S Morden - One Way

So he’d probably only get one chance, and he had to take it without hesitating. No mercy, which was as much mercy as he’d been shown. He’d killed two people now. This was surely the point where it got easier.

He needed a weapon. All he had was a scalpel covered in his own blood, but there wasn’t really anything else. The gardening tools were all small: snips and shears and dibbers, as befitted a high-tech hydroponic set-up. No shovels or long-handled rakes, which would have been so very useful.

The scalpel would have to do.

He looked through the little airlock window into the cross-hab area. There was movement, and he ducked back. If he’d been seen, it’d be over. But it was unlikely, and he risked another glance.

That pale shape bobbing around in his eyeline had to be the back of Brack’s spacesuit. He was going out to see what was wrong with the transmitter.

It would mean he’d be deaf and blind to everything happening behind him. Frank knew what that was like. Now. Do it now. He vented the inner chamber into the greenhouse, and opened the door. He kept his eye on what was happening through the window. Brack was also cycling the airlock, but it took longer to pump down than using the manual releases. He’d beat him to it. Beat him to the punch.

Frank closed the door behind him, vented the main hab air into the chamber. Mere seconds later the outer door was free, since the pressure was already almost identical. He opened the door just as Brack stepped forward into the open airlock in front of him.

He was fifteen feet away. Enough distance to pick up some speed. Frank slammed into Brack’s back and catapulted him through the open door and down the length of the airlock, into the door at the far end. He hit it hard and the confined space boomed. Before he could turn, before he could do anything, Frank was in with him, grabbing his ankles and jerking them backwards.

Brack went down, face-first, sprawling, and Frank went to work with the scalpel. He’d seen it done before, several times, and had subconsciously absorbed the how.

Remembering to keep his thumb on the top of the short handle, he stabbed down, hard, repeatedly, into the back of Brack’s thighs, puncturing the cloth and the airtight membrane and the skin and muscle beneath, not wasting time slicing, just in-out, in-out. The shock, the pain, the speed of the attack, was deliberately excessive, disorientating, vicious, and savage. Both legs, up and down between knee and buttock.

He could hear Brack roaring. He could see him try to reach up and slap the airlock cycle button in order to free the outer door and the only possible direction of escape, but since the inner door was still open, it wouldn’t function.

Frank clenched the bloody handle between his teeth and, taking Brack’s ankles again, pulled him half-into the cross-hab. His legs and lower torso were outside the airlock. His shoulders and head were still inside. He still had no idea who or what was attacking him.

Frank cut into Brack’s calves with the same rapid movement, pressing hard to force the blade deeper. Brack’s only response was to slap the floor and flail his arms and scream in a high-pitched keening wail. His legs would only twitch and spasm. He seemed to have lost control of them completely.

Had Frank done enough? His hands were slick with sweat and blood, and he was panting in the rarefied atmosphere. But the iron rule of prison fighting was to put the other guy down and make sure he stayed down. If you let him up, you lost.

The life-support rack was behind him. The spare oxygen cylinders were plugged in next to them. Frank snatched one up and went back to slam it repeatedly into Brack’s back and shoulders. The casing to the rear hatch starred, then broke. He drove the cylinder against the crack and kept on going like he was piledriving a fence post. Now that was honest, solid labor, not this butcher’s work.

He could hear the alarms sounding inside Brack’s suit as he pounded away. He was destroying the life support, damaging the control systems, crushing the filters and the valves. Brack was still trying to rise on his hands, and every blow knocked him back down. At least the screaming had stopped, and had been replaced by a grunt each time the cylinder descended.

Brack went limp. Now he’d done enough.

Frank pulled Brack all the way out into the cross-hab and heaved him over onto his back. Perhaps he was dead. Frank knew better than to trust that.

He smashed the faceplate in with repeated blows, and knocked the edges of the plastic away. As the fresh air blew in, Brack’s face twisted into a grimace.

So, not dead yet.

Frank took him by the ankles again and pulled him through the habs: the kitchen, the yard, and into Comms. There was the gun, resting next to the console.

Frank sat in the chair and picked it up. It had been modified so that it didn’t have a trigger guard, so that Brack could fire it while wearing a spacesuit. It also made it laughably simple to accidentally discharge.

He aimed the gun downwards at the floor, between his knees, and kept his fingers well away from the mechanism. It was strange, after so long, to be holding the reason why he was even on Mars. A gun. They made killing so easy. Not like knives. You really had to mean it with knives. Just look at how much effort he’d put into killing Zero, and now Brack.

And he was tired, too. Even more than before. The thin, cold air was taking its toll. Better end this now, then, and get some rest.

He stretched his leg out and kicked the sole of Brack’s boot.

“Hey. Hey, Brack. Wake up. It’s over.”

Was it over? Not really. It never would be. But this part of it was.

Brack blinked and stared at the ceiling. The top half of him hadn’t really suffered at all. Asphyxiation, severe bruising, but nothing was broken, nothing was ruined. Not like his legs. The heroic quantities of opioids in his system were probably keeping him alive as well as dulling the pain, too, just like they were for Frank at a lesser degree.

Brack fumbled for his suit controls, but when he tried to open the back hatch, nothing would move.

“It’s not going to happen, Brack. You’re stuck in that suit. I could get some tools from the workshop and try and cut you out. But I’m not going to risk the spark.”

Brack let his hands fall to his sides.

“You.”

“Me. Good old Frank. Frank the murderer. Three times over now. It looks like, in all this, neither of us quite realized how much I wanted to live, how much I wanted to go home, and the things I’d do to make that happen. I surprised myself. Sure as hell surprised you. Maybe you should have killed me first, instead of Marcy.”

“They’ll get you.”

“Will they? Will they really? It’s a very long way to come, just for one old lag.”

“Your wife. Your son.”

Frank looked at the gun in his hand, tested the weight of it. Because it was Mars, it was less heavy than it ought to be. How was it that something so light could cause so much damage?

Of course, he was never going to fire it inside the hab. Not only would the fire extinguishers trigger, he’d end up putting a round through the wall. It felt right to be holding it, though. The most powerful man in the room needed to be holding the gun.

“Now that’s a difficult one, isn’t it? What do you suggest? What’s the best way of protecting them now, given that all the promises you gave me about going home in return for watching your back were just bullshit. You made the same promise to every single one of us, didn’t you? It kept us all in line. It kept us from challenging you. It kept us hoping. That’s the bit that really sucks, especially when you, and XO, had planned to kill us off all along.”

“You can save me.”