S Morden - No Way

Not that it was the transmitter itself that ate up the watts, but the dish motors used to align it. Two-fifty each: enough to spike the system and turn random shit off.

He flipped the last switch and watched as the dish jerked into life, slowly and silently, and turned from pointing almost due west to face the sky. He admired his work for a moment, looking up at the almost-black zenith and the peanut-shaped moon caught mid-flight, skipping from horizon to horizon like a thrown stone.

In around ten minutes, XO would realize that they had a connection. It was time Frank needed to prepare himself. He’d decided on his tactics, and he retained the right to hit the off button if it looked like they were going to try and kill him.

He went back in through the main airlock, and stowed his suit. He’d spent the last few days walking around the base naked, but for this, he felt he should get dressed. His own blue overalls were still half black with blood: however many times he’d washed them, he couldn’t get the stains out. In the end, he’d decided that it didn’t matter. Brack had spares, and though he was not as tall as Frank, Frank was slighter. He’d tried one on for size: the cuffs were short of both his ankles and his wrists, and though it had been roomy for its previous owner, for him it was a little tight between neck and crotch. But the fit wasn’t as terrible as he’d anticipated, which was good because he’d find the state of his own clothing difficult to explain to NASA. He’d keep them for best, and wear his old ones for now.

He sat at the kitchen table, a scuba mask and oxygen tank in front of him, along with a surgical glove, weakly inflated and knotted at the wrist. That was his early warning sign of decompression, something that XO couldn’t possibly know about, let alone hack. In front of everything was his tablet—Brack’s tablet—OK, it was his tablet now. He read the Phase three summary again, trying to get his mind around what the job genuinely involved. It was a lot of work, and that was without the extra cleaning now needed. His own, old tablet would have to get junked, or wiped at the very least. That would be in the small print somewhere, as this was just an overview.

Three months, though, to do everything before NASA were due. Three months was a tight time-scale, but there wasn’t anything he could do to change that. They were on their way: they were almost here, even, having left six months before in a big transit ship. A proper spaceship, too, no sleep tanks. Too risky to use on real astronauts: they were only suitable for disposable crew like him.

The base computer synced to the orbiting satellite. Messages pinged up on his screen. He was live.

There was the response to Brack’s last message, and then several more: initially at the rate of one every hour or so, dwindling as earlier communications had gone ignored to a routine one every four hours.

He’d prepared his own message, one that XO weren’t going to be expecting. He moved it from the drafts column and read it through again. He’d spent half the night fashioning it, writing and deleting, pecking out new combinations of words with two fingers.

“This is Franklin Kittridge. From the start, let’s get one thing absolutely straight. I will destroy this base and everything in it if you try anything. Any hostile act, anything that looks like sabotage, against me or the base’s systems, and I’ll tear this place apart. No clean-up. Nothing. I’ll just leave it all for the next people to find, and you can explain everything to them.”

That should wake them up.

“I know what you did. I know about the robots. I know about bringing us here in place of them, and I know about killing us all off. If you try and deny any of this, you might just make me mad enough to want to trash the base anyway. So don’t. I’ve got all the Phase 3 docs.”

He hadn’t read them all yet, but he had read enough of them to form an opinion. That wasn’t a lie.

“I’m prepared, despite everything, to cut a deal with you. I have something you want—your multi-billion-dollar base, and your secrets. You have something I want—my freedom and a lift home. I think that’s more than fair, since you’ll be getting more out of this than I will. If this goes south, a lot of you reading this message will end up on death row. And you know it.

“So this is what I’m willing to do for you. I’m willing to carry out your Phase 3. I’ll clean up the base, look after it like you were expecting Brack to, and wait for the NASA people to arrive. When they do, I’ll pretend to be Brack, and keep things running smoothly. I’m not looking to rock the boat.”

That was the bait. Now to extract his price.

“I don’t know what you promised Brack, but I’m guessing it’s a suitcase full of dollar bills and a lifetime of silence. I’ll take that, and a commutation: time served will do. I’m not looking for parole, or early release on license. I want to be done with it. A clean start. Obviously, I get Brack’s place for the flight home. I’ll play along with the deception as long as you do. When I get back to Earth, you give me my money and my paperwork, and that’s it: that’s the only contact I want or need from you. You leave me alone after that.”

All that was left was the boilerplate, because he was certain XO wouldn’t make it this far without figuring out that he was vulnerable in one particular area.

“One last thing. If you threaten, attempt to threaten, or in any way mention, my family in these negotiations, I will burn this base to the ground, without hesitation or thought about myself. I hope that’s really clear, because I’ll do it, and I need you to know that. This deal is between you and me and it doesn’t involve anyone else.”

It was simple—plain, almost—but unambiguous and defiant. It wasn’t going to leave them in any doubt about what he wanted and what he’d do if he didn’t get it.

“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere in a hurry, no thanks to you. But don’t take too long, because I’m not lifting a finger to help you until we come to an agreement we can both stick to.”

That was about as good as it was going to get. He took a deep breath, and pressed send.

XO weren’t going to get it for ten minutes. Then there’d be the time it took for the operators at the other end of the interplanetary phone line to pass the message up the corporate ladder until it reached someone who could actually make a decision.

Part of him wanted to be a fly on the wall for that. And part of him was glad he wouldn’t be there, because if their reaction wasn’t one of begging his forgiveness for the terrible things they’d done, he wasn’t certain what he’d do.

He’d started the process. He wasn’t going to sit around and wait for an answer, because he had chores. He checked the list of things he had to do in the greenhouse: it was long, and it was detailed. He could follow instructions, though, if he could work out what everything was.

After some digging, he’d discovered the main computer had sufficient documentation on the hydroponics: there were even pictures, which were incredibly useful. And it didn’t go into the theory, either: he didn’t need to know about the whys and wherefores of crop management. All he needed was a comprehensive, if simplistic, set of instructions on how to grow stuff to eat on Mars.

Whoever had put this all together had known their shit, even if they were colluding with murdering bastards.

He took the tablet and gave himself another tour of the greenhouse. With care, he could identify the juvenile plants by the shape of their leaves, rather than relying on the obvious fruit they might yield in maturity. He realized that if all the stuff that Zero had planted kept on growing, he’d literally be drowning in food. There were no pests. No diseases. The nutrients delivered to each plant or type of plant were individually tailored to maximize the harvest.