Red warning lights circled around Luka and Bard, dancing across the static rovers as the air was slowly sucked out of the hangar. There should have been a warning siren too, but Luka had disabled it. He wanted to hear every word that Bard had to say for himself.
“What’s going on?” said Bard. “Who are you?”
“I’m the one who has locked you in here,” replied Luka, taking a step towards him.
Panicked, Bard looked up at the view port separating the hangar from the control room. “Kareem? Can you hear me?”
“He can hear you,” said Luka. “But the airlock door is locked. He can’t get to you.”
Bard clasped his crutches under his armpits and balanced on his good leg as he operated his WristTab and brought it to his mouth. “This is Bard Hunter! I’m in Rover Depot A in Tharsis City. I need urgent assistance.”
“They can’t help you either. I’ve started the depressurization process and the airlock doors can’t be opened until it’s fully reversed.”
“Are you mad?!” he screamed. “You’ll kill us!”
“Possibly,” admitted Luka. “But not for a little while. I’ve set the program to take a lot longer than normal, so we have enough air to talk.”
Bard stared at Luka, and it was almost possible to see the terrified thoughts racing behind his eyes. An instinct for survival kicked in, he turned and ran, dropping his crutches and limping on his injured leg as he charged towards the sealed airlock door. Luka was prepared to let him go until he saw what Bard must have seen – the emergency button to repressurize the hangar. Luka snatched up one of the crutches and reached Bard just as his hand stretched out for the button.
He jabbed the end of Bard’s crutch into the back of Bard’s wounded leg, and it collapsed from underneath him. Bard fell sprawling to the floor. His trademark white cap slid off his head and skidded underneath the nearest rover.
Luka heard the whir of the HoverCam coming up behind him to witness it all.
He stood above Bard, with the crutch in his hand like a weapon, and breathed deep. It wasn’t yet possible to tell that the air was getting thinner, but it wouldn’t be long. Just to make sure, he bashed at the side of the mechanism with the end of the crutch until was knocked free of the wall and hung uselessly from a pair of wires.
“Now,” said Luka, turning to Bard with an intimidating stare. “I want you to tell me how CrediCor crashed the asteroid into the ThorGate research station.”
“It was an accident!” yelled Bard.
“Financial records prove CrediCor’s asteroid controller was paid to do it.”
An alarmed realization passed across Bard’s face. “You know about that?”
“Course correction data pulled from the guidance system show the station was deliberately targeted.”
“Someone bribed her to do it, I don’t know who and I don’t know why.”
Luka was getting frustrated. If Bard countered every allegation he put him, they would run out of air before he ran out of lies.
Luka jabbed the point of the crutch on the floor and rested his hand on the top. “Let me tell you how oxygen deprivation works. First, you get a bit breathless. It’s like you’re walking up a hill, it feels normal. Then your lungs begin to hurt as they struggle to find enough oxygen. It starts to affect your brain, you get an ever worsening headache, you feel sick and dizzy. You might even start to hallucinate before you collapse, become unconscious and, eventually, suffocate. I can stop all that.” He held up his WristTab. “But only after I’ve heard the truth.”
Luka could feel himself getting breathless and he could see that Bard was feeling it too.
“You won’t do it,” said Bard, defiantly. “You’re breathing the same air as me. If I die, you die.”
“You’ve already killed the people I most cared about. Inside, I’m dead already.”
“You’re crazy.” Bard shuffled himself away from Luka and sat himself up to lean against the wheel of the nearest rover. Luka stood over him and watched him squirm.
The HoverCam adjusted its position to get a better look.
“Remember the Rhine Valley Disaster?” said Luka. “The factory owner took the blame, but the truth is, if CrediCor hadn’t withdrawn its loan at a critical time, corners wouldn’t have been cut and the chemical release would never have happened. CrediCor was warned about the consequences, but all those warnings were ignored. And you, Bard Hunter, signed off on it. You’re the reason my family died from breathing in poison. So, yeah, I’m prepared to suffocate alongside of you if that’s what it takes.”
Fear burned in Bard’s eyes. He was gasping now. “I did know about the crash,” he admitted. “No one wanted ThorGate to run that research – no one. Everyone said it should have been Ecoline. This was a simple way to stop them. I was the one who paid my asteroid controller to organize it. She thought she was being bribed by an outside organization because I knew that was the best way to make sure she told only the essential people the most crucial information. I also made sure no one could trace the payments back to me. But no one was supposed to die. Ecoline was going to make sure that no one was killed – I don’t know why that man was there.”
“Gianni,” said Luka.
“The station should have been empty.”
“Ecoline paid Anita Andreassen to make sure all the scientists were evacuated from the building.”
“I don’t know the details,” gasped Bard. “They dealt with all that.”
Luka put too much weight on the crutch, it slipped out from under him and he would have fallen if he hadn’t reached out for the hull of the rover next to him. He rested his hands there, taking gulps of thinning air. The muscles in his legs wouldn’t be able to keep him standing much longer. “Then,” he said, “you came along with a ready-made deal to save the day.”
“Yeah,” Bard whispered.
Luka dropped himself to sitting. His head was beginning to hurt, and thinking was becoming difficult. He might have misjudged how quickly he should deprive them of air. “And the Martian microbes?”
“Restore the air, for Christ’s sake!” Bard broke into a wheezing cough, his lungs spasming in the struggle to breathe. He tried to crawl to reach the broken emergency button, even though it hung uselessly from a pair of wires, but he barely shuffled half a meter before he collapsed.
“The Martian microbes,” Luka repeated. “I know Ecoline paid Anita to plant them under the Noctis City site.”
“Their idea.” Bard’s words as he lay on the floor were quiet, slow and labored. “Ensure their biology experts controlled the site. Hit ThorGate harder. Take their city too.”
Bard’s face was blurry. Luka couldn’t hear him anymore, just the whistling screeching in his ears. He had miscalculated; he’d thought someone would be there to rescue them by now. He had locked Kareem out of the control room systems, but the ones in the admin area should still be functioning. He had lied when he said he could restore the air using his WristTab. He had tried to link it, but the systems weren’t made to talk to each other, and he hadn’t had time to work it out.
Luka slumped to the floor and felt its cold, hard surface on his cheek. The pressure on his lungs and the pain in his chest seemed to lessen as he lay still, panting. Perhaps it was his dying brain releasing chemicals to ease his passing. He thought he heard footsteps and people shouting Bard Hunter’s name, but it had to be another hallucination.
He was going to meet his wife and children soon. Death was coming and he embraced it gladly, with the satisfaction of knowing he was taking the man who killed his family with him.