S Morden - No Way

One last normal evening, because they didn’t know who’d be coming back tomorrow.

[Transcript of Officer Denny Kraft Salt Lake City PD and Dispatcher (Jem Macintyre) 3/10/2049]

Dispatcher: They’ve all gone?

DK: Every single one of them. I mean, I know this place was a ghost town before they got here. But everything’s just been left. Except the people.

Dispatcher: Doors open?

DK: Nah. Everything’s locked up. I’m not going to go breaking windows without a warrant.

Dispatcher: No sign of our caller?

DK: There’s no sign of anyone, Jem. The whole place is deserted. Pete’s gone around the lot, same as I have, and it’s like they’ve just been raptured. You know?

Dispatcher: You want backup?

DK: I don’t know. I mean, it’s not a crime to just up and leave, but this is thousands of people. And we got that call.

Dispatcher: Maybe you and Pete should come back to the station.

DK: We’re out here now. We’ll go on to the fence. See what we can see. Maybe someone there we can ask.

Dispatcher: OK, Denny. You take care now.

[transcript ends]

Loading up in the dead of night, at the coldest moment, when everything was glittering with ice, was hard. Plastic was brittle, rubber was like iron, and their suits were stiff.

Frank hitched up a trailer, put drums on it and when they were full—ropes, straps, life supports, oxygen canisters, weapons in one, shields in another, even Leland’s suit in case one of theirs, or Yun’s, got damaged—they got ratcheted down. Everything they thought they’d need. Plenty of pre-made ammunition for the cannon. Spare parachute cloth. Rubber patches, a full medical kit even though getting into a pressurized environment to use it was going to be problematic at best. But if they didn’t take it, they couldn’t pop back for it later.

At three on the nose, Lucy, with Isla strapped into a bucket seat from the kitchen behind her, drove off in the direction of the Santa Clara. Frank followed with the trailer, Fan riding behind him. The tire plates growled and crackled against the loose rocks grown heavy with white frost.

They left the base behind, internal lights barely showing through the dense covering of the habs, the dish pointing blindly up into the sky. Overhead, the stars burned through like holes in a curtain.

It took them two hours to get to the outpost, where they discovered that anything that hadn’t been nailed down was gone. Panels, stores, electronic equipment that was vital for Yun’s work, scrubbers, gas cylinders, either vanished or gutted. There was little reason in taking some of the stuff: perhaps M2 were just punishing them for their abundance.

Frank made the others stay outside while he checked out the interior of the hab. It was still pressurized—a little saggy but otherwise sound—and someone could have been inside. It was freezing, and he walked through the debris of ransacking with the hope that maybe there was someone from M2 there, so that he could get an explanation as to why all this pointless, expensive waste.

It was silent, except for his own footsteps.

“We’re good,” he said. “Come on in, but don’t touch anything with bare hands or feet, or you’ll be leaving your skin behind.”

They swapped out their life supports, one at a time, and then remounted and drove on, with Frank in front this time. He knew the way.

The occasional voices in his ear started to chop and eventually cut out altogether. The NASA suits were still linked together, as long as they stayed close to each other. The XO suit which Frank wore wasn’t. He was out of range of the main antenna back at MBO, and the one they’d set up at the outpost had been stolen.

It was going to make it difficult when they got to M2, and something he should really have thought about first, not that they could have changed it. He might have swapped into Leland’s suit, but Leland had been a different size and shape to Frank. He had to drive on in silence.

He led the way down the volcano’s hard, ridged slopes. With the lights on, they would be easy to spot—but only if someone was looking. It was very much easier said than done, standing out in the freezing night, acting as a lookout. MBO had been attacked in broad daylight, and Yun hadn’t even managed to warn anyone inside before M2 had started coming through the airlocks.

Bouncing the cave base wasn’t going to be the difficult part. Dealing with the occupants while not killing Yun, assuming she was still alive, was.

That was the problem with these long drives. Being in his own head, nothing to do but steer and stare out at a landscape that hadn’t changed for tens of thousands of years, and wouldn’t for another ten thousand. Nothing they did would make any difference, in the long run. Sure, lives saved, lives lost, but there’d be other Martian missions, other Martian bases. When someone came to write a history of Mars, MBO’s fight with M2 might make a paragraph or two. They probably wouldn’t even mention anyone’s name.

When it came down to it, there was so little at stake. A few people, duking it out on the surface of an uninhabitable planet, when there were countless billions at home. It felt meaningful to him, but in a hundred years’ time, who was going to care?

He managed to keep his wheels pointing south. What was he in this for? Revenge? Hell, yes. Anything that was going to piss XO off was worth doing. And mercy: Yun shouldn’t be abandoned, not to this bunch of psychopaths. Even if it was too late, there was always justice. Which, for Frank, felt strange, having spent so long on the other side of it.

The eastern sky started to lighten, and he looked up to see one moon chase towards the sunrise, while the other seemed painted onto the western horizon. The land slowly changed from a blank canvas to one with black pits and gray rock. Then, as the temperature rose, the ice started to burn off.

Had the others never seen this before? Frank had, not just on his previous trip to M2, but on countless early mornings, where he had to hoard the daylight like a miser and spend it thriftily.

Lucy brought her buggy to a stop as the ground steamed and swirled with fog. Twists of smoke spiraled upwards and vanished, and all too soon the spectacle was much diminished, with only sheltered spots sending drifts of white vapor rolling out and up.

It looked like Hell. It could well be.

The first slanting rays of weak sunlight made more substantial shadows from the buggies, and the figures balanced on them, and Lucy set off again, allowing Frank to pull ahead as they descended towards the foot of the volcano.

They reached level ground, and Frank could, in the distance, see the dark scar of the trench. He pointed towards its eastern end and turned his wheel slightly. He was down on watts from where he’d been at this stage previously, due to the increased weight of towing. He might have to abandon the trailer for the trip back, assuming there’d be one—he might even have to abandon the buggy at the outpost. Someone could collect both later.

He kept watch for any movement ahead of him, but could see nothing. Just miles of dust and rock and craters, like most of Mars. Why would anyone want to come here? Sure, scientists, but a land grab? Get in before the competition? Who would want this? Why throw money and people at a place that was dead, dead, dead?

That was XO’s plan: it didn’t have to make any sense. Maybe he’d ask Lucy about it.

Now they were out on the plain, he could make out tire tracks: his own, and those of the M2 buggies that had chased him. Easy to follow them round to the entrance of the trench, not so easy to make himself drive that route, knowing what he faced at the end of it.

Then they were there, at the start of the five-mile-long trench that sloped gradually downwards and disappeared into the dark vault at the far end. The descent ship was clearly visible as a white thumb pointing skywards, but not the hab hidden in the cave.