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slippinmickeys · 2 years ago

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The Mesas of Deuteronilus Mensae (36/37)

After watching Scully turn to make her way out and onto the roof of the HAB, Mulder sat, staring at the screens in front of him. What the hell had happened here? And was he, at least partially, to blame? If one of their crewmates had been mentally unwell enough to kill, surely he should have known and been able to intervene. But then, mental illness was something you could hide. It often happened that no one, not even the most seasoned professional, could know until it was too late. He ran a hand over his face and sighed. The past wasn’t something he could control. The only way through was forward.

He leaned back, looking at the terminal before him. There had to be a way to figure out what had happened here. It occurred to him that not only was there a way to figure it out, but to see it too. The common areas of the HAB, as well as many locations on and around the HAB campus were set up with closed circuit monitoring systems. They didn’t have audio attached, but Mulder could sit here and cycle through the various locations on the base for clues as to where the crew had gone – and barring finding anything revelatory, he could go back into the history of recordings and see if what had happened here had been caught on tape.

Energized, he brought up the system on the main screen and started cycling through the live feeds of the various rooms of the HAB, and then the outdoor areas. There weren’t any cameras set up in the lav or the astronauts’ private quarters of course, but a lot was covered, and he might just get lucky. He quickly flipped through the rooms he and Scully had already checked and was just starting to cycle through the feeds of some of the outdoor areas when he heard a noise. He sat stock still for a moment, ears straining. There it was again: a dull, pounding sound – this time accompanied by what he was certain were muffled shouts.

Mulder shot up out of the chair, grabbed his helmet and hustled through the corridors of the HAB, head tilted, trying to locate the source of the noise.

“Hello!” he shouted. “Is anyone there? Hello?!”

He was passing the lab when the sounds got suddenly louder.

Thump thump thump. “Hello? Help!”

“Hello??” Mulder yelled again, careening into the room and making a half turn, trying to locate the source.

“Here! ” called the male voice from the area near the south wall. “I’m in here! Help me!!” Thump thump thump.

Mulder saw the door to one of the supply lockers rattle in its frame and he ran to it and jammed up the release. The door swung open and Powers fell out of the thin locker and to the floor at Mulder’s feet.

“Powers!” Mulder exclaimed, the sound and sight of a living, breathing, walking, talking member of the human race lifting his spirits like nothing else could.

“Mulder? Holy shit am I glad to see you,” Powers said, and Mulder reached down and helped the man to his feet.

“What-what the hell is going on here?” Mulder asked him.

Powers scrunched his neck and shoulders this way and that, trying to stretch himself out, wincing.

“How long you been in there, man?” asked Mulder.

Powers shook his head, looking a little dazed. “I feel like I was born in there.”

“What happened?”

Powers looked around the room, as if trying to figure it out for himself. Finally, he swallowed thickly and said, “Henderson. Went crazy. Elmer tried to subdue him and I jumped in to help. I took an elbow and… woke up in there.” He gestured to the lab locker.

Mulder processed this for a few moments, then said, “Elmer’s dead.”

Powers gave him a look and then dropped his gaze to the floor. “Shit,” he said, his voice low.

“Where’s the rest of the crew?” Mulder asked.

“I don’t know,” Powers said, looking around Mulder to peer out into the hallway beyond the lab. “When did you get back?”

“About fifteen minutes ago,” Mulder said, with a careful look at Powers’ face. The man had begun to sweat, and Mulder reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you sit down, Ricky.”

Powers shrugged off his hand. “I’m fine. Scully with you?”

Mulder nodded. “The place was empty but for Elmer’s body. Music blaring over the speakers.” At this, Powers nodded and reached up to fiddle with his ear, which Mulder had to imagine was still ringing. “The crew isn’t in the HAB, but their hardsuits are. What do you think Henderson did with them?” Everything about their arrival at the HAB had been odd in an unnerving way. Powers seemed a little off too, but then anyone would be after having been forced into a small enclosed space by a homicidal madman, Mulder mused.

Powers shook his head, looking shell shocked.

“Scully’s on the roof,” Mulder went on, “trying to get comms back up. Maybe we can find them, then. And report back to Mission Control.”

“We tried getting comms back up. Every time we did, something else would happen to them.”

Mulder shrugged. “Well,” he said. “Maybe a new pair of eyes.”

“Yeah,” Powers nodded, seeming to come back to himself. “Good idea.”

Mulder heard the static blip of comms through his helmet, which was still gripped in his left hand. He held up a finger to Powers. “One second,” he said, as he plunked his helmet back on, “I’ve got Scully on the two-way.”

“I’m here, Scully, can you repeat?”

“I’m on the HAB roof, Mulder,” she said. “The comms wiring—all of it—the entire cabling for both the HAB-based and Mission Control comms units—has been cut.”

“Cut?”

“That’s right. It’s going to have to be completely re-wired,” she said. “I’m going to stay up here and see if I can jerry-rig something. At least restore HAB-based comms.”

“You think you can do that?”

“Where there’s a will there’s a way. I’ve got an idea for a workaround.”

“Roger that,” Mulder said. “Any sign out there of the rest of the crew?”

“Negative,” Scully said glumly.

“I found Powers,” Mulder said, looking over at the other man. “Scully, he’s alive. He said Henderson killed Elmer. Shoved him into a closet in the lab.”

“Jesus,” Scully said breathily through Mulder’s helmet’s speakers. “Is he okay?”

Mulder wasn’t entirely sure the man was in perfect health—he seemed thoroughly shaken by the events that had taken place, but Mulder wasn’t about to add another thing to Scully’s mental load.

“He’s fine,” Mulder answered.

“I’ll be in touch if I need some help up here,” Scully said. “Can one of you go monitor the console at Base Base? Let me know how the system is looking?”

“Will do,” Mulder said. “Over and out.”

Mulder reached up and removed his helmet.

“What’s the word?” Powers asked.

“Scully said that the comm cables for every system have been cut.”

“Cut?”

“I said the same thing. They were cut clean through. She thinks she can maybe do a workaround to at least restore HAB-based comm.”

Powers stood up straighter and seemed to come more alive. “I’ll go help her,” he said.

“No,” Mulder protested immediately. “You should take it easy. How long were you in there anyway?”

Powers shook his head. His eyes had a wild look to them. “Too long,” he said.

Maybe giving the guy a job wasn’t such a terrible idea, Mulder thought. Powers had always been one of his favorite crewmen. Jovial and friendly and always there with a joke or witty rejoinder.

“Okay,” Mulder said. “I’ll be at Base Base monitoring the system. You guys let me know if you need anything.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully stood on the roof of the HAB, staring at the coils of wires and cabling that comprised the comm units of the Martian base. The metal housing had been torn off in order to get at the cables themselves, revealing the colored wires beneath. There would be a schematic mapping of them on the small computer portal just beneath the ladder to the roof where she stood, and now that Mulder had the computer back up, it should be relatively easy to access. Once she sussed out which wires were which, it shouldn’t be too hard—she hoped—to at least wire a workaround that led from the HAB’s system to the small local antenna that allowed ground-based communication. The Mars-to-Mission Control comm system was far more complex and would take someone with more engineering expertise to fix. Between her, Powers and Mulder, she hoped they could eventually sort it out. But at least this she felt comfortable doing on her own.

Scully was thrilled to hear that Powers was alive and well; she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed seeing a face other than that of Mulder’s. While she loved him, she missed the community they’d built here. One that Henderson had tried to tear down. Scully sighed thinking of the man lying prone on the rover, what suffering he must have endured to bring him to a place where he felt he had to do some of the things he’d done. At least he was more or less imprisoned on the rover. Even if he woke up, he couldn’t leave it without his suit. She did still wonder, however, exactly how the man had gotten out onto the regolith several days' travel from the HAB, and what he’d been doing with Robo-3.

She stood from the bound cabling, her center of gravity knocked ever so slightly off base by the small bundle she now carried in her center. She wasn’t as nimble as she would have been in her own suit–without the added weight she would have to be careful out here, and deliberate in her movements and steps. No one could afford for her to get hurt.

She made her way down the ladder and booted up the outdoor computer terminal, calling up the schematics of the comm system. According to the readout, the wires she’d need to resplice were red leading from the HAB, and yellow leading from the antenna. Scully turned and looked at the sun. There was a haze of dust in the air today, lending the light a sickly pallor. It would make telling the difference between red and yellow somewhat of a challenge with the planet’s orangey murk being her only source of light. She ground her teeth, and cursed the genius at NASA who had designed the system, living on a planet where the sun was so much closer. The lighting system on her helmet would help, but those lights were neutral, putting out about 3500 Kelvin—not too different in color from the Martian sun itself. It would be far easier to work with a cooler, whiter light, like the high-shine, 7000K flashlights that were housed in the base’s water-pumping station/lab.

The water lab was one of several pressurized outbuildings at the base, with a single airlock leading in and out. It was located a quarter of a click away from the HAB itself, closer to the water fields where the well was dug. It housed the mechanicals for the pumping station on one end and the water lab itself on the other—where Shaw and Hramic frequently worked, the chemist and geologist studying the precious Martian resource.

She could try to suss out which wire was which without the added light, but she wanted to work quickly, and the bluer light would make it easier. She turned to look out at the lab. She could be there and back in fifteen minutes.

“Mulder,” she spoke into her helmet’s mic.

“Mulder here,” he said.

“I’m headed over to grab some equipment from the water lab,” she said. “Shouldn’t take long.”

“Copy that,” Mulder said. “Powers is coming out to assist you,” he went on. “He’s suiting up now.”

“Copy,” Scully said, feeling a smile creep up her cheeks. “It’ll be good to see a friendly face.”

With that she clicked off. Powers’ help would be immeasurable. The sooner they got the comms up and running, the better. She started off toward the water lab, Henderson’s suit pressing uncomfortably into her crotch. By the time she arrived she regretted the trip. The place where the foreign suit rubbed against the inside of her legs was sore and she could feel it rubbing blisters into the skin. Still, she was out here, she would grab the light she needed, and maybe the extra tool kit housed in the mechanical section of the lab, which was not pressurized.

She opened the door and flipped on the light. Without realizing she’d been doing it, she found that her muscles were tense. She’d been half prepared to walk into the mechanical pump room and find another dead crew mate or the place in a shambles like Henderson’s quarters, but instead, she found everything as it should have been, the flashlights in charging stations hanging by the door and the tool kit in its designated area in the far back corner of the room.

Grabbing the supplies she needed, Scully began to make her way back outside, but the thought of the other astronauts made her pause – while she was out here, she may as well take a look in and around the lab for signs of her crewmates. She set down the tools and walked around the outside of the building, scanning for any signs of people. Then she made her way to the airlock. She didn’t even need to go in. The porthole in the airlock door was big enough that she could look through it to see if anyone was in there or if anything was out of place, and so she swung open the outer airlock door and moved to the window overlooking the lab.

Her breath left her in a rush. Three of the five remaining unaccounted for crewmates were sitting inside, looking thin and wan, each of them in a listless and worrisome position; Shaw was laying down, Hramic was sitting with her head hanging down, and Ehrlich, in the far corner, was sitting against the wall, staring blankly ahead. With a startled shout, Scully reached up and pounded on the porthole glass and all three of them jumped to their feet, their faces registering excited surprise.

Scully waved, and they all ran for the airlock door, each of them with mouths moving. Without comms, Scully couldn’t understand what they were saying, but finally, Ehrlich pushed herself to the front, and Scully raised her face shield so that Ehrlich could see her. The smile that broke out on their commander’s face was one Scully wouldn’t forget for the rest of her life.

“I’m going to come through the airlock,” Scully said slowly, hoping Ehrlich could read her lips. The commander nodded and Scully took a step back. She’d have to go back to the Mars-side of the airlock and close the outer door. Just as she was about to turn, she saw Ehrlich’s eyes go wide in fright, and the commander pointed at Scully and clearly mouthed the words “LOOK OUT! BEHIND YOU!”

Scully was upended, pulled up off of her feet completely by a mighty force and sent sailing through the air. She landed hard atop the Martian regolith, intense pain sparking up and down her entire left side where her body was slammed into the too-big hardsuit.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder sat and waited at the console for Scully and Powers to get to work on the comms system. Once they had a few workarounds done, they’d need him to test the system from Base Base so that they could fine tune and get it fully operational.

As he sat waiting, he decided to scroll through the past recordings from the closed circuit monitoring system. Watching Henderson’s slow descent into madness wasn’t something he particularly wanted to see, but if he could glean some insight into what had happened to the rest of the crew, there was maybe a chance to find and save them.

The recording system wasn’t really set up for monitoring. You couldn’t rewind and watch like on an old VCR or security system—everything recorded was stored digitally, mainly for posterity's sake, and the only way to call up past footage was to take a guess and key in specific dates and times. Without knowing when things had gone down, it was a crap shoot.

Mulder tried to remember the soldates when things had started to go awry, and pushed a few buttons, keying in a time around when the dust storm had hit him and Scully in the rover. Footage popped up onto the screen—Dutton and Patel sitting together in the mess, eating. A few more key presses brought up other views from the same time—Ehrlich sitting in Base Base, maybe even talking to them. A view of the empty med bay;Powers suiting up in the airlock, and a shot of Hramic and Shaw working in the water lab. All normal, everyday activities.

He sighed, reaching forward to key in a new date, and he decided to focus mainly on the HAB itself and the outside area around it. Footage popped up once again, showing empty hallways, empty labs, empty med bay, before switching to a shot of the mess, and the whole of the crew sitting around the table, Ehrlich at the head of it, looking stressed. Mulder clicked ahead. Different sols, different times. Then, more recently, he watched as Henderson and Elmer loaded up Rover 1 and set out on what must have been an EVA. A few hours later on the tape, something else pricked his interest. It was Powers, judging from the black colored stripes on his hardsuit, making his way back to the HAB from the direction of the well field. Behind him was Robo-3, who was pulling a big-wheeled cart filled with equipment Mulder couldn’t quite make out.

Mulder keyed in a few days later. There was Dutton, moving through the HAB hallways quickly, looking behind her like she thought someone might be following her. Mulder kept keying in times and dates, and each sol showed fewer and fewer of the crew in the HAB. Keystrokes, keystrokes, and then, there: outside, Rover 1 pulled back up to the HAB, its sides covered in Martian dust. Henderson and Elmer emerged from it. Mulder decided to follow their progress, in through the airlock, suits off and hung up, the men moving into and through the HAB. They moved more and more quickly, making their way to the mess. Powers was there by himself, and he leapt up when Henderson walked into the room, Elmer right on his heels. The men, all three of them, were agitated, Henderson gesturing wildly. Powers made a move to exit the mess, and Mulder watched as Henderson grabbed his arm and threw him back, landing a punch into the payload specialist’s cheek. Powers launched himself at Henderson and Elmer jumped into the fray and they moved, as a writhing mass, into the hallway which was, unfortunately, a camera blind spot.

Frantic, Mulder pulled up more camera locations, trying to locate the men. A few minutes later, Henderson came limping down the hallway toward the airlock, cradling a hand to the side of his head. The man quickly suited up and headed back outside, swinging up into Rover 1, which took off in the direction where Mulder and Scully would later find him. This must have been when Elmer had been killed, and Henderson shoved Powers into the lab locker to rot there.

And then it occurred to Mulder—they had found Henderson out on the regolith, but they hadn’t found Rover 1. When they’d rolled back into the campus of the HAB, the other rover had been parked where it should have been. The rovers didn’t have any kind of autopilot, so how had the rover made it back to base, leaving Henderson out on the Martian soil to die?

Mulder’s fingers flew across the keys, a sinking feeling washing over him.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully sat up, groaning, her left side on fire. She had no idea what had happened. One moment she had discovered some of their missing crew and had been about to go into the lab to greet them, and the next she’d been flying through the air to land painfully nearly ten feet from the airlock door. Then, she remembered the look on Ehrlich’s face. The wide eyes, the pointing hand. LOOK OUT!

Scully turned to look toward the lab. There, marching toward her, holding a metal rod menacingly, was the black-striped hardsuit of Powers. Like an ultra-fast montage in a formulaic movie, the scenario she now found herself in coalesced in her forebrain; the most sudden of realizations: Henderson had attacked Powers and locked him into a lab locker. She was wearing Henderson’s hardsuit. Powers thought she was the man who had attacked him.

“Powers!” she called into the comms. “Rick!”

He was still moving toward her with minacious purpose, and he began to raise the metal rod above his head. The comms! He must not be patched into the rover. Thinking quickly, she hit a few strokes into the keypad on her wrist. If she switched over, forcing him into a two-way comm channel with her, it might push his hardsuit’s unit into using the rover’s channel. They’d be able to talk. She hit the button for the channel.

“Powers!” she called out again, holding up a hand to halt his approach. “Powers, it’s me! Scully! I’m in Henderson’s suit!” Powers checked his step, the arm holding the metal rod half-lowering.

“Scully?” he said into the comm, taken aback.

“Yes,” she breathed, swallowing thickly and moving painfully to her feet. “It’s me. It’s me, Scully. I’m in Henderson’s suit. He’s locked up on Rover 2. It’s not him. It’s me.”

She watched Powers helmet cock to the side. “He’s alive?”

“Yes,” Scully panted. Her flank was on fire and it was hard to draw breath. She’d probably broken or cracked a few ribs. “We found him out there. We have him. But he can’t hurt you again. It’s me, Powers. It’s Scully.”

“Scully,” he said, and she heaved out a sigh of relief. And then Powers stepped forward and raised the metal bar high over his head. “You can die, too,” Powers said, slamming the weapon down onto her.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder was rolling through the footage as quickly as his fingers could press the buttons to call them up. He was honing in on it now, he could feel it—a few more keystrokes and he’d have what he was looking for. What he was dreading he might find.

A shot came up of the outside of the HAB at solbreak several days prior. Powers, in his black striped suit, jumped on the HAB’s four-wheeler and tore off into the regolith. Then, later that night, well after it was safe to be out, Rover 1 came back onto campus, pulling the little four-wheeled vehicle behind it. The cameras had night vision, but it was impossible to make out the color of the stripes of the astronaut who jumped off it and made his way toward the airlock.

Another few keystrokes. Mulder watched as Powers pulled off his helmet in the airlock doors. His stomach dropped and sweat broke out on his upper lip. Keystroke, keystroke, swipe.

There, the same day, only a little while ago, the cameras showed Rover 2 trundling onto the HAB campus, and Mulder watched as he and Scully disembarked. One more keystroke and the monitor showed footage of the lab. Mulder watched as Powers walked calmly and confidently up to the lab’s single storage locker, and locked himself inside.

Mulder jumped up, the chair he was sitting in flying back until it ricocheted off the wall behind him.

“Shit! Fuck!” he bellowed, and then he grabbed his helmet, slamming it home.

“Scully!” he shouted into the comms. He ran towards the airlock. Scully was getting tools out of the mechanical room at the water lab, if he was lucky, he could intercept her before Powers did or could. “Scully! Talk to me. It’s Powers! Powers is the saboteur!”

He looked down to his wrist as he ran. “Scully!” he shouted. Scully wasn’t plugged into their channel. He swore once more, and then pushed the button to force a two-way with her.

“Scully!” he called out again as he dove into the airlock and slammed the door closed.

“Mulder!” came her voice, screaming in what Mulder heard as a blind panic. “Mulder, help me!!!”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully screamed into her mic even as she rolled to the side, forcing Powers' blow to glance off the outside shoulder of her hardsuit. “Mulder, help me!” she shouted. She could feel the cold of the ground through the suit, Fear and Dread far overhead, twin eyes with murderous intent.

She’d managed to avoid Powers’ strike, but he was looming over her and she couldn’t move quickly in the lumbering, oversized suit. He raised the metal bar again and smashed it down onto her helmet. The noise inside the helmet was like a bomb going off. Dazed, she blinked her eyes in a vain effort to clear her vision. Seconds later, she realized that she wasn’t momentarily blinded, but that the faceshield of her helmet had cracked a massive fissure across the whole front. The pressure in her suit seemed to be holding, but one more blow near her face, and it was over for her.

Kicking out in a desperate, adrenaline-fueled flail, she caught Powers at the vulnerable knee joint of his suit, and he fell to his other knee, dropping the metal rod that he’d used to attack her. Scully scrambled to all fours and crawled as quickly as she could away from the man, through the thick, viscous loam, trying to get to her feet.

“Scullaaay!” Mulder shouted, his voice overly loud through the comms channel. “Scully I’m coming!”

She stole a desperate glance in the direction of the HAB and could see a hardsuited figure running in her direction, still at least a hundred and fifty yards in the distance.

Regaining her feet, she took a stumbling step toward Mulder before staggering to the ground as she was knocked off balance once again. He was still so, so far away.

“You!” came Powers’ voice, cutting in. He must have either forced her back into a two-way, or somehow opened a full comms channel. “You! Are not supposed to be here! None of us are!” His voice was unbalanced, incensed.

Scully rolled onto her back and Powers loomed over her, his gold-plated face shield mirroring the dull sky above them. She wondered what his eyes looked like. He leaned back down and picked up the metal bar then bashed it down on her again, this time a hard blow to her neck. She coughed as pain spread from the side of her head, arcing through her nerves and dulling synapses. Inside her helmet, a warning alert sounded. “ Suit pressure destabilized ,” the computer said. “ Suit pressure falling .”

Vaguely, and somewhat slowly, it occurred to her that she was about to die.

She was angry. Angry at Powers for what he’d done. Angry at everything that had happened because of it. And angry at herself–she’d always thought there was more fight in her than this.

She turned her head away to see the towering mesas dotting the landscape, then up to the sky, to the same sun that shone on Earth, which even now warmed those she loved and had left behind. From her left, a shadow fell over both her and the man who would kill her. Death had come to take her home.

But instead, Powers’s body went flying backwards on a sharp yelp, crashing into the ground twenty yards away on a plume of fine dust. Taken aback, she turned to watch and from the backlit shadow, appeared the metallic countenance of Robo-3.

“D-d-deprogram complete,” the robot said through the comms, his robotic voice carrying, it seemed to Scully, a note of triumph. And then her vision tunneled to black.

XxXxXxXxXxX

SOL 156

A steady beeping was the first thing that pierced her consciousness. The second was the comforting heft of a warm hand wrapped around hers.

A cottony, thick feeling took up most of the real estate behind her eyes, and it seemed to take forever to part the heavy lids, finally fluttering open into bright, artificial light. The hand holding hers squeezed.

“Hey,” came a low, rumbly voice. She turned to her head to find it.

“Mulder,” she said, her voice scratchy as all hell, consciousness coming on more quickly.

“Don’t move too much,” Mulder said from right next to her. “We’ve had to keep you out for a while on the orders of Baker. You’re going to be kind of weak.”

Scully rolled her head to the side and recognized the familiar equipment and sights of the HAB’s med bay.

“Baker?” she asked.

“Yes, Baker. The Mission Control Flight Surgeon?” Mulder hedged. When she turned to look at him again, his eyes were crinkled in concern.

“No, I know who Baker is,” she said, as a small roll of nausea passed over her. “But I thought we lost contact with Mission Control.”

“We did,” Mulder said. “But it’s back up and running. You’ve been out for a few days, Scully.”

“What happened?” Scully asked, trying to sit up, her core muscles unable to take her weight. More of her senses returned to her, the sterile, antiseptic smell of the med-bay, the starchy, rough surface of the thin, new sheets.

“How much do you remember?” Mulder asked.

“I found them,” Scully said, everything coming back slowly. “Shaw, Hramic and Ehrlich. In the water lab. Are they okay?”

“To a one,” Mulder said, and then pulled his chair closer to the bed, reaching out to run a finger over the downy hairs along her temple. The look of tenderness in his eyes bloomed a warm feeling inside her.

“It was Powers,” he finally said. “The saboteur.”

“Yes,” Scully said, “I’d gathered that when he tried to kill me.”

Mulder nodded. “He’s dead.”

Now that was news to her. “Powers is dead?”

Mulder nodded. “Killed by Robo-3. Saving you.”

“But,” Scully said, confused. “The Robo-Assistant’s programming doesn’t allow anything like that. They can’t hurt or lie, they’re—”

“Powers reprogrammed Robo-3,” Mulder cut in. “Sent him out on an intercept course to find us. He overrode all safety protocols and sent him out there with a message. He was trying to call us back, lure us into an ambush.”

“Then what…?”

“It’s complicated,” Mulder went on. “But he managed to trap the crew in the various outbuildings. He cut comms and stymied every attempt to fix them. Shaw and Hramic were working in the water lab when he just waltzed in and took their suits. Without their hardsuits, they couldn’t leave, and without the comms they couldn’t call for help. Henderson and Elmer were out on EVA. He sent Patel to Outbuilding 2 and forced her in, took her suit as well. Dutton and Ehrlich were getting hip to what was happening and he jumped them. Dutton is dead. He pushed her through the airlock. Ehrlich almost made it out to the water lab to get help from Shaw and Hramic, but got trapped by Powers instead. The three of them were pretty badly off when you found them. They were without food for days and days, though they had Martian water. Patel was worse, but she’s recovering.”

Scully processed all this slowly and thought of the unnecessary suffering they’d all weathered. The stress, the fear. Two people were dead. If she had any energy at all for it, she’d feel gray on the inside; numb.

She finally looked up at Mulder, some pieces of the puzzle still missing. “But what about Elmer and Henderson?” she asked.

“They returned from EVA and found things had gone absolutely sideways. They confronted Powers, who’d admitted to sending out Robo-3 to find us. Henderson and Elmer subdued Powers and Henderson went off in search of Robo-3 to call him back and fix him, but Powers somehow overcame Elmer, killed him, and took off after Henderson. Caught up with them. Henderson had Robo-3 half deprogrammed when Powers showed up. He stabbed Robo-3, took the rover and left Henderson for dead on the regolith.”

“And that’s when we found them.”

“That’s when we found them,” Mulder confirmed. “Robo-3 had gone off trying to get help, but his motherboard was wonky.”

Scully considered the machine, its vaguely anthropoid shape and its soulful voice. She had chided herself for treating it as an individual, for feeling for it as she would a friend. But the robot had saved her life. When she and Mulder referred to the bot as a “he,” it felt right.

“And then we picked him up,” she said, picturing the robot’s form against the backdrop of the Martian horizon, trundling earnestly on in their wake.

“Yes. And got to Henderson just in time,” Mulder said gravely. “He’d been out on the surface nearly 48 hours. It’s a miracle he survived.”

“He survived?” Scully asked, surprised out of her reverie.

“Woke up a couple days ago. He’s going to be okay.”

Scully felt a rising relief at his words. “Jesus,” she said, feeling the weight of all they’d endured. “So everything that happened to us all?”

“Powers,” Mulder said. “Best I can tell from some of the information I’ve been able to glean, he was missing his family desperately. Missing his wife. When you and I got together, it triggered him. The stresses of the mission, everything together, he suffered some kind of psychosis. I think,” Mulder paused here and took a breath. “I think some of the sabotage at the start was… I think he thought that if enough went wrong, the mission itself would get scrubbed, and we’d all be sent home. Then… it all became too much for him.”

“God, Mulder,” she said, tipping her head back. “So he was responsible for all of it? All the bad luck we’ve had?”

“Most of it,” Mulder nodded. “He was at the command center on Base Base when Dutton’s suit overoxygenated. He’d overridden the computer. He was the one who loosened the power coupling on the drill, though he nearly killed himself in the process. And Robo-2. He sabotaged it, which sent all that medication in the Martian dirt where it all got irradiated and—”

Scully inhaled suddenly. The birth control failure. The baby! She had almost completely forgotten, still in the grips of a medically and emotionally induced fog. She tried to raise her hand to feel her stomach, but her arm wasn’t working right and she started to panic.

“Mulder,” she said, urgently. “The baby! Is it—”

Mulder took the hand he was holding and calmly moved it to her middle, where she felt the hard rounded swell.

“—is okay. He’s okay, Scully. He’s going to be okay. And so are you.”

“…He?”

“I’m sorry if I ruined the surprise.” His voice had dipped low, full of emotion.

“They’re not going to make me…?”

Mulder gave her a tremulous smile and shook his head. “Baker almost had a conniption.”

The swirl of feeling that came up threatened to overwhelm her, but before she succumbed, there was a knock on the door. Three quick, sharp raps. Scully looked up. Commander Ehrlich stood in the doorway of the med bay, looking a little thin, but well.

“Can I come in?” she asked and Scully sniffed, took a deep breath then finally smiled and nodded.

“How are you feeling?” the commander asked, taking a step into the room.

“I’ve been better,” Scully said, and Ehrlich chuffed a small laugh.

“I’ve seen you worse,” the commander joked.

“It was the commander who stuck up for us,” Mulder said, nodding his head toward Ehrlich.

Ehrlich looked to the ground. “We no longer have to worry about a lack of resources, with Elmer and Dutton…” her voice trailed off, but she inhaled a moment later and she straightened her back. “We’ll do our best to take care of all of you, no matter what happens. And anyway, it’s like I told the Mission Commander back on Earth. The plan was always to colonize Mars. We’re just doing it… a little ahead of schedule.”

#the x-files #fanfic #my fic #msr #au #wip #mars au

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