It was a RUD. We'll have to rebuild and try again. Mark could see those words on the screen, there in the Rover; in his dreams, while he was awake, he couldn't get away from them.
It was a RUD.
A Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. He had always been delighted by the sheer snark of the term, whenever he'd happened to hear it.
Until now.
Now, the very thought of the word made him unable to motivate himself to get out of his bunk.
He wouldn't have today, except that a dust storm had kicked up enough powder and sand that the solar panels needed to be cleaned. A small part of him was tempted to just let it build up; fuck it. Who cares at this point.
His list of things to live for had gotten surprisingly short. He was tired of the fight.
But if he had to go out this way; if there was no way around it and he was going to die on Mars, alone, then there was that little contrarian part of him that wanted to do it on his own terms. He wanted to get as much research done, as possible.
He wanted to live, damn it.
And he wanted to get home.
Right now, he just didn't fucking see how it was going to happen.
But he'd beaten the odds before; maybe he could do it again, somehow. He was going to have to adopt the mantle of the man that had to live with a poor diagnosis, he guessed. Like a doctor had told him he had… cancer, or something. Less than a year to live. And maybe, if he really suffered, really starved himself, maybe there was a 10% chance of remission; that NASA could launch something half-assed, and get it to him, in time.
None of his earlier ideas had panned out; he'd initially considered visiting the Ares II surface mission site, and raiding their supplies. There were probably leftover rations there, not tons, but maybe five or six months worth. Not to mention an actual, working satellite dish and a com system that wasn't based on a busted lander older than he was. And if only he had been able to get in a couple more potato harvests, it could have been an option. A long shot, sure, but maybe something he could have pulled off, if push had come to shove.
Ares 2 was 7000 km away, though. More than twice as far away as Ares IV, and he simply couldn't get there with the supplies he had. He'd just starve in the Rover instead of in the Hab. Ares 1 had only had a half-sized Hab, and he didn't think there would be nearly as many supplies there, since they'd sent fewer pre-supply probes, and stayed on the surface for their entire mission.
There were other abandoned rovers and landers, scattered about on Mars. Some of them would be an improvement over Pathfinder, for communicating, but none of them would help him to not starve. And none of them except Pathfinder had been close enough to make the trip without somehow modifying the Rover to accommodate the AREC and Oxygenator.
His secret hope had been, that out of the 1,800 potatoes he'd harvested, that perhaps there would be a lone viable survivor, that would surprise the hell out of everyone by sprouting. Unfortunately this had not materialized, either. The only thing that had been gained from all his efforts with the potatoes and making the water to support it had been to buy him an extra 180 days on this godforsaken rock.
It was the end of the road, and he knew didn't have much hope of making it home at this point.
He knew it, on a visceral sort of level. He cut his rations again, according to his best calculations. After only a few days of it, though, he was weak and tired all the time. It was going to be an unpleasant way to live. An unpleasant way to die, in all likelihood.
I'm not okay with it, he thought, almost surprising himself in his sudden intensity. Not even close.
Donning his EVA suit, he trudged to the airlock to go take care of the solar panels. Then, he supposed, he'd go out to the rover and check in with Kapoor, which he hadn't bothered to do for a couple of days.
Houston
"What are you going to name him?" Caroline had asked.
Mindy gazed down at the tiny, perfect face, snuggled in his hospital-issue receiving blankets like a little burrito.
"I think," she paused, glancing down at him one more time to make sure, as though the baby might decide to wake up and angrily correct her, if she were to get this wrong. "His name is going to be Henry," she said, smiling.
"I like it," Richard chuckled, as he held out his arms. Mindy was still trying to get the hang of this 'passing the baby around' thing. She was terrified that she'd drop him.
Richard was an old pro at it, however. His hands were gentle and steady, as he transferred his grandson from Mindy's arms to his own. In moments, he had the baby propped up in the crook of his arm. Henry's eyes were open now, and he went a little bit cross-eyed as he tried to focus on Richard, momentarily.
Richard affected a very fake British accent. "I say, Henry, old chap," he grinned down at the baby, as Caroline snorted and shook her head, glancing skywards.
"Why Henry?" Caroline asked, curious, as she leaned over and adjusted Henry's hat, sneaking a quick kiss to the top of his head when she was done.
"Um, it was something that Mark and I talked about, sort of," she replied, as Caroline looked up at her, surprised. "Not baby names," Mindy laughed. "But we talked about how… things tend to come back into style again, eventually." She smirked at the memory of Mark's opening gambit with her. "Henry just seemed like a name that's so old-fashioned, it could be stylish again," she explained.
Caroline smiled, and squeezed Mindy's hand.
"I love it," she replied, nodding. "It suits him perfectly."
Later, when the hospital clerk had come to take down the baby's vital statistics for the birth certificate before Mindy was due to be discharged. She'd gritted her teeth, and left the baby's father's name blank empty. It was the first difficult decision she'd had to make on Henry's behalf, and she hated it.
All of them hated it.
In the state of Texas, though, when an unmarried couple had a child together, the father had to file a court affidavit, affirming that he was the biological father of the child, and that he waived the need for a DNA test to establish his paternity.
To do so without the father's involvement; it could be done, of course, but it was a drawn-out process that would involve a court hearing. Mindy wasn't willing to surrender her privacy, and Henry's, that easily.
Filing for an amended birth certificate, after the fact, was by far the simpler way to handle Henry's birth, without bringing unwanted attention to the situation. On paper, at least, he would have Mindy's surname, at least for the time being.
Houston
Johnson Space Center
Mitch Henderson was certain of what he wanted to do, now; he was less certain, however, of how he could actually do it.
What the hell was wrong with Sanders, anyway? How could he condemn Watney like that, after all he'd been through so far? A second Iris probe was a terrible idea, and Mitch wouldn't stand for it, not when Watney's crewmates didn't even know they had another, much better option.
And why not?
Because Colonel Sanders is acting like a fucking chicken, that's why not.
Watney had been impaled by the com array, and left for dead. But he hadn't given up. No, he'd put his engineering know-how to work for him, modifying the rover, turning hydrazine into water, using the MDV and anything he had on hand, to fight for survival. Mitch had to admire his determination.
Now, he had a chance to help things break Watney's way. If only he could borrow a little of Watney's ingenuity and think of a way to do it.
Sending a voice message to the crew on Hermes, without CAPCOM, that was the most obvious option. But Purnell's maneuver was a complicated one, and he would wind up listing off equations and formulae for two hours, if he was forced to send it in audio format.
The file size would be enormous, and it would be noticed. And then, also, there could be no plausible deniability about who had sent it.
No, he thought, he needed to be able to send it in text form.
Disguised.
The idea came to him, in a flash.
He'd attach the maneuver to an email in one of the outbound daily messages.
Better yet, he'd spoof a personal message from an already white-listed address, and send it himself.
He'd address it to Commander Lewis; it would be her call, and she would understand why he felt that she had been wrongly left out of the equation. She'd understand, and she would agree with him.
Lewis was a geologist, though. Not a pilot or a astrodynamicist. She might not comprehend the utter brilliance of the maneuver. Would she feel obliged to show it to Vogel or someone who would?
Or would her position, that rigid hierarchy chain-of-command that she lived by, would her background make her less likely to show the other crew something that could get them all permanently blacklisted? She would be in danger of court-martial, and would she want to risk the same for her pilot, and the rest of the crew?
Mitch was about 99% certain that indeed, she would. She'd put it to a unanimous vote, most likely, because that's how such a situation would be handled in the Navy, if for some reason the hierarchy of command had to be bypassed for reasons of corruption or incompetence. But there was that small sliver of doubt. What if she just dismissed it, or worse, didn't understand what it was? What it could mean for Watney.
What if he were to make Vogel his target, instead, and work from there?
It might be a better approach. Vogel was ESA; non-military. Gifted in astrodynamics. Hell, the thought had probably already occurred to Vogel, that something along these lines might be possible. Seeing it written out, in black and white, numbers already crunched; he'd probably find it irresistible.
And oh, then Mitch knew exactly how he could pull this off! He'd attach the file as an image-ha!-and Vogel would have no choice but to confer with the SysOp on how to open the file. Vogel would need Johanssen's help, of course, to override any attempts by CAPCOM to try and prevent them from commandeering Hermes for the maneuver, so she made the ideal second person.
Then, two of the six would have seen the course. Vogel would surely tell Lewis about it, and Johanssen would tell Beck, and that would make four. If Vogel could convince Lewis, then it would be like a chain reaction, but…
Oh, shit, he realized, suddenly.
Hermes was due to start the aerobraking protocol less than forty-eight hours from now, and once they began the process to slow down the ship, none of this would even matter. The maneuver would be useless to them. And they'd need some time to make their decision, to boot.
The Rich Purnell maneuver needed a ride to Hermes, right fucking now, he thought, as he pulled the file up from his personal drive and copied it, adding a quick and anonymous note to the crew about the maneuver and why it was being sent to them. Then, he deliberately changed the file's extension, obscuring its contents. Now, what to name it, he wondered. Today's data dump was due to go out any time now. He would need to hurry.
What would make Vogel look at the file first? Time was of the essence, here, and he needed Vogel's attention.
Why, he'd name the file Our Kids, as though it were a personal picture from his wife! Astronauts always looked at their personals first, and the ones with photo attachments were always the first to be selected. The sneaky brilliance of it delighted him, and he was smiling as he tapped a quick query into a search engine.
How do you say our kids in German, he asked.
Unsere Kinder, it returned, promptly.
"Unserekinder-jpg" it was, then, as he typed it in, deliberately mislabeling the file.
He then addressed it to Herr Vogel, from his wife, spoofing the email's sender, and hacking the header to make it look as though it had been written this morning instead of just now.
Then he dragged the whole parcel over to the outbound data dump.
Add to Data Packet?
He clicked Accept, and even though it was still a few minutes early, he began the file compression himself, before anyone else in his ground crew could have a chance to inspect his work.
Delete Packet?
Yes, he selected. And then he went back and created an alternate version of the packet, minus "Unserekinder-jpg", and replaced it before the other one had finished compiling, to cover his tracks.
Done, and done.
UPLINK SIGNAL ACQUIRED
Send Compressed Packet?
You bet your ass I will, he thought, as he forwarded the Rich Purnell maneuver to Hermes with a satisfied smile on his face.
Fuck you, Sanders.
He was going to put the decision-making process back where it should have been, in the first place.
The crew would make the right decision.
And if it cost him his job, well, it would be worth it.