S Morden - No Way

Yes, he was panting. Yes, there was air moving in and out. It wasn’t doing any good. He slapped his hand down—

He was face-down in the dirt, a bead of sweat hanging from the end of his nose. But he could breathe.

Fresh air blew against his skin, making the sweat-bead tremble. His throat hurt. No, everything hurt. He turned his head slightly and fastened his lips around the water spout. Empty. Goddammit.

“Frank?”

Someone kneeling on the ground next to him, their head lowered to the same level as his, looking sideways into his face.

“Yeah?”

“You OK?”

“Isla?”

“You saved Fan.”

His suit had shut down. As they approached the base, his suit, and Fan’s suit, had simply turned themselves off.

“That’s good.”

“The two M2 people… we didn’t get to them in time.”

Frank got his arm underneath his carapace and heaved. Willing hands pulled at him, and got him as far as sitting, leaning against the wheel of a buggy.

There was Fan, and Lucy, and Yun. And Isla. His eyes were sore, and he blinked rapidly. They were back at the entrance to the Santa Clara.

“What the hell happened?” he asked.

“We don’t know. There’s a fault with the suits.”

“A fault? They turned off. We did nothing, and it was like someone just pulled the plug on us.”

Lucy stood with hands on hips, looking behind Frank, across the Heights at the distant base.

“How far from the base were you?”

“Four, five hundred feet.”

“Just about the suit’s wifi range, right?”

“Mine’s less. But yes.” Frank remembered being hunted by Brack, out in the cold, dark night, and the only thing keeping him alive was that he was too far from the base for the implant in his chest to connect with the base’s automatic systems.

“Fan’s suit logged on first. Your suit, a few seconds later. The M2 suits were the same as yours. And the moment they connected with the main computer, they turned themselves off.” Lucy reached up and wiped dust from her faceplate. “Sorry, Frank. Looks like you were right.”

“Oh, OK. That’s nice. I like being right. And Isla has to do my laundry for a month.”

“I thought… I don’t know what I thought. At least we know what the problem is: XO installed a kill switch, injecting the code through the dish before we cut them off, and left it there to take out anyone returning from M2. There has to be a work-around.” She looked at Yun. “Any suggestions?”

Frank took the opportunity to check his suit numbers. Everything seemed OK. Now. OK apart from the dead man and woman they had fastened to the back of the buggy, and the fact that getting within range of the main computer system’s wireless transmitter would kill a suit—and the occupant. “Shame we can’t call Jerry. Or even if we can, he’s tied up.”

“What can we try?” Leland’s suit seemed crumpled with Yun inside it. She had shorter legs, and shorter arms, and even though the torso was a rigid container, her head seemed lower in the helmet. She looked like shit, and her voice sounded like she’d been gargling with razor blades. But she was still trying. “Use a tablet to access the root?”

Fan handed her his, and she tapped at the screen. It became rapidly apparent, from both her expression and the frequency of her finger movements, that she was having problems. “I’m not locked out. But I’ve had all my permissions revoked. There’s another layer of security immediately behind the initial handshake, and I can’t get through it.”

She kept on going, while Isla suggested: “We can drive back up to CU1, disable our transmitter chips, drive back down and hope we have enough air to last us that long. Which we might not.”

“Just turn off your transmitter,” said Frank.

Isla talked over him. “That’s the only way we’re going to get into the base and reset the system.”

“But you can just turn it off from the suit controls,” Frank said.

“Because it’s automatic. It just logs on to the network. So we need a way of stopping that.”

Lucy interrupted Isla. “Say that again, Frank.”

“I can turn off my transmitter.” He opened up his controls and scrolled through the menu. “See?”

He pressed the button and instantly all communication ceased. He thumbed the button again, and it came back.

“We can’t do that,” said Lucy.

“Can’t you?”

“That command just doesn’t exist. Why would we need it?”

“To stop someone fucking your suit over?” Frank dragged himself up and turned himself around so that he could see the base. It was tantalizingly close. “I guess that’s never been a thing until now.”

“It’s sure as hell a thing now. How did XO think they’d get away with this?”

“By making sure you’re not alive to tell anyone.” He needed a drink. Water would do. Beer would be better. But it was obvious what needed to be done, if how to do it remained opaque. “So which wires do I cut?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, Frank,” said Yun.

“You can’t go, Frank,” said Fan.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because you’re high on morphine, you’ve broken your arm and if something happens to you in there, none of us can come and get you.”

“The morphine wore off a while ago.”

“Trust me: if it had worn off, you’d be begging me for more. You’re hurt, Frank.”

“Don’t make me regret bringing you back.” Frank looked around at the others. “Who else is going to do this? You guys? Or those guys?” He pointed to the back of the buggy.

“We can’t, and those guys are dead, Frank.”

“Looks like I’m the last one standing who can fix his suit so that it won’t kill him.” No one else appeared convinced. “Sure, we can all head back to the outpost, pull your comms circuits out by hand in a way you may never be able to repair again, hope our air lasts long enough that we can fix whatever problem there is. Or you can just tell me what to do, I can go and do it, and then you all come over. I know which sounds like the easy way.”

Lucy grunted. “Yun. Talk him through it.” There were objections, and she shouted them down. “He’s an adult. He can make his own poor choices.”

“He’s not fit for duty,” said Fan. “I’m the medical officer.”

“Technically, you can’t order me around,” said Frank. “We don’t even work for the same company.”

“But you don’t work for XO. Not now.”

“Let’s say I’ve gone freelance. Just let me do this. I’ll be fine.”

“Like hell you will.” Despite that, Fan shut up and turned away.

Yun stood next to him, the tablet still useless in her hands.

“So what do I do?” he asked.

“There are several ways of doing this. The wireless starts in Comms/Control, and has repeaters in every hab. You could turn them all off manually, but that relies on you finding them all. Did you install them?”

“That was Declan. I think Dee helped.”

“If you miss one, the kill signal still gets broadcast. The surest way of disabling it is to turn it off on the main computer.”

“But you can’t access that.”

“I know.”

“Can’t I just cut the power to the computer?”

“Yes, but it’s working on a UPS.” When Frank looked blank, she explained. “It’s got its own battery. We’d have to wait a day for it to run down.”

“Can’t I just pull the battery leads out?”

“Again, yes. Do you know where it is?”

“Do you?”

“It’s behind a whole lot of panels that aren’t meant to be opened. And if you do turn the computer off, there are all the automatic systems that rely on it. We run the risk of everything freezing, the plants dying, and the base atmosphere going wrong, between you turning it off and me turning it back on again safely. So that’s Plan B, but there’s something else I’d rather try first. It is rather technical.”