J Mauldin - Final Solution

I sidled up to the window and openly glared inside. There she was, Liberty, looking just as lovely as ever, smooth caramel skin, high, avian cheekbones, pouty lips, and fathomless, dark eyes. She was even more beautiful for having matured, nearly putting the image of my pristine memory to shame. She’d been given the best parts of her parents, a perfect blend of Africa and Colombia.

I felt for the rubber gasket around my right ring finger and wondered if she still liked to race skimmers.

The Captain nearly spoke, but swallowed his angry reply. He raised his finger like a stylus as he often did when giving orders, but let it fall when the ship’s alarms began to bellow. Bright lights, red like as a dwarf star, flashed throughout the cabin, arresting everyone’s attention and leaching to the surface an impending sense of dread always felt, yet swallowed down, when serving on a military vessel. It was that sound. The sound. The one you never wished to hear. The warning cries of nightmare banshees who watched with fascination as the reaper’s blade was firmly pressed against your throat.

Red alert.

“Cut that off!” the Captain shouted at the Comm. The alarms died. “Sitrep.”

The main display changed, showing a dotted line connecting Jupiter’s moon, Europa, to Mars. “We have contact with our sensor network,” the Comm reported. Her face might have been turned away, but I could hear her eyes growing wider with each word. “It’s The Axis. The Razor . She’s altered course and is headed straight for Mars. Long range sweeps detect dense mass and high levels of radiation aboard.”

“Nukes,” XO grumbled. “It has to be. Those bastards are going for our main colonies. I knew we shouldn’t have been this far out.”

Captain Fryatt tapped his lips, seeming not at all afraid, but rather hard and thoughtful. “Navigation, how long do we have?”

Rosaleigh Guerra, Navigation, tucked a strand of mocha hair behind her ear. She licked her lips and sighed. “With our current trajectory, let’s see, we have a window of ten minutes to begin acceleration from our current position at Enceladus to enter a transfer orbit and escape the Saturn system. If we miss this window we’ll have to wait another sixteen hours to try again when we come back around.”

“And where would that leave us?”

“Best guess, arriving at Mars in five months and twenty two days.” Navigation swallowed. “Two days after the Razor , sir.”

A silent word hung in the air for an interminable moment. Annihilation. This would herald the end of The Brethren’s Martian Colonies, and the deaths of a hundred thousand people.

“They’ll have the opportunity to drop their entire payload by then,” XO added. “Either way, looks like they’ve got a head start on us from the get go. They don’t have as far to travel due to planetary alignment.”

“Orders, Captain?” Navigation asked.

Liberty turned in my direction; we met eyes. Her posture didn’t fail for an instant, she was too disciplined for that now, but her lips did part in a tiny gasp. After a moment of reflection, she mouthed the word David.

Hot damn, she remembered me. She remembered me.

“Engineer!” the Captain shouted, slapping a tablet resting on a workstation to the floor. His eyes became lakes of fire with the promise of hellish condemnation. “What are you doing eavesdropping on tactical? Do I need to cite you again? XO, how many marks will that be?”

“Captain, orders?” the Comm persisted, sounding both nervous and annoyed. “I’m sorry, sir, we’re short on time.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, not thinking my clearest. I should have tucked tail and run, waiting on orders like the rest of the crew. “This is bad, isn’t it? I didn’t think they’d ever make another move. It’s too risky.”

The Captain ground his teeth, but thank God, XO addressed me first. “Stand at attention, enlisted. We’re going to battle, that’s all you need to know. Is that clear?” I froze. “I said—attention!”

I stiffened bolt upright, eyes darting between XO, Captain Fryatt, and Liberty. “Sir, yes, sir.”

“Nine minutes, Captain,” Navigation persisted.

“Master Engineer, David Goddard,” the Captain shouted. “You have nine glorious minutes to get our engines burning at full or I’ll have you placed in an EVA rig without any oxygen cartridges. Do you hear me? We have a war to finish. Emergency burn, maximum delta v. Get us the hell away from Enceladus.”

I saluted the Captain and bolted. Medical, The Arboretum, Crew 1 and 2, and Cargo Bay rushed past in a blur. Security, maintenance and off duty enlisted plastered themselves against the bulkhead to get out of the way. I ripped off the PT weights and tossed them to the floor, leaving a trail of lead pouches in my wake.

“César!” I shouted as I crossed the Power Core and leapt for the rotating ladder of Nuclear Weapons Storage. I slid into the hatch at its top, barreling through the air in a place where gravity vanished. “Prep the fuel. Emergency boost, liquid burn.”

“Liquid burn? What’s wrong, señor?” His face screwed up. “What’s happening? Oh man, I heard the alarm and knew, just knew.” His fingers raked over the exposed flesh of his right arm like nails on a chalkboard, leaving behind just as much white.

“Engines! Now!”

The intercom boomed as we floated to the aft of the ship, nuclear warheads surrounding us in a radioactive cocoon.

“ Attention crew ,” said the Captain’s voice. “ We’ll be making an emergency burn to achieve sufficient delta v to break free of our orbit and leave Saturn. We have seven minutes to begin thrust in order to intercept the Razor, the Axis’s last remaining warship, before it reaches its target. It is their explicit intent to bombard the Martian colonies with nuclear weapons, eradicating what they see as a blight spreading throughout the system. If we fail in our mission and arrive late, if we’re destroyed en route, or if we fire last at close range, we will fail, and everyone you know and love, still living on Mars, will die, vaporized in an instant…”

“Pumps armed,” César said, slamming a control rod into place. “Liquid oxygen pressure good, liquid hydrogen pressure good. Igniter test?”

“No time,” I replied, flicking switches across the main control panels. “Damn it, did we check the thrust vector actuators?” I didn’t like being rushed like this. Mistakes happened when people were rushed.

“It’s not by chance that we titans face off for the lives of everyone, rather fate, serendipity. This is God’s moment to decide, once and for all, who the victor of this war shall be. Trial by combat. Duel of two champions. And it is my belief that the Brethren shall succeed! And when we do succeed, we shall ride on and they shall burn for their crimes…”

“Navigation,” I called into the mic. “Course set?”

“Course set, Goddard. Engines ready?”

“Almost, almost,” César replied, looking confused in the moment. The boy had spirit enough, but he was twitchy as hell and scatterbrained. “Shit, man.”

I finished my tasks and went to help him. “You’ve done this checklist a thousand times. What’s the hold up?”

“I know, I know, señor.” He fiddled with a broken switch. It was that damn switch I’d told his ass to fix starting a week ago. “It’s stuck. Damn it, the puta’s stuck. Pinche puta .”

“In less than four minutes we ride into battle, sending our enemies to hell! Crew, active stations, check all nuclear weapons, run test cycles on rail guns, secure equipment and personnel for hard burn…”

A pair of combo torches—capable of plasma cutting, arc welding, and soldering—were Velcroed to the wall beside César’s feet, one yellow-handled, one red. I snatched the one with the worn red grip and pushed him out of the way.