S Morden - No Way

“Maybe Lucy’s just giving you the option. Not because she wants to go herself, but because she thinks you might.”

“I’m doing this as much for me as I am for you.” She was adamant, and Frank didn’t know what that signified. Something for sure.

Brack had once taunted him saying people like him didn’t have friends: that he was indelibly marked out—the mark of Cain—as being different, being other. And yes, while he’d been in prison, that had been true enough. There’d been guards, and there’d been other cons, and why the hell would he want to make friends with anyone in either group?

In his mind, he’d not done anything to earn this generosity. Yet here was someone who was unequivocally on his side. He was conditioned to think, “what does she want?” OK, Frank. Don’t overthink it: what if she doesn’t want anything?

“I have to stay,” said Isla. “To the end of the mission. I’ll never get another chance at this. None of us will. I’m so sorry we lost Jim and Leland.” He could hear her passion. “But I didn’t realize how much this meant to me until I thought it might be taken away.”

He tidied away the nutrient solutions, making a note of where he’d got to and pushing in a flag to indicate the last tray he’d topped up: he liked things squared away. That way, if he suddenly died, then the next person along wouldn’t curse him for being messy.

She carried on: “The radiation exposure, the reduced gravity, the risks, my age—don’t laugh—this is it. I’ll never get back to Mars again. People will remember this mission for all the wrong reasons anyway. I understand that. If we turn tail and run now, or in a couple of months’ time even, that’s all they’ll remember. I want them to have something else.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me.”

“I do. Yun feels the same way.”

He walked ahead of her, running the fingers of his right hand across the tray of wheat tillers.

“You’ve talked to her? Of course you have.” He suddenly realized what was going on, and turned round. “Wait. You think I’ve got a vote? I’m pretty certain I don’t have a vote.”

“You’re crew.”

“I’m a con, Isla. Guys like me, we don’t get a say in stuff like this.”

“Most of Yun’s equipment is still intact. We can fix what M2 took. She knows this is her only opportunity too. And Fan.”

“What did Fan say?”

“‘You need a doctor’, is what he said.”

“That’s not great.”

“It’s enough.” Isla looked down at Frank’s broken arm. “He’s willing to say he can’t leave until that’s fixed. That’s…”

“Four months at least. Maybe six. Does Lucy know you got this all sewn up?”

“No. But if you want to go home, first opportunity you can, then I’ll switch. All you have to do is say.”

He missed leaning against stuff. Putting both his hands down and just resting his weight against them. “I’ve no idea what’s going to meet me at the other end. You know that, right?”

“I know that,” she said.

“Any deal I cut with XO, I blew out when I told you who I really was. They took me out of jail to send me to Mars. There’s nothing now to stop me bouncing straight back there. I’ve another hundred and nine years to serve. I don’t think you quite appreciate that that’s set in stone.”

“We can get you a new lawyer. Another trial.”

“The first trial wasn’t wrong, Isla. They didn’t come to the wrong conclusion. I did what I did, and this base might just be the only place on two planets I get to be free.” Then he turned away. “What I’m saying is, don’t make any decisions based on what may or may not happen to me. I don’t want that.”

“We can fix this.”

“The only way to do that is to bring back the dead. That’s not happening. Not everything is fixable. So just drop it. Please.”

She did. She took herself out of the greenhouse, and elsewhere, and left Frank alone. He stood there for a while, then followed.

Jerry was coming in from outside—it was still disconcerting to see Leland’s suit without Leland inside it. Maybe they should scrub his name off the carapace. Maybe that would be too much, too soon. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if it was just him and Frank in the base.

Jerry opened up the back hatch and eased his head out. “What’s going on?”

Frank checked up and down the corridor. “Lucy’s got to make the call.”

“The call?” Then he got it. “Right.”

“It probably won’t involve us.” He let that sink in. “No reason why it should. Neither of us should be here.”

Jerry slithered out backwards, with a dexterity that Frank envied.

“Where does that leave us?”

“On Mars. Where did you think it’d leave us? We look after the base, like we were always supposed to. They go home, like they were always supposed to. Just earlier than they expected.”

“Do you think they’ll do that?”

“That’s what they need to decide. I burned my bridges with anything on Earth a while ago. You? I don’t know how space law works, but I’m pretty certain you’ll be joining me and the XO board in jail.”

Jerry looked away, but Frank could see the muscles on his jawline flex.

“That’s not much of an offer,” said Jerry.

“Tell me about it. But unless I get anything better, that’s the one I’m taking. I’ve gotten used to pissing with no one watching me.”

“Is it that bad?”

“What it is, is gray. Think about that, Jerry. Whatever color is in your life, you’ll lose it.”

Jerry pulled on his borrowed coverall and racked his kit.

“What am I going to do, Frank?”

“People like us, we get it done to us. Today, we get to sit in and listen to what they have to say. Keep it zipped and take whatever comes. Just like I will. Let’s go see how it pans out.” Frank used his good hand to drag Jerry along with him to the kitchen. The others were already there, Isla and Fan and Yun sitting on the sides, Lucy standing at the yard-end of the table. Where Frank had sat, all those months ago, facing Declan and Zero and a tableful of shivs.

Frank guided Jerry around to the kitchen end and dropped him in one chair, then took one himself. If he sat just so, he could rest his arm on the tabletop and take the weight off his neck.

Lucy started pacing, first of all without talking, then, eventually, giving them the news.

“The situation is,” she pulled a face, “unclear. XO are holed up behind a wall of lawyers. They’re not admitting to anything, and are using our old friend, ‘commercially sensitive’, to cover almost every question they’ve been asked. They say that M2 acted independently of XO, that they lost contact early in the mission, that they can’t be held responsible for the actions of M2 crew. That much is what we know already.”

She stopped and stared at Jerry, who looked down at the floor until she resumed.

“Someone will probably manage to pin something on them in a civil suit, negligence or fraud or something like that. That might take years. Key personnel have just disappeared, gone to ground somewhere. Frank: you were reported dead six months ago. That’s why you’ve not been called on to give evidence yet. No one can work out who you really are. Your ashes were disposed of. There’s a death certificate for you, for Alice Shepherd, for Marcy Cole and Declan Murray. In the absence of the Phase three files, folk are trying to fill out your crew roster based on what you’ve told us. Needless to say, there’s no one who goes by the name of ‘Lance Brack’ anywhere near this or any other project. The military are now involved. Sorry, but you cleaned up too well. There’s no material evidence here we can point to that corroborates your story. Except for you. If you really are Franklin Kittridge, then someone on Earth will have to vouch for you.”