In the far distance, silhouetted against the pale disc of the late evening sun, a lone figure stood up in a classic shooter’s stance: feet slightly apart, holding up a long device that aimed squarely at the wobbling vehicle. The vehicle was heading toward a gap in the crater wall, one of three gaps.
“Harold.” Ben keyed his comm and waited. No response came, but he was certain Harold was listening. After a few moments of silence, he decided to go all in.
“Harold, we have a sniper on the ridge. He can hole that vehicle and probably injure or kill everyone inside it. Give up now.”
That, at least, bought a response. “Sniper, my ass. No weapons on the manifest. Nothing like weapons.”
“Doug, show him. Take out something non-essential.”
Atop the ridge, the sniper fired his weapon in utter silence. A searchlight on top of the vehicle exploded in similar silence a moment later.
Ben spoke into the comm again. “That searchlight wasn’t all that big, Harold. He hit it while you were moving. If he wants to shoot something, he can shoot it. Stop now.”
Abruptly, the vehicle stopped. Ben exhaled quietly, unaware until this moment that he had been holding his breath, speaking in strained whispers. He felt like screaming.
How in the hell had Harold got through the psychological tests? This monomania was poison to the community.
A hatch in the side of the distant vehicle popped open and three people clambered out. A pause, and two more followed. The hatch closed, and presently the vehicle began moving away again. The people, in their garish, brightly colored skinsuits, began hiking back toward town in the high, skipping steps typical of Martian pedestrians. It wasn’t easy to make such a gait look contrite, but they did it. From here, Ben couldn’t make out who was who.
“I can see him through the viewport. I have a good line on him. Can’t say what it might do going through the port, though. Might deflect, might not have enough energy to stop him.” Ben registered, distantly, the absence of the word kill. Because that was what they were talking about, the projectile having enough energy, after passing through the thick material of the viewport, to also pass through Harold Ponsoon’s skull, brain, his self-aggrandizing plans, and out through the other side of his towering ego. They only wanted to stop Harold, not kill him. Right?
Right?
“Is he buttoned up?”
“Affirm.” Harold was wearing a skinsuit, too. Of course he was, the vehicle didn’t have an airlock. Its interior had been open to the near-airlessness of Mars’ surface as the other occupants had left the vehicle. It was just a pat question, something to throw out in the moment, to make it sound like he was gathering information, assembling data in order to come to a conclusion, the right conclusion. If there could be a right conclusion to this scenario.
“Hold.” If the shot deflected on its way through the viewport, Harold would not be incapacitated by a sudden loss of cabin pressure. He’d probably be scared shitless, but not otherwise affected. “How many rounds do you have?”
A totally different voice came on the comm channel now, a woman’s. This was a party line, after all. All the comms could talk to all the other comms, but for the moment Ben’s was prioritizing only a few. Anyone else that had anything to say to him would have to leave a message. “We only had time and materials for ten. Doug used a couple for sighting in, I think.”
“Six. I burned six.” Doug’s voice had taken on a curiously flat tone. “But I’m pretty confident with this thing, now.”
Three rounds remaining, now that one of only ten high-velocity bullets that had ever existed on the entire planet of Mars had been used to cold-bloodedly murder an innocent searchlight.
And damn Harold Ponsoon, they might need that searchlight someday.
“Losing the angle.” Doug’s voice was flat, cold. I wonder what the psych tests said about him?
Harold would have heard Doug’s statement, of course. Depending on how he set his comm, Harold might be able to hear everyone, every word. Every curse, every plea, every exhortation.
He’d hear this, too. “Let him go.” Against the darkening sky, he saw the silhouetted sniper continue to hold the stance for a couple of seconds longer, holding the picture in the telescopic sight, then lower the weapon. “He can’t go far.”
He had bluffed, Harold had called, and ultimately Ben had to fold. The stakes were too high. The searchlight was bad enough, but to risk destroying a priceless viewport and God only knew what other damage to the vehicle was too much.
The vehicle passed through the gap and disappeared from view.
Two weeks earlier
“I’ve just about straightened it all out. The primary motor controls were cooked by that solar flare on the trip out and a lot of the monitoring, but I’ve converted everything over to either analog control or just manuals. You’ll have to keep on your toes to run it, but it’s no worse than operating, say, a 20th century automobile. Anyone can do it.”
“Well, that’s good, Harold. We’re needing that thing back on the line.”
“Dibs!”
Ben cast a baleful eye at Harold. “You can’t call ‘dibs.’ There are far too many legitimate users who’ve had to double- and triple-up on the other Pioneers for you to have a joyride.”
Harold inexpertly hid an offended expression. “I’m only joking.”
