S Morden - No Way

He stood aside, indicated she could go through. She did nothing, just stood there, breathing hard.

“Go on. Get what you can. Slap him around. Torture him if you want. All you’ll get is a pile of horseshit that means nothing. Seen that all before. When you toss him out the airlock, everything he knows will go with him, and you’ll have no clue as to whether he told you the truth or not.” Again, he pointed through to the kitchen. “Whatever it takes, right?”

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“I can get him to tell me the truth.”

“Will it get me Yun back? Will it get me Jim?”

“I don’t know. If I screw this up, you’ll still get your chance at him.” He wandered over to the greenhouse airlock, and peered through. The sight of the plants calmed him. Made him less terrified. Less angry. “You were a combat pilot.”

“The Stans.”

“You do the interrogation technique thing?”

“I survived it, if nothing else.”

“Did it work on you? Did you tell?”

“Name. Rank. Number,” she said.

“So give an old lag some credit for knowing that I can get more out of a stoolie with kindness than you will with threats.”

Lucy stepped away from the now-open corridor. “How long were you in jail for?”

“Eight years in. Out of a hundred and twenty, without parole.”

“What did you do?”

“He was a nineteen-year-old kid and I shot him at point-blank range.” Frank shrugged. “If you’ve got any sympathy, save it for his parents. I don’t want it, I don’t need it. I sure as hell don’t deserve it. I did a bad thing and I can’t put it right. Give me ten, fifteen minutes. I’ll sit where I can give you the sign that it’s working, where he can’t see you. And I’ll need Fan to do something, even though he won’t want to. But he’s the only one who can.”

He told her what, and such were the circumstances that she nodded and went to pass on the message.

Frank picked up the kitchen knife from the top of the life support rack and held it loosely as he walked through into the crew hab. He squatted down next to the tied man, and rolled him onto his side. More of his faceplate fell out, and Frank brushed the shards aside.

The man was wide-eyed and ashen. What did he think Frank was going to do to him? What had he been prepared to do to Frank, that he was imagining the same treatment?

“Do you know who I am?”

The man shook his head. More plastic clattered out.

“What’s your name?”

“Jerry.”

“Is that Jerry with a G or a J?”

“J.”

“Jerry. Jeremiah.” Frank stood up and found himself a chair. He set it on its feet and sat backwards on it. “I’m Frank, Jerry. And you tried to kill my colleagues.”

“We had no choice.”

“I’m going to stop you there, Jerry, because that’s not true, and I’m only interested in what’s true right now. No time for bullshit, no time for games. When you say ‘we had no choice’ what you really mean is ‘we didn’t expect you to fight back’. Am I right?”

“You don’t understand what it’s been like.”

“I don’t? That sounds like an invitation for me to listen to some more BS. I’m not going to feel sorry for you, whatever you tell me. We’re currently missing a geologist, an atmosphere scientist and there’s a dead shrink over in the med bay. Pretty much out of fucks to give.”

“But you’re the XO man, though. Aren’t you?”

“Oh, Jerry. Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. The XO man is dead. I killed him. I’m one of the chimps. That’s who I am. I’m the disposable crew who didn’t lie down and die.” Frank watched Jerry—if that was his real name, and Frank didn’t hold out much hope—carefully. The flare of recognition, the recoil away, as much as a man bound hands to feet could manage, told him that M2 knew all about Phase three. “If you think I’m an XO man, I’d think again.”

“What do you want from me?”

“What do I want? I wanted what I was promised by XO. That you would leave us alone. That I’d get my lift home. That was what I wanted, and now? I don’t know what I really want any more. You’ve taken Jim, you’ve taken Yun, you’ve killed Leland. Perhaps I just want you gone.”

“How can I change your mind?”

“I don’t know if—”

A scream. More of a yell that tailed off into a whimper. Frank acted surprised, but actually it was pretty convincing.

“What was that?” asked Jerry.

“That’s the sound of our doctor operating without anesthetic. You weren’t the only person we caught.”

Jerry gagged. “You can’t be serious,” he managed eventually.

“I don’t think it’s a joke. Do you?”

“What’s he doing to him?”

“Despite all the shit that’s gone down, I’m not going over there to ask.” Frank stretched out and put the knife on the table. “Looks like I won’t need that.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants to know what happened. Why you’re here on Mars. Whether or not XO told you that home invasion was OK. What happened to Jim. What’s going to happen to Yun. Stuff like that.”

Right on cue, another scream. That one sounded a little over-egged to Frank, but Jerry wasn’t in a discriminating frame of mind.

“I can tell you. I can tell you now.”

“I don’t think it’s going to make much difference to what he’s going to do to you. He’s one pissed sawbones right now.”

“I will tell you everything.”

“I don’t want to hear everything. Waste of good O 2.”

“Then just ask me questions. And quickly.”

“Like I said,” said Frank. “I don’t know if it’ll make any difference. I don’t carry that much influence around here. Not any more.”

“Oh God, you have to try.”

And again, this time cut short with a bubbling choke. Better. Definitely better.

Frank affected a bemused look. “I guess, if it doesn’t tally with the other guy, then it’s not like we’ve lost any time or anything. OK, I’ll try. I don’t know how long we’ve got. Depends on how long it’ll take them in there.”

“Just ask me something. Anything. Please.”

Was that easy, or was that difficult? Did he feel clean, or dirty? Frank was beyond such considerations now.

“Sure. Let’s talk about why you’re on Mars, and why you’re just over the hill from here.”

[Transcript of Emergency FLIGHT meeting Ares IV Mission Control JPL Pasadena CA 3/9/2049]

GT: What have we got? CATO [Communication and Tracking Officer]?

MA: XO are reporting complete failure of the main antenna. They say that they’re trying to reroute, but that both the HG [High Gain] and LG [Low Gain] are offline. No carrier signal. Nothing.

GT: OPSPLAN [Operations Planner]?

TY: Both OPSPLAN and EVA [Extravehicular Activity Officer] registered that the last authorized external activity was on Sol 622, where five [5] crew and the XO operative took two [2] rovers to the summit of Ceraunius Tholus to search for James Zamudio. All personnel and equipment returned to MBO. Other than that, nothing.

GT: RIO [Remote Interface Officer]?

LS: I’ve informed the Chinese government of the situation. I’ll inform them again after this meeting. They are, so far, not lighting a fire under my ass, so I’m grateful for that.

GT: ECLSS [Environmental Control and Life Support System]?

PO: The onboard LSS of MBO is dependent on the maintenance of the main computer by ODIN [Onboard Data Interfaces and Networks]. Likewise PHALCON [Power, Heating, Articulation, Lighting Control Officer] functions. If there’s a fault with the main box, then they can run MBO LSS and PHALCON functions manually.

GT: ODIN?

WM: I’ve been through the logs. There’s been no hint of any errors or hardware failures in any of them. If anything, the system has overperformed. I can’t rule out a catastrophic failure of critical systems, but neither can I rule it in.