S Morden - No Way

He entered the cross-hab. The oxygen sensor on the ceiling was chirping away, the bleeping mercifully dulled by his suit’s helmet. It was still loud, but just about bearable. He picked up the scuba mask from the top of the life support rack, tucked it under his arm, and hauled the one cylinder of oxygen that remained out of its place on the shelf. Either it had grown heavy, or he’d grown weak.

He let it hit the floor, and he dragged it after him on his way to the med bay.

The door to the examination room was still locked, the bolt on the outside shot home in the hasp on the frame. Frank used the back of his hand to knock it aside and then his shoulder to push through the door.

Jerry was lying on the floor, mostly face-down, his hands still bound behind his back and his feet wound into the blanket he’d been given. He didn’t move when Frank barged in, and stayed that way when he was accidentally knelt on.

Frank heaved him over. Jerry’s face was flushed red, and reminded him instantly of Dee, and how he’d died, gassed by the CO 2extinguishers. Could XO have set those off too? Jerry was still breathing: fast, deep, his whole frame swelling and shrinking. He was still alive, but there wasn’t much Frank could do but plug in the scuba mask, turn the oxygen on and force Jerry’s face into it. He couldn’t work the straps one-handed, and he had to give up on that.

He left him there. He’d done his best—Fan would be able to do so much more if he could just get into the base. Frank’s job, his one job, was to do battle with the main computer.

He pulled the door to, just in case that managed to increase the oxygen pressure in the cubicle, and walked quickly through to Comms. He kicked the chair out of the way, then went to the wall where the computer itself was sited. He looked up at his instructions, found the reset button, found that his gauntleted finger was too fat to fit in the depression, and looked around for something small enough to reach.

A coffee spoon handle.

OK, go to the kitchen, open the drawer, rake out a spoon, take it back to the computer, insert it into the hole and press.

The alarms fell silent. Thank God for that.

Next instruction. Get back to the terminal and press down the shift key before the boot sequence is complete.

He was too late. It had been seconds at most to walk around the desk and point his finger. He looked at the distance again, and dragged the console closer, and facing him. He used the spoon again, and watched the monitor go blank for a moment, before it popped up with “no video signal”.

He let go of the button, and now he could just lean over and press the shift key.

It worked. He was given a list of options. He selected “advanced options”, then the first choice with the recovery mode label. Paranoid about making a mistake, he used the spoon handle on the keyboard, tapping the down arrow key once, and then enter.

The screen flashed and came up with another menu. This time he was going to choose…“root”.

This was where shit got real. He had to type in a series of commands exactly as they were presented to him on his faceplate. If he got one of them wrong, he’d have to do it again. If Yun had got one of them wrong, then—what? He’d have to drive back across the Heights and get her to correct her instructions. All the while their base, their food supply, was dying.

He started along the first line, “mount -o remount,rw” and pressed enter. So far, so good. Then into the system files, delete them all—he was sweating, because Yun had told him that he could really screw things up—then copy all the files over from a backup directory. Streams of data washed up the screen, far faster than Frank could read, almost faster than he could see.

The inevitable message, something to tell him he’d failed, never came. Yun’s instructions were boilerplated.

He exited the root, then tapped up to “resume”. Here went nothing.

It worked. At least, it appeared to work. Scripts ran, the screen went blank, and then icons began to pop up on the screen. The alarms started again, having detected the lack of oxygen in the air, but there were alerts piling up in the action center which, when he opened it, told him that the air plant had just kicked in, that the scrubbers were on max, trying to take out the CO 2, that the airlocks were being set to active. Lights. Music. The works.

Had he managed to remove the suit kill switch, though? The only way he was going to be able to tell was by turning his comms back on. It’d kill him if he hadn’t, so he didn’t.

He’d done everything he’d come to do. The base should be starting to reinflate around him now, and return to its normal state. He could silence the alarms, but it was a good, audible reminder for everyone not to take their suits off. The noise would stop when the air was safe to breathe again.

All that remained to be done was to check on Jerry, and then head back to the Santa Clara. They’d see soon enough if he’d managed to incant Yun’s spell properly.

Jerry wasn’t what Frank would have called awake. He was stirring, moaning and coughing, pushing into the mask. He could really do with being untied, and that was something that Frank could manage one-handed.

Back to the kitchen for a knife, and saw slowly through the cable ties, trying not to nick the skin on Jerry’s wrists, because he was in enough trouble without getting cut too. The moment the plastic snapped, Jerry coughed and his hands planted on the deck to try and brace himself.

Frank used his good hand to help Jerry find the mask, and hold it to his own face. He wasn’t a doctor. He barely knew the basics. It was the best he could do.

He brought his head down and shouted, over the electronic beep of the overhead alarms, over the coughing and panting: “I’m coming back for you, OK? I’m bringing Fan with me. He’ll patch you up. Just keep breathing.”

Jerry had done bad things, but so had Frank. And if he could work out his salvation, there was hope for everyone. He didn’t have to like him. Just to recognize that he’d been there, too, and the way out took both time and effort.

Back to the cross-hab airlock, where the lights on the telltale were back on. Frank should have been able to just open the door and enter, but even in the short time the air plant had been back on, the pressure had increased enough to seal the door shut. He cycled the lock to equalize, and then again to exit into a Martian afternoon, the sun tipping low towards the western wall of Rahe crater.

He had a couple of hours’ air left. By the time that was up, the habs should have reinflated. Or at least enough that it wouldn’t kill them. He walked back round to the buggy, parked next to the dead transmitter dish, and tried to climb up.

They’d gone through the plan several times. What to do if Frank couldn’t access the computer, what to do if Frank couldn’t turn off the wifi repeaters, what to do if Jerry had freed himself and holed up inside, everything that might prevent Frank from neutralizing the kill switch threat.

What they hadn’t done was plan for his success.

He should, reasonably, be able to climb up one-handed, but goddammit he was tired. And weak. And everything else in between. The top of the chassis was just over head height. In normal circumstances, he could jump that high from a standing start. Right now, if he could make any air at all, he’d consider it a win. The lower part of the frame was four feet up. If he could get his leg onto that, he could probably lever himself the rest of the way. Barring that, it was a long walk back.

He looked up at the buggy again. A ladder. That was all he needed.

OK. He pulled his nut runner from his belt, spent a couple of minutes unbolting the steps leading up to the airlock at the end of the yard, and pulled them, jerking them inch by inch, around and against the side of the buggy.