S Morden - No Way

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Frank woke up to an almighty crash from outside, like the racking collapsing and spilling its contents on the floor. Disorientated, with no idea how much time had passed, he screwed his eyes up and called out, “Hey, you OK out there?”

When there was no immediate call of “I’m fine”, he slipped off the examination table and put his ear to the door.

There was… something.

Then the door bowed. Frank threw himself aside as it came off its hinges, flying into the wall hard enough to dent it. Fan followed it, arms and legs flailing. He hit the broken door, upended the examination table, and slid downwards.

Someone in an XO spacesuit walked in, arm raised, a length of stanchion in their hand, ready to beat down on a prone Fan.

“The fuck you will.” Frank pushed himself off the floor and into the figure, catching them under the shoulder, wrapping his arms around them. They fell together, tangled up, half on Fan’s legs.

Frank snatched at the stanchion, got both hands around it and twisted it hard. Wrists weren’t meant to rotate that far, and he broke the hold. Now he had a weapon, and goddammit, he was going to use it. He brought it down hard and fast on the helmet, not caring much about damage, but he was going to make it loud in there. He could see through the faceplate. Not the guy from before, and he’d be surprised if that one could walk any time soon. Different man, same desperate, wolf-like features.

The spacesuit tried to get up, rocking side to side on the curve of the life support to get some purchase on the floor. Frank knew that keeping him down was the thing.

Fan managed to pull himself out of the ruck: winded, he was in no position to help, but Frank already knew how to deal with someone in a semi-rigid suit, and that wasn’t by going toe-to-toe with them.

With one final swing at the helmet, Frank switched his attention to the control panel, which was right in front of him. He turned the pipe end on and drove it down hard. The man beneath him saw it coming and twisted onto his side, letting the carapace take the blow. Frank helped him over the rest of the way, and now the other guy found himself face-down, getting smacked around the head with the piece of metal pipe he’d brought himself.

Fan sat up, wheezing, and Frank tossed him the stanchion. He needed both hands free for this. He dug his fingers into the back panel on the suit, heaved the cover aside, and hit the manual off switch on the life support. Then he held the man down while he suffocated, slapping uselessly at the plastic tiles on the floor, clawing his fingers, kicking out. It took longer than Frank thought it would.

“You OK, Fan?” he asked, when the struggling had finally stopped.

Fan, clutching his chest, sipping at the air, nodded.

“He won’t be alone.”

He shoved the body to one side so he could get out the doorway. Leland—he was on the floor, boxes and crates and the things they contained around him, on top of him, and there was a hell of a lot of blood pooling behind his head. Frank couldn’t see anyone else, and ducked back into the examination room.

“Leland’s down. Do what you do: I’m going to find the others.”

Fan held out the stanchion again, and Frank shook his head. If there was a moment of comprehension, it was then. Fan knew. Fan understood.

Frank crept out, peered around the corner to the cross-hab, and could see shapes framed in the doorway to the crew section—chairs, people, stuff—in motion, chaotic and noisy. There was no one in between. No one standing guard. How many attackers? He didn’t know. Neither did he care. He would take them all on if necessary.

He grabbed an oxygen cylinder as he passed, because he knew that it was heavy and made more of an impact against the suits. Though there was now a gun in play. What had she done with it? There wasn’t any time to think about that. He charged.

They were all armed with makeshift weapons. Most usefully, Lucy had managed to get one of the kitchen knives. Isla had a chair, which she was about to throw. The three opposing them all had better. One, a wrench, one, part of a parachute filled with rocks, and one a makeshift spear, plastic tubing cut diagonally at the end to make a point. That could go through the hab wall if it was allowed to.

Lucy and Isla were backed up against the kitchen units, more or less surrounded, but the one with the wrench had slashes across his arm.

“Get out, get out, get out!” Lucy was shouting, when Frank barreled in behind and used his momentum to skittle two of them over.

He jumped up, swung his cylinder to meet the sack of rocks coming down, and reeled back as the spear end jabbed forward. Then it was just a free-for-all. At least he knew who he was supposed to be fighting. Lucy carved the air in front of her, Isla fended off the wrench, and Frank managed to get inside the spear length and bring the blunt end of the carbon-fiber cylinder up into the man’s faceplate, with the guy still hanging on to his length of tubing and trying to bring the point to bear on Frank.

It took three good hits to crack the clear plastic, each time stepping forward to keep within range. The fracture went right across, right to left. The suit’s occupant stared at it, rather than Frank, who took the opportunity to smack the hell out of the spear and force it from his grasp.

Disarmed, suit integrity compromised, they pushed Frank away, and ran for the airlock. They were about to find out the hard way whether they had a leak or not.

Then it was three against two, and the odds had shifted back. Rather than being on the defensive, Isla jabbed forward, inviting retaliation, until the rock-filled sleeve wrapped itself uselessly around one of the chair legs. Then she let go, and bundled the suit over while they were still trying to get untangled. Frank brought the cylinder down again, hard, like he had before, hitting the helmet, breaking it, sending shards of sharp plastic spinning away.

Lucy’s opponent turned and ran, and, not giving up, she gave chase. They beat her to the cross-hab airlock and started to cycle it.

“Lance, suit up,” she shouted. “Suit up. Get outside and find Yun.”

“Yun’s outside?”

She was right. Suit up.

“Tie them up,” said Frank to Isla. “Fan’s with Leland in the med hab. You OK?”

Isla nodded. Just the once. She was bleeding from several cuts. “Go.”

Frank hefted his cylinder again, and headed for his spacesuit.

Lucy was quick. Frank was quicker still, but when he powered his suit up, all he could hear was Yun calling for help, right in his ear. A mixture of English and what he had to assume was Mandarin. She was fighting them. She was fighting them hard.

Frank and Lucy cycled the lock together. They bundled outside, the usual suit checks not so much forgotten as ignored, and ran towards the open space beyond the Comms/Control hab. There was a buggy driving away in the direction of the Santa Clara; there were figures on the back of it, but the dust, the distance, made it impossible to tell what was going on. Was Yun with them? There was another buggy, with at least two—no, it was just two—people on it, circling round in front of the workshop. Someone was unplugging the charger from one of the base’s own transports.

The thing about radio was that it didn’t matter how close or how far away it was broadcast from. The distance to the receiver’s ears was a constant. Yun’s howls of rage, her demanding her release, her eventual begging for mercy, he was there. Right there, next to her. He wanted her to keep resisting and he wanted her to stop. But M2 were trying to steal one of their buggies. That, he could do something about.

He picked up a rock and threw it, not particularly aiming to hit the other guy, but to alert him to the fact he’d been spotted. Frank didn’t want to fight him so much as he wanted to scare him away from the buggy.