S Morden - One Way

“Alice could have saved you. But you killed her.” Frank scratched at his chin. “Me? I’m pretty certain I can’t. You didn’t train me for that. Didn’t train me for a lot of things. Just enough to be useful, not enough to realize how vulnerable we were.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “One thing I have learned: I’ve been denying that I’m a killer for ten years. There’s not been a day that’s passed when I haven’t said that to myself. ‘Frank, you’re not a killer.’ Turns out that I was wrong. I’ve got something inside me that says it’s OK to kill if I have to. That puts me much closer to you than I’m comfortable with, because I really don’t want to be like you.”

“I’ll tell XO to…”

Brack stopped mid-sentence with a gasp, and Frank kicked his foot again.

“What? What will you tell XO to do? Come and rescue us? Not kill my ex-wife and my kid? Do you think they care about anyone but themselves? Look at us. Goddammit, Brack, just look at the state of us. Look what they’ve done to us. This is what happens when you fuck up as badly as we have. We are in Hell.”

Brack shook his head, as if trying to shake something from his ears. Perhaps he was just trying to dislodge fragments of broken faceplate. He rallied.

“You can still go home. Just keep me alive.”

“You have to understand something. You were right. The others. They weren’t my friends. I wasn’t theirs. We got on, and that’s the best I can say about it. You gave us a job, and we did it, and we did it well, despite everything. Despite the crappy planning and the missing supplies and whatever happened to our personal effects. So we did everything you asked us to.” Frank looked at the gun in his hands. “And this is how you were always going to repay us. You were always going to kill us. Maybe you were leaving me till last because you knew I actually trusted you and believed you when you told me you were going to take me home, no matter how badly you’d treated me in the meantime: but you were going to kill me in the end. I don’t understand why. I don’t understand why XO would have done any of this. But they have. And you agreed to it all.”

Brack was reduced to panting, and Frank carefully put the gun back down on the console. He got up out of his chair, walked around the spreading pool of blood, and knelt down beside Brack’s head.

“The others didn’t deserve this. But I do. I know you brought me here to kill me. But I allowed myself to be brought. I am my own worst enemy. I get it now. I finally get it.”

Brack stared up at him, past him, his eyes unable to focus and skittering about in their orbits.

“You’ll never see your son again.”

“Fine words,” said Frank. He patted Brack’s shoulder. “Words to remember you by. All your hate and bitterness and poison, summed up in one sentence. You’re probably right: I never will. But I’m still not going to let you die alone, because no one deserves that. Not even you.”

He forced his hand into Brack’s, and felt a grip tighten against his. For a while, it was just the sound of their breathing. Frank’s, patient and steady. Brack’s, shallow and with increasing spaces between each exhale.

Then Frank found himself listening for a breath that never came. He gave Brack’s hand one last squeeze, and extricated his fingers. He went to sit back in the chair, and waited, in silence, alone.

[Message sent 11/12/2048 MBO Rahe to MBO Mission Control]

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.

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.

I’m prepared, despite everything, to cut a deal with you. I have something you want—your 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.

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.

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.

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.

DR. S. J. MORDEN has won the Philip K. Dick Award and been a judge on the Arthur C. Clarke award committee. He is a bona fide rocket scientist with degrees in geology and planetary geophysics. One Way is the perfect fusion of his incredible breadth of knowledge and ability to write award-winning, razor-sharp science fiction.

Sentient machines work, fight, and die in interstellar exploration and conflict for the benefit of their owners—the competing mining corporations of Earth. But sent over hundreds of light-years, commands are late to arrive and often hard to enforce. The machines must make their own decisions, and make them stick.

With this new-found autonomy come new questions about their masters. The robots want answers. The companies would rather see them dead.

They’ve died for the companies more times than they can remember. Now they must fight to live for themselves.

Carlos the Terrorist did not expect to die that day. The bombing was heavy now, and close, but he thought his location safe. Leaky pipework dripping with obscure post-industrial feedstock products riddled the ruined nanofacturing plant at Tilbury. Watchdog machines roved its basement corridors, pouncing on anything that moved—a fallen polystyrene tile, a draught-blown paper cone from a dried-out water-cooler—with the mindless malice of kittens chasing flies. Ten metres of rock, steel and concrete lay between the ceiling above his head and the sunlight where the rubble bounced.