J Mauldin - Final Solution

Might not have been gin, but that’s okay.

I chuckled and put my ass on the edge of the bed. “But what about the rules? No alcohol on board? Hot damn, I knew he had some stashed away, but this much?”

“There’s a hell of a lot more where this came from.” She fell back on the bed beside me, arms outstretched, body sinking into memory foam. “Ahhh, that’s lovely. Found crates in the Cargo Bay locked up with Father’s code. They were full of all kinds of great things.”

I took up one of the bottles and flipped it over. “Jack Daniels Single Barrel Select. This isn’t Martian whiskey, it’s from Tennessee.”

“And it’s old, real old. The note said these were made in the 60s.”

I twisted the cork free and sniffed, the aroma sizzling and yet tickling my olfactory senses with a creamy hint of caramel intermarried with vanilla. “Feels wrong not to drink it out of a glass.” But the cups were just too far away, ten feet away on the other side of a desk.

“Everything is wrong nowadays.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” I tossed the bottle back and took a small sip, then a swallow. “Ahh yeah, that’s the stuff.”

Liberty sat up and began unbuttoning her coat. “We’ve got some time to burn. Have all you like. Shit, get a hangover if you want.”

And so I did, taking another deep swallow. I slid back on the bed till my spine rested against the headboard, heels not touching the end, and watched as she shrugged out of her coat down to a sports bra. As each arm slid free I could see more of her, and not just in the physical sense. That coat was like body armor. It was a symbol of strength and domination, of forced control and security. She wore it to protect herself from the words and thoughts of others, even her own. Surrounded by threads spun of rank and achievement the result of cold discipline, she was near invincible to all emotional harm, yet also impervious to joy. But here with me, alone, she was making herself vulnerable to pain, vulnerable to yet another man who could let her down. Then again, I guess the stakes weren’t too high. Chances were we’d be dead in a couple months and none of it would matter anyways. Might as well get what joy you can while you’re still breathing.

She tossed the coat onto a chair and took a drag off her vape pen. A cloud of smoke oozed from her wolfish grin. “Don’t get too excited, Davie . It’s just nicotine.”

“That’s alright, Lib , I’ve had enough smelly socks for a while.”

She puffed again and passed me the tube, then uncorked her bottle of Jack and took a long swallow. “Not bad.”

“So,” I said through a pillar of smoke, “what’s the crew’s big surprise?” I held the tube in front of me, rubbing the built in stunner’s safety switch with my thumb.

“Found all kinds of junk food like chips and Hershey’s bars and frozen steaks alongside the whiskey. Father was holding back, make no doubt.”

“Why? Wouldn’t it have been good for morale to up our rations of luxury items?”

“Maybe. I’d like to think he was holding out just in case the mission ran longer than we expected. Somehow, though, I know that’s not the truth. It’s like he just wanted to create dissention in the ranks. He never held back in giving us officers what we wanted, besides alcohol. When’s the last time you ate chocolate?”

I handed the tube back to her, proceeding to drum my lips with fingers. “Two? Three years?”

Liberty scooted up beside me and laid her head on my shoulder. “Exactly.”

I put an arm around her and drew her in, propping my metaphorically splayed heart on top of hers. If she was willing to take a risk, so would I. I couldn’t say no to her. “So, what you gonna do with him?”

“Father?” She sniffed. “He committed treason.”

“And we committed mutiny.”

“Not true. He was proven to be at fault before we moved against him.”

“You think the Brethren leadership will see it that way? This is something President Atmore will oversee personally. If we do somehow survive this, there’s a damn good chance we’ll all go down.”

“Which is why I don’t plan on turning over control after it’s over.”

“Excuse me?” I peered incredulously down at her.

She slid to the center of the bed and crossed her legs. “Atmore was part of Father’s plan, and so was the rest of our leadership. If we want to end this for good, they have to listen to us, not the other way around.”

“How do you intend on doing that?”

“Holding them hostage. We’re well supplied with weapons. All we have to do is survive the attack, and we can hold our government to an account.”

“On a bluff? I know you won’t bomb them. This is madness.”

“The best kind, and they don’t know that. Look at what Father was willing to do. Don’t you see, David, we have a chance to change things. No more slaving away for a mindless corporation who’s made itself into a sovereign state. Our families took a chance in coming out here, they had kids and raised them hoping for a better life. That better life only came for a few, but for the rest, like you, they were put out here and forgotten. If the lowest is healthy and happy, the highest will thrive as well. We stand together, or we die together, just like on this ship. There is no other option.

“Look, I might have grown up in the lap of luxury, but certain, terrible things have always stuck with me. I wasn’t completely blind like the Sovereign from my parable. I’ve seen suffering and sadness. I’ve seen unwashed, sick children in the middle levels fighting over protein cakes while on my way back to the Estates to eat roasted duck shipped in from Southeast Asia. I’ve taken antibiotics while others were thrown in the crematorium for simple infections. I even went one year not wearing the same outfit a single day in a row, whereas your father has had the same jumpsuit since when he first set foot there. What about César’s family? You think that’s fair? One out of five girls from Valles Rojo become prostitutes. I tried to influence Father to help, even Mother, but they would say merely that we earned our life and they hadn’t. But how did we earn it? Did you really earn the jackpot if you bet on a winning skimmer? Or is it just luck? Is that all success ever is, being lucky enough to be born into a situation that benefits you? I can’t turn a blind eye.”

I sipped on the bottle for a moment, thinking it over. “Your dad worked hard, right? He was a high-carbon mining foremen before the military. That’s a big job.”

“Not hard enough to earn a thousand times what your father did working for the state maintaining PV arrays and generators all day. How many hours a week did your father slave away?”

“I’m not really sure, eighty? Pretty normal for us low folk. Then again, we made work time into play time sometimes. Hell, if work was slow he’d turn in his time and just find a hole to drink in. Not a bar, a literal hole. You can run a tube inside your environmental suit and fill it full of liquor, then go sit on a hillside and watch the day pass from outside. It’s not too bad, kind of fun actually. Especially when you have some killer tunes.”

Liberty’s eyebrows furrowed. “You know how much my father worked? Really worked? Not just, I’m playing like I’m working by being at the office all day?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe forty hours, if that. And we took vacations, too. Sometimes weeks at a go. See what I mean? Things need to change. What incentive does anyone have to make the colonies a better place if working harder earns them nothing? There are plans to use our high-carbon mines to terraform Mars and make us an atmosphere, but why make that dream a reality if it’s just the same old shit?”