S Morden - No Way

Frank looked up. Goddammit. He hadn’t seen that coming.

That was actually a stroke of fucking genius. No one was going to believe a single word he said from now on. He could be protesting his sanity from now until whenever, and that’d simply be reinforcing XO’s story.

He started to laugh.

“What’s so funny, Lance?”

Frank calmed himself down and slurped down some of his coffee. It was only lukewarm, but it was still better than he’d got in San Quentin. A long way to go for some decent joe.

“I give up,” he said. “I haven’t got the energy to fight this any more. You can do what the hell you like with me.”

Lucy glanced at Leland. Perhaps that wasn’t the reaction either of them was expecting.

Leland shuffled on his seat and said: “You went dirtside with two spare LS units. In the middle of the night. For hours. Where did you go?”

“I went to look for Jim.”

Again, from the tremor of disquiet that moved around the table, not the answer they’d thought they’d get.

“Did you find him?”

“No. I was able to get this, though.” Frank reached into his pocket and tossed the mission patch into the middle of the table.

Everyone stared at it for the longest while. Then Fan reached forward and dragged it back towards him. He examined it, the loose threads hanging off the embroidered edge, the dust ingrained on the face, the paleness of the backing. He passed it to Lucy.

“Where,” she asked, wagging it at Frank, “did you get this?”

“You’re not going to believe a word of this, so I’m thinking why should I even bother.” Frank watched Lucy grow even more cold, more controlled. “But this is about Jim and where he is, so you’re just going to have to shut up and listen until I’ve finished.”

He caught the gaze of everyone around the table, held it until they looked away. Isla… what was that expression even about? He didn’t know.

“Deal?”

“Tell us,” said Leland. “We won’t interrupt.”

Frank pinched the bridge of his nose. “So there’s another XO base, eighty miles south of here. They call it M2.”

“A manned base?”

“Goddammit, Fan.”

“Sorry. Go on.”

“It’s been there maybe three, four months.” He stopped. “Look, this is difficult to explain without giving you the whole backstory, but let me just give you the edited highlights. Half the equipment we’re using is theirs. They’ve got a total comms failure, and they can’t find their supply drops. But I could, and XO were so determined to keep M2 secret from me that they told me their stuff was a resupply for MBO. I didn’t know anything about it until I happened across one of them out on the plain, east side of the volcano, before you arrived even. XO swore me to secrecy. Said you weren’t to know. They were prepared to let M2 fail and everyone in it die if it meant keeping it hidden.

“And I had my own reasons for not wanting to go over there, which you’re not going to believe because XO have poisoned that well. Let’s just jump forward to when Station seven vanished. I’d been told that there was no way M2 could have survived, yet I knew it was them who’d taken it. I wanted to tell you about M2 at that point. XO said that if I did, they’d sabotage MBO and if anyone died, that’d be my fault. So I said nothing.”

Lucy gave him the side-eye. Words started to form, then she pressed her lips shut again.

“Then Jim disappeared. Maybe you were right. Maybe this was something to do with caves and ice and stuff like that. Maybe he’d had a suit malfunction. Maybe, hell, I don’t know, he just wandered off. It can be like that some days. And when we couldn’t find him, I thought maybe I’ll go and see M2. See if they really are as dead as XO says. Turns out they’re not.”

The silence dragged on, and grew more awkward.

Finally Lucy placed the torn mission patch on the table between them. “Are you saying that someone from this other base, this M2, gave you Jim’s patch?”

Frank scrubbed at his face. “I wouldn’t say ‘gave’. There was a guy outside—the same guy who I’d met on the east side—wearing Jim’s suit. He told me Jim was inside their hab, wanted me to go in too. I felt something was off, and when he realized I wasn’t going to do that, he tried to beat my brains out with a wrench. We… fought.”

“In spacesuits?”

“Of course we did it in fucking spacesuits! He tried to take my buggy. I broke his ankle and ripped the patch off his arm and got the hell out. They chased me. There’s damage to the buggy.” He scratched at his stubble again. “I got away. I came back here. That’s pretty much it. Apart from all the other stuff.”

“You know, this is…”

“Sure.” Frank swilled the remains of his coffee. Properly cold now. He grimaced. “What are you going to do now?”

She shrugged helplessly. “This has to do with the safety of the base and the mission. That is my responsibility. You disappearing off with mission-critical equipment with no explanation is… And the information XO has sent through? That they didn’t tell us en route, or after we landed: their excuse was they thought you were getting better, with us arriving. I’m going to leave that to the people back home. Right now, you’re my problem. Fan and Leland are going to take you through a thorough medical assessment. Which I’m going to arrange for you to fail.”

“I don’t think you’d have to get them to lie,” said Frank.

Yun, silent until now, said quietly. “Lance, what have you done with Jim?”

“I haven’t done anything with Jim. I don’t know if he’s alive and in M2, or… not. I just saw his suit. If you want answers, you’ll have to ask M2. But they don’t seem keen on answering that question. I did try.”

“When we first lost him, and you went out on your own to look, did you find him out on the volcano? Did you take his patch then? Was he still alive at that point?”

“I didn’t find him.”

“Is there really an M2? Or is that a—”

“Yun. I can show you on the fucking map. You can see the descent ship.”

“If that’s so, then—”

“Enough,” said Lucy. “This is about Jim. Where did you get this patch from?”

“I told you. I told you. As much as I’d like to be making this shit up, as much as I’d like to have brought Jim back, it didn’t happen. I tried to do a good thing, and, well, I guess it didn’t work. But before you drag me away, just remember, the threats that XO made to me, and to you, still stand. We’re breathing XO’s air. Drinking their water. Relying on their computer to run everything. Talking to Earth through an XO dish via an XO satellite. You probably want to watch out for that.”

“Fan, Leland. Go and do what you have to. You can take your time.”

Leland put his hand on Frank’s forearm, and Frank jerked away. “I know the way to the med bay.”

As they left, Yun leaned forward and started to whisper furiously at Lucy. Frank couldn’t catch what she said, and with both Leland and Fan at his back, he couldn’t linger. They followed him through the cross-hab and into the med bay.

“In here?” Frank indicated the examination room. “It has the only lockable door on the entire base.”

“Let’s just take it easy, Lance,” said Leland. “We just want to take a look at you.”

“Sure.” Frank pushed the door open, and lay down on the bench. “Do what you want. There’s nothing you can do to me that is worse than what’s already happened, or is going to happen.”

He stretched himself out. He felt his joints crack and click. It was done. It was over. He’d tried to play the game, and he’d lost. He’d just not been ruthless enough: he’d put the possibility of Jim’s survival over his own. If he’d left it, not said anything, not done anything, then maybe he would have survived. Gone home. Seen Mike again.