When he’d done, he straightened up. He took in the crater wall to the south, the notch through which the river from the top of the volcano had flowed, the looming bulk of the volcano itself, all fifteen thousand feet of it. He used to drive up that river—Dee had named it the Santa Clara—and take in the view, before heading back down again to the base. Because it was the only place he could go back to. He’d swapped one prison for another. That had been the deal he’d made with XO. Die on Earth or live on Mars.
XO hadn’t played fair, of course. There’d been the small matter of being sent to solitary confinement for the rest of his sentence if he’d failed for any reason to complete his astronaut training. The Hole sent men mad, and it had been a hell of an incentive not to crap out. XO’s Supermaxes were probably stuffed with those who’d failed, now howling at four blank walls and dreaming of ever more elaborate ways to stay sane.
Frank couldn’t help them then or now. He didn’t even know if he could help himself. It would only take one thing to go wrong, with his health, his suit, or the base, and that would be it. He hadn’t done any of his maintenance tasks since that long, bloody night, and neither had anyone else because they were all dead. As it was, he was carrying a bullet wound in his arm, and a cut on his chest where he’d extracted his XO-implanted medical monitor.
And yes, he’d pulled the bullet out with a pair of sterile forceps, and used a sterile scalpel to slice himself open, but he hadn’t cleaned it up properly nor taken antibiotics. Or painkillers—those that were left after Brack had chowed his way through the supply.
Perhaps he should do that, now he’d got the dead guys out of the base.
When XO had trained him, they’d provided only a rudimentary first-aid course. In fact, much of his training had been a gloss. He knew what he needed to know—in his case, how to site the base and bolt it together—and precious little else. He’d had a second, Declan, and he’d shadowed Marcy for transportation, but he knew almost nothing about the power or the plumbing or the comms. Especially not the hydroponics: Zero had guarded his greenhouse jealously.
He re-entered the base through the cross-hab airlock. There was blood on the floor. A lot of blood. Dried lakes of it, with drag-lines leading through to the yard, the main rec area, where Frank had dragged a semi-conscious Brack to the place where he’d died, his legs cut to ribbons, his suit smashed to an unremovable shell around him.
The med bay was the other way. There was no less blood there.
Frank racked his suit, next to Zero’s, and plugged his life support into the regenerator. He was naked. His one set of overalls were stiff and black with dried blood, and despite the sub-zero temperatures outside, it was warm enough inside.
The med bay looked like a slaughterhouse, with spatters up the curved walls, across the metal staging and the hanging fabric dividers. Furniture was overturned, knocked aside, and the floor? Zero had died there. Bled out. And it showed. Zero had attacked Frank, thinking not unreasonably that the man convicted of murder was the murderer. Frank had survived. Zero had not. He stood for a moment in the doorway, finally taking in the scene and seeing it for what it was. He clicked his tongue behind his teeth and grimaced. The place was a mess, and he’d always prided himself on keeping a clean working environment. All the same, he was going to have to leave it for now.
Frank looked through the boxes for dressings, and antiseptic cream. He didn’t know if infection was going to be a problem: Mars was sterile, but the base wasn’t. He guessed that they’d brought their own germs with them, but didn’t know enough to say whether they were dangerous bugs or not.
The water they used was sterile too—Zeus had told him as much—so he stood over the sink and carefully washed the wound on his chest. It wasn’t big, just a cut through the surface layers of skin and maybe half an inch long, big enough to squeeze the monitor out through. He’d had to cut along the original scar, though, and that might cause problems.
A dribble of pink water trickled down his belly and groin to drip onto the floor. Not that it mattered. A little more would make no difference at all.
He used one steristrip to close the cut, and wondered about putting a fabric pad over the top. It didn’t look that bad, and he left it.
The hole in his arm was more of a problem. It was sore. Of course it was—he’d dragged a bullet out of it—but he thought it should be hurting more than it was, even though he’d never been shot before. It also seemed to be healing well enough. Every time he knocked it or even flexed his muscle, he was reminded that it was there, but it hadn’t affected his ability to sleep. Far from it.
He cleaned up the edges of the wound, and used a big press-on patch to cover it. He still didn’t take any painkillers, partly because he didn’t trust them, and partly so that he could tell how much trouble he was in. There was no one else to look out for him, and he found himself extraordinarily ignorant about how to keep himself alive.
He disposed of the wrappings, and tidied away the unused items. There was no one else to do it.
He looked at the med bay again, properly looked at it. He didn’t even know if he could clean it up. He’d need actual cleaning tools to do that: detergents, bleach, a mop, a bucket, scrubbing brushes. Did they have that? He hadn’t come across any yet, and he’d helped build the base, and carry the stores from the supply rockets inside.
He picked up one of the examination tables that had been knocked over when Zero had crashed against it, and set it back on its feet, a simple enough task in the reduced gravity. His arm flexed, and he winced. There was a weakness there that hadn’t been present before. Perhaps he should take it easy. Perhaps that was the excuse he was looking for.
Whichever it was, he stopped.
He let his hands fall by his side. Was this it? Was this how it was going to be from now on? He’d killed two more people, for this?
Frank was at war with himself. There were too many things to think about, all at once. He had to strip everything back, deal with the absolutely necessary and immediate, and put everything else to one side, even if delaying it now spelled disaster later.
He’d bandaged his wounds. That was a good start. He could keep them clean, watch for infection, avoid exerting himself until he’d healed. What next?
How long was it since he’d had anything substantial to eat? His confusion could simply be down to low blood sugar. He had food. He had more food than he knew what to do with. He’d probably end up having to throw a lot of it away. So why not go and help himself?
He let himself into the greenhouse and took a tour of the hydroponic trays, taking the time to inspect both the variety and the growth-stage of each. It took a while to get his eye in, but eventually he was able to identify which he could harvest, and which he needed to leave. Some of the crops looked very similar, with only subtle differences, and none of them were labeled: presumably Zero had known what everything was, and how long he’d been growing them for. If he’d kept records, Frank didn’t know where to find them.
Unless they were on the computer. Maybe they were. Had Dee said anything about that? He couldn’t remember. Declan had chided him for being incurious. He’d probably had a point.
What had he come in here for? Food, that was it. He found a clean container, and picked himself a big bowl of salad: lots of leaves, tomatoes, green onions, and some young green beans. He left that by the airlock door, and took another bowl to the lower level, to where the tilapia tanks were.
Zero had fashioned a net from a piece of parachute fabric. Frank used it to chase the fish through the water and pick out two of the fattest ones. Would he have to cull them? They were going to breed faster than he could eat them, now that there wasn’t a full crew roster chowing down on them. Something else he wasn’t going to think about for the moment.