That didn’t make much sense, because the whole thing about replacing robots with cons was because cons were cheaper, more reliable and ultimately disposable. Putting a whole other parallel mission in place was a ridiculously expensive piece of overkill. They’d have better spent the money making sure that the base actually got built.
Best-case scenario? Frank struggled with this. He couldn’t think of a good reason for any other XO mission to Mars. Maybe they did it because they could. Maybe it was as badly run and poorly resourced as his own. Maybe it was so far off course that it had landed in the wrong hemisphere, and out of the whole of Mars to aim at, only accidentally landed close by. Maybe it was crewed entirely by decent, competent people who wouldn’t dream of harming a hair on his head, and he really ought to go and help them out with food and equipment.
What was he going to do, if Luisa asked him to do that, to be the good neighbor? That man had looked hungry, so very hungry.
Back to the worst case again—she’d tell him to load up with spare food, go over, and he’d never come back because someone there would know what Brack looked like and would know it wasn’t him.
OK, so he’d thought of something even worse. What if they had standing orders to kill Brack? That would make perfect, awful sense. Hire a stone-cold killer to see Phase two through and then get rid of him, too. Brack, with his addictions and his psychoses, was going to unravel in the company of real people, and the last thing that XO wanted or needed was a madman running amok in a thin-skinned hab full of expensive and popular astronauts. Much better to replace him with someone who was technically competent and not a murderer.
Brack was going to be the last victim. And Frank was now Brack.
10
[Message file #103025 12/10/2048 2206 MBO Rahe Crater to MBO Mission Control]
Luisa, this is my absolute bottom line. XO can take it or leave it.
I know XO planned this. The cargo drops happened in the same area the crew’s ship was supposed to land. XO deliberately put another base right next to MBO. I’ve got my reasons for thinking that’s a bad thing for me.
I don’t trust XO when you tell me that M2 has clear instructions to leave MBO alone, and neither do I think they’re going to lie down quietly and die. They know I’m here, and they know MBO has everything they need.
You say no one can talk to M2 because of the comms issue. But I’m not going to contact them either. I think XO are lying about pretty much everything, and I’m not going to risk my life and my chance of getting back to Earth over this. They put me here in this position. So they have to wear the consequences. If M2 stay their side of the mountain, then fine. I won’t have to say anything to NASA about this “classified mission”. I don’t actually give a shit about who gets to play on Mars, but if XO want it kept secret as a condition of my return, then OK.
But you have to understand that I’ve got about as much control over M2 as you do now. If one of the NASA guys spots them because M2 goes off the reservation, then there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s XO’s problem, not mine. If they bust their cover, no one can blame me.
Like I said. Take it or leave it. NASA are here in just over two months.
[message ends]
He still had to move the bodies into the ship. He hadn’t before. He’d not done it so that he didn’t have to see them every time he took a new batch of stuff over. Though that wasn’t actually true: he did see them every time, because their shrouds were clearly visible under the rocket cone at the base of the descent ship, and they didn’t fall out of sight until he was at the bottom of the steps leading up to the airlock.
Now he’d run out of excuses. They were literally the last item on his list, and he’d ticked off everything else. No, that wasn’t true either, though there was a very good reason for that.
He drove the short distance to the landing spot. It was his eight-month anniversary on Mars—February 6th. Eight months since he’d been woken up by Alice. Eight months since he’d lost both her and Marcy. Then, five months in, Zeus, Dee, Declan, Zero. Finally, Brack.
Almost three months since he thought he was totally alone.
And eight weeks since he’d discovered XO had put another mission on Mars, just over the hill. Strange that it had been at that exact moment that the ghosts of his dead crewmates had stopped appearing to him. No manifestations since. It would probably scare him to death, thinking it was someone from M2, so he’d been saved that at least.
Even so, Frank was ragged. He snatched at sleep and usually missed, and when he did finally catch it, he’d wake up at the slightest sound, real or imagined. It had been bad enough before, with the nightmares and flashbacks. Now it was concretized: the threats he dreamed about were real. The base being invaded. Him being dragged outside. Held down while his suit was opened up. Because they wouldn’t want to damage XO property, would they? On Mars, resources counted more than the people did. Certainly more than a bunch of cons did.
The last few sols had simply blurred together. He no longer knew when he was awake. Nervous energy was the only thing carrying him through. At some point he was going to crash, and crash hard. But not today. He couldn’t do that today.
He climbed down from the buggy, and looked around, checking that no one had interfered with the ship—a strip of parachute material caught carelessly in the outer airlock door was his telltale. It was still there. There were no unexplained tracks, no bootprints that weren’t his. Time and wind had eroded what lay beyond the ship, out towards the drop-off, into broad, dark smudges, like marks of half-scrubbed pencil lines.
Nothing fresh. Nothing to indicate that M2 had been anywhere near him. That was good, and still he worried. Every day. And especially now. He’d done all of the work. MBO was… not spotless, but it was clean. It had a lived-in look. The floor panels were scuffed where he’d scrubbed them, and the sub-floor voids scratched and shiny after chipping the dried blood out from the framework and utilities. The med bay was orderly once more, and the consulting room empty of everything including the USMC cap that Brack had brought along.
It had been the only personal item from Earth that had made it onto the surface of Mars. The cons’ effects—including Frank’s few books and letters—had vanished. He had no idea where. And the hat had to go, along with all the other junk—tablets, overalls, spacesuits, hair from the drains and skin in the filters—into the heart of the sun.
His instructions were to just pile it all up inside. He didn’t have to worry about tying it down or stop it from banging into the instrument panels. Those wouldn’t do anything once XO had taken remote command of the vessel.
He was going to put half an hour on a timer. That was as long as he spent at any one time inside the ship. Not quite long enough for the ship to register that he’d activated the airlock, send a message to Earth, and for XO to trap him inside and take him on a one-way trip into space. Of course, they’d already done that once, but being shot into a star would be a qualitatively different trip.
Maybe they wouldn’t do that. Maybe they’d stick to their agreement. But he’d be stupid to bet his life on it, any further than he already had to. When he lay down to sleep, it was clutching a semi-inflated rubber glove, with scuba gear and his spacesuit within touching distance.
And the gun by his side.
He’d decided that he was going to keep it. XO would never know, one way or the other. He’d brought the metal case over along with the rest of Brack’s effects, dumped it in plain sight of the ship-board cameras, but the gun itself was currently in the same pouch at his waist as his suit patches.