buggies had no lights. No winch. No cameras. To the guy in front, he’d effectively disappeared.

Which meant he was about to turn and try and pick him up again.

Frank eased off again, letting the distance between them increase by ten feet, twenty feet. The buggy to his left was turning in a wide arc, still ahead, but easing rightwards. The one he was tailing would be told where Frank was, but he wouldn’t know . The driver would have to make that turn soon. Left, or right?

Left. It heeled over, and the buggy threatened to tip. It slowed hard as it tried to make the curve, and the wheels came up, spinning fast and useless on the side facing Frank. Who squeezed hard and thanked his good sense to strap in.

He rammed the buggy, his nose against their rear wheel, his own tires away from the collision point. The plates clattered hard against the lattice framework, and one sheared off, spinning high into the air, sharp and fast. Frank felt the impact, the juddering as the tire ground against the metalwork, could hear the rattle and the whine of the motor.

He dug in, spreading his own plates wide for maximum traction. And shoved. The other buggy tilted and tipped. He was almost under it now, and they were still moving. If he twisted the steering column left, he’d have most of a buggy on top of him. He’d be a sitting target for the second one. So turn it right.

Higher. Higher still. Now. He pulled the column over as far as he dared, and the M2 buggy was on its side, careering across the dust, wheels a blur, and—it must have hit a rock—took off. It sailed up, tumbling, and came down hard before flipping again, rolling like it was in a barrel. It came to a rest upside down, the driver hanging from their harness, arms extended limply towards the ground.

Frank had no time to check for damage. The other buggy was barreling round ahead of him, and heading back in his direction.

He steered around the wreck and wondered how he should handle this. There was one obvious way. If he got it wrong, they might all die out here. If he called it right, then he could still make it home.

Home. Was that what MBO was? No time to unpack that just now. He looked at the dust plume ahead of him as it turned from something he saw side-on to seeing it head-on.

How brave was he? Honestly, he wasn’t brave at all. He’d proved that again and again, taking the path of least resistance at each moment until all he was left with was the extremes. He’d only killed Brack because that was the only thing he could do apart from be killed himself. It had been all very matter-of-fact. He could fight for others. But not for himself.

The M2 buggy stopped. So did Frank. There was no one behind, or to the sides. They were alone out there. No one was going to stand as a witness to this, except maybe a satellite and God, and Frank didn’t believe in God. He checked his fuel and air. Tight. Even the air. He’d done lots of hard breathing, and he’d used up more than he’d expected. He had enough to get himself to the outpost. He still had one full life support pack strapped to the back of the buggy, but he needed an atmosphere to change it in. Not really something he could do while being chased.

He started forward. Gradually, he built up speed until he hit about fifteen. The other buggy was half a mile away across the plain, standing between him and the volcano’s lower slopes. It started moving too, dust rising up behind it, falling down again like water.

Frank wondered if the other driver had worked out which game they were playing yet.

They were closing on each other, both at quite modest speeds. That wasn’t the way to do it. This had to be all or nothing. A cataclysmic crash, or one of them bailed. That was it. Of course, they could both steer away at the last second, but there was no guarantee of survival if they still hit each other.

Forty, fifty miles an hour wasn’t really that fast. They’d both probably live through the crash. But their transports wouldn’t. They’d be left to suffocate together, out of reach of help. That was the kicker.

There were so many different ways to die on Mars.

Closer. Frank could see the driver’s pale spacesuit now. The other guy would be able to see his. There was nowhere to hide. Time to go all out. He squeezed down hard, felt his buggy respond, and he dialed back the suspension until it was taut once more. The ground rattled his bones, and the wheels skipped from crest to crest.

The speedo crept up. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two.

They were getting close. He saw the driver hunched over the controls, faceless, almost immobile, just like he was, crouched, tense. Waiting for the smash.

Then, barely before it had started, it was over.

The other guy blinked first. He wheeled away, sliding sideways through the soft sand to a halt, and Frank was tearing by, heading for the lava flows as they swept down to the plain.

He was drenched with sweat, but he was laughing. Goddammit, he’d gotten away with it. Chicken. In a spacesuit. On Mars.

He eased off as he reached the volcano, and swung round to take in a view of the southern plain before he pointed himself back north for his ascent.

There, in the distance, were the two buggies, one just arriving at the place where the other had come to rest. Frank didn’t think he’d killed the guy: the roll cage would have taken the impact, but it would have hurt all the same. Loosened some fillings at least. He might have damaged the buggy more. He didn’t know how much rough-housing one would take, but being flipped over and bounced several times wasn’t going to do it any favors. There wasn’t much to go wrong, but if he’d bent one of the hubs, that might not even be fixable.

They weren’t in a position to chase him now. They’d have to go back to M2. What they’d do after that was anyone’s guess.

But the question as to whether he could now tell Lucy about them had been settled. He was going to tell her everything. And by everything, he meant everything. He had Jim’s mission patch—proof that M2 had been up on the mountain that day. Proof they’d found him. Beyond that, Frank wasn’t prepared to say. But Jim could be alive inside the M2 hab. There wasn’t any real wriggle room in that. Oh, he could lose the patch, pretend, but… he’d changed. He didn’t know if that meant something else was broken, or that something else had been fixed: he just wasn’t the same Franklin Kittridge who’d got himself sent to Mars.

He owed Lucy. He owed them all. And Jim was one of them.

XO weren’t going to like that. Maybe he could shut the dish off, like he had before when he wanted to stop Brack from phoning home, while he made his confession. Give everyone the chance to work out what to do, what to say.

He wasn’t expecting the news of his and XO’s deception to be greeted with enthusiasm. Lucy would be well within her rights to cuff him and kick him out of the airlock. He was guessing she wouldn’t, because they were all decent people—better than he was, for certain—and maybe they’d realize he was victim in all of this too.