With Face in control of the doors and able to monitor life sign readings and see camera feeds, tracking down and incapacitating Kyle's men was just a matter of time. But the main prize eluded them until last. Face reported that Kyle himself seemed to be getting through the doors, despite the lockdown. He must have an override code, Hannibal realised.

But despite that advantage, they started to close in on him, forcing him down the corridors they chose, Hannibal and Ted pursuing, and driving Kyle towards BA and Murdock. Eventually they'd have him trapped between them with no place to go.

Of course, they couldn't expect he'd just give up easily, Hannibal thought, ducking back into cover as an energy bolt frazzled the wall over his head.

"Face," he said, into his communicator, "you got us? We're in section two."

"I see you. Kyle's heading away from you but he's got a surprise coming."

Hannibal poked his head out, saw Ted do the same, from his cover position across the corridor. Kyle had reached a door at the other end of the long corridor, and as they watched, he typed a code into the access panel. The door slid open and at once gunfire erupted, over Kyle's head, forcing him to duck. He ran away from the advancing BA and Murdock and back towards Hannibal and Ted. Hannibal grinned.

"He's gotta surrender now," he began, and then stopped, as Kyle stopped and tapped at another panel on the wall. A door slid open and he vanished from sight. Hannibal heard the door close. Despite losing sight of Kyle, Hannibal kept smiling, because he knew where that door led.

"Face! We've got him! He went into the airlock to the landing bay. Open the inner door!"

Kyle would be aiming to get out of the other side of the airlock of course. The landing bay was still pressurised, its space doors closed, the Chicago hovering over them. But once Face opened the inner door, the outer door wouldn't open, even with an override code. Airlocks never had both doors open at once. If one stood open, the other stayed sealed tight closed.

"Face!" Hannibal shouted as the four of them reached the airlock door to find it still closed. "I said open the door!"

Face's voice came over the communicator, his tone odd, tight, a far away tone in it.

"Oh I opened the door, Colonel."

-o-O-o-

On the flight deck of the Chicago, its small temporary crew had been following the mopping up operation, over an open comms channel. Amy frowned as she heard Face speak to Hannibal, heard the tone in his voice.

"What the hell?" Joy said, and the three of them stared at the big view screen in front of them, as a shaft of light emerged from the ground below, followed by a cloud of vapour and some small pieces of debris, and dust. The doors into the base's landing bay now stood open. Light poured out of them.

"He just dumped the atmosphere in the landing bay," Joy said, frowning. "I guess he wants to make sure Kyle can't escape into the bay. Now Kyle has to go back out the way he came in." She nodded. "Good plan."

Amy stared and Face's words came back to her, as they'd talked on a balcony with no view, under a stone sky.

"No," she whispered. "No. That's not the plan, Joy. That's not the plan at all."

Joy and Calvin turned to look back at her. "Amy?" Joy said and her voice shook Amy into action. She jumped to her feet.

"Mr Calvin, can you land this ship in the bay?"

"Yes, but why --?"

"Do it now!" Amy snapped the order and he turned to the controls without another word. "Joy, come with me," Amy said. "I'll need your help." The two women ran from the flight deck and as they ran Amy heard Hannibal's voice over the comms channel, broadcast through the ship, his words confirming what she already knew.

"Face, you've initiated the airlock cycling, to open the outer door, not the inner." His voice had a hectic tone, Amy thought, he must know the bay is open to vacuum now. "Face, you hear me? You've made a mistake."

As Amy took a flight of steps in three big jumps, hearing Joy clattering down them behind her, she shook her head.

No, Hannibal, she thought. No, he hasn't made a mistake.

-o-O-o-

Hannibal got no answer from Face over his communicator. Muffled thumps from the other side of the airlock door told him Kyle was banging on it.

"Face, are you receiving me? I said you made a mistake."

"Hannibal." He looked up at Murdock, who shook his head. "Hannibal, it's not a mistake."

Hannibal stared, at Murdock's pale face, wide eyes and knew he was right. Face had depressurised the bay and he was going to open the airlock door into it, exposing the unprotected Kyle to the vacuum. The thumps on the door continued. Hannibal wasn't sure if he could hear yelling, or if that was only his imagination.

"He can't," Hannibal said, not wanting to believe Face intended a deliberate murder. That wasn't how they operated. Not even against scum like Kyle. "He can't kill him. Dammit, Face." He turned to his communicator again. "Abort the airlock cycle now, Lieutenant. That is a direct order. Answer me!"

Silence. Hannibal gave a shout of frustration and glanced wildly back and forth. The doors on either end of the corridor still showed red lights on their access panels, still locked. And Face wouldn't open them on Hannibal's command, he knew that. Not until this was over. Not until Kyle was dead.

Kyle. Hannibal thumbed the button for the intercom into the airlock.

"Kyle, give me your override code for the doors! Now!"

"Not working!" Kyle's voice came back at him, panicky, panting. Through terror, Hannibal wondered, or had the air started to be sucked from the airlock, to equalise the pressure before the door opened? "Tried it." He meant he'd tried it on this door, Hannibal knew, but that wasn't what Hannibal wanted it for.

"I want it to get to the control room. Give me the code."

"One one --"

The voice cut off.

"Kyle?" Hannibal called. Silence. Face must have killed that intercom channel.

"One One," Murdock said. "How many more numbers?"

"Two more." Hannibal had seen Kyle type in a four-digit code right before Murdock and BA had driven him back from the door. Closing his eyes, he tried to see it in his mind, but Kyle had been too far away for Hannibal to see the actual numbers.

"Okay, then that's ninety-nine, no, one hundred different numbers to try. Zero zero to ninety-nine." Murdock ran off towards the nearest of the doors, started trying numbers.

"That will take ages!" BA called after him.

"Then shut up and let me work!" Murdock yelled back at him.

-o-O-o-

On the Chicago, Amy pushed her fingers into the gauntlets of the space suit. Joy fussed over her, checking seals.

"Is there any chance I can save him?" Amy asked. She wondered which 'him' she meant. Kyle's life meant little to her, but Face's did and she knew it would be blighted by guilt if he went through with this. Face had said he hadn't figured out what he wanted in life, but Amy felt sure that in the end this wasn't it. "Any chance at all?"

"Don't try to drag him back here," Joy advised. "Soon as that airlock door opens, be ready to shove him straight back inside. Once inside, well the key is getting that outer door closed again, fast as possible and the inner one open."

Amy nodded. The airlock door had a manual release lever, which Face couldn't do anything about. She pulled that lever and the door would crash back down. Perhaps Kyle also planned to try to do the same, when the door started to open, but his chance of managing that, as the airlock dumped its air and him into the bay, was small.

She picked up the helmet and gingerly placed it over her head. Joy at once started locking the clamps in place. Amy's breathing fogged up the faceplate for a moment, until it cleared. She opened the comms channel and heard Joy speaking to her, one hand holding a communicator now, the tiniest delay on the channel making her lips just very slightly out of synch.

"The colonel and others all have standard training for dealing with vacuum exposure. And Maggie's in there someplace. Getting him inside is his best chance."

Everyone's best chance, Amy thought. She'd met people who'd survived vacuum exposure; especially hanging out with the team, she'd met old soldiers, who told tall tales. But she found them hard to believe. Joy placed a small cylinder of oxygen and a mask into Amy's hand. Kyle's one chance. Face's one chance.

Her own oxygen in a highly compressed tank on her back was a heavy but reassuring weight. Nodding her thanks to Joy, Amy stepped into the Chicago's airlock. The inner door closed behind her.

"Starting the cycle," said Joy's voice in her ear. "Good luck."

"Thanks," Amy whispered. Her voice seemed to echo in her ears. Anywhere but here, she thought. I want to be anywhere but here. She'd never gone into vacuum before. As much as BA feared the matter transporter, Amy feared going out in vacuum in a pressure suit. Face's earlier teasing about it hadn't amused her at all.

She stood there, trembling, and all too soon, the outer door in front of her slid open, and she started to pant, knowing only the suit kept her from suffocating to death. Then, as her mind became convinced she could still breathe, she took a deep gulp of air. Clumsy and slow in the heavy suit, she stepped out of the airlock and down the ramp.

-o-O-o-

Face looked up as Maggie's voice finally penetrated his consciousness. Earlier she had retreated to sit with her back against the wall and her head down on her crossed arms. Now she stood as close to Face as the chain would let her come.

"Face! You can't do this!"

"You have no idea what I can and can't do. You know nothing about me."

"I know you're not the kind of man to do this, you're not."

"Not like him?" Face nodded up at the view screen that showed Kyle in the airlock, still banging at the door. He was yelling something.

"Three eight! Smith, you hear? One one three eight! Can you hear me? One one three eight!"

"He can't hear you any more, Doug."

Kyle looked up wildly at the sound of Face's voice. "Peck! Let me out of here! You can't do this!"

"Oh I think I can. I think I have control of the whole base from here. You live or die at my whim."

"Look!" Kyle held up his handgun and popped out the power clip. "I'm surrendering." A glance at the wall and he moved over to it and pulled at a handle, to open a small hopper. He put his gun inside and closed it again. Disposal unit, Face knew, for contaminated equipment that couldn't be brought through the airlock into the facility. The unit's power flared for a moment as it vaporised Kyle's pistol. "I'm unarmed!" He spread all three empty hands out. "I'll come quietly."

"You might have noticed," Face said. "That you are still breathing. See I've messed with the cycle. The lock should be equalising pressure right now, sucking out all the air before the outer door opens. But I decided I don't want you to pass out. I want you wide-awake. I want you to see that door open. I want you to feel that moment all the air is sucked out of your lungs."

He knew that moment intimately. Not only vacuum exposure would do that. Getting gut shot would too. The hot air, the sun so big in the sky, the sky such an insane colour. Yellow today. They said that one day it would be blue.

Lying on his back, bleeding on flowers that had been white this morning and yellow this afternoon, he wondered about the people who would one day enjoy the blue sky he was dying for. Why fight for this blue sky? We have one back home. Best of the lot. Real one, not simulated. They never get that blue quite right.

Voices, of the men who'd shot them. Supposed to be our side. Liars. Killers. Thieves. Rough hands searched Face. No, not even Face yet, didn't have that name. Like Face hadn't even been born. A dark shape over him, blocking out the big sun and the sick sky. Stripped him of gun and knife and radio. Left him unarmed and helpless and bleeding and listening to the crashing smashing noise that he didn't yet know was their radio dying too. Their one chance. Then the voices faded. That one last, the one who'd said "Major Douglas Kyle" and before Face could draw, had fired.

He'd first met Hannibal in the hospital he ended up in. Got called Face for the first time. Templeton died that day. Kyle killed him. Face was born.

Face heard the voice now, of the traitor killer thief. It sounded so different. Pleading. Begging Face not to kill him. Offering Face anything he wanted. Other voices. Maggie. And quieter, the volume turned down in that channel, but his still excellent hearing picking them up. Hannibal. Murdock. BA.

"Face, don't do it, ain't right"

"Please don't kill him."

"Face, if I can't order you, then I can only ask you."

"This isn't who you are. This isn't who you are."

Murdock said the same thing over and over. How did he say that and not lose track of the codes he was trying, Face wondered.

"Isn't it?" Face asked, whispered. The heat and blood and the sick sky faded and Face glanced down at the progress monitor for the airlock cycle. Ninety-eight percent. Kyle had seconds to live. The monitor showed he had dropped to his knees and Face heard him groaning. Terror had claimed him, this close to death. He had his back to the outer door so he wouldn't see it open.

"This isn't who you - I'm through! One one three eight!"

Face smiled. Murdock had it right. This isn't who he was. He pressed a switch and a message scrolled across the screen.

'Airlock cycle aborted.'