J Mauldin - Final Solution

It was hard to suppress a laugh. “So I was the bad influence, huh?”

“Maybe, but look who supplied the green.” She leaned back and sighed, pulling my hand along with hers as she did. Before I knew it my head was in her lap and I was lying on my back. “I wish it could be those days again, but father is a different man now. He’ll never be that man again. Maybe if I took him back to the caves he’d remember what it was like…” She paused to chew that over.

“I like that thought,” I said, nodding.

A storm rolled over the vastness of her tumultuous mind and was driven out to sea. She had had enough. “Damn, I’m hungry.”

I grinned up at her. “Hah. Me too. Got any crisps?” Despite the happy chemicals, I could see in her eyes a sadness she fought to hide. I guess I’d been lucky after all. My parents had loved the hell out of me and been warm hearted, though I wouldn’t have called them good parents. I hoped they were okay, Dad at least.

“So, what about you, David? What do you want? What do you think about?”

“What do I want? No one ever asks me that anymore.”

She ran a hand through my hair, sending a jolt of excitement all over. “I just did.”

I knew I needed to be careful and hold back. Part of me wanted to pounce her, and I didn’t think she’d resist. She was vulnerable, but that would vanish as soon as we were back on duty, and I didn’t know if I could handle that later rejection. She was an officer, and not just that, but more than just another woman. I had to be honest with her, yet not say too much, not be too direct. I had to do something I wasn’t good at, at all—be subtle.

I stretched out my stiff arms and it felt wonderful, like all the muscles laid against her weighed next to nothing. I was a balloon filled with helium drifting on the currents of a peaceful breeze.

“What do I want? I just want to go home,” I said, looking into her starry eyes looming over me. “I want to find a nice spot facing Arsia Mons from the observatory with the perfect companion. I want to watch the sun set again and again, until my body gets too frail to carry me to my favorite spot, a place where the glow is just right. And even when that day comes, I hope I’ll have someone younger, someone stronger, maybe even someone like us, to help me and my companion get there once more.” I paused to let the idea settle on her, then added, “And well, maybe sip a little gin while I’m at it.”

Liberty lowered her face, barely suppressing a smile by chewing on her bottom lip. “Sunset… But when you do get old, you might want to skip the gin. Not the best drink for dusty engineers.”

“You’re right, might be for the best,” I wheezed. “Maybe I’ll just have a Coke instead.”

“Okay, so as much as you talk about Coke, have you ever even had one?”

I shook my head. “No. I haven’t. Just seen ’em in every old film, not to mention the general store on Level Five for more credits than I could ever round up at once.”

“We’ll have to change that.” She began massaging my temples, sending warm shivers through my neck and upper back. Heaven. “so, what got you working on ion thrusters? I mean, I know they run the world but those little bitches are slow. I thought you liked the big boom boom, like that Nasa SLS engine you were fixing. Remember that thing?”

“The RS-25? Liquid-cryo fuel. Up to half a million pounds of thrust. A specific impulse of 450 seconds. Oh, I remember it. After you vanished, almost got it fixed too. Dad and I worked on it for another year. Got it in operating order but had no tanks. No fuel.”

“Were you planning to build a rocket and leave Mars? You’ll need more than just one booster to do that, scrap monkey. That engine was a museum piece. You’d be better off with a cluster of Raptors.”

“No, I wasn’t building a rocket—or—maybe? It was just for fun. We used whatever we could scavenge, but it wasn’t enough in the end.”

“And now you maintain ion thrusters?” She leaned her head back and looked at the ceiling. “They’re like a Martian summer breeze.”

“Hey!” I piped up, defending our ship’s main propulsion. “It’s not about the big boom boom, a massive chemical reaction hurling us where you want to go in a flash. This isn’t project Orion.” I reached back and locked my arms around her middle, my head still on her lap. “It’s about taking your time, going one step faster and faster, not being in a rush, but knowing your destination clearly. Even with all the advancements in nuclear thermal propulsion, you think our KS-55s burning five liters of Type-H per minute can hold a candle to the speed and efficiency I can get out of our third gen ion thrusters? Sure, the KS-55s have more punch, but they don’t last long. Fuel is heavy. With my third gens at a specific impulse of twenty times the KS-55s, I can go for dozens of weeks without stopping. Ever consider how fast one hundred fifty kilometers a second is? If you can imagine that, you’ll be in the ballpark. We’d need a city block of fuel to reach that speed with liquid thrust alone.”

She smiled, cradling my head in her hands. “You can go for weeks, huh? But what if I like things fast and rough? Remember, turtle, I blow two hundred megawatts of power every few days by pushing a tiny little button fixed between my pressed uniformed legs. Bah boom!”

I felt warm all over, but it wasn’t the green. This cause was far, far better. She leaned down and pressed her lips against mine, kissing me upside down. It was moist and delicious, her tongue tasting of blueberries and fucking sunshine. I kissed her deeper, breathing it all in, sampling her sweet scent. So many years I’d wanted this, and she’d vanished. So many times I’d thought about the night we wrecked and had almost shared a moment like this. The result was far better than I could have ever imagined. It was divine.

How was I so lucky to be here with her right now? How, tell me? How?

Did I deserve this gift?

After a couple of minutes our lips regretfully disengaged.

“I love it when you talk tech to me,” she whispered, catching her breath.

All I could do was grin like an idiot.

But before I could do something smart, like kiss her again, a serious question came to mind. Such a stupid time for this, but I had to know. “You know why we’re at war, don’t you? The real reason, not just what they tell us.”

She nodded.

“Will you tell me? Because things just don’t add up. They say the Axis are hard socialist, and that they want us to be as well. They say they want to take from us our freedom of religion and speech and the right to work. Take from us our right to vote. They say they are Godless autocrats who seek to revive communist ideals by beating us into submission. Please, tell me the truth.”

She considered this for a moment and shook her head. “Maybe someday. Look, I gotta go.” She got up and dusted off her clothes. Our wonderful moment, a tiny bubble floating in a sea of darkness and doubt, was unraveling. “If father catches you with me, you’re done.”

“I know.”

She acted as if she were about to bolt, then stopped. “That’s why I’ve been staying away. I don’t want to make things more complicated for us. It’s hard enough serving with dear old dad, but us, that’s some legitimate Shakespearian nonsense. You don’t want him to go to war against you. We need you to survive.”

I hung my head between my legs. “I know, it’s just—”

“David?”

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you meet me?” Her question came at me out of nowhere, a glittering knife with a razor’s edge poised over my chest.

“What?” I raised my head and cocked it to the side, heart aching.

“After we trashed the skimmer I waited for you just like we’d planned.” Her left eye twitched as she took a deep breath. “But you never came. Why is that?”